Dumb as a rock video for Friday night

There are approximately 296 spoken (or formerly spoken) indigenous languages north of Mexico, 269 of which are grouped into 29 families (the remaining 27 languages are either isolates or unclassified).

...the survival of Spanish-speaking communities in New Mexico and Louisiana, whose uninterrupted existence from colonial times to the present provides a fascinating example of persistence in the face of overwhelming demographic pressure from speakers of English.

This Pennsylvania Dutch culture was the first foreign language culture in America…Franklin complained that of the six printing presses in Philadelphia two were Dutch and two more were half Dutch. The Dutch were actually printing more and technically better books than literary Boston! Furthermore Franklin actually feared that the Dutch would “outnumber the English and make government and language precarious.” He also rather contradicted himself in his statement, for his criticisms that the Dutch were illiterate and backward did not seem to jibe with his statements about most of the printers being Dutch, and also his statement that they imported many books from Germany.

Louisiana French is a rich tapestry of the French that was spoken in the 18th Century by Acadian and French immigrants and the French and African Creoles who came to Louisiana from the West Indies… As with all living languages that continue to evolve, the accent and expressions of Louisiana French are unique, but the same thing can be said of the French spoken in places like Quebec, Dakar, and even Paris.

An interminable language…it is one of the oldest living languages of the earth, as some conjecture, and may well be classed among the best …the thought to displace it, or to doom it to oblivion by substituting the English language, ought not for a moment to be indulged… Long live the grand old, sonorous, poetical Hawaiian language.

So… what’s her problem?