While reading this article, there was a question in the back of my head that was consistently nagging me and I kept pushing it away. I was almost upset that I kept asking it because for some reason it is an innate emotion to want to keep this tribal dialect alive but my question was still legitimate. The question was: why? Why is keeping this language alive so important? Does it matter if it becomes extinct? My first reaction is, "of course it matters! How could you ever think it wouldn't?!" It seemed as if letting this language go extinct was letting something die - and in a way it is. But why does it matter? Will the world really change without this language that barely anyone speaks anymore? Probably not.
But what if we let it happen to many languages...what if we let more and more languages become extinct and then what will we have? Mandarin probably...so is that what we want? Obviously we are not at this point yet but it is something that is possible. Preserving all languages is important to keep our world diverse and unique and exciting!
In a way it reminds me of art. There are so many different types of art from the past, present, and heading towards the future. Art in all forms is valuable in our society because it is interesting and mind opening. Preserving historical art is crucial to our global society; we have created thousands of things related to historical art including museums, careers, special exhibits, books, and so on. Imagine if we stopped making oil paintings...and then clay statues...until there weren't many types of art left at all. This is how I think of preserving languages. Languages are art and it is essential for us to preserve every single one of them.
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