Quote:
unless, of course, there were only one or two people left.
smile

I particularly liked this part of the article:

"I would tend to think that arts play a rather limited role in the survival of a language. This applies, in particular, to painting, sculpture and architecture, which are particular types of communication, able to deliver messages by using other means than words. However, historically, many traces of extinct languages are transmitted to us by linguistic messages which accompany works of art."

Just yesterday visiting the really marvellous Cèzanne-Picasso-Mondriaan exhibition we agreed that one picture is a thousand words, (one word is not a thousand pictures) while a guide was pulling the words out one to tell a bus-group of visitors what they were meant to see.