| Pages in topic: < [1 2] | Accidental Death of a Language Thread poster: 3ADE shadab
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jacana54 (X) 
Uruguay
English to Spanish
+ ...
| Mercosur languages | Feb 8, 2010 |
One of the official languages of the Mercosur is guaraní.
While it is one of the languages spoken in Paraguay and nearby regions, the only people I know from outside the area who've made a point of learning it are missionaries.
| | | | Alan Frankel
United States
Local time: 19:52
German to English
| Speaking to Susanna | Feb 8, 2010 |
I'm addressing this primarily to Susanna, as she is the only person so far in this thread who has made a statement with which I can truly identify.
Yes, it IS a calamity when a language dies, and when the culture it represents dies with it. I find it strange that this should be a controversial statement. It certainly may be a good idea for individuals who speak Arutani, or Maragus, or Haeke to also master English, or Portuguese, or French IN ADDITION to their original languages. But... See more I'm addressing this primarily to Susanna, as she is the only person so far in this thread who has made a statement with which I can truly identify.
Yes, it IS a calamity when a language dies, and when the culture it represents dies with it. I find it strange that this should be a controversial statement. It certainly may be a good idea for individuals who speak Arutani, or Maragus, or Haeke to also master English, or Portuguese, or French IN ADDITION to their original languages. But for the world to lose every poem that was ever spoken in Arutani, or Maragus, or Haeke, or another 6000 languages -- is that really a joking matter? It amazes me that someone would basically think "Well, it doesn't matter as long as it doesn't affect our business," and then end up posting such a shallow thought.
Of course, individuals should have the choice to learn other ways of life, including majority languages, but they should also be made aware that they have not only the option, but the responsibility, of keeping their own heritage alive. Unfortunately, this must be an active task because majority language speakers have very often not only passively but actively wiped out minority languages (by forbidding them to be spoken, for instance, as has occurred in the USA, Canada, and probably every country around the globe).
The Endangered Language Fund at Yale supports projects that preserve languages. People listen to the remaining speakers of a language, collect information about it (vocabulary, grammar, etc.), help the speakers to educate subsequent generations about the language and the importance of keeping it alive, and compile information in it (songs, tales, etc.). Their website is here:
http://www.endangeredlanguagefund.org/index.html
I donate to them on a regular basis and I urge others to at least take a look at what they do before assuming there's no need for anyone to care about endangered languages, or that there's nothing that can be done to help people to help themselves to save them. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Protection of endangered languages as a weapon | Feb 8, 2010 |
Alan Frankel wrote:
I donate to them on a regular basis and I urge others to at least take a look at what they do before assuming there's no need for anyone to care about endangered languages, or that there's nothing that can be done to help people to help themselves to save them.
Alan, of course you are free to donate to whatever causes you find good and just for mankind. But in my opinion you make the same mistake as every passionate advocate of anything: you simply cannot believe that others don't do the same, call them shallow and probably believe they are irresponsible or plain stupid. It happens with environmentalists, believers in extreme political forms, followers of non-mainstream forms of religion, etc.
I do respect your ideas and how you invest your money, but please do not judge me as a bad person because I don't follow your same "faith". My main concern about mankind is widespread respect of human rights, democracy, economical freedom, and legal safety for all individuals. Unfortunately in my own country I see people discriminated, beaten, fined, and chased for reason of their mother tongue, so I am really skeptical of this "protection of endangered languages". It is used as a weapon in my country.
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 01:52
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
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Mohd Shadab wrote:
...some of these languages are believed to be over 60,000 years old. In fact, Bo Sr’s death breaks an alleged link to a culture over 60,000 years old.
The writing down of sounds is less than 5000 years old. There is absolutely no way scientists can determine if the Bo language spoken today is the same as the Bo language that was spoken 10 000, 20 000 or 50 000 years ago. Besides, it is unlikely that a language would remain unchanged for so long... even under ideal conditions such as having no influence from other languages and having speakers who live in close proximity of each other for so many years.
Samuel
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Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 01:52
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
| Why would one want to revitalise dying languages? | Feb 8, 2010 |
Mohd Shadab wrote:
Of the world’s 6,500 or so languages, 3,000 are expected to die within less than one hundred years’ time. There are few cases of successful language revitalisation, Welsh and Hebrew being two remarkable examples.
