Encyclopedia of the World's Endangered Languages

Death awaits us all. Only its prelude need concern us. Nations, too, cannot assume immortality, witness the current anguished preoccupation with falling natality in Berlin, Caedydd, Dublin and Tallinn. Nor are languages eternal, though some may be suffered to linger on. Aspiring to higher education, my generation in Wales was dragooned into choosing between our living language and a “dead language” used as a filter by Oxford and Cambridge universities: Latin.

Language death can be traumatic. In his challenging novel of alternative Cymric (Welsh) futures, Wythnos yng Nghymru Fydd (A Week in Future Wales) (1957), Islwyn Ffowc Elis...