How do languages go extinct? Respond to the readings, and reflect on what happens when a language dies. How can linguists help preserve a language? Can a ‘dead’ language ever be brought back to life? What efforts are currently underway to document linguistic diversity?
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Languages can become extinct when communities encounter challenges such as oppression, prejudice, or migration, which hinder the transmission of their language to future generations. Oppression often compels communities to forsake their language in favor of a more dominant one, while migration can sever ties to cultural roots. Without active speakers, a language can fade away, taking with it unique perspectives, cultural identities, and systems of knowledge. This loss is a significant cultural tragedy, as each language offers a distinct way of interpreting the world. Linguists strive to preserve languages by documenting them through recordings, creating dictionaries, and developing educational and digital resources. For instance, the Siletz tribe launched an online dictionary that generated interest in their endangered language. Although reviving a "dead" language poses challenges, it can be achieved with sufficient documentation and community engagement. Social media and modern technology can significantly aid revitalization efforts by incorporating endangered languages into daily communication. Initiatives to document linguistic diversity include recording gestures, examining contact languages, and immersing linguists in the communities where these languages are spoken. These efforts are vital in ensuring that endangered languages are not lost.
Languages go extinct when they no longer have any active speakers. A common pattern in the extinction of these languages is their decline to a small community of speakers with no one left to pass the language on to. As the population decreases, the language dies along with it. In an interview, David Harrison discusses how oppression and prejudice largely contribute to the extinction of languages. Oppression suppresses and discourages the use of minority languages, leading to assimilation into the dominant culture. This oppression and prejudice causes low self esteem within the community, causing its members to abandon their language, despite being the only ones who can preserve its unique knowledge.
Linguists like Harrison work to preserve endangered languages by meeting with the remaining speakers and recording the language. Although a “dead” language can be revived, this requires a recording of the language, significant time and effort, and a community of people interested and willing to sustain it. The readings explore how technology can play a critical role in these efforts. For example, the Siletz tribe created a dictionary of their endangered language that was publicly accessible. This gained the attention of many people worldwide and helped revive the language.
These readings emphasize the importance of recognizing the value held by the minority languages. Preserving them requires attention and support rom both the communities themselves and the world outside of the communities. With such efforts, we can help slow down or even prevent the rapid decline of available language worldwide.
Languages go extinct as fewer and fewer people speak it. It can decline from the center of a society to something only a few aging community members know. When languages die, human knowledge is lost and a sense of place and identity for the community disappears. Even once recognized by linguists, not all languages can be ‘brought back to life.’ A lot more is required than just having a living speaker to save a language. Someone is needed to help the linguist spell out the rules, sounds, and vocabulary. This is a painstaking process involving hundreds of hours of work and if the only speakers are deaf and suffering from dotage, it’s extremely hard for linguists to do preservation work. The Living Tongues Institute, a non-profit partnered with National Geographic, is one such effort to document linguistic diversity.
Reflecting on the readings, the fact that Siletz, in the place it originated, is hoping to merely be taught as a foreign language shows just how vast linguistic winners and losers have been over the past hundred years. It is heartbreaking to think that the last standing language of several Native American communities has only five speakers and isn’t even be taught in the place it originates.
Reflecting on the Harrison video, I’m very interested by the idea of language ownership. I feel a connection to English – and that I can carve out a set of words and phrases that I like to use and that represent my values – but the language is absolutely not mine. I feel no ownership of it, nor is it an intimate part of my personal identity. For me it’s just the system I grew up in and the tool I use to communicate my thoughts and feelings. When I teach English my attitude is very much, "I don’t know why we do grammar this way or have vocabulary that means that, but that’s how it is and that’s how you need to learn it." I’m interested in going to a classroom teaching a dying language to see if the native speaker has a stronger, more profound connection with it. What reasons do they give for why the grammar rule or vocabulary is the way it is. Are these aspects of the language explained with the same insouciance that I have or with linguistic pride?
A final thought is the power of Harrison’s quote, “language is a much older, more intricate and complex monument to human genius than anything else.” As a language enthusiast, Harrison’s passion for languages and their preservation demonstrated through quotes like this is inspiring.
