Week 13: Language Death

In linguistics, language death occurs when a language loses its last native speaker. By extension, language extinction is when the language is no longer known, including by second-language speakers. Other similar terms include linguicide, the death of a language from natural or political causes, and rarely glottophagy, the absorption or replacement of a minor language by a major language.

Language death may manifest itself in one of the following ways:

  • gradual language death
  • bottom-to-top language death: when language change begins in a low-level environment such as the home.
  • top-to-bottom language death: when language change begins in a high-level environment such as the government.
  • radical language death
  • linguicide (also known as sudden death, language genocide, physical language death, biological language death

The session discusses the concept in detail.

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