
Can Multilingualism Survive?: How cities preserve and abandon languages - tokenadult
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/05/multilingual-cities/482709/?single_page=true
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Typhon
I'm quite pessimistic concerning the future of multilingualism. Small,
isolated communities manage to preserve their language for century, but a
community the same size in a big city can lose its language in the space of a
generation or two.

EDIT :
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IBfgUNpRsY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IBfgUNpRsY)
Note that the title is kinda stupid, it's obviously not their native language
if they can barely speak it, and that's kind of the point. Note also that
their parents come from a huge language community which is in no danger of
disappearing anytime soon and nevertheless, it's not enough.

~~~
sridca
That's obvious though, isn't it? People are going to gravitate towards
adopting the language with highest economic and social capital (presumably why
English took over French as an international language?).

~~~
guard-of-terra
English is also less weird than French, written English is pretty easy
language. Spoken English not so much. Italian is perhaps much easier, but of
course economic and social capital matters too.

~~~
Typhon
Weirdness of a language is completely subjective, and easyness too.

Overall, the intrinsic qualities of a language matter little if at all in
driving its adoption.

~~~
theoh
Inflected and irregular languages are more complex than uninflected and
regular. That's one kind of weirdness that it's difficult to dismiss.

~~~
rvense
But in most cases you don't have a pick of which extra language to learn.

People learn English because they want to speak with Americans (and earlier
the British). Everything else is irrelevant.

~~~
wolfgke
I rather think most people learn a particular set of language because they
have to pick it in school. For me it was English, Latin (hated it) and French
(as third language I also could have chosen Russian (would also have
interested me) or ancient Greek).

~~~
thaumasiotes
>> People learn English because they want to speak with Americans (and earlier
the British).

> I rather think most people learn a particular set of language because they
> have to pick it in school.

You are using "learn" in a completely different sense than rvense is. Far and
away the majority of people who have to take language classes in school don't
learn anything. People who study a language because they want to communicate
with people who speak that language, do learn.

~~~
wolfgke
> You are using "learn" in a completely different sense than rvense is. Far
> and away the majority of people who have to take language classes in school
> don't learn anything.

I know few people who really try to learn a new language after school (which
is IMHO a pity, since there exist free options in the internet), so for the
typical person it is "one either learned the language in school and got to an
at least medium level (on which one can, if one wants to (say, because one
wants to communicate with others), build later on in life) or one will never
learn the language".

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voodootrucker
Uniting in language is a sign of increased communication and opportunity. The
sooner we have a global language, the better. More opportunity, less war. I
would think a bunch of engineers trying to create stuff would agree on that.

All of that being said, the study of language is very important, and the
differences that exist should be recorded for scientific study. Maybe it even
makes sense to preserve the real outlying communities
([http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Sleep-There-Are-
Snakes/dp/0307386...](http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Sleep-There-Are-
Snakes/dp/0307386120)) by forcibly cutting them off from the global economy.

But major languages (English, Spanish, Portuguese) are redundant standards
that should be consolidated ASAP.

~~~
onion2k
A common global language doesn't have to be a _human_ language though.
Technology to translate in real-time already exists, and is likely to improve
far more quickly than anything that requires a rewrite of our cultural and
political systems. It's a great deal more likely we'll speak as many languages
as we do now but use technology to understand many more.

~~~
WildUtah
"Technology to translate in real-time already exists"

No. It does not. I do some translation work and a lot of multilingual
interaction. There is no decent translation technology even for written
communication outside technical documents. Even that is only barely decent
between European languages. A serious attempt at usable translation of even
the simplest texts between Asian languages and others does not yet exist.

Real time translation would multiply the speech recognition problem onto that
still-imaginary translation technology.

I will admit there is a lot of hype but there is no substitute for human
translators nor for simply learning a new language anywhere on the horizon.

~~~
onion2k
It's early days, but the cutting edge stuff works for some limited value of
"works". It's just about usable for casual conversations. But that's not the
point I was making; what I'm saying is simply that the likelihood of getting
working real-time translation on a computer is _considerably_ higher than
getting everyone to agree on a universal single language.

I can see computer-based real-time translation getting to the point where it's
putting translators out of jobs in the next few decades. I can't ever imagine
humanity transitioning to a single language, or even a limited scope single
language for business. It just won't happen.

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timthelion
In my experience, every langauge is broken into two dialectual parts:

1\. The formal communications dialect 2\. The bedroom + dinner table dialect

People who live in a european contry may notice that the formal dialect of
their native langauge is dissapearing, and even, that many new concepts cannot
be expressed in their native toung. But that doesn't mean that the bedroom +
dinner table aspect of their langauge is going away. Germans don't have tummy
aches, neither do Czechs. But both, "compile" their software and both preform
a "git commit".

~~~
Typhon
It's much more complicated than that, and unless you know french, I doubt
you'd guess what a "logiciel" is or an "ordinateur".