The question that one should answer is "Why revitalise languages?". Who wants to revitalise languages? Why? What are their motives? What do they hope to achieve by revitalising a language? I'm not suggesting that there aren't good reasons for revitalising a language... but the revitaliser should tell us what his reasons are, if we are to decide on the best way of doing it, and how to measure our success.
David Crystal in Language Death (2000) gives six factors which may help revitalise a dying language. He suggests the speakers of a dying language:
1. increase their prestige within a dominant community
2. increase their wealth
3. increase their power in the eyes of the dominant community
4. have a strong presence in the education system
5. write down the language
6. make use of electronic technology
More information at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_death
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_revitalization
It is interesting to see Crystal's list, because it shows that language is tied to society. The rise or fall of a language depends on its speakers having or not having superiority over speakers of other languages in the same region.
If it is possible for a language to be reinvigorated, revitalised and perhaps brought back from near death then the job of linguists is to always support such initiatives. If we are able to preserve language life then by all means let us preserve it.
These are two sweeping statements that cannot simply be repeated. Not all things that die out are good things. Not all things that gradually disappear are worthy of being preserved. Some things are very, very bad, and we should not try to prevent their demise. Since language is tied to culture, society and power, it follows that an effort to preserve a language is an effort to preserve (or re-instate) power of one group of people over others. I'm not saying that this is good or bad, but I am saying that one must be honest about it.
However, sometimes this is not possible and then perhaps our most important task as linguists is to analyse, describe and document; set the dying language down so that we can use knowledge about it to further research into the general understanding of the human condition.
While it may be interesting to study something that is fast disappearing, it is not always certain that knowledge of it would help us understand things that do currently matter, such as how to deal with existing, non-threatened languages and/or how to deal with currently threatened languages.
Studying existing languages with hundreds of speakers is likely to be far more productive if our aim is to learn about the "human condition".
[Edited at 2010-02-08 09:25 GMT]
| | | | | European languages | Feb 8, 2010 |
Paul Dixon is of course correct, there are five, not four, official European languages across the three continents – my mistake. However, that hardly alters the fact that European languages, and not Native American or Australian ones, have official status in every single country.
As far as I can tell, the only indigenous languages with any official recognition at state level (and even then alongside a European language) are Aymarà and Quechua in Bolivia so, ultimately, the 300 o... See more Paul Dixon is of course correct, there are five, not four, official European languages across the three continents – my mistake. However, that hardly alters the fact that European languages, and not Native American or Australian ones, have official status in every single country.
As far as I can tell, the only indigenous languages with any official recognition at state level (and even then alongside a European language) are Aymarà and Quechua in Bolivia so, ultimately, the 300 or so indigenous languages of North and Central America and the 600 or so attested from South America, combined with the over 250 aboriginal Australian languages will be (or already have been) replaced by the grand total of five. As languages take centuries to evolve, they may also take centuries to eradicate; however this will be the eventual end result. The same is true for indigenous languages in large areas of Africa.
You may or may not approve of that scenario. However, if you do approve of it, it would be interesting to know precisely what you think will have been achieved by the elimination of some 1200 languages and their replacement with five, all of which have their origins in a small area of Europe facing the Atlantic.
This is not, as Krzysztof suggests, about India losing one of its 12000 languages (there aren’t 12000 languages in the world, let alone India, but I’m sure he is aware of that), the loss of Bo is but the tip of a very large iceberg – a process affecting thousands of languages across the world.
I am fully aware, as Samuel notes, that: ‘the rise or fall of a language depends on its speakers having or not having superiority over speakers of other languages in the same region’. That, indeed, is my main point, and the superiority aspect is the part that I find objectionable. These languages are not ‘dying’ because their speakers are suddenly fed up of them (that, at least, could be considered a natural outcome), they are being killed off, sometimes by negligence, but more often deliberately, by those in a position of power who simply want to get rid of them.
I am surprised that Tomás hasn’t included the right to speak your own language amongst the human rights he has listed. Discrimination on grounds of language is clearly wrong, but I believe I am putting forward a case for mutual respect here, not the replacement of one language of superiority with another.
