Just to show that it's not just in the developing world where there is a debate about indigenous languages and the effects that their loss has on local cultures, this article from Daily Ireland focuses on what would be required to revive Irish.
The article commences by comparing Irish with Hebrew, the revival of which is seen by the author as a model for Irish to follow. The two prerequisites identified for Hebrew to survive were idealism and necessity, the former of which exists with regards to Irish, but the second of which doesn't, with almost everyone in the Republic speaking English. The article's author identifies his own requirements for Irish to succeed: learning the language, and using the language.
The key to making a language successful, and sustainable, is to create a demand for it. Obviously, the best way to do this is to make it the default language of a large number of the population, but this is difficult to achieve. The author suggests that the Irish government ought to set a target for a certain number of people to be speaking Irish within five years, but he doesn't indicate how that might happen, and he concedes that it's unlikely anyway.
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