Still, (1) Having easy access to the last several generations' literature is very nice! (2) Knowing the modern form of the language is often a huge help to le

Still, (1) Having easy access to the last several generations' literature is very nice! (2) Knowing the modern form of the language is often a huge help to learning the ancient form, so losing native proficiency in modern languages would still be a hindrance to understanding older texts. (3) People can try to slow down language change in order to at least slightly reduce the magnitude of this effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_planning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_planning