by David Parker

Generally, language death occurs as the result of a people being in physical danger or because of cultural assimilation; but as David Crystal suggest, it is not that simple, “It is not usually possible to write a single cause on the death certificate for a language” (Language Death, 2000).  Specific reasons for language death include the following:

Demographics (e.g., urbanization - economic factors luring rural works to urban areas);

Language Use (e.g., after the Babylonian Captivity, the Hebrew language was virtually dead; however, within the last century, Israel's implementation of aggressive language planning and policy and the use of Ulpanim, intensive Hebrew language immersion schools, have revived the Hebrew language in Palestine);

Language Cultivation, Development, Literacy;

Status and Recognition (usually indigenous languages just aren't invited into a country's education system, the press, or religious life; but Paraguay is an exception.   There, the Guarani language population enjoys equal status with Spanish); Language attitudes (individual, regional, national - e.g., speakers in that language have a booming economy or international or regional prestige and power.  According linguist, K. David Harrison of the Living Tongues Institute, “Children are little barometers of social prestige.  They understand implicitly that if they live in an environment there two languages are spoken, one of them is less valued than the other, and they will speak the more valued language.”);

Amount and Quality of Documentation (dictionaries, the Bible, other literature, etc.);

and the Number of speakers (but the number of speakers is not necessarily deterministic in the life of a language).

Since merely saying that a language is "endangered" can be ambiguous, it is needful to define levels of endangerment.  Although various linguists may have their own definitions, which differ to some extent, the following will provide an idea of how a language ranks among various levels of vitality.

Potentially endangered – lack of prestige in the home country, economic deprivation, language not being passed on in the education system

Endangered – youngest fluent speakers are young adults

Seriously/severely endangered – youngest speakers are 50 years of age and older

Moribund – a tiny portion, mostly the very age, remain as speakers of the language

Extinct – no remaining speakers of the language

The concern or lack of concern about language death is a matter of perspective.  A person ignorant of God and apathetic to God's message will merely value cultural and historical losses when languages die.  They care about language death because of cultural and historical loss.  But a person who knows God and is motivated to give His message to all people will see language death as the most significant communication failure imaginable.  How would you like have to learn a second language in order to partly understand God's message to you? This is not God's will.  His message is for all people, tribes, tongues, and languages.  Let's give them the Message in a language they can understand – theirs!

David Parker

Statistic:
The median size language in the world is 6,000 speakers.  This means that half of the world's languages are spoken by 6,000 or more people; and that the other half are spoken by 6,000 or less people.

Additional Resources:

http://www.livingtongues.org

http://www.sil.org/sociolx/ndg-lg-grps.html#Endangered

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/09/070918-languages-extinct.html

http://www.ethnologue.com/nearly_extinct.asp

Language Death (David Crystal, 2000)

Encyclopedia of the World’s Endangered Languages (Christopher Mosely, 2007)