When the children are not even motivated to learn X, the language will have become moribund. Because the comparative advantage of one medium over another is so contingent upon external circumstances, the abiding reasons why a language has value for its users must lie beyond its message-carrying utility. A language is not just a medium, a symbol-system or a code. It is also the repository of a cultural tradition, a way of living and of expressing which helps to confer a sense of identity upon its native-speakers. Some of this intrinsic value can rub off on to those who learn X as a later language - this is a premiss upon which education in the humanities is based.
People define themselves partly in relation to their culture.
It is not surprising that the Waimiri-Atroari tribe celebrates its own language and teaches the young people to prize it as a thing of value. A language is an intricate collectively produced artefact inherited from previous generations. Whichever language one absorbs as a child, the truth is that the language is a gift. Let us now turn to the impersonal and scientific reasons for preserving an endangered language based on its value as an object of study. Here we must distinguish between existing and living.