Some dead/dying languages are dead/dying by "natural" means, it's true. But I would hesitate before concluding that most are that way. Certainly most languages in the Americas seem to have died out because of the deaths of speakers (whether unintentionally--through disease--or intentionally--through genocide) or because of enormous pressure to not speak them (e.g. Indian schools, where speaking your native language was punished severely).M Mira wrote:By being a historically small ethnic group, or being lukewarm about their "own" language? There are plenty of ethnic groups that have (or had) their own language, but the number of speakers is much, much less than the ethnic groups themselves. Just to draw some random examples:gmalivuk wrote:The languages that are dying today are in that state due to past actions.
Sure, the last speakers may die peaceful deaths surrounded by loved ones or whatever, but how do you think there came to be so few speakers in the first place?
Yes, language death is more complicated than "genocide". But it can't be denied that, as Tiamat said, economic pressures/oppression and sometimes literal genocide have contributed massively to language death. We cannot realistically talk about language death without factoring this in.