2025-07-25
6 分钟Today I want to talk about value.
What is the value of a language?
Sometimes the question is which language should I learn next?
Which language is most worthwhile learning?
Which language is the most valuable or better than other languages or more beautiful than other languages?
So I want to talk about this because we do acquire a language.
So when we acquire something, we can think of it in sort of economic terms.
What gives a language value?
And I want to talk about this because I just came back from a trip to Northern Europe,
specifically Ireland, Scotland, and briefly in Iceland.
And there I was able to look at what has happened to some of those languages.
So first of all, even in Iceland,
where they speak a form of a Scandinavian language,
which is quite remote from other Scandinavian languages,
and there was some concern expressed about whether the younger generation will continue to speak Icelandic or whether there's a growth in the use of English.
Certainly when I was in Ireland, it's evident that in a couple of hundred years,
the number of speakers of Irish Gaelic has declined significantly to where it's almost a curiosity right now.
They're trying to revive it.
We see Gaelic signs everywhere, but I never heard anyone speaking Gaelic.
Scotland even more so.