Short answers, pulled from the story.
Language death is the process in which a language eventually loses its last native speaker, rendering it unable to be passed down to new generations. This phenomenon occurs when the last native speaker stops using their language for daily communication, leading to extinction when the language is no longer known by anyone.
Ethnologue reported only 7,102 known living languages on the 20th of May 2015. This figure represents a decline from the 7,358 living languages recorded in 2001 and further dropped to 7,097 known living languages on the 23rd of February 2016.
Language death has been linked to higher suicide rates and increased prevalence of diabetes within Indigenous communities. One study found that suicide rates were six times higher in groups where less than half of its members communicate in their ancestral language, while greater knowledge of the traditional language correlated with lower diabetes prevalence.
The Hebrew language in Israel is the only example of a language acquiring new first language speakers after it became extinct in everyday use for an extended period. This revival occurred after the language was used only as a liturgical language or as a lingua franca between Jews from different linguistic communities.
Anthropologist Akira Yamamoto identified nine factors that include a dominant culture favoring linguistic diversity and the creation of bilingual and bicultural school programs. These factors also require the endangered community to be completely involved, the creation of easy-to-use language materials, and the use of the language in new environments.
Joshua Fishman proposed the Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale, known as GIDS, in 1991. This system measures the level of disruption in the intergenerational transmission of a language and has been used to track the progress of language revitalization efforts in many communities.