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How can bilingualism contribute to the gradual loss of a traditional language?

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Three women sit together outdoors, smiling and laughing as they talk, with trees softly blurred in the background. — Language Spoken language is just one type of language, which has been defined in many different ways across history.

Bilingualism can contribute to the gradual loss of a traditional language when successive generations of speakers shift their proficiency toward a more prestigious or dominant language. This transition often occurs as individuals seek social and economic advantages, such as better employment opportunities, access to higher education, or the need to navigate government, commerce, and technology in a common language.12

In this process, bilingualism acts as a bridge: as speakers become increasingly proficient in the dominant language, they may begin to lose fluency in their traditional tongue. Over time, this can lead to a decline in the use of the traditional language within the community, eventually resulting in its extinction as a spoken language.13

While bilingualism itself is a natural linguistic phenomenon, the pressure to adopt a dominant language for practical advancement often marginalizes minority languages. Although some communities attempt to preserve their heritage through language revival or by maintaining the traditional language as a learned second language for cultural identity, the socioeconomic forces favoring the dominant language remain a significant challenge to the survival of traditional tongues.1234