{"id":788,"date":"2018-08-19T20:49:57","date_gmt":"2018-08-20T00:49:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/lmlc\/?p=788"},"modified":"2019-05-22T12:36:32","modified_gmt":"2019-05-22T16:36:32","slug":"language-death-dead-languages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/lmlc\/2018\/08\/19\/language-death-dead-languages\/","title":{"rendered":"Language Death & Dead Languages"},"content":{"rendered":"

In one of our textbooks for Linguistic Anthropology, Language in Society, the author Suzanne Romaine dedicates a part of chapter 2 in exploring the topic of language death. Language death<\/a> occurs when a language ceases to be spoken and used by people, rendering it non-existent in terms of communication between others.<\/p>\n

Language death is a scary concept as it can really happen to any language. What causes this to happen has been debate by linguists, from minority communities being suppressed<\/a> and overridden by majority force in society, to a phenomenon called \u201clanguage shift<\/a>\u201d where a community starts off as bilingual but gradually loses their native tongue.<\/p>\n

A related concept to language death is a dead language<\/a> although these terms are not as mutually inclusive as one would think. A dead language refers to a language losing its native speakers, old languages such as Ancient Egyptian and Latin would fall into such a category because they lost their native speakers.<\/p>\n

Language death can certainly lead to a language to be labeled as \u201cdead\u201d though and both are scenarios with which to avoid and certain communities fear happening to them, like this tribe<\/a> of Aboriginals in Australia which have only a few native speakers left.<\/p>\n

By studying this phenomenon though, linguists can learn how to prevent language death from happening and learn about communities that reversed their fate. Hebrew<\/a> for example was revitalized after centuries of the language mainly being used for religious purposes rather than for other areas in life.<\/p>\n

Also of note is expanding a language\u2019s access<\/a> to its community members and emphasizing<\/a> code-switching<\/a>, or use of multiple languages in everyday communication, especially for children to retain knowledge of their mother tongue.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, while language death is a grim topic and can evolve into becoming a reality for some communities, with the right amount of effort and work, it can be reversed and even thrive in their communities of origin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In one of our textbooks for Linguistic Anthropology, Language in Society, the author Suzanne Romaine dedicates a part of chapter 2 in exploring the topic of language death. Language death occurs when a language ceases to be spoken and used<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3323,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,4,38,1],"tags":[45,6,13,71],"class_list":["post-788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-language","category-language-map","category-uncategorized","tag-blog","tag-language","tag-language-clouds","tag-language-death"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/lmlc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/lmlc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/lmlc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/lmlc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3323"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/lmlc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=788"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/lmlc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1104,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/lmlc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788\/revisions\/1104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/lmlc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/lmlc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/lmlc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}