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Near-extinct languages - Advise? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| J-Learner Senior Member Australia Joined 6029 days ago 556 posts - 636 votes  Studies: Yiddish, English* Studies: Dutch | Message 17 of 27 12 November 2008 at 1:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think that for latin fluency Latinium is one of the projects that are taking it to a new level.
I want to learn Yiddish. Being Jewish and learning Hebrew is one thing. Learning the mame-loshn of a large portion Jews for 1000 years is another, equally as important to me. My pleasure in listening to klezmer music is an important factor not to forget the historical importance. In learning this tongue myself I contribute towards it lifespan. After learning German I am doing to do 6 months or a year of Yiddish. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6271 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 18 of 27 13 November 2008 at 6:50am | IP Logged | ||
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I read something about the West Slavic language, Polabian, which was once spoken on the Elbe southeast of Hamburg and died out in the 18th century. One sign of its approaching death was that young people in the area only spoke German (probably Low German) and mocked the Slavic speech of the older people. Sometimes ridicule drives languages to extinction.
With other languages, schools have sometimes assisted language death by promoting the state language and punishing pupils who speak the unfavoured minority tongue. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| unzum Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom soyouwanttolearnalan Joined 6913 days ago 371 posts - 478 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Mandarin | Message 20 of 27 15 November 2008 at 9:17am | IP Logged | ||
I was the one who originally started the post on unilang about endangered languages, so I'll reproduce the useful content here.
The thread ended up with me and Trapy picking Ainu to study. This is an endangered language spoken in the northern island Hokkaido of Japan. There are only a handful of fluent speakers and it is listed as nearly extinct on Ethnologue. Me and Trapy have been using Ainu for Beginners to learn from and together with noir (translator of aforementioned course) we have managed to get an Ainu forum set up. I am also helping to translate an Intermediate Ainu course. If you can read Japanese there are 9+ courses available for free on the internet, each one with 50+ lessons. Whatever you decide to pick, good luck! It's a noble endeavour you're setting out on. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Feculent Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6160 days ago 136 posts - 144 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German | Message 21 of 27 16 November 2008 at 6:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't see why learning a near-extinct language is a noble thing. I love the idea that there are more languages than I could ever know (for some reason I'd hate the idea of being able to know every language there is although I don't know why, maybe because then there would be nothing new to explore) but I don't think that languages are intrinsic to culture, I suppose the language barrier makes it harder for other cultures to enrich/invade it lol
I try to be open minded though, and I admit I know very little on the subject so i take my own opinions with a pinch of salt ;) Please fill me in because loads of people seem pretty passionate about it =) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Siberiano Tetraglot Senior Member Russian Federation one-giant-leap.Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6492 days ago 465 posts - 696 votes Speaks: Russian*, English, ItalianC1, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Serbian | Message 22 of 27 17 November 2008 at 2:11am | IP Logged | ||
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I think, ethnographic study and records could be both of use for the humanity and an immersion. If you can record their tales and songs, that would be a great value, and translating them would be a great challenge. Here are the examples of valuable things: 1 2 3 4
But going to ethnographic expeditions to remote areas isn´t a piece of cake. As Iversen pointed, there are a number of small peoples in Siberia, with their languages likely to be extinct by 2050 (since right now all of them know Russian). They are in many places from arctic coast to the temperate climate zone of Sakhalin island. I guess, in other places in the world there are peoples in a similar situation, so anyone is welcome to make an account of their culture. Edited by Siberiano on 17 November 2008 at 2:26am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TheElvenLord Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6079 days ago 915 posts - 927 votes 1 sounds Speaks: Cornish, English* Studies: Spanish, French, German Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 23 of 27 17 November 2008 at 2:43am | IP Logged | ||
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Feculent
I am a revival activist, as some may know, for the Cornish language, so I am pretty passionate about a near-extinct (you could say - it's the same as fluent, what is the meaning of it) language. A bit of background/ You see, the English government has a reputation of being evil to everyone (in the past or present) - and although not internationally so now, it still goes on in the UK. The English educational system teaches biased information and downright lies to children. They teach stuff that was made up by them, and has actually NO evidence. One of the things they fail to teach is about Cornish (although some schools have gone against the flow and started teaching it). I never knew about the Cornish language, until I found it on the internet. I started learning it then. It is what makes me different from the ignorant flow around me. I am CORNISH - not English. And my language promotes that. And from all those years of not being taught about it, I come back to promote it furiously, and make sure that the government feel they have made a mistake not teaching me. So, why do people feel passionately about promoting their language? - "Revenge" - Ownership/possession - Worry about extinction - Seperateness Why do people learn near-extinct languages? - To help the community involved - To help the world community by helping to save a struggeling language (just learning a language can make a huge difference!) - For an adventure (learning a "normal" language is different from learning a "struggeling" language COMPLETELY) Sorry about the bit of rambling at the begginning, but I feel it is neccessary to give you some background so you can understand the points fully. TEL 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cheeky chica Groupie England Joined 5955 days ago 70 posts - 75 votes Studies: Spanish, Japanese | Message 24 of 27 20 November 2008 at 7:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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I can't remember how to spell it but... Pidaha has around 350 native speakers. It is spoken by a tribe in the Amazon jungle.
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