Reasons for language death: myths and counterevidence

Borchers Dörte

Abstract

In the growing literature on language maintenance and language death the factors enumerated for influencing a language's chances of being transmitted to the next generation are usually similar. The prominant factors named as leading to the extinction of a language are low prestige, low number of speakers, missing presence of the language in the media and no institutionalization in education and administration (e.g. Fishman 1993; Gibbon, Haig, Riehl 2002). At first glance the arguments seem convincing. Those languages that come first to mind as not being threatened by extinction are national languages, e.g. English, Chinese, Hindi or Nepali. These languages have prestige, many speakers, are used in the media, in education and administration and have traditions as languages of literature. And the languages that first come to mind as being threatened, e.g. Sorbian (Slavic) or Haida (isolate; Alaska), have obviously hardly any speakers, little prestige and little or no institutionalization. There are, however, languages that do not behave according to the expected pattern. The speakers of the North American language Chilcotin (Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit) seem to have stopped transmitting their language because of its high prestige (Pye 1992), while Arizona Tewa (Kiowa-Tanoan) survived 300 years of close contact with the dominant Hopi (Uto-Aztecan) (Dorian 1998: 15-17). Why some languages are maintained while other languages under similar conditions die can only be understood by close study of each individual language's situation. Most crucial in such a study is probably the scrutiny of language attitudes held by the language's speakers. The dominant political and societal conditions under which the linguistic minorities in the Himalayan region live are, across national boundaries, similar. While all minor Himalayan languages are threatened, some are closer to extinction than others. Finding the reasons for the differences in performance with regard to language maintenance is of eminent importance for maintaining linguistic diversity of the region.