Dying Languages, Fading Formats 501
utopyr writes "A story on BBC News looks briefly at the problems in preserving human languages in digital formats. The scope of the problem? Of the world's roughly 6,500 languages (of which, fewer than 500 are listed here), half will be extinct within the century, as the last speakers die. However, formats are proving even more ephemeral than human memory."
This is a bit harsh... (Score:4, Insightful)
If no one is going to speak it again, and it isn't written anywhere, why should it be preserved?
Reminds me of people that are 'pack rats.' Why must you feel compelled to keep something you don't use?
Re:This is a bit harsh... (Score:4, Insightful)
However, I think older languages should be preserved if only to make sure that archeologists and historians have a way of understanding what they're reading.
Re:This is a bit harsh... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, sandscrit isn't spoken, but its still important to the study of ancient texts.
A tribal dialect of swahili used by a tribal village of canabals that died off by eating themselves and never had any texts, OTOH, should not be something worth keeping and studying...
Re:This is a bit harsh... (Score:2, Flamebait)
Agreed.
Re:This is a bit harsh... (Score:3)
It was probably your sig that did it. It looks like part of the message at first glance.
Re:This is a bit harsh... (Score:3, Informative)
And yes, it is spoken and in active use. Every Hindu religious ceremony is in Sanskrit, and every priest and read/write and speak it. Given that there are 800 millions plus Hindus, that's a lot of Sanskrit out there.
Re:This is a bit harsh... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:This is a bit harsh... (Score:3, Interesting)
No No No! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:No No No! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:This is a bit harsh... (Score:5, Insightful)
These differences explore the breadth and depth of what it is to be human.
So different people having different opinions are good, and therefore having different cultures with different worldviews are good; language is just one part of that equation.
Re:This is a bit harsh... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's only through knowing these rare, dying languages that scientists have been able to talk to indigenous people and discover so-called wonder drugs in remote jungles etc.
IANAL (that's L for Linguist) but I know that diversity is a good thing. If we all spoke English, well, damn that would be like if we all used Windows.
Re:This is a bit harsh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is a bit harsh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Fundamentally, Life is killing. There are only two pathways from that statement: blasphemy and sanctity. You destroy a culture to implement english, Mc Donald's, Ford, and Victoria's Secret... much difference than expressing tolerance, preserving that culture to be remembered, and holding the people of that culture as equals.
Re:This is a bit harsh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is a bit harsh... (Score:5, Insightful)
People aren't eating McDonald's hamburgers because they've been forced to under an imperialistic dictum...they're eating them because they like a cheap, easy meal
Indeed. This for me seems to be the "trap" of "modern" western culture. The technology and conveniences are powerfully alluring, and ultimately any non-isolated culture is going to voluntarily gravitate towards it, seeking its benefits (and perceived status). You can't stop it. Most kids of other cultures will pick Playstations over traditional toys. People like things like cellphones. Not to mention the benefits of western medicine and medical technologies.
Some people of other cultures (e.g. here in South Africa) would like to see their people return to a "traditional" lifestyle, but it can never happen as long as new generations are exposed to "our" (western) culture - its like a Pandora's box, it cannot be closed again. Its unstoppable, because no rational person can argue against the obvious benefits of the technologies our culture has produced. None of this is really a bad thing, as such, because people are ultimately just choosing what they believe is best for them, and surprise surprise, they like cellphones, cars, Playstations etc. So this isn't necessarily a bad thing. But it can be. Language and culture form an important part of how people define themselves, of their identity. This shouldn't be underestimated. Many people are attracted by all the "shiny things" our culture has to offer in terms of material wealth and 'fancy gadgets' and nice houses, nice cars etc, and in many cases choose to give up (either partially or entirely) their own language and culture. And once its too late, they may find out just how empty, unfulfilling and alienating our culture can be (not saying it inherently is, but it clearly can be).
But on the whole, people nowadays are making their own choices, and they are voluntarily choosing things like McDonalds.
