Helping Endangered Languages//
　OK, let’s get started.// Today, we want to take a look at efforts to protect endangered languages.// Eleven of the world’s languages have at least one hundred million native speakers.// The United Nations says that these eleven languages are the mother tongues of half of the world’s population.// But the world has close to seven thousand languages.// Linguists predict that as many as half of these may be at risk of disappearing by the end of this century.//
　Members of the Native American Siletz tribe take pride in their language.// But today, very few people can speak it fluently.// When linguists came in and assessed the tribe, they labeled the language “moribund,” or on the brink of extinction.// So, several National Geographic  fellows helped the tribe record fourteen thousand words and phrases of the language.// More than ten thousand entries can be found in the Siletz Online Talking Dictionary.//
　Dr. David Harrison is a linguistics professor.// He has online dictionaries of highly endangered languages from around the world.// He says that technology can promote the influence of major languages but also help save endangered ones.// He and Dr. Greg Anderson have mapped areas of endangered languages.// Why does the world have endangered languages?//