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Languages: Why we must save dying tongues (2014)

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Re: Languages: Why we must save dying tongues (2014)

#61

Post by ak4g »

thesoonerdev wrote: post #55
riffraff wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> all accents are all a product of geography not necessarily, there is often a clear split between social classes of groups of people (i.e. consider the association of "cockney" with working class, or the discussion around "ebonics" for african-american-english) And there are cases where specific communities evolve their own sub-languages (e.g. cants and argots). There is surely less separation now then there once wa…

Does it mean, then, that as the people who are anti-immigration such as Donald Trump get elected and geographic mobility (potentially) decreases, we can work our way backwards and say that these languages are less likely to die? In other words, does the trend towards anti-globalization lead to the unexpected side effect that some languages may actually take longer to die?

Yes, but it would hardly be unexpected, and though this gets into iffy and boring questions around definitions, I don't think it's a side-effect either.

Re: Languages: Why we must save dying tongues (2014)

#62

Post by DonaldFisk »

ggreer wrote: post #5

It's not a well-liked view, but I'm very glad that humanity is on the path to speaking only a few languages (or perhaps just one). If you disagree, consider this thought experiment: Imagine if the entire world spoke a single language. Would we ever want to invent new languages, making mutual communication harder? It would be silly. I do feel for the speakers of these dying tongues, but in the long run, this is a good…

If we all started to speak the same language, it would make most of the world's novels, short stories, poetry, song lyrics, and movie dialogue inaccessible, and different ways of looking at the world would be lost. And which language should be chosen? English, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, Esperanto, or something else?

Ask bilingual speakers if they'd prefer just to speak one language and to forget the other one. Knowing two languages gives you access to two cultures, even if one is dying or dead.

Re: Languages: Why we must save dying tongues (2014)

#63

Post by panic »

jfaucett wrote: post #22

As much as I feel sad about losing so many amazing languages, these arguments are weak emotional appeals at best. The only legitimate argument you can make for keeping minority languages around is to basically reframe the context and say your goal as a society is to promote cultural and linguistic diversity because society needs it more than it does a highly effecient raw information processing system. As a programme…

What is "efficiency" in the context of an entire society? What are we working toward? What will we do when we get there?

Re: Languages: Why we must save dying tongues (2014)

#64

Post by sargun »

ggreer wrote: post #5

It's not a well-liked view, but I'm very glad that humanity is on the path to speaking only a few languages (or perhaps just one). If you disagree, consider this thought experiment: Imagine if the entire world spoke a single language. Would we ever want to invent new languages, making mutual communication harder? It would be silly. I do feel for the speakers of these dying tongues, but in the long run, this is a good…

I believe that this is one of the best things that TV has given us - the homogenization, and adoption of the English language. It eases communication and trade across cultures.

It also makes it cheaper to recruit people from all around the world with a given skill. Right now, there's a shortage in skilled welders. There's a massive number of skilled welders in Asia that make bit less money than the welders here do. Why can't we bring them across -- cost of certification? No. It's the language. Language enables globalization.

I'm sure there are still advantages to being bilingual that exist as well, but inventing, or adopting obscure languages to become one's mother tongue only seems counterproductive to me in the long run.

Re: Languages: Why we must save dying tongues (2014)

#65

Post by erehweb »

ggreer wrote: post #5

It's not a well-liked view, but I'm very glad that humanity is on the path to speaking only a few languages (or perhaps just one). If you disagree, consider this thought experiment: Imagine if the entire world spoke a single language. Would we ever want to invent new languages, making mutual communication harder? It would be silly. I do feel for the speakers of these dying tongues, but in the long run, this is a good…

We actually do want to invent new languages now - consider Game of Thrones, Star Trek, LOTR etc. In a monolingual world, would any of these have real adherents? Maybe. Even within English, various groups have invented sublanguages - Cockney rhyming slang or Polari https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polari

Re: Languages: Why we must save dying tongues (2014)

#66

Post by jeromegv »

miguelrochefort wrote: post #31
lugus35 wrote: post #2

French is one of those dying tongues. In France we don't speak french anymore, we speak franglais, a mix of french and english words.

Quebec is trying to save French through some crazy laws: - You can't have a company whose name isn't French. - The company I work for had to replace all keyboards by French keyboards, had to switch to an HR software available in French, had to switch all OSes to French, had to put French stickers on the microwave oven, etc. - I can't send my kid to an English school if I haven't been to one myself.

- You can't have a company whose name isn't French. That's much more nuanced than that. See article: http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/quebec-cracks-down-...

- The company I work for had to replace all keyboards by French keyboards, had to switch to an HR software available in French, had to switch all OSes to French, had to put French stickers on the microwave oven, etc.

