In 2008, a linguist named David Harrison travelled deep into the forests of Siberia searching for speakers of an almost forgotten language called Chulym. After days of asking around, he was led to a small village where he met an elderly man named Vasilii Gabyshev. Gabyshev was one of the last fluent speakers of Chulym. When Harrison asked him how many people still spoke the language, Gabyshev paused, thought for a moment, and quietly replied: “Maybe three… maybe two.”

Then he added, almost as an afterthought, “Sometimes I talk to myself so I don’t forget it.” That simple confession revealed the fragile state of a language on the brink of extinction. For Gabyshev, speaking Chulym was no longer an act of communication – it was an act of preservation. With no one left to converse with regularly, he became both speaker and listener, carrying an entire linguistic tradition within his own memory. This poignant tale brings to us an urgent crisis – every two weeks, somewhere in the world, a language dies.

With it disappears a unique way of seeing the world, a system of knowledge, and an irreplaceable cultural identity. Linguists estimate that out of the approximately 7,000 languages spoken today, nearly half could vanish by the end of this century. This quiet crisis-largely unnoticed outside academic circlesraises urgent questions about cultural survival, globalization, and the future of human diversity. Language death is not a sudden event but a gradual process. It begins when a community starts to shift from its native language to a more dominant one, often due to social, economic, or political pressures.

Younger generations, seeking better opportunities or social acceptance, adopt widely spoken languages such as English, Mandarin, Spanish, or Hindi. Over time, the ancestral language becomes confined to older speakers, and eventually, when they pass away, the language disappears entirely. One of the most significant drivers of language death is globalization. As the world becomes more interconnected, dominant languages increasingly serve as gateways to education, employment,........

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