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Article discusses the findings of researchers who've documented and categorized the utterances of the dying (morbid, but true!) Author Michael Erard notes that more research should be done in this area, because "Even basic descriptions of language at the end of life would not only advance linguistic understanding but also provide a host of benefits to those who work with the dying, and to the dying themselves. Experts told me that a more detailed road map of changes could help counter people's fear of death and provide them with some sense of control. It could also offer insight into how to communicate better with the dying. Differences in cultural metaphors could be included in training for hospice nurses who may not share the same cultural frame as their patients."

Linguist are trying to document and record quickly dying languages. They try writing down and making dictionaries of these endangered languages. Documentation can be the key to revitalization. But if no one is interested in revitalization then there it is just like keeping museum artifacts.

Thanks to Scott Herzer for this story, about Anderson Valley, an isolated corner of Mendocino County about two hours north of San Francisco, where people speak in a hinterland dialect called Boontling. The dialect is endangered and hopefully won't "pike to the dusties" (go to the graveyard) anytime soon.

Australian composer Liza Lim unveils her opera "Tree of Codes," which includes snippets of a Turkish whistling language from a small mountain village. This article explains that numerous people believe that if tradition is dying, something new should take it's place; there must be a way to incarnate the dying into something new.

Between 1950 and 2010, 230 languages went extinct, according to the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger. Today, a third of the world's languages have fewer than 1,000 speakers left. Every two weeks a language dies with its last speaker, 50 to 90 percent of them are predicted to disappear by the next century. Wikitongues wants to save these endangered languages from extinction. Bogre Udell, who speaks four languages, met Frederico Andrade, who speaks five, at the Parsons New School in New York City. In 2014, they launched Wikitongues, an ambitious project to make the first public archive of every language in the world. They've already documented more than 350 languages, which they are tracking online, and plan to hit 1,000 in the coming years. "When humanity loses a language, we also lose the potential for greater diversity in art, music, literature, and oral traditions," says Bogre Udell.

Linguist David Crystal opines that one of the oldest forms of punctuation may be dying. The period - the full-stop signal we all learn as children, whose use stretches back at least to the Middle Ages - is gradually being felled in the barrage of instant messaging that has become synonymous with the digital age. The conspicuous omission of the period in text messages and in instant messaging on social media, Crystal says, is a product of the punctuation-free staccato sentences favored by millennials - and increasingly their elders - a trend fueled by the freewheeling style of Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter.

LONDON - One of the oldest forms of punctuation may be dying The period - the full-stop signal we all learn as children, whose use stretches back at least to the Middle Ages - is gradually being felled in the barrage of instant messaging that has become synonymous with the

Geoffrey Khan, a linguist, is bent on documenting Aramaic, the language of The Bible, and all of its dialects before the language-once the tongue of empires-follows its last speakers to the grave.

The text exchange was unspectacular: a friend explaining a video that had been posted by a classmate to his Snapchat feed. Jordana Narin, my 20-year-old research assistant, was half paying attention, sitting in my living room working on a project, texting between breaks. "Omg literally dying," she typed back, not missing a beat.

An article on how many endangered languages are dying out

This was a fascinating article that focused on one dying language in particular - Icelandic. The article details of how Icelandic is weakening to the point that some of Iceland's youngest children speak English without an Icelandic accent, and when speaking Icelandic, their syntax is unfortunately influenced by English. Further, the article detailed of how the Icelandic government aims to secure a future for this language, spoken by less than 400,000 people, through preserving it in a digital medium on an online database.

The Beijing dialect is disappearing, with a decreasing number of people speaking it, said Wan Jianzhong, a scholar at Beijing Normal University and municipal CPPCC member. "With an increasing number of migrants, the city is becoming less Beijing-like. Original residents are relocated and fewer people speak the dialect and live the old lifestyle," he said. Wan believes that to bring back Beijingers' memories and sentimental attachments to their old life and culture, the dialect should be promoted. The number of migrants reached 7.04 million by 2010, 35.9 percent of the city's population, according to the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Statistics. "Beijingers are being non-localized by migrants. They talk to people who speak different dialects and forget to use their own," said Wan. While Putonghua should be advocated among the greater public, local dialects should not be sacrificed, he noted.

Margaret Noori, a professor at the University of Michigan is exploring the implications of bridging the digital divide to use social media as a linguistic preservation tool. Noori's studies are centered around Anishinaabemowin, the native language of the Ojibwe, Michigan's indigenous population.

Language-lovers and locals of an isolated mining region of the Ozarks are scrambling to preserve what's left of a dialect known as Pawpaw French before it fades. The dialect once dominated this community in southeastern Missouri, but due to stigmatization, is dying out. Pawpaw French - named after a local fruit-bearing tree - is a linguistic bridge that melds a Canadian French accent with a Louisiana French vocabulary.

Languages are now dying off faster than animal species, at a rate of losing a world language every two weeks. Researchers have discovered that the primary threat to endangered languages is economic development. It is now considered a global phenomenon.

"David [Harrison] and Greg [Anderson] will circle the planet to hear the last whispers of a dying language. They are The Linguists." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Linguists

Field trip to New York?

There are some cities you can identify with just an accent, including New York. But linguists say that those who speak in the classic New York tongue are part of a dying breed. To find them, filmmaker Heather Quinlan went accent hunting around the city, holding a sign that reads, "Do you have a New York accent?