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

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

#241

Post by sametmax » Tue, Jul 05, 2016, 11:28 AM UTC

biswaroop wrote: post #209

sametmax wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1. Yes, cultural diversity is good. But we have plenty of ways to have that without needing 1000 languages : - art; - food; - social constructs; - city organisations; - and slang if you really want your tongue to be part of it. We don't need to spend time and energy to save old ways of communication. Let's us it to make communication better now. What's more, anything that live eventually dies, which is something we…

I think you're confusing monolingualism with everyone having a lingua franca. Your argument sounds like "We should all just have one common language; therefore, we don't need others." Bilingualism has existed in countries for centuries without either language dying out. I'm all for everyone speaking English. I want people to know as many languages as possible. What I don't want is everyone speaking only English. It's…

You are the one introducing "monolingualism". In no way not saving dying languages will lead to it. Even if by some act of god suddenly everybody learned english and forgot their own language in a night, very soon you would see emerge variations, slangs, then dialects. Languages are like living creatures, they evolve.

My point is mereley "we got thousand of languages, it's ok to loose some of it, let's spend more energy on making sure we got at least one lingua franca".

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

#242

Post by kazinator » Tue, Jul 05, 2016, 6:22 PM UTC

mablap wrote: post #228

kazinator wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, it's fundamentally different for other reasons. For one thing, no two "installations" of a natural language are identical. The natural language learning process isn't like loading a program into a machine, but a "reverse engineering": forming a refined set of hypotheses about what the rules are, from examples. Thus after years of learning, still no two competent, even native speakers will agree about all the f…

You're right of course, and this is precisely why preserving languages is important. They are loaded with knowledge, and passing around this knowledge is time consuming, hard, or sometimes unfeasible if not enough speakers still live :)

Languages contain pseudo-knowledge consisting of a set of conventions that people made up. They have no external value.

I'm not comfortable with the idea that something which pops into my head today represents a burden for future generations to preserve, who will have perfectly good heads of their own into which similar stuff can pop just as well.

Linguists require specimens of languages to study so that we can understand language. But we have more than enough non-dying languages to keep linguists busy.

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

#243

Post by mablap » Tue, Jul 05, 2016, 6:28 PM UTC

danieltillett wrote: post #234

mablap wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am upset in the intellectual sense, not the physical. There is no discussion to be had. You are wrong. If you cannot accept the basic fact that any concept can be translated into any language (efficiency notwithstanding) then fine, just don't pretend you want to engage in "civilised discussion". Confrontation is not a personal attack. The arguments you gave (and still support) are evidence of someone who is either…

Yes I can read (and speak badly) a few languages (Spanish, French and a bit of Italian) and I have travelled widely - not that it is really relevant. I think you can’t accept that there are many concepts that can’t be expressed in any language other than English. I am a scientist by background, trained in multiple fields for over 20 years, and yet I only have an understanding of a tiny fraction of all the scientific…

    I think you can’t accept that there are many concepts that
    can’t be expressed in any language other than English.

I cannot accept such an absurdity, because it is false. I am also a scientist trained in theoretical physics and I have received my education in French, a colleague had his in Portuguese, another in Mandarin, yet another in French/Arabic and our professors and PIs had theirs in German, English, French, Spanish and Romanian (that I know of, could be more).

You are right that at conferences people speak English, and we speak English in group meetings for the simple reason that it's the common denominator. There is no other reason. We have scientific discussions in French and English, some have them in German or Arabic, it doesn't matter because they're all equally capable of describing scientific thought.

I think the point you're trying to make is that the scientific vocabulary in some languages, in some scientific fields, sometimes doesn't keep up with that of English. This I would concede to you. But usually, just like English does, the other languages simply borrow the new words (or craft the usually obvious equivalents using greek/latin or whatever). This has nothing to do with a language's inherent capacity of describing concepts, as you maintain. This argument is a much weaker form than that which you propose.

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

#244

Post by sp332 » Tue, Jul 05, 2016, 7:23 PM UTC

Chris2048 wrote: post #197

sp332 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The moral argument is simply one of valuing equality. You don't deserve to have your chosen language canonized, and I don't deserve to have mine relegated to a cultural dustbin.

Valuing equality is valuing equality, not pretending it has virtues that it doesn't. Trying to trick people into doing something by misrepresenting it as beneficial is a sure way to lose trust, and the moral argument (respecting autonomy). When did 'deserve' enter the argument? Do I deserve to have two arms and two legs?

Right, that's why I didn't do any of that.

What would a moral argument even be about if it's not about deserving things?

I don't know how many arms and legs you have now or how many you deserve, but it's unlikely that anyone else has a moral right to take any away from you.

