Why is learning, reading, and producing texts done in specific languages?

What is it about?

What explains the importance of English over large geographic spaces and what explains the relevance of Latin or Sanskrit over long stretches of time? The paper uses formal models to address these questions. Readers want to learn languages used in relevant texts. Producers of texts like to be read and hence they use languages with many readers. One of the questions is why producers of texts would ever choose an old language. The speakers of that language are long dead. Would it not be better to use a currently employed language instead, i.e., Italian rather than Latin, Hindi rather than Sanskrit? One answer to this question is this: Producers like to have many readers both during their lifetime and beyond. In particular, this holds for important political or religious documents. Now, if one uses Sanskrit, one may reach future readers who find learning Sanskrit attractive due to the large base of relevant texts accumulated over many centuries.

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Why is it important?

1. One needs to understand the importance of English nowadays (or of Chinese in the years to come. Similarly, one likes to understand what made Latin or Sanskrit so important for so long. 2. If one aims at pursuing a national language policy, one needs to know how translations might help or hinder a dominance of that language.