Language deaths in the 2000s
By this post we want to raise awareness that language death is nothing that happened in the past but is in fact alarmingly accelerating today. When a language dies, it dies quietly. We can only name examples in this post because the death of most of the last speakers wasn’t noticed by the public and never came to its attention.
2001
It belonged to the West Gurage languages of the Semitic languages, thus, distinctly related to Arabic and Hebrew. The last speaker of it (no name is cited by the language survey that interviewed him) died presumably 2001.
This language belonged to the Salishan language family, of which almost all languages are highly endangered (only a handful of speakers) or dead. Its native name was Q̉ʷay̓áyiłq̉. Upper Chehalis is now dead, as is Lower Chehalis. The last speaker of Upper Chehalis died in 2001.
2002
Gaagudju was an Australian Aboriginal language that was spoken in Arnhem Land, Northern Australia. Australia has about 27 language families and isolates - only about 150 languages have survived today, back in the 18th century there were up to 750 languages spoken there. But today, with only a few exceptions, almost all languages are highly endangered. Gaagudju has died in 2002 with the death of its last speaker, Big Bill Neidjie.
Unami was an Algonquian language spoken in lower Delaware and Hudson rivers and in small groups in Oklahoma. The language died in 2002 with the death of Edward Thompson. His sister Nora Thompson Dean died in 1984 but has compiled a lot of Unami language material to document the language.
2003
Akkala Sami belongs to the Sami languages of the Uralic language family. It was spoken on the Kola peninsula in Russia near Finnland. The last native speaker, Maria Sergina, died 2003. There were in 2011, however, still two or three people left that have some knowledge of the language.
2008
This language belonged to the Na-Déne language family and was closely related to the Athabascan languages, like Navajo. The language went extinct in 2008 with the death of Marie Smith Jones (in Eyak: udAch’ k'uqAXA'a'ch “a sound that calls people from afar"). Currently, some revitalisation efforts are done, notably by Guillaume Leduey, who teached himself Eyak since he was 12. A lot of material has been made for Eyak, some can be found here.
2010
The Great Andanamese languages and the the Jarawa-Onge (Sentinelese?) language family belong together to the Andanamese language family, a language family spoken on the Andaman Islands in India. The speakers are said to be an ethnic group that split up tens of thousand years ago (some sources even proclaim the split happened 65,000 years ago). The Andanamese languages may have been spoken there since then (of course in various different historical forms) and are not related to any other language family. Sentinelese, a language spoken in the south, can’t be clearly classified as the 100-250 speakers of it haven’t had contact to the rest of the world for the past three centuries. The death of Aka-Bo was a rather public language death since many media stations reported about it. The Aka-Bo language was a Great Andanamese language, Boa Senior is believed to be the last speaker of any of the Great Andanamese languages (Aka-Bo) and with her death in 2010, the whole family can be considered dead. The other languages have died also shortly before in the 2000s. There might have, however, emerged a creole or koine language mostly based on Aka-Jeru. Some say it is still spoken, some say it already died by 2009.
It is an Indo-Portuguese creole language spoken at the Malabor Coast of India. The last speakers lived on the Vypeen Island in the Cochin city. Some Christian families still live here that understand it to some degree. But the last native speaker, William Rozario, died in 2010.
The Pazeh language was an Austronesian language spoken in Taiwan. The last speaker was Pan Jin-yu who died in 2010. Luckily, she was teaching about 200 students in classes in Puli. But there is little know about their usage and fluency of the language.
2012
It is not even slightly less bad when dialects of a language die. Scots is an endangered regional language in Scotland and with the death of Bobby Hogg in 2014 the language now has one dialect fewer. The Cromarty dialect was spoken there since the 15th or 16th century.
Kiksht was a Chinookan language spoken at the Colombia river. The last speaker, Gladys Thompson, died at age 97 in 2012. The Chinookan language family only consists of Upper Chinook, Lower Chinook (also called Chinook-proper) and Kathlamet which died in the 1930s with Charles Cultee and was believed to be a dialect of Upper or Lower Chinook but not mutually intelligible with either. Only Lower Chinook is still spoken by about 140 people.
2013
Livonian is a Finnic language, closely related to Estonian and Finnish. It was spoken at the coast in the West of Latvia. The last native speaker was Grizelda Kristiņa who died in 2013. The language is however still taught to some students at the university, so there are around 40 B1 speakers and 210 A1-A2 speakers.
2014
This language is traditionally spoken on Vancouver Island and across the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The native name is nəxʷsƛ̕ay̕əmúcən. It is a member of the (Straits) Salishan language family, and thus distinctly related to Chehalis (s. above). The last native speaker was Hazel Sampson who died in 2014. However some younger Klallam are learning the language to some degrees of fluency.
At the end there is hope
In order to not end this with a total loss of hope we wanted to present to you the extraordinary Marie Wilcox and her honourable efforts to help document the Wukchumni dialect, the last remaining dialect of the Tule-Kaweah Yokuts language. She is the last speaker of that language and is now constantly working on a written and spoken dictionary of that language. The Global Oneness Project filmed a short documentary about her.