If the language stops being spoken then there are no people who speak them, and asking what something means for those nonexistent people is kind of weird.

Just because you have none who speaks your language, doesn't mean you're dead or don't exist. Language is lost in pockets, not all at once. Communities dwindle until it's just a few, then practicality of life makes them use their language less so language can even die while multiple speakers still engage in dialogue, of that dialogue isn't in that language.

there's likely a good reason most of them are disappearing.

This belief is called the "just world fallacy". Sadly, the world is not just.

Most of these languages are disappearing due to colonialism. People's traditional ways of living have been forcibly upended by capitalists and state governments, who have seized the commons around the world, and by colonialist policies such as residential schools. No longer able to support themselves using their traditional ways of living, people have been mde into wage slaves who must compete on the market to survive. That means using English or another widely-spoken language. Indigenous languages are much less useful to capitalists, and so gradually they wither and die.

We are at risk of killing 95% of the world's languages, on top of the incalculable cultural damage that goes along with all of this, just to prop up a single way of being: liberal nation states. It is reprehensible beyond words.

Gaeilge (Irish) is barely spoken because of Britian banning it, if people give up on speaking it it means a massive loss of an important piece of Irish culture.

There's a saying: tír gan teanga, tír gan anam, meaning a country without a language is a country without a soul. A native language to a country can be an integral part of its culture.

I’m thinking that the loss of distinct languages in active use is not necessarily a bad thing overall. It means more people can communicate with each other more widely.

I don't think I understand what you're trying to get at, here. Are you implying that it's not possible for people to speak more than one language?

Yep...

I can't believe I just read this...and I can't believe so many people upvoted this chauvinistic take on language.

I don't get why people are up in arms over lost languages or lost cultures, unless of course if it's due to genocide.

Which it often is, as I'm sure you know. We are in an awful situation for Indigenous languages.

Regarding culture, people don't lose their culture in general, they adopt other cultures over time.

These are the same thing. People don't just lose their culture and become cultureless. They lose their culture as they adopt another culture, but this process is largely driven by colonialism.

Just like people have evolved biologically over time, so do we also evolve culturally, but the cultural evolution is much much faster.

"Evolve"? Do you think European culture is superior to Indigenous cultures? We are destroying the planet in record time, and you are talking about "cultural evolution"? This is the language of 19th century racists who were blind to the nuances of culture. Different cultures are different ways of being in the world, each with its own pros and cons.

And it's fucking great that cultures evolve, because that's the way to get rid of religion and other traits of our cultures that are detrimental to in general.

Unfortunately, the cultures that have replaced Indigenous cultures around the world have largely been bigoted Christian cultures. Language loss is not caused by cultures becoming healthier -- it is caused by unhealthy cultures killing other cultures.

I’m a skeptic on this as well but wow you completely dismissed the entire question of loss of cultural diversity and that is a little too far for me. I think you may also be ignoring that humans are built to speak 3-4 languages without strain, and so having just one is unnecessary, and for people to have alternates is not necessarily harmful.

For any pair of languages there are plenty of subjects where one is clearly inferior to another.

That's why they have evolved in the first place.

because that’s the way to get rid of religion and other traits of our cultures that are detrimental to in general.

Religion is biological, not cultural. The cultural part associated with it being destroyed doesn't change human nature.

And leads to uglier religions.

Having as many languages as we have is a mess, and speaking the same language is a clear advantage for everybody.

A language and a piece of knowledge are in symbiosis, you can't just "translate" everything without losing half the meaning.

If your only language is English, then please don't make statements like this.

But USA was inhabited by people from alol over the world, but it's damned practical that they almost all speak English.
Having as many languages as we have is a mess, and speaking the same language is a clear advantage for everybody.

Only if your understanding of human language is that it is simply a tool for life, not an expression of life or intelligence itself.

No you are catastrophically wrong, but most people agree with you all the same and damn us all for that.

When we all speak exactly the same language, that will be by definition the moment we have reached a point of no return in the destruction of our own species.

Gaeilge (Irish) is barely spoken because of Britian banning it, if people give up on speaking it it means a massive loss of an important piece of Irish culture.

There’s a saying: tír gan teanga, tír gan anam, meaning a country without a language is a country without a soul. A native language to a country can be an integral part of its culture.

It makes sense to speak english or since its effectively the linga franca, but people can know more than one language.

Actually, looking at history, no language will survive. Modern English is only 400 years old. >In a few hundred years, all languages will be very different from what they are now. Different enough to be considered a different language. It is normal.

This is a completely different process than what's outlined in the article. The article is about outright language death, like if Old English had died so that it never became Modern English.

Language change is normal. Language death is, in our world, largely a result of colonialism, racism, and anti-Indigenous policies.