Linguicide is a little used term describing the intentional causing of the death of a language. It is also used as a derogatory term to describe unintentional death of languages through competition and other mechanisms. Perhaps the largest historical example was the destruction of the Native American languages in the Spanish colonization of the Americas. Some of the most recent historical instances of linguicide were in Australia and the USA.
Some of the mechanisms leading to the death of languages and recent historical examples:
- instituted separation of children from their parents, e.g., Aboriginal children in Australia. See Stolen Generation.
- imposition of another language (e.g., by declaring it official, English-only movement)
- imposition of another culture
- ban on the language that is to be annihilated (e.g., Hawaiian in Hawaii by the USA after its annexation; German in the USA after the World Wars, German in Italy after WWII, Ainu in Hokkaido)
- linguistic competition (e.g. English vs. French in scientific publications)
- "glottopolitics and linguistic warfare"
- extermination of people speaking the language (e.g., Holocaust contributed to the decline of Yiddish; the Indian Wars to various Native American languages)
- destruction of the traditional culture (e.g., Native American languages by European settlement, etc.)
- natural decline in native populations and their traditions
- refusal to teach children through their native tongue, e.g. Scottish Gaelic and Welsh within the British state.
- refusal by advertisers/corporations/employers to allow/use certain languages
See also
External links
The content of this page is retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguicide under GFDL
