

A Loss for Words: Can a Dying Language Be Saved? - benbreen
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/03/30/a-loss-for-words

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waqf
Should a dying language be "saved"? Preserving cultural heritage is all very
well, but expending a child's language-acquisitive resources on a language
which won't connect them to the rest of contemporary humanity seems far too
high a price.

~~~
bkurtz13
There is a particularly human egotism with respect to "saving" things that
have outlived their usefulness and purpose, or preserving things that should
be changing. If language can be viewed through its evolutionary purpose, these
dying languages are simply experiments that did not pan out, and should be
allowed to become extinct.

~~~
JulianMorrison
Many of these cultures (including their language) were forcefully banned,
obliterated by law, lynching, displacement. discriminatory treatment, and the
stealing of children. I do not exaggerate. So don't pretend they are dying of
natural causes when the knife is still sticking out of their back.

~~~
67726e
To play the devil's advocate, maybe they deserve to die out. If they would
have innovated and conquered first, their language could have lived and ours
could be the one on its deathbed. Survival of the fittest, if you will.

~~~
JulianMorrison
The devil has enough advocates. Every time the words "to play the devil's
advocate..." cross your brain, just punch yourself in the face instead. Soon
the urge will pass.

~~~
67726e
Every time you feel like posting a snarky reply on Hacker News, go fuck
yourself.

It's an honest question and I was hoping for some interesting answers. I was
hoping someone would come along and have something interesting a la Jarred
Diamond's "Guns, Germs, & Steel"[0] that may explore what role languages had
on development of cultures, similar to the aforementioned book's exploration
of the development of civilizations and how that led to the fateful
interactions that have shaped the modern world.

No, instead of an insightful answer, let's just let our liberal outrage fly at
a comment that could not possibly have any good or real intent behind it. I'm
clearly just a neo-Nazi posting up in here in HN, advocating the destruction
of those damn Injuns! God forbid one uses a rhetorical device!

[0] -
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel)

~~~
JulianMorrison
If I thought you were arguing in good faith, I'd say something like: you are
wasting your time running toxicology screens on a patient with the knife hilt
still protruding. It's intensely unsubtle what happened: the languages were
banned, boarding schools beat kids for talking anything but English, and so
on.

However, I feel that nobody plays devil's advocate in good faith. In the worst
case it's a shallow wrapper for "lets pretend my hate is a hypothetical" or in
the best, "lets spend a few minutes kicking the skulls of innocents down the
road, merely for idle argument's sake." Which evinces such a callous disregard
it's hardly better than the former.

~~~
67726e
Not every dead language is a result of a genocide. My question stands on it's
own, and there is more to it than what you imply. Yes, the most obvious, ready
examples are what you say, but not all.

------
MrPatan
To all the tourists that want to stop people from talking to each other in
order to have the vague aesthetic feeling that "the world is diverse" or
whatever floats your tourist boat: Why don't you go and do that with _your
own_ child?

Go on, raise them in a language that will limit their life choices and
potential. See how that works for them. Then have them tell us how that went.
Oh, sorry, that won't happen so easily, now, would it?

"Linguistic diversity" Is just another way to say "Communication barriers".

Funny how is is always something that should happen to other people.

~~~
EdwardDiego
> raise them in a language that will limit their life choices and potential.

False dilemma. You can raise a bilingual child, in no way limiting their life
choices and potential. In fact, there is evidence that suggests that
bilingualism provides cognitive benefits later in life.

~~~
waqf
_You 're_ a false dilemma. Raising a child bilingual in English and Mandarin,
good. Raising a child bilingual in Gaelic and Navajo, not so good.

~~~
EdwardDiego
Another false dilemma. Raise a child bilingual in English and Navajo, nothing
bad. Gee, why did you omit _that_ combination?

