Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Loss for Words: Can a Dying Language Be Saved?

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 107 posts

Re: A Loss for Words: Can a Dying Language Be Saved?

#41

Post by JulianMorrison »

bkurtz13 wrote: post #10
waqf wrote: post #4

Should a dying language be "saved"? Preserving cultural heritage is all very well, but expending a child's language-acquisitive resources on a language which won't connect them to the rest of contemporary humanity seems far too high a price.

There is a particularly human egotism with respect to "saving" things that have outlived their usefulness and purpose, or preserving things that should be changing. If language can be viewed through its evolutionary purpose, these dying languages are simply experiments that did not pan out, and should be allowed to become extinct.

Many of these cultures (including their language) were forcefully banned, obliterated by law, lynching, displacement. discriminatory treatment, and the stealing of children. I do not exaggerate. So don't pretend they are dying of natural causes when the knife is still sticking out of their back.

Re: A Loss for Words: Can a Dying Language Be Saved?

#42

Post by Animats »

sumedh wrote: post #38

I just feel that the whole humanity should speak one common language. Now whether you like it or not that language is going to be English. I just dont understand why do we need multiple languages anymore. If anyone says we need them to preserve the culture, I dont understand that either. My native language is not English, just in case anyone feels I want to force English down your throat.

It may end up being Mandarin. Although Beijing, despite half a century of trying, hasn't been able to convert the Guangdong and Hong Kong areas. Only about 53% of China's own population has good fluency in Standard Chinese.

Re: A Loss for Words: Can a Dying Language Be Saved?

#43

Post by lesu »

DanAndersen wrote: post #25
lesu wrote: post #21

I'm wondering if the people who are railing against saving languages are equally against organizations such as the Internet Archive? My thinking is that, as tech-savvy computer whizzes, many folk on Hacker News are happier to preserve something that makes sense to _them_ (media or website snapshots) than things that don't (languages and foreign cultural history). It's difficult to say what is useful without the benef…

I see that as an apples to oranges comparison. When we say "saving languages," do we mean archiving them, backing them up, creating stores of references and recordings that can be easily recalled yet inexpensively preserved? If so, then I am definitely for that. If "saving languages" means accepting nothing less than the descendants of the speakers of a dying language needing to expend mental energy and time to remai…

Good question :) not sure I have a good answer for that one, although I'd like to point out that many people elect to expend mental energy on otherwise unproductive minutia (aka. hobbies) so perhaps the task of carrying on a spoken tradition is less onerous to some than one might expect.

Language contributing to group segregation is a very strong claim, however, and if you have any case studies (or, like, newspaper articles, this isn't academia) I'd be interested in seeing them.

Re: A Loss for Words: Can a Dying Language Be Saved?

#44

Post by intopieces »

freehunter wrote: post #11
intopieces wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment is predicated on an assumption that I'm not sure has a foundation in science: that a child's "language-acquisitive resources" are finite in some way, or that a child learning a minority language won't "have room" for other subjects because of it. Because many, many children in the world speak one language at home and another at school, I'm not sure there is any foundation for this assumption.

What does have a foundation in science (or reality) is that the teaching of another language means a child won't have room in their daily schedule for other things. There's only so much time in the day. If a child is learning math and science and their main language and other skills for seven hours, sleeps for eight hours, and eats for two hours, that only leaves seven hours in the day to fit in everything else, incl…

>what other, more useful knowledge could they have gained otherwise?

How does one rank the usefulness of knowledge? Language acquisition (and the acquisition of a particular language) is not a skill in isolation. It enhances other skills such as problem solving, logical inference, the ability to recognize patterns, knowledge synthesis... skills I daresay are useful in other fields, such as computer programming. I hear your argument a lot among people who just plain don't like learning languages and think it's "worthless," or that they'll "never use it" -- but the same thing could be said of some mathematical disciplines. However, there is little doubt that those mathematical disciplines contribute to other areas of knowledge.

Re: A Loss for Words: Can a Dying Language Be Saved?

