Why Does A language Die?

(From the Master's Thesis of Randi Nott, North Central College, Naperville, IL, Winter, 1997)

Language Extinction Process

The extinction of languages is a process which has taken place throughout history and takes place nearly everywhere in the world.  When a language dies, the extinction is due to the supplanting of the old language by a new language with social and political prestige.  It is a social phenomenon and is triggered by social needs; there is no evidence that there was anything wrong with the dead language itself, it simply faded away because it no longer fulfilled the social needs of the community who spoke it or its last speaker died.1

Native American Language Extinction

In the case of Native American languages, the United States government implemented deliberate policies to eliminate native languages as a means of assimilating the American Indian into "white" society.  For over a century, federal Indian policy focused on stamping out what one 19th century commissioner of Indian affairs called "the barbarous dialects" that were "detrimental to the cause of (the Indians') education and civilization."  English became the final weapon of assimilation - a linguistic club that was wielded at reservation schools as late as the 1960s.2

Commitment to Language Preservation

Commitment to language preservation is not universal, even among Native Americans.   Many people feel that indigenous languages are part of the past and must inevitably be replaced; they fear that their use in schools will 'hold back' children.  Parents may decide not to teach their native language to their children, using English with them instead in order to increase their chances of success in school.  Intermarriage between members of distinct Indian groups is increasingly common; in such mixed families, English is likely to be the principal home language.  Even where and indigenous language is spoken in the home, the language socialization of children may be largely in English.  Young parents, working two jobs to support families, may have little time to spend with children, who are exposed to far more English language television than to parental talk in the local language.  Elders, in their deep concern for language preservation, may over-react to the normal mistakes of children, and be especially censorious of such manifestations of bilingual speech as code-switching and loan vocabulary and may inadvertently discourage young people from speaking.3

Sources

1. Aitchinson, Jean  Language Change: Process or Decay?, Fontana Press, 1981, page 221.

2. Nash, Gary B. The American People, Harper & Row, 1990, pp.278-281.

3. Zepeda, Ofelia and Jane Hill The Conditions of Native American Languages in the United States.  Endangered Languages , R.H. Robins and E.M. Uhlenbeck, Editors

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