An Indigenous language, or autochthonous language, is a language that is native to a region and spoken by its Indigenous peoples. Indigenous languages are not necessarily national languages but they can be; for example, Aymara is both an Indigenous language and an official language of Bolivia. Also, national languages are not necessarily Indigenous to the country. Many Indigenous peoples worldwide have stopped the generational passage of their ancestral languages and have instead adopted the majority language as part of their acculturation into their host culture. Furthermore, many Indigenous languages have been subject to linguicide (language killing). Recognizing their vulnerability, the United Nations proclaimed 2019 the International Year of Indigenous Languages "to draw attention to the critical loss of Indigenous languages and the urgent need to preserve, revitalize and promote Indigenous languages."
Language loss Indigenous languages are disappearing for various reasons, including the mass extinction of entire speaker communities by natural disaster or genocide, aging communities in which the language is not passed on, and oppressive language planning policies that actively seek to eradicate languages. In North America since 1600, at least 52 Native American languages have disappeared. Additionally, there are over 500 different Indigenous groups in the Americas, yet at least 20 percent of them are estimated to have lost their mother tongue. There may be more than 7,000 languages that exist in the world today, though many of them have not been recorded because they belong to tribes in rural areas of the world or are not easily accessible. Some languages are very close to disappearing:
Forty six languages are known to have just one native speaker while 357 languages have fewer than 50 speakers. Rare languages are more likely to show evidence of decline than more common ones. It was found that among the languages used in 1950, over 75% of them are now extinct or moribund in the United States, Canada, and Australia. Meanwhile, less than 10% of languages in sub-Saharan Africa have gone extinct or are moribund. Overall findings show that "19% of the world's living languages are no longer being learned by children," which is a leading cause of lingual extinction. Although small languages face risks of extinction, languages at severe risk of extinction have particularly been said to have an estimated threshold of about 330 speakers or less. Small languages have been quantified to have less than 35,000 speakers, and nearly all languages with 35,000 or more speakers have been found to be all growing at around the same rates. Oklahoma provides the backdrop for an example of language loss in the developed world. It boasts the highest density of Indigenous languages in the United States. That includes languages originally spoken in the region, as well as those of Native American tribes from other areas that were forcibly relocated onto reservations there. The US government drove the Yuchi from Tennessee to Oklahoma in the early 19th century. Until the early 20th century, most Yuchi tribe members spoke the language fluently. Then, government boarding schools severely punished American Indian students who were overheard speaking their own language. To avoid beatings and other punishments, Yuchi and other Indian children abandoned their native languages in favor of English.
In 2005, only five elderly members of the Yuchi tribe were fluent in the language. These remaining speakers spoke Yuchi fluently before they went to school and have maintained the language despite strong pressure to abandon it. The situation was not limited to Oklahoma. In the Northwest Pacific plateau, there are no speakers left of the Indigenous tribal languages from that area all the way to British Columbia.
Oregon's Siletz reservation, established in 1855, was home to the endangered language Siletz Dee-ni. The reservation held members of 27 different Indian bands speaking many languages. In order to communicate, people adopted Chinook Jargon, a pidgin or hybrid language. Between the use of Chinook Jargon and the increased presence of English, the number of speakers of Indigenous languages dwindled. The extinction of Indigenous language can be seen outside of North America, as well. Of Australia's at least 250 aboriginal languages, most have now gone extinct with very low likelihood of the remaining languages surviving. Reasons for these declines can be attributed to the spread of diseases, such as the measles and smallpox epidemics, forced displacement of inhabitants by settlers, and social, political, and economic isolation and exclusion. Some researchers blame the extinction of language in Australia on a decline in "biolinguistic diversity", a term which identifies a parallel between an area's biodiversity and an area's linguistic diversity. This phenomenon compares the extinction of wildlife upon the introduction of a dangerous predator or extreme change in habitat to the death of Indigenous language upon cultural, social, and environmental changes and forced assimilation. Other tribes of Native Americans were also forced into government schools and reservations. They were also treated badly if they did not become "civilized", which meant they were to go to Christian churches and speak English. They were forced to give up their tribal religious beliefs and languages. Now, Native Americans are trying to regain some of their lost heritage. They gather at "pow-wow" to share culture, stories, remedies, dances, music, rhythms, recipes and heritage with anyone who wants to learn them.
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