On language: if you could ger all of your ancestors lined up for 1,000 years and you spoke to your parents and they to theirs etc each generation could converse with ease yet if you could go back the 1,000 years you’d have great difficulty in understanding a few words and their meaning may well have changed.
I studied early English at Uni. and it was a foreign language.

I wonder, by what marvellous process Indigenous languages have remained so pure?

Old English as spoken by the Anglo-Saxons sounds like Modern English spoken by a drunken Scotsman.

Languages & dialects must be kept going but we also need one World language that keeps evolving with new times & technology.
English has become the World language & it will include more & more words from other languages as time goes on !
The less obstacles to communication the better societies will turn out !

Indyvidual,
If you could magically create a one world language tomorrow and get rid of the rest, twenty years later there’d be a dozen new languages.
My grandsons already speak a variation of English that I sometimes find hard to follow.

Foxy,

Have you learnt an indigenous language?

On the South Island in New Zealand, we have quite a few Māori working with us and very few of them are fluent in Māori.

Of the non-Māori kiwis, most of them know a few words and phrases but could not string a full sentence together.

I don't see Maori surviving this century.

SM,

Not sure who these Māori people of the South Island of Aotearoa you are referring to, a new mysterious race with a strange language, and an even stranger alphabet, I assume they are only known to you. Maybe your painful GOUT is still causing you grief, as you recommended to yourself, cut down on the sauce!

"I don't see Maori surviving this century."

My wife laughed at that one, she tells me her people, her language, and her culture has never been stronger amongst both young and old since the Pakeha first invaded about 220 years ago. In the Bay Of Islands, where she is from, and the Maori population is the largest per capita, larger than in the Waikato, her iwi Nagapuhi accounts for about 140,000 in a World population of over 1,000,000 Maori, both language and culture remain vibrant. The over 700 marae which are the centres for Maori culture and physical practice of traditions are well patronised and in constant use, unlike Christian churches which are closing at an alarming rate due to lack of viability.

SM, check out the new muti-million dollar marae being built in Sydney Australia by Maori people, with their own money. It includes a cultural centre for Maori, and all their indigenous and other brothers and sisters of the world to freely use and enjoy.

How do you celebrate your culture? Macca's and a box on your own on a Saturday night, I suspect.