I still want to say sombrero and hey you are one cold hombre.

Reasons for preserving languages:
(a) Cultural heritage and traditions: much cultural practice is bound up in linguistic knowledge. Ceremonial traditions, oral history, myths, views of the world, geographic and botanical classifications. This is obviously important to the community whose language it is, but also has scientific value in anthropology and potentially in other fields, such as biology.
(b) Preservation of communities, ethnic and cultural pride: the language one speaks is (often) an important part of cultural and ethnic identity.
(c) Preservation of linguistic diversity. Much like some of the arguments for protecting endangered animals, anyone who has any interest in the range of beautiful and surprising things that are found in the natural world should recognize that linguistic diversity has its own value. Both animal species and languages have always been dying out and being replaced. However, the rate at which both species and languages are disappearing has increased dramatically in recent years. We can’t stop it, but some efforts at preservation may well be worthwhile.

Finally, the reason for at a minimum thorough documentation of endangered languages (though not necessarily preservation): Science. Linguistic diversity is crucial to scientific understanding of the human capacity for language. What is a possible language? What is not? How are linguistic structures products of (a) the human brain and (b) the functions of language as a communication system?

And documentation by itself might not be sufficient to answer some of the more interesting questions linguists pose about the structure of a language, such as: What does a speaker actually have to know about his/her language in order to produce only the grammatical structures of the language, to be able to make uniform grammaticality judgements about sentences s/he has never heard before, etc.?

i know that one world language could help us a lot, but i think that language is a part of culture. that's the main reason why protecting this diversity.

but i also think that history will follow its course, and this global community is going to that direction: the vanishing of languages.

it's scary to think that in the future there will be no more spanish, portuguese, korean and so on, but just one world language. but if that is the tendency, nothing's gonna stop it

I, too, am going to play the devil's advocate.

I agree that language is an element of culture. Is it not that culture's responsibility to preserve the language, if they choose? Every community and person decides to what extent their cultural preservation is important to them, and languages/traditions will reflect the choices of those people.

Interesting, also, in the study of language, is the convergence of languages, no? Languages borrow and lend so many words from each other, and if some die out, they will still be present in other languages. I would argue that this is an inevitable product of a global society, and an interesting scientific study in and of itself.

To the first post: I seriously doubt Spanish is in any danger of dying out, so I will also continue to say sombrero, and greet my friends with a saucy 'hola.'

I think that the possible extintion of "minor" languages is due to growth, in use of the "major" languages

Certainly the promulgation of English as the world's "lingua franca" is unethical and linguistically undemocratic. I add that I am a native English speaker!

Unethical because communication should be for all and not only for an educational or political elite. English is now used, at an international level, in this way.

Undemocratic because minority languages are under attack worldwide due to the encroachment of majority ethnic languages. Even Mandarin Chinese is attempting to dominate as well. The long-term solution must be found and a non-national language, which places all ethnic languages on an equal footing is essential.

An interesting video can be seen at http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_YHALnLV9XU

A glimpse of Esperanto can be seen at http://www.lernu.net

Somewhat on a tangent here, and admitting that I am *completely* biased as I say this, but English is absolutely the pits for an international language. BTW, it's not my mother tongue.

It has too many quirks and irregularities in it. To speak English, one always has to keep up with the "vocabulary du jour", or what the jokes and cultural commentaries are. For instance: I remember when "germane this" or "german that" was very much in fashion. Or take "401K". Unless you watch US news every night, it's just an incomprehensible term.

An international language should not be tarnished so much by specific cultural contexts, but should be a space where a plurality of influxes from many contexts are created. This will never happen with English (or any other natural language - I'll get to that).

Furthermore, even for a person accustomed to English, it's a very hard language to comprehend. Now, I'm perfectly fluent - to the point where I blend in perfectly (I don't have an accent). However, I always have difficulty with English accents and pronunciation - this is because there are simply to many semi-vowel sounds in English - depending on the speaker's origin or even articulation. Not all languages are like this - take Italian or Japanese, for example, are much, much easier in vowel and semi-vowel phoneme detection.

The other aspect is that a foreigner is always in an inferior, non-expert position when talking to a native English-speaking person - he/she being the expert.

That all being said, I am currently hoping that Esperanto will come out as a true international language - at least for written material on the Web (such as the Wikipedia). Although it's an artificially created language (an "auxiliary language" we like to call it), unbeknownst to many, languages by "dictat", as it were, are not without successful precendents. The examples are many: Norwegian (created via a consesus), modern spoken Hebrew (ressucitated by a linguist), and the many ortographic reforms in Portuguese. The point is that "pushing" a "working language" is an agenda that has worked before. Esperanto has many desirable features, and currently it has more speakers than some natural languages, such as Welsh. But let's leave it here, as this is getting much too long...

I'll just say that, at least for the European Union legal documents, it would be a rational choice, English being unacceptable, for political and cultural reasons.

Dear Professor

I would like to hear what you would say it was your mother language that was threatened with extinction. Language is inextricably linked with cultural heritage, literature, identity, and with many other essential elements of human existance.

Your article is so fundamentally ethnocentric and revels such a spectacular ignorance of cultural diversity, that it deserves no further comment.

Thank you for providing a perfect example that will allow many of us to illustrate perfectly the worst of American cluelessness, cultural isolation and navel gazing.

Caput tui ubi sol non lucet est.