500 Endangered Languages Online by 2030
A global mission to digitise, promote, and teach the world’s most endangered languages.
What is 500 Languages Online by 2030?
Thousands of languages are disappearing – some with only a few speakers left. Every lost language means the loss of culture, identity, and knowledge.
Our Mission:
“500 Languages Online by 2030” is a global campaign to ensure that 500 endangered and under-resourced languages are visible, learnable, and alive online.
Why Save Endangered Languages?
A language dies every two weeks. That’s not just a loss of words. It’s the disappearance of a way of seeing the world.
Right now, 40% of the world’s languages are at risk of extinction. With each one that vanishes, we lose more than vocabulary – we lose songs, stories, traditions, and the deep cultural knowledge that communities have passed down for generations.
Language is identity. It’s memory. It’s resilience. When we protect endangered languages, we protect the diversity of human experience – and ensure that future generations inherit more than silence.
Learn MoreWho Is This For?
Whether you’re fluent or just curious, this campaign is for you.
It’s designed for language learners who want to explore something rare and meaningful, native speakers and elders who hold valuable knowledge to share, and teachers and students looking for free, accessible resources to bring into the classroom.
It’s also for volunteers, researchers, and NGOs dedicated to digital preservation, and for diaspora communities seeking to reconnect with their linguistic and cultural roots.
Endangered Languages FAQs
An endangered language is at risk of disappearing because it is no longer being passed down to younger generations and has a shrinking number of speakers.
Around 40% of the world’s languages are considered endangered, according to research and classifications used by organisations such as UNESCO.
Languages become endangered due to globalisation, historical colonisation, political pressure, migration, and education systems that prioritise dominant languages over local or Indigenous ones.
When a language disappears, cultural identity, oral traditions, historical knowledge, and unique ways of understanding the world are lost forever.
Yes. Through community-led teaching, documentation, and digital tools, many languages have been successfully revitalised, especially when children are encouraged to learn them.
Individuals can support language preservation by raising awareness, learning endangered languages, supporting documentation projects, and promoting multilingual education.