Languages: Why we must save dying tongues (2014) • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by danieltillett » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 10:05 AM UTC

pvaldes wrote: post #178

danieltillett wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pick any scientific paper at random. No other language other than English has the terms and concepts required to write the paper - you can’t translate most scientific papers into another language since the complete set of terms and concepts don’t exist in any other languages. It is not that you can’t write scientific papers in other languages (many are written in other languages), just that we have settled on English…

Well, paraphrasing your post... Pick any scientific paper related with biodiversity at random. No other language other than latin (or maybe greek) has the terms and concepts required to write it - you can’t translate Oegopsida or Metasequoia glyptostroboides (Taxodiaceae: Conipherophytina) into english, or another language since the complete set of terms and concepts don’t exist in any other languages. It is not that…

You can't write a modern scientific paper in classical Greek or Latin these days as the vocabulary just doesn't exist in these languages. Sure scientific papers borrow terms from other languages, but today you can really only write most papers in English - the required terminology and concepts are missing from most languages. There really is a world of ideas only accessible in English.

As you rightly point out there is nothing about English that makes it suited for science inherently - it is just an accident of history. This does not change the fact that today the language of science is English and hence many scientific ideas are expressed exclusively in English.

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

#182

Post by douche » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 10:17 AM UTC

danieltillett wrote: post #156

mablap wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

most higher level scientific concepts can’t be expressed in any language other than English. Out of the total number of human concepts that have ever been communicated, the majority are only available to English speakers. Please provide examples to support your baseless claim.

Pick any scientific paper at random. No other language other than English has the terms and concepts required to write the paper - you can’t translate most scientific papers into another language since the complete set of terms and concepts don’t exist in any other languages. It is not that you can’t write scientific papers in other languages (many are written in other languages), just that we have settled on English…

At one point, German was the language of science, however.

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

#183

Post by philh » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 10:20 AM UTC

Razengan wrote: post #166

danieltillett wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not that you can’t in principle express any concept in any other language, just that in most cases the vocabulary doesn’t exist in that language. In Newton’s time it was not possible to write most scientific papers in English as English lacked the required terms and concepts (everyone wrote in Latin). For a whole series of historical reasons English has become the international language of science resulting in…

> just that in most cases the vocabulary doesn’t exist in that language. Again you keep insisting that certain vocabulary doesn't exist in other languages, right after I provided some examples of vocabulary that do/did not exist in English! If a language decides to incorporate, say, "science" into its vocabulary, does that make it any more limited than English when English itself took the word from French/Latin? The…

> Take "throwing star" versus "shuriken", or "raw seafood" against "sushi." Does English have words for those objects or concepts?

Um, yes. It has the words "shuriken" and "sushi". We didn't invent those words, but we found them useful, so we kept them.

Presumably, if the cultures that used lots of shuriken and ate lots of sushi had been English-speaking, they would still have invented words for them.

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

#184

Post by jugbandjames » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 10:25 AM UTC

khedoros wrote: post #145

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>you really don't know what actual cultural diversity is // So a young nomadic Mongolian girl and I (UK, middle-age, male, working in craft/retail) don't represent different cultures because we can both speak English? Go on, explain, clearly I don't understand. Didn't you already explain that there were vastly different subcultures within the population of English language speakers? Don't you think there's more to cu…

> So a young nomadic Mongolian girl and I (UK, middle-age, male, working in craft/retail) don't represent different cultures because we can both speak English? I think the person you responded to went too far in their argument. I would've said that speakers of the same language can have very different culture, but that (in your example) the English-speaking Mongolian girl wouldn't be part of the same culture that she…

>Language doesn't dictate patterns of thought, but it certainly shapes them.

What you're talking about is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, and it is not certain at all. It's highly contested. Language may have an effect on some cognitive processes (again, contested) but definitely not all.

However, language does reflect the cumulative experience of a culture, whether modern speakers are aware of that experience or not. Here's a good illustration: http://youtu.be/kIzFz9T5rhI

So language can reflect a culture, but it probably doesn't dictate it. In the case of the Mongolian girl, she's unlikely to be a nomad these days, and what separates an English speaking Mongolian from a non-English speaking one is usually wealth. So, someone from a wealthy country is probably more culturally similar to her than they might expect.

