And the most vulnerable of those languages are always the ones that people simply don’t even notice to exist, because they aren’t associated with some independent government. Ask people about Polish, they’ll point to a country in a map; but if you ask them about Sorbian, they’ll simply say “there’s no Sorbia country”. Same deal if you ask them about Sardinian, Galician, Occitan, Low German varieties, etc.

It’s never caused solely by easier communication though; it has to do with the loss of the sense of identity between the speakers of those languages. Often forced - like a Franco or a Vargas telling you “use the country language or we’re going after you”, but sometimes through “softer” means (like turning a blind eye to linguistic prejudice).

Sorry for rambling about this. This topic is emotionally relevant for me.

Speaking of disappearing dialects, this reminds me of what’s currently and gradually happening with Portuguese.

Although both Brazil and Portugal speak Portuguese, the Brazilian Portuguese is way different from European Portuguese spoken by the latter country, in a similar fashion on how American English is somewhat different from British English (cab vs taxi, color vs colour, spoken “computeRR/wateRR” vs “computAH/watHAH” (here I’m exaggerating for illustration purposes), and so on). Portuguese examples include “moço” vs “gajo” (both are words for “young adult man”, respectively Portugal’s and Brazil’s ), “moça” vs “rapariga” (both words for “young adult woman”; the latter, the European Portuguese variation, while being a common word in Portugal, is often seen as a swearing by Brazilian Portuguese) and so on.

However, with the international popularization of Brazilian influencers (such as Lucas Neto), Portugal is complaining about their kids starting to sound and speak Brazilian Portuguese instead of European Portuguese. Seems like Portugal is facing a reshape of their own Portuguese variation due to Brazilian influence.

Brazil itself has many dialects and accents. South uses “bergamota” while southeast uses “tangerina” to refer to tangerine. Northeast uses "macaxeira " and southeast uses “mandioca” to refer to cassava. Minas Gerais uses “trem” and São Paulo uses “coisa” to refer to “thing” (e.g. “could you please reach me that thing over there?”, a “mineiro” (people from Minas Gerais) would speak “ocê pega esstrem fazenofavô?” as a vocalized shortening for “você pega esse trem fazendo o favor?” while the paulista (São Paulo) would say “cê poderia pegá pra mim aquela coisa ali?” as shortening for “você poderia pegar pra mim aquela coisa ali?”). As you can notice, Brazilian Portuguese itself is so broad and multifaceted across the country. Even the same state has its differences (e.g. the capital city of São Paulo says “sinal” while the interior of the state says “semáforo” for “traffic lights”; also, São Paulo says “lotação” while the interior says “circular” for “shuttle bus”).

Internationally, non-brazilians learning Brazilian Portuguese often tend to learn the Carioca (Rio de Janeiro) dialect, because there are many influencers and internationally famous Brazilian people that are from Rio (also, IIRC, both Brazilian Olympics and Brazilian World Cup happened in Rio).

There are other countries that speaks Portuguese as well, such as Moçambique (Mozambique) and Angola. Their Portuguese variation is slightly different from both the European and the Brazilian, but I guess the same Brazilian cultural influence is also happening with Mozambican and Angolan kids.

Language has always changed and evolved. It feels sad to lose something but other than documenting a “dead language” or dialect, not sure anything else can be done. You can force yourself to learn it if it is close to your language but then you also have to use it, or it will vanish again.

I remember reading about this Welsh PhD or Master student, I think it was for Chemistry. They were the first student ever to do the whole studying completely in Welsh. Including the thesis. They had to invent new words for scientific terms since they didn’t exist, I think they worked together with some association for Welsh language or something. But all of that will be gone if no one else is picking it up and in the sense of science it is also not a great decision because now you limit who can understand your work to the Welsh speaking community. Since you invented new words, maybe even those won’t get what you wrote.

My point of rambling, I am not sure you can do anything about changing languages. They are meant to be used or not. So while it feels like a sad thing to lose some languages, it should not because its just how languages work. Not sure that makes sense to say…