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

Icelandic language battles threat of 'digital extinction'

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 170 posts

Re: Icelandic language battles threat of 'digital extinction'

#131

Post by curun1r »

icebraining wrote: post #107
curun1r wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the debate over English superseding other languages to be somewhat comical. On the one hand, sure, there are parts of different cultures being lost. But they're being replaced by possibly the best example there is of a language evolving over time due to power dynamics. The accusation is often leveled against American cultural imperialism. But the language being imposed isn't a Native American language...it isn…

But the language being imposed isn't a Native American language.. If a Frenchman shoots someone with a bullet made in Germany, would you say the victim was killed by a German? The origins of the language don't matter to the point being made, which is that having one's native language adopted by everyone else provides massive benefits in spreading one's culture and values, while weakening and even killing off others.…

> The origins of the language don't matter to the point being made, which is that having one's native language adopted by everyone else provides massive benefits in spreading one's culture and values, while weakening and even killing off others.

And that point is irrelevant. Now that everyone is communicating with everyone else, a common language is an inevitability. And that language isn't going to be chosen democratically or designed, it's going to flow from a power dynamic. That's what's going to happen because that's what's always happened. Arguing that it shouldn't happen or is wrong is like arguing against gravity, evolution or any other fact of life.

That doesn't mean that other languages will just go away (just look at how many other languages are alive in some form in the UK, despite English having been dominant there for centuries), it just means that they won't be as ubiquitous as they once were because people will have the option not to learn them.

Re: Icelandic language battles threat of 'digital extinction'

#132

Post by Bromskloss »

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.

> having the world Balkanized

That makes it sound like such a division is something that is happening now, being _done to_ the world, even. Rather, of course, the world _is_ already diverse like that, and what is happening, if anything, is a homogenisation.

Re: Icelandic language battles threat of 'digital extinction'

#133

Post by chicob »

groovy2shoes wrote: post #82
chicob wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like people resentfully segregate from each other just because they speak different languages. Languages evolve, change, innovate and sometimes they go extinct. Latin disappeared with the downfall of the Roman Empire (although it is still used in the Vatican, including ATMs), but paved the way for many romance languages. Even Navajo saved lives during WWII. Like species, we know they're condemned to eventual…

Latin emphatically did not disappear with the fall of the Roman Empire. Classical Latin was preserved not only by the Roman Catholic Church, but also as the lingua franca of all educated discourse in the West into the 18th century (at least!). Initially, this was probably because education was typically provided by the Church, yet its use persisted after the Protestant Reformation and through the Age of Enlightenment…

Thanks for your correction. It is quite complete.

I didn't mean it disappeared overnight but, as far as I know, formal education in Latin declined with the fall of the Empire, thus giving preponderance to Vulgar Latin. As a consequence, correct pronunciation diverged from the canon. At the same time, Germanic peoples travelled south bringing with them new dialects.

Anyway, I am not as worried about an eventual hegemony of English as I am about the disregard for the value of other languages.

Portuguese language, for example, was made the official language for matters of law by King Denis in 1290. But Castillian was still the lingua franca of the court for centuries. The then recent creation of the University of Coimbra helped build the formal Portuguese we know today.

I believe that it is always by creating something new, alongside the old, that good things happen. Hoping progress to come by following utopian notions of simplicity, making tabula rasa (oh, Latin, you...) of former culture is a recipe for disaster.

Re: Icelandic language battles threat of 'digital extinction'

#134

Post by chicob »

groovy2shoes wrote: post #82
chicob wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like people resentfully segregate from each other just because they speak different languages. Languages evolve, change, innovate and sometimes they go extinct. Latin disappeared with the downfall of the Roman Empire (although it is still used in the Vatican, including ATMs), but paved the way for many romance languages. Even Navajo saved lives during WWII. Like species, we know they're condemned to eventual…

Latin emphatically did not disappear with the fall of the Roman Empire. Classical Latin was preserved not only by the Roman Catholic Church, but also as the lingua franca of all educated discourse in the West into the 18th century (at least!). Initially, this was probably because education was typically provided by the Church, yet its use persisted after the Protestant Reformation and through the Age of Enlightenment…

Regarding what you said about English, Mandarin, Arabic (or Hindi might I add), it is curious to note that, in some more modern erudite circles, English and French played roles I find similar to Classical Latin and Classical Greek in the erudite circles of Renaissance Europe: to speak the first was good, to speak both was great.

In my line of work I encounter many emigrants looking for temporary jobs in agriculture. No one here speaks English very well, let alone their languages.

I was very impressed by a worker from Nepal that, besides his mother tongue, spoke Hindi, Russian and English. In Portugal, his boss didn't speak but Portuguese.

Now I see a lot of emigrants from Eastern Europe and Nigeria.

The Spanish don't speak Portuguese. We chat in Portunhol, mainly.

Esperanto would be quite handy, but I suspect it won't take off anytime soon...

Re: Icelandic language battles threat of 'digital extinction'

#135

Post by vinay427 »

thefounder wrote: post #80
smnrchrds wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Outside of the touristy parts of Reykjavik, everybody will assume you speak Icelandic until you respond in English. I am curious, does this apply to everyone or only European-looking people?

What do you think?

This isn't very obvious, and I certainly wouldn't expect it to be obvious to those who haven't traveled internationally as much.

