Editing Language death (section)

== Language change ==
{{Main|Language change}}
The process of language change may also involve the splitting up of a language into a family of several [[daughter language]]s, leaving the common parent language "dead". This happened to [[Latin]], which (through [[Vulgar Latin]]) eventually developed into the [[Romance languages]], and to [[Sanskrit]], which (through [[Prakrit]]) developed into the [[Indo-Aryan languages#New Indo-Aryan|New Indo-Aryan languages]]. Such a process is normally not described as "language death", because it involves an unbroken chain of normal transmission of the language from one generation to the next, with only minute changes at every single point in the chain. Thus with regard to Latin, for example, there is no point at which Latin "died"; it evolved in different ways in different geographic areas, and its modern forms are now identified by a plethora of different names such as French, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, etc. Language shift can be used to understand the evolution of Latin into the various modern forms. Language shift, which could lead to language death, occurs because of a shift in language behaviour from a speech community. Contact with other languages and cultures causes change in behaviour to the original language which creates language shift.<ref name=":1" />