The Extinction of Language and Other Light Topics

When the phrase “extinction” is inevitably brought up in polite conversation, there’s a good chance that the first topics that jump into people’s minds are the declining mountain gorilla population or the sorry lack of Mexican grizzly bears in today’s wilderness.

Well, those may not be the primary examples that normal people usually consider, but the sad truth is that extinctions are silently occurring on a level far removed from many people’s minds—the extinction of language!

When’s the last time you saw a magazine in Galatian? A newspaper in Kamassian?

Met a person fluent in Bohemian Romani? Or watched a movie with dialogue in Tasmanian?

If you’re the average reader who doesn’t possess a rather diverse family tree, you likely answered WBAP-MAY12-01“never” to most of those. This is the reality of the epidemic known as language extinction, and while there’s a good chance you’d never read a Galatian magazine even if the language weren’t extinct (given that it likely died in the 6th century,) the fact remains that its extinction all but guarantees that the Galatian tabloids will forever remain out of print.

Scholars actually denote a couple different terms to describe this phenomenon: language extinction and language death. While there isn’t much functional difference between language death and language extinction, the two can be contrasted in one or two ways. Language extinction is typically defined when a language loses all of its native speakers and is no longer used, while language death may refer to languages that aren’t spoken but are sometimes used in special written contexts. (Hieroglyphics, anyone?) Despite this distinction, the two are used pretty synonymously by those unafflicted by obsessive linguistic tendencies.

However you choose to define it, the end of a language can happen in several ways; most commonly when a community of speakers becomes bilingual and gradually forgets their original language, or simply chooses to speak their new language without teaching their children the original. This typically occurs when one language demonstrates superiority over another by simplicity, ease of speaking or political doctrine. Also referred to as a language shift, this effectively ends the line of native speakers as future generations will likely never have a chance to learn the language that their forebears grew up on.

Globalization is also to blame for the death of languages and the numerous regional dialects associated with them. When a powerful culture has influence over others, the spread of information and ideas inevitably leads to the loss of some cultural variance. (Yes, we’re looking towards you, America.) This is nothing new – imperialism has been the culprit of many lost languages in the past, and while the spreading of cultural values through the Internet and mainstream media is only slightly less barbaric, (reality TV notwithstanding), there’s no denying that some of the finer details can be lost in the process.

Putting aside the losses of cultural heritage ever-present in language extinction, the death of language isn’t necessarily as bad as hand-wringing scholars may have you believe. After all, language can be seen as a spoken art form that builds on itself over time and reflects the changing needs of society. Despite the losses, the world will continue to develop and new linguistic constructs are sure to develop with it.