Language Death

Below is one of the papers I submitted for the Introduction to Linguistics course. It discusses the factors behind the death of certain languages. Enjoy :)

Language Death

   “All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer.” This statement of Robert Louis Stevenson’s is the key to understanding the concept of language death. A language dies when nobody speaks it anymore (Crystal, 2000). Thus, language death is the result of various factors: human and non-human.  

     It is estimated that 90% of human languages will, in the long run, become extinct or be doomed to extinction (Baker, 2006). This expectation is based on the fact that 50% of the world's estimated 6,300 languages are no longer being reproduced among children. Therefore, many of these languages will die in the next 100 years unless some conservation measures are taken. Linguists maintain that, around 8,000 BC, there were more than 20,000 existing languages.  In 2012, that number was considered to be 6,909 (How does a Language Die?, 2013).

     One of the important human factors that intervene in the transmission of languages from one generation to another is the oppression of minor languages in some areas. For example, about three-quarters of the languages of the Americas are under the threat of extinction, and 95 % of the indigenous aboriginal Australian languages are declining extremely rapidly (Rosenthal, 2014).  Another example is what has taken place in the former Soviet Union. Many people in Kazakhstan are unable to speak Kazakh because they grew up in exclusively Russian-speaking environments. Those environments were nurtured by the laws of the former Soviet Union. In the 1950s the USSR implemented the policy of Russifiying its republics. Children from non-Russian speaking families were sent to only Russian-speaking boarding schools for ten months. Such policies are set from political and economic perspectives. Armies can fight together only if they share the same language, and it is easier and cheaper to market to millions of people in the same language (Raw, 2014).

      Another human factor is human conflict. During World War II, many islands of the Pacific Ocean lost their native languages as a result of their colonization by European countries. In South America, 1,500 indigenous languages that were used before contact with European settlers are reduced to 350 languages nowadays (Raw, 2014). Therefore, globalization is the main reason behind those policies and is actually succeeding in killing some languages. It is realized that languages of little economic power are more in danger of extinction. For instance, Spanish, English, and French are not in danger; they are rather killing other languages. In France, Breton, Allsatian, and Provençal are eventually replaced by French in schools; thus children are no more able to speak or write their native languages.

     Other factors that may lead to the death of some languages may not be human; that is, out of human control. Natural disasters have played a major role in murdering some languages. Tidal waves, earthquakes, and volcanoes have wiped out hundreds of thousands of people along with their languages. In 1970, a tidal wave swept most of the inhabitants of the Andaman Island, which belongs to India. The Indian government decided to move the remaining Andamanese to a safer nearby island, a decision which affected the Andamanese language vastly. Andamanese, which was one of the oldest languages in the world, was no longer transmitted from older to younger generations. It died with Boa Sr, the only member of the Bo tribe who survived till 2010. She was reported to have lived alone as a result of her husband's death. Her children, on the other hand, did not acquire the language of their parents. "It was all because of the colonizer", she said a few days before her death. "They destroyed our language. And then came this wave. Everything is over" (Shaw, 2010).

 

      Although languages die because of human and non-human factors, some languages die because they don't help individuals of today to communicate. That is, some languages are not productive in terms of word formation; thus, they cannot satisfy the communicational needs of modern man. For example, Mlahso, a dialect of Aramaic, died in 1998 with the death of its last speaker in Syria. Nobody knows this language anymore except his nearly deaf sister who has no one to speak it to (Law, pp. 2,3).

      Different factors contribute to the death of language. With the high rate of language death, one language dies every two weeks (Rymer, 2012). Hence, governments have to take necessary conservative measures to keep their languages safe, because language represents one's history and culture, and predicts his future.

Works Cited

 

Baker, C. (2006). Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. Multilingual Matters LTD.

Crystal, D. (2000). Language Death. Cambridge University Press.

How does a Language Die? (2013, February 21). Retrieved January 11, 2015, from Languages.com: http://languages.com/2013/02/21/how-does-a-language-die/

Law, P. (n.d.). Langage Ecology. BBC , pp. 2-3.

Raw, L. (2014, November 11). Retrieved January 4, 2015, from The Official Memrise Blog: http://www.memrise.com/blog/why-do-languages-die/

Rosenthal, M. (2014, July 15). When languages die, ecosystems often die with them. PRI .

Rymer, R. (2012, July). Vanishing Languages. National Geographic .

Shaw, A. (2010, February 10). Last member of 65,000-year-old tribe dies, taking one of world's earliest languages to the grave. Daily Mail , pp. 1-2.