Nû shu is the name of an ancient chinese language spoken only by women of a single prefecture in the Hunan province in China. It was similar to mandarin, but even the
signs were completely different from standard
pinyin, the standard mandarin chinese writing. There was only one person currently speaking the language,
Yang Huanyi, and she died last October 6th; it's been also told in
chinese journal. Actually, 50% of the of the 6000 existing languages in the world will dissapear by 2050; with them, a whole network of memes will be lost forever.
They will probably not be forgotten; lots of documents and pages will talk about them, show its grammar; some people will even be able to translate them. But if there are not two persons that will be able to chat using these languages over coffee, or to receive old stories told by their families, they will be, to all effects, dead.
