My Yiddish-speaking, immigrant grandparents did the same thing with my parents. As they wanted them to succeed and excel in the United States, they spoke to them in their non-native, flawed and accented English rather than teaching them their home language, Yiddish, the language of their culture. And forget about Russian, the language of my grandparents' schooling and that of the larger society. My point is that this rationale that lets obscure languages die also comes into play with more major languages too.

I had never seen the Omniglot site before. Very intersting thanks for the link.

In some cases this can work in reverse. The rigorous efforts by the British to anglicize South Africa led to an equally determined effort on the part of the Boers to retain their language and their identity. The net effect is that despite the fact that English is a major vehicle for international communication, Afrikaans continues to play an important role in South Africa. National pride plays a pivotal role. What a shame this doesn't apply to more minority languages.

PS I'm not sure whether you regard the disappearance of minority languages as a good thing or a bad thing, languagehat. The word "Cornish" springs to mind!!

*looks at his shoes, embarrassed*
I don't know why I was so hard on Cornish back then. It's like when I was a kid I used to try to kick pigeons. I've grown out of it now.
*foot twitches reminiscently*

Hooray for SOAS. I studied there, you know (back when I was doing something useful: Yoruba art), splendid place.
Perfectly normal kids from Liverpool, fluent in Arabic and Turkish, or Swedish PhD who just happened to be students of Korean linguistics. It was one of those, "what, you don't know Akkadian?" sorts of places, ab fab.

They are the "man for the job."

Kicking pigeons is nothing to be ashamed of.

Tell it to my wife, zizka.