Lost languages discovered in the oldest continuously run libraries (2017) • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by rileyphone » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 5:44 PM UTC

newsbinator wrote: post #31

velcrovan wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No-one in their right mind would create […] society Right. Because societies are emergent things that arise from masses of people, not products of an individual’s design preferences. That’s not to say that we might not eventually get to one language. But it won’t be because of illiterate* ideals expressed through technocratic meddling. (* — “Illiterate” in its original sense: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2012/05/03/r…

What's the difference between the technocratic meddling of getting everybody to stop spreading AIDS and the technocratic meddling of getting everybody to start speaking the same language? We build consensus, we devote dollars and person-hours, and we try to figure out how to get closer to a desired end state. We do it all the time. But when it's giving a generation of people plumbing that's monumental human progress…

The consequences can be disastrous, like Mao’s great leap forward. In any case, English is naturally taking the place of the world language.

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

#62

Post by yosito » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 5:49 PM UTC

newsbinator wrote: post #56

yosito wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, languages are a whole lot more than systems for speaking and writing. They're cultural memes and make up a large portion of many people's identity. I speak two widely spoken languages and one that's a bit less common. Learning the less common language was like gaining membership in an exclusive cultural club, and was even a key to getting citizenship. But I had to learn more than just words for things.…

> Learning the less common language was like gaining membership in an exclusive cultural club This is the problem: every language is an exclusive cultural club. I want to have one that isn't an exclusive cultural club. > I learned things that simply can't be translated into other languages without long paragraphs of explanation that would actually require the reader to accept some knowledge of the language to underst…

> The children in our family don't speak the same language as their grandparents did ... This doesn't seem to matter in any way that I've noticed

Speaking as a grandchild who didn't have the fortune of being exposed to my grandparents' language growing up, I felt that I missed out on a wealth of cultural knowledge and experience, which is what drove me to learn the language as an adult. I very much wish that I would have been taught by my family as a child.

> What would be an example of this?

Azt a fűzfán fütyülő réz angyalát!

This is the first example that came to my mind. It's not even the best example. The literal translation is "Unto that copper angel whistling on the willow tree", and it could be substituted with "Wow!" but good luck figuring out why it means that and why people use it instead of "Hűha".

Another more recent example, "Szeretném elkérni Mészáros Lőrinc anyukájának lencsefőzelék receptjét". You simply won't be able to understand what that means or why someone would say it as a literal translation.

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

#63

Post by rileyphone » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 5:52 PM UTC

yboris wrote: post #27

newsbinator wrote: post #7

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…

Language is a way of thought. Languages come with their own quirks, and just like [plant] monoculture is bad for an ecosystem, so would a single language. Since I was born in Russia and came to the US (thus becoming fluent in both languages), and especially after reading the book "Metaphors we live by" I see how language forces certain concepts on us. Having a variety of languages is a benefit, despite introducing pr…

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis always catches me as something we should investigate more, but unfortunately it’s mired in the broader conflict of cultural relativity, as I learned when my anthro professor tried to disprove it with a convoluted argument from an aboriginal tribes notion of direction. A diversity of languages means a diversity of thought, which maybe you could make the case for more multilingual teams from.

English seems to suck as a language but it has risen to be the lingua franca of our present world system - how much of that is because British and American superpowerdom vs being a good lingua franca is up for debate.

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

#64

Post by nitrogen » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 5:58 PM UTC

newsbinator wrote: post #37

thatjoeoverthr wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Empirically, most people deal with English’a dumb spelling. Over a billion people have gone and learned English, on top of native speakers. We’re using it now. Your hypothetical new language would have to displace this incumbent which for all practical purposes already does what you want of it. Miraculously, people can do more than one language so all this happens without anyone abandoning their languages. English sp…

Every person who learns English writing today spends literal years learning it to the point of not being embarrassingly bad at writing it. I'm not sure if you've ever had to learn English as a non-native English speaker, but it's one of the hardest, most painful, longest things to get truly proficient at, equal to other very hard aspects in one's very hard profession. There are hundreds of millions of smart people wh…

Regarding writing systems for English, have you seen this one? We had to learn about it when growing up in Utah:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deseret_alphabet

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

#65

Post by nitrogen » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 6:06 PM UTC

newsbinator wrote: post #56

yosito wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, languages are a whole lot more than systems for speaking and writing. They're cultural memes and make up a large portion of many people's identity. I speak two widely spoken languages and one that's a bit less common. Learning the less common language was like gaining membership in an exclusive cultural club, and was even a key to getting citizenship. But I had to learn more than just words for things.…

> Learning the less common language was like gaining membership in an exclusive cultural club This is the problem: every language is an exclusive cultural club. I want to have one that isn't an exclusive cultural club. > I learned things that simply can't be translated into other languages without long paragraphs of explanation that would actually require the reader to accept some knowledge of the language to underst…

Your ideas are interesting and I wish you luck on your quixotic quest to switch this part of our world from PvP mode to PvE mode.

