How the Internet is Killing the World's Languages
washingtonpost.com
How the Internet is Killing the World's Languages
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Re: How the Internet is Killing the World's Languages
#2Serious question: what are the arguments in favor of language preservation?
Re: How the Internet is Killing the World's Languages
#3Serious question: what are the arguments in favor of language preservation?
I am not a linguist, but if it is true that language influences how we think then I would guess that it would be advantageous to have a multitude of thought patterns available.
Re: How the Internet is Killing the World's Languages
#4Serious question: what are the arguments in favor of language preservation?
Languages shape the mind. A language gives a special outlook on life and has its own reality. There are also specific linguistic features that are interesting to linguists and help to comprehend how languages work. One could also draw a parallel with genetic diversity.
Re: How the Internet is Killing the World's Languages
#5Serious question: what are the arguments in favor of language preservation?
I came here to ask the same thing. As I see if fewer languages lead to greater ease of commerce, which leads to increased wealth. It also leads to easier communication, which should lead to greater understanding and few conflicts. More wealth, less conflict. Sounds like a win all around!
Re: How the Internet is Killing the World's Languages
#6Another way of titling this would be, "How the internet is uniting humanity." Languages are tools for communication, and while it's sad from an anthropological/historical perspective to be losing languages, from a humanist perspective it's fantastic news. The more people can communicate without barriers, the better it makes the world for everyone.
Re: How the Internet is Killing the World's Languages
#7Serious question: what are the arguments in favor of language preservation?
I am not a linguist, but if it is true that language influences how we think then I would guess that it would be advantageous to have a multitude of thought patterns available.
The built-in romantic assumption is that 7,776 different language would result in things like 7,776 solutions to one problem, which is likely not the case.
Re: How the Internet is Killing the World's Languages
#8Another way of titling this would be, "How the internet is uniting humanity." Languages are tools for communication, and while it's sad from an anthropological/historical perspective to be losing languages, from a humanist perspective it's fantastic news. The more people can communicate without barriers, the better it makes the world for everyone.
Can't upvote this enough. A united world needs to speak the same language. Down with the borders, of any kind.
Re: How the Internet is Killing the World's Languages
#9Serious question: what are the arguments in favor of language preservation?
Languages shape the mind. A language gives a special outlook on life and has its own reality. There are also specific linguistic features that are interesting to linguists and help to comprehend how languages work. One could also draw a parallel with genetic diversity.
This has been my experience with picking up a second language. There are concepts that are expressed in a single Japanese word that seem like they would need a small book to explain adequately in English. Maybe there are places where the language and culture aren't so intertwined, but Japan at least isn't one of them. So as much as I think the grand flattening of the world is great in some ways, I would be a little sad if we ended up with a global monoculture catalyzed by the coalescing of languages. Other cultures are just fascinating to explore.
Re: How the Internet is Killing the World's Languages
#10Serious question: what are the arguments in favor of language preservation?
Wikipedia[1] references a source[2] with a pretty good explanation:
"As each language dies, many sciences - linguistics, anthropology, prehistory and psychology - lose one more precious source of data, one more of the diverse and unique ways that the human mind can express itself through a language's structure, vocabulary and idiom."
Linguistics is obviously most affected. The variety of sounds and grammar used in languages in huge, and we wouldn't know about it without being able to study a lot of languages. I don't know if that has any economic value[3], but then neither does paleontology, but we consider that pretty important, important enough to preserve the available data.
Really, as nice as it would be to keep these languages spoken, preserving a complete grammar and audio recording of individual sounds as well as longer spoken passages would be enough for most purposes. But the problem is that this is a lot of work, and languages are going extinct faster than we can document them.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_preservation
[2] http://www.ogmios.org/manifesto/index.htm
[3] Well OK, some people get paid to invent languages for sci-fi/fantasy and a lot of linguistic data helps with that, but... that's not much.