Language Death: How do languages die?

Hello everyone welcome to the Langfocus Channel and my name is Paul.

Today's topic is language death.

Normally on this channel when I talk about a language, it's usually a living language,

a language that's still spoken by native speakers today

and continues to grow and evolve.

But there are also dead languages and extinct languages.

Languages are considered dead when they simply have no more native speakers,

even though they may continue to be used in some way.

Latin is dead for example, but it continues to be used for religious purposes and for some administrative purposes in the Vatican.

Some people can speak it, but not naturally like a native language.

And it's not passed down as a native language. Another example is Hebrew,

which was a dead language before its revival in the form of modern Hebrew. Nobody spoke it natively for a long time

but it continued to be used for religious purposes and as a written literary language. In contrast, languages are considered

extinct when no living person can speak them. For example, if the last remaining speaker of a Native American

language dies and nobody has learned it as a second language,

then that language becomes extinct. Likewise, ancient languages like Sumerian are extinct, some people might be able to read ancient

texts in that language, but nobody really uses it today. Languages become either dead or extinct as a result of language death.

Types of language death

Languages don't always die in the same way.

There are various types of language death.

The most common way that languages disappear is through gradual language death. This normally happens when speakers of one language come into contact

with a language of higher prestige,

the language of a dominant more powerful group of people. That community may remain bilingual for quite a long time.

But with each successive generation,

fewer young people speak their traditional language and with lower levels of proficiency, as they opt to use the prestige language instead...

until one day their communities traditional language is no longer spoken. An example of this is Cornish,

which ceased to be spoken by the late 19th century as a result of the growing influence of English and also as a result of

the perception of Cornish as a lower class language, even amongst its own speakers at the time.

But Cornish is actually not extinct because there are

revitalization efforts to encourage people to continue to use that language.

Next, bottom-to-top language death. In bottom-to-top language death, a language ceases to be used as a native spoken language

but continues to be used in certain

contexts: normally in a formal religious context, or ceremonial context, or perhaps for literary purposes.

In gradual language death, the language normally disappears first in more formal contexts as its replaced by the prestige language.

But it continues to be spoken in more casual contexts for a longer time. In bottom-to-top

language death, on the other hand, the language dies out at the bottom in other words in casual contexts,

but it continues to be used in more formal contexts.

An example of this is Latin, which is basically no longer used outside of religious or ceremonial

contexts or perhaps literary contexts.

Next: sudden language death. Sudden language death occurs when all or almost all the speakers of a language

suddenly die as a result of a disaster or violence.

An example of this took place in the

1830s in Tasmania when virtually all of the islands native inhabitants were wiped out by European colonists during the black war.

Next:

radical language death

Similar to sudden language death, radical language death normally happens very rapidly and normally happens as a result of political

repression or under threat of violence. The difference is that the language's speakers are not wiped out,

but suddenly stop using their own language as a way to avoid persecution. An example of this occurred in El Salvador

during an uprising in the 1930s when many aboriginals abruptly stopped speaking their native languages as a way to avoid being

identified as aboriginals and potentially killed.

Two languages that suddenly died out where Lenca and Cacaopera.

Case studies

Let's look at a few languages that have already died and see if we can figure out how they ceased to be spoken.

Old Church Slavonic

Old Church Slavonic is the first attested Slavic language which was spoken and written between the 9th and 11th centuries.

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.

Those Slavic dialects which were basically the colloquial form of the same language,

gradually developed into the different Slavic languages of today.

Because it's still used in some churches for religious purposes today,

it's a liturgical language so it fits in with the

category of bottom to top language death. The newly developing Slavic languages replaced the old Slavonic

dialects as the languages of daily life, but old Church Slavonic

Continued to be used for religious purposes and for a certain amount of time for political purposes.

It's worth noting that some dead languages never actually died in both the case of Latin and of old Slavonic.

The language never stopped being spoken, it just continued to evolve into different languages,

leaving the codified literary language behind as a separate dead language that was no longer spoken.

The Mandan Language

In 2016, a man named Edwin Benson, the last remaining speaker of the Mandan language, passed away.

Mandan was a Native American language of the Siouan language family

which was spoken in the state of North Dakota.

The population of Mandan speakers was nearly wiped out by an outbreak of smallpox in the 1780s and again in the 1830s.

The cohesion of the remaining population was limited by government

relocation and the construction of dams which separated villages from each other, while the influence of English grew.

The fact that the most of the population was wiped out in tragic outbreaks of smallpox

would place this in the category of sudden language death. Even though some speakers of the language continued to live on.

Among the remaining speakers, we can also say that there was an element of gradual language

death as more and more members of that community began to speak the prestige language English until one day, Mandan was no longer spoken.

Gaulish

Up until the 6th century CE, a Celtic language called Gaulish was spoken in what's now France.

When the Romans conquered the area,

they made Latin the official language of the state, and being able to speak Latin became a way to gain status and economic opportunity.

For a number of centuries it was common to be bilingual in Gaulish vernacular and the prestige language Latin

until Latin finally replaced Gaulish entirely. This is a clear case of gradual language death,

as a population gradually gave up their traditional language in favor of the prestige language.

Ajawa

Between 1920 and 1940, the Ajawa language died out in Nigeria because its entire community of speakers switched to

Hausa for economic and practical reasons. The entire community very rapidly stopped using their traditional language

and it was not passed down to the next generation

This is an example of radical language death, when a language dies because all of its speakers suddenly switch to another language.

In many cases of radical language death, the community gives up their language for survival in the face of violence,

but in this particular case they gave up the Ajawa language because it was more beneficial for their community to speak Hausa.

Why should we care about language death?

Some people think that language death is a good thing, that less language diversity

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

they think that will promote the unity of their country.

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.

For example, let's look at the endangered Kallawaya language of Bolivia.

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,

but also to understand the thousands upon thousands of plant names

specific to the Kallawaya language that explained the medicinal uses of different plants in the local region.

If Kallawaya disappears, then all of that culture and secret knowledge will disappear with it.

Linguistic diversity has been on a steady decline and of the present, nearly 7,000 languages on earth nearly half are endangered

and the top 100 most spoken languages are spoken by 85% of the world's population.

Some endangered languages are finding new life through revitalization efforts

which require that the language first be recorded and documented,

then learned by new speakers and also used by an enthusiastic and motivated community.

And having some political influence wouldn't hurt either.

The Question of the Day

In your country or in your region, are there languages that are in danger of dying or becoming extinct?

How would you feel about those languages disappearing? Would something important be lost?

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