Languages go extinct when it loses active members who speak, write, and read in the language. According to the YouTube video featuring author and linguist K. David Harrison, languages are oftentimes lost and forgotten because there is no written record of the language along with the loss of native speakers. This is also highlighted in the New York Times article, Tribe Revives Language on Verge of Extinction, mentioning the extinction, and revival, of the Siletz Dee-ni language. In a world where some languages are being appointed as an international language, others face the brink of extinction as fewer and fewer people speak it. This was the case about the Siletz language. As a local, native language of a tribe located in the West of the US, there are only five speakers in the world. This once-dominant language belonged to one of the last-standing, large tribe. In the 1950s, however, the tribe was declared dead by the US. The establishment of schools taught in English, decreased tribe population, and declaration of extinction were three large threats in the extinction of the Siletz language. Two decades later, the tribe was federally recognized as a living tribe and thus, the culture and language prevailed. Since then, the language has been dwindling yet again. Differently from the past, however, with the creation of a charter school where the language has been reintegrated into the education program, the publication of a Siletz Dee-ni dictionary worked on by tribe members such as Bud Lane has given the Siletz Dee-ni language a written long-term record. A dictionary is a perfect example of the ways people can document linguistic diversity. Both the article and video underline the importance of the younger generation’s participation in the preservation of a language. To bring a language back from the brink of extinction, or from the dead, people from the outside are important agents in strengthening the content available on a language. Native speakers are necessary to provide the information on the language, but those from the outside of the young people of the population are the ones responsible for the future of a language.
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