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Eteocypriot writing, Amathous, Cyprus, 500–300 BC, Ashmolean Museum. An extinct language or dead language is a language with no living native speakers. [1] [2] A dormant language is a dead language that still serves as a symbol of ethnic identity to an ethnic group; these languages are often undergoing a process of revitalisation. [3]
An endangered language or moribund language is a language that is at risk of disappearing as its speakers die out or shift to speaking other languages. [1] Language loss occurs when the language has no more native speakers and becomes a "dead language". If no one can speak the language at all, it becomes an "extinct language".
A revived language is a language that at one point had no native speakers, but through revitalization efforts has regained native speakers. The most frequent reason for extinction is the marginalisation of local languages within a wider dominant nation state , which might at times amount to outright political oppression.
Lists of endangered languages are mainly based on the definitions used by UNESCO. In order to be listed, a language must be classified as "endangered" in a cited academic source. Researchers have concluded that in less than one hundred years, almost half of the languages known today will be lost forever. [1] The lists are organized by region.
A language like Latin is not extinct in this sense, because it evolved into the modern Romance languages; it is impossible to state when Latin became extinct because there is a diachronic continuum (compare synchronic continuum) between ancestors Late Latin and Vulgar Latin on the one hand and descendants like Old French and Old Italian on the ...
According to Pimsleur, "Foreign Language Syndrome occurs after a serious accident or injury to the brain renders victims unconscious. When the patients come around they find themselves talking in ...
By extension, language extinction is when the language is no longer known, including by second-language speakers, when it becomes known as an extinct language. A related term is linguicide , [ 1 ] the death of a language from natural or political causes, and, rarely, glottophagy , the absorption or replacement of a minor language by a major ...
One is when a language is no longer being taught to the children of the community, or at least to a large number of the children. In these cases, the remaining fluent speakers of the language are generally the older members of the community, and when they pass on, the language dies out with them.