Language death - Definition and Overview

In linguistics, language death is the process whereby a community of speakers of one language become bilingual in another language (e.g: for economic or political reasons or because they are forced to do so), and gradually shift allegiance to the second language until they cease to use their original language. Languages can also die when their speakers are wiped out by genocide or disease.

Strictly speaking, language death only occurs when only one speaker of a language lives (who no longer has anyone to communicate with in the language).

See also

• Language suicide
• Linguicide
• Endangered language
• Minority language