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For many languages which have become extinct in recent centuries, attestation of usage is datable in the historical record, and sometimes the terminal speaker is identifiable. In other cases, historians and historical linguists may infer an estimated date of extinction from other events in the history of the sprachraum .
Over a thousand known languages were spoken by various peoples in North and South America prior to their first contact with Europeans. These encounters occurred between the beginning of the 11th century (with the Nordic settlement of Greenland and failed efforts in Newfoundland and Labrador) and the end of the 15th century (the voyages of Christopher Columbus).
Although the first known text by native speakers dates to 1885, the first record of the language is a list of words recorded in 1793 by Alexander MacKenzie. 1885: Motu: grammar by W.G. Lawes: 1886: Guugu Yimidhirr: notes by Johann Flierl, Wilhelm Poland and Georg Schwarz, culminating in Walter Roth's The Structure of the Koko Yimidir Language ...
Radical language death: the disappearance of a language when all speakers of the language cease to speak the language because of threats, pressure, persecution, or colonisation. In the case of radical death, language death is very sudden therefore the speech community skips over the semi-speaker phase where structural changes begin to happen to ...
This is a list of extinct languages of North America, languages which have undergone language death, have no native speakers and no spoken descendant, most of them being languages of former Native American tribes. There are 196 Indigenous, 2 Creole, 3 European, 4 Sign and 5 Pidgin languages listed. In total 210 languages.
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]
Cherokee is one of the few, or perhaps the only, Native American language with an increasing population of speakers, [119] and along with Navajo it is the only indigenous American language with more than 50,000 speakers, [120] a figure most likely achieved through the tribe's 10-year long language preservation plan involving growing new ...
The origin of language, its relationship with human evolution, and its consequences have been subjects of study for centuries.Scholars wishing to study the origins of language draw inferences from evidence such as the fossil record, archaeological evidence, contemporary language diversity, studies of language acquisition, and comparisons between human language and systems of animal ...