What Makes a Language ‘Alive’ or ‘Dying’?

A language is like a big family of words. If lots of people use it every day, it’s alive, like when you play with your friends and talk all the time. But if only a few people speak it, it might be dying, like a quiet little voice that gets harder to hear.

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Examples

  1. A baby learning to talk from their parents keeps the family’s language alive.
  2. An old man who only speaks his native tongue might be one of the last people to use that language.
  3. Kids in school learn English and forget their own language.

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Categories: Culture · language· culture· extinction · Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.