A language becomes endangered when its use declines significantly to the point where it is no longer widely spoken or used in everyday life. There are several reasons why this can happen, including:
Cultural assimilation: When a community is assimilated into a larger, dominant culture, they may adopt the dominant language and abandon their own.
Economic and political pressure: Governments and businesses may use a language to promote their own interests, often at the expense of minority languages.
Migration: When people move away from their traditional communities and settle in places where their language is not spoken, their children may grow up speaking the dominant language and lose the ability to speak their parents' language.
Lack of language transmission: If parents don't pass on their language to their children, it can quickly become endangered.
Stigmatization: If a language is stigmatized or associated with a lower social status, people may avoid using it in public or teaching it to their children.
When a language becomes endangered, it is at risk of disappearing altogether, which can result in a loss of cultural diversity, knowledge, and history.