
We Can’t Stem the Tide of Language Death - diodorus
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/we-cant-stem-the-tide-of-language-death
======
openfuture
I speak a tiny language and used to be of the opinion that we should just
document it while we can and then expedite its death while moving to English
instead.

This is a very easy and naive stance to take. However I have completely
abandoned it!

With the years I have come to unravel some of the incredible knowledge encoded
in the structure of my language. It is amazing how idioms and structural
qualities of languages can define a culture through their influence on the way
people think. Now I have gotten very curious about learning some exotic
languages and I suspect I will need to dedicate a portion of my life to that
pursuit :)

Trying to preserve this through translation is never going to work for many
reasons, mainly because turning meaning from something continuous into
discrete words is done differently in different cultures so a words true
meaning can be hiding between several words of the language you wish to
translate to. Therefore some things become hard to say which used to be common
phrases. This has obvious consequences for culture but it also means that
often when you as an individual move from one language to another you unlock
more of your innate assumptions and see how your language defined your
approach to problems in some ways. Gaining understanding of these assumptions
gives more 'room to move in', perspective wise, I find.

~~~
Qwertious
>Trying to preserve this through translation is never going to work for many
reasons, mainly because turning meaning from something continuous into
discrete words is done differently in different cultures so a words true
meaning can be hiding between several words of the language you wish to
translate to. Therefore some things become hard to say which used to be common
phrases. This has obvious consequences for culture but it also means that
often when you as an individual move from one language to another you unlock
more of your innate assumptions and see how your language defined your
approach to problems in some ways. Gaining understanding of these assumptions
gives more 'room to move in', perspective wise, I find.

I get what you mean, but you should give some examples, if possible. Nothing
cements abstract notions in the mind quite like examples - in my experience,
anything hard requires 1. an example that demonstrates the phenomena, then 2.
the theory necessary to properly understand _which_ aspects of the example
you're referring to that demonstrate the phenomena, before you finally
understand the phenomena as it acts in the example and 3. can model the
concept in your mind independent of the example.

~~~
michaelbuckbee
I'm not sure if this is exactly what the commenter above was referring to (or
what you're looking for), but a really tricky aspect of translation is humor.

Things like alliteration, rhyming, and homophones are all incredibly difficult
to move across languages and those are _easy_ compared to the slang and
idioms.

An example:

In Tagalog, the word for blue is "asul" which more or less directly leads to
an English/Tagalog joke about how "People have been telling me to cheer up all
week, they keep calling me an 'asul'".

Which to understand, you need to be fluent in Taglog, English slang and have
the cultural background to understand that "blue" means sad (which isn't
universal).

~~~
ASalazarMX
To support your point, blue (the color) is "azul" is Spanish, but blue (the
feeling) is "triste". As a native Spanish speaker, I was lost for a few
seconds with your example.

------
david-gpu
I agree that there's some value in documenting and preserving minority
languages.

At the same time, each language is a barrier between people, one that prevents
ideas to be shared and stories to be told. The fewer such barriers we have,
the easier it becomes to understand others. Literally.

~~~
Hemospectrum
> At the same time, each language is a barrier between people, one that
> prevents ideas to be shared and stories to be told. The fewer such barriers
> we have, the easier it becomes to understand others. Literally.

This is an easy opinion to harbor when you speak a language whose future is
pretty much secure.

Imagine if you woke up one day and you were the last person who knew a word of
English. All the English-language music you've ever heard, all the books and
movies, etc., are now totally incomprehensible to everyone you'll ever meet.
All copies of them, and indeed, all English text except for whatever's in your
pockets, is gone. All the place names you know are removed from the map. All
English words borrowed by other languages are gone. Every native English
speaker (aside from you) has disappeared, and their very names are
unpronounceable to the world's remaining population. Maybe even the Latin
alphabet is gone.

You get to keep all your memories, but naturally nobody shares them or has
reason to believe they actually happened. Most people don't care to hear about
them. If they do, they see them as a curiosity, a museum piece to be put in a
display case, not something with the slightest relevance to their own lives.

You can't even tell English-language jokes anymore. They aren't funny in
translation.

Of course this leaves you isolated. And of course there's a solution anyone
can offer you: Forget about English. Adopt a whole new life where you're a
normal person who speaks a normal language that other normal people
understand. Your identity as an English speaker is entertaining for about five
minutes, but ultimately an inconvenience to society. Hurry up and let it go.