In a certain sense though, people don't really have a "choice", as such: people have to choose our culture, because it is really the only option available that makes sense in today's society. You need to make money to pay rent and buy food, you need a job to make money, you need an education to get a job, better education = better job, you need a car to get around, etc etc. So in a certain sense people are, very loosely speaking, "forced" to choose this culture.
All the same reasons apply to why its difficult as a "westerner" to choose another cultural lifestyle even if you want to. Sure I would like to go live in the middle of nowhere somewhere or in some central Amazonian rainforest, catching and/or growing my own food etc. But some obvious questions arise, apart from luxuries ("give up Internet?"), but more practically, "where would I get my contact lenses / glasses from?", "what happens if I get sick or break a leg?" etc.
Re:This is a bit harsh... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd prefer it that way than
Re:This is a bit harsh... (Score:3)
Baloney. The flow of culture isn't one-way. Japanese food, cars, electronics, and pop culture have invaded the US just as much as American food and pop culture have invaded Japan. Twenty years ago, in central Oklahoma, I counted myself as extremely lucky to find one album of Persian chants and love songs--now I can walk three blocks and spend far more than I can afford on "world music" CDs. (No, I haven't moved to the coast; I
Re:Vive La France (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, if it were French that was the basis of the the mono-culture, then the development of a common language would be considered giving culture to to world...not taking culture from the world.
The really funny thing about what is happening now is that the US is not as actively trying to create a mono-culture as the French, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Russian and other imperialist nations did in the past.
When the Europeans were
Re:This is a bit harsh... (Score:5, Insightful)
As I explain in another post: Capturing different languages helps to capture different cultures, and differences in culture help to teach us how different and similar people are, and how the brain works.
We will be losing anthropological information, something we will want 1000 years from now, and something we *know* we will want. Think of all the old lost civilizations we study, and think of the fact that we are watching the same thing happen in front of our very eyes.
Re:This is a bit harsh... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:This is a bit harsh... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm working on a project right now called the Omushkego Oral History Project for the University of Winnipeg and Canadian Heritage, whose goal is to preserve the Cree language spoken around Northern Manitoba and Ontario. It has opened my eyes to a really large tragedy in North America.
We have a chance to learn about the history of North America from another perspective than the "winners", something you currently don't learn about in high school history class. This is important for Canada as a country because it allows us to understand our history more fully, and to understand how prior actions have resulted in social issues, including racism, that exist today. This helps us improve our decision making process by being more aware of what the results of our decisions might be. It is also necessary to help us solve the problems we have today, which is necessary in order to move forward. History and cultural preservation, or at least documentation and understanding, is a necessary part of this.
In Star Trek Nemesis, Picard stated that to be human was to seek to improve oneself. One of the crucial ways of doing that is by learning about our history. Without that, we're a lost cause.
I agree that culture is both moving and unique, and is not shared just as a society or community, but cultural differences exist between individuals as well. In order to build a more effective culture and sense of morality for yourself, you need more than just your own perspective, or your potential for growth cannot be realized.
Rosetta Stone (Score:2)
Rus
Re:Rosetta Stone (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Rosetta Stone (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This is a bit harsh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Latin isn't being spoken anymore, and not written anymore, but it's not a dead language...
People learn it to enjoy great literature such as Virgilius' Aeneas in the language it was originally written in! Or Catulus his poems, translations aren't even half as good. It also is the foundation of current languages, consult an etymological dictionary and you'll see!
Losing these languages is a very sad thing IMHO.
Re:This is a bit harsh... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This is a bit harsh... (Score:2)
Yes, I know hyrogliphics are written, but it's still a language.
Re:This is a bit harsh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why dig up fossils of extinct animals? To understand how they developed, evolved, and why they went away. And by understanding how a langage changes and grows and moves across the land you can gain a wealth of information about the people who spoke it.
Re:This is a bit harsh... no its realistic (Score:2)
If no one is going to speak it again, and it isn't written anywhere, why should it be preserved?
Reminds me of people that are 'pack rats.' Why must you feel compelled to keep something you don't use?
