While many people imagine learning a new language to be a dull affair with dusty grammar books, endless vocabulary lists and rote learning, languages are actually more akin to living things than most people appreciate.
Languages develop and grow with time - and the English language is probably one of the best examples of this. Look back 20 years and we would never have used words like "blog" or "twitter" as we do today. In fact since Shakespeare's time over a million words have been added to the English language.
That's why learning a language requires constant effort - we will never know all there is to know about our mother tongue let alone a second or third language that we have come to master!
Sadly, by the same token languages also die out. There are many reasons why this is the case, some of which are politically, socially or ethically motivated. Regardless of the reason the death of a language represents the death of a cultural entity.
We talk of the world being like a global village, well the death of a language is like letting a historic building fall into decay and ruin. It might not seem important to some people but to linguists it's a tragedy.
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