30 October 2009
John McWhorter contemplates whether language death is really all that bad a thing.
He very much reflects my opinion on the matter. While the loss of languages is a definite blow to linguistic research and understanding, socially its effects may actually be beneficial to the isolated speakers of the rare tongues that are dying. And besides, it is happening whether we like it or not and there seems to be very little we can do about it except record as much of the dying languages as we can before they are gone.
