Rescuing Endangered Languages Means Saving Ideas (fwd link)

[Phillip E Cash Cash]

August 19, 2011

Rescuing Endangered Languages Means Saving Ideas

By Emily Badger
USA

While saving the world’s threatened languages may seem informed more
by nostalgia than need, federally funded researchers say each tongue
may include unique concepts with practical value.

Endangered languages don’t seem as self-evidently valuable as, say,
endangered species essential to the functioning of a healthy
ecosystem. If the world loses Chuj, a particularly endangered Mayan
language of Central America, or Itelmen, a language with fewer than
two dozen native speakers on an isolated peninsula in the far east of
Russia, people will still be able to communicate. They’ll just do it
in Spanish, or maybe Russian. And history will move on.

Human language, though, encapsulates more than just different ways to
say to “hello.”

Access full article below:
http://www.miller-mccune.com/culture/rescuing-endangered-languages-means-saving-ideas-35246/