------
lesu
I'm wondering if the people who are railing against saving languages are
equally against organizations such as the Internet Archive? My thinking is
that, as tech-savvy computer whizzes, many folk on Hacker News are happier to
preserve something that makes sense to _them_ (media or website snapshots)
than things that don't (languages and foreign cultural history). It's
difficult to say what is useful without the benefit of hindsight, by which
time it is a moot point -- the resource is long gone and will never be again.
Anyways, just my two cents as an incredibly biased amateur archivist.

~~~
DanAndersen
I see that as an apples to oranges comparison. When we say "saving languages,"
do we mean archiving them, backing them up, creating stores of references and
recordings that can be easily recalled yet inexpensively preserved? If so,
then I am definitely for that. If "saving languages" means accepting nothing
less than the descendants of the speakers of a dying language needing to
expend mental energy and time to remain active speakers of that language,
placing them at a disadvantage when compared with those who have free time for
other pursuits and contributing to segregating that group from others, I don't
know if that's as beneficial.

In general, all knowledge should be preserved when possible. The question is
whether it's better for it to be stored on hard drives or in brains.

~~~
lesu
Good question :) not sure I have a good answer for that one, although I'd like
to point out that many people elect to expend mental energy on otherwise
unproductive minutia (aka. hobbies) so perhaps the task of carrying on a
spoken tradition is less onerous to some than one might expect.

Language contributing to group segregation is a very strong claim, however,
and if you have any case studies (or, like, newspaper articles, this isn't
academia) I'd be interested in seeing them.

------
sumedh
I just feel that the whole humanity should speak one common language. Now
whether you like it or not that language is going to be English.

I just dont understand why do we need multiple languages anymore. If anyone
says we need them to preserve the culture, I dont understand that either.

My native language is not English, just in case anyone feels I want to force
English down your throat.

~~~
Animats
It may end up being Mandarin. Although Beijing, despite half a century of
trying, hasn't been able to convert the Guangdong and Hong Kong areas. Only
about 53% of China's own population has good fluency in Standard Chinese.

~~~
morgante
I doubt it. There might be more people with Mandarin as a native language, but
English has far more adoption amongst non-native speakers. Most Europeans, for
example, know some English.

------
MichaelGG
>"Mohawk isn’t just a form of speech,” he said. “It’s a holistic relationship
to the cosmos.”

What's _that_ supposed to mean? Apart from as a tautology because we're part
of the cosmos.

~~~
panglott
It's just an effort to raise the prestige of Mohawk. Like all the
disinformation about how English is just essential to everyone's economic
future.

The prestige of English is wide but shallow: everyone's just in it for the
money, and if something nicer shows up, the world will abandon English in a
heartbeat.

If a language has spiritual value (like Latin, Sanskrit, or Classical Arabic),
that's tapping into a narrower but deeper source of prestige.

------
vorg
> The mother tongue of more than three billion people is one of twenty, which
> are, in order of their current predominance: Mandarin Chinese, Spanish,
> English, Hindi, Arabic, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, Japanese, Javanese,
> German, Wu Chinese, Korean, French, Telugu, Marathi, Turkish, Tamil,
> Vietnamese, and Urdu.

Arabic listed as one language? Can Gulf Arabic and Moroccan Arabic speakers
understand each other? I've heard people speak to each other where one speaks
Spanish and the other Brazilian Portuguese. The main difference between Hindi
and Urdu is the different script. Don't those languages have more
justification for being counted as one than those of Arabic? It's even a bit
iffy to count English as one language -- put 3 people speaking Indian English,
Ebonics, and Geordie in a room together and see how well they communicate!

~~~
panglott
Quantifying the difference between a language and a dialect is always going to
be a problem. English dialects differ, but most English speakers also know
well a standard variety of American or Commonwealth stock (which are mutually
intelligible).

Distangling the Chinese languages is another huge problem, since the
government of China sees them as all dialects of a single language, but any
real comparison of phonology, syntax, or lexicon shows them to be quite
distinct indeed.

My understanding is the syntax of Hindi and Urdu are very similar, but the
lexicon is quite distinct. Since each has either a relatively more a
Persianized or Sanskritized vocabulary.

