--Anonymous student of Latin

By my calculations, at the current rate, in the year 2300 English will be the only language left. Maybe that's why Picard speaks English. Prehaps we should inport some new ones from other planets.

Even the alien races on star trek speak english. Maybe the galactic total of languages is running down until english triumphs.

Take that, anthropic principle!

an estimated 7,000 languages spoken around the world today, one of them dies out about every two weeks,

By my calculations, at the current rate, in the year 2300 English will be the only language left. Maybe that's why Picard speaks English. Prehaps we should inport some new ones from other planets.

Aren’t languages which are being lost almost by definition those of illiterate peoples? Do they really have a lot to teach us about mathematics and the space-time continuum?

The Egyptians were one of the earliest literate societies, and we still lost the knowledge of their hieroglyhics. Along with that we lost not only our knowledge of that culture, but also of history and medicine that wasn't rediscovered for centuries after.

All I know is that, in the 24th Century, people with names like Jean Luc Picard speak with a British accent. FWIW.

You think that's weird? Wait til you meet a blond-haired blue-eyed native cantonese speaker. There are some areas that are so linked in our minds between culture and ethnicity that it is hard to break the association.

It is a shame to lose languages, but it's an intellectual loss, not on the order of magnitude of losing a species, or even an individual life. It's to be regretted, to be avoided if rationally and economically possible, but not worth preserving at any or all costs.

Languages do have lifespans. They're born, grow up, live, and die. Some go utterly extinct; others live on through their close relations. Yet others spin off new and different generations.

At present, English is the language most vital in its expansion. That's unlikely to be the case indefinitely, but there's no stopping what is a natural process aided or augmented by contemporary technology, from TV and the Internet, to the simple fact of air travel.

Lets hope French dies quickly, as well. And Spanish--then those immigrants will be forced to speak American.

All I know is that, in the 24th Century, people with names like Jean Luc Picard speak with a British accent. FWIW.

That sure seems like a stretch. How much scientific knowledge will we really lose if Charlie Mungulda is unable to pass on Amurdag? Aren’t languages which are being lost almost by definition those of illiterate peoples? Do they really have a lot to teach us about mathematics and the space-time continuum?

Language is a tool, and the inherent assumptions of language do mould our perceptions and thoughts a great deal.

The book Technopoly by Neil Postman has some interesting insights on this. FOr instance he quotes a japanese winner of the Nobel prize in either physics or chemistry who says that science should be done in English because the language itself is better suited to the task than Japanese. English is sometimes described as an aggressive language because every sentence consists of something doing something. Without a verb (explicit or implied) there is no sentence. That's not true of all languages.

Now as native english speakers we don't usually think about this. If we're lucky enough to be polyglots we might be more aware of how communicating in a particular language exerts a strong influence on our thought patterns.

All of which is just a long way of saying that, yes, even illiterate speakers of a language may have insights based purely on their perception of the world as expressed by how they created their language.

Now, that having been said, I don't personally find the disappearance of languages to be a terrible tragedy. Where possible it'd be good to record the details of the language so that they aren't lost forever, but it's not even close to the biggest problems on the table.