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Lost languages discovered in the oldest continuously run libraries (2017)

smithsonianmag.com

11–20 of 82 posts

Re: Lost languages discovered in the oldest continuously run libraries (2017)

#11

As someone who makes a hobby of learning languages, I am of the highly unpopular opinion that the world would be a better place if we could pick one easy-to-learn language (e.g. Malay) and one super-simple writing system (e.g. South Korean Hangul) and get our species out of the dark ages of having thousands of mutually unintelligible languages. No-one in their right mind would create an ethical, functioning modern so…

I read your comment and compare to programming languages. It would be revolutionary to have all computers programmed in the same language, but as different languages are good at different things and evolve concurrently, it's almost inconcievable to make it happen. And you're talking about refactoring not merely an entire industry, but the very language of thought for our species! How can we even begin to approach thi…

The analogy is reasonable, although it breaks down because human languages are not nearly as varied in usefulness for different things as programming languages are.

Human languages are much more generalized.

Sure, you can find domain-specific examples of one human language being preferable to another though, like when Korean Air forced all its pilots to communicate in English, even Korean->Korean pilots, because in English you can tell explicitly a person who is older/more senior than you that they're about to kill everybody on the plane, without defaulting to making that a polite "it seems as though perhaps what if" suggestion.

On a country-level, we've successfully normalized a given language across large populations and large geographies. Often without involving genocide or prison camps.

If we can roll out vaccines to the globe over a couple years and a few trillion dollars, then surely rolling out a global language over a generation or two would only be 1 or 2 orders of magnitude more challenging, but it would likely result in far more benefit to the human race in the medium/long term, and probably even in the short term too.

Re: Lost languages discovered in the oldest continuously run libraries (2017)

#12

As someone who makes a hobby of learning languages, I am of the highly unpopular opinion that the world would be a better place if we could pick one easy-to-learn language (e.g. Malay) and one super-simple writing system (e.g. South Korean Hangul) and get our species out of the dark ages of having thousands of mutually unintelligible languages. No-one in their right mind would create an ethical, functioning modern so…

I'm sure you know that there is a reason your opinion is highly unpopular. Language doesn't just communicate fish and net. Poetry, songs and literature just do not seamlessly translate between languages very well. Nor should we lose the calligraphy of Japanese/Chinese/Arabic/Persian. Humanity would lose a lot if we all went to just one language and script. Sure, when all the rich people flee to Elysium or Mars, they…

> Poetry, songs and literature just do not seamlessly translate between languages very well. Nor should we lose the calligraphy of Japanese/Chinese/Arabic/Persian.

We don't have to incinerate anything. There won't be a government commission you have to petition to be allowed to do Japanese calligraphy or read a poem in its original language.

Re: Lost languages discovered in the oldest continuously run libraries (2017)

#13
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because some books are more valuable than others. You might enjoy Harry Potter, but if your only copy of a calculus 101 is deteriorating you will erase Harry Potter and copy the calculus text over the top to save the more important calculus book - or maybe you would erase the calculus textbook to copy Harry Potter over the top. This is a statement of relative value when paper is scarce, but it doesn't mean they didn'…

There's a third way. You combine the best halves of calculus and Harry Potter into one book. It'll be more difficult to understand, but managing so grants one the best of both worlds.

  - Harry Potter and the Two-Sided Limit.
  - Harry Potter and the Area Beneath the Curve.
  - Harry Potter and the Osculating Circle.

Re: Lost languages discovered in the oldest continuously run libraries (2017)

#14

As someone who makes a hobby of learning languages, I am of the highly unpopular opinion that the world would be a better place if we could pick one easy-to-learn language (e.g. Malay) and one super-simple writing system (e.g. South Korean Hangul) and get our species out of the dark ages of having thousands of mutually unintelligible languages. No-one in their right mind would create an ethical, functioning modern so…

> Sure, languages evolve and you can't fight that, but with a global internet and a concerted effort to finally solve the Tower of Babel problem, languages can evolve everywhere at once into a single global language that every child gets brought up speaking.

That... is optimistic, to say the least. Languages evolve essentially by having successive generations pick up collectively on idiosyncratic features of the language. And of course, people who aren't talking with each other aren't going to pick up on others' idiosyncratic features, and after several generations, you end up with new, distinct languages. To keep a single language out of it, you have to work hard to promote only a single version of it, and rather literally beat the daylight of anyone who speaks the "wrong" version of the language (this is essentially how the modern "big" European languages came about.)

In other words, enforcing linguistic unity tends to require enforcing cultural unity as well.

Re: Lost languages discovered in the oldest continuously run libraries (2017)

#15

As someone who makes a hobby of learning languages, I am of the highly unpopular opinion that the world would be a better place if we could pick one easy-to-learn language (e.g. Malay) and one super-simple writing system (e.g. South Korean Hangul) and get our species out of the dark ages of having thousands of mutually unintelligible languages. No-one in their right mind would create an ethical, functioning modern so…

That would be authoritarian.

I think natural evolution will gradually move most people to adopt either a single global language, or there will only be a few global languages. As English speakers, you and I can travel to most parts of the world without knowing the local language, because English is so pervasive. Will the "global language" be English? Who knows!

> Sure, languages evolve and you can't fight that, but with a global internet and a concerted effort to finally solve the Tower of Babel problem, languages can evolve everywhere at once into a single global language that every child gets brought up speaking.

