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language death
Sign in to saveAlso known as language extinction
process when a language loses its last native speaker
Wikidata facts
- Subclass of
- occurrence
Show 3 more facts
- has effect
- dead language
- different from
- language attrition
- facet of
- sociolinguistics
Sources (1)
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Encyclopedic overview
In linguistics, language death occurs when a language loses its last native speaker. By extension, language extinction is when the language is no longer known, including by second-language speakers, when it becomes known as an extinct language. A related term is linguicide, the forced death of a language.
The disappearance of a minor language as a result of the absorption or replacement by a major language is sometimes called "glottophagy".
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “language death” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.