
The Reason Some Hyperlocal Languages Survive - curtis
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/02/why-some-tiny-hyperlocal-languages-survive/582367/
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sramsay
From the article: "Languages are often considered to supply the very framework
on which our thoughts coalesce—a framework that is completely distinct in each
language and _gives rise to distinctive modes of thinking and expression "_
(emphasis mine).

It never ceases to amaze me how addicted the media is to the so-called "Sapir-
Whorf hypothesis." Follow the link, and you discover that there is actually
fairly narrow evidence for this claim (at least the strong version of it).
Look into actual experiments on linguistic relativity, and it becomes even
weaker.

That phrase "often considered" makes it sound like it's a majority view among
linguists, when it's actually a quite fraught contention. It would be like
saying, "panpsychism is often considered an explanation of the relationship
between mind and matter." Some hold that view, but "often considered" makes it
sound more like a widely held position, or even a consensus position. Which it
certainly is not.

~~~
moreoutput
Is it really that surprising that writers would want it to be true?

~~~
sramsay
It is unsurprising only if you fail to consider the implications of it being
true (in the strong sense).

Some languages have extremely complex ways of indicating tense (making a
grammatical distinction between, for example, past events that occurred and
then ceased, versus past events that are still ongoing). Some have retained
complex grammars for expressing wishes (the optative mood, for example). Other
languages have far fewer _grammatical_ ways of expressing tense and mood.
Tenses in Mandarin Chinese are often "optional" in a sentence, for example,
and in general the mood system of English is a lot simpler than it is in, say,
ancient Greek. Ancient Hebrew, strictly speaking, does not have past, present,
and future tenses at all (but instead combines context with perfective and
imperfective aspects).

Now here's the possibly dangerous leap. "The Chinese think differently about
time" (or are less concerned about it). "The ancient Hebrews were very focused
on the present and rather feckless about the future." "German and Greek are
the only languages worthy of philosophy" (a direct quote from Heidegger).
"There are certain emotions in Hopi that cannot be expressed in English."
"People speaking a creole are less capable of nuanced rational thought." You
can probably see where this is going . . .

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PavlikPaja
One of the more interesting grammatical features is evidentiallity, which
requires you to indicate how you know what you say, e.g. if you saw it,
deduced it, or if it's something you were told.

Another is grammatical honorifics, which use suffixes to indicate your
relationship with the speaker and sometimes also with who, or even what you
are talking about.

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bayesian_horse
Recently I learned that there are several Sami languages spoken in northern
Finland, all of which are classified as endangered, at most a few thousand
speakers each. Yet also, due to modern technology like health care and food
security, there are more Sami speakers living right now than ever before...

Which leads me to suspect that such languages must have been evolving,
breaking apart and dying all the time.

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thaumasiotes
Yes, that's true of all languages.

Those Sami languages are endangered not so much because of their absolute
number of speakers as because you can't get anywhere by speaking them.
Languages like that tend to die out in favor of more useful ones.

If all the Finns were wiped out and nobody could go into Finland, the Sami
would thrive and so would their languages.

~~~
bayesian_horse
That seems like a naive understanding of language and population dynamics.

Nobody prevents the Sami from reproducing in bigger numbers and living all
over Finland (and they consider themselves Finnish citizen, mostly). Also, the
usefulness argument contradicts with these languages surviving and Latin
having dyed out despite being widely understood (to this day).

~~~
thaumasiotes
Died out? Latin is the national language in Italy, Spain, France, Romania,
Portugal, and all of central and south America. (You know... "Latin America".)
And other places.

The Sami languages haven't "survived" to any greater degree than Latin has.
Quite the contrary.

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frabert
None of those places speak Latin, they all speak Romance languages. None of
those languages are anything like Latin.

~~~
clouddrover
What, not even Italian? English is also strongly influenced by Latin. Leaving
the word "Latin" aside, your post uses the words "place", "none", and
"language" which derive from Latin.

The claim that none of these languages are anything like Latin is overblown.

~~~
bayesian_horse
The point is that these languages are related, but distinct.

One factor is mutual intelligibility, but mutually intelligible "languages"
can still be classified as distinct. This is complicated by continual spectra,
where A and B, B and C are MI but A and C are not.

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PavlikPaja
The point is that people never stopped speaking Latin (although in some places
like North Africa nad the Balkans they did) There is a clear continuity
between Latin and various Romance languages. Some time during the early middle
ages, people started complaining they couldn't understand such and such
person's Latin and the different dialects eventually became to be called
different langauges and had their own writing systems created.

Langauges slowly change over time. It's kind of like the Canterbury tales'
English is different from Shakespeare's English and even Lovecraft's English
is clearly more oldfashioned compared to modern English.

~~~
bayesian_horse
Shakespearian English and modern English are mutually intelligible and their
separation is mostly temporal, not geographical.

Middle-English is referred to as a distinct language which you can study.

~~~
PavlikPaja
Mutual intelligibility is rarely the only reason for calling a different
langauge different. E.g the scandinavian langauges are relatively easily
mutually intelligible, so is Czech and Slovak, yet they are called different
languages mainly for political reasons. On the other hand, many of the Chinese
"dialects" are not even alike, yet they are still considered one language for
political reasons. Even perhaps more familiar "Black English" is usually
considered to be nothing more than English with bad grammar, even though it's
very clearly a distinct language of its own, that is not readily mutually
intelligible with standard american English.

~~~
bayesian_horse
You just have a quirky understanding what a language actually is. Language
names are given and defined in language themselves, and it does make a world
of a difference if you say you speak Swedish, Danish, or Norwegian, even
though they are quite MI among each other, and even somewhat MI with German.

Linguists do refer to different languages in China, which are referred to by
the government as dialects. So there is much more to it than politics. In your
definition probably the whole Indo-Germanic family from Norwegian to Farsi or
Hindi would be one language.

