Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee (SOCHUM)

The regions shown on this map are language hotspots and are especially susceptible to language endangerment.
but is considered “definitely endangered,” while
Picard, a language in southern France with 700,000
speakers, is on the list of “severely endangered”
languages. 11
Regardless of the terminology and definition, most
endangered languages have a number of similar
features. They generally, though not always, have a
small number of speakers, who constitute a minority
of the population in the region in which the language
is located. The speakers are usually older, and some
do not have full competence in the language. One
of the major hallmarks of an endangered language is
lack of transgenerational transmission, which means
that children are not acquiring or using the language.
This situation is worsened by the fact that, because
many members of the community do not speak
the language, and the national government of its
respective country does not recognize it, a dominant
language monopolizes public life, including the legal
system, governmental administration, and education.
Endangered languages are also defined by the
attitudes that speakers and nonspeakers have toward
them. Nonspeakers perceive endangered languages
to be low-prestige dialects while some speakers
of an endangered language often view it, and even
their culture, as inferior to the one of the dominant
language and culture of the population. Finally, most
endangered languages have little documentation and
few written records. 12
these signs of language endangerment form the
basis of attempts to classify languages using the
terms listed above. To date, the most standard criteria
published for determining language endangerment
was created in 2003 by a United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization Ad-hoc expert
group on the subject. The eight main factors that they
proposed for classifying languages are as follows: (1)
transgenerational transmission, (2) absolute number
of speakers, (3) proportion of speakers within
the total population, (4) loss of existing language
domains, (5) response to new domains and media,
(6) material for language education and literacy, (7)
governmental and institutional language attitudes
and policies, including official language status and
use, and (8) community members’ attitudes toward
their own language. the existence of documentation
is another factor that determines how urgently
preservation efforts are needed. 13
Despite the body of literature on the statuses
of specific languages, the problem of language
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