Introducing English Linguistics

Language death
Language death is a type of language shift. However, unlike bilingualism,
which involves speakers shifting from one language to another in differ-
ent contexts, language death occurs when, over time, a language loses all
its speakers. The process of language death is typically slow, and involves
successive generations of speakers abandoning a language until only rela-
tively few people remain as fluent speakers. Once these people die, the
language dies too.
Latin is sometimes referred to as a dead language because it no longer has
any native speakers and exists only in written texts surviving from earlier
periods. But while Latin may have died, its legacy survives in its direct descen-
dants, such as Spanish, Italian, French, and Portuguese. In this respect, Latin
is similar to other languages in the Indo-European language family that are
no longer spoken (e.g. Old English, Sanskrit). In other contexts, however, some
languages simply die, leaving no direct descendants. For instance, as a result
of the colonization of the Americas, numerous indigenous languages have
died or are endangered. Of the forty-four languages in the Algic language fam-
ily (a family of languages spoken in the United States and Canada), thirteen
have died (www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=91079, accessed June
2008). The remaining living languages have a mere 194,980 speakers (Gordon
2005: 18), and a number of these languages are “nearly extinct,” a situation
arising “when the speaker population is fewer than 50 or when the number
of speakers is a very small fraction of the ethnic group” (Gordon 2005: 8).
According to the latest figures in the Ethnologue, 516 of 6,912 languages in the
world are nearly extinct (www.ethnologue.com/nearly_extinct.asp, accessed
June 20, 2008).
In the Americas, language death is a direct consequence of colonization,
which was accompanied by genocide, disease, and the overwhelming
42
INTRODUCING ENGLISH LINGUISTICS

---

influence of the languages of the colonialists (e.g. English, Spanish, and
Portuguese). Even a relatively healthy language like Navajo, which in the
1990 census had 148,530 speakers, is seeing a decline in the number of
younger speakers: among ethnically Navajo first-graders in 1968, 90 percent
spoke it as a native language; now only 30 percent do (Gordon 2005: 305).
Attempts to revive endangered languages have yielded mixed results. While
Welsh was successfully revived, with 19 percent of the population of Wales
now able to speak it (Gordon 205: 566), most other attempts have been
unsuccessful. Linguists have been actively involved in the movement to save
endangered languages. The Linguistic Society of America (LSA) has a special
committee, the Committee on Endangered Languages and their Preservation
(CELP), whose mission is to promote linguistic research on endangered lan-
guages and to help speakers of endangered languages preserve their lan-
guages. Crystal (2000: 27f .) discusses why linguists feel so passionately about
the preservation of endangered languages. He emphasizes the importance of
linguistic diversity, and notes that because a speaker’s identity is so closely
associated with the language that he or she speaks, with the death of a lan-
guage comes the loss of personal identity. Languages also contain records of
human history, provide “a unique encapsulation and interpretation of
human existence” (Crystal 2000: 44), and are inherently interesting in and of
themselves, offering important insights into the human mind.
The issue of language death is relevant to any discussion of the English
language, since it is sometimes argued that the globalization of English
has led to the death or displacement of many of the languages of the
world. Schneider (2003: 233) remarks that while many view English as “the
world’s leading language ... [an] indispensable tool for international econ-
omy, diplomacy, sciences, the media, and also individual interactions
across language boundaries,” others regard it as “a ‘killer language,’
responsible for the extinction of innumerable indigenous languages,
dialects, and cultures around the globe.” Just which perspective one takes
is largely a political decision. Nevertheless, language change is not simply
a phenomenon affecting individual languages in isolation from one anoth-
er. Change in one language can potentially have implications for many
other languages, as is the case with the rise of English as a world language.
Language change is natural, normal, and (ultimately) inevitable. While
many describe changes in the language as “corruptions” or markers of
“decay,” in reality so-called “errors” of usage can often be precursors of
change. For instance, the word flaunt is often used by many in place of
flout. A former president of the United States, Jimmy Carter, made this
usage famous when in 1979, during the Iran hostage crisis, he said “the
government of Iran must realize that it cannot flaunt with impunity the
express will and law of the world community.” Strictly speaking, he
should have used flout here because flout means ‘to violate,’ while flaunt
means ‘to show off ’ (e.g. The child flaunted his new fire truck). However, the
two words are quite close in pronunciation. In addition, while flaunt is a
fairly common word, flout is not. The result is that many people confuse