I think the idea that cultural groups can be complicit in the extinction of languages is interesting. Yiddish isn't quite dead yet, but it is certainly heading that way, which is a shame especially since it influenced English so heavily. I didn't realize growing up how many words I used and heard in normal English were just yiddish words. I was especially surprised when at home and hearing my dad (from Brooklyn) talk to me I realized that a ton of the words were not English, but I understood them by virtue of growing up with them. I had always thought of it as normal english, but then when I asked my friends if they could understand, none of them could.
One thing that makes me hopeful about the future of language preservation is current technology. With how powerful computers and the internet are at the moment, I find it hard to believe that a current language could be completely lost short of a global catastrophe. We live in a really fortunate time, with the breadth of human knowledge available at no cost to us. Thinking about ancient civilizations that have been totally forgotten makes me very grateful to have been born in this millennium.
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