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

#185

Post by danieltillett » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 10:26 AM UTC

douche wrote: post #182

danieltillett wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pick any scientific paper at random. No other language other than English has the terms and concepts required to write the paper - you can’t translate most scientific papers into another language since the complete set of terms and concepts don’t exist in any other languages. It is not that you can’t write scientific papers in other languages (many are written in other languages), just that we have settled on English…

At one point, German was the language of science, however.

Yes it was in some fields and still is to a certain extent in organic chemistry. The only language today other than English where a reasonable amount of new scientific knowledge is published is Chinese, but even in China there is a strong desire to publish in English if you are a scientist.

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

#186

Post by circlefavshape » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 10:44 AM UTC

thret wrote: post #162

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A single language would never work anyway. It would inevitably split into dialects and regional/generational/racial slang, which would soon become incomprehensible to outsiders. English patois in some parts of the world makes no sense to British/American speakers, even though it reads and sounds more or less like standard English. You don't even have to travel to find the split happening. Just try listening to teenag…

This was readily apparent in The Wire. As a native English speaker from across the sea I could not understand the Baltimore street dialect.

I could, I just needed to turn on subtitles :)

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

#187

Post by iaskwhy » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 11:00 AM UTC

hvidgaard wrote: post #153

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 the entire world spoke English, Spanish, or Chinese, we still wouldn't be able to understand each other. I live in Denmark, less than 6 million people, and I can pick two guys, put them in a room, and they would not be able to understand one another. They live less than 300 miles from eachother.

You might be biased without knowing it because Danish is one of those languages with lots of dialects in such a small region. I only know this because my girlfriend used to live in Copenhagen and couldn't understand most people outside of the capital. Maybe most countries don't share so many dialects, I'm sure mine (Portugal) doesn't, it's pretty easy to understand most people here with the exception of the Azores Islands.

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

#188

Post by jugbandjames » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 11:04 AM UTC

ufmace wrote: post #17

mrob wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We probably would invent new languages, or at least new dialects, to signal group membership. If somebody has made the effort to learn the language then they're probably serious about being part of the group. As a practical example, consider the revival of the Hebrew language, which happened mostly as an expression of Jewish identity. Strengthening group identity is the main motivation for preserving rare languages.

That's an interesting take on it. I wonder if there's much history of groups starting out with common languages, then groups separating and the languages evolving separately, either intentionally to demonstrate group membership, or just due to lack of communication between groups, and continuing to differentiate until they're effectively different languages. I only speak English, but I've heard several different acce…

> I wonder if there's much history of groups starting out with common languages, then groups separating and the languages evolving separately, either intentionally to demonstrate group membership, or just due to lack of communication between groups, and continuing to differentiate until they're effectively different languages.

Thats basically what sociolinguists investigate. Here's an example of a study that kind of does that: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233713880_A_Quantit...

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

#189

Post by sanoli » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 11:08 AM UTC

danieltillett wrote: post #114

sanoli wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, you can express pretty much any concept from a foreign language in English, and vice-versa if the language is thorough enough. What you lose is the power and conciseness that comes from having a single word expressing a concept that would take 10 or 18 words to be correctly expressd in English. I have memorized a few interesting ones in some languages: 'Litost' (czech), 'Prozvonit' (czech also),'Tartle'(scottis…

English is very interesting in that if a word makes sense to use (rather than a phrase) then English will borrow that word without hesitation. Actually because the language of science and technology is English there are lots of concepts that can’t be expressed in any other language. Sure any emotion a human can feel can be expressed in any language, but most higher level scientific concepts can’t be expressed in any…

> Out of the total number of human concepts that have ever been communicated, the majority are only available to English speakers.

Wait, I'm not sure if I agree with the rest of your post, but this last sentence is surely an exaggeration, no? You mean over 50% of human concepts that were ever communicated are only available to english speakers?

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

#190

Post by bmrishabh » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 11:10 AM UTC

My immediate thought after reading this article was like there is nothing wrong or disadvantageous in having a single language all over the world. It would make communication easy and universal. But the point here, which the author stresses, is that every language has its own perspective of looking at an object, emotion, action etc. If we let a languages die then we are essentially losing this perspective. May be there is some language in this world which can express a particular emotion which other languages, for example English, cannot express no matter what. Won't humanity lose a lot in this scenario? And besides this I think that English is the so called universal language just because English speaking population conquered most of the world. It is not so that English is the easiest or most simple and complete in all aspects.

As a student of science I tend to believe in universality of language. It makes exchange of knowledge easy. But the points that I mentioned above are also important. According to me, letting a set of people try and revive the dying languages is worthy and helpful to human civilization.