Barth is not alone in thinking these things about language.

对这些语言问题的思考Barth并不是孤军奋斗。

耶鲁公开课 - 1945年后的美国小说课程节选

There are 300 million people in the U.S. This type of left-brained thinking is like saying, every person that is born speaks their own language, so everyone in the U.S. needs to learn 300 million languages to communicate with each other.

FORBES: A Liberal Arts Degree Is More Valuable Than Learning Any Trade

Parents stop using traditional tongues, thinking it will be better for their children to grow up using a dominant language (such as Swahili in East Africa) or a global one (such as English, Mandarin or Spanish).

ECONOMIST: Endangered languages