old news

http://typophile.com/node/43412

Even though it's been discussed before (here too: http://www.typophile.com/node/37315), that doesn't make the problem any less serious. For linguists, language death represents an irretrievable loss. We are forced to develop hypotheses based on limite data, but ideally we then test those hypotheses on as many different languages as possible to see if we've really understood something universal about language or not. As a general rule (with the exception of pidgins/creoles) languages evolve slowly over thousands of years, and if they disappear, the features that are unique to them will likely never reemerge in our lifetime (nor for several subsequent generations, if ever). If it happens that we have not discovered those unique features before a language disappears, we may lack crucial data that could otherwise inform and improve our flawed theories.

For minority language communities, the situation is even more serious, because of all of the culture that is inherent in their languages. Many communities would like to bring back their languages to the extent that Hebrew, Welsh, or Maori have been revived, but that requires not only dedication and a critical mass of willing participants, but enough existing language resources so that the language can be learned and modernized. Unfortunately, for many endangered languages there are insufficient resources to fully revive the language.

I wish I had some easy answers to this perplexing situation, but at least folks are talking about it.