4 ms·
That's not really a fair comparison. The languages that are dying out do not have even remotely as much existing cultural material as English. Even Latin, whic
by TheCoelacanth 9y ago
That's not really a fair comparison. The languages that are dying out do not have even remotely as much existing cultural material as English.
Even Latin, which has no native speakers and dramatically less published material than English is in no danger of dying out. People learn it just to access the existing material.
- freehunter 9y agoThere are a ton of languages I would love to learn but I have no access to any substantial amount of written or spoken content, like you mentioned. Hell even being in America, your access to pop culture media created in most widely-spoken European languages is severely restricted. If I want to read a German language book I only have a few choices to pick from that aren't specifically written for learning language. Movies are even harder to come by, and German is very much a living language. I'm not arguing that niche languages shouldn't be saved, just refuting the argument that we need to keep speaking them in order to retain access to their cultural materials. Like you said, they need written or recorded cultural material to begin with.