Anyone have any idea why the 8 modern languages were chosen to represent the stones?



Yes I do. This wonderful monument results from thinking that took place in London in the late 1960's and early 1970's. The think tank that was tasked with this was an entirely volunteer group of some of the must intelligent people that could be mustered and their prognostications on the likely important languages was based on economic and population growth at the time. Germany was predicted to eventually fall apart and either Russian or English was predicted to become the dominant language of Europe. There was some mistaken views on the burgeoning of Africa, AIDS was not predicted and Swahili gain unnatural stature. Still all in all we did a pretty good job of it, I think.