Mxsmanic wrote:

Padraig Breathnach writes:

No. All you need is people capable of understanding it, and a
reasonable repository of instances of authentic usage.

And how does that provide special insight into the human psyche?

A quick translation from An t-Oileánach, by Tomás O Criomhthain:
"I wrote in great detail about a lot of our doings so that there would
be a memory somewhere about them and I tried to give an account of the
mentality of the people around me so that it would be known after we
were gone, for the likes of us will never be again."

This was written about 80 years ago by an impoverished island dweller
off the west coast of Ireland who scratched a living from a small
holding and fishing from a currach, and who saw that his community was
on the road to final collapse. It was essential to his project that he
wrote in Gaelic (although he could write more easily in English)
because Gaelic was at the core of the mentality of the people that he
wished to record for posterity.

I'll take his view in preference to your Socratic questioning.

--
PB
The return address has been MUNGED
My travel writing: http://www.iol.ie/~draoi/