An extinct language is a language that no longer has any speakers,[1] especially if the language has no living descendants.[2] In contrast, a dead language is one that is no longer the native language of any community, even if it is still in use, like Latin.[3] A dormant language is a dead language that still serves as a symbol of ethnic identity to a particular group. These languages are often undergoing a process of revitalisation.[4] Languages that currently have living native speakers are sometimes called modern languages to contrast them with dead languages, especially in educational contexts.
In the modern period, languages have typically become extinct as a result of the process of cultural assimilation leading to language shift, and the gradual abandonment of a native language in favour of a foreign lingua franca, largely those of European countries.[5][6][7]
As of the 2000s, a total of roughly 7,000 natively spoken languages existed worldwide. Most of these are minor languages in danger of extinction; one estimate published in 2004 expected that some 90% of the currently spoken languages will have become extinct by 2050.[8]
Language death
Normally the transition from a spoken to an extinct language occurs when a language undergoes language death by being directly replaced by a different one. For example, many Native American languages were replaced by English, French, Portuguese, Spanish or Dutch as a result of European colonization of the Americas.[citation needed]
In contrast to an extinct language, which no longer has any speakers, or any written use, an historical language may remain in use as a literary or liturgical language long after it ceases to be spoken natively. Such languages are sometimes also referred to as "dead languages", but more typically as classical languages. The most prominent Western example of such a language is Latin, but comparable cases are found throughout world history due to the universal tendency to retain an historical stage of a language as the liturgical language.[citation needed]
Historical languages with living descendants that have undergone significant language change may be considered "extinct", especially in cases where they did not leave a corpus of literature or liturgy that remained in widespread use (see corpus language), as is the case with Old English or Old High German relative to their contemporary descendants, English and German.[citation needed]
Some degree of misunderstanding can result from designating languages such as Old English and Old High German as extinct, or Latin dead, while ignoring their evolution as a language. This is expressed in the apparent paradox "Latin is a dead language, but Latin never died." A language such as Etruscan, for example, can be said to be both extinct and dead: inscriptions are ill understood even by the most knowledgeable scholars, and the language ceased to be used in any form long ago, so that there have been no speakers, native or non-native, for many centuries. In contrast, Old English, Old High German and Latin never ceased evolving as living languages, nor did they become totally extinct as Etruscan did. Through time Latin underwent both common and divergent changes in phonology, morphology, syntax and lexicon and continues today as the native language of hundreds of millions of people, renamed as different Romance languages and dialects (French, Italian, Spanish, Corsican, Asturian, Ladin, etc.). Similarly, Old English and Old High German never died, but developed into various forms of modern English and German. With regard to the written language, skills in reading or writing Etruscan are all but non-existent, but trained people can understand and write Old English, Old High German and Latin. Latin differs from the Germanic counterparts in that an approximation of its ancient form is still employed to some extent liturgically. This last observation illustrates that for Latin, Old English, or Old High German to be described accurately as dead or extinct, the language in question must be conceptualized as frozen in time at a particular state of its history. This is accomplished by periodizing English and German as Old; for Latin, an apt clarifying adjective is Classical, which also normally includes designation of high or formal register.[citation needed]
Minor languages are endangered mostly due to economic and cultural globalization, cultural assimilation, and development. With increasing economic integration on national and regional scales, people find it easier to communicate and conduct business in the dominant lingua francas of world commerce: English, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish and French.[10]
In their study of contact-induced language change, American linguists Sarah Grey Thomason and Terrence Kaufman (1991) stated that in situations of cultural pressure (where populations are forced to speak a dominant language), three linguistic outcomes may occur: first - and most commonly - a subordinate population may shift abruptly to the dominant language, leaving the native language to a sudden linguistic death. Second, the more gradual process of language death may occur over several generations. The third and most rare outcome is for the pressured group to maintain as much of its native language as possible, while borrowing elements of the dominant language's grammar (replacing all, or portions of, the grammar of the original language).[11]
Institutions such as the education system, as well as (often global) forms of media such as the Internet, television, and print media play a significant role in the process of language loss.[10] For example, when people migrate to a new country, their children attend school in the country, and the schools are likely to teach them in the majority language of the country rather than their parents' native language.[citation needed]
Language revival
Language revival is the attempt to re-introduce an extinct language in everyday use by a new generation of native speakers. The optimistic neologism "sleeping beauty languages" has been used to express such a hope,[12] though scholars usually refer to such languages as dormant.
