In linguistics, language dies when the last speaker of the language is lost, including secondary speakers. As the article indicates, there are many linguists attempt to save certain language such as the language, Siletz Dee-ni, mentioned in the article. Additionally, there are also students who are learning this language. Therefore, I was wondering how could language goes into extinction with so these many actions have been done to preserve it? I went to do some researches online and some factors including war or disaster. However, most languages die out gradually as successive generations of speakers become bilingual and then begin to lose proficiency in their traditional languages. This is surprising.
But there are definitely many means that could be used to save and preserve endangered languages. As I mentioned above, learning the language could prevent the language from extinction since there are more speakers who understand the structure of the language throughly. Another method, as mentioned in the article, is to create dictionaries for endangered languages. In the article, Bud Lane, who is a tribe member, is working on the online talking dictionary for Siletz Dee-ni. From my perspectives, one of the ways that could potentially protect and document linguistic diversity is through recording. Recording the way native speakers talk, the vocabulary, and the grammar and so on. Even though this method would require a lot of labor work.
As far as we know, there are still many languages die out every day with nobody knowing. Therefore, it is important to preserve the ones that we are aware of and try to find other languages that remain unnoticed.
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