Language Endangerment – When Words Disappear Silently

As soon as people wake up, they usually start taking advantage of their native language. It accompanies them in daily life activities without even paying attention to the steady use. People rely on their languages while ordering breakfast in the small café across the street, messaging their friends on Facebook or reading their new purchased book before going to bed. This common usage indicates that our language has always been here and it always will be here. However, many people in different parts of the world already suffer from their mother tongue being driven to extinction. But it is not only the vocabulary that gets lost: When words disappear, a whole culture dies.

Throughout the world, approximately 6,000 languages are in use, but scholars estimate that 50 percent of these languages will be gone by the end of this century. Because of globalization and the therefore increasing international and intercultural interactions, the need for a global language to make communication easier is stronger than it has ever been before. It has been statistically proven, that the number of the world’s population increases steadily, whereas the number of living languages shrinks continually. In other words, a smaller number of languages is spoken by a greater count of people. But what happens to the languages that somehow just disappear?

A language is considered endangered when parents are no longer teaching it to their children. The children may understand their ancestor’s languages, but they will be unable to speak it. This occurrence leads to the extinction of the language since it is not passed on to subsequent generations. When a language has no more native speakers left, it becomes a “dead language”. Reasons for parents to not teach their descendants their own mother tongue are diverse. Generally, one can claim that a language does not die due to outside pressure, but because of the arising thought that it will not be worthwhile to maintain it. Undoubtedly, this sentiment

gets triggered by the existence of a global language. In any case, something must change because every time a language loses its place in the world, so much gets lost.

Languages function as cultural bodies – they are the most effective channel of communication, help people to understand the world and act as means of social contacts. There