Why languages die and what can accelerate or decelerate this? This talk will be a brief overview of Claude Hagege's book titled "On the death and life of Languages". Hagege is a renowned French linguist currently the chair of Linguistic Theory at the College de France in Paris. In his book he reviews the most important factors that play a role in extinction of languages all over the world, the measure that can be taken to stop this seemingly inevitable catastrophe threatening almost 90% of currently alive languages and finally the resurrection of languages. As an example of successful resurrection, Hebrew and its life, death and revival will be discussed.




