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An endangered language or moribund language is a language that is at risk of disappearing as its speakers die out or shift to speaking other languages. [1] Language loss occurs when the language has no more native speakers and becomes a " dead language ".
Language preservation is the preservation of endangered or dead languages. With language death , studies in linguistics , anthropology , prehistory and psychology lose diversity. [ 1 ] As history is remembered with the help of historic preservation , language preservation maintains dying or dead languages for future studies in such fields.
Lists of endangered languages are mainly based on the definitions used by UNESCO. In order to be listed, a language must be classified as " endangered " in a cited academic source. Researchers have concluded that in less than one hundred years, almost half of the languages known today will be lost forever. [ 1 ]
definitively endangered: the language is spoken by a majority of the population; severely endangered: the language is spoken by less than 50% of the population; critically endangered: the language has very few speakers; extinct: no living speakers; Trends in existing language domains universal use (safe): spoken in all domains; for all functions
A revived language is a language that at one point had no native speakers, but through revitalization efforts has regained native speakers. The most frequent reason for extinction is the marginalisation of local languages within a wider dominant nation state , which might at times amount to outright political oppression.
Vibrant" languages are those in full use by speakers of every generation, with consistent native acquisition by children. "Vulnerable" languages have a similarly wide base of native speakers, but a restricted use and the long-term risk of language shift. "Endangered" languages are either acquired irregularly or spoken only by older generations.
The Catalogue of Endangered Languages provides information on each of the world's currently endangered languages. It provides information on: the languages' vitality (their prospects for continued use), such as number of speakers, trends in the number of speakers, intergenerational transmission; the language's spheres of use
Google launched the Endangered Languages Project aimed at helping preserve languages that are at risk of extinction. Its goal is to compile up-to-date information about endangered languages and share the latest research about them. Anthropologist Akira Yamamoto has identified nine factors that he believes will help prevent language death: [16]