Causes Behind the Death of a Language

Causes of language death:

From beginning till the present day, many languages emerged and died with their cultural
emergence and death. It is not possible to tell a single reason of the death of a language
because there are various factors that are the leading cause of the death of any language, and
many researches have contributed through their works in designing a fair range of them.

Physical factors:

The physical factors are the ones which results to put the people in physical danger.

Death of all the speakers:

This is one of the fair reason of the death of a language that when all the people who speak it
die and this factor occurs when all of the native speakers are come under destruction by natural
phenomena disaster which leads to destruction or death of the habitat; so any direct or indirect
threat to the safety of a community is the bottom reason. "Many languages have become
endangered, moribund, or extinct as a result of factors which have had a dramatic effect on the
physical wellbeing of the speakers". (David Crystal, 2003).

Factors which put the people in physical danger:

The physical factors that lead to the death of all the members of a community include:
earthquakes, floods, tsunami, atomic bombarding, warfare, volcanic eruptions etc. This is the
destruction of a total and it results in the loss of habitats totally. There are also the other factors
that when the habitat remains but the conditions and situations become unsurvivable due to
the climatic and economic conditions. For this, there are two main factors i.e. famine and
drought. For instance, the Irish potato famine that resulted in many deaths during the years of
1845 and 1851, this causes the decrease in people Irish and it also created great impacts on the
Irish language as it was spoken by the Irish people, so there was also the decline in the use of
Irish language.

Factors which change the people culture:

This factor also lead to the cultural assimilation when the speakers don't die but their language
dies. This factor changes the people's culture as the members of the community do not die but
their language continuously goes in to the decline and disappears. This is because of the
language of a small group in a dominant culture that the people adopt the language of the
dominant group. Another reason that supports this factor is when children stop speaking the
parent's language. This is also called "Language Shift" in which the society or community use the
new or other language more and more, so their native language does not remain in use and it
gets replaced by some other language. This is also known as cultural assimilation: it states that
"one culture is influenced by a more dominant culture, and begins to lose its character as a
result of its members adopting new behavior and mores". (David Crystal, 2003)

Cultural contact and clash

Cultural contact and clash of a community with the other also adds to the threat of the death of
a language. This factor is related to the above mentioned factor of language shift and discusses
it in detail. Cultural contact of communities and clashes between them can be fatal for the
survival of the language of weak members of a community. It is not of course a direct cause of a
language death but it contributes by changing the attitudes and affiliation of its speakers
towards their own language. A researcher argues that such situations tend to occur if a speech
community comes into economic, cultural, or political contact with another community or
population speaking a different language and which is economically stronger and more
advanced than the first speech community, or culturally aggressive, or politically more powerful
and mighty (wurm, 1991, p. 5).

Cultural influence

The gravest reason behind a language death is the domination of one culture of a community
on the other where the former is culturally more regressive, or complex in nature and the later
with a sense of inferiority about their own culture. A language is a part of one’s culture so with
the domination, or suppression of a culture its language dominates, or be suppressed as well.
This phenomenon can be clearly seen in a colonized society where the colonizers, willingly, try
to impose their own language and create an environment where the suppressed or colonized
people consider themselves as weak and inferior and take a shame in speaking their own
language. In this way, the culture along with the language of the colonized be replaced, fully of
partially, by the colonizers not 'masters'.

What is noted in this case is the Pidgin-Creole form of a language where the parent generation
scolds their children for using their parental language because they do not want their children
to face the same position in the society that they themselves did due to their inability in
speaking the 'superior' language properly. Consequently, the next generation, Creole, feels
reluctant to use their parental language that ensures the ultimate death of the parental, first
language.

Religion plays an important role in this regard as well. For instance, those people who came
under the influence of Arabs and converted to Islam, they tended to learn the new language of
Arabs due to its affiliation with the religion.

Another important reason of the partial of complete loss of a language and its replacement by a
new language is the complexity of the language. The new generation finds difficulty in
remembering the traditional, complex forms of the language so they change it with simple
forms and the complex features either become useless, or their use becomes optional. This
happened with Turkish language so Mustafa Kamal Pasha revised and edited Turkish language
by emitting old, complex way of writing and forms. Wurm (1991) regards this as ‘Pseudo-death’
(p.13).

Economic Influence

If an economic Influence occurs along with political and strong cultural influence, it can lead to
the disappearance, or the death of a language. This happens when a weaker speech community
looks towards the stronger speech community for economic benefits and to get better
opportunities, follows their its culture and language making its own language a useless entity. If
there is an economic Influence without strong political and cultural influence then there are
likely less chances of the death of a language. In this case, people may be eager to become
bilingual to get the economic benefits but they still use their own language at the private
occasions.

Migration towards developed countries for better living opportunities is one factor contributing
towards economic Influence. Crystal (2000) presents his argument that when another language
is perceived to be so desirable and useful, it is hardly surprising that people want to learn it; and
if it helps them get on life, this is obviously a good thing (p. 88). When people migrate to these
countries, they follow their norms and try to learn and speak the language spoken there. In this
way, they become bilingual. This bilingualism can retain if these people get fair chances to
communicate in their first language and they do not take shame in doing so. Otherwise, they
will follow the second language more and will end up not using their first language.

Political influence and conquest

The political influence from outside the national boundaries, on the speakers of a language can
have a diverse effects on the language spoken there. This kind of influence is noted in Ares
under conquest, or colonization, where the masters encourage the locals to adopt the language
of the rulers. In some cases. It happens reversely, and the conquerors adopt the language of the
locals. This is the case where the conquering nation lacks some cultural features that it finds in
the conquered nation’s culture and like it, such as; rich literary traditions, or poetical features of
its language.

Diversity of a language within a society can be a threat to the national unity as language is a
part of one’s ethnic identity and is considered to be the pride for those ethnic groups, so one
ethnic group of the political leaders of that community, who belong to any of those ethnic
groups may demand the domination of its own language, molesting the rights of other speakers
of the other languages in that community. This type of cases were found in historical events of
sub-continent, where many ethnic groups lived together.

In a nutshell, there are many factors that are the leading cause of a language death and it is
always complex to limit the boundary of these factors because there are many daily life
instances contributing towards it. As there are many factors, so a language does not die
uniformly, rather with a series of incidents ranging from finding a good job to natural calamities.