I understand exactly what you are saying. Reminds me of the Simpsons episode with the endangered "Screaming Catapiller". It was sexually attracted to fire, and had a bunch of other reasons why it should be allowed to become extinct (screaming was one of them). But there is always some people who w
Re:This is a bit harsh... (Score:5, Funny)
Ahem . . . We are not 'pack rats', we are cautious folks!
You never know when you will need that box of 8" floppies or that copy of Lotus 1,2,3 G.
Re:This is a bit harsh... (Score:2)
We can learn a LOT of things through different languages, even languages that are no longer spoken. Some examples that come to mind:
Cognitive psychology: Say "B" then "P," then realize that they're just a frequency apart, and speakers of some languages can't tell our B and P apart, but instead have two different B's that are indistinguishable to our ear. Keeping these languages around could give us clues as to how we develop linguistic abilities (although I don't have a partic
Re:This is a bit harsh... (Score:2)
We cannot expect that the language to be "preserved" as in used and spoken by people.
However, keeping records of the language is an important process; just like we save old books in libraries and old things in museums.
Such records will be invaluable to historians (linguists, in this case). It gives all of us a sense of history, so that we know how things were in the past.
Tor
Re:This is a bit harsh... (Score:4, Insightful)
Throwing away a language is like throwing away the last remainig copy of a historical reference. Leaving thousands of langauges to die is like the burning of the Alexandrai library.
Re:This is a bit harsh... (Score:2, Insightful)
btw...what is the 'most' efficient language? (Score:2, Interesting)
Just curious?
Re:This is a bit harsh... (Score:3, Insightful)
Kaj jes, unu el ili estas Esperanto!
Re:This is a bit harsh... (Score:3, Insightful)
Because it might contain something interesting or useful that we're not capable of recognizing right now. Why sequence genomes, catalog butterflies, or do star surveys?
Human language is poorly understood, as were many scientific fields that began with inquisitive 'pack rats' collecting lots of data. Once you've got something to work with, you can do studies, look for patterns, and find things that the origin
I find it ironic that your sig quotes Einstein! (Score:2)
Or dying, as it were.
You can read my other replies in this thread, but to address your question:
People think differently, therefore they speak differently. Capturing the speech therefore captures the different thoughts. Sounds simple enough I hope.
Cultures think differently, and therefore come up with different languages and different language structures. Capturing the language therefore captures the different cultural thoug
Re:This is a bit harsh... (Score:2)
Re:This is a bit harsh... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's been found that all languages studied thus far share structural features in syntax, semantics, morphology, and phonology. Finding all of these features will help us gain important insight into how the human mind works. However, there are still many things that have yet to be found. By keeping these datasets around, there is greater chance that we will be able to find out all of these features.
For example, the New York Times has an interesting article [nytimes.com] about the slowly dying African click-languages. Since all the other languages of the world do not employ the use of click sounds, if this language were to completely disappear, we would have no evidence that humans are able to use certain click sounds in language (linguists have documented a canon of specific sounds that all languages pick from).
Re:This is a bit harsh... (Score:3, Insightful)
'coz, usually, a lot of specialised knowledge is encoded in these languages that is not there in a generic language like English (or "standard", i.e., non-dialectal sarkari Hindi, or Mandarin).
The point here is very subtle and is something that I've always found it difficult to describe to mono-linguals, especially when I can't think of examples off-the-top-of-my-head. So let's just put it this way:-Douglas Adams' Babelfish and that germ thing you see on Farscape? I doubt if you can replicate in real life.
Re:This is a bit harsh... (Score:3, Interesting)
(And so forth...that's just one example of the sort of research opportunities made possible by well-preserved language data.)
Star Trek (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Star Trek (Score:2)
A bigger list (Score:5, Informative)
Re:A bigger list (Score:2, Informative)
Here's an even bigger one:
The Summer Institute of Linguistics' Ethnologue [ethnologue.com]
Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, the flip side of the coin is that there are no living native speakers of Old English either. That is, languages are born and they die just as species do, and this is a natural process. Trying to preserve them all completely intact is simply not possible, any more than freezing a few condor embryos is going to teach us what ecological role the animal played during its heyday.
