DIALOGUE

Poignant Headline: “Ancient Tribal Language Becomes Extinct as Last Speaker Dies" (published in the "Guardian" in February 2010 –
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/04/ancient-language-extinct-speaker-dies).
The death of the last native speaker of the Bo language broke a 65,000-year
link to one of the world's oldest cultures. 

Taking the flip side of the debate, in a blog post from 2008, “Languages Are Vanishing: So What?” Roy F. Baumeister argues that maybe fewer languages would be better -- http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/cultural-animal/200811/languages-are-vanishing-so-what. 

It seems to be a controversial issue, one that is particularly poignant to me. I remember sitting in a class a couple of years ago and being shocked when a participant suggested we would all be better off if there were fewer languages because it would make us more unified as a global population. The devastation I encountered at her comment and at the very thought of vanishing languages is also the number of nuances, rituals, stories, and traditions that are also lost as each language fades away
and the last native speaker dies--especially knowing many indigenous languages were completely supressed by those who colonized the people who spoke them. What do you think about the whole issue?

If you have interest in the topic, consider checking out the work done by an organization called Cultural Survival who features a Language Revitalization initiative, especially among Native
American cultures where they predict that in the U.S. alone, in the United States, where more than 70 Native American languages will disappear in the next 10 years: http://www.culturalsurvival.org/current-projects/native-language-revitalization-campaign.