Languages not acting as language of science, of international communication, of higher literature are inherently inferior and therefore could not be used in these ways. An example of this opinion can be seen in New Zealand where 95 percent of the population speaks English and only 5 percent speaks Maori. Although 12 percent of the New Zealand population identifies themselves as Maori, only 5 percent of them speaks the Maori language. Because of this, the language use is increasingly restricted and sometimes only used at formal institutionalized events. But New Zealand is very proud of their Maori community, so over the past twenty years a number of initiatives were set up to reverse the trend. The Maori language became an official language of New Zealand, it is now used in radio and television broadcasting and even a subject taught in school and even at one university. This proves that a minority language, with a little help, can be used in more ways. Even in the first century BC, this idea of a ‘language just not being good enough’ already existed. The Roman orator Cicero, composed his philosophical work in Latin. Both to make his work available to a Latin-speaking audience and to show that it could be done. People in his days were sceptical of the possibility that Latin was able to express the ideas and thoughts of the Greek. To them Latin was just not good enough. But now Latin is the language of scholarship, science, international diplomacy and literature (Bauer & Trudgill, 1998).
               But why are some languages not good enough? There are three arguments for this notion:
1. In the south-east of Switzerland some people speak Romansh. According to Germany the language is not good enough to be used in technical areas because German can construct clearly defined single words for technical ideas, whereas Romansh can’t. Which is nonsense because Romansh is structured in the same way as French or Italian, and these language function perfectly in technical areas.
2. Languages differ in the way they work structurally and in the extent in which they are able to express logical connections between words and ideas. And some languages are just not good enough because they are ugly, rude or barbaric.
3. Languages are not good enough because you can’t discuss nuclear physics in it. However, this really depends on the history of the language. For example, there has been no occasion or need to discuss nuclear physics in Maori. But when English was created, the Old English, there weren’t computers. So computers couldn’t be discussed in Old English. But English has changed over time and in Modern English we can discuss computers. English has developed the resources necessary to discuss topics like computers or other topics that were simply unknown in earlier times
(Bauer & Trudgill, 1998). .
               And that is exactly what minority languages like Maori and Romansh should do; create new vocabulary from existing resources within their own language to be able to talk about modern things like computers, law, science, and nuclear physics. Of course these language are very unlikely to ever become international languages of science or diplomacy. But what if history has been different? Than we would perhaps be writing about English being ‘just not good enough’
(Bauer & Trudgill, 1998).