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?
Languages are lost through a variety of different ways. One way spoken about in the article is when unique tribes get conglomerated and they end up having to use a common language or a dominant language. The dominant culture is the one that is carried on. With American Indian tribes this is a common trend as they were being pushed out by US expansion. It also reminds me of how in Nigeria and other multiethnic countries in diverse metropolitan areas using English as their mode of communication. Due to the diversity in languages and cultural backgrounds of people, it is impossible to retain the ethnic languages in academic and professional settings.
Linguists document endangered languages by recording, writing, and curating it. They also take an ethnographic approach by building relationships and living amongst the people to learn and document the language. These approaches expand the focus of linguistics from internal (ie theoretical studies) to external (ie preservation efforts). It was interesting to see how the linguist in the video talked about the ownership of languages by the speakers as their intellectual property. In a lot of ways the Siletz speakers took that ownership into action by reviving their language through different methods such as implementing their language in academic settings, especially for the younger generations.
Indeed a dead language can be brought back to life, but according to statistics 84 languages dominate in global media and are spoken by 80% of people, the other 6000 are spoken by 20%. These impending tragedies are impoverishing as David Harrison said and losing a language is like losing a whole way of thinking about the world.
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