Language Vitality
Language vitality can be measured on a scale ranging from “healthy” to “extinct.” A UNESCO paper proposes nine factors that determine a language’s viability:
Absolute number of speakers
Availability of materials for language education and literacy
Community members’ attitudes toward their own language
Governmental and institutional language attitudes and policies, including official status and use
Intergenerational language transmission
Proportion of speakers within the total population
Response to new domains and media
Shifts in domains of language use
Type and quality of documentation
Almost all of these factors include six degrees of endangerment: safe (healthy), unsafe/vulnerable, definitely endangered, severely endangered, critically endangered, and extinct.
The causes of language endangerment can be divided into four main categories:
Disease, famine, and natural catastrophes: The village of Malol in Papua New Guinea was destroyed by an earthquake in 1998. It was estimated that Malol had 3,330 speakers at the time.
Genocide and war: The Kasabe language of Cameroon became extinct in 1995 due to the Fulani jihad of the 19th century, which resulted in enslavement and massacre.
Overt repression (assimilation): Breton, spoken in France, is an example of a severely endangered language that suffered repression in the name of national unity.
Cultural/economic/political dominance: Santali, a language spoken in India, is classified as vulnerable due to the predominance of Bengali and especially Hindi, which is the official language of the country alongside English.
It is important to note the difference between an extinct language, which has no remaining speakers, and a dead language, which is one that no longer is the native language of any community, even if it is still in use. Latin, the official language of the Holy See, and Coptic, the liturgical language of the Coptic Orthodox Church, are two examples of dead languages. Adequate documentation is necessary to revive an extinct language, as was the case with Hebrew and Cornish, among others. This process is known as language revitalization, which also refers to the attempt to slow language death. Some examples include Ainu, Livonian, Navajo, and Māori.
