Year: 2008
Type: article
Abstract: If present trends continue, the majority of Native American languages will no longer be spoken by the end of this century. The process of extinction often happens so subtly and rapidly that the community is unaware of the imminent danger of language death. A language is endangered when children no longer learn it and is dead when the last elderly speaker passes away. Faced with this irreparable loss, some communities are determined to bring back their languages. Language Revival is the creation of a living language community where such a community has ceased to exist. Over the past two decades, language revitalization has become increasingly visible to the public eye as many communities try to reverse the steady erosion of their heritage language. Linguists and language activists, however, have not paid as much attention to the idea of bringing back a language after the language has already died. The data on language endangerment indicates that many Native American languages are moving from a language revitalization scenario to a language revival scenario. It is therefore time to discuss the distinct methods and processes involved in language revival. This paper will offer such a model. In the first section, I will establish the differences between revitalization and revival, and in the second section, I will use the features unique to moribund and dead languages to outline a three-step model for reviving such languages.
Author: Brad Montgomery‐Anderson
Language: English
Subfield: Linguistics and Language
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2124196824