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Only 4% of languages are used online

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Re: Only 4% of languages are used online

#21

Post by CaveTech »

melling wrote: post #14

I guess the title "Only 240 languages are used online" doesn't sound like a problem? That probably represents 5 or 6 of 7 billion people? I think the world should move towards even fewer languages than 240. However, it would be very sad if we didn't capture the complete grammar, vocabulary, etc. of those other languages before they die, along with lots of audio, to preserve them.

You're promoting both the killing and preserving of languages in the same paragraph, seems a bit misguided. Surely if they're worth documenting, then its worth trying to preserve their use as well.

Surely the world should be moving to a place where it doesn't matter what language the source is, at least online. A fully competent Google translate would seamlessly allow everyone to communicate without destroying culture in the process.

Re: Only 4% of languages are used online

#22

Post by nitrogen »

CaveTech wrote: post #21
melling wrote: post #14

I guess the title "Only 240 languages are used online" doesn't sound like a problem? That probably represents 5 or 6 of 7 billion people? I think the world should move towards even fewer languages than 240. However, it would be very sad if we didn't capture the complete grammar, vocabulary, etc. of those other languages before they die, along with lots of audio, to preserve them.

You're promoting both the killing and preserving of languages in the same paragraph, seems a bit misguided. Surely if they're worth documenting, then its worth trying to preserve their use as well. Surely the world should be moving to a place where it doesn't matter what language the source is, at least online. A fully competent Google translate would seamlessly allow everyone to communicate without destroying cultur…

Why promote the use of obsolete technology (including language), when it can be satisfactorily preserved in museums?

Re: Only 4% of languages are used online

#23

Post by PavlovsCat »

stan_rogers wrote: post #18
PavlovsCat wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Loss of a language also often means a slightly unique way of seeing the world and thinking/talking about it is lost. Many languages have cool or weird features [1], and I care about that even though I can't communicate with speakers of those languages and therefore will never know the difference. I don't care about the national heritage of others, it's theirs - I care about diversity for the sake of it existing, not…

That way lies the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, and madness. The value isn't about (slightly) unique ways of thinking/talking about things, but (slightly) unique ways of expressing those thoughts. That is, without at least a good description of as many of the various grammars that exist, we lose a lot of data that can help us to understand language as a whole. F'rinstance, if languages like Hixkaryana had died out before b…

> That way lies the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

What's wrong with it? I'm not familiar with it, but Wikipedia says "Current researchers such as Lera Boroditsky, John A. Lucy and Stephen C. Levinson believe that language influences thought, but in more limited ways than the broadest early claims".

> The value isn't about (slightly) unique ways of thinking/talking about things, but (slightly) unique ways of expressing those thoughts.

How is talking not expressing thoughts? Anyway.. Then you go on to make good points, but I don't see what makes you think they're in contradiction to anything I said. I was not talking about "the value", someone else claimed that everybody who cares about language diversity must be a nationalist, and that being a "globalist" means welcoming putting all eggs in one basket. I completely disagree with that, but for my nilly-willy reasons. If you have other reasons that's fine, they're good reasons, but to say that my view is vaguely wrong, because there lies madness for reasons you don't care to go into, well.

I personally do not care as much about what is accessible to "us" as about what is accessible to itself, wether I am aware of it or not. If there was a button to exterminate all parts of the universe we will never have access to and then forget that happened, I wouldn't press it, even if you bribed me, I hope. And again, remember this is in response to someone saying the only reason someone would care is X; I'm not saying my opinion is correct or perfect in any way, I'm just saying it's not X, cuz it's not :P

Re: Only 4% of languages are used online

#24

Post by melling »

CaveTech wrote: post #21
melling wrote: post #14

I guess the title "Only 240 languages are used online" doesn't sound like a problem? That probably represents 5 or 6 of 7 billion people? I think the world should move towards even fewer languages than 240. However, it would be very sad if we didn't capture the complete grammar, vocabulary, etc. of those other languages before they die, along with lots of audio, to preserve them.

You're promoting both the killing and preserving of languages in the same paragraph, seems a bit misguided. Surely if they're worth documenting, then its worth trying to preserve their use as well. Surely the world should be moving to a place where it doesn't matter what language the source is, at least online. A fully competent Google translate would seamlessly allow everyone to communicate without destroying cultur…

I think the majority of the 6000 languages are spoken by very few people. Look at the number of languages spoken in India, for example.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_...

Is there a benefit to having all those languages where less than 100,000 people speak the language?

Re: Only 4% of languages are used online

#25

Post by wallnerm »

I would rather focus on the many opportunities technology and the internet offers to preserve those 6000+ languages that are currently not being used online. It's not very bold to say that technology will prevent them from disappearing completely unlike many languages in history that were not persevered.

Re: Only 4% of languages are used online

#27

Post by astine »

CaveTech wrote: post #21
melling wrote: post #14

I guess the title "Only 240 languages are used online" doesn't sound like a problem? That probably represents 5 or 6 of 7 billion people? I think the world should move towards even fewer languages than 240. However, it would be very sad if we didn't capture the complete grammar, vocabulary, etc. of those other languages before they die, along with lots of audio, to preserve them.

You're promoting both the killing and preserving of languages in the same paragraph, seems a bit misguided. Surely if they're worth documenting, then its worth trying to preserve their use as well. Surely the world should be moving to a place where it doesn't matter what language the source is, at least online. A fully competent Google translate would seamlessly allow everyone to communicate without destroying cultur…

If it were possible to translate every concept or expression, transparently from any language into any other, there wouldn't be any real reason to have more than one language. Or, in other words, if the only differences between languages are cosmetic, different words and slightly different grammar, then there would be more to gain from being able to communicate without using a machine as an intermediary than from keeping the old phonemes (which will eventually be replaced anyway) in use.

Re: Only 4% of languages are used online

#28

Post by jacobwcarlson »

w1ntermute wrote: post #8

And what percentage of people in the world uses one of the languages in that 4% as their primary language? I'm guessing it's a really large percentage, probably a majority of the world's population. It's not really useful to look at the percent of languages when they vary in the number of speakers by so much (and there's a long tail of languages with a vanishingly small number of speakers).

The cool thing about the Internet is that if you're curious about some data you can analyze it on your own. Perhaps you would show us what you've found? And what impact that's had on how you conduct business?

Re: Only 4% of languages are used online

#29

Post by autarch »

vilhelm_s wrote: post #15
w1ntermute wrote: post #8

And what percentage of people in the world uses one of the languages in that 4% as their primary language? I'm guessing it's a really large percentage, probably a majority of the world's population. It's not really useful to look at the percent of languages when they vary in the number of speakers by so much (and there's a long tail of languages with a vanishingly small number of speakers).

Indeed. To get a rough idea I added up the first table in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of... , it seems that about 85% of the world population are native speakers of one of the top-100 (top 1.6%) languages.

It's not clear from the Wikipedia list if the language categories are mutually exclusive. For example, it seems quite likely that nearly everyone who speaks the Wu, Jin, and Min Nian Chinese family languages also speaks Mandarin.

I'm not even sure what it means to say that Min Nian is the native language for anyone in Taiwan. Sure, lots of people learn it at home but anyone under 60 is going to be just as fluent in Mandarin.

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