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The focus of this paper is the dichotomy of natural versus artificial languages, in the sense of naturally and historically developed languages versus artificially designed ones, and this is also the thread that links the two languages studied in this paper, Hebrew and Mandarin. To reclaim a dead language (Hebrew) and to create a national language (Mandarin) thanks to national language policies are valid goals, a priori. Even so, when some living languages have to die in the process, a deeper and different look becomes unavoidable. Our approach transcends the boundaries of the limited geographic areas studied in this paper, and could also be applied to other regions or territories where language revival or national language projects are being developed. If saving one language from extinction means consigning some others to it, linguists must consider carefully whether this is worth it.
