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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)

#81

Post by coldtea »

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 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.

We do something similar to that already. Kids make up their own lingo when playing, subgroups invent new slangs within a single language, areas make their own dialect, we invent new cultural languages (e.g. music genres) that differentiate us from others, we invent new computer languages despite having existing ones, etc. Heck, even English got developed while other languages already existed.

But that's a question for an alternative reality. It doesn't answer whether it would be better to remove historical languages, and adopt a single (existing or new) one. What I mean is that what would be the best approach in a world that spoke a single language does not really enlighten us about a world that already has many. The world that "spoke a single language" wouldn't have existing living cultures in different languages like us to remove, and thus they'd have nothing to fear of losing.

Besides, languages encode ways of thinking and the culture/history etc of its generations speakers, something that will be lost in a monoculture. Single language = single universal culture = same shit all over the world, no diversity.

And if you think you're still getting diversity within a single country (e.g. because you have stuff ranging from Metallica to the Residents and from Hank Williams and Beyonce to Philip Glass and John Zorn) then you really don't know what actual cultural diversity is.

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

#82

Post by gkya »

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…

> Ideally, linguists and historians would document these languages and their cultures, then let them quietly fade. Teaching them to new generations is not only a futile effort, it's less beneficial on net.

I agree to this, and only this, from your comment. There's a lot of romanticism in reviving dead or dying languages that recalls a likeness to the Human Zoo.

But on the other hand, languages and dialects are very tied to the political spheres, which are always on the change, and the languages change with them. Dialects form themselves everywhere: even each household has it's own tiny dialect where some phrases make sense only therewithin. And for language in the modern sense is basically a partially constructed dialect based on a dialect spoken by the ruling class of a dialect continuum, and as dialects and politics are ever-changing animals, languages will always change. While some dialects become closer to a given language, others diverge, or even emerge.

And for lingua francas, they change too. It is possible that English will let it's status go to some other language in the coming centuries, just like Latin, French, Aramhaic, etc. did in the past.

> And most people don't realize how great a cost we pay for having so many languages.

Well, we can't ask people to let go of their identities because we'd rather not do internationalisation.

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

#83

Post by PeCaN »

Paul_S wrote: post #36

I'm not advocating one global language and I think everyone should learn at least one language other than English but let's let the dying languages die. Natural selection is doing a good job. The good ones will survive.

The problem with natural selection as pertaining to language is that the language may be great but die because the culture dies off or shrinks or gets assimilated. For example, I don't consider Spanish an efficient or well-designed language in the slightest, but it's very widely spoken because the Spanish are good at conquest. Ainu is very fascinating and possibly more efficient (in terms of syllables per second over syllables per bit of information). The Ainu didn't have much interest in expansion and got more or less assimilated by Japan. Doesn't mean the language got selected against, the _culture_ got selected against.

While language may have an effect on a culture's success, I suspect a culture has much more impact on a language's success. Natural selection is a terrible metric of “good ones” in that case.

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

#84

Post by coldtea »

wvenable wrote: post #40
freyfogle wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, of course we would invent new languages. We do this continually. In any big language there are many different dialects. This is a way to signal group identity. Over time they become new languages. Latin becomes French, Spanish, Romanian, etc. If you disagree why do you not speak your English with a (choose those that don't apply:) English / southern / Indian / Scottish / Irish / South African / Jamaican / New En…

This is still somewhat historical. Latin becoming French, Spanish, Romanian, and all accents are all a product of geography. France, Spain, Romania, etc. It's not group entity, it's location identity. But the generations aren't separated by geography anymore. Well there may well be intellectual advantages for multilingualism, different unilingualism typically just leads to conflict.

>But the generations aren't separated by geography anymore.

They are. There's immigration, but that's just a tiny fraction of what goes on. We don't move randomly around the world. Even the immigrants come to a place to settle down and start a family and be integrated eventually.

And different countries are also separated by different outlooks on the world, ideas, ways to each. Which is a good thing (and orthogonal to war etc which historically its more about interests -- war can be just as brutal between brothers and similarly thinking people, as civil wars have told us).

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

#85

Post by PeCaN »

Kenji wrote: post #9

If computer scientists made similar emotional arguments: Save EBCDIC because diversity. No. Full stop. It's the adherents' of these cultures (speakers' of these languages) duty to compile and/or translate their cultural insights and knowledge. If they fail to do that - good bye, it probably wasn't that important, otherwise the culture or language would have been dominant.

For the record, every IBM iSeries uses EBCDIC and those aren't going away any time soon (actually, the OS on those is very advanced and amazing, minus the EBCDIC part).

Also, discarding intellectual curiosity for strict utilitarianism is awfully short-sighted.

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

#86

Post by gkya »

Paul_S wrote: post #36

I'm not advocating one global language and I think everyone should learn at least one language other than English but let's let the dying languages die. Natural selection is doing a good job. The good ones will survive.

> The good ones will survive.

FTFY: the ones with more speakers and more political ties attached.

It's hard to say that a language is better than another one, it's highly subjective. But languages die not because they're worse, but because speaking them is a burden if you are: killed for speaking them, excluded for speaking them, there's no one to speak in the language with, you can't use it to shop or at the doctor's, etc.

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

#87

Post by coldtea »

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.

And it might mean some people get the chance to improve their own countries too, instead of being forced to immigrate (by globalization pressures) and try their luck on another.

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

#88

Post by coldtea »

eropple wrote: post #71
erehweb wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The idea of "foreignness" implicitly carries with it the notion of approaching ideas and the universe in which we live in a way that isn't the same as ours. So we invent new languages to represent that. Almost as if that's the point, yeah?

Same as the idea of personal or group identity.

People like to be different -- either themselves to others, or their groups to other groups (because they also like to belong. Belonging and being different at the same times translates to groups and subgroups).

And they show that in many ways, language is but one. From clothing to consumption, tons of other things are used to that effect.

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

#89

Post by gkya »

beloch wrote: post #72

"What’s more, languages are conduits of human heritage. Writing is a relatively recent development in our history (written systems currently exist for only about one-third of the world’s languages), so language itself is often the only way to convey a community’s songs, stories and poems. The Iliad was an oral story before it was written, as was The Odyssey. “How many other traditions are out there in the world that…

Off-topic: Why are code blocks are used for quotes by many people here? They just scroll horizontally forever and are a burden to read.

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

#90

Post by douche »

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 for no other reason, I would be psyched to see a single language win out, especially if it were an alphabetic language that could easily be encoded in 8 bits. Fuck Unicode.
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