EXPLAINERNews|Arts and CultureWhere are the most endangered languages in the world?February 21 is World Mother Language Day. Al Jazeera looks at the most spoken languages and which ones are endangered.

Currently, over 7,000 languages are spoken globally, with approximately 3,000, or 40 percent, classified as endangered.

English is the most commonly spoken language, with around 1.5 billion speakers across 186 countries. A minority, 20 percent, speak English as their first language, while 80 percent use it as a second or additional language. Mandarin Chinese follows with nearly 1.2 billion speakers, making it the largest language by native speakers due to China's population size. Hindi, Spanish, and Standard Arabic follow with 609 million, 559 million, and 335 million speakers, respectively.

Scripts in the World's Most Popular Languages

There are 293 known scripts used for writing languages, with 156 still in active use. Historical scripts, such as Egyptian Hieroglyphs and Aztec pictograms, are no longer in use. The Latin script is employed in at least 305 of the world’s 7,139 living languages, accounting for use by over 70 percent of the global population.

Among the 7,159 languages globally, 3,193 (44 percent) are endangered, 3,479 (49 percent) are stable, and 487 (7 percent) are institutional, meaning they are utilized by governments, educational institutions, and the media. A language becomes endangered when a community shifts to a more dominant language for intergenerational transmission.

Currently, 337 languages are dormant, while 454 are extinct. Dormant languages lack proficient speakers but remain part of an ethnic community's identity. Extinct languages have no speakers or social usage.

Approximately 88.1 million people speak an endangered language natively. The breakdown includes:

1,431 languages with fewer than 1,000 native speakers 463 languages with fewer than 100 speakers 110 languages with fewer than 10 speakers

Oceania has the highest number of endangered languages, followed by Asia, Africa, and the Americas. A significant 80 percent of these languages are found in just 25 countries.

In Australia, Yugambeh is spoken by the Yugambeh people. Efforts such as community-led revitalization programs and learning apps have been implemented to make the language accessible to younger generations.

Japan's Ainu language is critically endangered. Although the precise number of speakers is unknown, a 2006 survey indicated that 304 out of 23,782 Ainu people have knowledge of the language.

Ongota, spoken by a small community in southwest Ethiopia, is critically endangered, with only a few elders retaining fluency.

In North and Central America, most Indigenous languages are endangered. Louisiana Creole in the United States and Leco in Bolivia are examples, with both languages primarily spoken by elder community members.

Cornish, spoken in southwest England, was once considered extinct but has since been revived and is now classified as endangered. It is spoken as a first language by 563 individuals, according to the 2021 England and Wales census.

Based on reporting by Al Jazeera.