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Hello everyone, welcome to the
Langfocus Channel
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and my name is Paul.
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Today's topic is language death.
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Normally on this channel,
when I talk about a language,
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it's usually a living language,
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a language that's still spoken
by native speakers today
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and continues to grow and evolve.
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But there are also dead languages
and extinct languages.
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Languages are considered dead when
they simply have no more native speakers,
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even though they may continue
to be used in some way.
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Latin is dead for example,
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but it continues to be used
for religious purposes
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and for some
administrative purposes in the Vatican.
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Some people can speak it,
but not naturally like a native language.
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And it's not passed down
as a native language.
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Another example is Hebrew,
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which was a dead language
before its revival
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in the form of modern Hebrew.
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Nobody spoke it natively for a long time
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but it continued to be used
for religious purposes
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and as a written literary language.
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In contrast,
languages are considered extinct
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when no living person can speak them.
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For example, if the last remaining speaker
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of a Native American language dies
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and nobody has learned it
as a second language,
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then that language becomes extinct.
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Likewise, ancient languages,
like Sumerian, are extinct.
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Some people might be able to read
ancient texts in that language,
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but nobody really uses it today.
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Languages become either dead or extinct
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as a result of language death.
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Languages don't always
die in the same way.
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There are various types of language death.
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The most common ways
that languages disappear
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is through gradual language death.
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This normally happens when
speakers of one language
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come into contact with
a language of higher prestige,
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the language of a dominant,
more powerful group of people.
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That community may remain bilingual
for quite a long time.
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But with each successive generation,
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fewer young people speak
their traditional language
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and with lower levels of proficiency,
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as they opt to use the
prestige language instead...
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until one day their communities
traditional language is no longer spoken.
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An example of this is Cornish,
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which ceased to be spoken
by the late 19th century
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as a result of the
growing influence of English
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and also as a result of the perception
of Cornish as a lower class language,
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even amongst its own
speakers at the time.
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But Cornish is actually not extinct
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because there are revitalization efforts
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to encourage people to continue
to use that language.
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Next: bottom-to-top language death.
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In bottom-to-top language death,
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a language ceases to be used
as a native spoken language
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but continues to be used
in certain contexts:
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normally in a formal religious context,
or ceremonial context,
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or perhaps for literary purposes.
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In gradual language death,
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the language normally disappears first
in more formal contexts
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as its replaced by the prestige language.
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But it continues to be spoken in more
casual contexts for a longer time.
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In bottom-to-top language death,
on the other hand,
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the language dies out at the bottom,
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in other words, in casual contexts,
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but it continues to be used
in more formal contexts.
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An example of this is Latin,
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which is basically no longer used
outside of religious
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or ceremonial contexts,
or perhaps literary contexts.
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Next: sudden language death.
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Sudden language death occurs when all
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or almost all the speakers of a language
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suddenly die as a result
of a disaster or violence.
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An example of this took place
in the 1830s in Tasmania
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when virtually all of the island´s
native inhabitants
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were wiped out by European colonists
during the "Black War".
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Next: radical language death.
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Similar to sudden language death,
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radical language death
normally happens very rapidly
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and normally happens
as a result of political repression
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or under threat of violence.
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The difference is that the language's
speakers are not wiped out,
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but suddenly stop using their own language
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as a way to avoid persecution.
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An example of this occurred in El Salvador
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during an uprising in the 1930s
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when many aboriginals abruptly
stopped speaking their native languages
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as a way to avoid being identified
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as aboriginals and potentially killed.
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Two languages that suddenly died out where Lenca and Cacaopera.
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Case studies
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Let's look at a few languages that have already died and see if we can figure out how they ceased to be spoken.
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Old Church Slavonic
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Old Church Slavonic is the first attested Slavic language which was spoken and written between the 9th and 11th centuries.
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It was a standardized variety of Slavic that was understood by speakers of the various Slavic dialects of that time which were still quite similar to each other.
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Those Slavic dialects which were basically the colloquial form of the same language,
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gradually developed into the different Slavic languages of today.
