http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_Diversity_Index
http://www.ethnologue.com/ethno_docs/distribution.asp?by=country
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0018/001852/185202E.pdf (pg 81, and 304-308)

It would be interesting to see the correlation between GDP or 10-year growth rate and LDI.

It’s not that hard to raise children bilingually from birth (it’s much harder if you wait until the child enters school at age 5 or 6), if the parents speak both languages.

Definitely, there is a strong case for documenting as much as possible languages which are in apparent terminal decline, especially those without extensive written (and recorded!) literature. But that’s

As much as we may mourn the loss of diversity; the actual speakers have the final say.

For example, our understanding of the ancestral legacy of all of the hundreds of millions of Indo-European language speakers today would be dramatically richer and more accurate if Tocharian had survived as a living language with a small community of native speakers, rather than as a mere collection of administrative and religious texts. Similarly, our understanding of our heritage would have been greatly improved if a few pockets of people who spoke the non-Indo-European; non-Uralic languages of Europe other than Basque had survived. We mourn the death of the Etruscan language far more than we do the death (or near death) of Faliscan (the closest relative of Latin).

Likewise, we today would have benefited tremendously in the understanding of our cultural heritage if Emperor Theodoric had not ordered the widespread destruction of pagan texts in the late Roman Empire.

Conversely, the priesthoods of ancient pagan cults who preserved the Hattic language and Sumerian languages as liturgical languages long after they had been replaced by Hittite and Semitic Akkadian as living languages did us, their successors, a great service in allowing us to understand our roots in a way more human than bones and shards of pottery could. We likewise treasure the legacy that the Vedic sagas and Avestian literature of provided us by giving insights into the worldviews held by our ancestors.

Tiny languages have value in much the same way that nearly extinct species do, and modern science is incapable in preserving either in all ways that the people of the future will wish that we could have preserved them. Many languages and religions and cultural ideas are received by us solely as substrates of their successors.

If the virtue of dying languages is mostly in the cultural legacy that they afford to our descendants, then perhaps we should prioritize our efforts to preserve them in a way that reflects this purpose. Languages that are the sole representative of a group are more important, particularly the higher up the linguistic family tree they are. The language of the indigeneous Andamanese so deeply separated from any of its neighbors, might be more critical to preserve than one of many Bantu languages of Africa. Languages that were once important, but are no longer important, might similarly be a greater priority than those that have always been the exclusive province of a few thinly populated villages. We mourn the loss of the language of the Huns who once ruled a large swath of the world or Fulani, more than the loss of one language of several hundred in the same part of Papua New Guinea. We might care more about preserving the closest descendant languages of the Aztecs and Mayans who left us a rich cultural heritage, than some other indigenous languages of Latin America.

The greater the importance of a dying language to the cultural legacy of us all, the more it makes sense to devote resources of a larger society that doesn’t speak those languages to subsidize communities that can preserve the old tongue and the culture that goes with it in a way that approaches authenticity.

It might also be sensible to try to preserve languages with a mechanism similar to that of pre-modern language death — e.g. it might make sense for speakers of many Amazonian languages in a region to unite to preserve just one of those languages for their community that is vibrant, rather than to try to save them all when they are all at high risk of becoming moribund and then going extinct.

 In Canada, aboriginal groups that do have access to technology are attempting to preserve near-dead languages with it. That is also what happens when groups attain affluence, their actions reflect what is important to them. 

Razib,

I’m impressed. Not only have you morphed into a sane-semi-right-minded thinker, but you also picked up on the large scale dynamics involved.

1) As for the former there is a balance between the individual and the all: The particular — that Mencian mean between the two extremes. That dreaded us/them

2) As for the latter, the various costs involved in having US/Them configurations, or particulars, needs to be weighted against the cost of having, at the one extreme, an indefinite amount of individual varieties (which maximizes transaction cost and individual licence/ (Liberties) — and with it, in a social context, the threat of bellum omnium contra omnes) and, on the other hand, having just one collective (which minimizes transaction cost and licence/ (liberties) — yet maximizes the threat of systematic societal collapse).

As you note there is a socio/axio/poli/eco/nomics and dis-socio/axio/poli/eco/nomics of scale, which of course is contingent on the sociobiology of the humans, relative to whatever we are talking about — language, religion, political organization, business, etc — given a level of technology.

Of course, what we are talking about is rather important. As you suggest, idioese might not function as well as globalese when it comes to languages, but it might be fine for religions, in the sense of Political Liberalism and one defining one’s personal Good — as as opposed to global Hinduese. Political organizations, businesses, etc. will each have their own theoretical optimal mean between the extremes.

Of course, some of these might work in systems. Hindu-democratic-capitalism might not work in the way Liberal-democratic-capitalism does.

I will note…you see what you are talking about in philosophy too. Western philosophy pioneered one way of thinking, a more objective/logical/dualistic/external way, which led to a quicker development of scientific thinking — and other traditions did their own ways, pioneering different aspects of human reality.

As you know, much of the discourse in what’s left of the West — given globalism and multiculturalism –is fairly anti-particularistic. I guess we will see if that’s an “irrational herd,” of sorts. And if other philosophical perspectives — which have more nuanced take — are better suited for the job.

So it’s time to move forward and adopt a neutral non-national language, taught universally in schools worldwide,in all nations. As a native English speaker, I would prefer Esperanto

Your readers may be interested in the following video at http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_YHALnLV9XU Professor Piron was a translator with the United Nations in Geneva.

A glimpse of Esperanto can be seen at http://www.lernu.net

I sincerely hope that Maltese does become extinct. It does not deserve to survive on any level.

http://www.economist.com/node/16213950

Go hang out at universities almost anywhere and you can already here Globish being spoken. Big language wins. Little language loses. Tough luck.

Also by fiat. School instruction actually switches languages for basic instruction at different grade levels.

No question there are economic incentives for many people to be multilingual, and that governments can create more such incentives. I think it’s an interesting question just how long purely social incentives can last, and how numbers-dependent they may be.