Libraries, grammars, lexicons are all the genetic information of a language. But there is so much besides that will be lost...
Re:Interesting (Score:2, Interesting)
Languages (Score:5, Interesting)
I think this will somehow make a change to future languages.
Re:Languages (Score:2)
Of course it will change future language, anything else would be a revolutionary discovery. English and other languages are always evolving. Changes are often driven by you
Re:Languages (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Languages (Score:2)
Sure eventually these changes may be incorporated into the language, but I don't see how a little short-hand will threaten a language. I think it's kind of funny that adults using short-hand for centuries never raised concern but some kids use "tnx" for "thanks" and it's speculated the language is going to hell.
Re:Languages (Score:3, Interesting)
More and more kids use expressions like "U" for "you"
I always find this a somewhat weird example/argument for the "degradation" of English, because a number of languages already use "u" to mean "you". In South Africa: "u" means "you" in Afrikaans (pronounced a little like "e" but shorter, isiZulu "u" means "you" (*) (pronounced like "oo" in book), Sesotho uses "o" which is anyway pronounced very much like the isiZulu "u". And none of this has ever been seen as a bad thing. Its perfectly normal. What exact
too many. (Score:2, Interesting)
This is important.. (Score:2)
For a longer list of languages (Score:3, Informative)
Why or Why Not? (Score:5, Informative)
Here is a good essay as to why NOT to preserve them:
http://www.kenanmalik.com/essays/die.html
Re:Why or Why Not? (Score:4, Insightful)
The idea is not absurd at all. Connotative meanings are different to different peoples, and Connotative meanings are part and parcel of the language you speak. The language you speak affects your worldview.
Consider the Hawaiian word "momona". It's usually translated into English as "fat", but to a Hawaiian speaker, that's not what it means. To a Hawaiian speaker, it would imply "plump", well-built, or healthy. Pleasingly plump, if you will. It is not the negative word that the English word "fat" is. The same with "wiwi", skinny: in Hawaiian, the implication is one of sickness and unhealth. Far, far different from English.
Even a cursory run through any of the languages you know would reveal examples of this in both single words and metaphorical phrases.
You could argue that language itself is an insignificant part of cultural expression, and that you could just as easily bring someone up speaking English to whom the terms "fat" and "thin" would have different connotations, and I suppose you would have a point. But I don't think it would be a very strong one. I think language and culture are strongly tied together; it is not necessarily because a Frenchman speaks French that he sees the world differently, but it is certainly due to the fact that he is French, and speaking French is part of being French. It becomes a chicken-and-egg question: are you French because you speak French, or do you speak French because you're French?
Re:Why or Why Not? (Score:4, Insightful)
Then the English translation of "fat" is sloppy and wrong. This has nothing to do with linguistic culture, as much as it does with sloppy translation.
Think back to the days of Teddy Roosevelt -- where the image of health and wealth was the well-dressed, "fat" person. They were considered affluent (who else could afford to each that much) and healthy.
Language doesn't define culture, culture defines language. Thus, being "a Frenchman" isn't defined by speaking French -- but by attitudes, beliefs, actions, etc. Thus the haughty "you are not a TRUE Frenchman" or Arab, or African, or...
A Frenchman speaking English would be just as French, and you would find that the English he spoke would evolve over time to reflect his worldview better. Language is mutable and will always change to reflect culture. This is why American, British, Canadian and Australian all speak English, but aren't speaking the exact same language.
Re:Why or Why Not? (Score:3, Insightful)
Then how would you translate it? There's no English parallel that clearly matches the meaning of that word.
Try translating "The Marines put gangstas and crackers together in boot-camp." You can translate gangsta and cracker, but there's no word in Hawiian or French that means the same thing; you can either translate it tersely, and lose the feeling and mean
context, context, context. (Score:3, Informative)
It is even more absurd to imagine that all French speakers have a common view of the world, thanks to a common language.
