Fill in each numbered blank with one suitable word or phrase.
ENDANGERED LANGUAGES: WHY DO LANGUAGES DIE?
In an article recently published in The New Yorker, the issue of endangered languages is explored in depth. They report a concern that up to half (6) _______ today’s living languages are in danger and will be extinct by the end of the 21st century, other than what (7) _______ preserved in archives. This means a language dies on average every four months.
Languages (8) _______ for many reasons. Some are cultural. For example, many cultures have been colonised or otherwise (9) _______ by another culture. Often, this translated into suppressing the native culture’s (10) _______ tongue. If these conditions lasted long enough, then these languages dwindled, were only spoken in secret or died out altogether.
Numerous examples exist in North America, where (11) _______ people, now known as First Nations’ people, have (12) _______ lost or are in grave danger of losing any working knowledge of their mother tongue.
In (13) _______ cases, languages may decline or die in situ, but may be holding tenuously on in another environment. We can see examples in immigrant communities (14) _______ New York to South Africa. Furthermore, many dying languages can be hard to (15) _______ if their tradition was mostly oral, with few written records ever in existence.
(https://www.communicaid.com/business-language-courses/blog/why-are-languages-dying)
*in situ: in the original or correct place.
In an article recently published in The New Yorker, the issue of endangered languages is explored in depth. They report a concern that up to half (6) _______ today’s living languages are in danger and will be extinct by the end of the 21st century, ...
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