Should minority languages be saved from extinction?

Yes and no. I was watching an X-Files episode where the two main characters investigate a case on a Native American reservation. The fact that one of the Native American men speaks his native tongue is helpful in the case of this show, but it sometimes makes communication difficult. There's always the problem of having a translator, and the issue that not everything can be translated literally. So I think minority languages should be saved for the sake of having cultural integrity and history, but for those purposes only. I think it tends to complicate things when there's not a simple, guided language to converse in. Latin, for example, is now a dead language, though quite preserved, but it was never a minority language. I think an important part of culture and beliefs is language, so even if people no longer speak a minority language, I think it's nice to know at one point they did, and for them to appreciate this without using it.

Is the ability to learn language innate or learned?

I saw a Geico ad the other day, one of the ones with the cavemen, and it got me thinking how humans came up with language. Were we born with a way to communicate? Well sure, we have vocal chords and such, but don't animals have those too? So maybe animals are born with the ability to communicate too, like the songs whales sing to each other, or the noises dolphins make. I think with this new view that the ability to learn language is innate, but has evolved over time. We weren't born speaking English or Spanish, but our brains evolved and the tool of communication became innate.