Isolated & Extinct Languages

As in other cultural traits, language patterns are the result of the two competing geographic trends of globalization and local diversity. English has become the principal language of communication and interaction for the entire world. At the same time, local languages endangered by the global dominance of English are being protected and preserved.

Isolated Languages

Similarities and differences between languages—our main form of communication—are a measure of the degree of interaction among groups of people. Some languages bear no similarity to other languages. Isolation from others has helped to preserve some of these languages, but in other cases it may hasten their demise.

An isolated language is a language that is unrelated to any other and therefore not attached to any language family. An isolated language arises because the speakers of that language have limited interaction with speakers of other languages.

The status of an isolated language is considered vibrant if it is in full use in the community, and spoken in all areas of life by people of all generations. As a result of its usage in daily life, the language is judged by Ethnologue to be sustainable—that is, likely to survive at least in the near future. Only seven isolated languages in the world are classified as vibrant: Hadza and Sandawe in Africa; Burushashki, Korean, and Puroik (also called Sulung) in Asia; Basque in Europe; and Mapudungun in South America. Other isolated languages are considered to be in varying stages of dying.

Basque: Europe’s Only Isolated Language

Basque, called Euskara by the Basque people, is the sole example of a vibrant isolated language in Europe. It is apparently the only language currently spoken in the region that survives from the period before the arrival of Indo-European speakers. No attempt to link Basque to the common origin of the other European languages has been successful.

Basque may have once been spoken over a wider area but was abandoned where its speakers came in contact with Indo-Europeans. It is now the first language of around 750,000 people in the Pyrenees Mountains of northern Spain and southwestern France (refer to Figure 5-26, the dark magenta area in northern Spain). Basque’s lack of connection to other languages reflects the isolation of the Basque people in their mountainous homeland. This isolation has helped them preserve their language in the face of the wide diffusion of Indo-European languages (Figure 5-42).

Street Sign In The Basque Language

Use your translation app to figure out what the top line says in Basque.

Icelandic: An Unchanging Language

Icelandic is not an isolated language because it is in the North Germanic group of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European family. Icelandic’s significance is that over the past 1,000 years, it has changed less than any other language in the Germanic branch. As was the case with England, people in Iceland speak a Germanic language because their ancestors were Germanic speakers who migrated to the island from the east, in this case from Norway. Norwegian settlers colonized Iceland in 874 C.E.

When an ethnic group migrates to a new location, it takes along the language spoken in the former home. The language spoken by most migrants—such as the Germanic invaders of England—changes in part through interaction with speakers of other languages. But in the case of Iceland, the Norwegian immigrants had little contact with speakers of other languages when they arrived in Iceland, and they did not have contact with speakers of their language back in Norway. After centuries of interaction with other Scandinavians, Norwegian and other North Germanic languages had adopted new words and pronunciation, whereas the isolated people of Iceland had less opportunity to learn new words.

Some languages once seen as isolated may be reclassified as small families. This happened with Japanese (now included in the Japonic family along with Ryukyuan languages such as Okinawan) and Georgian (now the most dominant or standard of the Kartvelian languages of the Caucasus).

Pause & Reflect 5.4.2

The top line in Figure 5-42 is in Basque. Use your translation app to identify the language in the second line. Why might that language be displayed on the sign?

Extinct Languages

An extinct language is a language that was once used by people in daily activities but is no longer in use. The extinction may follow this process. (1) A language becomes vulnerable to extinction when its use is restricted to certain domains, like only the home, but not in public places like shops and offices. A vulnerable language is spoken by children, but only in some places. (2) A language becomes endangered when children are no longer learning it. (3) A language becomes moribund when it is spoken only by older people. (4) A language becomes extinct when it is no longer spoken.

Ethnologue estimates that 367 languages have become extinct since 1950, a rate of 6 per year. The U.N. identifies 228 recently extinct languages (Figure 5-43). For example, on Taiwan, a small island of 36,000 square kilometers (slightly larger than Maryland), nine languages belonging to the Austronesian family have recently become extinct (Figure 5-44). Ethnologue lists 74 languages based in the United States that are now extinct, and the U.N. lists 54. These are languages once spoken by groups of Native Americans, especially in the West (Figure 5-45).

Languages Extinct Since 1950

Extinct Languages in Taiwan

The three most widely used languages (Mandarin, Min Nan, and Hakka) belong to the Sino-Tibetan family. The languages named in red are exinct.

Languages in the United States Extinct Since 1950

The dots point to the approximate locations where the recently-exinct languages were last spoken.

Two examples of recently extinct languages are Liv and Clallam. Liv, a language belonging to the Uralic family, became extinct on June 5, 2013, when its last speaker, Grizelda Kristina, died in Latvia in Eastern Europe. Around 200 ethnic Livonians live along the northwestern coast of Latvia, but none of them speak Liv.

Clallam, a language once spoken in Washington’s Olympic Peninsula and Vancouver Island, Canada, became extinct on February 4, 2014, when its last-known speaker, Hazel Sampson, died at age 103. The language is taught at Port Angelos High School in Washington, and six youths are reported to be able to speak some words of Clallam as their second language. A dictionary of Clallam was published in 2012. If someday a child is taught Clallam as his or her first language, perhaps by one of the six who know some words, then the language might be reclassified as reawakening.

When Spanish missionaries reached the eastern Amazon region of Peru in the sixteenth century, they found more than 500 languages. Only 92 survive today, according to Ethnologue, and 14 of them face extinction in the very near future because fewer than 100 speakers remain. Of Peru’s 92 surviving indigenous languages, only Cusco, a Quechuan language, is currently used by more than 1 million people.

The loss of many languages is a reflection of globalization. To be part of a global economy and culture, people choose to use a widely used language, leaving their traditional or indigenous language to disappear.