Natural Selection – the process by which favorable heritable traits become more common in successive generations of a population of reproducing organisms, and unfavorable heritable traits become less common (source: Wikipedia) – is commonly understood to apply to genes in reproducing organisms. The ability to speak (driven in part by the FOXP2 gene) is an evolved trait. Language – a natural byproduct of our ability to speak – could also be said to evolve. If one can accept this concept, is it not also possible that languages (and by extension ideas) can become less common like undesireable genes? A recent article in The Economist suggests that nearly 1/3rd of all the languages on Earth are at risk of extinction. [READ]. The question I ask is whether or not we should worry about it. If a language is worth saving, wouldn’t we instinctually preserve it?

Languages, like species, come and go. Wikipedia has an interesting list of extinct languages [READ]. Some efforts have been made to bring specific languages back from the brink of extinction (eg. Hebrew, Welsh and Hawaiian) but for the most part, when speakers of a language decide to change to another language (for a variety of reasons), the language withers and dies. In the past, I suspect that colonialism drove much of this change in parts of North America, Africa and Asia but in modern times, the three most popular languages in the world (English, Spanish and Mandrin) are the language of business. Many Germans, for example, speak fluent English. I don’t think German is on the brink of extinction but another 100 years of fluent English speaking within Germany and it might end up on the endangered list.

There’s two things to consider then:

1. Why should we save a dying language?
2. How can we save a dying language?

To address the first point, I think there are cultural merits for saving a language but beyond that – I don’t see the point. For practical purposes, the more we narrow the language spoken worldwide, the easier it will be to communicate. Now before you accuse me of justifying my own cultural imperialism – keep in mind that my children’s ancestors spoke German, English, Celt, Punjabi and Urdu. These days, we just speak English at home. Why? Because it’s easier to communicate. My wife would like our kids to speak Punjabi because she has living relatives that speak Punjabi and its her first tongue. In contrast, I am not worried about our kids learning German because I never learned to speak it myself despite being half German.

This is not to say that other languages aren’t beautiful and have merit in their own right, I’m not going someone who would ever support putting massive amounts of tax dollars into keeping a language alive when its own native speakers have abandoned it. For example, Welsh. Welsh is spoken by some 750,000 people worldwide. Only about 20% of the population of Wales can speak it. Welsh as a language just about died in the late 1800s. It took until the 1940s for the language to be taught in schools in Wales again. These days, Welsh is considered a “living language” in that it is adapting to the times and adding new vocabulary.

While not all languages can remain living languages forever, I think we can use modern technology to preserve dying languages. Like an electronic Rosetta Stone, we could record the grammar and vocabulary of languages on the endangered languages list along with some recordings of native speakers. At a later date, this could allow for the recovery of dead languages when interest in them re-emerges. It’s not unlike preserving the DNA of a species that you know is going to die off.