If you've always wanted to learn Yuchi, now's the time.
Yesterday, as an example of how languages are constantly evolving, I taught my Writing & Grammar 9 students the origin of the English word "goodbye" (it started life as the phrase "God be with you" - just in case you didn't know).
Now I read an article I'll certainly be sharing with them tomorrow: according to the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages and the National Geographic Society, approximately 7,000 languages are currently spoken on Earth... and one of them disappears forever every two weeks.
Chances are nobody will remember them after they're gone, either, since roughly half of Humanity's languages have never been written down, and are only spoken by 0.2 percent of our world's total population.
The Living Tongues Institute is doing everything it can, of course, to record as many of these endangered lessons as possible before they go the way of the dodo, but it has its work cut out for it. The language of the Native-American Yuchi tribe - possibly unrelated to any other tongue known to Man - is now only familiar to five elderly men. Which actually makes Yuchi five times as well-known as Siletz Dee-ni or Amurdag.
According to the article, the director of the Living Tongues Institute is making a few noises about "the key to getting a language revitalized" being "getting a new generation of speakers", but we all know that's a fantasy. Whatever their historical value, languages thrive only so long as they are practically useful to their speakers. In the new global community developing before our eyes, obscure tribal languages simply have no compelling reason to exist. There's nothing for that.
Nor is there any reason to fret about it, I'll add, though I know that's easy for me to say, seeing as how I'm an American, and so popular is my language that I make a living teaching it to children in other countries. But listen: languages have always died or morphed beyond recognition over time. All that's noteworthy about the phenomenon now is simply the speed at which it is occurring.
Once upon a time, two cultures met and changed each other - or one swallowed the other - over a period of time measurable in hundreds of years. That same effect requires only decades today. We should be thankful for this, since - generally speaking - the evolution of a society has always been dependent upon its taking the best elements with which it comes into contact and allowing the lesser elements to fade away.
Still: I hope the Living Tongues Institute manages to record as many of these endangered languages as possible, in the interests of posterity.