Icelandic language battles threat of 'digital extinction' • Hacker News Board

Re: Icelandic language battles threat of 'digital extinction'

#11

Post by dalbasal » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 4:23 PM UTC

marten-de-vries wrote: post #4

johan_larson wrote: post #3

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, yes, it's a pity to see a cultural artifact like a language fade away. I get that. But on the other hand, having the world Balkanized into thousands of mutually incomprehensible linguistic ghettoes is a bad thing, because it makes it harder to get things done on large scales. Things would just be easier if we spoke a manageable handful of languages.

There's a middle road, you know: being bilingual. To run with the Icelandic example, you'll be hard pressed to find someone who speaks it but not English. Where I live, there's also a local language (Frisian) spoken beside the 'bigger' language (Dutch). And here too, lots of people speak English. Or if not, you might get lucky with German.

A generation ago, Dutch minority dialects & languages were really discouraged and some were nearly killed. Kids were disciplined in school for using them. A generation before that, British accents/dialects^ actively suppressed to give way to standard (King's) English.

I think there were almost no advantages to this dialect killing.

Small minority dialects are at a danger of dying out, not crowding out the bigger languages. This is how all of europe worked for hundreds of years. My Grandfather grew up speaking yiddish (german dialect) in school, czech in town & Hungarian at school. These are completely unrelated and individually difficult languages. He later went to college in German & Latin, later on English. He spoke 10 languages in total, most fluently. I knew him in a language that he learned in his 40s. This was normal in his day. They weren't afraid of languages then.

Anyway... if your "home" language is a tiny, local one. There is no danger that you will be monolingual in a commercially useless language. You will speak a big language too. Speaking 2 makes the 3rd one easier to learn.

^more on the dialect end of the spectrum than most people realize.

Re: Icelandic language battles threat of 'digital extinction'

#12

Post by krapp » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 4:24 PM UTC

mbid wrote: post #10

johan_larson wrote: post #3

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, yes, it's a pity to see a cultural artifact like a language fade away. I get that. But on the other hand, having the world Balkanized into thousands of mutually incomprehensible linguistic ghettoes is a bad thing, because it makes it harder to get things done on large scales. Things would just be easier if we spoke a manageable handful of languages.

Do we really want billions of people who all talk the same, think the same, and have the same values? I don't see how that could possibly be a good thing. The world is already bleeding ridiculous amounts of accumulated knowledge and wisdom. It may be true that the average person today knows and understands more about the world than the average person in the past, but we all know the same things today.

Just because people share the same language, it doesn't mean they think the same, or share the same values.

Many people around the world speak English, but they don't become culturally American or British because of it.

Re: Icelandic language battles threat of 'digital extinction'

#13

Post by cal5k » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 4:25 PM UTC

Just got back from Iceland! (I'm Canadian) Outside of the touristy parts of Reykjavik, everybody will assume you speak Icelandic until you respond in English. Then they'll switch to almost perfect English, with remarkably few exceptions. It was pretty amazing.

In small towns like Akureryi, there's a lot of local pressure to keep signs mostly in Icelandic. I was actually surprised by this since there were a lot of English-speaking tourists in the area, but I respect it thoroughly. It's their country, I should learn how to get around.

Oh, as an aside - as someone who is single and still uses the various datings apps, I was also impressed by how idiomatically correct their english was even down to slang and figures of speech. There's clearly a large influence from American media.

If you're travelling to Iceland, take the time to learn a few basic Icelandic phrases - the locals have a lot of pride in their culture and will love you for it.

Re: Icelandic language battles threat of 'digital extinction'

#14

Post by ocschwar » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 4:25 PM UTC

Hebrew, like Icelandic, is subject to a conscious effort to maintain its character as it modernises. Icelanders want their new vocabulary to stay Norse, as opposed to the far less picky tendencies of everyone else who uses Germanic languages. With Hebrew, it's keeping things Semitic. New words should be derived from Arabic/Aramaic/Maltese/Ethiopian sources before anything else, and if that fails, first go to Persian, Greek or Latin before getting words from English or French.

Icelanders are going to have a harder time of it, because English can worm its way into Icelandic more easily than it can enter into Hebrew. Plus they have less of a critical mass.

