Well, they could start by making Icelandic accessible to the outside world, good luck learning it outside Iceland.
Icelandic language battles threat of 'digital extinction'
141–150 of 170 posts
Re: Icelandic language battles threat of 'digital extinction'
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Well yeah, looking at popular music will do that. There's a massive amount of advertising money to make it popular. Look at the less forced genres of music. Rap in the USA, Grime in the UK, similar but different. The UK has a very different type of indie (named from coming from an independent label) music. And Country is only popular in the USA. If you have a quick look on the surface it can be similar, but if you lo…
Also, styles of music aren't equivalent to the culture that produced them.
American rock has its roots in Jazz and Bluegrass, which has its roots in the African slave diaspora. Japanese Visual Kei was influenced heavily by American glam rock bands. Does that mean Visual Kei merely an imitation of American culture, or that it expresses the same things that American rock does? Of course not. You can borrow the sound and the style but still make something culturally unique.
K-Pop is probably more "Americanized" than Japanese pop, but it's still distinctly not American. I don't think anyone would confuse either Japanese or Korean culture for American culture, even though both incorporate Western aesthetics and English into their cultural expressions.
Re: Icelandic language battles threat of 'digital extinction'
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
I imagine it would be latter, but I am not sure, hence my question. I have little knowledge about Iceland. I know for example in Quebec outside of Montreal, everyone assumes you speak French, regardless of your ethnicity.
I think most Icelanders, including myself, would start off conversing in English as a matter of courtesy; it would be rude to assume that a person of an ethnic minority isn't Icelandic based on their looks. A lot of times they are indeed Icelanders of ethnic minorities, and you avoid a situation embarrassing for both parties, and perhaps make them feel more welcome in the country they were born in.
When I went to Iceland, I was expecting to see close to zero immigrants and their descendants among the Icelandic population. I was surprised to see quite a few people of African and Asian descent working in Icelandic stores and speaking fluent Icelandic with the customers.
I found that the children in Iceland know English surprisingly well. My children were playing with an 8-year-old Icelandic girl who spoke nearly flawless English. I was impressed.
Re: Icelandic language battles threat of 'digital extinction'
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
>But they're being replaced by possibly the best example there is of a language evolving over time due to power dynamics. Why does the power dynamic of the language speakers (and therefore their linguistic dominance) provide a counterbalance to the loss of culture? That is, why do you specifically value one over the other, and in what sense is this comical?
It's not that I value one over the other. It's that I observe a dynamic that has persisted throughout human history and see people trying to fight it. Why is right now the time that we should "freeze" language adaptation to save culture? If that's the perspective, why aren't we also trying resurrect Ancient Egyptian language to preserve that culture as well? Growing up in an area with rip tides, it was always drilled…
First of all I fully agree with your sentiment and have similar views (re comical and more)
But
I don't think it is wrong to want to preserve culture and or language. I actually have really strong views that we MUST preserve language and everything that stems from it.
Not necessarily in the sense that we must all be able to speak it - English is going to dominate no matter what you do - but from a purely academic stand point it gives us an incredible insight into how humans have developed historically and may even help explain some of our misgivings in the future. Recording language is something we should be doing in the same way we are creating seed vaults in the arctic.
Language is what I believe truly defines us as humans. People who speak multiple languages often have completely different personalities [1] when speaking each language.
The language you speak can also alter many things including the way you view and reason about:
- Time [2]
- Color [3]
- Direction / left and right / forward and back [3]
- And even whether you know your own gender [3]
The list probably doesn't stop there but it shows you that losing these languages means we lose a completely different way of viewing the world - I think that would be kind of sad, I'm just glad we at least learned this before they're all lost.
> It's that I observe a dynamic that has persisted throughout human history and see people trying to fight it. Why is right now the time that we should "freeze" language adaptation to save culture?
I don't think "right now" is the time - I suspect all lost languages have struggled with losing their place and would have had people attempt to fight it and preserve the language.
Remember, our history likely doesn't cover the languages that have been lost and the struggle to preserve them specifically because they have been lost.
> If that's the perspective, why aren't we also trying resurrect Ancient Egyptian language to preserve that culture as well?
I'm glad you bought that up - it is a perfect example because we know how to read and write the language but we can only begin[4] to imagine how it actually sounds - and what ways it may have altered our views.
[1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/life-bilingual/201111/c...
[2] http://theconversation.com/language-alters-our-experience-of...
[3] https://ideas.ted.com/5-examples-of-how-the-languages-we-spe...
[4] https://www.connectsavannah.com/savannah/how-do-we-know-how-...
Re: Icelandic language battles threat of 'digital extinction'
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
Toute l’expérience d’un individu est construit sur le plan de son langage. [An individual’s experience is built entirely in terms of his language.]
This is Sapir-Whorf thinking. My understanding as a non-linguist is that this has never been proven. I know there is a strong/weak form of the hypothesis, but can't remember what the distinction is.
> but can't remember what the distinction is.
The strong hypothesis says that language determines and bounds your thinking, the weak hypothesis is that it influences and conditions your thinking.
Re: Icelandic language battles threat of 'digital extinction'
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
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, his…
Some public schools, such as Ridgeview Classical Schools in Colorado, teach English and Latin from Kindergarten through 12th grade. A Greek program starts in 3rd grade. They add modern languages (French, Spanish, German) in high school.
Re: Icelandic language battles threat of 'digital extinction'
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is Sapir-Whorf thinking. My understanding as a non-linguist is that this has never been proven. I know there is a strong/weak form of the hypothesis, but can't remember what the distinction is.
> but can't remember what the distinction is. The strong hypothesis says that language determines and bounds your thinking, the weak hypothesis is that it influences and conditions your thinking.
Thanks...weak sounds a lot more plausible than fully binding.
Re: Icelandic language battles threat of 'digital extinction'
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve often heard this, it’s never been my practical experience. If after the other party switches to English you either persist in their language, or ask politely if you can continue in their language, everyone I’ve ever encountered has been happy to help me stumble on
There are countries where either persisting in the local language or asking nicely, will meet with a negative response. Take the Netherlands, for example, where 90% of the population is said to speak English now. A foreign novice–intermediate learner trying to practice Dutch in everyday situations is likely to be told “Let’s just speak English and not waste time.” Your attempting to persist with your less-than-fluent…
Agreed, it’s definitely context dependent. There’s a world of difference between holding up a line in a store and having a conversation, however limited, with a taxi driver.
Re: Icelandic language battles threat of 'digital extinction'
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are countries where either persisting in the local language or asking nicely, will meet with a negative response. Take the Netherlands, for example, where 90% of the population is said to speak English now. A foreign novice–intermediate learner trying to practice Dutch in everyday situations is likely to be told “Let’s just speak English and not waste time.” Your attempting to persist with your less-than-fluent…
Agreed, it’s definitely context dependent. There’s a world of difference between holding up a line in a store and having a conversation, however limited, with a taxi driver.
The shop could be completely empty, no queue, and the shopkeeper might be free and even bored, but chances are he still won't want to listen to a novice-intermediate foreigner practicing Dutch. Listening to halting speech can feel like a waste of your time even if you have nothing better to do.
Re: Icelandic language battles threat of 'digital extinction'
#150This 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…
This is a topic that's really interesting to me because it has a lot of angles. At its most basic, there's people like me who are largely divested from our heritage and don't value it's preservation particularly. That's not to say I want it gone, I just don't have strong feelings about it either way.
On the other hand you have a lot of peoples who draw a lot of pride or just a sense of identity from exploring their culture and its heritage.
And finally you have the arguable need and definite convenience of a lingua franca in the face of increasing globalization.