In practice, this has only happened on a large scale successfully once: the revival of the Hebrew language. Hebrew had survived for millennia since the Babylonian exile as a liturgical language, but not as a vernacular language. The revival of Hebrew has been largely successful due to extraordinarily favourable conditions, notably the creation of a nation state (modern Israel in 1947) in which it became the official language, as well as Eliezer Ben-Yehuda's extreme dedication to the revival of the language, by creating new words for the modern terms Hebrew lacked.
Revival attempts for minor extinct languages with no status as a liturgical language typically have more modest results. The Cornish language revival has proven at least partially successful: after a century of effort there are 3,500 claimed native speakers, enough for UNESCO to change its classification from "extinct" to "critically endangered". A Livonian language revival movement to promote the use of the Livonian language has managed to train a few hundred people to have some knowledge of it.[13]
Recently extinct languages
This is a list of languages reported as having become extinct since 2010. For a more complete list, see List of extinct languages.
See also
Notes
- Last surviving native speaker; some children still learn it as a second language.
References
- "Ancient Indian language dies out". 4 February 2010 – via news.bbc.co.uk.
Bibliography
- Adelaar, Willem F. H.; & Muysken, Pieter C. (2004). The Languages of the Andes. Cambridge Language Surveys. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-36275-7.
- Brenzinger, Matthias (ed.) (1992) Language Death: Factual and Theoretical Explorations with Special Reference to East Africa. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-013404-9.
- Campbell, Lyle; & Mithun, Marianne (Eds.). (1979). The Languages of Native America: Historical and Comparative Assessment. Austin: University of Texas Press. ISBN 0-292-74624-5.
- Davis, Wade. (2009). The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World. House of Anansi Press. ISBN 0-88784-766-8.
- Dorian, Nancy C. (1978). 'Fate of Morphological Complexity in Language Death: Evidence from East Sutherland Gaelic.' Language, 54 (3), 590-609.
- Dorian, Nancy C. (1981). Language Death: The Life Cycle of a Scottish Gaelic dialect. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 0-8122-7785-6.
- Dressler, Wolfgand & Wodak-Leodolter, Ruth (eds.) (1977) 'Language Death' (International Journal of the Sociology of Language vol. 12). The Hague: Mouton.
- Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (Ed.). (2005). Ethnologue: Languages of the World (15th ed.). Dallas, TX: SIL International. ISBN 1-55671-159-X. (Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com)[permanent dead link].
- Harrison, K. David. (2007) When Languages Die: The Extinction of the World's Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge. New York and London: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-518192-0.
- Mithun, Marianne. (1999). The Languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-23228-7 (hbk); ISBN 0-521-29875-X.
- Mohan, Peggy; & Zador, Paul. (1986). 'Discontinuity in a Life Cycle: The Death of Trinidad Bhojpuri.' Language, 62 (2), 291-319.
- Sasse, Hans-Jürgen (1992) 'Theory of Language Death', in Brenzinger (ed.) Language Death, pp. 7–30.
- Schilling-Estes, Natalie; & Wolfram, Walt. (1999). 'Alternative Models of Dialect Death: Dissipation vs. Concentration.' Language, 75 (3), 486-521.
- Sebeok, Thomas A. (Ed.). (1973). Linguistics in North America (parts 1 & 2). Current Trends in Linguistics (Vol. 10). The Hauge: Mouton. (Reprinted as Sebeok 1976).
- Sharp, Joanne. (2008). Chapter 6: 'Can the Subaltern Speak?', in Geographies of Postcolonialism. Glasgow, UK: SAGE Publications Ltd. ISBN 978-1-4129-0779-8.
- Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove. (2000). Linguistic Genocide in Education or Worldwide Diversity and Human Rights? Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. ISBN 0-8058-3468-0.
- Thomason, Sarah Grey & Kaufman, Terrence. (1991). Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-07893-4.
- Timmons Roberts, J. & Hite, Amy. (2000). From Modernization to Globalization: Perspectives on Development and Social Change. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978-0-631-21097-9.
External links
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinct_language
The Andamanese languages are a pair of language families spoken by the Andamanese peoples of the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean. The two language families are Great Andamanese and Ongan, while the Sentinelese language is spoken by an uncontacted people and therefore at present unclassifiable.[1][2]
History
The indigenous Andamanese people have lived on the islands for thousands of years. Although the existence of the islands and their inhabitants was long known to maritime powers and traders of the South– and Southeast–Asia region, contact with these peoples was highly sporadic and very often hostile; as a result, almost nothing is recorded of them or their languages until the mid-18th century. By the late 18th century, when the British first established a colonial presence on the Andaman islands, there were an estimated 5,000 Great Andamanese living on Great Andaman and surrounding islands, comprising 10 distinct tribes with distinct but closely related languages. From the 1860s onwards, the British established a penal colony on the islands, which led to the subsequent arrival of mainland settlers and indentured labourers, mainly from the Indian subcontinent. This coincided with the massive population reduction of the Andamanese due to outside diseases, to a low of 19 individuals in 1961.
One of the first accounts in English of the languages was by the early phonetician Alexander John Ellis, who presented to the Philological Society on the South Andamanese languages on his retirement. This presentation was later adapted into a Report of Researches into the Language of the South Andaman Island.[3]
By the beginning of the 20th century most of these populations were greatly reduced in numbers, and the various linguistic and tribal divisions among the Great Andamanese effectively ceased to exist, despite a census of the time still classifying the groups as separate.[4] Their linguistic diversity also suffered as the surviving populations intermingled with one another, and some also intermarried with Karen (Burmese) and Indian settlers.
By the latter part of the 20th century the majority of Great Andamanese languages had become extinct.
At the start of the 21st century only about 50 or so individuals of Great Andamanese descent remained, resettled to a single small island (Strait I.); about half of these speak what may be considered a modified version (or creole) of Great Andamanese, based mainly on Aka-Jeru.[1] This modified version has been called "Present Great Andamanese" by some scholars,[5][6] but also may be referred to simply as "Jero" or "Great Andamanese". Hindi increasingly serves as their primary language, and is the only language for around half of them.[7]
The Ongan languages survive mainly because of the greater isolation of the peoples who speak them. This isolation has been reinforced by an outright hostility towards outsiders and extreme reluctance to engage in contact with them by South Andamanese tribes, particularly the Sentinelese and Jarawa. The Sentinelese have been so resistant that their language remains entirely unknown to outsiders.
Grammar
The Andamanese languages are agglutinative languages, with an extensive prefix and suffix system.[5][8] They have a distinctive noun class system based largely on body parts, in which every noun and adjective may take a prefix according to which body part it is associated with (on the basis of shape, or functional association).[6] Thus, for instance, the "aka-" at the beginning of the Great Andamanese languages' names is a prefix for objects related to the tongue.[8] (See Great Andamanese languages for examples.) Terms for body parts are inalienably possessed, requiring a possessive adjective prefix to complete them, so one cannot say "head" alone, but only "my, or his, or your, etc. head".[6]
The basic pronouns are almost identical throughout the Great Andamanese languages; Aka-Bea will serve as a representative example (pronouns given in their basic prefixal forms):
| I, my | d- | we, our | m- |
| thou, thy | ŋ- | you, your | ŋ- |
| he, his, she, her, it, its | a | they, their | l- |
The Ongan pronouns are rather different; Önge is cited here:
| I, my | m- | we, our | et-, m- |
| thou, thy | ŋ- | you, your | n- |
| he, his, she, her, it, its | g- | they, their | ekw-, n- |
Judging from the available sources, the Andamanese languages have only two cardinal numbers: one and two and their entire numerical lexicon is one, two, one more, some more, and all.[8][better source needed]
Lexicon
Abbi (2009)[9] lists the following lexical items for Onge, Jarawa, and Great Andamanese, showing that Ongan and Great Andamanese are distinct language families sharing few lexical similarities.
