There was a time when junior Emma Karpel could not speak more than a few words of her first language.
“[Losing Russian] kind of made me upset because I’ve known the language for so long, and the fact that I couldn’t communicate with [my grandparents] as well as my older sisters … kind of upset me,” Karpel said.
According to Dr. Erin Leddon, director of undergraduate studies in the Department of Linguistics at Northwestern University, language loss is a gradual process in which sociocultural pressures, usually created by a dominant language, such as one that is important for the economy or is the language of government, give people fewer reasons to use a language that is being lost.
“If you’re in a context where there’s a dominant language, say like in the U.S. with English, you’re gonna have a lot of pressure to speak English, and you’re gonna have hardly any pressure at all to use other languages, other than what’s important for your community,” said Leddon. “And if there’s not many people in that community anymore, it becomes even harder to hold on to those languages because you just don’t have as many opportunities to use it.”
The loss of language can include the process of language shift.
Language shift almost always occurs in minoritized communities, usually when younger generations stop speaking a language and speak somebody else’s language, which can lead to language loss, said Dr. Lenore Grenoble, John Matthews Manly Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Chicago.
Certain languages have greater global influence than others.
“English is a language that has a lot of cultural currency here and across the world,” said Leddon. “A lot of global youth culture relies on English, and so we see a lot of incentives for people to speak English and other large, widely spoken languages in the world like Mandarin Chinese, Korean [and] Spanish.”
The development of technology has resulted in unequal representation of certain languages in the digital sphere.
Natural language processing tools such as Google Translate and autocorrect do not work in many languages, said Dr. Isabelle Zaugg, an author of the edited volume “Global Language Justice.”
Technology companies often consider return on investment when deciding to support another language, which is why certain languages spoken by hundreds of millions of people may not be represented in the digital sphere, Zaugg said.
According to Karpel, her social media is mostly in English and includes American content about current trends, but occasionally, she will get a TikTok relating to Russian family dynamics.
The internet can facilitate language revitalization efforts.
“Modern technology can be helpful in terms of preserving linguistic diversity and even potentially saving some of these endangered languages by creating at least a virtual community of speakers of that language,” said Peter Connor, professor of French at Barnard College.
According to Leddon, when you do not speak the language, you lose one important way of learning about and maintaining your culture, which can be a way we lose some of our cultural diversity.
Taking Russian classes at Glenbrook North has helped Karpel maintain connections to her culture and family.
“Relearning Russian helped me connect with my family because I am able to mention Russian poems, traditions and foods when I talk to my family that I didn’t know before,” Karpel said.