Problems associated with language endangerment:

The speakers of an endangered language and linguists (or revitalization workers) might have different views on the revitalization and/or language itself. For instance, for a language community it might be enough to know some of the language (eg. using traditional names for places), whereas linguists want to revitalize "the whole language". Thus, there may be contradicting views on the goals of revitalization which can create challenges in cooperation. In addition, speakers of a language community might have varying opinions and views on language and language revitalization within the community, making it more difficult to determine the goals and purposes of revitalization.

There are multiple factors related to language vitality and endangerment, with the total number of speakers being only one of them. Thus, several different tools and classification systems for measuring language vitality have been produced.

In general it would be important to pay attention how we linguists talk about endangered languages - for instance determining a language dead by using this word might be harmful, and language speakers might see the "status" and endangerment differently than linguists.

We also often talk about language endangerment, although what is endangered is much more than just language, it is the culture and knowledge that are lost too (for instance the kinship terms in some Australian communities).

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