This article discusses the fascinating topic of language death, or the process of a language becoming extinct through lack of use and application. This specific article looks into the Lakota language, one of many Native American languages spoken within the United States.
Language extinction is frequently viewed in a negative light, and is often connected to the extinction of a culture, a people's history. But I think that language extinction should also be viewed in a more positive, practical light as well. It is true that one's language is an important part of a culture. However, will one's past really be lost because one can't communicate in the native tongue?
When Africans were transported to the United States during the slave trade, they brought with them their own language, which eventually became integrated into the English spoken in the United States. But African-Americans still talked about and celebrated their origins in their new creole language, and passed on various cultural traditions to their children. Furthermore, some words of their native languages live on today in the English language: words like "banana," "voodoo," etc. In a sense, their language has not necessarily died out, but rather become immortalized in the more mainstream, commonly used language.
The creation and extinction of language is a natural - and in my opinion - inevitable process. Latin, which used to be the language of the ruling class and Church hundreds of years ago, is now considered a dead language in that it is not used in everyday life. Furthermore, languages often evolve to fit the needs of society. For example, the English alphabet has its roots in the ancient Greek alphabet. While the death of a language may hold certain social implications, it should be viewed more as a natural process rather than a negative one.
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