I've witnessed the death of a language with my own eyes. My father still speaks the local dialect but I don't and nobody of my age does. I just know a few words of it. It's really sad to see the death of a language, when a language dies, everything dies with it, the spirit of a culture dies. And most of these languages are not even recorded anywhere, there is just no trace of it. (that's also the case of the dialect I'm talking about).
However, a language rarely dies completely. Even if the next generations are not speaking it anymore, some words remains when the concept the word is describing does not exist in the new language, some traces are still there.
I don't want you to see this as a personal attack, but isn't it your father's fault not having taught you to speak this "dialect" (which, I guess, is a language called despectively a dialect)?
Well I'm not sure of iagooar's intent, but there is an important distinction here that only community members have the actually power to save a language. It isn't their 'fault' by any means because they have to balance the conformative expectations of the larger (usually oppressive) society with the desire to keep their culture alive, and none of us can really say which is the 'right' choice.
The important battleground here is misinformation. A lot of people think teaching their children a native language will impede them from learning the matrix language, but tons of evidence shows that this is not the case. Bilinguals might think slightly differently than monolinguals, but on most tests they actually perform above average. If we could make sure they know that, and provide resources to record media and train educators directly in the communities, a lot more languages would survive.
I don't want to blame anyone, that wasn't my intent. But how do I express my opinion, that passing a language from parents to children is the best way of preserving an endagered language?
I ask myself how is your "grumpy" post contributing to this discussion?
It's indeed part of the problem. It's clearly a chicken and egg problem, because it was already engendered at the time, he did not think it would be useful (and it was already a bit out of fashion). But yes I agree. I call it a dialect myself because it relies at least 20% on french (I'm french myself). But after all, I'm not a linguist, they might disagree with the appellation. Maybe it would be a good think to document it I guess, for future purpose.
My father tried quite hard to teach me and my brother Turkish when we were young. It's lucky Turkish isn't in any sense an endangered language, because today between us we know exactly zero words of Turkish. It's not exactly a foolproof process.
I am a person who, as a polyglot, feels a lot of passion for languages, and can get really upset when I hear about languages that are dying. Guess you could compare the feeling with those of animal species getting extinct.
I often ask myself if I, as a programmer, could contribute to helping preserve at least some information about that of dying languages, or even prevent them getting extinct at all? Any ideas?
How about organizing an effort to collect entries like the ones in Untranslatables, for endangered languages? This could be done as a CC-licensed dictionary with source on github. A markdown template would be useful, and a way to collect all submissions into a nicely typeset PDF.
Google partnered with several research foundations to back http://www.endangeredlanguages.com/ It's not as specific as a dictionary, but it does provide a simple way to find particular languages and upload source material for them.
Researching and preserving endangered languages for posterity is mostly field work. For the most part, hardly any online records (apart from those collected by researchers) exist. It's very interesting work because documenting endangered languages means studying them in their 'natural habitat'. It's probably as Indiana Jones as a linguist's work can be.
That said, computational linguistics and especially statistical language models (HMMs etc.) are very useful for finding and describing distinctive language features once the data has been retrieved in the field. This is an area of expertise you might get involved in.
Replace "language" with "race" in that sentiment and you'll understand how dangerous your sentiment is. Languages are not mere vessels for communication. They also hold within them cultural histories and ways of thinking. To want all of them eradicated but one is to proclaim one language "superior" to all.
Luckily, we have technology that helps us translate between languages almost instantly. This allows people to communicate without completely eradicating an aspect of their cultural identity.
There is so much more than communication inside a language, it carries a whole culture. If you only know English, I would advise you to learn another language, you will understand.
> Languages were invented as means of communication, so if all languages disappear except one it'll be tremendous boost to humanity.
It isn't at all obvious that it would be a straight-up boon. It would help some things, hurt others. And in a few generations, we would have dialects and languages again. It's just how brains and (by extension) communities work.
I would think this kind of drift that used to happen when population were separated and didn't intercommunicate would happen much less nowadays.
Print, physical and electronic, kind of ossify a language. How much have English, Chinese, German evolved since widespread print and education? I think much less than they did a few hundred years ago.
