Dormant language

In linguistics, a dormant language is one that is no longer used and has no known native or fluent speakers remaining. Some linguists use the term interchangeably with “extinct language,” but others draw a subtle distinction between the two classifications. Those who differentiate between dormant and extinct languages describe a dormant language as one that has passed out of use in the relatively recent past, while an extinct language has been out of use for centuries or millennia. Dormant languages also retain an important cultural heritage element to the specific population groups that spoke them, while extinct languages do not.

Background

The process of an active language passing into dormancy or extinction is known as “language death.” Experts stress that a large majority of the languages that humans have ever spoken have gone through language death, with most of them becoming extinct. According to conservative estimates, human beings have developed approximately thirty-one thousand languages during their history. Out of those, approximately six thousand to seven thousand remain active, suggesting that at least 81 percent of all languages ever spoken have passed into death or extinction.

Notably, linguists also recognize a distinction between an “extinct language” and a “dead language.” Both terms refer to languages that have no living native speakers and have long been out of practical or everyday use. However, dead languages remain relevant, mainly in their written forms, due to their value or importance in scholarship, science, law, or religious observance. Well-known examples of dead languages include Sanskrit and Latin. In the case of dead languages, contemporary observers often have significant or even nearly complete knowledge of their grammar, sound systems, vocabulary, and other structural elements. This is not the case with extinct languages. In many instances, little to nothing about an extinct language’s features remains known.

The process of language death unfolds across multiple stages, during which a language gradually passes from active or “living” status to become “vulnerable” and “endangered” before becoming dormant. Linguists generally consider a language to be vulnerable when children still speak it but only in narrow or limited settings such as in the home with their parents. As languages become increasingly vulnerable, they pass through multiple stages of endangerment. When children no longer learn a language at a native level, the language becomes “definitely endangered.” A “severely endangered” language is spoken only among members of older generations, with neither parents nor children using the language at any functional level. The final stage of endangerment occurs when a language becomes “critically endangered,” which occurs when grandparent-level generations represent its last living speakers, and they have only partial knowledge of the tongue. As these last active speakers of a language die off, the language passes with them and becomes dormant.

Topic Today

Language death is an ongoing, constant process. Experts estimate that at least half of all active languages are currently becoming vulnerable or endangered, while other approximations place that figure as high as 90 percent. Projections suggest that most of these languages will become dormant by the turn of the twenty-second century unless they are revitalized.

In the contemporary context, linguistic shifts are considered the main driver of the mass-scale trend toward language death and dormancy. Those who speak the world’s twenty most widely used languages combine to account for approximately half the global population. As these dominant languages continue to grow, they gradually supplant minority languages to the point of vulnerability and endangerment. Expert estimates suggest that approximately 40 percent of all living languages have fewer than one thousand speakers remaining. Many of these languages are spoken by Indigenous groups living in countries with colonial histories or by small cultural minority groups who reside in locales where another language dominates.

Some linguists liken the process of language death to biodiversity loss. When agriculture begins to over-represent a relatively small number of plant species or crops, evolutionary and health vulnerabilities that pose detrimental threats can arise. According to some experts, similar results can occur when language use converges around a relatively small number of dominant tongues. The unique perspectives and heritages expressed in dormant and extinct languages become lost, and cultural evolution becomes confined to a relatively small number of linguistic contexts, negatively impacting human cultural diversity while posing potential impediments to social advancement.

Recognizing these risks, linguistics experts and speakers of vulnerable and endangered languages have increasingly worked to preserve and revive affected languages to prevent them from becoming dormant. As an initial preservation step, a language must be documented in written form. According to the renowned field linguist and anthropologist K. David Harrison (1966–), approximately 85 percent of all living languages have never been documented and, therefore, face a particularly acute risk of becoming dormant and eventually extinct.

Targeted language revitalization movements describe systematic efforts to revive a vulnerable or an endangered language by growing its active speaker base through education and cultural outreach programs, which are often designed to engage children. Linguists stress that language revitalization can only succeed through a concerted effort by the language’s remaining speakers. In the past few decades, many Indigenous languages have been actively revitalized. Other high-profile successes extend to several historical languages of the British Isles, including Cornish, Welsh, and Gaelic (Irish), which underwent significant revivals in the twentieth century. Cornish had actually passed into dormancy sometime in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century before it was revived, thanks in large part to the efforts of the linguistic scholar and cultural historian Henry Jenner (1848–1934), whose 1904 book A Handbook of the Cornish Language is credited with rescuing Cornish from extinction by sparking initial interest in its subsequent revival.

Cornish offers a clear example of the continued cultural relevance a dormant language can retain, but many observers cite Hebrew as the most obvious and dramatic example. In the nineteenth century, Hebrew had been a dead language for approximately two thousand years. It survived in written form but was no longer actively spoken before the linguist and lexicographer Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (1858–1922) launched a campaign to revive it. Jewish populations latched onto the effort as part of a wider cultural identity movement, bringing the Hebrew language back from the dead. As of 2024, the Hebrew language has approximately nine million active speakers worldwide.

Bibliography

Armstrong, Richard. “Language Death.” University of Houston, engines.egr.uh.edu/episode/2723. Accessed 23 Apr. 2024.

Eberhard, David M., Gary F. Simons, and Charles D. Fennig. “Ethnologue: Languages of the World.” Ethnologue, 2024, www.ethnologue.com/insights/how-many-languages/. Accessed 23 Apr. 2024.

“Endangered Languages: The Full List.” The Guardian, 15 Apr. 2011, www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/apr/15/language-extinct-endangered. Accessed 23 Apr. 2024.

Rymer, Russ. “Vanishing Voices.” National Geographic, July 2012, www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/article/vanishing-languages. Accessed 23 Apr. 2024.

“Silent Tongues: Language Extinction.” Endangered Languages Project, endangeredlanguages.com/about‗tongues/. Accessed 23 Apr. 2024.