If this sounds harsher than what you were trying to say, perhaps you've
underestimated what a language is to the people who speak it. It's more than
just a list of words.

~~~
TheAdamAndChe
Is life not harsh? Should the world just stop adjusting to the new global
interaction just so that some people can avoid some discomfort?

edit: To those downvoting me, can you please explain why? I was asking a
serious question. The post above made it sound like that person's comfort was
more important than adapting to changing times.

~~~
vixen99
The world won't stop adjusting so your point is made. The downvotes are
completely irrelevant. Assume they simply can't make the argument.

~~~
TheAdamAndChe
Either I'm getting downvoted because my argument was weak or didn't advance
the conversation, or because I went against the site's hivemind. In either
case, this site as a whole benefits when either are pointed out or explained.
Either I become a little less ignorant, or someone else learns to question
their beliefs a bit more.

~~~
gspetr
Their feelings were hurt and your argument goes against the "diversity is
strength" narrative.

I upvoted you btw, I assume some downvotes were because your choice of words
was a bit too callous for their liking.

------
kashyapc
Related: Speaking of word origins, here's a fun example.

How a Mistake Gave Us the Word 'Cherry'[+]:

[quote]

The Old North French word for 'cherry' is 'cherise'. English speakers heard
the 'se' at the end of the word and assumed it was plural, 'cherries', and
that the singular form of the word must then be 'cherry' (ok, they spelled it
'chery').

[/quote]

The Merriam-Webster article mentioned below goes into some more depth & gives
other examples.

[+] [https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/cherry-
history...](https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/cherry-history-
origin)

~~~
schoen
For much more on this, with many other examples, see

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebracketing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebracketing)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back-
formation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back-formation)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_etymology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_etymology)

------
schoen
As a meta-observation, I think this is a great thread which includes a lot of
relatively respectful, informed discussion about somewhat controversial
topics... and not a lot of flames so far. That makes it a great opportunity to
upvote comments that you disagreed with but found interesting.

------
duncan_bayne
On the other hand, imagine a world with only one written and spoken language.
Where everyone can easily communicate with everyone else, regardless of the
accident of their nationality.

I for one hope that's where this trend is leading, as I think it'd be a
worthwhile trade off against the loss of cultural knowledge that results from
language death.

~~~
imron
> I think it'd be a worthwhile trade off against the loss of cultural
> knowledge that results from language death.

I don't. Out of curiosity, how many languages do you speak?

~~~
BillChapman
Yesterday (21 October 2017) I chaired a gathering of Esperanto speakers in
Conwy, north Wales, UK. Present were speakers of Welsh, Tagalog, Slovene,
Estonian, Brazilian Portuguese and maybe a few others besides English. We had
Esperantyo as our common language. I have spoken Esperanto for precisely fifty
years, and throught that time I have seen Esperanto as an aŭiliary language
(sorry, my keyboard has just gone into Esperanto mode!), i.e. a language which
values our native tongues while enabling trouble-free communication. I speak
Welsh, French and German, by the way, and have an ability to bluff my way in a
few more languages. Life is too short to learn them all. Keep on fighting for
your smaller languages. There is plenty of room in the world for them - and
for Esperanto.

------
microcolonel
The only factor in the diversity of language, is the isolation of cultures.
The less isolated cultures are, the less any individual could be bothered to
speak a different language.

As the world becomes more integrated, and less isolated, even major languages
will begin to disappear.

I see this happening with one of my favourite languages: Japanese. Colloquial
Japanese is slowly replacing words with close English approximations (just as
it took on German vocabulary in the early 20th century), dialects are at once
becoming more widely understood, and more similar.

You can no more preserve a language than you can preserve a human being.

------
FrozenVoid
I'm probably going to sound harsh, but diversity of spoken language is way
different than diversity of programming languages or frameworks. We need to
have a common cultural ground, a shared language: Esperanto was created
because the world was deeply culturally divided at the time, nationalist
movements and totalitarian mandate of us-vs-them only worked because you have
different cultures and languages competing in the same area. Death of
languages is not bad. Having cross-cultural exchange and business links
probably is the biggest contributor to world peace, all because of people
speaking a common language. Having one shared language has numerous benefits :
It increases efficiency by eliminating translation and adaptation to each
country: instead of making N editions of something for each language you have
one. Lack of cultural barrier: you can read sites/books/articles watch movies
without subtitles and dubbing, also making content production cheaper and
simpler. News and communications become fast and unimpeded by borders and
cultures: no need to translate anything. A standard term for something being
as precise as the shared language definition: instead of two languages
competing for a descriptor word which covers different areas the meaning is
made more accurate by settling on a single word. Less of misunderstanding
where content can have hidden/insulting meaning in another language due
translation(often a quick translation can have subtle mistakes), Diplomacy and
travel become easier, with people less alienated from each other. Cultural
differences that depend on the language disappear, preventing bias and
prejudice for the unknown and foreign. A great counter-example to "benefits of
language diversity" is tribes: they have languages unique for each tribe and
constant warfare and tensions: us-vs-them mentality preventing progress and
cooperation.

------
Ice_cream_suit
Language is not knowledge or culture. It is merely a tool for communication.

I deliberately chose not to teach my children my or my wife's fairly obscure
and mutually completely unintelligible languages.

On the other hand, I ensured that they studied Latin, Italian, French and
Sanskrit in addition to their L1 ( English )

I am a polyglot and know around a dozen languages to various levels, including
several semi-obscure minority languages.

