Language Endangerment: A Critical Destiny of Indigenous Mother Tongues Decline in Nepal

Abstract

Language is the vehicle for people to communicate socio-cultural reality which transmits culture and knowledge from one generation to another. Language and culture are intimately related and dependent on each other. Endangerment is one of the stages of language loss which is a very critical issue in the 21st century because the extinction of each language results in the irrecoverable loss of unique expression of the human experience and the culture of the world. A language is dying every time in the world which will create difficulty to understand the pattern, structure, and function of human languages, prehistory, and the maintenance of the world’s diverse ecosystems in the future. Language is thus essential for the ability to express cultural knowledge and the preservation of one is paramount to the preservation and further development of the others. It is believed that half of the world's languages will disappear within this century. In Nepal, there are 92 indigenous or minority languages out of 123 are in endangered situation. This paper describes the context and stages of language endangerment in the global and Nepalese context and indigenous language situations of Nepal.