Not all french speakers are alike. infact, go to any country, and the northerners can tell the southerners as soon as the open their mouths- they speak differently! (Or maybe its east and west, depends upon the geography) As for french, do Parisians have the same world view as the Quebecois? They live on
In other language news... (Score:5, Funny)
Linky [theonion.com]
made up language (Score:5, Funny)
It is not a real language, it is just a bunch of made up noises that pranksters use to appear intelligent, but I am on to them!
See my website [franceisoc...ermany.org] for more information.
Re:made up language (Score:4, Interesting)
As is any language, really.
I have learned a lot over the past few years about linguistics, because my girlfriend (now wife) was getting her Masters in French linguistics. In essence, you are right about French being a bunch of made up noises, but that is what all languages are!
People like to gripe about "bastardizations" of language, like ebonics or 1337 speak, but in reality they are linguistically relevant. How do you think English, or any other language for that matter, evolved?
I could go on and on with examples (if I could remember them), but they are countless. Popular culture, sometimes through ignorance, changes the way a word is written and/or spoken. That can evolve into a new word that could take on an entirely different meaning. Verbing is one example. Sometimes I may hate it, but it is a natural linguistic phenomena. "Fax me" or "email me" doesn't sound weird to me, but "text me" does. Maybe in 5 years, it won't.
Another example: some of you may have heard the US Marine phrase "Semper Fi, never die". Semper Fi is short for Semper Fidelis, which is Latin. Funny though, Fidelis is pronounced "Fee-delis". That's an E sound, not an I sound. But someone misunderstood that, and thousands of people say Semper Fi (long I).
Even if a lot of these languages could be "saved" in written form, they won't be truly preserved. Even if they could be recorded, they might not be preserved. Context, how to speak them, tone, inflection, etc all play a part in what makes up a language. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), languages, like living things, die and evolve.
preserving dialects (Score:3, Informative)
link [ling.umu.se]
A few of my favorite sites (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.ancientscripts.com
http://www.omniglot.com
Omniglot includes a geek-friendly section on artificial writing systems as well.
We need them because of the Sapir-Worf Hypothesis (Score:4, Insightful)
Google for more details [google.com]
Re:We need them because of the Sapir-Worf Hypothes (Score:2)
Re:We need them because of the Sapir-Worf Hypothes (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:We need them because of the Sapir-Worf Hypothes (Score:5, Interesting)
the thoughts you can think are mostly expressed in the langugages you command.
This strong form of the Whorfian hypothesis is simply wrong.
The most common demonstration of this involves colors. Many languages have only a very few color words, but speakers of those languages can and do identify, categorize, and differentiate color in exactly the same ways as English speakers who have dozens of color names.
Also, the hypothesis doesn't really make sense in the first place. It's easy to think thoughts without expressing them in your native language or any other. This is what's happening anytime you have a concept but you don't quite know how to express it, so you say "uh..." until you can put the right words together.
Weaker forms of the hypothesis that aspects of language can affect thought have recently been gaining some support; things like noun gender and verb endings seem to nudge speakers to describe objects slightly differently or pay more attention to certain things in the world, for example. But this is nothing like the hypothesis expressed above.
Isn't FORTH endangered too? Only Yoda speaks it. (Score:3, Funny)
(or in FORTHese:
FORTH known speaker yoda only is.
)
Unfortunately, it is a dying language.
(or in FORTHese:
language dying unfortunately it is
)
It must be preserved.
(or in FORTHese:
Perserved, it must be.
)
Digital amnesia (Score:5, Insightful)
not really... (Score:3, Insightful)
The same cannot be said for any analog based data system such as film. If the original is damaged, you're left with an imperfect copy. Of course, pay enough money and your analog copy will be a close reproduction of the original, but it won't be identical.
Dr Fish
Free Databases help (Score:2, Interesting)
I am working right now with LingoTeach and a US university to add a Native American language that is almost extinct to the Free LingoTeach Database, so that future generations have the choice to revive it. Can't say more here, because we are still working out details.
Any help is of course welcome. http://www.lingoteach.org
Vanishing Voices (Score:3, Informative)
The basic argument was that preserving linguistic diversity would have the corollary effect of preserving cultural diversity (which is good). I found this indirect logic to be somewhat weak. After finishing the book, I did not feel that the authors had given me a good reason to be concerned about the loss of so many languages.
