Is It Important To Save Dying Languages? (Of Course, But Not For The Reasons You Think)

“Certainly, a culture can thrive without its own language: No one would tell today’s American Indians that if they no longer spoke their ancestral language it would render them non-Indian. Likewise, being Jewish does not require speaking Hebrew or Yiddish. Yet because language is so central to being human, to have a language used only with certain other people is a powerful tool for connection and a sense of community.”