Language death is like no other form of disappearance. When people die, they leave signs of their presence in the world, in the form of their dwelling places, burial mounds, and artefacts - in a word, their archaeology. But spoken language leaves no archaeology. When a language dies, which has never been recorded, it is as if it has never been.
David Crystal, How Language Works: How Babies Babble, Words Change Meaning, and Languages Live or Die
language, language-death