To the point, I'm neither European nor white and was almost always spoken to in Spanish when in Spain. That may be because of the lower level of English proficiency in Spain, however.

Re: Icelandic language battles threat of 'digital extinction'

#136

Post by legulere »

amyjess wrote: post #100
luxpir wrote: post #50

Learn Icelandic for free online, via the gov-supported course: https://icelandiconline.com/ Goes up to advanced level. The appeal for me is the ability to understand one of the least changed old European languages, much akin to our Old English. One that is bizarrely and amazingly still spoken. Admittedly I do speak a fair bit of Swedish, potentially making things easier, but even without that there are many cognates…

> The appeal for me is the ability to understand one of the least changed old European languages, much akin to our Old English. From what I understand, written Icelandic is mutually intelligible with Old Norse, so if you learned Icelandic you could actually read the sagas. The pronunciation has diverged enough that the spoken languages aren't mutually intelligible, but nobody really speaks Old Norse anymore so it doe…

I can't say the opposite is true. I learned a bit of old norse in university reading sagas and looking at modern Icelandic the problem really is the vocabulary, which seems completely different from what you find in the sagas.

Re: Icelandic language battles threat of 'digital extinction'

#137

Post by dragonwriter »

kodis wrote: post #130
dragonwriter wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How many German productions have you seen? How many French? Quite a few French, actually.

Also, Spanish, so much so that our cable TV provider offers several 'all Spanish all the time' cable stations.

Spanish is a bit complicated in this context because I think the question was about nation of origin not language (though language is the offered reason for French/German-origin productions being hard to export.) A lot of the Spanish-language content in the US is, I think, US origin. Though a fair amount is of Latin American (particularly Mexican) origin, and some from elsewhere. But, yeah, there is a lot of Spanish-language, foreign produced content consumed in the US, and not all by native Spanish speakers.

Re: Icelandic language battles threat of 'digital extinction'

#138

Post by zombieprocesses »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #129
radagast wrote: post #7

This has been discussed for as long as I remember myself (am 30 now). First it was the influence of english in TV (we only dub childrens shows and movies). I came unscattered from my youth and really doubt that my children won't be as good or better at icelandic than me. Everyone has learned icelandic, basic danish and advanced english at age 16. From the age 16-20 majority of kids add a fourth language which is eith…

What about the opportunity cost of learning all those languages. Time spent learning languages is time that is not used for other things. Age 16-20 was a crucial time in my learning computer programming at a deep level. I wonder what the marginal utility of a fourth language learned over 4 years as opposed to 4 years of say learning programming or math or finance or history or art more deeply?

> Age 16-20 was a crucial time in my learning computer programming at a deep level.

And even greater opportunity cost is the lack of in-depth knowledge of your own language.

Language isn't just grammar rules. It also has cultural/regional/historical/etc.

You can learn a few languages and be somewhat proficient at all of them or you can have expert level grasp of the language - where you can discuss philosophical, historical, economic, cultural, etc topics.

Not to mention, jokes, puns along with culture-specific references.

Personally, I wish the education system ( in the US ) focused on english, latin and ancient greek for K-12. I don't think you can fully understand english without understanding a bit of latin and even ancient greek.

Re: Icelandic language battles threat of 'digital extinction'

#139

Post by _emacsomancer_ »

schoen wrote: post #91
_emacsomancer_ wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US culture/society also tends to kill off non-English languages. Spanish is large enough and with a 'renewable' resource of Spanish speakers from other parts of the Americas that it manages to survive, but other languages do not fare as well.

I don't think that's quite right. Chinese is a notable counterexample in a lot of places, as well as Vietnamese and Tagalog and some others. But Spanish definitely has a more universal geographic distribution in the U.S. than any other non-English language. This article and map were pretty interesting: http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2014/05/langua...

There's enough immigration that other languages can get 'renewed' too, but the general pattern is for languages to die off by the second generation. This is in stark contrast to what happens, say, in India where speakers maintain ancestral languages much better even when they have been resident in area which employs a different language for many generations. It seems to come down to cultural handling of mono- vs multi-lingualism.

Re: Icelandic language battles threat of 'digital extinction'

#140

Post by thatfrenchguy »

powercf wrote: post #21
radagast wrote: post #7

This has been discussed for as long as I remember myself (am 30 now). First it was the influence of english in TV (we only dub childrens shows and movies). I came unscattered from my youth and really doubt that my children won't be as good or better at icelandic than me. Everyone has learned icelandic, basic danish and advanced english at age 16. From the age 16-20 majority of kids add a fourth language which is eith…

My problem is that, as time goes by, English use will become more common, and Icelandic less. The spread of the English language (e.g. the children in the article who '“know what the word is” for something they are being shown on the flashcard, but not in Icelandic.') is accompanied by the spread of US culture (TV, film, music). While US culture isn't neccessarily better or worse than any other, I get a lot of enjoym…

> I get a lot of enjoyment from visiting places where English isn't spoken

Very interestingly though, Americans tend to visit places and usually contain themselves to the very small pockets of countries where people can speak English to them. I can definitely see that in my country (France), where American tourists only go to the-place-where-all-americans-go, and then come back amazed that people spoke English to them.

This tends to be very disconnected from the actual English-speaking skills of the population (which, for my country, is pretty abysmal).

Post reply on HN