http://www.theguardian.com/education/2001/mar/22/tefl3

In looking for something to post about ethnobotany or linguistic genocide, I came across this short and simple Guardian newspaper article by Tove Skuttnab-Kangas. To quote from the article:

 “threatened languages store the knowledge about how to maintain and use sustainably some of the most vulnerable and most biologically diverse environments in the world. It has taken centuries for people to learn about their environments and to name the complex ecological relationships that are decisive for maintenance of biodiversity. When indigenous peoples lose their languages, much of this knowledge also disappears: the dominant languages do not have the ethno-biological and ethno-medical vocabulary, and the stories will not be translated.”

Skuttnab-Kangas says that just as the loss of biodiversity is a threat to our survival, so is the loss of linguistic diversity—monocultures are vulnerable. The author claims that the biggest weapon we have against linguistic genocide is to enshrine rights to education in the mother tongue much more strongly throughout the world than is currently practiced, and also to raise awareness about the great risks of language loss.