English Onge Jarawa Great Andamanese boat ɖaŋɛ cɨ (cagiya paɖa)-taŋ/daŋ rowa bow ɪja aːw ko child ɨcɨʐɨ ɨcɨʐə ʈʰire crocodile ʈɔjəgɨ torogijəi sare-ka-teo crows wawa-le waːraw pʰaʈka dog wəːme, uame wɔm caːw goat ʈikʷabuli tʰikʰwa-gopejajo – laugh ɨɲja əniaː kʰole water ɨɲe iːɲ ino 1SG (I) mi mi ʈʰu 2SG (you) ɲi ɲi ɲ forehead -ejale -ejea -beŋ eye -ejebo -ejebo -ulu ear -ekʷagɨ -ikʰəwə -boa elbow -ito-ge -itʰo-ha -bala-tara ɖole wrist -moɲa-ge -eɲia -ʈʰo palm -obanaŋ-ge -obaŋna -koro thumb -oboʈa-ge -obotʰa -kənap thigh -ibo -ibə -buco knee -ola-ge -olak ~ -ola -curok sole -ubtəga-me -ugɖaga -moʈora-ɖole neck -aŋgiʈo -agiʈʰo -loŋɔ
Below are Proto-Ongan reconstructions from Blevins (2007)[2] compared with Great Andamanese lexical items from Abbi (2011).[10]
gloss Proto-Ongan Great Andamanese head *-otab ɛr-co hair (of head) *-ode ot-bec eye *-ecebo < *eca-ipo er-ulu ear *-ikwag er-buo nose *-iɲjan-ipo er-kɔʈʰo tooth *-akwed er-pʰile, ɸile tongue *-adalaŋ ɑ-tɑt mouth *-alaŋ er-pʰoŋ hand *-ome er-ʈoŋ foot *uge u-mɔʈo breast *-akak er-me-tɛi meat, flesh e-tʰomo blood *-aceŋ e-tei bone *daŋ e-tɔe, o-ʈɔy person *eŋ, *əŋ (< *en) name *-atiba liu dog *wem(e) cɑo fish *napo ʈɑjeo louse *kuhi kɔemo tree *taŋ 'tree, log' ɛʈ-ʈole 'wood' leaf *bebe tec flower *okw ʈɔl, ʈɔlo water *iŋ ino fire *tuke ɑʈ; luro stone *uli meo earth *bela buɑ salt sɑre road, path *icala ɲɔrtɔ eat *-ita ɲɑ; iji die *peca-me em-pʰil
The languages and their classification
The Andaman languages fall into two clear families,[11]
- Great Andamanese: Spoken by the Great Andamanese people; Aka-Jeru, had 36 speakers in 1997 who are bilingual in Andaman Creole Hindi.
- Ongan: Two languages spoken by 300 people, mostly monolingual.
In addition, there is the unattested language
- Sentinelese; likely at least 50 speakers, and perhaps up towards 250 (the population of the Sentinelese people is unknown).
