Endangered languages

lolwhites · Post by **lolwhites** » Thu Jan 20, 2005 1:52 pm

Not really Applied Linguistics but worth reading nonetheless (although BBC News does tend to be a bit superficial).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4172085.stm

Andrew Patterson · Post by **Andrew Patterson** » Thu Jan 20, 2005 8:08 pm

Maybe this is going to seem controversial, but when I see the fact that languages are dying out described as "a problem" I always think, apart from the fact that there are a few lonely people with nobody to talk to, why is loss of a language a problem? The pat answer is that it is a loss of culture. Well languages evolve anyway, and every 750 or so years what was written in the past becomes uninteligable to modern readers anyway.

Within any one language there is plenty of culture anyway. What language death results in is greater communication between those who speak the remaining languages. It is sad but true that conflict is most likely to occur between people who don't understand each other. Language diversity isn't the same as biodiversity, as essentially language is just another meme. We need diversity of memes, but not of language itself. Even there, though, memes will be subject to natural selection. The tendencey is for greater numbers of memes, I'm glad to say. In general, culture is still expanding.

Now going out and deliberately destroying languages is going to put people's backs up, but we should surely never thow money at languages with the intention of preserving them with the possible exception of ones that serve as a lingua franca.

lolwhites · Post by **lolwhites** » Thu Jan 20, 2005 10:24 pm

It is sad but true that conflict is most likely to occur between people who don't understand each other

Yugoslavia? N. Ireland? Spain 1939-36? England 1642-1649? American Civil War? Los Angeles? Brixton?...

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Fri Jan 21, 2005 12:24 am

The article claims that a whole way of understanding human experience is lost. This view is now out of fashion, isn't it?

lolwhites · Post by **lolwhites** » Fri Jan 21, 2005 11:09 am

I wasn't aware the idea was "out of fashion" but let's assume it is, for arguments sake. What if it ever comes back into fashion? Might it be too late by then? Just because an idea is "out of fashion" doesn't make it wrong.

As a former students of linguistics I seem to recall that great insights into how language worked and what the universalities were came by looking at the less known ones to test theories. Sure, to the average person in the street it doesn't matter if little spoken languages die out but that is that really the point?

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Sun Jan 23, 2005 2:54 am

Well, languages certainly shouldn't be kept alive only in order to help us with our theories. Being a member of a minority language group is a great handicap in life, assuming one is not happy to follow traditional culture (which in any case is ever harder to happily maintain). Therefore people are keen to learn more useful tongues. It's all a great shame, and we should try and keep languages alive where possible, but frankly, many languages are going to keep dying out, and minority peoples are going to continue to want to share in our great riches.

I thought you would have more respect for intellectual fashion Lol, since you rage against the machine a little less than most posters here. It does after all represent current academic opinion based on the relevant research. As far as I'm aware, that suggests that everything can be understood in any language - no particular perspectives are being lost due to the switching of grammar and words. However, the death of a language probably means the concurrent death of a culture, so that is of course a shame, and there is no need to bring linguistic science into it.

lolwhites · Post by **lolwhites** » Mon Jan 24, 2005 12:39 am

Don't get me wrong, woody, I'm not of the "it's the latest view so it must be right" school of thought. Regarding the disappearance of some minority languages, I've yet to see the research or hear an argument to convince me that it doesn't matter that smaller languages are disappearing. I argued on another thread that the spread of English as a world language doesn't necessarily lead to the displacement of other cultures, and I do see the benefits of a lingua franca but that doesn't make the wholesale disppearance of another language ok.

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Mon Jan 24, 2005 2:37 am

The issue here is different. Powerful national languages are squeezing the smaller tongues, not international English.