Study documents a precipitous decline in the number of languages

Globally, people currently use roughly 7,500 languages, with English, Mandarin Chinese, Hindi, Spanish, Arabic and French the most common, counting native and nonnative speakers.

That ​is a lot of languages.

But it is a far cry from the peak number historically.

Researchers used mathematical modeling and insights from anthropology, linguistics and demography ‌to estimate the […] ...