Language revival movements

A. There is increasing awareness that there is an extinction crisis among the world’s languages, just as there is among living creatures. There are thriving efforts to pass along to new generations Irish Gaelic, Welsh, and Breton (all Celtic languages), as well as Maori and Hawaiian (the Polynesian language originally spoken in the islands).

B. Some people involved in these efforts are more optimistic than others. As to the question of whether we can maintain 6,000 languages as spoken ones, the truth, as it so often does, lies in the middle. There is little prospect that English will become the world’s only language (remember how common diglossia and bilingualism are worldwide). But there is equally little possibility of maintaining all the world’s languages for longer than another century.