------
christophmccann
In Scotland, there is a big movement to preserve the teaching of Gaelic.
Whilst I think it is important to preserve culture and to preserve history, I
don't think, in terms of youth education, that should outweigh the utility of
skills and languages necessary for the modern world.

It seems slightly obtuse to me that whilst do not teach computer science,
programming, engineering or science particularly well in schools, we should
worry about the preservation of teaching of old languages. That being said, I
think it is extremely important to teach kids (and the public in general)
about history as a way of avoiding past mistakes so I don't think we should
eliminate it - I just think there are more important things we need to fix
first.

~~~
maccard
The scots preservation of Gaelic is much less than in Ireland. When I was in
school, I took Irish classes from when I was 5 until I left, as do the vast
majority of children. Most Irish people have at least a handful of words and
phrases they know. All of the road signs and government communications are
translated into Irish.

~~~
redacted
(Disclaimer: I am Irish, and I do not agree with the mandatory nature of Irish
lessons.)

The fact that 12-13 years of taking Irish classes daily leads to most Irish
people having a few words and phrases is a _damning indictment_ of our
education system. It is also a perfect example of how saving a language that
has fallen out of use is incredibly difficult. All that effort teaching a
language to a country and, because it is almost never used outside of the
Gaeltacht (Irish-speaking areas, mostly in the west of the country) it has
been my experience that most people very rapidly lose their ability in Irish
after leaving school.

I have long held the position that forcing children to learn a dead (or at the
very least, on advanced life support) language is doing more harm than good.
It instilled antipathy towards Irish more than love for Irish in my peers.
Making it an optional subject would mean only people who cared would study it,
and they would perhaps be more likely to try and use it.

~~~
jkot
Gealic is not mandatory. English-only schools in west of ireland are
underfunded. Parents could sign their children into English school with 50
another kids in single class, or into Geelic school with 20 children in class.

~~~
redacted
Irish is mandatory. All primary and secondary school students are required to
learn Irish, normally around one hour per day on average. Our secondary school
graduation exam (the Leaving Cert) has precisely one mandatory subject: Irish
[1].

My mother is a primary teacher in a non-Gaelscoile (school taught through
Irish), so I am well aware of the institutional funding bias that exists and
agree it is completely unfair. It is another ill-thought out attempt by our
Department of Education to prop up a failing system.

[1] Many Irish universities require English, Maths and a second language
(Irish, French, German would be the most common). However if you don't want to
go to college you don't need to sit those exams.

------
codewithcheese
Some descriptive YouTube videos about the Selk'nam people with English
subtitles

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psJ5tg6Pqcc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psJ5tg6Pqcc)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAgcA0JEQkk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAgcA0JEQkk)

~~~
kazagistar
Holy shit, they actually had a real Patriarchy: All the guys were in a secret
conspiracy to keep the women down?

------
benbreen
An interesting blog post about the camouflage-style initiation paint and masks
of the tribe this article is about:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selknam_people](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selknam_people)

------
Potando
These articles appear from time to time but they never give any sensible
reason. Just take it as given that languages must be saved. This one has a
long diversion into indigenous medicine - not something that needs a language,
but rather needs knowledge, using any language. Here's the closest thing I
found to a reason though I only read half way:

"But the loss of languages passed down for millennia, along with their unique
arts and cosmologies, may have consequences that won’t be understood until it
is too late to reverse them."

------
crusso
It would be nice if the human mind were flexible enough to use different
spoken languages the way that we use different computer languages.

Would we discover that like computer languages, certain languages are just
better at expressing some concepts? Would we talk about love in French and
about science in English or German?

Or would our easy use of language just encourage us to merge the best of all
languages into some optimized hodge-podge general-use language?

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markbnj
>> It is a singular fate to be the last of one’s kind

Well, obviously.

------
cjsthompson
Can those who believe it's ok for languages (cultural diversity) to die out be
saved ?

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the_gipsy
Maybe an artificially revived language is worse than a dead language.

