A language is a living thing. A language needs to be used; otherwise it gets forgotten. There are about 7,000 languages still in use in the world. But about every fourteen days, one of these languages is no longer spoken and dies. Experts believe that by 2100, more than half of today’s languages will extinct.

There are many reasons why a language starts to disappear. Often it’s because the need for the language disappears. Or because fewer people communicate with it.

In Bolivia, more than 30 languages are spoken today. One is a secret language called Kallawaya. The reason it’s known as a secret language is because it’s only taught by a father to his son or a grandfather to his grandson. Girls almost never learn to speak it. The Kallawaya people use their language for healing and in their family. They don’t really use it anywhere else. These days, there are only about twenty people who can speak Kallawaya. With each new generation, fewer males will speak the language and pass it on to their children. Kallawaya is disappearing because of cultural and social changes in people’s behavior.

The eastern group of the Cherokee Indian tribe (部落) lives in the state of North Carolina, the USA. Today, there are fewer than 200 fluent (流利的) speakers of Cherokee living in North Carolina. Cherokee people in North Carolina are trying to change that. They set up an elementary school to teach the Cherokee language and culture. Now, more children can speak Cherokee. Many people are trying to help their language grow. In fact, you can find smartphone apps and computer software (软件) in Cherokee.

Do you believe languages have magic power? Whenever I missed my family during my stay in America, I would talk with my friend who was also in the same school in Shanghai dialect. By speaking in this way, I seemed to go back to the neighborhood where I grew up.

  When I was a kid, my mom couldn’t spend much time with me because of her job. To draw her attention, I began to learn German, a language she speaks well. Although at first I could only say “Ich liebe dich (I love you)”. After a few months, I could have conversations with my mom.

After a trip to Israel (以色列) in high school, I became fascinated with Jewish (犹太的) culture and started to teach myself Hebrew (希伯来语). During the first months, I couldn’t remember how to spell words. I couldn’t remember how to spell words, but then started to understand sentences quickly. Now I have a friend in Shanghai’s Jewish community.

Gradually, I realized that languages are similar in some ways. As I learned French in university, I found many French words have the same meaning as English words. Though I only started learning French half a year ago, I have started reading books in French to better understand the language.

You see languages bring me closer to the world. I walk on the streets of Paris through French novels. I admire the Jewish spirit of challenging the impossible. I will do my best to pass on the Shanghai dialect to young people. Languages make people closely related to each other, which is exactly needed in this world.

Thousands of years ago, Chinese characters (汉字) appeared on animal bones (骨头) and bamboo before they were written on paper. Now there is a new place to hold the ancient Chinese texts in the modern age.

Recently, a research team from Nanjing Agricultural University together with Gulian, a leading ancient Chinese text publisher, introduced a large language model called Xunzi.

“Traditional Chinese characters and the absence of punctuation marks (标点符号) are always making reading traditional texts hard,” said Wang Dongbo, who led the research.

To create this model, Wang and his teammates did a lot of research on Chinese classics (名著). “We have to work on a lot of Chinese characters and we want to share them with the world,” said Wang.

However, it was not an easy job. Wang said they needed to learn these classics first and then mark the characters into different groups.

But their hard work seems to pay off. Now, the model can help users understand and study ancient Chinese texts. “The model can help us learn more information hidden in our traditional culture and find something new. We also want to let more people understand traditional Chinese culture,” said Wang. So they shared the large language model on the website, allowing users to download and use it for free.