My latest blog post on language & value theory, specifically in relation to language death. Thoughts anyone?
http://danielhieber.com/2011/05/11/language-and-value/
Very interesting post. I think the idea of language preservation/revitilization is a good one, but only for a couple of reasons. Firstly, preserving one's own heritage or the heritage of others is a decent objective. Secondly, preserving them for the sake of records is also a good objective. However, languages evolve and change over time all of the time. Why preserve a language as it is now rather than allow it to change as it naturally would? As an object of intellectual curiosity it's certainly interesting to study ancient languages or "dying" languages but it's not easy to say that a language as it exists now is that language in its pristine state.
Well, notice that I'm not really making an argument for / against language revitalization, except to say that many people find it valuable. Imagine if someone said to you, "everybody ought to own an iPhone," or "everybody ought to have healthcare." As a good economist, you say that 'ought' has nothing to do with it. Instead, you'd ask why people buy / don't buy iPhones and healthcare. Once you understand the reasons why many people don't have healthcare (things like opportunity cost, government intervention, etc.), you can start making intelligent recommendations about how to increase healthcare coverage (get rid of legislation).
Same with language. Once you understand why languages die out (again, government intervention has a lot to do with that), then you can recommend better policies for preserving them, if that's a goal you have. But I don't think we can say that's a goal you *ought* to have. Arguments for / against language preservation are mostly irrelevant to the actual point I'm trying to make here.
I do understand what you're saying in your post about value and the idea that you cannot derive an ought statement from an is statement, but you do say this, "With all that said, I do think that the preservation and revitalization of indigenous languages is a good thing, and not just because of my personal valuation of them, but because of the numerous positive instrumental effects that keeping them in the community have. While I think many people grossly overestimate the positive impact that preserving a language has, clearly significant positive benefits do exist, and for many communities the benefits consistently outweigh the costs." That was what I was addressing I think.
Ah, right. I think what I'm trying to say there is just that indigenous communities do tend to benefit from revitalization projects (just not in the ways many people think). It's hard to say at this point why that should be so, except to point to vague ideas like 'strenghtening identities' or 'strengthening social institutions', but it does seem to be the case that communities which start revitalization projects find benefits like their students doing much better in school, for example.
To actually answer your original question though: we linguists estimate that about half of the world's 6,000 languages will be extinct by about 2100, because there are no speakers in those langauges younger than middle-aged. Some of this is just a natural decline in linguistic diversity stemming from globalization, but a lot of it is due to the rise of the nation state and the imposition of a false linguistic unity. What happens is that the community in question has their social institutions wrecked and their language ostracized by the state, and so they do what you'd expect - they flounder as a society and lapse into crime, alcoholism, poverty, etc. Preserving their language by ensuring there are native speakers in the community - not necessarily preserving it in the exact state it's being spoken today, but just ensuring that it continues being spoken by the community - is one way of creating cultural continuity and counterbalancing the effects of the state. Rather than an abrupt and destructive cultural shift like throwing all the kids in a boarding school, the language and culture change gradually and emergently, following whatever the natural incentives are. I think that without the state involved, you'd actually see a much greater amount of linguistic diversity today, and a whole lot of indigenous communities would be better off for it: http://mises.org/daily/4687
While it's possible that the state has some hand in it, trade and commerce do as well. The benefits of a common language probably outweigh any benefits of a multitude of language. You don't fully extend your ideas about value and reach the next conclusion which is what is the ideal number of languages? Why should we have 6000 instead of 3000, etc.?
Even if we accept the idea that a common language would be the best of all possible scenarios, your own earlier points illustrate why that's impossible - language changes over time. It would be impossible for there to ever exist a global language - time and distance would cause the language to fracture and split into many new languages over time, just like Latin did in the past, and just like English is in the process of doing. But economics is about real choices. We don't magically have the ability to instantiate Globish around the world. The fact is, there are thousands of languages being spoken worldwide, and their speakers clearly have reasons for preferring that language as their native tongue, rather than some lingua franca. Asking about the 'ideal' number of languages is exactly the wrong question to ask. I make no claim whatsoever as to whether there should be 1 language or 10,000. My claim is that there should be precisely as many languages as people want and need to fulfill the social functions in their community. You approach the problem with the Marxist maxim, "to each according to his need," and decide *for* everyone that they only *need* one language. But again, this ignores the reality of the situation, that given the present global linguistic environment, the linguistic needs and wants of people around the world are hugely varied and manifold.
Moreover, you seem to be assuming that a common language is mutually exclusive with indigenous languages, but that's also false. The *average* number of languages spoken by a person worldwide is four. Why have just one language that everybody speaks, when you can have *both* a language everybody speaks *and* thousands more? Again, advocating for Globish and only Globish is like the Soviets saying that X brand soap is best, therefore nobody needs any other brand of soap but X.