A language becomes extinguished every two weeks. Each death makes us poorer.
https://lithub.com/the-worlds-languages-are-in-the-middle-of-an-extinction-level-event/
'Schoolchildren in Ireland and Wales in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were forced to wear tally sticks around their necks, notched for every time they spoke their native Celtic languages, before they were hit at the end of the school day for how many notches they had accrued. The story of English is not just about Beowulf and Shakespeare; it’s also about those children being smacked daily by their teachers. It’s about colonial administrations, such as that of Whig politician Lord Macaulay, who said he wanted a class of imperial subjects in India to be English-speaking so that they could be “a class of persons Indian in blood and color, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect,” who, as interlocutors, could “refine” the multilingual Indian population.
These words, spoken in support of a law that would eventually be passed, allowed the British East India Company to begin teaching an English curriculum instead of a traditional Sanskrit and Persian one, a decision that would eventually lead to the cultural prominence English enjoys in India today. In a postcolonial world, such transparently racist edicts may be less commonplace. But my research into linguicide, the systemic erasure of languages, has found that not only are decisions made a century ago still having catastrophic consequences today, but that far too little is being done to reverse or even decelerate them.'
