Language death is a constant problem and always will be.
How many languages do you think about on a daily basis? And how many would you say you actually know about? Maybe 10-20? If you list out all the languages you’ve heard of, the list might not be very big.
The list of languages you speak, natively or even conversationally, is likely much smaller. I would say I have barely two, in that respect: English and (kind of) Spanish.
What if I told you there are over 7,000 languages currently spoken in the world?
Many of these languages are spoken in remote, small, or marginalized communities, and don’t get a lot of recognition. Others are slowly dying out and being replaced by larger, more widely-spoken languages that provide people with greater opportunities.
In fact, UNESCO has a list of all of these languages alongside their number of speakers. As you scroll through this list, the numbers begin to grow smaller and smaller all the way down to 0. It’s important to note, though, that having 0 speakers doesn’t mean the language is dead. There might still be people that speak it but not as a first language, or records of the language that could still be used for revitalization (which I will talk about more later).
Why Dying Languages are Important
Imagine, as a speaker of whatever language you’re reading this in, that you are the last person who speaks it. Everyone around you speaks some other language, and nobody knows what you’re saying when you speak to them in your first language. All of the ideas and concepts that can only be expressed through your language will die with you. Sayings, idioms, figures of speech, jokes, puns, words of wisdom, riddles, and even nouns and verbs will be lost to time when your language dies out.
Language is the embodiment of a culture. You can preserve the ideas, traditions, and traits of a culture, but language is what unites these ideas and properly expresses them. If you lose the language, the culture is sure to follow (outside of historical and anthropological records, which can’t preserve the true soul of the culture/ language). On the other hand, if you lose a culture, the language is sure to die out, too.
Language helps to shape your entire worldview, whether you realize it or not. Something as simple as the categorization of color or the way nouns are classified can have a huge impact on the way you see the world. Even the words we choose to make up for describing the world around us can change how we understand it:
“Puhpowee, she explained, translates as ‘the force which causes mushrooms to push up from the earth overnight.’ As a biologist, I was stunned that such a word existed.
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
The makers of this word understood a world of being, full of unseen energies that animate everything. I’ve cherished it for many years, as a talisman, and longed for the people who gave a name to the life force of mushrooms. The language that holds Puhpowee is one that I wanted to speak. So when I learned that the word for rising, for emergence, belonged to the language of my ancestors, it became a signpost for me.”
In this way, language is as important as any religious or cultural practice. It is as important as anything else we interact with on a daily basis. We are growing, more and more, to value a world with diverse and creative ideas, and language is such a great way for us to find them.
What Causes Language Death?
There are a number of factors that contribute to this issue. Many of them aren’t easy to reconcile, or simply can’t be prevented:
- Nationalism
- Economy
- Ideologies
Each of these factors affect one another, but each has their own role to play in language death. Some of them can be worked around or altered to prevent language death, which is the entire subject of linguistic revitalization.
Nationalism
I said earlier that culture dies when language dies. Thus, when a country seeks to unite its people or prevent differences from causing conflict, language is often one of the first things to go.
Look at, for example, the treatment of indigenous groups in what is now the United States during its westward expansion. Boarding schools popped up all over the land to teach children and adults English and to instruct them in proper religious and cultural customs.
By taking language away, you can take culture away and force people to join your own culture. Their connection to, and means of expressing, their own culture is lost, so now they have to follow yours.
Immigrants to the US (or any country, for that matter) will often stop using their native language or teaching it to their children. This can happen for several reasons. One big one is a change in cultural or national identity. If you now see yourself as an American, you’re going to want to adopt American culture. (It’s worth mentioning, though, that the US does not have an official language, unlike many countries.)
There are other ways this can happen, too, though. For example, there are over 300 languages spoken in China. Despite being linguistically classified as separate languages, the Chinese government and culture considers them all to be dialects of a greater Chinese language (the definition of a language is pretty heavily debated anyway). In this way, their national identity is united, but their languages and cultural differences remain intact.
Now, does this mean that language death doesn’t/can’t happen there? No. Economy plays a large part in all of this, too.
Economy and Language Death
A big reason that languages fall out of use is, well, their usefulness.
Let’s continue with the China example. If you’re a member of a smaller cultural group with its own language, but there isn’t a lot of work for people who speak your language, what will you do? You’ll likely have to learn a more widely-spoken language like Mandarin to get better job opportunities. Whether you stay in your own cultural “zone” or move to a bigger city, you’ll find yourself using your original language less than before. Maybe you’ll use it at home or among family, but not at your job.
If you’re an immigrant parent, you’ll likely want your children to learn the language of your new country. It’s both an economic and cultural concern. Even if you never learn the language well, your children will, and they can get better jobs and a better life. Over time, your native language won’t be spoken anymore.
For this reason, languages tend to die out in areas with a heavy focus on a single language. This isn’t something we can fundamentally change, but there are ways around it.
All of these ideas contribute to another major factor: ideology.
Ideology
People can be stubborn.
Alongside the other two factors I mentioned, ideologies surrounding language often hinder revitalization efforts. These can take on a lot of forms and come from a lot of sources:
- Media misinformation/ bias
- Native speaker beliefs
- Outsider beliefs
Let’s briefly delve into these factors and what they do.
Media
Media reporting on language death might say something like “This is the last native speaker of [endangered language]” or report on their recent death. Headlines like this often imply (intentionally or otherwise) that the language is gone. Oftentimes, the language isn’t actually dead or gone, it simply has no first-language/native speakers. That’s one concern I have with the list I linked above: it doesn’t account for people actively learning or speaking the language who didn’t learn it from childhood, at least not with the numbers. (Pay close attention to the terms like ‘vulnerable’ and ‘critically endangered’ on the list I linked.)
Media can make a language’s death seem permanent when it really isn’t. If linguists or speakers are working to revitalize or record the language (or both), then the fight isn’t over yet, and the language can still be brought back.
Native Speakers’ Beliefs
I’ve touched on some native speaker beliefs already in the sections above, but here’s some more quick ones:
- Differing opinions on how/if the language should be preserved (whether it should be written down, recorded, etc.; what writing system it should use and how).
- Differing opinions on how/if the language should be modernized with new words.
- Differing opinions on who should be allowed to speak/ engage with the language.
These topics above might sound like non-issues, but they can be very important to some groups. Making sure a language is properly recorded and maintained in a way that aligns with its culture is just as important as revitalizing or maintaining it in the first place. Sometimes, though, compromises need to be made.
Outsiders’ Beliefs
Members of other cultures or systems of power, like governments and religious groups, might have their own ideologies that get in the way, too. This could lead to something like the boarding schools, but it could also go in the opposite direction. What if a particular group doesn’t want their language preserved, but outsiders insist that it has to be done?
Conclusion
I hope this article left you with a greater appreciation for the factors behind language death and why it’s a big deal. It’s a topic that needs a lot more attention in my opinion, and can help to preserve ideas that could change the course of history.
Many of these issues are near impossible to change, and difficult to work around. There’s a reason people devote their entire lives and careers to them.
Next week, I’m going to talk about what you can do to help. Expect a link to that post here.
Thanks for reading! If you want to discuss any of these topics in further detail or have questions, comments, or concerns, let me know below! If there’s a term here that needs to be more clearly defined, tell me and I’ll get to it ASAP!