It's about having the language of the work environment in French. If the company decided to switch the keyboard to French and change your microwave in French, that is just a company policy, not a government regulation. The point of having the HR software in French is to allow someone that only speak French to work in HR in the company. Surely you can still use the software in English if you want to, but at least it's available in French.

Re: Languages: Why we must save dying tongues (2014)

#67

Post by wolfgke »

smsm42 wrote: post #44
Kenji wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am willing to give up my language in favour of a world language - in fact, I have already done that. I think in English. I write all my poetry, stories and dreams in English, I only communicate in that language unless it's with family or coworkers. I pretty much gave up on my native language. I feel like English is superior in many ways because it has words that my language does not, which forces me to describe awk…

German, however, has schadenfreude, gestalt, eigenvalue, angst, weltschmerz and poltergeist ;)

The most important feature of German that I strongly miss in English (and probably other languages, too) is the easiness that one can make new words (in particular nouns) by juxtaposition (and indeed, importantly, you can often rely on the fact that more complicated words are constructed this way). I really wish a lot more English words were built by juxtaposition from more simple concepts instead of being own words that one has to learn without (easily) being able to understand the "atoms" that the word is built of.

Some of smsm42's example do have this property:

"Eigenwert" (eigenvalue): eigen (of (it)self), Wert (value)

"Weltschmerz": Welt (world), Schmerz (pain)

"Poltergeist": poltern (to rumble), Geist (ghost)

Re: Languages: Why we must save dying tongues (2014)

#68

Post by DonaldFisk »

Chris2048 wrote: post #23
mablap wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you willing to stop speaking, reading, thinking, writing in English and use Mandarin? And what about the fact that some concepts and words are enunciated more succintly or clearly in different languages? I mean, you have the perfect example in front of you: why are there so many programming languages? Could it be that some language constructs are more difficult in one language vs the other? Why invent new program…

> Why invent new programming languages when you've got C? The practicalities of PLs aren't at all like spoken natural languages. For one thing, all computers can run any PL with little effort. Secondly: > Are you willing to stop speaking, reading, thinking, writing in English and use Mandarin? What the OP thinks is irrelevant, it's whether this would be desirable or not. It would also not be a "do this now" thing and…

> The practicalities of PLs aren't at all like spoken natural languages. For one thing, all computers can run any PL with little effort.

But not with equal effort. Machines have been developed to run specific languages (Burroughs mainframes - Algol 60; Lisp Machines - Lisp), and languages have been developed to run on specific machines (C - PDP-11).

Re: Languages: Why we must save dying tongues (2014)

#69

Post by eropple »

chousuke wrote: post #16
ggreer wrote: post #5

It's not a well-liked view, but I'm very glad that humanity is on the path to speaking only a few languages (or perhaps just one). If you disagree, consider this thought experiment: Imagine if the entire world spoke a single language. Would we ever want to invent new languages, making mutual communication harder? It would be silly. I do feel for the speakers of these dying tongues, but in the long run, this is a good…

From an utilitarian viewpoint, sharing a single, global language is probably useful. but I feel that such a world would likely also suffer from less variety in culture and viewpoints. Languages tend to accommodate the way of thinking prevalent in the cultures that speak it, and vice versa the language also shapes the speakers. To learn another language as a non-native speaker, especially one that is sufficiently diff…

This post is a good one, and that utilitarian idea that unilingualism is good because you can hire people is a claim borne of the kind of short-sighted technocracy that bedevils tech and tech culture. In the appendices of 1984, Orwell was speaking of conscious linguistic malformation to make it difficult to communicate concepts that the manipulators of Newspeak (née English) wished to stamp out. It's not better when you do it because somebody sticks HBO on your television.

People here venerate Paul Graham's Blub Paradox article--I wonder how many stopped to think about the possibility that we're speaking Blub, and the attempt of a unilingual world is incomprehensibly more problematic than that of computer programming languages. From the root comment of this chain:

> Do you feel stunted or unsatisfied because your ancestors didn't pass their native tongues down to you? I don't.

How would you fucking know?

Technocracy in action: we can't think of a black swan, so black swans can't exist.

Re: Languages: Why we must save dying tongues (2014)

#70

Post by DonaldFisk »

wolfgke wrote: post #67
smsm42 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

German, however, has schadenfreude, gestalt, eigenvalue, angst, weltschmerz and poltergeist ;)

The most important feature of German that I strongly miss in English (and probably other languages, too) is the easiness that one can make new words (in particular nouns) by juxtaposition (and indeed, importantly, you can often rely on the fact that more complicated words are constructed this way). I really wish a lot more English words were built by juxtaposition from more simple concepts instead of being own words…

Mandarin Chinese does much the same as German.

English prefers to borrow words from other languages. Curiously, it has borrowed hardly any words from Mandarin Chinese.

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