~~~
has2k1
> Language is not knowledge or culture. It is merely a tool for communication

A lot of culture co-evolves with language. In a language are myths and
legends, some of which contribute to the words in the language, which then
give birth to other proverbs and stories, and so on. All of which and
fragments of which become available for communication. The more knowledge and
culture a language loses, the more bland communication in that language
becomes and the information density of the language decreases. This in turn
affects communication because to maintain the same amount of information it
has to become longer, so the attitude towards communication changes. And so
does the message.

The tool of communication is part of the message itself.

------
WalterBright
It isn't just languages that pass out of existence. I know a lot about my
parents, probably about .1% of that about my grandparents, and pretty much
nothing going back further than that. There are essentially no records. What
kind of lives they lived, what was important to them, how they viewed the
world, etc., all gone.

If one of your ancestors was a historical figure, or kept a diary, maybe you
have much more. But that's hardly ordinary.

It's just the way things are, and probably the way it has to be.

~~~
slimshady94
Your grandchildren will be able to see minute details of your life, using
social media archival tools. They may be able to read all your HN and reddit
comments. Would they be interested in that? Who knows. But things are about to
change nevertheless.

~~~
visarga
> They may be able to read all your HN and reddit comments. Would they be
> interested in that?

Maybe not, but many AI agents are trained on our Reddit, HN and Twitter
comments. In the future I expect that every person alive today should be
documented from logs in order to run simulations of the human society as it
was pre-singularity. The previous generations have very little data, and the
next generations will be influenced by AI, so the only 'pure', large size
sample is us. AGI is going to want to know how it came to be, and future
humans will want to rebuild an authentic human society so they will need a
good reference.

So your comments are surely going to be studied in detail, maybe you're going
to be simulated from your comments and other crumbs of data you leak.

------
tomjm
The best argument for preserving endangered languages, ironically, is the
strong form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis--which linguists flatly reject.
Given how hostile most of them are (if Pullum and his gang on Language Log are
anything to go by) to even the soft Whorfianism of Boroditsky et al., it's
quite galling that these same linguists, who assert the absolute fungibility
of human languages, also stress the vital importance of preserving each and
every one of them.

And given that linguists use as an insult the term "prescriptivist"[1] for
anyone who wishes to preserve or establish particular linguistic usages--even
if for wholly benevolent reasons, such as the removal of inconsistencies for
the benefit of non-native speakers--how can they then go and support efforts
to actually increase the number of speakers of some dying tongue? Isn't that
awfully _prescriptivist_ of them, dictating not just how others should use a
particular language, but even which languages they should be speaking?

[1]
[http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?cat=5](http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?cat=5)

~~~
gizmo686
If the vast majority of experts in a field of study reject some hypothesis in
that field; it is a good indication that that hypothesis is likely wrong.

The linguistics' reasoning for wanting to preserve language is largly selfish;
their job is to study language, and the loss of language is an irreplaceable
(on the scale of human lifetime) loss of data that will fundamentally limit
our ability to understand human language in general.

The linked article explicitly is not arguing for saving dying languages (which
it views as a lost cause), but rather for studying them while they are still
alive. Doing at least this should be non-controversial to the extent that one
values the study of linguistics.

Also, not that it is relevent to the article, but even if people are speaking
a language by conscious choice to preserve it, does not mean that that
language use becomes invalid. As an extreme example, take modern Hebrew. Even
though it was brought to life through explicit choice, it is still a valid
language for study, because children have grown up exposed to it as their
native language. If children are exposed to a language like system as their
native language, they will learn it as a human language, and from how those
children speak, a linguist can learn about human language in general.

