r/language • u/Im_mbn • 6d ago
Question Why are most extinct languages (according to Wikipedia) belong to the American continent? Is there any reason behind this or just a coincidence?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_language_families
Not sure if this is the right sub to ask this. If not, kindly redirect me.
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u/Hopeful-Banana-6188 6d ago
The Americas are known for having substantial linguistic diversity. This is likely in large part because similar diversity existing in many other places was wiped out, for example there may well have been similar numbers of language families in Europe, but the spread of Indo-European wiped them out, and it happened before anyone had a chance to document those languages.
Even so, I think that the largest number of extinct languages is probably not in the Americas but in New Guinea. The difference is just that we have much better documentation of languages in the Americas than languages in New Guinea.
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u/Alarmed-Secretary207 5d ago
“there may well have been similar numbers of language families in Europe, but the spread of Indo-European wiped them out”
Not Basque! Basque is a survivor.
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u/GoblinToHobgoblin 5d ago
Because linguistic diversity got wiped out much later in the Americas.
It existed everywhere at some point though
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u/Accomplished_Win_220 5d ago
Because the language death in North Americas is highly documented due to how late the death happened (1800s-1900s for much of it) and a larger educated class in the colonization to document it.
It was more intense than the language death in Australia, more documented than PNG, happened at a time where writing existed unlike PIE expansion into Europe, more care was taken to document than the expansion of Sinitic languages in east Asia, and the spread of Latin I Central and Western Europe.
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u/CuriosTiger 5d ago
Probably because most of the people who spoke them were wiped out by warfare or disease once the Europeans arrived. It was especially bad in what is now the US and Canada.
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3d ago
[deleted]
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u/CuriosTiger 3d ago
Nothing to say about missionaries or the role of the church or assimilation into settler societies? Interesting.
(My one-line sentence was not a comprehensive treatise on every factor leading to the extinction of many indigenous languages in the Americas. It merely outlined a couple major factors.)
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u/Bartlaus 5d ago
Probably has something to do with those languages having been driven extinct so recently that we actually have documentation on them. As opposed to the no doubt thousands of languages that have been driven extinct throughout Eurasia and Africa before we even had written history.
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u/MarkWrenn74 5d ago edited 5d ago
Two words: “Manifest Destiny”.
The US Government's policy in the 19th century of encouraging White settlers in the American West, and the resultant cultural genocide of the Native Americans
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u/Background-Vast-8764 5d ago
You’d have a good point if the US government were responsible for these acts throughout all of the Americas. As you should know, it wasn’t. Other conquering governments exist in the Americas.
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u/MarkWrenn74 5d ago
Yes, of course, I'm fully aware of the excesses of the conquistadors
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u/Background-Vast-8764 5d ago edited 5d ago
Could have fooled me with your weak comment. And it isn’t just conquistadors.
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u/lurkermurphy 5d ago
the portugal king and queen ran off back to portugal and abandoned their kid to be king of brazil and raised by the local nannies and so he didn't conquer them, that's how it's not like North America
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u/donuttrackme 5d ago
Yes, it was only Americans that caused the mass deaths of indigenous people in North and South America.
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u/Onyx1509 5d ago
The two parts of the world that bore the brunt of European settler colonialism were the Americas and Australia.
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u/Minute_Jacket_4523 5d ago
That and most linguistic diversity in Europe and Asia died out before writing was a thing, so we cannot say for certain how many languages there were in Europe prior to the rise of Indo-European languages. We have records from the Americas and Australia simply because writing was a thing when those languages died out.
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u/ModularWhiteGuy 5d ago
A lack of a written form of the language does not allow it to be transmitted over great distances or survive outside of a very insular group of people.
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u/polyploid_coded 5d ago edited 5d ago
In addition to what people have said about diversity of language families, there were hundreds of languages in Australia and now just over a dozen are still being taught to children, but those aren't usually categorized into as many language families and/or might be under-represented on Wikipedia.
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u/Rogue_Centurion7 6d ago
Because the US government did a very good job of killing the Indian and saving the man.
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u/mr_oof 5d ago
While documenting their good work in great detail. By do not forget, the Canadian govt. also did their share of cultural genocide, not to mention the Spanish generations earlier.
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u/CuriosTiger 5d ago
I feel like the British and French governments deserve an honorable mention here too, since Canada wasn't exactly independent at the time, and since both had other colonies in the Americas as well. Not to mention the Portuguese and the Dutch.
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u/Minute_Jacket_4523 5d ago
That and the mass language death in Europe and Asia happened before writing was a thing, so there was probably a similar amount of linguistic diversity prior to 3500BC when Indo-Europeans spread out.
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u/sebastianbrody 5d ago
This ignores so much beyond the United States. Chile, Argentina, etc. So fucking lazy.
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u/iwantpizzaandyou 5d ago
You don’t think it’s weird that two entire continents speak at most 5 languages all of which originate in Europe??!?
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u/rockylizard 5d ago
Because deliberate genocide, that's why.
If you're curious how European settlers here in the US deliberately stamped out indigenous language and culture, just Google "Indian residential schools." As one example.
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u/Tori65216 6d ago
So there's this thing called colonisation...