Economic success 'drives language extinction'

Let a thousand flowers wilt!

Consider this statement from the lead author:

"As economies develop, one language often comes to dominate a nation’s political and educational spheres. People are forced to adopt the dominant language or risked being left out in the cold – economically and politically."

Another way of putting that would be:

"People learn foreign languages so they can communicate with a greater number of people", which does not have quite the same potential for moral panic as the original.

The paper still appears to be embargoed, but the authors have not made much of a case for why linguistic diversity per se is important. Not nearly enough to support their moral claim that states should take efforts to encourage people to speak languages that they themselves have decided not to speak.