Across the world, the trend seems to be for people to speak a local language, and a lingua franca. The former carries their cultural heritage and identity, the latter opens economic opportunities.

For a lot of people, investing in their local language is a luxury, if it comes at the expense of deeper engagement with the lingua franca. We see this decision being made across the world, as the population urbanizes and leaves their local culture behind. Few can afford not to.

In this case, it sounds like Elfdalian is up against both Swedish and English.

If people are capable of and willing to learn three or more languages to native fluency, then that is of course their prerogative. But at some point, I believe it becomes unethical to promote investment in a hyper-local language if the effect is to detract from the economic opportunities of lingua francas.