My thanks to Alan for his supportive comments, the majority of which I agree with, (I would not personally wish to make speakers feel any obligation to keep their heritage alive if they really didn’t want to) and for the link. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Alan Frankel
United States
Local time: 19:52
German to English
| Several clarifications | Feb 8, 2010 |
Tomás, I wasn't talking about shallow people but rather flip responses. The irony is that my own response was so quick that I didn't recognize that you had not only actually said that the loss of languages is bad for business, but that language extinction is a process you (as well as others on the thread) lament. I certainly ... See more Tomás, I wasn't talking about shallow people but rather flip responses. The irony is that my own response was so quick that I didn't recognize that you had not only actually said that the loss of languages is bad for business, but that language extinction is a process you (as well as others on the thread) lament. I certainly agree that individuals have the right to focus on certain issues rather than others. Along the same lines, I did not mean to say that any particular minority-language-speaking individual faces a personal obligation to save his or her language. But groups should be made aware of the consequences of the unconscious loss of languages, a process that could be reversed if some individuals in each generation stepped up to collect and teach. That can be done in a very respectful, mutually beneficial, and unpatronizing way. Basically, groups should be presented with the knowledge that what they possess is valuable, they are in danger of losing it, and they are the ones with the power to safeguard it. And if possible, they should be provided with a catalytic amount of resources to help them save it. I cannot imagine that anyone could force them to teach or speak their minority language, or would even try.
As for the idea that protection of language is used as a weapon, well, yes, I can imagine that one group falsely claims that its culture is under attack by another group, and uses this to oppress the other. The Nazis did something analogous by claiming, against both logic and evidence, that the Jews, who formed about 1% of the population in Germany and had not so long ago been excluded from government, law, and academia, were trying to destroy German culture. But I'm not talking about specious claims. I'm talking about real ones. For instance, governments have often taken minority language speakers from their families and forced them to attend boarding schools where they are never allowed to speak their native language. That active destruction should not be followed by passive inaction.
As for the title of the post, perhaps it was inspired by the play "Accidental Death of an Anarchist" by Dario Fo, which deals with a perhaps-not-so-accidental death. Hence, the idea may be that the death of languages is not necessarily inevitable. And indeed, I think that while some languages may well have passed the point where they can be saved, the tide can be turned. Just as people have embraced the idea that they can ultimately do better by embracing sustainable agricultural techniques, I think that they can be convinced that they stand to gain by sustaining their culture. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Old practices in modern times | Feb 8, 2010 |
Alan Frankel wrote:
But groups should be made aware of the consequences of the unconscious loss of languages, a process that could be reversed if some individuals in each generation stepped up to collect and teach. That can be done in a very respectful, mutually beneficial, and unpatronizing way. Basically, groups should be presented with the knowledge that what they possess is valuable, they are in danger of losing it, and they are the ones with the power to safeguard it. And if possible, they should be provided with a catalytic amount of resources to help them save it. I cannot imagine that anyone could force them to teach or speak their minority language, or would even try.
I entirely agree with this.
Alan Frankel wrote:
For instance, governments have often taken minority language speakers from their families and forced them to attend boarding schools where they are never allowed to speak their native language. That active destruction should not be followed by passive inaction.
Well, that is to a certain extent what is happening today some parts of Spain unfortunately. In regions as important as Catalonia and the Basque country, Spanish-speaking pupils are forced to use the other official language at all times at school, even during recess. In Catalonia it is just impossible to get schooling in Spanish these days, despite the fact that it is as official a language as Catalan in the region. And it all started with claims that Spanish was putting Catalan in danger... I hope you understand that suggestions to revive minority languages or cultures gives me the creeps!
[Edited at 2010-02-08 18:53 GMT]
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Alan Frankel
United States
Local time: 19:52
German to English
Yes, I can imagine that that kind of coercive, one-size-fits-all approach in the name of protecting a minority language (at least a language that is in the minority in Spain as a whole) would give the subject a bad taste. No one should be telling people what language they should be speaking outside class. For that matter, I don't believe anyone should be told what language to speak in the workplace with colleagues, though many workplaces try. But the same type of coercive behavior is used to ... See more Yes, I can imagine that that kind of coercive, one-size-fits-all approach in the name of protecting a minority language (at least a language that is in the minority in Spain as a whole) would give the subject a bad taste. No one should be telling people what language they should be speaking outside class. For that matter, I don't believe anyone should be told what language to speak in the workplace with colleagues, though many workplaces try. But the same type of coercive behavior is used to squelch minority languages. The problem is the coercive approach, not whether the language involved is a minority (locally or country-wide).
There are generally constraints on total resources (time, or money, or the number of schools available), so the situation can be complicated and require ingenuity and sensitivity to solve. But that doesn't mean that it shouldn't be solved, or that only an "all-or-nothing" solution is acceptable. ▲ Collapse
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