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. Language loss occurs when the language has no more native speakers and becomes a "dead language". If no one can speak the language at all, it becomes an "extinct language". A dead language may still be studied through recordings or writings, but it is still dead or extinct unless there are fluent speakers. Although languages have always become extinct throughout human history, they are currently dying at an accelerated rate because of globalization, imperialism, neocolonialism and linguicide.
The Formosan languages are a geographic grouping comprising the languages of the indigenous peoples of Taiwan, all of which are Austronesian. They do not form a single subfamily of Austronesian but rather nine separate subfamilies. The Taiwanese indigenous peoples recognized by the government are about 2.3% of the island's population. However, only 35% speak their ancestral language, due to centuries of language shift. Of the approximately 26 languages of the Taiwanese indigenous peoples, at least ten are extinct, another four are moribund, and all others are to some degree endangered.
SIL International is an evangelical Christian non-profit organization whose main purpose is to study, develop and document languages, especially those that are lesser-known, in order to expand linguistic knowledge, promote literacy, translate the Christian Bible into local languages, and aid minority language development.
Language revitalization, also referred to as language revival or reversing language shift, is an attempt to halt or reverse the decline of a language or to revive an extinct one. Those involved can include linguists, cultural or community groups, or governments. Some argue for a distinction between language revival and language revitalization. There has only been one successful instance of a complete language revival, the Hebrew language, creating a new generation of native speakers without any pre-existing native speakers as a model.
Language documentation is a subfield of linguistics which aims to describe the grammar and use of human languages. It aims to provide a comprehensive record of the linguistic practices characteristic of a given speech community. Language documentation seeks to create as thorough a record as possible of the speech community for both posterity and language revitalization. This record can be public or private depending on the needs of the community and the purpose of the documentation. In practice, language documentation can range from solo linguistic anthropological fieldwork to the creation of vast online archives that contain dozens of different languages, such as FirstVoices or OLAC.
The Tutong language, also known as Basa Tutong, is a language spoken by approximately 17,000 people in Brunei. It is the main language of the Tutong people, the majority ethnic group in the Tutong District of Brunei.
Emiliana Cruz is a contemporary linguistic anthropologist. She received her doctorate in linguistic anthropology from University of Texas at Austin and currently teaches at CIESAS-CDMX. She is the co-founder of the Chatino Language Documentation Project.
Rongga is a language of central Flores, in East Nusa Tenggara Province, Indonesia. Rongga is closely related to Ngadha, and more distantly to Manggarai.
Darrell T. Tryon was a New Zealand-born linguist, academic, and specialist in Austronesian languages. Specifically, Tryon specialised in the study of the languages of the Pacific Islands, particularly Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, and the French-speaking Pacific.
Colleen M. Fitzgerald is an American linguist who specializes in phonology, as well as language documentation and revitalization, especially with Native American languages. She is the Vice President for Research and Creative Activity at North Dakota State University. Previously she was Associate Vice President for research at Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi., and Professor in the Department of Linguistics and TESOL the University of Texas at Arlington where she directed the Native American Languages Lab. She formerly served as chair of the department.
Carol E. Genetti is an American linguist who is known for her research into Tibeto-Burman languages and languages of the Himalayans. Her work into Newar language is the first comprehensive grammar, focusing on the Dolakhae dialect. Her investigation into languages of the Indosphere has increased understanding of many typological features, including auxiliaries.
Living Languages is an international non-profit organisation which was established to advance the sustainability of the world's Indigenous languages.
Peter Kenneth Austin, often cited as Peter K. Austin, is an Australian linguist, widely published in the fields of language documentation, syntax, linguistic typology and in particular, endangered languages and language revitalisation. After a long academic career in Australia, Hong Kong, the US, Japan, Germany and the UK, Austin is emeritus professor at SOAS University of London since retiring in December 2018.
The Institute on Collaborative Language Research or CoLang is a biennial training institute in language documentation for any person interested in community-based, collaborative language work. CoLang has been described as part of a modern collaborative model in community-based methodologies of language revitalization and documentation.
Canadian Indigenous Languages and Literacy Development Institute (CILLDI) - an intensive annual "summer school for Indigenous language activists, speakers, linguists, and teachers" - hosted at the University of Alberta, Edmonton - is a "multicultural, cross-linguistic, interdisciplinary, inter-regional, inter-generational" initiative. CILLDI was established in 1999 with one Cree language course offered by Cree speaker Donna Paskemin. By 2016 over 600 CILLDI students representing nearly 30 Canadian Indigenous languages had participated in the program and it had become the "most national of similar language revitalization programs in Canada aimed at the promotion of First Peoples languages." CILLDI - a joint venture between the University of Alberta and the University of Saskatchewan - responds to "different sociolinguistic situations in language communities under threat" and includes three faculties at the University of Alberta in Edmonton - Arts, Education, and Native Studies. CILLDI provides practical training to students which is "directly implemented back in the community." Initiatives like CILLDI were formed against the backdrop of a projection of a catastrophic and rapid decline of languages in the twenty-first century.
Within the linguistic study of endangered languages, sociolinguists distinguish between different speaker types based on the type of competence they have acquired of the endangered language. Often when a community is gradually shifting away from an endangered language to a majority language, not all speakers acquire full linguistic competence; instead, speakers have varying degrees and types of competence depending on their exposure to the minority language in their upbringing. The relevance of speaker types in cases of language shift was first noted by Nancy Dorian, who coined the term semi-speaker to refer to those speakers of Sutherland Gaelic who were predominantly English-speaking and whose Gaelic competence was limited and showed considerable influence from English. Later studies added additional speaker types such as rememberers, and passive speakers. In the context of language revitalization, new speakers who have learned the endangered language as a second language are sometimes distinguished.
The Endangered Languages Project (ELP) is a worldwide collaboration between indigenous language organizations, linguists, institutions of higher education, and key industry partners to strengthen endangered languages. The foundation of the project is a website, which launched in June 2012.
Juliette Blevins is an American linguist whose work has contributed to the fields of phonology, phonetics, historical linguistics, and typology. She is currently Professor of Linguistics at the Graduate Center, CUNY.
Sinasian Sign Language (SSSL) is a village sign language of the Sinasina valley in Chimbu Province, Papua New Guinea. This language is used by approximately 3 deaf and 50 hearing individuals, including members of the Kere community. SSSL was first encountered and reported by linguists in 2016. Documentation efforts are ongoing.
I Wayan Arka is an Indonesian-Balinese linguist, lecturer, scholar and researcher at Udayana University (UNUD) in Bali, Indonesia and the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra, Australia.