#45

Post by WalterBright »

japhyr wrote: post #31
DanAndersen wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you be able to provide some examples of these untranslatable concepts or ways of thinking? I suspect that the fact that you can provide them, in English, means that English is as capable as any other language to at absorbing that idea and making it expressible. If different languages contain unique ways of thinking that can't be expressed in other languages, then what benefit is there to the preservation of tha…

I'll try to share some examples in a bit. Short reason this approach is "lossy": it's a huge game of telephone. Translation retains most of the translated concept, but not all of the concept's subtleties. The farther removed we get from the original, the less faithful the translation. We see this most clearly where it takes a paragraph of English to start to communicate the meaning contained in one word from some lan…

The meanings and subtleties of English words also change over time. For a topical example, there's a front page article on Reddit on how Homer Simpson is distinguishing between jealousy and envy, a distinction that is being lost in modern usage.

I have a friend who writes screenplays. One of the more difficult things is getting the language correct for period pieces. It's hard to tell what turns of phrase would be out of place in, say, the 40's, and what would be in place.

Going back a little further, nobody alive knows what the Confederate "rebel yell" actually sounded like.

Re: A Loss for Words: Can a Dying Language Be Saved?

#46

Post by 67726e »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #41
bkurtz13 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a particularly human egotism with respect to "saving" things that have outlived their usefulness and purpose, or preserving things that should be changing. If language can be viewed through its evolutionary purpose, these dying languages are simply experiments that did not pan out, and should be allowed to become extinct.

Many of these cultures (including their language) were forcefully banned, obliterated by law, lynching, displacement. discriminatory treatment, and the stealing of children. I do not exaggerate. So don't pretend they are dying of natural causes when the knife is still sticking out of their back.

To play the devil's advocate, maybe they deserve to die out. If they would have innovated and conquered first, their language could have lived and ours could be the one on its deathbed. Survival of the fittest, if you will.

Re: A Loss for Words: Can a Dying Language Be Saved?

#47

Post by civilian »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #41
bkurtz13 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a particularly human egotism with respect to "saving" things that have outlived their usefulness and purpose, or preserving things that should be changing. If language can be viewed through its evolutionary purpose, these dying languages are simply experiments that did not pan out, and should be allowed to become extinct.

Many of these cultures (including their language) were forcefully banned, obliterated by law, lynching, displacement. discriminatory treatment, and the stealing of children. I do not exaggerate. So don't pretend they are dying of natural causes when the knife is still sticking out of their back.

If languages are natural, then humans and all their crappy actions are also natural.

Re: A Loss for Words: Can a Dying Language Be Saved?

#48

Post by kazagistar »

intopieces wrote: post #44
freehunter wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does have a foundation in science (or reality) is that the teaching of another language means a child won't have room in their daily schedule for other things. There's only so much time in the day. If a child is learning math and science and their main language and other skills for seven hours, sleeps for eight hours, and eats for two hours, that only leaves seven hours in the day to fit in everything else, incl…

>what other, more useful knowledge could they have gained otherwise? How does one rank the usefulness of knowledge? Language acquisition (and the acquisition of a particular language) is not a skill in isolation. It enhances other skills such as problem solving, logical inference, the ability to recognize patterns, knowledge synthesis... skills I daresay are useful in other fields, such as computer programming. I hea…

Ranking between categories is hard. But within a category it is much easier. Adding a language like Mandarin, for example, provides very similar mental utility as some dying tongue, but additionally gives the child a useful communication tool later in life.

Re: A Loss for Words: Can a Dying Language Be Saved?

#49

Post by redacted »

jkot wrote: post #34
redacted wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Disclaimer: I am Irish, and I do not agree with the mandatory nature of Irish lessons.) The fact that 12-13 years of taking Irish classes daily leads to most Irish people having a few words and phrases is a damning indictment of our education system. It is also a perfect example of how saving a language that has fallen out of use is incredibly difficult. All that effort teaching a language to a country and, because…

Gealic is not mandatory. English-only schools in west of ireland are underfunded. Parents could sign their children into English school with 50 another kids in single class, or into Geelic school with 20 children in class.

Irish is mandatory. All primary and secondary school students are required to learn Irish, normally around one hour per day on average. Our secondary school graduation exam (the Leaving Cert) has precisely one mandatory subject: Irish [1].

My mother is a primary teacher in a non-Gaelscoile (school taught through Irish), so I am well aware of the institutional funding bias that exists and agree it is completely unfair. It is another ill-thought out attempt by our Department of Education to prop up a failing system.

[1] Many Irish universities require English, Maths and a second language (Irish, French, German would be the most common). However if you don't want to go to college you don't need to sit those exams.

Post reply on HN