preserve a language, preserve a heritage.

In the book Conformity and Conflict Language is defined as " a system of cultural knowledge used to generate and interpret speech". If language is meant as a way to express ideas and opinions, to keep records and hold conversations,  to pass on cultural knowledge, then how can it be that so many languages are slipping away every day, some with only single members that remember how to speak it? When I read the article from The New York Times I imagined what it would be like if I were the only person on the planet that knew how to speak English. How would I even begin to explain the intricacies and small complexities to somebody, especially when there would be no practical use for them to learn it. I soon stopped thinking about this because it made my brain hurt, but the thought remained that preserving a language, any language, is important not only because it can help us understand a culture, but because it can help us to understand our current position in the world. While it is true that cultures both big and small often live and die like a living organism, it is important to keep a record of these languages and their people, to learn from them and record their histories. We as modern citizens and as human beings owe it to these people to at the very least make a record of their language. To note that they inhabited the planet and made some sort of mark. Languages and cultures evolve just like people, certain things become homogenized or antiquated, but it is important to recognize these things and their significance in the grander scale.