As for me, I’ve always been a sucker for learning a new language.   (I’ve even written a couple.)   In addition to the mainstream languages like Perl, dot-net, Java, PHP and so on-and-on-and-on, there are lots of others:   Common LISP, Prolog, ”R,” just to name three off the top.   Now, some of these (like Haskell) are things that wouldn’t make my socks roll up and down if I ever had to actually use them to earn my loaf of bread, but the exercise of learning a language IMHO is always very educational.   A programming language (system) is someone’s embodiment of an idea of a tool to solve a particular problem or to do a particular task, and often an entire library of contributed software (e.g. CPAN) grows up around it.

Fair warning, though ... this learn-a-language thing ... it’s addictive.   I find it genuinely fun.

As far as “will this language survive?” ... never worry about that.   The software that is developed in a language is far more valuable than the language it’s written in, and conversion of a system from one language to another simply isn’t done.   Once a programming language has proven its worth to enough engineers, it’s here to stay.   Just don’t rest on your language laurels ... always notice what’s coming down the pike.