[lsy]

One way of answering this question would be to consider why, for example, Native American children were punished at boarding schools for speaking their language instead of English, why US colonial rule of Hawai'i included bans on Hawai'ian language usage, why Britain published missives against the Welsh language, or why nationalists in Taiwan or communists in China have worked to suppress languages like Taiwanese or Cantonese in favor of Mandarin. Languages are often considered delimiting factors for whether a group should be considered autonomous, a marker of shared ethnic heritage, and as a bulwark against cultural assimilation. Because they are part of a community's history, the eradication or revitalization of a language is often linked to the eradication or revitalization of that group of people as a cultural and political entity, as in Welsh revitalization efforts or protests to retain Cantonese broadcasts. So there is a connection to whether a group can be considered as a distinct culture, with its own distinct political rights, that goes beyond the utilitarian aspect of language as a means of simply transmitting information.