Extinct Language - Language Loss

Language Loss

Normally the transition from a spoken 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, Spanish, or Dutch as a result of colonization.

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, New Testament Greek, Ge'ez, Ardhamagadhi, Pali, Sanskrit and Latin are among the many dead languages used as sacred languages. Courses and active teaching still exist for these, as well as Egyptian Hieroglyphs and Maya script.

Sometimes a language that has changed so much that linguists describe it as a different language (or different stage) is called "extinct", as in the case of Old English, a forerunner of Modern English. But in such cases, the language never ceased to be used by speakers, and as linguists' subdivisions in the process of language change are fairly arbitrary, such forerunner languages are not properly speaking extinct.

A language that currently has living native speakers is called a modern language. Ethnologue records 7,358 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. 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 7,000 languages currently spoken in the world will have become extinct by 2050, as the world's language system has reached a crisis and is dramatically restructuring.