Endangered language

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An endangered language is a language with so few surviving speakers that it is in danger of falling out of use. For example, many Native American languages in the United States became extinct through policies in the 19th and early 20th centuries discouraging and/or outlawing their use (linguicide). A dead language (or extinct language) is one which has no native speakers.

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Identifying endangered languages

While there is no definite threshold for identifying a language as endangered, three main criteria are used as guidelines:

  1. The number of speakers currently living.
  2. The mean age of native and/or fluent speakers.
  3. The percentage of the youngest generation acquiring fluency with the language in question.

For example, Ainu is endangered in Japan, with only approximately 300 surviving native speakers, only 15 of which use the language actively, and few youth acquiring fluency in it. A language might also be declared as endangered if it has 100 speakers, but the speakers are all over the age of 90, and no youth are learning the language.

Some languages, such as those in Indonesia may have tens of thousands of speakers but be endangered because children are no longer learning them, or speakers are in the process of shifting to using the national language Indonesian (or a local Malay variety) in place of local languages.

In contrast, a language with only 100 speakers might be considered very much alive if it is the primary language of a community, and is the first (or only) language of all children in that community.

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Causes

Causes for language homogenization include global trade, the internet, print, and television media.

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Debate over endangered languages

Some linguists argue that at least 3,000 of the world's 6,000-7,000 languages are liable to be lost before the year 2100. There are two basic views as to the implications of this.

One view holds that this is problematic and the extinction of languages should be prevented, even at significant cost. A number of reasons are cited, including:

  • an enormous number of languages represents a vast, largely unmapped terrain on which linguists, cognitive scientists, and philosophers can chart the full capabilities and limits of the mind;
  • languages embody unique local knowledge of cultures and natural systems in the regions in which they are spoken; and
  • languages serve as evidence for understanding human history (see NSF article on endangered languages).

The view at the other end of spectrum is that this is not problematic and in fact should be encouraged. Fewer languages means better and clearer communications among the majority of speakers. The economic cost of maintaining myriad separate languages, and their translator caretakers, is enormous. A company could save a lot of money designing and marketing a product in one language, and with one set of instructions. The extremist position of this view is that all language should give way to one single language, thereby creating the greatest economic efficiency possible by utterly avoiding all transaction costs associated with linguistic differences.

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Recovering endangered languages

Once a language is determined to be endangered, there are two basic steps that need to be taken in order to stabilize or rescue the language. The first is language documentation and the second is language revitalization.

Language documentation is the process by which the language is documented in terms of its grammar, its lexicon, and its oral traditions (e.g. stories, songs, religious texts).

Language revitalization is the process by which a language community through political, community, and educational means attempts to increase the number of active speakers of the endangered language.


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Examples of endangered languages

Main article: list of endangered languages

For some examples of endangered languages that recently became extinct, see Extinct language: Recently extinct languages

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See also

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External links

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Bibliography

see also the large bibliography: Language death: Bibliography.
  • Abley, Mark. (2003). Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages. London: Heinemann
  • Campbell, Lyle; & Mithun, Marianne (Eds.). (1979). The languages of native America: Historical and comparative assessment. Austin: University of Texas Press.
  • Hale, Ken; Krauss, Michael; Watahomigie, Lucille J.; Yamamoto, Akira Y.; Craig, Colette; Jeanne, LaVerne M. et al. (1992). Endangered languages. Language, 68 (1), 1-42.
  • Mithun, Marianne. (1999). The languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-23228-7 (hbk); ISBN 0-521-29875-X.
  • Sebeok, Thomas A. (Ed.). (1973). Linguistics in North America (parts 1 & 2). Current trends in linguistics (Vol. 10). The Hauge: Mouton. (Reprinted as Sebeok 1976).
  • Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove. (2000). Linguistic genocide in education or worldwide diversity and human rights? Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. ISBN 0-8058-3468-0.br:Yezh en arvar

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