Book contents
- The Cambridge Handbook of Language Contact
- Cambridge Handbooks in Language and Linguistics
- The Cambridge Handbook of Language Contact
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Maps Volume II
- Figures Volume II
- Tables Volume II
- Contributors
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part One Multilingualism
- Part Two Contact, Emergence, and Language Classification
- Part Three Lingua Francas
- Part Four Language Vitality
- 17 Language Endangerment, Loss, and Reclamation Today
- 18 Contact and Shift: Colonization and Urbanization in the Arctic
- 19 The Indian Diaspora: Language Maintenance and Loss
- 20 Quechua Expansion during the Inca and Colonial Periods
- 21 Indigenous and Immigrant Languages in the US: Language Contact, Change, and Survival
- Part Five Contact and Language Structures
- Author Index
- Language Index
- Subject Index
- References
17 - Language Endangerment, Loss, and Reclamation Today
from Part Four - Language Vitality
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 June 2022
Book contents
- The Cambridge Handbook of Language Contact
- Cambridge Handbooks in Language and Linguistics
- The Cambridge Handbook of Language Contact
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Maps Volume II
- Figures Volume II
- Tables Volume II
- Contributors
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part One Multilingualism
- Part Two Contact, Emergence, and Language Classification
- Part Three Lingua Francas
- Part Four Language Vitality
- 17 Language Endangerment, Loss, and Reclamation Today
- 18 Contact and Shift: Colonization and Urbanization in the Arctic
- 19 The Indian Diaspora: Language Maintenance and Loss
- 20 Quechua Expansion during the Inca and Colonial Periods
- 21 Indigenous and Immigrant Languages in the US: Language Contact, Change, and Survival
- Part Five Contact and Language Structures
- Author Index
- Language Index
- Subject Index
- References
Summary
Language endangerment and loss is a longstanding phenomenon affecting both non-contact languages and contact languages, but contact languages are particularly susceptible. This endangerment has greatly increased and sped up in the last century. Case studies of several languages in China and Thailand show that structural change is often more rapid during language shift. Tujia has been receding for millennia in central China; Gong may have originated during contact between speakers of a variety of Burmese and several local languages in western Thailand several hundred years ago. Several small groups in western China speak languages developed in contact between speakers of Mongolic languages, Tibetan, and Chinese in western China in garrisons set up from about 700 years ago on. The final part of this chapter discusses how communities may be assisted to react to the endangerment of their language. While linguists can document a language, it is only the speakers and the community who can decide and act to maintain it. Some of the problems leading to endangerment and the strategies to overcome them are briefly discussed.
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- The Cambridge Handbook of Language ContactVolume 2: Multilingualism in Population Structure, pp. 455 - 472Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022
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