Main Causes
- Dominance of major languages: Global languages like English, Spanish or Mandarin often replace smaller local languages in education, media and jobs.
- Lack of intergenerational transmission: Parents may stop teaching their mother tongue to children, believing another language offers better opportunities.
- Urbanization and migration: When people move to cities, they adopt the common city language and gradually abandon their traditional tongue.
- Social and political pressure: Some languages are looked down upon as “backward”, so speakers feel ashamed or are discouraged from using them.
- Loss of traditional lifestyles: When indigenous cultures, rituals and local knowledge systems disappear, the languages tied to them also decline.
Simple LaTeX-style Summary
We can think of language survival like this:
\( \text{Language survives} \iff \text{children learn it} + \text{community uses it with pride}. \)
If either condition fails for a long time, the language moves towards extinction.