RE: Birdie Birds And Great Tits

I think there never was a proper education in Saami

This is actually so sad. Afrikaans is a relatively young language (how we speak it today, something like 100 years old). And it is slowly dying according to one idea about the survival of languages: education. As you mentioned, without education in a language, it will be difficult for that language to survive. Afrikaans is in some sense banished from tertiary education (except for small portions in universities). This is affecting secondary education as more and more Afrikaans speaking secondary students are opting for English due to University (i.e., tertiary education) being almost exclusively English. (We find it more and more that if we meet up "academically" pure Afrikaans speakers will talk to each other in English even though both speakers are second language English speakers.) There are obviously other factors as well, but education and language goes hand in hand I would argue.

different languages and different people are the richness of life

Oh yes! I cannot agree more. Even though we humans are very similar in most regards, culture and language give life so much more color. It is wonderful to experiences different cultures in terms of how they conceptualize the world but also in terms of food, etc. Losing even only one language is an irrevocable and utterly sad tragedy.

"Here's to dying!"

What a wonderful metaphor! Indeed, but let us hope the dying is of such character that it provides nutrients and not anti-nutrients so that we can flourish in our rich diversity and multiplicity.