The American Prospect has a nice piece by E.J. Graff on efforts to be made to keep languages alive when ethnolinguistic communities are in diaspora. Graff discusses the Tibetan situation, and efforts to retain the Tibetan language by referencing the resuscitation of Hebrew, which "was essentially a language on ice, used primarily in religious services but not to communicate, rich with symbolism but lacking words for anything related to post-exile life—until early Zionists performed CPR and turned it into a living vehicle, actually spoken daily (usually very, very quickly and disputatiously) (#joking)."
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