There are some factors that can contribute to languages to become more dead:
a. The most common process leading to language death is one in which a community of speakers of one language becomes bilingual in another language, and gradually shift allegiance to the second language until they cease to use their original language. This is a process of assimilation which may be voluntary or may be forced upon a population. Speakers of some languages, particularly regional or minority ones, may decide to abandon them on economic or utilitarian grounds, in favor of languages regarded as having greater utility or prestige.
b. Languages can also die when their speakers are wiped out by genocide or disease.
c. A language is often declared to be dead even before the last native speaker of the language has died; if there are only a few elderly speakers of a language remaining, and they no longer use that language for communication, then the language is effectively dead. This occurs when a language stops being transmitted as a mother tongue. This is not usually a sudden event, but a slow process of each generation learning less and less of the subtleties of the language, until it remains only in poetry and song. For example, a family's adults may speak in an older native language, but when they have children, they may not pass on this language, and therefore the language dies in that family. This situation occurred with the Manx language, but Manx, in addition to other languages, has been reintroduced in schools and in bilingual publications.
d. Linguicide is a little used term describing the intentional causing of the death of a language. It is also used as a derogatory term to describe unintentional death of languages through competition and other mechanisms. Perhaps the largest historical example was the destruction of the Native American languages in the Spanish colonization of the Americas. Some of the most recent historical instances of linguicide were in Australia and the USA.
e. Language attrition, occasionally called language suicide, is a process of language obsolescence. Over generations, the speakers of the less prestigious language of two closely-related languages borrow so much lexis, pronunciation and syntax from the more prestigious language, that the less prestigious language becomes virtually indistinguishable from the prestigious one.
Some of the mechanisms leading to the death of languages and recent historical examples:
• instituted separation of children from their parents, e.g., Aboriginal children in Australia. See Stolen Generation. Bosnian orphan children that were adopted by foreign family.
• imposition of another language (e.g., by declaring it official, English-only movement)
• ban on the language that is to be annihilated (e.g., Hawaiian in Hawaii by the USA after its annexation; German in the USA after the World Wars, German in Italy after WWII, Ainu in Hokkaido)
• linguistic competition (e.g. English vs. French in scientific publications)
• "glottopolitics and linguistic warfare"
• extermination of people speaking the language (e.g., Holocaust contributed to the decline of Yiddish, Indian Wars)
• destruction of the traditional culture (e.g., Native American languages by the USA)
• natural decline in native populations and their traditions
• refusal to teach children through their native tongue, e.g. Scottish Gaelic and Welsh within the British state.
• refusal by advertisers/corporations/employers to allow/use certain language.
• refusal by advertisers/corporations/employers to allow/use certain languages.
3. Language origin is the theory that explains how human acquired language at the first time. This topic has attracted considerable speculation throughout human history. The use of language is one of the most conspicuous and diagnostic traits that distinguish Homo sapien from other species. Unlike writing, spoken language leaves no trace. Hence linguists have to resort to indirect methods in trying to decipher the origins of language.
There are some theories that linguists have tried to speculate. One of them is Jespersen who offered five theories upon this topic:
(1) The bow-wow: people imitating the sounds of animal calls.
(2) The pooh-pooh: people making instinctive sounds, caused by pain, anger or other emotions.
(3) The ding-dong: people reacted to the stimuli in the world around them.
(4) The yo-he-ho: people worked together, their physical efforts produced communal, rhythmical grunts into chants.
(5) The la-la: people produced sounds due to the romantic side of life.
Language Death
Confronting Death: A Christian Approach to the End of Life with Walter Wangerin, Jr.
Death of the English Language
