OT: Is there any information where the name "isle of man" is originating from? It always sounded overly dramatic to me like "dawn of mankind". But apparently "man" neither stands for "male" nor "mankind" but instead is some weird term without further meaning? Is there some story behind it?
I had the same question some time ago. The Wikipedia page is, as always, quite interesting. Although I think the tl;dr is "the name's so old, no one really knows". But the theory is:
"The name is probably cognate with the Welsh name of the island of Anglesey, Ynys Môn, usually derived from a Celtic word for 'mountain' (reflected in Welsh mynydd, Breton menez, and Scottish Gaelic monadh), from a Proto-Celtic *moniyos."
What is the value of preserving languages like this?
Answering my own question, I suppose the benefit of the language’s survival primarily accrues to the speakers. They get to feel part of a culture and community.
A language isn't just a collection of vocabulary words and grammar rules. A language, beyond being a cultural artifact in and of itself, forms part of the system by which a community processes, discusses, reacts to each other and the world around them. Some folks might be familiar with Spanish's gendering of inanimate objects, but even things like counting on linear counting scales are in play here! https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2610411/
The value isn't just "the culture": language is indelible from the way one sees and understands the world. That's what's worth preserving.
I wonder how this applies to languages that have been revived? Do modern-day Hebrew (also a revived language[0]) speakers relate to it and Jewish culture the way that Judean Jews did? Presumably the corpus of existing literature is a significant factor.
Sapir-Whorf is discredited AFAIK, although some nearly trivial influence of language probably exists. There's almost no support, and the support I've seen suffers from the usual pitfalls (not excluding other causes, bad inferential statistics, etc.).
I'm appalled that Wikipedia cites a text book as the proof.
I'd say it's roughly equivalent to the value of preserving any cultural artifact--a language, a musical tradition, holidays, folklore, religions, ancient martial traditions, and so on.
Languages are cultural artifacts that contain within them other ancient cultural artifacts. When we lose a language, we lose those artifacts.
Everyone doesn't care about old cultural artifacts, but, luckily for those of us who do, there are enough of us to keep many of them alive.
I have been touring Europe the past few months. I have seen a lot of preserved artifacts. They are fascinating, and I am grateful they have been preserved.
Is a living language, the same? Last night, I overheard white people speaking what sounded like Chinese or a tonal language. Listening closer, it was not an Asian language I’m familiar with. It made me very curious. So, I guess, yes. Living languages can be fascinating in the same way as physical artifacts.
It’s not necessarily the case that language preservation offers something of strict “value” (however one defines value and I do think that’s a big open question) outside of comprehension of historical documentation, but yes, it is the case that language is a method of continuing the culture and lifestyle passed onto us by our ancestors. If the Mannish people feel like reviving the language reclaims something that has been lost by English oppression,
more power to them!
