A language, among other things, is an ongoing, long-term, collective effort by a culture to categorize understanding: to divide up what is known, knowable, (or mistaken) into chunky abstractions that can then be played with lego-style to assemble new insights, hypotheses, or what-have-you.
Each language carves up reality a little differently.
When there are more languages in use, there are more versions of this carving at play. Some languages can easily express things that other languages cannot. Some languages make distinctions that others do not. And so forth.
When a language dies and merely exists as documentation in another language, something is lost. The very things in the dead language that are most exceptional are the ones that defy translation; they have their edges rubbed off during the documentation process and become e.g. “the closest English equivalent of” rather than their rich original meaning.
When we lose living languages, we lose more than alternative ways of expressing certain concepts, but alternative ways of conceptualizing.
I agree that the utility of preserving endangered languages is greater than zero. But how much greater.
These alternative ways of conceptualizing… how useful are they? What can we achieve with them? As far as I can tell, they are fun and interesting, but insignificant compared to other problems we can help solve.
I’m reminded of the recent review of How Language Began on ACX: the missionary linguist becomes an atheist because in the local very weird language they have declinations to indicate the source of what you are saying, and saying things about Jesus just doesn’t click.
Some considerations you might be missing:
A language, among other things, is an ongoing, long-term, collective effort by a culture to categorize understanding: to divide up what is known, knowable, (or mistaken) into chunky abstractions that can then be played with lego-style to assemble new insights, hypotheses, or what-have-you.
Each language carves up reality a little differently.
When there are more languages in use, there are more versions of this carving at play. Some languages can easily express things that other languages cannot. Some languages make distinctions that others do not. And so forth.
When a language dies and merely exists as documentation in another language, something is lost. The very things in the dead language that are most exceptional are the ones that defy translation; they have their edges rubbed off during the documentation process and become e.g. “the closest English equivalent of” rather than their rich original meaning.
When we lose living languages, we lose more than alternative ways of expressing certain concepts, but alternative ways of conceptualizing.
I agree that the utility of preserving endangered languages is greater than zero. But how much greater.
These alternative ways of conceptualizing… how useful are they? What can we achieve with them? As far as I can tell, they are fun and interesting, but insignificant compared to other problems we can help solve.
I’m reminded of the recent review of How Language Began on ACX: the missionary linguist becomes an atheist because in the local very weird language they have declinations to indicate the source of what you are saying, and saying things about Jesus just doesn’t click.