It is not extremely rare, but one of our four national languages is spoken by a minority (now around 0.9% of Switzerland according to Wikipedia) and honestly I never knew all that much about that language, even considered it simply a strange dialect when I was younger. I am speaking of Romansh.
There are lots and lots of languages lost each day, some too complex for people to teach, some just die out with the people, but most are just forgotten or people don't care about.
interesting analogy about languages and evolution, they even cros-breed occasionally
I don't see this as a big problem, cultures die with their wielders, languages too. Still it's wise to attempt to preserve a languale like they try to do.
The ethnic Greeks left in Turkey from the population exchanges of the 1920s speak a very old version of Greek, more similar to ancient Greek than Koine Greek. A few thousand still speak it. It's not dying out quite yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was gone within my lifetime.
Rare languages will always die. I feel sorry for the people who have nobody to speak their language with, that's all. It's kind of obvious, globalism leads to a necessity to communicate, and the people with the bigger cards will communicate in their language. It's a little sad, but what's someone to do? Most of these rare languages are barely spoken as it is, I'm content with all the languages I've encountered already.