Note that the book focused more on the problem of preserving the languages in society. The authors considered an archive to be a poor substitute for a living, breathing language, much like a recording is a poor substitute for a concert.
Oh whatever (Score:2)
Obviously some media degrades physically over time, just like some paper.
Extinguished languages (Score:5, Informative)
There are still many ancient texts, from dead languages, that have never been deciphered, and some, not from such a distant past. Maybe you would like to give your best shot at some of them. Here is a list of texts and writing systems awaiting to be understood:
Rongorongo [rongorongo.org], the hieroglyphic script of Easter Island
The Voynich Manuscript [ucr.edu], 200 pages, probably written in the 13 century
Indus Valley scripts [harappa.com] from Mohenjo-daro in Pakistan, 4000 years ago
Etruscan [geocities.com]
The Disc of Phaistos [interkriti.org], from Crete, 3700 years ago
Meroitic hieroglyphs of ancient Nubia
Zapotec script [ancientscripts.com]
Have fun!
Coptic (Score:2)
Wow, I didn't know the police had their own language!
Is it just me... (Score:3, Funny)
Oh, wait. Human languages...sorry.
Interesting Language Links... (Score:4, Informative)
The Summer Institute in Linguistics [sil.org] has a much more comprehensive list of languages in their compendium entitled the Ethnologue [ethnologue.com] (Available for perusing online.
UNESCO [unesco.org], an agency of the United Nations has compiled The Redbook of Endangered Languages [u-tokyo.ac.jp] listing many endangered languages around the world.
Another source for those interested in endangered languages is The Foundation For Endangered Languages [ogmios.org].
For those more interested in creating languages of their own, or "conlangs" like Tolkien created, might I suggest Langmaker [langmaker.com], Mark Rosenfelder's excellent Virtual Verduria [zompist.com] (including his Language Construction Kit [zompist.com]), and for those interested in Tolkiens' tongues (such as Quenya, almost unanimously considered the most beautiful conlang created) there is the very informational Ardalambion [www.uib.no].
Hope those links will help people interested in the topics of endangered and model languages.
The Value of Preserving Dying Languages (Score:5, Informative)
Before starting, I should mention that the given estimate for the number of languages spoken today is just that: an estimate. There are areas in the world such as Cameroon, Papua New Guinea, the Congo basian, and the Amazon basin that are constantly yielding new languages. Compounding the problem of an accurate number is the fact that, unfortunately, records and data are not available for all spoken languages and counting all of them is quite difficult. I have personally seen figures in the range of four thousand to fifteen thousand currently spoken languages so don't take that number as gold. (It is, however, as close to being accepted as any other estimate can be.)
OK. Why should a dying language be preserved? People have pointed out the parallel to preserving endangered animal species through environmental efforts or the scramble scientists made to save Mesopotamian artifacts from Iraq before the war broke out and these are both excellent analogies: just because a language is not a physical thing does not mean it is not worth the time, money, and effort to preserve. Wildlife activists fight for the rights of endangered species because they are unique and part of the natural environment of this world. Archeologists do the same for artifacts of human eras long gone and disappeared. Why shouldn't the same be made for languages? A language and the culture surrounding it are inseparable; a language is a living thing, a product of the unbelievable mechanism of the human mind. Chimpanzees can use basic tools to scrape termites out of their mounds but they are unable to communicate using spontaneous, creative language. Ultimately this is what lifts the human race above the rest of this planet's fauna. Preserve a dying language because it is part of the heritage of the entirety of mankind.
Of course, saving a language for its aesthetic value is not the only reason. Linguists (notably Noam Chomsky and Joseph Greenberg) have been trying for at least decades to document and discover the underlying reasons for the existence of language universals. Using simple examples, every language has the concept of a noun and a verb. Why is that? Is it just to facilitate the processing of communication in the human mind or is it innate? Every language that has evolved naturally is complex in its own manner and can express any concept found in any other language; no language is inferior or superior to any other language in facilitating communication. Is this natural? Are there languages out there that are simply empirically inferior to others and die out as its native speakers learn the value of another, superior tongue? Has every language ever spoken been this way?
