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Across the world, the places with the greatest biodiversity are also the places with the greatest language diversity.

Researchers don't fully know why, but it's a phenomenon seen again and again, in the Amazon and in the

Pacific Islands. For instance, Pablo New Guinea is one of the most biologically diverse areas

in the world, and it is also the most linguistically diverse places in the world.

This is Dr. Lydia Liu, a professor at Columbia University and co-editor of a book called Global Language Justice,

which calls attention to the fact that in a time of mass extinction and climate change,

we are also living in a time of rapid language loss.

Why is that a loss?

Well, different people will give different answers.

There's the human reason, of course.

People are attached to their languages emotionally.

They attach to their families and to their community.

So the human element here specifically involves people's breaths, right?

Are they able to articulate, utter their own sounds?

And this language loss is happening disproportionately within indigenous communities in the

tropics. The United Nations estimates that one indigenous language dies every two weeks.

...