Reasons for Language Loss

When a language dies, a whole history often dies with it.There is a complex web of political, social, economic and cultural factors responsible for the phenomenon. North Pakistan is a land of geographic and ethnic diversity,one of the most multilingual places on earth. This study is designed to investigate the causes of language loss in general. For this study three dying languages of North Pakistan were selected, Palula,Yadgha and Domaki. Information was collected through...
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When a language dies, a whole history often dies with it.There is a complex web of political, social, economic and cultural factors responsible for the phenomenon. North Pakistan is a land of geographic and ethnic diversity,one of the most multilingual places on earth. This study is designed to investigate the causes of language loss in general. For this study three dying languages of North Pakistan were selected, Palula,Yadgha and Domaki. Information was collected through observations, interviews, questionnaires, wordlists and texts. Data collected through these tools were then statistically analyzed and discussed. It was found out that the political and socio-cultural causes for language loss were not the same for all the languages; they varied from language to language. It was concluded that the causes of language loss fall into both general and specific categories. General causes of language loss are usually the same for all languages, irrespective of geographic boundaries and linguistic variables, but specific causes differ according to their social, geographic and linguistic features.