Furthermore, there is no such thing as a "concept that cannot be expressed" in
a language. More often than not when people say a language has "no word for
X", they turn out to be wrong, and even when they're right, the concept can be
expressed through paraphrase.

~~~
Swizec
There are many concepts in many languages that cannot be expressed in another
language with the same connotations and subtext.

That's why we have loanwords.

Why else would a bouquet not be called "a bunch of flowers". Because a bunch
of flowers is something different than a bouquet.

~~~
hermannj314
We call them floral arrangements in the midwest United States, not "bunch[es]
of flowers". We also call them bouquets, nevertheless, I think the English
language can handle that one just fine.

~~~
csydas
I think what the above poster was referring to was the cultural connotations
that are immediately invoked by a word or phrase that isn't really
transmissible to someone not familiar with the language and its culture. The
example of "bouquet" was likely to touch on the idea that the literal
translation of the word would be more akin to their example of "bunch of
flowers". Since the word has now integrated into English, there is an
immediate understanding that you're not just referring to a bunch of flowers,
but something meant to be aesthetically pleasing and usually to signify an
event of some importance. I suppose the English language did handle the word,
but it did so by just integrating the word, not by translating it.

The response to the parent comment was more to debate that there are a lot of
words, concepts, and idioms that may carry an actual translation or similar
concept in another, but the translations fail to capture the immediacy of the
idea conveyed by the original word or phrase. It's not to say that there is no
way to understand or interpret these bits of language unless you're a native
speaker, it's that in many cases you lose a lot of the meaning without the
cultural context surrounding it.

Culture and language are pretty inseparable; it's why transliteration is often
frowned upon when doing translation works, and localization is considered
important to helping the audience understand without imparting too high of a
burden of knowledge of their part. Sometimes this burden of knowledge is
simply unavoidable. But the ability of a word or phrase to evoke a specific
idea/image/feeling in one language and to not do so in another is not
impossible. If you know anyone for whom English is a second language (and has
not spent extended time in the US), try to explain why "cut the cheese" is
funny in English. They may understand conceptually that there is a rude
meaning to the phrase, but I'm willing to bet they'd be more than happy to
tell you that they'll cut the cheese in the kitchen.

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cm2187
Most european languages are bound to disapear if Europe wants to achieve
anything in common. You just can't if people don't understand each others, and
if people all have to speak a common language, within a couple of generations,
French, Spanish or German will be that old dialect that some old people insist
on speaking but that new generations don't understand anymore. Everything has
a begining, a peak and an end. Languages too.

~~~
Typhon
_Europe wants to achieve anything in common_

It's unclear if "Europe" wants anything of the sort at this point, and you
seem to assume that English would be the common language, which is not
unreasonable since it's the one currently being used, but it's not politically
acceptable, and it'll be worse if the UK finally decides to leave.

Note also that Europe is probably the part of the world where minority
languages are in better shape. E.g Catalan is spoken by 4 million native
speakers, which is more than all of the native american language speakers
combined.

~~~
WildUtah
Mayan and Nahuatl (Aztec) are each spoken by more than that before we even
address the much more diverse South American languages. Europe is far from the
most prosperous place for minority languages. SE Asia and Central America are
far better.

~~~
Typhon
I thought I'd written 'North America', but apparently I didn't, so yeah, point
taken.

Even if there are more minority languages in SE Asia and South America, I'm
not sure they're treated better there than in Europe.

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broadbear
There are a lot of factors here. Some communities fiercely protect their local
tongue. Take Brittany in France for example. They still teach their native
language, completely distinct from French, in public schools. This is how long
after French has been the official language of France? Additionally, some
countries in Europe, such as the Netherlands, have high rates of
multilingualism. It is supposedly easier when you are born into it. This
enables you to speak the administrative languages fluently while still
speaking a native language at home only a few million people on the planet
still speak. Loyalty to one's culture can have a lot to do with sustainability
of a language. To an outsider, it may seem futile to learn a language like
Italian for any kind of practical reason. To an Italian, to abandon their
language would be sacrilege.

Globalism may be weakening some languages in the near term as it may make
sense for people around the world to learn English or even Chinese, and maybe
a few other languages. However, imagine if translation technology became
advanced enough to conduct a normal conversation with each party speaking a
different language. We might even hold on to that mysterious 4th official
language in Switzerland (Romansh) after that. There are plenty of people who
would love to go back to their hometown and speak nothing other than the
language their parents taught them.

------
known
"The greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less
they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects;
In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as
much as they do in the most homogenous settings."

[http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/05/t...](http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/05/the_downside_of_diversity/)

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x5n1
Tower of babble must come down. We are so obsessed as a civilization with at
the same time destroying languages through things like global capitalism,
while at the same time preserving them. It's a weird combo.

~~~
wolfram74
You're mixing your metaphors, the tower of babel was struck down the same time
ADMIN invoked the curse of babble upon the land.

