There is a pervasive idea, in popular discourse about language endangerment, that languages just slip away, becoming obsolete or falling out of use. In this view, languages are like fashions, that pass with time, or technology, that is replaced by the more advanced. Those clinging to the old languages are seen as quaint at best, and conservative, or even luddite, at worst. But this conception is wrong. It benefits the powerful at the expense of the powerless, reassuring the colonizer that they are not to blame. Languages are not lost, they are taken. They are uprooted by malice or neglect, their speakers assimilated into a new tongue, or left to struggle in the space between the fading old and the out of reach new.
Language endangerment has continually accelerated, as the rise of nation-states and centralized, powerful governments, along with inventions such as the printing press and mass media, have created a handful of super tongues, which bulldoze all others in their path﹒While there are around seven thousand extant languages today, half the planet speaks One of just twenty-three tongues, with that proportion growing every year. At the time of writing, according to UNESCO, some twenty-four-hundred languages are vulnerable or endangered, while almost six hundred are on the verge of going extinct.
As a Welsh saying goes, “cenedl heb iaith, cened! heb gallon,” a nation without a language is a nation without a heart. Languages are deeply enmeshed with culture; they link people to their ancestors and help maintain traditions, oral histories and ways of thinking about the world. The loss of linguistic diversity is not merely an intellectual tragedy, but a continued consequence of colonialism and imperialism, as groups are forcibly assimilated and their diverse histories, cultures and tongues wiped out. This can literally be a matter of life and death: researchers in Australia and Canada have shown that indigenous communities that retain access to their languages are healthier and more cohesive, with less unemployment, alcoholism and suicide, and higher levels of education, than those unmoored from traditional culture and forced to use English alone. Language diversity can also foster new ideas and thinking that can help us address many of the injustices and disasters wrought by colonialism and industrialization. Environmentally, economically, and culturally, language diversity holds the potential for new solutions for the problems often wrought by the world’s linguistic monoliths. The United Nations, in declaring 2019 the International Year of Indigenous Languages, recognized that such tongues provide “resources for good governance, peacebuilding, reconciliation, and sustainable development".
心得：
語言不是自然消失，很多人以為傳統語言只是慢慢溜走，因為過時或不再使用。作者說其實是被連根拔除，殖民者帶來了新語言，讓他們以為傳統語言消失不是他們的錯。其實是惡意和故意忽略造成，傳統語言只好默默離開，文中提到超級語言（例如英語）可能導致語言的消失。這世界人口有一半的人只使用1/23語言的其中一種，而且還在增長。
其實傳統語言對於人們的健康，生死有關，研究調查使用傳統語言的原住民造成失業、酗酒、自殺的比例，都比只說英語的人低，身心也更健康、更有凝聚力。不禁讓我們思考傳統語言，文言文，似乎使用人口越來越少，但其實它是一個寶藏，5000年前中國古代所有智慧的思想都放在這些文字裡，但我們捨棄不用實在太可惜，若要開智慧，汲取先前人的智慧是最快的捷徑，但我們遠離他們，開創一條新語言道路，重新摸索，學新的文化，這不是自討苦吃嗎？
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