While there is no definite threshold for identifying a language as endangered, three main criteria are used as guidelines:
For example, Ainu is endangered in Japan, with only approximately 15 surviving native speakers and few youth acquiring fluency in it. A language might also be declared as endangered if it has 100 speakers, but the speakers are all over the age of 90, and no youth are learning the language.
In contrast, a language with only 100 speakers might be considered very much alive if it is the primary language of a community, and is the first (or only) language of all children in that community.
Examples of endangered languages
Examples of recently extinct languages With last known speaker and date of death:
The Rosetta Project is an online language archive which seeks to preserve endangered languages.
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