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

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

#91

Post by panglott »

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…

Every child must expend enormous energy to learn their mother language, but the human mind is not a cup that can hold but one language. Bilingualism and diglossia are the human norm, not monolingualism. Language is a human right, and parents have a right to teach their children their heritage.

Languages are only ever "dying" because of state coercion aimed at robbing children of their cultural heritage.

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

#92

Post by panglott »

EdiX wrote: post #59
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…

Storing away all of geocities for future reference is a good thing. Having every children memorize passages from geocities would be pointless and no one does it. Having them learn a dead language is cruel, you are wasting their time to make them learn something that will only serve to keep them isolated. And it's all in vain, making a language alive is the opposite of preserving it because live languages change.

No-one is arguing that children from minority communities should be prevented from learning an international language. The only question is whether they should be prevented from learning the language of their heritage.

Multilingualism is the norm. And it's easy enough to learn Math in English, English in English, and literature in your mother tongue.

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

#93

Post by panglott »

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.

All of humanity speaking one language, and having multiple languages, are not actually mutually exclusive.

Diglossia and multilingualism are the norm. There's no reason why people can't speak a mother tongue at home and in a local community, and use an international language for math, science, and travel.

The question is whether people should be coerced into abandoning their mother tongue.

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

#94

Post by panglott »

wishinghand wrote: post #83
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.

I'd rather everyone speak two languages: their local/cultural tongue and an invented language that the world shares and could contribute to, such as Lojban or Esperanto.

Esperanto could work, or even Interlingua but how about Lojban get even a few native speakers before proposing it as THE language of international communication. Even a few fluent speakers? ;)

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

#95

Post by panglott »

MichaelGG wrote: post #57

>"Mohawk isn’t just a form of speech,” he said. “It’s a holistic relationship to the cosmos.” What's that supposed to mean? Apart from as a tautology because we're part of the cosmos.

It's just an effort to raise the prestige of Mohawk. Like all the disinformation about how English is just essential to everyone's economic future.

The prestige of English is wide but shallow: everyone's just in it for the money, and if something nicer shows up, the world will abandon English in a heartbeat.

If a language has spiritual value (like Latin, Sanskrit, or Classical Arabic), that's tapping into a narrower but deeper source of prestige.

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

#96

Post by panglott »

vorg wrote: post #60

> The mother tongue of more than three billion people is one of twenty, which are, in order of their current predominance: Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, English, Hindi, Arabic, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, Japanese, Javanese, German, Wu Chinese, Korean, French, Telugu, Marathi, Turkish, Tamil, Vietnamese, and Urdu. Arabic listed as one language? Can Gulf Arabic and Moroccan Arabic speakers understand each other? I've h…

Quantifying the difference between a language and a dialect is always going to be a problem. English dialects differ, but most English speakers also know well a standard variety of American or Commonwealth stock (which are mutually intelligible).

Distangling the Chinese languages is another huge problem, since the government of China sees them as all dialects of a single language, but any real comparison of phonology, syntax, or lexicon shows them to be quite distinct indeed.

My understanding is the syntax of Hindi and Urdu are very similar, but the lexicon is quite distinct. Since each has either a relatively more a Persianized or Sanskritized vocabulary.

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

#97

Post by panglott »

redacted wrote: post #22
maccard wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The scots preservation of Gaelic is much less than in Ireland. When I was in school, I took Irish classes from when I was 5 until I left, as do the vast majority of children. Most Irish people have at least a handful of words and phrases they know. All of the road signs and government communications are translated into Irish.

(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…

Anything important enough to do well can instead be done badly.

Education policy in the West, but until the late 20th century, was oriented towards exterminated the use of minority languages. Consequently, there wasn't much experience until recently with policies to regenerate linguistic communities after oppression.

Mandating some minimal classroom instruction for non-mother-tongue speakers is exactly the kind of ineffective policies that people like Joshua Fishman criticize. More efforts these days is going into mother tongue preschools and "nests".

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

#98

Post by panglott »

redacted wrote: post #26
reitanqild wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Side note: A couple of years ago I found myself working with a Welsh engineer who told me he learned English first as a teenager. Still almost can't believe it but he was very serious about it.

In Ireland, we have the Gaeltacht [1], which are areas where Irish is the primary language. I know a couple of older people who grew up in a Gaeltacht and only learned English in school, never using it at home. This would be much less likely nowadays, hard to avoid English on the Internet etc [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaeltacht

Welsh is less geographically concentrated, but is more spoken in the west and north. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_language#/media/File:Wel...

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

#99

Post by panglott »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #64
intopieces wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

A partial case study: In Wales ~100% of the population speak English. In the last UK census the numbers who responded that they could _speak_ any old Welsh, Cymraeg , was Cymraeg is at such low demand by parents that there are no secondary schools that use it (except as a subject, like you'd learn a foreign language). Excepting a handful of Patagonians and some ex-pat Welsh there is nowhere outside the country to spe…

Does knowing about the country you live in really have so little value? Maybe it's not the only valuable thing in the world, but knowing about the culture of the society you live in sure seems like it would be valuable...?

Welsh has been largely abandoned in Cardiff and southern Wales, but there are large sections of the country where at least a quarter of the population speaks Welsh, and in other places 65-80% of people speak Welsh. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_language#/media/File:Wel...

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