Why are you learning that……..?????… is probably something that you hear a lot. Why not something you can actually use? Why do some people run triathalons, play baseball, go jogging? Do people ask them why? Maybe, but your answer is probably some version of theirs–it’s fun/it’s a challange/or that it was there and you just wanted to try.
So, if you are learning a minority language we already know that you are up for a challenge. If you were learning Spanish or Chinese you could probably just walk down the street and hear it. Or maybe you couldn’t–in fact, in some parts of the world those 2 languages could also be minority languages. Quechua, with X million native speakers, is a minority language because it is not the dominant language in any of the countries where it is spoken. Aine, with X hundred speakers is also a minority language (as well as being endangered). So it is not about the number of speakers, but about the relative number.
