death of sign language

[Adam Schembri]

Wikipedia provides a nice overview of this issue (how sustainable the situation described in the last sentence is over the long-term is unclear, however):

"An endangered language is a language<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language> that is at risk of falling out of use. If it loses all its native speakers, it becomes a dead language<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_death>. If eventually no one speaks the language at all it becomes an "extinct language<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinct_language>".
….

While there is no definite threshold for identifying a language as endangered, three main criteria are used as guidelines:

  1.  The number of speakers currently living.
  2.  The mean age of native and/or fluent speakers.
  3.  The percentage of the youngest generation acquiring fluency with the language in question.

Some languages, such as those in Indonesia<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesia>, may have tens of thousands of speakers but may be endangered because children are no longer learning them, and speakers are in the process of shifting to using the national language<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_language> Indonesian<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_language> in place of local languages.

In contrast, a language with only 100 speakers might be considered very much alive if it is the primary language of a community, and is the first (or only) language of all children in that community, actually spoken."


Adam

--
Assoc. Prof. Adam Schembri, PhD
Director | National Institute for Deaf Studies and Sign Language
La Trobe University | Melbourne (Bundoora) | Victoria |  3086 |  Australia
Tel : +61 3 9479 2887 | Mob: +61 432 840 744 |http://www.adamschembri.net/webpage/Welcome.html


From: Anthony Chong <anthonychong at LIVE.COM<mailto:anthonychong at LIVE.COM>>
Reply-To: linguists interested in signed languages <SLLING-L at LISTSERV.VALENCIACOLLEGE.EDU<mailto:SLLING-L at LISTSERV.VALENCIACOLLEGE.EDU>>
Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2012 20:17:33 -0400
To: <SLLING-L at LISTSERV.VALENCIACOLLEGE.EDU<mailto:SLLING-L at LISTSERV.VALENCIACOLLEGE.EDU>>
Subject: death of sign language



 Hello all,

I am curious. How will we be able to measure sign language death? Can we consider a language as death language if there less than 10 speakers?
Let me know.
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