How Languages Can Go From Living to Dead to Extinct

Dr. Erica Brozovskiof thePBSseriesOtherwordsexplained how languages can go from living (used regularly) to dormant (rarely used but with a clear cultural identity) to dead (no native speakers but written use) and finally, to extinct (no native speakers nor written use).

Language death occurs when the last remaining native speaker of a language passes away. But how does it get to the point where a language's continued existence is reliant on a single person? How do languages die or go extinct?

She also notes that some languages have been revived from the dormant and dead, such as Hebrew and Na-Dene, but there are still many more languages have been lost through various shifts such as intergenerational, language repression and replacement, community migration, and war.

It makes sense that when there aren't any more speakers, a language gets lost, but how does it get to that point? Language endangerment is generally the result of language shift, which, as the name suggests, refers to the process in which a population changes or shifts from using one language to using another.