This is a very complex question! There is no short answer, but if there were, it would include this basic fact: language endangerment generally reflects other pressures, injustices, struggles, or traumas in a community. Languages do not generally become endangered when their communities are stable and thriving. Learn more about language endangerment here. 

Language is much more than just a collection of words or a tool for communication: languages reflect all our different ways of being human. Indigenous languages, in particular, carry irreplaceable knowledge systems and cultural practices that are critical to their communities’ ways of knowing and being, worlds and worldviews. Language is at the heart of identity and culture.
 

Language endangerment is also about injustice. Language endangerment reflects violations of human rights, disruptions to lives and communities, and the destruction of knowledge and cultures. Put simply: the things that cause language endangerment make the world worse for everyone. 

Particularly for Indigenous Peoples, language revitalization is about connections: (re)establishing and renewing intergenerational relationships to lands, ancestors, human and beyond-human relatives, lifeways, worldviews, and social, cultural, and spiritual ways of knowing and being.

Language revitalization supports wellness: it’s linked to better mental, physical, and emotional health in Indigenous, endangered, and minoritized language communities. Language revitalization upholds human rights and the self-determination of Indigenous Peoples, as affirmed in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. 

Sustaining language diversity means sustaining a world with a greater diversity of knowledge, ways of living sustainably, and understandings of what it means to be human. A better world for languages is a better world for all. 

Endangered languages are not "doomed" - they can be revitalized. People and communities around the world are revitalizing their languages. Visit the Revitalization Directory to learn more about these programs. There are many different ways that language revitalization can happen. To learn and think more about these possibilities, visit the Learning & Help Center.

This work is about more than language. The forces that cause languages to become endangered are things that everyone should be concerned about. Everyone can work to change the root causes of language endangerment. Learn more about supporting language revitalization as an ally.

The term “endangered languages” is complicated. It’s a word that has been widely used in this field for several decades, and it’s familiar to audiences in many parts of the world. It’s a term that is meaningful to governments, institutions, NGOs, and funding agencies – some policies, laws, or grants are specifically for “endangered” languages. It’s also a term with lots of baggage. There are many complex and valid reasons that some people and communities do not like the term “endangered” to be used for their languages, such as its focus on extinction, its reliance on biological metaphors of language, or its failure to name the root causes of language loss, among other reasons. Other people and communities choose to describe their languages as “endangered,” and find the word useful. It’s a word that carries multiple meanings, and we acknowledge that it may be an uncomfortable or inappropriate term in some contexts. 

ELP prioritizes using more nuanced and more appropriate language whenever we can, but sometimes we will also use popular terminology to be accessible and understandable to the public.