Pérez Báez: A language can, unfortunately, become endangered relatively easily. It happens when fewer and fewer people speak it, and especially when children stop learning it as their dominant language. These children are then less likely to speak it at home and teach it to their children.
Currently, there are 573 known extinct languages. These are languages that are no longer spoken or studied. Many were local dialects with no records of their alphabet or wording, and so are forever lost. Others were major languages of their time, but society and changing cultures left them behind.
Examples of an Extinct Language
There are currently 570 known extinct languages, with some notable examples being Eyak, Yana, Tunica and Tillamook – which are all mostly from Native American tribes.
That loss is visceral, as languages often help define who we are. When a language dies, we lose cultures, entire civilizations, but also, we lose people. We lose perspectives, ideas, opinions, most importantly, we lose a unique way of being human.
The revitalisation of indigenous languages is essential for ensuring the continuation and transmission of culture, customs and history, but it is also important to address biodiversity loss and climate change.
Languages are a transmission vehicle for culture, and as languages die, the cultures they represent also begin to die. Preserving languages allow us as a collective to preserve the cultures they represent. More and more, the issue of endangered languages is being considered as a critical one.
It is crucial to understand that languages represent cultures. This reiterates the need to protect endangered languages. Without its language, a culture can die out quickly and become lost to time. Above all, preserving languages is as critical as preserving diverse wildlife to maintain a balanced ecosystem.
Although languages have always become extinct throughout human history, they are currently dying at an accelerated rate because of globalization, mass migration, cultural replacement, imperialism, neocolonialism and linguicide (language killing).
Teaching and taking language classes
Both teaching and participating in language classes are excellent ways to keep a language alive. Typically, elders volunteer or are paid small stipends to lead classes for a community.
Today, the voices of more than 7,000 languages resound across our planet every moment, but about 2,900 or 41% are endangered.
Aramaic is best known as the language Jesus spoke. It is a Semitic language originating in the middle Euphrates. In 800-600 BC it spread from there to Syria and Mesopotamia. The oldest preserved inscriptions are from this period and written in Old Aramaic.
There has only been one successful instance of a complete language revival, the Hebrew language, creating a new generation of native speakers without any pre-existing native speakers as a model. Languages targeted for language revitalization include those whose use and prominence is severely limited.
Kawishana is the rarest language in the world.
Therefore, while growing up without hearing poses many difficulties in life, growing up without language is significantly worse. Language is so central to being human that lacking it can mean a lifetime of social deprivation and isolation.
Having one lung will still allow a person to live a relatively normal life. Having one lung might limit a person's physical abilities, however, such as their ability to exercise. That said, many athletes who lose the use of one lung may still train and be able to continue their sport.
1. English (1,452 million speakers) According to Ethnologue, English is the most-spoken language in the world including native and non-native speakers. Like Latin or Greek at the time, English has become the world's common language.
Types of Language Change
Language is always changing. We've seen that language changes across space and across social group. Language also varies across time. Generation by generation, pronunciations evolve, new words are borrowed or invented, the meaning of old words drifts, and morphology develops or decays.
One language dies every 14 days. By the next century nearly half of the roughly 7,000 languages spoken on Earth will likely disappear, as communities abandon native tongues in favor of English, Mandarin, or Spanish. What is lost when a language goes silent?
Is Danish growing or dying? Denmark's population is growing slightly, so that may lead to an increase in the total number of Danish speakers over time.
Across multiple sources, Mandarin Chinese is the number one language listed as the most challenging to learn. The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center puts Mandarin in Category IV, which is the list of the most difficult languages to learn for English speakers.
Icelandic. It belongs to the West Scandinavian group of Norther Germanic languages, just like Faroese, and it is Iceland's mother tongue.
The archaeological proof we have today allows us to state that the oldest dead language in the world is the Sumerian language. Dating back to at least 3500 BC, the oldest proof of written Sumerian was found in today's Iraq on an artifact known as the Kish Tablet.
Many people believe that you lose the ability to learn new languages as you get older. Language experts, however, will tell you that you're never too old to learn a new language. As you get older, it can be more difficult to learn a new language, though. Children and adults learn new languages in different ways.