How exactly do languages die?
In: Culture
The people who speak it get old and die off, and the younger generations for whatever reason do not learn it. Sometimes it’s social pressure (kids don’t want to be bothered learning a language their friends don’t speak) and historically there have been periods where languages of oppressed people’s have been criminalized to force them to adopt the “correct” language. If there are no new speakers to replace the old, the language dies with them.
People stop using them. Suppose for example your country with its unique language is conquered and made part of a giant empire with a different language as standard. Everyone learns the new language and you teach your children both your first language (which you are most familiar with) and this new language. They grow up being competent in both to nearly equal degree.
Time passes and your country is filled with visitors and transplants from elsewhere in the empire with their own languages of origin. But they all speak the language of the empire so people tend to use that more than anything else. Over time they get more familiar with the empire’s language and use of the old local language decreases.
Eventually the last competent speaker of the old language dies and so effectively does the language.
Imagine ten people speak a language that only one person ever taught anyone. They are the only ten people ever to know that language since their teacher died. Two of them are killed in tragic accidents when they are young. Four of them move to a new place and learn the native language there, when they have children they teach them the new language because it’s easier for them. The remaining four people never have children. After the original ten speakers of the language pass away without having taught the language to anyone new, nobody else ever speaks that language. It has died.
TL:DR – Evolution over time.
No texts that were written in a common/other language to translate, so no one could learn pronunciation.
The people who spoke the language died off.
The people changed over time, using a more widely known language. 30 years ago, no one in the US really spoke Spanish unless that was their primary language. Today Spanish is everywhere and non Spanish speaking people know more Spanish, broken Spanish, and functional Spanish. So the US is evolving.
Even today, how we pronounce a word can change depending on region, whether it’s a primary or secondary language of the speaker, dialect, etc. Cantonese and Mandarin both use the same written language, but pronouncing those words change depending on if the speaker speaks Cantonese or Mandarin.
After 3 or 4 generations, unless there’s a record of speech such as audio evidence, the spoken language may change entirely, blending what once was with what is. It could also be falsely portrayed such as Transatlantic which was a blend of American and British accents for the movie industry. Normal people at that time didn’t talk like that, but in movies they did.
Languages can be learned if there are texts if pronunciation. We know how Latin sounds because we have texts on how to speak it. Hell, languages that don’t really exist except in fantasy can be learned because of text books. Tolkien created Quenya and Sindarin as well as a bunch of other languages, but you can legit learn Elvish because he wrote a guide book. Or even Klingon.
English and Spanish spread because they sailed around the world and conquered areas, enslaved the people, and forced them to learn. Before them it was Greek.
200 years from now, Spanish and Chinese may be the “common” language. 2000 years we could all speak something nonexistent today and English may be the “dead” language that no one speaks.
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