Oklahoma City, OK, Nov. 8 (UPI) -- Twenty-five American Indian languages are still spoken in Oklahoma, but 10 of them are only one generation from extinction, experts say.

Speakers are dwindling because the older generation is dying, but a number of the state's 39 tribes are trying to save the languages, the Oklahoman reported Monday.

Although Oklahoma has 21,359 native speakers, 10 tribes have 10 or fewer fluent speakers, and 15 have fewer than 200, according to a count conducted by Alice Anderton, a linguist who directs the Intertribal Wordpath Society.

"Time is really running out for some languages," she said.

Fourteen years ago Congress enacted a law to make it federal policy to preserve, protect and promote native language rather than eradicate them. Tribal schools are trying to preserve the languages, but it's difficult with so few speakers with some tribes.

In Oklahoma, only the Cherokee language has a real chance of survival because of its language immersion preschool for 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds, said Dennis W. Zotigh, Indian research historian at the Oklahoma Historical Society. The tribe has 9,000 native speakers in Oklahoma.