There are still untold numbers of questions that cannot or have not been answered by contemporary linguistics. Joseph Greenberg is the father of the movement to uncover linguistic universals by studying large sets of data representative of the distribution of the genetic makeup of the world's languages. This approach has yielded many valuable insights into the human creation of language. If a universal is absolute, then perhaps it reveals part of the inner workings of our own minds. The sad truth, however, is that so many languages have been lost before the advent of the written language and since that no universal can ever be proven to be 100% absolute. Does this mean linguists should give up? No, of course not! Perhaps some unique language in the valleys of Papua New Guinea will manifest some exception to an absolute universal, forever changing our views on the human mind. For instance, the language Hixkaryana, spoken by less than 400 natives in the Amazon basin, has a default word order of Object-Verb-Subject. Before the discovery and documentation of Hixkaryana it was thought this word order was so counter to normal human thinking that it probably did not exist. What would have happened if no efforts had been made to document Hixkaryana? Linguists would have been unknowingly deprived of a valuable insight into language typology.
I hate to say it but I'll be harsher... (Score:4, Interesting)
Do your homework... storing these languages will be a way for some with some interest to research how and possibly WHAT factors influenced the language development of various groups through history. For example, Latin may be dead, but it influenced many languages, and in some cases you could trace invasions via accents borrowed from Latin. (Romania is in the middle of the slavic/gallic area yet their language is based on Latin, quite significantly at that.Hungaria is right west of Romania and they speek a completely different language than all those around them (Huns settled there.) All in all at least some study will at least keep track of where we are coming from.)
It is almost like taking family pictures or writing a family tree, only this time with languages. It may not seem like much to the consumerist point of view prevalent now, especially among those of us here in the USA that have NOT been outside the country...
Destroy variety and you'll be left eating hot dogs for the rest of your life. They're not bad, but if it was all you had you'd soon understand why many seek the unusual and the break from the status quo. Preserving some cultures or parts of cultures other than our own might even count as being civilized. (remember our ancestors commiting genocide of entire peoples when they landed here? you should. it is our heritage and forgetting it will let those in power commit those crimes again)
Plus our studies of evolution have barely begun... we need to record some things that aren't fossilized such as art and language. Even if just to leave to future civilizations digging out our leftovers from the ashes of our own stupidity. (ala A.I.)
-DaedalusHKX
PS - parts of this post were not related completely to the article but more to your rants of "its better if everyone spoke english" but I guess many would also say "its better if everyone agreed with the status quo, even if GW threatens to smash all our rights into the gutter so the RIAA and the rest of the corporate world can fatten its portfolio).
PPS - mod as you see fit
Languages may hold the key... (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree that if a language is dying then it should not be saved to perpetuate its use. If the language is dying then it has essentially shown itself to be an inadequate means of expression for the modern world and that it is unable to adapt itself to express new ideas.
That said, I do believe that languages ought to be preserved for academic study since every language is a reflection of its culture and expresses ideas and concepts that are not easily expressed in other languages. For instance, you'll find in a language like Arabic, spoken by desert dwellers and nomads, figures of speech, proverbs, and other expressions depicting the importance of water which would not be found, for instance, in languages spoken by populations in lush, agricultural societies. Something similar could be said regarding regions that experience an abundance of water like South East Asia which has the monsoon season. Although the preceding example is mundane, what I'm getting at is that letting a language disappear is depriving oneself of novel modes of thought and expression.
I think every language has rich concepts to offer other languages. If we don't preserve the languages we do have, we may very well be shielding ourselves from potentially revolutionary ideas.
Language determines what you read online. (Score:4, Insightful)
Spelling (Score:4, Insightful)
Another angle. (Score:4, Insightful)
Not that we are bad, it's that we have other more pressing matters like survival.
Those languages combined tell us a story we will have a much harder time understanding without many of them.
I have often wondered about religion and why it exists. This question is always tied up with our lost roots.
