An
extinct language is a
language which no longer has any speakers. Extinct languages may be contrasted with
dead languages: no longer spoken as a main language.
Language loss
Normally the transition from a dead to an extinct language occurs when a language undergoes
language death while being directly replaced by a different one. For example,
Native American languages were replaced by
English,
French,
Portuguese, or
Spanish as a result of colonization. The
Coptic language, replaced by
Arabic in its native Egypt, was once thought to be extinct.
Language extinction may also occur when a language evolves into a new language or family of languages. An example of this was
Old English, a forerunner of
Modern English.
By contrast to an extinct language which no longer has any speakers, a dead language may remain in use for
scientific,
legal, or
ecclesiastical functions.
Old Church Slavonic,
Avestan,
Coptic,
Biblical Hebrew,
Ge'ez and
Latin are among the many dead languages used as
sacred languages.
Alternatively, a language is said to be extinct if, although it is known to have been spoken by people in the past, modern scholarship cannot reconstruct it to the point that it is possible to write in it or translate into it with confidence (say, a simple dialogue or a short tale written in a modern language); whereas a language is referred to as dead, but not extinct, if it is sufficiently known at present to permit such routine use, even though it has no modern speakers. By these definitions
Proto-Indo-European (of which only conjectural reconstructions of lexicon and grammar exist) is an extinct language, and
Classical Latin and
Old Tupi are dead, but not extinct languages.
A language that has living native speakers is called a
modern language.
Ethnologue records 6,912 living languages known.
Hebrew is an example of a nearly extinct spoken language (by the first definition above) that became a
lingua franca and a
liturgical language that has been
revived to become a living spoken language. There are other attempts at language revival. For example, young school children use
Sanskrit in
revived language in
Mathoor village (India) In general, the success of these attempts has been subject to debate, as it is not clear they will ever become the common native language of a community of speakers.
It is believed that 90% of the circa 7000 languages currently spoken in the world will have become extinct by 2050, as the world's language system, after evolving for centuries, has reached a crisis and is dramatically restructuring.
Globalization, development, and language extinction
As economic and cultural
globalization and development continue to push forward, growing numbers of languages will become endangered and eventually, extinct. With increasing economic integration on national and regional scales, people find it easier to communicate and conduct business in the dominant languages of world commerce: English, Chinese, and Spanish.
[ Malone, Elizabeth. "Language and Linguistics: Endangered Language." National Science Foundation. 28 Jul 2008. National Science Foundation, Web. 23 Oct 2009. . ]In their study of contact-induced language change, American linguists Sarah Grey Thomason and
Terrence Kaufman state that in situations of cultural pressure (where populations must speak a dominant language), three linguistic outcomes may occur: first - and most commonly - a subordinate population may shift abruptly to the dominant language, leaving the native language to a sudden linguistic death. Second, the more gradual process of
language death may occur over several generations. The third and most rare outcome is for the pressured group to maintain as much of its native language as possible, while borrowing elements of the dominant language's grammar (replacing all, or portions of, the grammar of the original language).
Institutions such as the education system, as well as (often global) forms of media such as the Internet, television, and print media play a significant role in the process of language loss.
Educating children in English in favor of their local, native languages is one way in which the practical effects of Thomason and Kaufman's theory on contact-induced language change can be observed.
Cultural anthropologist
Wade Davis points to the dangers of "
modernization" (often cited as reason for economic development) and globalization as threats to indigenous cultures and languages throughout the world. He argues that just as the biosphere is being eroded by these forces, so too is the "ethnosphere" - the cultural web of life.
[Davis, Wade. ""On endangered cultures"." TED Talks. Monterey, CA. Feb 2003. Lecture. 22 Oct 2009. ]Implications of language extinction
Estimates of future language loss range from half of more than 6000 currently spoken languages being lost in the next 200 years
["Linguistic Expert Warns of Language Extinction." Science Daily 4 Mar 2007: n. pag. Web. 23 Oct 2009. .], to 90% by the year 2050
. Wade Davis states that languages - as not simply bodies of vocabulary or sets of grammatical rules, but "old growth forests of the mind" - for the many and unique cultures of the world reflect different ways of being, thinking, and knowing.
