language death

noun

, Linguistics.

1. the complete displacement of one language by another in a population of speakers.

Example Sentences

Beautiful Irish drama has language, death, smoking.

From Washington Post

Language death does not happen in privileged communities, as scholar James Crawford wrote in the 1990s.

From Seattle Times

Perhaps, she prayed, the gods only spoke Chinese, never studied English, would not recognize temptation in another language. “...death, that this will be our secret no matter what.”

From Literature

The statistics and logic behind the trend towards language death are indeed bleak, as this article and many of the comments demonstrate.

From New York Times

No mainstream republican had ever used such language; death threats followed.

From Economist