Editing Tuvaluan language (section)

== Risk of endangerment ==
Isolation of minority-language communities ''promotes'' maintenance of the language.<ref name=":2">{{Cite book|last=Thomason|first=Sarah|title=Endangered Languages: an Introduction|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=2015|pages=79}}</ref> Due to global increases in temperature, rising sea levels threaten the islands of Tuvalu. Researchers acknowledges that within a "few years", the Pacific Ocean may engulf Tuvalu, swallowing not only the land, but its people and their language.<ref name=":1" /> In response to this risk, the Tuvaluan government made an agreement with the country of New Zealand in 2002 that agreed to allow the migration of 11,000 Tuvaluans (the island nation's entire population).<ref name=":1">{{Cite journal|last=Kamusella|first=Tom|date=2004|title=On the Similarity Between the Concepts of Nation and Language|journal=Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism|volume=31|pages=107–112}}</ref> The gradual resettlement of Tuvaluans in New Zealand means a loss of isolation for speakers from the larger society they are joining that situates them as a minority-language community. As more Tuvaluans continue to migrate to New Zealand and integrate themselves into the culture and society, relative isolation decreases, contributing to the language's endangerment.

Lack of isolation due to forced migration since 2002 has contributed to the endangerment of the Tuvaluan language and may further threaten it as more Tuvaluans are removed from their isolated linguistic communities.