Essay On Endangered Language

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INTRODUCTION Language is not only a means of communication used every day to express our selves, but is also an identity of our cultures and represents our lifestyles and communities. Coming to what an endangered language is, the language at risk of falling out of use due to various reasons. Loss of language is a loss of both the identity and the culture of that community. Language loss occurs when the language has no more native speakers and becomes a dead language. And if no one speaks the language at all, it becomes extinct. The rate at which languages are getting endangered is increasing due to the dominance of other economically powerful languages. This paper is an attempt to present about the endangered species. And is also going to look into…show more content…
Based on the above guidelines UNESCO has created four levels of language endangerment. • Beyond safe(not endangered) and are vulnerable(not spoken by children outside home) • Definitely endangered(children not speaking) • Severely endangered(only spoken by the older generations) • Critically endangered(spoken by few members of the oldest generation, often semi-speakers) Using an alternative scheme of classification, linguist Michael E. Krauss defines languages as "safe" if it is considered that children will probably be speaking them in 100 years; "endangered" if children will probably not be speaking them in 100 years (approximately 60–80% of languages fall into this category); and "moribund" if children are not speaking them now. Many languages may have tens of thousands of speakers, but are still considered endangered because children are no longer learning them. And also the speakers are shifting to use what is called their national language. In contrast, a language with only 500 speakers might be considered very much alive it is the primary language of the community and is a spoken language for all the children in that community.

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