More than half of the world's 6,000 languages are in danger of disappearing, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) said on Tuesday.

"One language disappears on average every two weeks," the organization said on the sixth celebration of International Mother Language Day.

In addition, only 10 per cent of the world's languages are represented on the Internet, UNESCO said.

The occasion was marked by a conference at UNESCO's Paris headquarters on linguistic diversity and the difficulties many minorities of the Americas, Asia and Africa have in preserving their tongues.

In a press statement, UNESCO Secretary-General Koichiro Matsuura appealed to "all the prime movers in the political and economic world and civil society so that the cause of languages and their diversity, in particular in cyberspace, may be duly appreciated and furthered in a fashion commensurate with the key issues at stake."

However, Musa Bin Jaafar Bin Hassan, president of the 33rd session of UNESCO's General Conference, noted that it was difficult to resist "the wave of globalization" which places English in a position of complete dominance.