

Economic success 'drives language extinction' - jdmitch
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-29037168

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lambdaphage
Let a thousand flowers wilt!

Consider this statement from the lead author:

"As economies develop, one language often comes to dominate a nation’s
political and educational spheres. People are forced to adopt the dominant
language or risked being left out in the cold – economically and politically."

Another way of putting that would be:

"People learn foreign languages so they can communicate with a greater number
of people", which does not have quite the same potential for moral panic as
the original.

The paper still appears to be embargoed, but the authors have not made much of
a case for why linguistic diversity per se is important. Not nearly enough to
support their moral claim that states should take efforts to encourage people
to speak languages that they themselves have decided not to speak.

