Different languages have different nuances for things so there are ideas and ways of thinking that are lost when a language dies, as you may have accidentally alluded to. I grew up in Colorado and my family normalized many terms like couloir or scree that got me in a bit of temporary trouble with an English instructor in Texas who thought I'd been fishing for exotic words to use in a paper. He was a great guy and accepted my explanation that these were words I used frequently while growing up: they are my language.