"extinction of languages" is a correct and usable phrase in written English.
You can use it when referring to the loss of dialects, words, or entire languages due to cultural or environmental changes. For example, "The extinction of languages like Cornish and Manx has caused the loss of many significant historical words and phrases."
He confesses to us early on that he is more anguished by the extinction of languages than people.
Those same conditions, together with the spread of literacy, are leading to the extinction of languages spoken by relatively small communities.
Mark Abley's SPOKEN HERE: Travels Among Threatened Languages (Houghton Mifflin, $25) covers the extinction of languages, with case studies in Aboriginal and Amerindian tongues, Manx, Provençal, Yiddish and Welsh that are gracefully written, funny and frequently heartbreaking.
Such processes of linguistic expansion, while presumably common in human history, sometimes result in the extinction of other languages as the domains of language use begin to overlap to the extent that one of them becomes obsolete.
For James Woodward, the mass extinction of sign languages is bound up in prejudice and chauvinism.
In complementary contrast, Hiller's The Last Silent Movie, while certainly not being silent nor really a movie, laments the extinction of minority languages.
Despite this, schools still offer a Spanish-centric curriculum, "a system of education," explains Fernando Bojórquez, "which itself contributes to the extinction of the languages and cultures of original peoples".
Despite this, schools still offer a Spanish-centric curriculum, "a system of education," explains Fernando Bojórquez, "which itself contributes to the extinction of the languages and cultures of original peoples". Oaxaca's linguistic diversity is born of its terrain: a rugged landscape of ravines, caverns and sheer jungle ascents.
Furthermore, these cultural and community traditions, often oral in nature, are disappearing with the extinction of the languages in which they are deeply associated, adding a component of urgency to the preservation of this valuable knowledge.
Some organizations equate the extinction of a language with the loss of a biological species, and they are trying to call attention to the need to record and preserve as many threatened tongues as possible.
Jorge Luis Borges thought Wells's books, especially the early fantastic classics, would last for ever, "be incorporated, like the fables … into the general memory of the species and even transcend ��� the extinction of the language in which they were written".
