endangered languages
Vanishing speech forms
Endangered languages are languages at risk of falling out of use, typically because fewer children are learning them as their first language.
A language becomes endangered when its speaker population shrinks or ages without passing the language to younger generations.
Linguists estimate that half of the world's roughly 7,000 languages may disappear by century's end.
Efforts to document endangered languages have intensified as elders die.
- documentationWritten proof or instructions
- heritageInherited cultural legacy
- identityWho someone is
- tongue tiedUnable to articulate clearly
- globalizationWorldwide economic and cultural integration
immersion programs · dialects · educational policies · colonization · oral traditions · community elders · advocacy campaigns · dying · assimilation · archiving · diaspora · indigenous rights · storytelling · vanishing · oral · speakers · mother tongue · fluent
- cultural heritagefolklore, traditions, customs, folk music revival, museum collections
- heritagecultural traditions, museum, national heritage, archive, monument
- language groupsMandarin speakers, heritage speakers, bilingual communities, bilinguals, bilingual community
- Overlooked Thingsrare diseases, folk traditions, indigenous art, oral histories, local customs
- sociolinguisticssociolinguistics, diglossia, bilingualism, dialects, code-switching
- language loss
endangered languagesworld languages
Systems of human communication globally
lingua francas · English · Mandarin Chinese · Spanish · French
endangered languagesdead languages
Languages without native speakers
extinct languages · ancient languages · classical languages · Latin · Sanskrit