Types of Language Death
Language death may manifest itself in one of the following ways:
- gradual language death
- bottom-to-top language death: when language change begins in a low-level environment such as the home.
- top-to-bottom language death: when language change begins in a high-level environment such as the government.
- radical language death
- linguicide (Also known as sudden death, language by genocide, physical language death, biological language death)
The most common process leading to language death is one in which a community of speakers of one language becomes bilingual in another language, and gradually shifts allegiance to the second language until they cease to use their original (or heritage) language. This is a process of assimilation which may be voluntary or may be forced upon a population. Speakers of some languages, particularly regional or minority languages, may decide to abandon them based on economic or utilitarian grounds, in favour of languages regarded as having greater utility or prestige. This process is gradual and can occur from either bottom-to-top or top-to-bottom.
Languages with a small, geographically isolated population of speakers can also die when their speakers are wiped out by genocide, disease, or natural disaster.
A language is often declared to be dead even before the last native speaker of the language has died. If there are only a few elderly speakers of a language remaining, and they no longer use that language for communication, then the language is effectively dead. A language that has reached such a reduced stage of use is generally considered moribund. Once a language is no longer a native language - that is, if no children are being socialised into it as their primary language - the process of transmission is ended and the language itself will not survive past the current generation. This is rarely a sudden event, but a slow process of each generation learning less and less of the language, until its use is relegated to the domain of traditional use, such as in poetry and song. Typically the transmission of the language from adults to children becomes more and more restricted, to the final setting that adults speaking the language will raise children who never acquire fluency. One example of this process reaching its conclusion is that of the Dalmatian language.
Language death can be fast, when the children are taught to avoid their parents' language for reasons such as work opportunities and social status. At other times, minority languages survive much better, for example when the speakers try to isolate themselves against a majority population. Often, especially historically, governments have tried to promote language death, not wishing to have minority languages.
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