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Economic development is driving the extinction of some languages, the BBC reported, citing scientists.

A study has found that minority languages in the most developed parts of the world, including North America, Europe and Australia, are most at threat.

The research is published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The researchers say that efforts to protect these languages need to be focused on these areas.

Lead author Tatsuya Amano, from the University of Cambridge, said: "World languages are now rapidly being lost. This is a very serious situation.

"We wanted to know how the extinction is distributed globally and what are the main drivers of this."

Dr Amano, who usually looks at extinction rates in animals, said that about 25% of languages around the world were under threat.

The researchers found that the more successful a country was economically, the more rapidly its languages were being lost.

They said that in North America, languages such as Upper Tanana, were now spoken by fewer than 25 people in Alaska, and were at risk of vanishing forever.

In Europe, languages such as Ume Sami in Scandinavia or Auvergnat in France are fading fast.

The team also found that languages in the Himalayas are at risk, such as Bahing in Nepal, which has an estimated eight speakers. In the tropics, too, voices are disappearing.