Interconnectedness kind of promotes the preservation of the current state of a language, I think. Yes argots and memes and cants proliferate more quickly but dont seem to make so many permanent changes and when they do instigate a change that change gets diffused more widely so the language, while changing, remains monolithic rather than create a new dialect.
Everything can be looked at as a mere tool. To other people, it's more than that - an identity, a culture, a history, self-expression.
It might have felt like a drag if I was forced to learn to play and listen to jazz, like in music classes. But I don't try to project my personal feelings of how playing and learning jazz feels like work and drudgery onto actual jazz musicians. Now imagine if a jazz musician woke up one day and there were no one left to jam with - just curmudgeons like myself who don't appreciate jazz. Man, what a drag.
> Languages were invented as means of communication
That's one of two equally important reasons for language. The other is to easily identify insiders in large communities. A few languages later change their primary use to inter-community communication, but those will then start to splinter into dialects to easily distinguish insiders from outsiders.
There a PBS documentary on deciphering the glyphs of the lost Mayan language, which has been so valuable to the history of the Mayan people that they began teaching the lost language in schools: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5ppfC6y-5s
When I have traveled the world I got to the conclusion that the main problem of the world is people speaking different languages.
Americans, or Japanese or Chinese believing whatever their media trows at them only happens because those people do not understand the rest of the languages of the world.
Those countries are so big, the people living there believe they don't need other languages in order to live, so they live in their own bubble.
For Americans it gets compounded because they also believe the world should learn their language and not the other way around.
Languages are the main cause of conflict in the world today as without understanding them you are at the mercy of other people's interest.
The person that yesterday was a friend, today could become an enemy just because media tells you so(because it is in their own interest). It is very hard for media to do that when people could actually travel their selves and understand reality talking to the people that supposedly hates them without intermediaries.
People have the natural tendency to fear what they don't know about, and this could be used against them in order to justify mass surveillance, emergency measures, also called "total control of the ruling's elite".
This was said by Goering in Nuremberg:
"the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
Not different today. War is created by media. Living in a language bubble is dangerous.
Most of the languages that are going to disappear are not that different from others that will survive. People that live near other people copy the best thing their neighbor has.
Damn - if only programmers ruled the world, there could be world peace. Imagine a world of total conformance and homogeneity, identity stripped away in the name of standardization and streamlining. Finally, we would all understand each other... surely...
What carries culture is people, not the language they speak. Do all English speaking people think the same and have no identity?
We humans are very good at both forming groups as well as self-segregation. There will never be total conformance and homogeneity. If you think certain group of people fall into that category, that's because your own lack of understanding of them rather than them being the same.
In fact, if we all spoke the same language, there will actually be more understanding and less perceived sameness or difference.
If we all do the same things during the day, there will actually be even more understanding and less perceived sameness or difference.
People don't live to achieve total understanding and zero perceived difference with everyone else, rather, understanding and sameness exists to facilitate living.
Slowly getting to know people who spoke no common language with you and finally both of you managing to build rapport and communicate clearly with each other is a fulfilling experience. Advocating monoculture of language isn't too different to advocating a monoculture of crops, destroying diversity of life in the name of efficiency.
Efficiency facilitates living. Sacrificing experience of life in the name of efficiency kind of defeats the point.
Language is a barrier, and barriers have had a huge part in developing and maintaining cultures (Think mountains/laws/etc). Language keeps many cultural thoughts, perceptions, artifacts, and philosophies from both entering and leaving.
Like you said, the idea of everyone speaking the same language could never result in total homogeneity. However, you could lose out on some of the deeper insights and developments without language to filter out the noise. I believe that it would be a huge step backwards, but obviously you may disagree.
I wonder if when one's language dies out enough then it becomes incredibly hard to learn a new language since there are no resources to learn the new language using your original language.
31 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 73.6 ms ] threadHowever, a language rarely dies completely. Even if the next generations are not speaking it anymore, some words remains when the concept the word is describing does not exist in the new language, some traces are still there.
The important battleground here is misinformation. A lot of people think teaching their children a native language will impede them from learning the matrix language, but tons of evidence shows that this is not the case. Bilinguals might think slightly differently than monolinguals, but on most tests they actually perform above average. If we could make sure they know that, and provide resources to record media and train educators directly in the communities, a lot more languages would survive.
