To what extent are endangered languages a priority in modern linguistics? Are graduate students encouraged to document moribund or endangered languages for their dissertations? How much encouragement is there to compile a dictionary of one? How many academic departments encourage applied linguistics in communities for the support of endangered languages? How many departments provide appropriate training for speakers of these languages who are most ideally suited to do the most needed work? Obviously we must do some serious rethinking of our priorities, lest linguistics go down in history as the only science that presided obliviously over the disappearance of 90% of the very field to which it is dedicated. (Michael Krauss, 1992:10)

If it wasn't for his work, we wouldn't have our language. He single-handed preserved our language … You can't put a price on something like that. (Jim Pepper Henry, a Kaw tribal member, quoted in The Wichita Eagle's obituary of Robert Rankin, 2 March 2014)

Johnnie Ray McCauley, who was Kaw, told The Eagle in 1996: “I just want to hear it again. There has been no one else to talk it with.” McCauley died in his home a few months after receiving the CDs. When he was found, he was wearing headphones and the CD recordings of his late aunt speaking the family's native Kaw Indian language were still playing, according to his obituary in The Eagle. (From The Wichita Eagle's obituary of Robert Rankin, who had recorded Mr. McCauley's aunt's stories along with other narratives on reel-to-reel tapes in the 1970s, digitized and converted the tapes to CDs in 1996, and presented the Kaw community with a set of the CDs that same year.)

I am not very willing that any language should be totally extinguished. The similitude and derivation of languages afford the most indubitable proof of the traduction of nations, and the genealogy of mankind. They add often physical certainty to historical evidence; and often supply the only evidence of ancient migrations, and of the revolutions of ages which left no written monuments behind them. (Samuel Johnson, 1766)

A knowledge of their several languages would be the most certain evidence of their derivation which could be produced. In fact, it is the best proof of the affinity of nations which ever can be referred to. … It is to be lamented, then, very much to be lamented, that we have suffered so many of the Indian tribes already to extinguish, without our having previously collected and deposited in the records of literature, the general rudiments at least of the languages they spoke. (Thomas Jefferson, 1782)

If English were the only language, we could learn a lot about the fundamental principles of grammar, but we could only guess at the nature of that which can vary, except to the extent that this is evident from the varieties of English itself. (Ken Hale, 1992:35)

Baagi Letsapa, 54 … is a leathery man who still remembers the teachings of his father. He knows that the boiled roots of the sage plant help ease indigestion, that papyrus makes the best sleeping mats and that the ukayi plant produces a poison that kills fish, but not people. This knowledge is disappearing as young people abandon the rivers, the canoes and the old ways. (Rachel L. Swarns, about a man of the Wayeyi people of Botswana, 2001)

Language is

our unique relationship to the Creator,

our attitudes, beliefs, values, and

fundamental notions of what is truth.

Our languages are the cornerstone of

who we are as a People.

Without our languages,

our cultures cannot survive. (Towards Linguistic Justice for First Nations, Principles for Revitalization of First Nations Languages, Canada, 1990)

When another nation comes

and destroys your language

they are sinning on more fronts

than they can ever imagine. (Pat Ingoldsby, 2005)

Many Arapaho see the loss of their language as a kind of spiritual test. Without it, the tribe's ceremonies can't be conducted correctly. “You lose the language, you lose the soul”. (Sergio Maldonaldo, director of Northern Arapaho tribal education, Wind River Reservation, Wyoming, 2009)

When you lose a language, you lose a culture, intellectual wealth, a work of art. It's like dropping a bomb on … the Louvre. (Ken Hale, quoted in his obituary, 1 November 2001)

[T]he ancestral language connects a people to its heritage in ways that there is simply no substitute for … There is something inexpressibly sad about watching the disappearance of a unique local language that will never again be heard flowing in its full magnificence from the tongue of a verbally gifted speaker. I conversed with a number of speakers of East Sutherland Gaelic who had just such exceptional verbal gifts. … The sadness lies in the realization that the great-grandchildren of those magnificent speakers will never have the chance to hear the like of what I heard. (Nancy Dorian, 1999)

The post-contact history of Martuthunira is one that has led to their almost complete extinction in little more than a hundred years. Their decline is part of a general pattern which has seen the people of the coastal Pilbara and Ashburton River districts almost completely wiped out while inland groups such as the Panyjima and Yindjibarndi continue to boast thriving communities. The demise of the coastal groups can be attributed both to introduced disease and, perhaps, to a general despair following the complete breakdown of social structure following European settlement. There were only three remaining speakers of Martuthunira [in 1981]…While this grammar of Martuthunira allows the interpretation of the literal meaning of narrative texts and, to a lesser extent, the texts of songs, a full understanding and evaluation will never be possible. Too much of the cultural context which gives them their deeper meaning has been lost. (Alan Dench, 1995)

About 97% of the world's people speak about 4% of the world's languages; and conversely, about 96% of the world's languages are spoken by about 3% of the world's people. (‘Language Vitality and Endangerment’, a report by the UNESCO Ad Hoc Expert Group on Endangered Languages, 2003, citing H. Russell Bernard, 1996:142)

The Setos are linguistically close to the southeastern Estonians … but are distinctly different in their customs, culture and Orthodox belief. In their territory, called Setomaa, the Russian language and culture had prevailed, with school education and administration in Russian, until 1920. Under the Tartu Peace Treaty (1920) the entire territory of the Setos became part of the Republic of Estonia. In the first years of independence, estonisation of Setos was initiated. … During the Soviet occupation the position of the Seto language weakened even more, particularly after the 1960s. This was caused by weakening the village community, campaigning against the Seto language at schools, establishment of Estonian-language kindergartens, fast expansion of media in the Estonian language … and out-migration of young people. (Estonian Bureau for Lesser-Used Languages, 2009)

‘Tip’ is ‘a gradual accretion of negative feeling toward the subordinate group and its language, often accompanied by legal as well as social pressure, until a critical moment arrives and the subordinate group appears abruptly to abandon its original mother tongue and switch over to exclusive use of the dominant language’.