Of the approximate 7,000 languages spoken in the world
today, fewer than 5% of those languages exist online, according to scholar
Andras Kornai (2013). Kornia states that
the life of a language typically follows a general course of extinction. The first sign of a native language fading will often occur in the business world, where it’s encouraged and more socially
acceptable to speak a common language among clients and business partners
rather than one’s potentially less common native tongue. As a result, younger generations become less
likely to adapt to the native language as well, preferring to adopt what’s more
widely accepted among the working classes.
Therefore, subsequent younger generations will adopt the common language
used by the generation before, thereby allowing the native language to fade
from existence altogether.
To linguistics experts, a language isn’t technically extinct until
there are no living people who are able to speak it. However, there are already an estimated 40%
of languages endangered currently, according to the very cool Alliance for Linguistic
Diversity. Even some languages that aren’t
endangered may have only a few thousand native speakers (Dewey, 2013). Cultures throughout the world are starting to
recognize the threat that digital media may play to their languages and ways of
life; as a result, many small groups in various countries have started Digital Language Activism, in which they offer ASL-like challenges to social media
users. Rather than a social media user
dumping a bucket of water over his head, he is challenged to create a video in
his native tongue and tag someone else to do the same (Alliance for Linguistic
Diversity, 2014).
To combat the decline of native language use among various countries, Wikimedia has also created a language incubator of sorts. This incubator is a “platform where anyone can build up a community in a certain language edition of a Wikimedia project that does not yet have its own subdomain, provided that it is a recognized language” (Wikimedia, 2013). This is Wikimedia’s attempt at ensuring that all viable languages are accessible on the internet.
Typically, experts use what is known as the 100 Year Rule as
a predictor to determine if a language is at risk of dying out. That is, they ask the question, “In 100
years, will people still be speaking this language?” This rule doesn’t necessarily apply to the
digital age though, in which our society makes changes in the blink of an
eye. It’s difficult to say where the
World Wide Web will be even five or ten years from now, much less 100. If current trends have taught us anything, it’s
that our dependence upon technology and the internet will only become more
significant, leaving the possibility for thousands of languages and cultures to
become extinct in a relatively short amount of time.
References
Alliance for Linguistic Diversity. (n.d.). Endangered Languages Project - Knowledge sharing. Retrieved from http://www.endangeredlanguages.com/blog/
Dewey, C. (2014, December 4). How the Internet is killing the world’s languages - The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/12/04/how-the-internet-is-killing-the-worlds-languages/
Kornai, A. (2013, October 22). PLOS ONE: Digital Language Death. Retrieved from http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0077056
Patel, A. (2014, August 19). A Gathering of Indigenous Language Digital Activism in Oaxaca, Mexico [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PV0P3F5VSxc
Wikipedia. (n.d.). Welcome to Wikimedia Incubator! Retrieved August 30, 2015, from https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Incubator:Main_Page
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