When a language dies, so does the culture that created and used that language. Since languages connect people to their specific cultures—including their traditions and beliefs—those disappear with the language. All languages have words and phrases that are completely unique to the language. For example, any inuit language would have words to describe unique weather conditions and hunting traditions that we would never think to have in our english language.
The future of language is really exciting to me. As technology continues to change every single aspect of our daily lives, it also is quietly shifting how humans communicate with one another. With revolutionary technology like online translators, we are moving towards being able to talk to people who, without technology, we could not have a conversation beyond the use of body language. The article points out that while a few languages such as mandarin, english, and spanish are becoming increasingly spoken, others are becoming extinct—but saved by new technologies. So what our new capabilities are allowing us to do is to accept the darwinism of languages and allow these languages to die, but not allow the culture of the languages to go with them. I imagine that in the future we will have the capability to program computers to know every single language known to man. What’s beautiful about this is that the culture will still exist even though those who created it are now gone.
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