Language is a cultural invention and tool in which the world’s separated populations suspend themselves each as a unique enterprise. Perhaps in the densely populated complex societies, the aggregation of multiple cultures in political space require stronger tools for accommodation and integration.
The subjects of language, language history, linguistics, etc. are immense, but where we have the tools for our own demise, nature demands we find a common enough cultural and social code to keep everyone — and their languages — in existence
There are presently about 7,000 living languages extant, but the actual number is less and we lose several annually to natural discarding (if not through cultural annihilation). It’s for that reason I’ve taken the tack that a People possessed of a language, practically by definition invented in the space, small or large, on which they have been marooned, need their land and may be “updated” to civil standards of a sort and otherwise left to evolve.
That’s my proposed modern ethic.
Where we witness barbarism, what we may perceive as an absence of conscience may be instead a different set of cultural rules (desperately in need of adjustment). When ISIS idiots mass rape Yazidi women, they do so with language that has pandered to them and given them permit for extraordinary cruelty. Of course, some ISIS members flee ISIS for such reasons: the behavior on exhibit goes against the grain of their humanity.
Within Islam, the same may be noted of Muslims victimized by the Taliban: the Army School in Peshawar represented a Muslim community defending and raising its children, and the “Talibandits” attack, which must have seemed a virtuous undertaking to themselves, proved only to further destroy their image while encouraging more of the Ummah to shun their presentation of what Muslims should be.
BackChannels produced a page pointing to linguist Daniel Everett some years back, and it might be useful for any just starting on their journey into philology.
A “zeitgeist” is an expression of language in its totality and care must be taken — artists and poets may consider their responsibilities to man and God — or man and nature if that better suits — before encouraging the worship of chaos and death.