When the last speakers die without transmitting the language, it dies. Language death is the complete end of use of a language as a community vernacular, resulting in its extinction as a living system.

Death usually follows endangerment and shift, as domains of use shrink and children stop acquiring the language. Causes include forced assimilation, demographic collapse, and economic pressure to adopt a dominant language. Semi-speakers may retain partial knowledge after fluent use ends.

Documentation can preserve records, and revival movements sometimes reawaken dormant languages, but loss of fluent intergenerational use is profound. Each death reduces the diversity of human expressive systems and the knowledge they encode.

• Extinction of a language as a living community code
• Preceded by shift and loss of child acquisition
• Driven by social, political, and demographic forces
• May leave only archival records