I ask myself how is your "grumpy" post contributing to this discussion?
"A language is a dialect with an army and navy"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_an...
I often ask myself if I, as a programmer, could contribute to helping preserve at least some information about that of dying languages, or even prevent them getting extinct at all? Any ideas?
http://www.amazon.com/Dictionary-Untranslatables-Philosophic...
That said, computational linguistics and especially statistical language models (HMMs etc.) are very useful for finding and describing distinctive language features once the data has been retrieved in the field. This is an area of expertise you might get involved in.
But once you link disappearance of language with words like endangered, dying, extinct, all of sudden it sounds terrible.
Power of the words.
"language" is a tool used to communicate, and it would be wonderful if any two arbitrary people could successfully communicate.
It isn't at all obvious that it would be a straight-up boon. It would help some things, hurt others. And in a few generations, we would have dialects and languages again. It's just how brains and (by extension) communities work.
Any recommended references on this process of language forking and dialect creation, especially in the context of neuroscience?
Print, physical and electronic, kind of ossify a language. How much have English, Chinese, German evolved since widespread print and education? I think much less than they did a few hundred years ago.
Interconnectedness kind of promotes the preservation of the current state of a language, I think. Yes argots and memes and cants proliferate more quickly but dont seem to make so many permanent changes and when they do instigate a change that change gets diffused more widely so the language, while changing, remains monolithic rather than create a new dialect.
It might have felt like a drag if I was forced to learn to play and listen to jazz, like in music classes. But I don't try to project my personal feelings of how playing and learning jazz feels like work and drudgery onto actual jazz musicians. Now imagine if a jazz musician woke up one day and there were no one left to jam with - just curmudgeons like myself who don't appreciate jazz. Man, what a drag.
That's one of two equally important reasons for language. The other is to easily identify insiders in large communities. A few languages later change their primary use to inter-community communication, but those will then start to splinter into dialects to easily distinguish insiders from outsiders.
There's also a corresponding book, Breaking the Maya Code, http://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Maya-Code-Third-Michael/dp/05...
When I have traveled the world I got to the conclusion that the main problem of the world is people speaking different languages.
Americans, or Japanese or Chinese believing whatever their media trows at them only happens because those people do not understand the rest of the languages of the world.
Those countries are so big, the people living there believe they don't need other languages in order to live, so they live in their own bubble.
For Americans it gets compounded because they also believe the world should learn their language and not the other way around.
Languages are the main cause of conflict in the world today as without understanding them you are at the mercy of other people's interest.
The person that yesterday was a friend, today could become an enemy just because media tells you so(because it is in their own interest). It is very hard for media to do that when people could actually travel their selves and understand reality talking to the people that supposedly hates them without intermediaries.
People have the natural tendency to fear what they don't know about, and this could be used against them in order to justify mass surveillance, emergency measures, also called "total control of the ruling's elite".
This was said by Goering in Nuremberg: "the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
Not different today. War is created by media. Living in a language bubble is dangerous.
Most of the languages that are going to disappear are not that different from others that will survive. People that live near other people copy the best thing their neighbor has.
Viva la programmacion!..
We humans are very good at both forming groups as well as self-segregation. There will never be total conformance and homogeneity. If you think certain group of people fall into that category, that's because your own lack of understanding of them rather than them being the same.
In fact, if we all spoke the same language, there will actually be more understanding and less perceived sameness or difference.
People don't live to achieve total understanding and zero perceived difference with everyone else, rather, understanding and sameness exists to facilitate living.
Slowly getting to know people who spoke no common language with you and finally both of you managing to build rapport and communicate clearly with each other is a fulfilling experience. Advocating monoculture of language isn't too different to advocating a monoculture of crops, destroying diversity of life in the name of efficiency.
Efficiency facilitates living. Sacrificing experience of life in the name of efficiency kind of defeats the point.
You want more, more of what, exactly?
Like you said, the idea of everyone speaking the same language could never result in total homogeneity. However, you could lose out on some of the deeper insights and developments without language to filter out the noise. I believe that it would be a huge step backwards, but obviously you may disagree.