As Davis puts it, language extinction effectively reduces the "entire range of the human imagination... to a more narrow modality of thought"
, and thus privileges the ways of knowing in dominant (and overwhelmingly Western) languages such as English.
Foucauldian ideas of power and knowledge, as both inseparable and symbiotic, are implicated in the universalizing of Western knowledge as truth, and the rendering of other forms as less valid or false: mere superstition, folklore, or mythology. In the case of language extinction, those "voices" which are deemed to be inferior or secondary by colonizing, globalizing, or developing forces are literally silenced.
Davis also illustrates that languages are lost not because cultures are
destined to fade away (as proponents of environmental or cultural
determinism or
Social Darwinism may contend), but rather that they are "driven out of existence by identifiable forces that are beyond their capacity to adapt to"; he further remonstrates that "genocide, the physical extinction of a people is universally condemned, but ethnocide, the destruction of peoples' way of life is not only
not condemned, it's universally - in many quarters - celebrated as part of a development strategy."
Recently extinct languages
With last known speaker and/or date of death.
- Adai: (late 19th century)
- # Alsea: John Albert (1942)
- Arwi: (Early 19th Century)
- Chitimacha: Benjamin Paul (1934) & Delphine Ducloux (1940)
- # Comecrudo: recorded from children (Andrade, Emiterio, Joaquin, & others) of last speakers in 1886
- # Garza: last recorded in 1828
- # Hanis: Martha Johnson (1972)
- # Miluk: Annie Miner Peterson (1939)
- # Rumsen: last recorded speaker died 1939 in Monterey, California.
- Cotoname: last recorded from Santos Cavázos and Emiterio in 1886
- Cuman: (early 17th century)
- Esselen: report of few speakers left in 1833, extinct before end 19th century
- # Galice dialect: Hoxie Simmons (1963)
- ## Ahantchuyuk, Luckimute, Mary's River, and Lower McKenzie River dialects: last speakers were about 6 persons who were all over 60 in 1937
- ## Santiam dialect: (ca. 1950s)
- ## Tualatin dialect: Louis Kenoyer (1937)
- ## Yamhill dialect: Louisa Selky (1915)
- # Yonkalla: last recorded in 1937 from Laura Blackery Albertson who only partly remembered it.
- Kitanemuk (an Uto-Aztecan language): Marcelino Rivera, Isabella Gonzales, Refugia Duran (last recorded 1937)
- # Clatskanie dialect: father of Willie Andrew (ca. 1870)
- # Kwalhioqua dialect: mother of Lizzie Johnson (1910)
- Mahican: last spoken in Wisconsin (ca. 1930s)
- # Bear River dialect: material from last elderly speaker recorded (ca. 1929)
- # Mattole dialect: material recorded (ca. 1930)
- Munichi: Victoria Huancho Icahuate (late 1990s)
- Natchez: Watt Sam & Nancy Raven (early 1930s)
- # Shasta: 3 elderly speakers in 1980, extinct by 1990
- Takelma: Molly Orton (or Molly Orcutt) & Willie Simmons (both not fully fluent) last recorded in 1934
- Tataviam (an Uto-Aztecan language): Juan José Fustero who remembered only a few words of his grandparents' language (recorded 1913)
- Most dialects of Upper Chinook (a Chinookan language) are extinct, except for the Wasco-Wishram dialect. The Clackamas dialect became extinct in the 1930s, other dialects have little documentation. (The Wasco-Wishram language is still spoken by five elders.)
- Wiyot: Della Prince (1962)
- Yola related to English (mid-19th century)
Ryan Johnson Y.R.H
See also
