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 endangerd languages is explored in depth. They report a concern that up to half (1)____ today’s living languages are in danger and will be extinct by the end of the 21st century, other than what (2) ____ preserved in archives. This means a language dies on average every four months.

Languages (3) _____ for many reasons. Some are cultural. For example, many cultures have been colonised or otherwise (4) ____ by another culture. Often, this translated into suppressing the native culture's (5)____ 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 (6) ______ people, now known as First Nations’ people, have (7) ____ lost or are in grave danger of losing any working knowledge of their mother tongue.

In (8) ____ cases, languages may decline or die in situ, but may be holding tenuously on in another environment. We can see examples in immigrant communities (9)_____ New York to South Africa. Furthermore, many dying languages can be hard to (10)_____ 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.   

Numerous examples exist in North America, where (6) ______ people, now known as First Nations’ people, have (7) ____ lost or are in grave danger of losing any working knowledge of their mother tongue.