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

#245

Post by Chris2048 » Tue, Jul 05, 2016, 9:38 PM UTC

sp332 wrote: post #244

Chris2048 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valuing equality is valuing equality, not pretending it has virtues that it doesn't. Trying to trick people into doing something by misrepresenting it as beneficial is a sure way to lose trust, and the moral argument (respecting autonomy). When did 'deserve' enter the argument? Do I deserve to have two arms and two legs?

Right, that's why I didn't do any of that. What would a moral argument even be about if it's not about deserving things? I don't know how many arms and legs you have now or how many you deserve, but it's unlikely that anyone else has a moral right to take any away from you.

A common language, and an individuals limbs, differ in this context..

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

#246

Post by gkya » Tue, Jul 05, 2016, 9:40 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #122

gkya wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

Why can't we ask people to give up their identity? Let's consider the possibility that arbitrary linguistic (and other tribal) divisions are harmful. Consider the possibility that giving the political sphere more levers to pull to manipulate us is not a good thing. In much the same way, consider the step backwards we've taken in messaging. We had a lingua franca - XMPP. We gave it up so that various powerful actors (…

> Why can't we ask people to give up their identity?

Because that's how they _be_. Even if we created a monotonous people without any identities, different persons with different abilities and interests will diverge from others and cluster with similar individuals, forming various intersecting groups, and lead to a complex system of group and personal identities. (edit, forgot: Such groups bring together diverging dialects, first diverging metaphors, then words, phrases, etc., so on maybe until mutual intelligibility is lost.)

Your XMPP analogy does not hold because XMPP was popular among some tech geeks whereas even my granny who does not understand the concept of video and blushes and hides when changing her clothes when the TV is on gets to use WhatsApp, with help from my mom who thinks her WhatsApp is locked because of the recent encryption thing they introduced and the yellow little message the app displays related thereto.

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

#247

Post by xchip » Tue, Jul 05, 2016, 11:43 PM UTC

Yet another super long article that could be summarized in a couple of lines.

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

#248

Post by Nadya » Tue, Jul 05, 2016, 11:56 PM UTC

khedoros wrote: post #218

thaumasiotes wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand what is so controversial about the idea that other places use the language slightly differently, and it can take some time to become accustomed to the differences. Nothing. What's controversial is equating "other places use the language slightly differently, and it can take some time to become accustomed to the differences" with "it takes a few weeks of practice to intelligibly [sic] understand s…

What I'm saying is that you took the strongest possible interpretation and knocked it down as a strawman. If there are several possible interpretations of someone's argument, and one of them is obviously flawed, then it's not very generous (or constructive, IMO) to attack the flawed interpretation.

You speak of the principle of charity [0]. Something that has long vanished on many internet forums, where people are quick to take the most absurd and least likely interpretation of a statement and argue against it. Especially when being pedantic about certain word phrasing or word choices (to which the OP would often respond with "You know what I meant.")

My best friend is Australian, the idioms are often nonsensical or require a bit of thinking due to being a variant of an idiom I'm familiar with. e.g "a roo loose in the top paddock"

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

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

#249

Post by drdeca » Wed, Jul 06, 2016, 4:18 AM UTC

danieltillett wrote: post #225

gumby wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you know of one? Of course, I use them all the time. I'll give you a couple of silly, yet profound examples. In German and Marathi there are different words for the droppings (crap) of different animals. In fact in German there's a book that teaches the kids different words. Unlike the highly developed squeamishness of the English language around body functions, you might use one of these words to describe somet…

All of these are examples of my claim which is that all concepts in other languages can be expressed in English. Sure you might have a specfic term for the droppings of cows in some language (we have the same thing in English not that it matters), but this concept can be translated into English. It might not be as poetic, or it might not have quite the same emotional association, but it is translatable. The concepts…

I don't get it; can't you just describe the technical things in the other languages?

Brainf* may be turing complete, but I would certainly prefer to use a more ordinary language.

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

#250

Post by danieltillett » Wed, Jul 06, 2016, 5:42 AM UTC

drdeca wrote: post #249

danieltillett wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of these are examples of my claim which is that all concepts in other languages can be expressed in English. Sure you might have a specfic term for the droppings of cows in some language (we have the same thing in English not that it matters), but this concept can be translated into English. It might not be as poetic, or it might not have quite the same emotional association, but it is translatable. The concepts…

I don't get it; can't you just describe the technical things in the other languages? Brainf * may be turing complete, but I would certainly prefer to use a more ordinary language.

Yes you can, but at the cutting edge of science this is a big job because of the amount of assumed knowledge and concepts you need to explain the new concept. To translate the new concept you need translate all supporting concepts as well to enable the person to understand the new concept.

In practice this requires translating a significant amount of all scientific knowledge from English into the target language (lets pick Swahili for example). Because this is such a huge job with little return, scientists just all work in one common language and for historical reasons this is English.

Of course further away from the cutting edge the easier it is to explain concepts in a non-English language which is why science can be taught to undergraduates in a language other than English. Once you are dealing with the primary literature this becomes very difficult.