Since each of us always asks these questions at some point, work done to save these languages makes sense. It also makes their loss real once you think past the purely practical matters.
On the plus side (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Who cares? (Score:2)
However, for those who do study the past and learn from it, having the information about dead languages is a useful tool. Certainly tells us about ourselves.
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Funny)
All Space Aliens also speak english.
Re:Is this really a big deal? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Is this really a big deal? (Score:3, Insightful)
I imagine that if you polled the American populace in general, you might find more support for this than you think exists. I think you would find that the only group strongly opposed would be the very old and the poorly educated.
... say ... France ... about converting their "official" language to
Now, try polling the populace in
Re:Metric? Not worth it. (Score:3, Insightful)
BABEL II (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Is this really a big deal? (Score:2)
Re:Is this really a big deal? (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, I'll feed the troll.
The issue of what language people should speak was never at hand; your comment is a total non-sequetur, and is off topic.
The issue is the preservation of languages which are fast becoming historical. The reason it is a big deal is that we lose part of history if we do not. The language itself is of significance to historians, but futhermore, all of the literature and linguistic art of that culture is lost to us if the language in which they exist is lost to the knowledge of human kind.
Let me give you a little example. You almost certainly are familiar with the word "troubador". You may have a vague sense that is refers to a sort of medieval minstrel.
What it refers to is an elite of songwriters, "trobadors", in the 12th and 13th centuries, famed for the quality of their lyrics, and for the fact that, unlike the "serious" artists of the rest of Europe at that time who wrote in Latin, they wrote in their vernacular. We now call that language "Old Occitan", though they did not call it that.
For some eight centuries -- right through to the present day -- their fame as lyricists was so great that the word for them has become a common noun. Their craft was legendary for centuries after their home land was conquered in the Albigensian Crusade, and their worldly, sensuous art repressed by the Church.
I'm willing to bet you have never heard a single word of trobador verse, neither in the original nor in translation. This is the single most famous body of literature in the history of Europe, and you have never heard a single word of it.
The reason why is that the trobadors loved word play -- e.g. double-entrendres, extremely tight rhymes -- and invented complicated poetic forms (you have a trobador to thank or curse for the sestina). The result is that while the sense of a troubador song may be translated, translating the form, bringing all the witty word play which was the point of their craft, into another language is pretty close to impossible. They even managed to invent a kind of rhyme (rims derivatatius) which is close to impossible to execute in English, requiring, as it does, a syllable's length difference in congugation of verbs or declention of nouns.
So if you want to appreciate the most famous poetry in the history of Europe, you have to learn Old Occitan and read it in the original.
And that is one example of why it is so important to preserve dead and dying languages. So that, should some weirdo in the future actually care about the bounty of the human artistic acheivement through time, the door to the libraries of the past may yet be unlocked by those crazy enough to learn the keys.
We preserve languages for the same reason we don't burn libraries.
Everyone learning and speaking in uniform English? (Score:5, Informative)
Counterpoint: Singlish
Singapore, like most former British colonies, has an education policy to teach its school-kids primarily in English. Curiously enough, it's produced a generation that needs a campaign to speak proper English [sgem.org.sg] and another campaign to speak Mandarin [mandarin.org.sg], the mother-tongue of more than 70% of Singaporeans. One naive, probably superficial, comment we'd make is that young Singaporeans are neither here nor there; they insist on mixing Mandarin grammar and Hokkien words to produce English sentences. The government, apparently, is so worried that Singapore might lose its "natural advantage", that it has a set of "approved" words to be used in locally-produced English-language television shows.
Clearly, it has been very difficult to teach and sustain a standard, uniform, international language for 30 years in a population of 4 million. Now consider the challenges involved in doing this for the entire world.
Let's face it; even if everyone learns and speaks in English, there will still be geographical differences in dialect. The differences will lead to new languages. Just as it has been happening over the last few millenia.
Re:Is this really a big deal? (Score:2)
As long as the language is french we're okay. (Score:2)
Anyone who thinks the french are ethnocentric should look in the mirror (USA, Japan,