Final answer:
The UN classifies endangerment of languages as Vulnerable, Definitely Endangered, Severely Endangered, Critically Endangered, and Extinct. This system helps understand the urgency and scale of language revitalization efforts. Globalization and colonialism are key factors in language endangerment.
Step-by-step explanation:
The United Nations, through UNESCO, categorizes endangered languages into different levels based on their vitality and the number of active speakers. These levels help linguists and policymakers understand the severity of the threat to a language's survival and develop appropriate revitalization strategies.
The categories are as follows:
- Vulnerable: The language is most often spoken within the family and community, but intergenerational transmission is starting to break down.
- Definitely Endangered: Children are no longer learning the language as a mother tongue in the home.
- Severely Endangered: The language is spoken by older generations and while the parent generation may understand it, they do not speak it to children or among themselves.
- Critically Endangered: The youngest speakers are grandparents or older, and they speak the language partially and infrequently.
- Extinct: The language has no known speakers left, although there might be some recordings or written materials still existing.
Endangered languages often face challenges due to processes of colonialism and globalization, leading to language shifts as communities adopt more dominant languages for socio-economic advantages, often to the detriment of their native tongues.
Initiatives like language revitalization are essential to reviving and protecting these languages from disappearing entirely.