Editing Language death (section)

==Dead languages ==
{{More citations needed section|date=December 2015}}
{{Main articles|Extinct language}}
Linguists distinguish between language "death" and the process where a language becomes a "dead language" through normal [[language change]], a linguistic phenomenon analogous to [[pseudoextinction]]. This happens when a language in the course of its normal development gradually morphs into something that is then recognized as a separate, different language, leaving the old form with no native speakers. Thus, for example, [[Old English]] may be regarded as a "dead language" although it changed and developed into [[Middle English]], [[Early Modern English]] and [[Modern English]]. Dialects of a language can also die, contributing to the overall language death. For example, the [[Ainu language]] is slowly dying: "The UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger lists Hokkaido Ainu as critically endangered with 15 speakers ... and both [[Sakhalin Ainu language|Sakhalin]] and [[Kuril Ainu]] as extinct."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Länsisalmi |first1=Riikka |date=October 2016 |title=Northern Voices: Examining Language Attitudes in Recent Surveys on Ainu and Saami |url=https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/publications/northern-voices-examining-language-attitudes-in-recent-surveys-on |journal=Studia Orientalia Electronica |volume=117 |pages=429–267}}</ref> The language vitality for Ainu has weakened because of Japanese becoming the favoured language for education since the end of the nineteenth century. Education in Japanese heavily impacted the decline in use of the Ainu language because of forced linguistic assimilation.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Fukazawa |first=Mika |title=Routledge Handbook of Japanese Sociolinguistics |date=2019-06-05 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-315-21337-8 |editor1-last=Heinrich |editor1-first=Patrick |edition=1 |location=New York |pages=3–24 |language=en |chapter=Ainu language and Ainu speakers |doi=10.4324/9781315213378-1 |access-date=2023-05-29 |editor2-last=Ohara |editor2-first=Yumiko |chapter-url=https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781351818407/chapters/10.4324/9781315213378-1 |s2cid=197996106}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Tahara |first=Kaori |date=2019-02-05 |title=The saga of the Ainu language |url=https://en.unesco.org/courier/numero-especial-octubre-2009/saga-ainu-language |access-date=2023-06-12 |website=UNESCO |language=en}}</ref>