[lotsofpulp]

Within the last 50 years, the language of the place where my grandparents and parents came from lost pretty much all of its economic significance, and that place has 100 million+ people. As the child of an immigrant in the US who was taught the alphabet and characters and raised completely in the US, I am more literate in the native language than the children who grew up there!

All of their parents sent them to English schools, and all business is done in English. You use the native language to talk to old or poor people, but nothing that can make you a living.

So in my experience, all that time I spent learning that native language more than what I needed to for casual conversation was a waste of time.

[yiyus]

An economic compensation is not the only reason to learn something.

Your comment is the less human thing I have read in a while, and I spend a huge amount of time reading generated code!

[lotsofpulp]

I don't see what's "human" or not about the different rate of return of different languages. If it tickles your fancy, go for it. But language is a tool, one that is almost useless if you have no one to use it with. So I have a tool which I basically can't use anymore.

I'm not blaming my elders or anything, I'm sure they were most well intentioned and they don't know the future, but I think my time could have been better spent. And I know there's many things I've wasted my time on, but I am simply stating my belief the future utility of some languages is not worth the cost of keeping them alive.

[yiyus]

What is not human is measuring the "rate of return" of what you learn exclusively in economic terms. Culture is a thing, although not always a very profitable one. There are people (particulars, governments, and even the UN) spending money to conserve languages. Also, I find quite extreme that you consider being able to talk with old and poor people a "waste of time", just because it won't help you to make a living.

A language is a tool, but it is also much more. In particular, it is much more than a tool to make money.

I don't know you, maybe you are a wonderful person. Maybe you could have done better things with your time than learning that language (I do not know how much time you invested or your possibilities to use it), but reading your comment made me feel bad.

[lotsofpulp]

>Also, I find quite extreme that you consider being able to talk with old and poor people a "waste of time", just because it won't help you to make a living.

I didn't mean to imply that language is only worthwhile if you make money from it. But time is a finite resource, and unless you really like learning different alphabets or something, there is no utility gained for 99.9% of people in learning one that no one else is going to use.

Learning how to speak a language is orders less time intensive than a reading and writing an alphabet. I'm glad I speak it fluently, and can converse with elders and poor people. But reading and writing it will never come into use for me.