
How to Save an Ancient Language Before It Disappears - quickfox
http://narrative.ly/super-subcultures/how-to-save-an-ancient-language-before-it-disappears-forever/
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FussyZeus
Whenever it comes to these kinds of issues I always have the same question:
Why is it inherently valuable to save things that are no longer used? I rarely
get an answer beyond a reference to the nebulous concept of "historical" that
deems it worthy of preservation.

If it were important, people would be using it, or at least keeping it
already. If it's not, let it die. Humans in groups have nasty tendencies
toward hoarding.

Just my opinion, will probably get downvoted but I just don't get it.

Edit: Yes I realize this was kind of forcibly forgotten which changes the
variables, I'm more referring to the constant stream of "we need to save the
X" causes where X can be anything from a language to some subspecies of
tropical frog or some weird tradition.

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gliese1337
For many things that are no longer used, there really isn't any value. But
languages are special- languages are intimately connected with culture, and
potentially vast bodies of other knowledge. As the article says, in this case
"it is their language that binds them together as a people more than
anything".

There is scientific value is preserving languages, just like there is
scientific value in preserving endangered rainforest frogs and weird plants-
they might have useful things to teach us, and we'll never know if we let them
disappear.

When a weird tradition dies out, we lose some emotional connection to past
people, but that's probably OK because it's still documented, and we can go
read about it. When a tropical frog goes extinct, we lose access to any
biochemical tricks it might have been hiding, and that's a little bit sadder.
But when we lose a language, not only do we lose the emotional connection to
other people (which is a pretty freaking big deal all by itself! But you could
argue that losing a culture isn't inherently bad, if nobody cared about it
anymore anyway), and not only do we lose the ability to study the workings of
the language like we might study the workings of a frog, we also lose access
to all of the knowledge of other things that was encoded in that language.
It's not just losing a tradition, it's losing everything that people who spoke
that language knew about all of their traditions. If it had extensive
literature, and was well documented, we might be able to translate some of it
into other languages for preservation, but that is incredibly difficult to do,
and simply will not happen for most languages. And plenty of knowledge is not
preserved in literature- it's purely oral. Cultures that die may have their
knowledge preserved if their language is still carried on, but when a
_language_ dies, all of its knowledge dies with it.

For any particular language, there _may_ not be much that it has to offer that
is unique and can't be replaced. But, then again, there might. The _potential_
is enormous, and thus the risks associated with losing a language are also
enormous, and thus it makes a lot of sense to care about preserving languages,
just in case.

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FussyZeus
I'm not sold on traditions, but your arguments on the other two are good.

