Language Endangerment and Death

  • total disappearance of a language, not the altering of form
  • contributing factors:
    • loss of speech community
    • genocide
    • famine
    • political oppression
    • war
    • epidemics
    • abrupt death
    • decline in language acquisition across generations
    • competition from global languages (English, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, Portuguese, etc.)
  • small languages have very few native and bilingual speakers
  • most important: generational transmission. are they passing the language down to their children?
    • three generation rule
  • need to document world’s languages before they die
    • salvage linguistics: studying near-extinct or dormant languages from the last individuals who speak it
    • with really old speakers: they don’t have anyone to speak with and the knowledge is inaccessible
  • tipping point: small language communities surrender to a big language very quickly
  • languages don’t die because they’re socially inferior