For many things that are no longer used, there really isn't any value. But languages are special- languages are intimately connected with culture, and potential

For many things that are no longer used, there really isn't any value. But languages are special- languages are intimately connected with culture, and potentially vast bodies of other knowledge. As the article says, in this case "it is their language that binds them together as a people more than anything". There is scientific value is preserving languages, just like there is scientific value in preserving endangered rainforest frogs and weird plants- they might have useful things to teach us, and we'll never know if we let them disappear. When a weird tradition dies out, we lose some emotional connection to past people, but that's probably OK because it's still documented, and we can go read about it. When a tropical frog goes extinct, we lose access to any biochemical tricks it might have been hiding, and that's a little bit sadder. But when we lose a language, not only do we lose the emotional connection to other people (which is a pretty freaking big deal all by itself! But you could argue that losing a culture isn't inherently bad, if nobody cared about it anymore anyway), and not only do we lose the ability to study the workings of the language like we might study the workings of a frog, we also lose access to all of the knowledge of other things that was encoded in that language. It's not just losing a tradition, it's losing everything that people who spoke that language knew about all of their traditions. If it had extensive literature, and was well documented, we might be able to translate some of it into other languages for preservation, but that is incredibly difficult to do, and simply will not happen for most languages. And plenty of knowledge is not preserved in literature- it's purely oral. Cultures that die may have their knowledge preserved if their language is still carried on, but when a language dies, all of its knowledge dies with it. For any particular language, there may not be much that it has to offer that is unique and can't be replaced. But, then again, there might. The potential is enormous, and thus the risks associated with losing a language are also enormous, and thus it makes a lot of sense to care about preserving languages, just in case.