Your thoughts on language ownership are new to me. I can relate to your feelings about English; it feels more like a tool than a personal identity. It would be fascinating to see how native speakers of dying languages feel about their language. It’s inspiring to hear how Harrison values the complexity of language.
The idea of language ownership is very interesting. I rarely feel a connection to English in the way that you do. But, similarly to you, it is not an intimate part of my personal identity. This makes me wonder what would facilitate that sense of intimacy with language, and if it differs by cultures.
Languages go extinct for various reasons, including colonization, globalization, and the dominance of more widely spoken languages, which often push minority languages to the margins. Economic pressures, cultural assimilation, and intergenerational language loss—where younger generations stop learning their ancestral language—also play significant roles. When a language dies, it’s not just words that are lost but an entire cultural worldview, including unique knowledge of the environment, traditions, and oral histories. I always hold the fear for China that one day all dialects are going to become distinct due to factors such as economic pressure and cultural assimilation. Because Mandarin is the official language, many dialects used by the ethnic minorities in China have already gone distinct because the younger generations has to emphasize on learning Mandarin instead of their own language, if they want to walk out of the mountains to enter the cities and find a job.
Linguists play a vital role in language preservation by documenting endangered languages through recordings, dictionaries, and grammar guides. They collaborate with communities to ensure the resources are accessible and culturally relevant. Efforts like the Siletz talking dictionary demonstrate how modern technology can preserve and teach languages. My anthropology professor Dr. Jennifer Nourse, is also dedicated to work on language preservation for a dialect in Indonesia. She is is the process of making an official dictionary and will go there for more research next semester. While a "dead" language, one without native speakers, may never return to full community use, it can still be revitalized for cultural purposes, Hebrew is a well-known example.
Today, initiatives like online dictionaries and language classes aim to document and preserve linguistic diversity. Even social media like TikTok is beneficial for people to share and preserve the language in a new way. These efforts not only save languages but also reinforce the cultural identities and resilience of the communities that speak them, offering hope in the fight against language extinction.
Languages are at risk of going extinct when small communities face great challenges in trying to overcome oppression and prejudice, resulting in a feeling of low self-esteem. These difficult circumstances may cause people to give up their language, even though those people are the only ones who can save the language. Additionally, languages can go extinct when people migrate and/or are displaced from their rural villages, whether that be to seek economic opportunities or improve their social mobility. As they leave their communities and countries behind, the languages are not being intergenerationally transmitted, and the generational shift that follows could also contribute greatly to the extinction of a language. The loss of a language is not just a linguistic issue, but also a deep cultural tragedy, in that when languages die, unique worldviews, knowledge systems, and cultural identities are lost as well. Linguists can help preserve languages by documenting endangered languages, implementing them into educational programs, and creating digital resources to help younger generations reconnect with their linguistic and cultural heritage. Although extremely difficult, it is possible to bring a ‘dead’ language back to life if it has been well-documented and there are individuals who are interested in being engaged and immersed in language revitalization. Especially in this generation, social media could be of great use and a language could be revitalized through integrating it into modern communication. As of late, some efforts that are currently underway to document linguistic diversity include pointing gestures, using contact languages, and linguists immersing themselves in the environment in which the language is used.
Your reflection highlights the multifaceted causes of language extinction, particularly economic pressures and cultural assimilation, which resonate deeply with your concern for China’s dialects. I appreciate your bringing in examples like your professor’s work and initiatives like the Siletz talking dictionary, showing how personal dedication and modern technology can preserve linguistic diversity. Your point about TikTok and social media as tools for language preservation is especially compelling, as it bridges tradition with contemporary platforms to keep languages alive and relevant.
I like your point of unique worldviews and knowledge systems being lost. Harrison would of course agree as well seeing as he presented numerous examples of when local knowledge systems expressed through and embedded in language had superior information to western taxonomic systems. I wish Harrison or the NYT article would go into a little more detail though about the potential value for laymen of preserving these languages. The fact that there's a special word for male, rideable, 2-year-old, uncastrated reindeer is cool but I worry that people outside of linguistic circles might not see value in the example he presented.