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

#66

Post by alvarlagerlof » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 6:06 PM UTC

tgv wrote: post #39

newsbinator wrote: post #7

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…

What would that solve? Do large societies with a common language do so much better than those with multiple languages? > South Korean Hangul The Roman alphabet is just as simple, and much wider spread. English is a perfectly simple, easy to learn language with great expressive power. So shall we settle on English as the New World Language? Thought so.

English isn't simple at all.

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

#67

Post by SuoDuanDao » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 6:22 PM UTC

newsbinator wrote: post #7

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 is very much the sentiment behind the Esperanto movement. Though that was proposed as a standardized second language, to be learned alongside whatever local languages were already being learned by the local population.

The Esperanto crowd is a cool community, but uptake has been much slower than would be necessary for it to have the desired effectiveness.

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

#68

Post by kaesar14 » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 7:01 PM UTC

danjac wrote: post #54

newsbinator wrote: post #7

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…

The world decided on English. It wouldn't be my first choice - even as a native speaker - but history and inertia has decided on this obscure Norman French/Anglo-Saxon island pidgin and we're kind of stuck with it until the Chinese century runs its course and we're dealing with pictograms and tonal differences.

Until Chinese romanizes it will never be a lingua franca. Simply far too hard to learn the written word, Simplified or not.

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

#69

Post by kaesar14 » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 7:03 PM UTC

newsbinator wrote: post #37

thatjoeoverthr wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Empirically, most people deal with English’a dumb spelling. Over a billion people have gone and learned English, on top of native speakers. We’re using it now. Your hypothetical new language would have to displace this incumbent which for all practical purposes already does what you want of it. Miraculously, people can do more than one language so all this happens without anyone abandoning their languages. English sp…

Every person who learns English writing today spends literal years learning it to the point of not being embarrassingly bad at writing it. I'm not sure if you've ever had to learn English as a non-native English speaker, but it's one of the hardest, most painful, longest things to get truly proficient at, equal to other very hard aspects in one's very hard profession. There are hundreds of millions of smart people wh…

I don't think anyone disagrees English writing sucks, but the inertia is massive, and the benefits not all that clear relative to the absolutely massive cost. Retraining every English speaker to write, changing all our keyboards, changing signage and physical written word... it's a near impossible task. And it's not clear to me what the benefit is when, yes, a billion people can more or less communicate in it just fine.

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

#70

Post by newsbinator » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 7:24 PM UTC

yosito wrote: post #62

newsbinator wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Learning the less common language was like gaining membership in an exclusive cultural club This is the problem: every language is an exclusive cultural club. I want to have one that isn't an exclusive cultural club. > I learned things that simply can't be translated into other languages without long paragraphs of explanation that would actually require the reader to accept some knowledge of the language to underst…

> The children in our family don't speak the same language as their grandparents did ... This doesn't seem to matter in any way that I've noticed Speaking as a grandchild who didn't have the fortune of being exposed to my grandparents' language growing up, I felt that I missed out on a wealth of cultural knowledge and experience, which is what drove me to learn the language as an adult. I very much wish that I would…

> You simply won't be able to understand what that means or why someone would say it as a literal translation.

This is a supporting argument for my point: it’s the equivalent of an in-joke that I simply wouldn’t be able to understand.

Lots of groups have in-jokes that I can’t understand. For example, 3/4ths of memes on gaming and sports subreddits. These are rich cultures I am not a part of and have no need to be a part of.

I want there to be a single, unifying baseline language that we can all understand. When a concept is relevant to us, we’ll create words for it. When it’s a historical or cultural curiosity and not relevant to us, we’ll leave it to be explored by hobbyists, academics and people who have some historical connection to it.

Not every in-joke in every culture needs to be preserved as a world heritage.

At some point we need to say: here are the words to know and here’s how we use them to do math, science, politics, and to debate social issues… everything that involves people who aren’t in one’s personal in-group, in one’s tribe or on one’s team.

Those words will evolve, but let them evolve globally, with off-shoots that are relevant to in-groups, but with a main branch that is relevant to everybody.