I found an article written in April of 2010 about the Lost Languages, Found in New York
This article goes into great detail about specific languages that were thought to be lost but were found in New York which has been discovered to be "an endangered hot spot" for dying languages. Through interviews with many of the individuals who speak the language we get a sense of how they feel about the language being lost.
Many believe that their language isn't required to move forward in the world since they can get along with the mainstream languages of their countries.
One person was asked whether they believed their children (who did know the rare language) would continue to speak it when they grew up. To that the individual responded that if they married someone who also spoke it then yes, but if they married an American then probably not. It makes sense to think that this will happen because "Americans" as well as many other western culture societies don't depend on multiple languages, but rather one language, especially English. However I know that that it isn't always the case because my best friend can speak Arabic because her mom taught her (who is Palestinian) while her father is a Jersey boy who speaks only English.
It was mentioned that as these rare-foreign-language speakers get older they are thinking more and more about the idea that perhaps their culture is being lost with their language.
However this article is mainly about the Endangered Language Alliance which was a project put together by a professor in New York to identify and record foreign languages. You can read the article to learn more. But I think that this idea is fantastic! It's such a wonderful idea to try and preserve languages like this and I'm sure that it will be appreciated when the language does eventually disappear but even the article said that "It's not like putting jelly in a jar. A language is used. Language is consciousness".
Even if it was preserved in dictionaries and language teaching books, It's difficult to keep something alive if it doesn't come into use in the real world. That is all that most people are interested in. Something that drives them to better succeed. Unfortunately most people don't believe it is worth the time to learn a language that won't come into play often in their lives.
Also fun fact that I learned was that the United Nations keeps an atlas of languages that are becoming extinct. I learned something :)
Hope you enjoy!
