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An endangered language is a language that it is at risk of falling out of use, generally because it has few surviving speakers. A language is a dynamic set of visual auditory or tactile Symbols of Communication and the elements used to manipulate them If it loses all of its native speakers, it becomes an extinct language. According to some definitions an extinct language is a Language which no longer has any speakers, whereas a dead language is a language which is no longer spoken

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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.

Some languages, such as those in Indonesia, may have tens of thousands of speakers but be endangered because children are no longer learning them, and speakers are in the process of shifting to using the national language Indonesian (or a local Malay variety) in place of local languages. The Republic of Indonesia ( (Republik Indonesia is a Country in Southeast Asia. A national language is a Language (or language variant, ie Dialect) which has some connection - de facto or de jure - with Indonesian or Bahasa Indonesia, based on the Riau version of Malay language, was declared the official language with the declaration of The Malay language ( ISO 639-1 code MS is an Austronesian language spoken by the Malay people and people of other ethnic groups who reside in the

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 (most of Andaman languages, actually spoken). The Andamanese languages form a proposed Language family spoken by the Andamanese peoples of the Andaman Islands, a Union territory An excellent resources for information is [1].

Debate over endangered languages

Some linguists (among them, Michael Krauss and Stephen Wurm) 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 a problem and the extinction of languages should be prevented, even at significant cost. A number of reasons are cited, including:

The view at the other end of spectrum is that this is not a problem 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. For instance, 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 languages should give way to one single language, thereby creating the greatest economic efficiency possible by utterly avoiding all transaction costs associated with linguistic differences. It is unclear whether such a monolingual culture would be stable, because it is not certain in what way and extent changes in technology will effect the forces that originally drove the development of the huge range of different languages from the theoretical one 'proto-world' language (for example, if linguistic divergence requires isolation, massively accessible world-wide communication will work against the process). Some argue that a unified language is undesirable, saying that such a culture would also be frozen in other ways, and would not encourage other forms of intellectual diversity and change that such diversity promotes.

(There also exist highly original syntheses of these positions. For example, the exotic possibility that highly available and capable translation technologies could lead to a world where nobody spoke the same language but everyone understood each other anyway. )

Members of communities where endangered languages are spoken sometimes have views on these issues that surprise those at either end of this spectrum. On the one hand, communities can actively resist promotion of their own minority language, since children educated in the language are perceived to be at an economic or social disadvantage, when compared to children educated in a more dominant national or trade language. This is sometimes the case in countries like China or Indonesia, which have a national lingua franca, as well as many minority languages. A lingua franca (from Italian, literally meaning Frankish language, see etymology under Sabir and Italian below is any Language widely On the other hand, members of very small linguistic communities sometimes express strong appreciation for the language as a means of communication as compared with other available languages, even in the face of disagreement from others from outside the community who are also familiar with it. Eg: Konkani spoken in south India aiman - Konkanis who migrated to Keralaaiman from their original habitat Goa 400 years back due to Portuguese attack today speak two dialects of Konkani, Malayalam, national language Hindi & English. Kerala ( Malayalam: {{Kerala in Malayalam}}; Goa ( Konkani: गोंय /ɡɔ̃j/ is India 's smallest state in terms of area and the fourth smallest in terms of population. English & Hindi are used to communicate with non malayalees, Malayalam with locals, one variant of Konkani for informal talks & the other variant (which they do not teach to anybody else) for conveying secret messages among members of the community. This is how both variants of Konkani survived for 3 centuries among a few thousand speakers amidst & freely interacting with 30 million malayalees.

Reviving 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 a Language is documented from a documentary linguistics perspective Language revitalization is the attempt by interested parties including individuals cultural or community groups governments or political authorities to recover the spoken use of a

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. This process is also sometimes referred to as language revival or reversing language shift. Language revitalization is the attempt by interested parties including individuals cultural or community groups governments or political authorities to recover the spoken use of a Language revitalization is the attempt by interested parties including individuals cultural or community groups governments or political authorities to recover the spoken use of a

Examples of endangered languages

Main article: list of endangered languages

In addition, nearly all of the spoken Native American languages in the U. The Breton language ( Brezhoneg) formerly often called Armoric or Armorican, is a Celtic language spoken by some of the inhabitants of Brittany See also [[Cajun]] Cajun French (sometimes called Louisiana Regional French) is one of three varieties or Dialects of the French language The term Curonian language (Kurisch kuršu valoda kuršių kalba may refer to two different but related Baltic languages. Latgalian language can mean one of the following It was a language spoken by Latgalians in a great part of the area which is now Latvia. The Defaka (sometimes called Afakani) are a small ethnic group of south-western Nigeria, numbering fewer than a thousand people The Ijoid languages are spoken by the Ịjọ ( Ijaw) and Defaka (Afakani peoples of the Niger Delta, who number about ten million Istro-Romanian is an Eastern Romance language, or a Dialect of the Romanian language. Livonian (Līvõ kēļ belongs to the Baltic Finnic branch of the Uralic languages. Manchu is a Tungusic language spoken in Northeast China; it used to be the language of the Manchu, though now most Manchus speak Mandarin Sami or Saami is a general name for a group of Finnic languages spoken by the Sami people in parts of northern Finland, Norway The Sorbian languages are classified under the Slavic branch of the Indo-European languages. For indigenous peoples in the United States other than Hawaii and Alaska see also Native Americans in the United States. S. and Canada are endangered. These include:

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

See also

External links

Bibliography

see also the large bibliography: Language death: Bibliography. According to some definitions an extinct language is a Language which no longer has any speakers, whereas a dead language is a language which is no longer spoken A list of Endangered languages (with fewer than 1000 speakers or in rapid decline Language revitalization is the attempt by interested parties including individuals cultural or community groups governments or political authorities to recover the spoken use of a The Language Conservancy is a nonprofit organization that provides Language revitalization support to the world's Endangered languages restoring them to health and The Rosetta Project is a global collaboration of language specialists and native speakers working to develop a contemporary version of the historic Rosetta Stone to The Endangered Language Fund is a small non-profit organization based in New Haven Connecticut. The Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights is a document signed by UNESCO, the PEN Clubs and several Non-governmental organizations in 1996 to support In Linguistics, language death (also language extinction, linguistic extinction, and sometimes pejoratively as linguicide) is a process According to some definitions an extinct language is a Language which no longer has any speakers, whereas a dead language is a language which is no longer spoken Many countries have a language policy designed to favour or discourage the use of a particular Language or set of languages In Linguistics, language death (also language extinction, linguistic extinction, and sometimes pejoratively as linguicide) is a process
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