cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/cool/p/1517755/game-designed-to-save-dying-aboriginal-language-wins-global-awards
With only eight fluent Nyiyaparli speakers remaining, an Aboriginal group is racing against time to save its 41,000-year-old language.
Languages are like tools, if people don’t see utility in them, they won’t use them. The only people who would go out of their way to learn and use a specific tool are experts and enthusiasts, and there aren’t enough of those around to keep a language alive. If much bigger languages like Yiddish, Romani, Bavarian, Assyrian, etc are classified as critically endangered languages and struggling to survive then these smaller languages simply have no future. I think efforts like are good at preserving the language, and there’s definitely value in that, but I ultimately think that this a doomed language.
I mean if you wanna look at it like that all languages are doomed languages
All languages evolve, and in the age or globalisation also becoming more homogenised. I don’t think there will ever be one global language as people like their local dialects and are influenced by local culture, but i wouldn’t be surprised if in a handful of hundred years I could read a bit of French.