What Can Kill Languages?

Language has always been at the forefront of communication among people, whether in their own culture or with people from around the world. Linguists estimate that upwards of 20,000 languages may have been in existence around 8000 BC (Krauss, 68). Unfortunately, today that number stands at 6,909 languages, and by 2100, about half of those languages may be gone. This leads to language death. Total death is declared when no speakers are left of a particular language variety in a population that had used it (Mufwene, 204).

What is killing off these languages? There are several daunting reasons for the cause of language extinction. As our society changes, so do the facets of our cultures, due to globalization, urbanization, and linguistic imperialism. This paper will show how each one of these phenomena takes part in the extinction of a language.

First, let’s define language. Language is a system that predates the speaker, and the use of this system for communication requires a set of socially shared rules and cultural norms, including, but not limited to, the ability to make new words and put multiple words together, and the knowledge of what word combinations work best in any given situation (Chomsky, 1997).

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With the use of this definition, it must be noted that it can be understood that people have no control over the language system into which they are born and is necessary for successful communication. The death of a language can start in the home, or it can start in some areas as high up as the government or aristocracy (Harrison & Merino).

Probably the most common cause of language death is when a community that previously only spoke one language starts to speak another one.

This is called “language shift” (Harrison & Merino). The community first becomes bilingual, not discarding their native tongue, but soon they start to use the new language more and more until their native language is no longer used. Language shift can happen naturally, but many times, probably too often, it’s something that the government in an area has pushed in some way or another since the languages that are discarded are generally regional or minority languages (Harrison & Merino). Sometimes the community decides that they would be better off if they learned a more socially acceptable or popular language, as its members would then have access to social and economic opportunities otherwise unknown to them (Harrison & Merino). Why is language shift more common now than it used to be? In one word: globalization. English is an international language, and English speakers are more able to find opportunities and communicate with the world at large (Harrison & Merino). Additionally, economic mobility and urbanization have led to mass movements of people, breaking up communities where small languages were spoken.

Small ancestral languages are less useful whichthey used to be, and English has a greater appeal (Harrison & Merino). Language shift, therefore, is becoming much more frequent.

Globalization represents a process of pervasive force that increases global connectivity and interdependence in the realms of life such as technology, economics, politics, and cultures. Though the process of globalization is more popular in its economic sense where it is seen as a course of unification of global patterns of production and consumption (Jameson & Masao).  Furthermore, globalization can also be defined as the increasing interconnectedness of nations that ameliorates official borders and creates an uneven distribution of resources (Steger, 2013). As a result of this interconnectedness, culture, which includes ideology and language, is being transferred between countries and continents faster than ever before. Some endangered languages vanish in an instant, at the death of the sole surviving speaker. Others are lost gradually in bilingual cultures, as indigenous tongues are overwhelmed by the dominant language at school, in the marketplace, and on television.

The “hot spots” of imminent language extinctions arewhich Northern Australia, Central South America, North America’s upper Pacific coastal zone, Eastern Siberia and Oklahoma and Southwest United States (Grenoble, et al.). All of the areas are occupied by aboriginal people speaking diverse languages, but in decreasing numbers. Much like the Native Americans in the 1600s, these aboriginals are at risk of linguistic colonization. According to anthropologists, there are 29 families or language groups spoken by the majority of the native peoples north of Mexico (Grenoble, et al.). This consists of 296 distinct languages. However, many of the actual languages spoken by the numerous tribes in North America before the European incursion are no longer spoken. Many indigenous languages are extinct, but a number are still widely spoken as mother tongues, especially in Central and South America (Grenoble, et al.). The most widely spoken of all is Southern Quechua, with about 6-7 million speakers in southern Peru, Bolivia, and northwest Argentina.

Why are these regions more susceptible to languages dying out due to globalization? Many of the 113 languages spoken in the Andes Mountains and Amazon basin are poorly known and are rapidly giving way to Spanish or Portuguese, or in a few cases, to a more dominant indigenous language (Wilford). In this region, for example, a group known as the Kallawaya use Spanish or Quechua in daily life, but also have their secret tongue, used mainly for preserving knowledge of medicinal plants, some of which were previously unknown to science (Wilford).

The dominance of English threatens the survival of the 54 indigenous languages of the Northwest Pacific plateau of North America, a region including British Columbia, Oregon, and Washington. Only one person remains who speaks Siletz Dee-ni, the last of many languages once spoken on a reservation in Oregon (Wilford). Due to the adoption of similar cultural practices across the globe, people who once experienced individualistic communal practices are now conforming to a set standard. This leads us to the next topic, cultural imperialism.

Cultural imperialism occurs when political and economic power is closely tied to a particular language and culture so that there is a strong incentive for individuals to abandon their language (on behalf of themselves and their children) in favor of another more prestigious one (Jameson & Masao). One example of this is assimilatory education. This frequently happens when indigenous populations, to achieve a higher social status, have a better chance to get employment, or are forced to it in school, adopt the cultural and linguistic traits of a people who have come to dominate them through colonization, conquest, or invasion; examples of this kind of endangerment are the Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, and Scots in Great Britain, the Ainu language in Japan, and the Chamorro language in Guam (Jameson & Masao). This is the most common cause of language endangerment. Ever since the Indian government adopted Hindi as the official language of the union government, Hindi has taken over many languages in India (Jameson & Masao).