These have frequently been assumed to be related. However, the similarities between Great Andamanese and Ongan are so far mainly of a typological morphological nature, with little demonstrated common vocabulary. As a result, even long-range researchers such as Joseph Greenberg have expressed doubts as to the validity of Andamanese as a family.[12][13]
Blevins (2007) summarizes,
a relationship between Jarawa and Onge and languages of the Great Andaman group is not widely accepted. Radcliffe-Brown (1914:40) found only seven potential cognates between Onge and Bea/Jeru, and noted that the difference between Onge and the Great Andaman languages "is such that it would not be possible from consideration of the vocabulary alone to prove that they belonged to the same language stock." [...] Abbi (2006:93) is agnostic, stating that "current linguistic analysis does not, with any certainty, indicate any genetic relationship between Great Andamanese and the other two languages." The only positive evidence offered in support of this relationship is a listing of 17 word pairs as proposed cognates in Manoharan (1989:166–67). There are several problems with Manoharan's proposal [such as semantic mismatches and failing to identify loans. ...] Given evidence that shows these languages have been in contact, and the scarcity of data available at present on Great Andaman languages, there remains no persuasive evidence of a family relationship between Jarawa-Onge and the Great Andaman languages. [...] Greenberg (1971:810) is unconvinced of the relation between Great Andaman and Onge-Jarawa, agreeing with Radcliffe-Brown (1914) that "…there are very few vocabulary resemblances between this language [Onge] and those of Great Andaman and the only real point of contact is typological. … A few citations from Onge have been included in the general Indo-Pacific vocabulary, but both its special relationship to the languages of the rest of the Andamans and its assignment to Indo-Pacific must be considered highly provisional."
As alluded to in this quotation, Greenberg proposed that the Great Andamanese are related to western Papuan languages as members of a phylum he called Indo-Pacific,[12] but this is not generally accepted by other linguists. Stephen Wurm states that the lexical similarities between Great Andamanese and the West Papuan and certain languages of Timor "are quite striking and amount to virtual formal identity […] in a number of instances", but considers this to be due to a linguistic substratum rather than a direct relationship.[14] Blevins (2007) proposes that the Ongan languages are related to Austronesian in an Austronesian–Ongan family, for which she has attempted to establish regular sound correspondences.[15] The proposed connection between Austronesian and Ongan has not been supported by Austronesianists, and Robert Blust (2014) finds that Blevins' conclusions are not supported by her data: Of her first 25 reconstructions, none are reproducible using the comparative method, and Blust concludes that the grammatical comparison does not hold up. Blust, in addition, cites non-linguistic (such as cultural, archaeological, and biological) evidence against Blevins' hypothesis.[16]
See also
References
- Robert Blust (2014) "Some Recent Proposals Concerning the Classification of the Austronesian Languages", Oceanic Linguistics 53:2:300–391.
Bibliography
- Abbi, Anvita. 2006. Endangered Languages of the Andaman Islands. LINCOM Studies in Asian Linguistics, 64. München: Lincom Europa. ISBN 3-89586-866-3
- Blevins, Juliette (2007). "A Long Lost Sister of Proto-Austronesian? Proto-Ongan, Mother of Jarawa and Onge of the Andaman Islands". Oceanic Linguistics. 46 (1): 154–198. doi:10.1353/ol.2007.0015. S2CID 143141296.
- Burenhult, Niclas. 1996. Deep linguistic prehistory with particular reference to Andamanese. Working Papers 45, 5–24. Lund University: Department of Linguistics.
- Man, E.H.
- Dictionary of the South Andaman Language, British India Press: Bombay 1923.
- On the Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands. The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 12, 1883.
- Manoharan, S. 1997. "Pronominal Prefixes and Formative Affixes in Andamanese Language." Anvita Abbi (ed.). The Languages of Tribal and Indigenous Peoples of India. The Ethnic Space. Delhi: Motilal Benarsidass.
- Portman, M.V. 1887. A Manual of the Andamanese Languages. London: W.H. Allen & Co.
- Temple, Richard C. A Grammar of the Andamanese Languages, being Chapter IV of Part I of the Census Report on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Superintendent's Printing Press: Port Blair 1902.
- Zide, Norman Herbert & V. Pandya. 1989. "A Bibliographical Introduction to Andamanese Linguistics." Journal of the American Oriental Society 109: 639–51.
External links
- South Asia Bibliography – Andamanese
- Andaman Association
- Vanishing Voices of the Great Andamanese Anvita Abbi, Jawaharlal Nehru University
- The Andamanese Language Family (I) & (II)
- Burenhult's Paper on Andamanese
- Another link to Burenhult on Andamanese
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andamanese_languages
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