Death of a language

[Rakuen Growlithe]

Recently a language died out (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8498534.stm) and it's said to be a loss to society. I've heard similar views expressed before, mostly with people saying how bad it is that of the 4000 or so languages that exist, the vast majority are endangered and becoming extinct, usually because the only people speaking them are very old. Most will be lost without ever being recorded.

Is the loss of these languages really a loss though? They are certainly a cultural heritage, but do they actually have any value? Most of these languages are unknown and whether they are lost or not will make almost no difference to anyone. In fact the purpose of a language is to allow people to communicate, as such there is really no need for more than one language. Is it really worth struggling to record and preserve thousands of languages that serve no purpose?

[Skit]

I don't think a dying language is a bad thing. Who knows maybe languages and cultures from games will take the place of languages being spoken today and their cultures.

Although English is really not considered a cultural language, being too wide spread.

Still, a lost language wont affect the world as much and it will only cost major amounts of money to bring back from the dead. I say let it die. No offense meant but it sounds pointless to preserve it.

[Entropy]

I agree totally.

Old languages could be interesting to study to learn about cultural heritage and the history of a social group, but they indeed serve no purpose.

Welsh is a pretty good example in the UK. It's spoke by about 580,000 people in Wales (20% of the population there) in addition to English. Road signs in Wales are bilingual, quite a bit of official bumph across the UK has the option of being in Welsh rather than English (university and drivng license applications to name two examples) but the language serves no purpose whatsoever. It's a little bit of British history - there's nobody here who does not speak English as a first language and it's treated as a bit of curiosity.

Yes, in my opinion nobody besides historians would lose out if an obscure language died. Such a language has obviously failed to be useful for communicating, so it's been supplanted by more widely understood ones.

[Rakuen Growlithe]

The language issue is even more ridiculous here. I think it's 12 official languages, only about 3 or 4 of which you would have ever heard of. There's also been a court case or something about language equality recently. I think it's totally ridiculous as most of the languages are only spoken in specific regions of the country. And they are all tiny! Zulu is the biggest first language I believe it only is spoken by something like 10% of the country!