Urbanization is the movement of people into urban areas that can force people to learn the language of their new environment. Eventually, later generations will lose the ability to speak their native language, leading to endangerment. This is the case in which languages become extinct when a community finds itself under pressure to integrate with a larger or more powerful group (Davis, 73). Sometimes the people learn the outsiders' language in addition to their own; this has happened in Greenland, a territory of Denmark, where Kalaallisut is learned alongside Danish (Davis, 73). But often the community is pressured to give up its language and even its ethnic and cultural identity. This has been the case for the ethnic Kurds in Turkey, who are forbidden by law to print or formally teach their language (Davis, 81). It has also been the case for younger speakers of Native American languages, who, since the 1600s, were punished for speaking their native languages at boarding schools (Davis, 79).

The last speakers of probably half of the world’s languages are alive today. As they grow old and die, their voices fall silent. Their children and grandchildren will either choose not to learn or will be deprived of the opportunity to learn the ancestral language (Harrison, 3).  When a community loses its language, it often loses a great deal of its cultural identity at the same time. Although language loss may be voluntary or involuntary, it always involves pressure of some kind, and it is often felt as a loss of social identity or as a symbol of defeat (Davis, 86). Language is a powerful symbol of a group's identity. Much of the cultural, spiritual, and intellectual life of a people is experienced through language (Burns & Coffin). This ranges from prayers, myths, ceremonies, poetry, oratory, and technical vocabulary to everyday greetings, leave-takings, conversational styles, humor, ways of speaking to children, and terms for habits, behaviors, and emotions (Burns & Coffin). When a language is lost, all of this must be refashioned in the new language, with different words, sounds, and grammar, if it is to be kept at all (Davis, 86). Frequently traditions are abruptly lost in the process and replaced by the cultural habits of the more powerful group. For these reasons, among others, it is often very important to the community itself that its language survive (Davis, 85).

The extinction of languages happens all around the world. It’s only natural that a language becomes extinct it is not useful anymore in modern society. Take, for example, Celtic languages, which were very common in Western Europe (Grenoble, et al.). With the spread of Roman influence and Germanic-speaking people, Celtic languages were slowly disappearing. Today, Celtic languages only survive in the British Isles and Ireland. Another example is the Yiddish language in Israel. Yiddish is a European-Jewish language that originated in Central Europe (Grenoble, et al.). This language is becoming less common in Israel because most Israelis speak Hebrew, a language that is more useful to communicate with most Israelis. Learning Yiddish is not necessarily useful for daily conversation. Furthermore, the Hebrew language is more suitable for education and business (Grenoble, et al.).

It is, however, sad to lose a language. Language is culture, so losing a language is like losing a piece of diversity. However, in a practical sense, it saves you a lot of time for not learning a language that does not bring any benefit in the modern world. So, how do we preserve languages so they don’t die out? We have to promote the documentation, maintenance, preservation, on and revitalization of endangered languages worldwide through linguist-aided community-driven,, and multimedia language documentation projects. The dominant approach nowadays is what is known as documentary linguistics (Ivanka, et al.). This means accepting that many languages will die shortly but trying to record them as well as possible before they do. This means writing dictionaries, taking video and audio recordings of speakers, and taking notes of grammatical structures, among other things. If troves and troves of data are available on all of these languages to future researchers, then we will have not lost as much scientific information once these languages die (Ivanka, et al.). Although it may seem a little depressing, taking a snapshot of the world's languages before they die seems to be the best we can do.

Furthermore, as a society, there are three things we can do to help limit stigmatization and eliminate the idea of linguistic dominance. First, we must encourage bilingualism. Language death means that one language has been replaced by a more dominant language. Minority language speakers often believe that they do their children a disservice by teaching them their native/minority language.

They are under the impression that it will have detrimental effects on children's acquisition of the dominant language or even on their social status as a whole (Ivanka, et al.). If speakers of minority languages imparted both the minority and majority languages to their children, neither language would die. Secondly, we need to discourage negative social connotations associated with the minority language. Languages die when they hold negative associations in people's minds. If people believe only hicks speak a certain language (or dialect), its speakers will have less incentive to pass it on to their children.

Lastly, we are to inspire interest within the affected community (Ivanka, et al.). The only proven way to 'save' a dying language is by revitalizing it. And that only happens when the community of language speakers becomes passionate about saving it. Furthermore, it’s essential to inspire interest within the linguistic community. Although no army of passionate linguists is enough to keep a language from becoming extinct, linguists are the ones who can train community members on language preservation tactics. They are also the ones who help communities create dictionaries, voice recordings, and other teaching methods.

In conclusion, the use of any spoken or written language is an essential key element of any culture's customs. As mentioned above, language interacts with every part of a community’s customs and once that starts to diminish, so does the culture behind that language. Language death is an important issue as language is related to culture and cultural identity and loss of linguistic diversity could also be a loss of diverse cultures. People identify with a culture they belong to and thus they also identify with a certain culture and feel a sense of belonging to a group or society even when they speak a language that is common in a cultural group they identify with the language as well.