I always find it fascinating to see different dialects of English. The way that Americans will say "Please ..." and Indians say "Kindly ..." always makes me chuckle.

Re: Lost languages discovered in the oldest continuously run libraries (2017)

#16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read your comment and compare to programming languages. It would be revolutionary to have all computers programmed in the same language, but as different languages are good at different things and evolve concurrently, it's almost inconcievable to make it happen. And you're talking about refactoring not merely an entire industry, but the very language of thought for our species! How can we even begin to approach thi…

The analogy is reasonable, although it breaks down because human languages are not nearly as varied in usefulness for different things as programming languages are. Human languages are much more generalized. Sure, you can find domain-specific examples of one human language being preferable to another though, like when Korean Air forced all its pilots to communicate in English, even Korean->Korean pilots, because in E…

> On a country-level, we've successfully normalized a given language across large populations and large geographies. Often without involving genocide or prison camps.

Which country is this? Genuinely curious. I’m a native English speaker and any time English was established as a country wide lingua franca it involved colonization and suppression of other people, even in England.

Re: Lost languages discovered in the oldest continuously run libraries (2017)

#17

As someone who makes a hobby of learning languages, I am of the highly unpopular opinion that the world would be a better place if we could pick one easy-to-learn language (e.g. Malay) and one super-simple writing system (e.g. South Korean Hangul) and get our species out of the dark ages of having thousands of mutually unintelligible languages. No-one in their right mind would create an ethical, functioning modern so…

> Sure, languages evolve and you can't fight that, but with a global internet and a concerted effort to finally solve the Tower of Babel problem, languages can evolve everywhere at once into a single global language that every child gets brought up speaking. That... is optimistic, to say the least. Languages evolve essentially by having successive generations pick up collectively on idiosyncratic features of the lang…

> you have to work hard to promote only a single version of it

Yes, you do have to work to make it happen. Up to now we've given languages a free cultural pass, whereas diseases and poverty we keep shoveling trillions into, and we're proud when we've made a 20% dent.

It takes work to pull the species out of what is natural, because what is natural is very often terrible. Diseases naturally evolve to terrorize us. We fight them and sometimes we win.

The first step is admitting that how languages have evolved naturally up to now sucks for an ethical, roughly egalitarian 21st century information-based society.

The sooner we can de-link language from local culture, the better.

And of course that begs the question: can language be delinked from culture?

Yes: my native language isn't the one I'm writing in to you now, and my native culture is whatever I'm making up for myself as I go along, to the chagrin of my parents and many in the culture I was born into.

Re: Lost languages discovered in the oldest continuously run libraries (2017)

#18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read your comment and compare to programming languages. It would be revolutionary to have all computers programmed in the same language, but as different languages are good at different things and evolve concurrently, it's almost inconcievable to make it happen. And you're talking about refactoring not merely an entire industry, but the very language of thought for our species! How can we even begin to approach thi…

The analogy is reasonable, although it breaks down because human languages are not nearly as varied in usefulness for different things as programming languages are. Human languages are much more generalized. Sure, you can find domain-specific examples of one human language being preferable to another though, like when Korean Air forced all its pilots to communicate in English, even Korean->Korean pilots, because in E…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity

Re: Lost languages discovered in the oldest continuously run libraries (2017)

#19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read your comment and compare to programming languages. It would be revolutionary to have all computers programmed in the same language, but as different languages are good at different things and evolve concurrently, it's almost inconcievable to make it happen. And you're talking about refactoring not merely an entire industry, but the very language of thought for our species! How can we even begin to approach thi…

The analogy is reasonable, although it breaks down because human languages are not nearly as varied in usefulness for different things as programming languages are. Human languages are much more generalized. Sure, you can find domain-specific examples of one human language being preferable to another though, like when Korean Air forced all its pilots to communicate in English, even Korean->Korean pilots, because in E…

> On a country-level, we've successfully normalized a given language across large populations and large geographies. Often without involving genocide or prison camps.

Well, what do you call beating school children for not speaking the "proper" language? Because that's basically the minimum you need to do (see: US, Canada, France for specific examples).

Re: Lost languages discovered in the oldest continuously run libraries (2017)

#20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The analogy is reasonable, although it breaks down because human languages are not nearly as varied in usefulness for different things as programming languages are. Human languages are much more generalized. Sure, you can find domain-specific examples of one human language being preferable to another though, like when Korean Air forced all its pilots to communicate in English, even Korean->Korean pilots, because in E…

> On a country-level, we've successfully normalized a given language across large populations and large geographies. Often without involving genocide or prison camps. Which country is this? Genuinely curious. I’m a native English speaker and any time English was established as a country wide lingua franca it involved colonization and suppression of other people, even in England.

There are several examples. Here's one that involved fining people for not speaking the lingua franca in public:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen,_speak_Turkish!

I'm not sure exactly how I feel about this. I hope we can get everyone to a global language without so much as a $1 fine, but if it did require a generation of fines and public shaming, it could fall into "the ends justify the means" territory.

In my modern/developed country we fine citizens heavily for entering without presenting a valid PCR test against covid. That's because we believe the public good of having everyone free of covid outweighs the public evil of fining people for simply existing as they are.

Would the public good of switching the globe to a unified language be worth fines and social pressure?

I don't know the answer to that, which maybe correlates with my score on the "Darkness Measure" we've recently seen posted here on HN:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29734100

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