What makes a language endangered?

When I talk to people about working to support the revitalization of endangered languages, I often get the question "What exactly does it mean that a language is endangered?". At what point do linguists declare, "Now, this language has become endangered"? What are the warning signs and what causes a language to become endangered or extinct? Why does it matter, and what can we do about it?

What is an endangered language?

When the number of speakers of a particular language declines, that language may become endangered. Various actors in linguistic and cultural spaces (such as UNESCO, or linguistic scholars) use slightly different criteria for how to determine if a language should be endangered or not, but most of these different approaches agree that an endangered language has one, or a combination of several, of the following features: 1) the language is not spoken by children outside the home, 2) children do not learn the language at all, 3) the language is only spoken (fluently or partially) by the oldest living generations.

What causes a language to become endangered?

A variety of different pressures, including economic, political, and social can create a language shift resulting in a decline in the use of a particular language. If the language is not used in public life, the language can fall out of use, as people need ample exposure to a language in different parts of their life to be able to successfully keep fluency in it. Moreover, when there is a threat of your livelihood or a threat of violence associated with speaking a language, speakers of that language dwindle even faster. Eventually, the language may no fall out of use completely and become extinct (this is known as 'language death').

For example, in Hawaii, teaching and learning in Hawaiian was banned in 1896 by the US government. This law promoted physical punishment for children caught speaking Hawaiian at schools. In addition to the ban, public and private institutions were established by the US government and run in English. When official life such as hospital visits, university education, television, radio, newspaper and literary publications occur in English, exposure to Hawaiian decreases and it becomes increasingly harder for Hawaiian speakers to keep up fluency in a language with diminishing exposure, and parents are more likely to not speak the language at home and thus not pass it on to their children. Thus the number of native Hawaiian speakers dwindled to less than 0.1% of the state's population by the time the ban was lifted 91 years later.

A similar combination of pressures to decrease linguistic diversity has unfortunately occurred in countless societies around the world, in antiquity, and currently, from Basques in Spain, Irish in the UK, and countless Native American languages in the United States, among many others. Despite the challenges, in many places minority language speakers have persevered and passed down the language knowledge to younger generations. Now, approximately half of the world's languages are considered endangered.

Why preserve a minority language?

When we lose a language, we lose information, culture, and history. Loss of a language can also result in violations of human rights, and speakers on minority language can be disenfranchised from public life. Here are some perspectives of students of the Laz language in Turkey:

• “My relatives talk among themselves in Laz, laughing, enjoying themselves. I can’t understand what they are saying, and that really hurts. My mother speaks fluent Laz – I felt I could not communicate with my mother in her own language.”

• “If the language ends, then the culture dies too.”

• “A language and a culture doesn’t only belong to its own people – it belongs to all the world. We should all do our part to help it survive.”

Source: Aljazeera

Supporting the vitality of all languages is important because all peoples are valuable and deserve to thrive. Because language knowledge is important for understanding our cultural inheritance and our history.

How to revive a language?

Many linguists collaborate with native speakers on language documentation, recording the pronunciation of words, creating dictionaries, and translating texts to help improve access to both learning materials as well as language access. Activists and politicians push to change laws around education, healthcare, and social justice to further increase access to the language. Writers, filmmakers, and musicians create works in the language, spreading the culture and fueling interest in that language, while also ensuring representation. For example, Maxida Mäjark from Jokkmokk in Sápmi (northern Sweden), where Lule Sámi is traditionally spoken, sings in the language.

Maxida Märak, Swedish-Sámi musician and activist.

If you are interested in learning more about which languages are currently endangered, the Endangered Languages Project, a U.S.-based nonprofit organization supporting the revitalization of Indigenous and endangered languages around the world, has a map and a list where you can explore the status of languages around the world.

Pérez Báez at work during a visit to the Zapotec community of La Ventosa, Mexico, with a team of other researchers. The group was conducting a collaborative and participatory project to document the lexicon and cultural knowledge associated with the flora of the town. (Photo by Gibrán Morales Carranza)

You can support language revitalization by informing yourself on endangered languages, donating to initiatives working on revitalizing languages, sharing information with others about endangered languages and language revitalization, or supporting art created by artists focused on language revitalization.

One great initiative working on revitalizing languages is Nkanda (The Aflang Project), founded by Philip Akoda and Mary-Brenda Akoda to preserve and promote the linguistic heritage of Africa. As the Aflang Project, they developed comprehensive digital dictionaries for various African languages, and in 2025, declared their broader multilingual mission, developing a multilingual dictionary platform: Nkanda.

Philip Akoda, CEO and Co-founder of Nkanda (The Aflang Project)

Mary-Brenda Akoda, CTO and Co-founder of Nkanda.

At Halbuki, we aim to make lesser-taught languages accessible to everyone through scholarships and classes for learners of different levels. We try to connect learners to the culture of a language, its music, and its cinema. Scholarships are always available to those who need them!