Do you think some countries like Sweden and Romania are too small to maintain their own languages?
No. I think that so long as they have a strong national identity, that they really feel that they know who they are – and are not – then a population of a million or two is enough to sustain a language. The problem comes when the speakers of a language have an inferiority complex – the feel they are inferior to speakers of another language. Then they will start using the “better” language instead of their own. A self-confident nation such as Sweden appears to be (I don’t know about Romania) can carry on with most of the population being bilingual: a home language and an international language, usually but not always English. Only when the nation loses confidence in itself will it lose its language.