Re: Icelandic language battles threat of 'digital extinction'

#15

Post by smitherfield » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 4:26 PM UTC

marten-de-vries wrote: post #4

johan_larson wrote: post #3

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, yes, it's a pity to see a cultural artifact like a language fade away. I get that. But on the other hand, having the world Balkanized into thousands of mutually incomprehensible linguistic ghettoes is a bad thing, because it makes it harder to get things done on large scales. Things would just be easier if we spoke a manageable handful of languages.

There's a middle road, you know: being bilingual. To run with the Icelandic example, you'll be hard pressed to find someone who speaks it but not English. Where I live, there's also a local language (Frisian) spoken beside the 'bigger' language (Dutch). And here too, lots of people speak English. Or if not, you might get lucky with German.

But is it a sustainable road? French-Canadians have been complaining for many years that Montreal's "bilingual" neighborhoods become English-speaking in a decade or so, and "French-speaking" neighborhoods become bilingual. And this is despite extensive government efforts to encourage or even enforce the use of French. You can see the same trends in Catalonia, Wales, Ireland, etc.

Where the government intervenes in the opposite direction, the transition can be much more rapid. Visiting Strasbourg (in Alsace, France), people's surnames, street and place names, and the local cuisine are all German, but nobody speaks a word of it. It was amazing (and slightly depressing) to see how in 2-3 generations a city could forget the language it spoke for nigh-on 1,500 years.

The way things are going, I wouldn't be surprised if Dutch were considered a dying language 50 years from now.

Re: Icelandic language battles threat of 'digital extinction'

#16

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 4:27 PM UTC

marten-de-vries wrote: post #9

Retric wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the first half of a language dying. If everyone speaks Dutch and it's on signs and menus etc then learning Frisian has limited value.

I don't think so, or the language would have died out already. I'd argue it's more about whether children learn it as their primary language. Also, because of concerns of linguistic extinction, similar to the ones mentioned for Icelandic in the article, you see somewhat of a counter-movement as well. This caused e.g. a special status of the language by law (see e.g. [1]), and also: * it's a mandatory school subject *…

[deleted]

Re: Icelandic language battles threat of 'digital extinction'

#17

Post by nickpeterson » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 4:35 PM UTC

spraak wrote: post #2

Reverse example: I've only [1] let my child consume Swedish media (mostly the SVT app Barnkanalen, while we live in the US) and their accent is really good, and they often correct me and remind me of how something should be said. [1] Not 100%. They still watch e.g. Moana in English, or sometimes watch shows in German, French, some English ones, etc.

I think it would be especially difficult with children, since the English version tends to be the 'real' version. As such I would assume songs to just be more natural in english, and that tends to be the part children obsess over. I'm from the US, so I have the same problem from the other perspective, "Why learn a language when everyone speaks English." So you get a bunch of children who don't want to become bilingual since it serves no apparent value in their lives.

It doesn't help that schools basically only push Spanish, which is actively besieged by half the population. I really wish schools would push things like mandarin and german more since it's a much larger part of the world economy.

Re: Icelandic language battles threat of 'digital extinction'

#18

Post by mbid » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 4:37 PM UTC

krapp wrote: post #12

mbid wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we really want billions of people who all talk the same, think the same, and have the same values? I don't see how that could possibly be a good thing. The world is already bleeding ridiculous amounts of accumulated knowledge and wisdom. It may be true that the average person today knows and understands more about the world than the average person in the past, but we all know the same things today.

Just because people share the same language, it doesn't mean they think the same, or share the same values. Many people around the world speak English, but they don't become culturally American or British because of it.

Yes they do. Look at popular music around the world. It's all slight variations of American popular music. I don't think this is only because of the dominance of English, but the two phenomena are definitely symptoms of the same disease.

Re: Icelandic language battles threat of 'digital extinction'

#19

Post by ionised » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 4:37 PM UTC

krapp wrote: post #12

mbid wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we really want billions of people who all talk the same, think the same, and have the same values? I don't see how that could possibly be a good thing. The world is already bleeding ridiculous amounts of accumulated knowledge and wisdom. It may be true that the average person today knows and understands more about the world than the average person in the past, but we all know the same things today.

Just because people share the same language, it doesn't mean they think the same, or share the same values. Many people around the world speak English, but they don't become culturally American or British because of it.