When a language is lost, we lose the ability to talk about something in a particular way. Certain ideas only exist in certain languages and when a language is lost, that idea is lost as well and it may never be recovered. A culture is lost as well as a language. We always have the opportunity to learn from other cultures and it can become difficult to learn about a culture if the language is lost. There may also be people who are forced to learn another language in order to communicate, when they really only know how to communicate in the language they learned first.
This is slightly off topic, but I think it is really great that they're teaching Siletz as a foreign language in school. That is a great way to make sure a language doesn't die.
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