Is preserving languages a good thing?

[Sal]

Diversity is pretty well necessary to stabilize any complex system. It's true of aquariums, and it's true of societies. A big part of any culture is encoded in the language. There's no stopping said current mass language-extinction, but IMO it'd be a real stretch to say that's a good thing.

Check out Newspeak for a taste of what that would be.

After a short Google search, I came across an incomplete translation tool on a website. Only a few key words, inspired by George Orwell's "1984" novel, were translated into Newspeak. It had the right idea of what it would look like.

[Secular Elf]

The english of today isn't even the same across state lines.... just in the US.  I guarantee that me and my boy can have an entire conversation that would be unintelligible to anyone who doesn't speak type two shift.  A dialect not widely spoken until after WW2.  Mull that over.  Communicating with the grey and wizened southern set is just as difficult for me as communicating with me can be for someone from boston.

We use a separate dialect than our own (still living) grandparents.

That is so true.  Not everyone speaks, or even writes in Standard English, which was considered in the 70s and 80s, when I was growing up, as "proper" ways of speaking and writing.  But all Americans usually speak and write in their own dialect.  And every generation has their particular slang, some words continue to be used while other words are dropped.  Every language has dialects, to greater and lesser degrees.  Czech and Slovakian can be considered two dialects of one language that are still mutually intelligible, and Serbo-Croatian, same language but written in two different alphabets: Serbian is written in Cyrillic while Croatian is written in Latin/Roman alphabet.  Ancient Greek had scores of separate dialects, enough divergence had occurred that even though a Spartan and Athenian may have understood another well enough yet both would have a hard time understanding someone from Epirus, Thessaly, Thracia, or Samnos.

As far as the OP's initial question is concerned, I think extinct languages will remain extinct, and will only be of concern to archaeologists, anthropologists and those of us within the wider public (such as myself) who have an interest in such things.  Dead languages that have had evolved and adopted and/or transformed their own writing systems, in a manner of speaking, continue to live on, even in some small way, after they have been deciphered and have revealed whole civilizations that were behind them (Sumerian cuneiform, Hittite hieroglyphs and cuneiform, Tocharian alphabet, Mayan glyphs, e.g.).  Latin and Greek gave English thousands of loan words that became useful to science, medicine, and engineering, and Ancient Egyptian survives in the Coptic Church as a liturgical language.

One last point I would like to make: Language often is important to people's ethnic culture and identity, especially when they have to fight for their own survival.  It becomes a source of pride in their own heritage.  Many Native American Tribes in both Canada and the U.S. have never completely lost their tribal languages despite efforts by governments and Christian missionaries to force them to only speak English; they are experiencing a revival.  Though Cornish, a Celtic tongue related to Welsh, became extinct in the 18th Century, it was revived in the early 20th Century.

English is as close as it can come to being a globally universal language.  But I don't think it ,or any other language, will completely overrun or replace all the others.  If we humans ever colonize Mars and remain there for any length of time, there is no doubt in my mind that any and all languages spoken their will diverge enough for a Terran and a Martian to not understand one another.  It is only natural for our species and our languages to evolve.

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In the UK in wales they have to extremes to save the welsh language. Pointlessly really. everyone in Wales speaks English and Welsh is a cumbersome language that has just meant extra large road signs in English and welsh.

Time to get rid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvlQXPNwrqo

I recently saw on Acorn TV a series called "Keeping Faith" a very damn good show, excellent story, I highly recommend it. The production of the film was done in both English and Welsh, at the same time, intentionally, for a Welsh-speaking audience and an English-speaking audience. I found it interesting and cool to listen and watch the clips that were in Welsh. I would think any Welshman who takes pride in his/her heritage and language would strongly disagree with you getting rid of their signs or that it was pointless. What if someone told you that your language was pointless or tried to force you to speak a language that may be cumbersome? Shoe on other foot.

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I think it is important to preserve languages even if there are evolution over time because language or a dialect of a language is tied to a culture.
I think it is important to preserve cultural diversity and preserve languages alongside its dialects and sub-dialects is a way to do so.

Each languages have dialects and sub-dialects.
For example among the dozen of English dialects there are British English and American English.
Among the dozen of sub-dialects of British English there are Received Pronunciation , Cockney and Mancunian.
Among the dozen of sub-dialects of American English there are General American , Inland Northern English and Western American English.

We lose time when we translate something in another language but languages are tied to ours cultures of humanity and work in any language contain reflect of a particular culture and this reflect is lose if done in another language and this is why it is important to keep work in original language.
If we suppress a language we eliminate a culture.
Learn a foreign language = Learn another culture that our and learn there are others ways to think.

Communicate with another person can be difficult if he / she doesn't know your language and you don't know his / her language.
You can have a language in common like English but you would have difficulty to communicate if this is not the mother tongue of this person or your because language are tied to a culture. Therefore you would do mistakes while communicating.
It does exist artificial languages to facilitate intercultural communications like Esperanto , Ido , IALA etc...

I agree totally with that assessment. Language is, as I stated before, is important to many people's pride in culture and pride as part of an ethnic group and their history. I looked up once out of curiosity, and found that there are over 500 different languages that are spoken in the United States, about 400 of those are Native American tribal languages. Personally, I would not have it any other way, as I find joy and fascination with such diversity. Among Hispanics of first and second generation immigrants, parents want their children and grandchildren to learn English even though they themselves may not know or speak little to no English, even though they may speak Spanish only or a mixture of both Spanish and English at home.