On Obsolete Languages

Michael Erard, a designer not a linguist, commented on When Languages Die, a book by well-known linguistic anthropologist K. David Harrison. Harrison laments the death of languages due to the specific knowledge lost in the process, from specifics about dates, agriculture, and familial relationships, to the grammatical features of these languages, which are often unique.

Back when I took sociolinguistics in college, we discussed the extinction of languages, and supposedly within the next century, half of the languages now spoken will be forgotten if undocumented. Now, I'm all for the recording of these languages, but languages are constantly evolving, and, much like the evolution of humans caused the extinction of other related bipedal species (neanderthals), a "stronger" language is going to overtake weaker languages, eventually rendering it obsolete.

Strong languages such as English, Mandarin, Spanish, etc., are always going to overtake the hundreds of weaker languages. Economics play a factor, as do subjects of cultural relevance in areas like religion and politics, but so do the abilities of a language to evolve to keep pace with the objects encountered in contemporary developed society. Borrowing dilutes a language's purest form (e.g., Russian), but language maintenance is important to relevance. As an example, French has a group of scholars that are responsible for updating the language to keep pace with technology and other developments, rather than just borrowing a word from another language such as English. This group of scholars is ineffective, but their efforts are often overlooked. It is because of them that the French language, despite the dwindling number of native speakers in comparison with several other languages, has maintained its place as one of the most spoken languages in the world.

In conclusion, maintain languages or record them and let them go. We don't use DOS anymore, but we still use information we gathered from it.

From Design Observer, via Wired.