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Because it's still used in some churches for religious purposes today,
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it's a liturgical language so it fits in with the
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category of bottom to top language death. The newly developing Slavic languages replaced the old Slavonic
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dialects as the languages of daily life, but old Church Slavonic
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Continued to be used for religious purposes and for a certain amount of time for political purposes.
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It's worth noting that some dead languages never actually died in both the case of Latin and of old Slavonic.
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The language never stopped being spoken, it just continued to evolve into different languages,
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leaving the codified literary language behind as a separate dead language that was no longer spoken.
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The Mandan Language
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In 2016, a man named Edwin Benson, the last remaining speaker of the Mandan language, passed away.
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Mandan was a Native American language of the Siouan language family
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which was spoken in the state of North Dakota.
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The population of Mandan speakers was nearly wiped out by an outbreak of smallpox in the 1780s and again in the 1830s.
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The cohesion of the remaining population was limited by government
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relocation and the construction of dams which separated villages from each other, while the influence of English grew.
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The fact that the most of the population was wiped out in tragic outbreaks of smallpox
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would place this in the category of sudden language death. Even though some speakers of the language continued to live on.
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Among the remaining speakers, we can also say that there was an element of gradual language
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death as more and more members of that community began to speak the prestige language English until one day, Mandan was no longer spoken.
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Gaulish
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Up until the 6th century CE, a Celtic language called Gaulish was spoken in what's now France.
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When the Romans conquered the area,
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they made Latin the official language of the state, and being able to speak Latin became a way to gain status and economic opportunity.
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For a number of centuries it was common to be bilingual in Gaulish vernacular and the prestige language Latin
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until Latin finally replaced Gaulish entirely. This is a clear case of gradual language death,
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as a population gradually gave up their traditional language in favor of the prestige language.
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Ajawa
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Between 1920 and 1940, the Ajawa language died out in Nigeria because its entire community of speakers switched to
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Hausa for economic and practical reasons. The entire community very rapidly stopped using their traditional language
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and it was not passed down to the next generation
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This is an example of radical language death, when a language dies because all of its speakers suddenly switch to another language.
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In many cases of radical language death, the community gives up their language for survival in the face of violence,
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but in this particular case they gave up the Ajawa language because it was more beneficial for their community to speak Hausa.
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Why should we care about language death?
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Some people think that language death is a good thing, that less language diversity
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is a good thing. For example the leaders of some countries want one language to be dominant and to replace all of the others because
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they think that will promote the unity of their country.
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On the other hand, a language is part of a culture so when a language dies part of that culture dies, and a unique way of seeing the world dies with it.
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For example, let's look at the endangered Kallawaya language of Bolivia.
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Kallawaya is used by a sect of medicine men who learned the language not only to understand the ritual practice and oral tradition of their ancestors,
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but also to understand the thousands upon thousands of plant names
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specific to the Kallawaya language that explained the medicinal uses of different plants in the local region.
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If Kallawaya disappears, then all of that culture and secret knowledge will disappear with it.
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Linguistic diversity has been on a steady decline and of the present, nearly 7,000 languages on earth nearly half are endangered
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and the top 100 most spoken languages are spoken by 85% of the world's population.
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Some endangered languages are finding new life through revitalization efforts
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which require that the language first be recorded and documented,
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then learned by new speakers and also used by an enthusiastic and motivated community.
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And having some political influence wouldn't hurt either.
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The Question of the Day
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In your country or in your region, are there languages that are in danger of dying or becoming extinct?
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How would you feel about those languages disappearing? Would something important be lost?
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Be sure to follow Langfocus on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. and once again.
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Thank you to all of my wonderful patreon supporters,
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especially my top tier Patreon supporters whose names are on the screen right now. Very many thanks to them.
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By the way on the last video about Toki Pona, some of you asked why Toki Pona was listed on the page of patrons.
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That's because the creator of the Toki Pona language has been a Patreon since last summer
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but preferred not to appear on the list. But upon request. I've begun listing the name of the language instead,
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Thank you for watching and have a nice day!