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Being forced to learn a minority language

 Language Learning Forum : General discussion Post Reply
42 messages over 6 pages: 1 24 5 6  Next >>
nway
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United States
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 Message 17 of 42
26 May 2011 at 6:40pm | IP Logged 
Levi wrote:
nway wrote:
It's indeed a fair tradeoff, given that one linguistically distinct cultural group (in this case, Russian) doesn't have much legitimacy to rule over the homeland of another linguistically distinct cultural group (in this case, Komi). It's the "price to pay" for Russia's geographic magnitude, so to speak.

So how about the U.S.? Would you support the same policy here with regard to Native American languages?

In the small pockets of the U.S. where a linguistically unified Native American population comprises at least about a quarter of the population, sure.
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Levi
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 Message 18 of 42
31 May 2011 at 8:13pm | IP Logged 
nway wrote:
Levi wrote:
nway wrote:
It's indeed a fair tradeoff, given that one linguistically distinct cultural group (in this case, Russian) doesn't have much legitimacy to rule over the homeland of another linguistically distinct cultural group (in this case, Komi). It's the "price to pay" for Russia's geographic magnitude, so to speak.

So how about the U.S.? Would you support the same policy here with regard to Native American languages?

In the small pockets of the U.S. where a linguistically unified Native American population comprises at least about a quarter of the population, sure.

Fair enough.
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zerothinking
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Australia
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 Message 19 of 42
31 May 2011 at 11:49pm | IP Logged 
I think any government money spent on getting people to learn an otherwise useless
language is wasted.
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Dragomanno
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Zimbabwe
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 Message 20 of 42
01 June 2011 at 12:04am | IP Logged 
zerothinking wrote:
I think any government money spent on getting people to learn an otherwise useless
language is wasted.


"Useless" is a quite tricky word. Of course Komi is unlike to become the next world trade language. On the other hand, over the centuries the major political powers spent a lot of government money just on eradicating native languages, like in the case of Breton in France, Irish when was under the British law and Lithuanian under Soviet Union. In your Australia, Zerothinking, the policy implemented towards Aborigens was almost genocidical until very recent times. If central governments are finally up to, say, pay their debts I think only good can come from it.
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aabram
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Estonia
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 Message 21 of 42
01 June 2011 at 7:51pm | IP Logged 
Darn, big nations have totally different measurement scale than us, small guys.
According to Wikipedia there are 293 000 Komi speakers. That's a lot of people living
"in the forests near the mountains". Iceland has population of 318 000 and I've yet to
see somebody scorning Icelandic off as a language which is spoken by mere 0,3 million
people who all live "on the rock somewhere in the sea".

Also, this statement

zerothinking wrote:
I think any government money spent on getting people to learn an
otherwise useless language is wasted.


deserves an award on its own. There are 300 000 people out there struggling to revive
their culture and then along comes a cowboy dismissing them as useless in a single
sweeping statement. Brilliant, just brilliant. Sure, let's just spend all the money on
useful things like building more gas lines and more iPhone factories.
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Darklight1216
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United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name
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 Message 22 of 42
01 June 2011 at 8:16pm | IP Logged 
It's nice that they're trying to preserve the language, but I was compelled to study one language and I hated it. As far as Native American languages go, I'd be strongly opposed to mandatory studying. Since there are relatively few speakers, there would probably be very few fluent teachers and many students would be stuck reading a grammar book and memorizing verb conjugations.

Edited by Darklight1216 on 01 June 2011 at 8:21pm

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Arekkusu
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Canada
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 Message 23 of 42
01 June 2011 at 8:34pm | IP Logged 
kyssäkaali wrote:
Being forced to learn a language in this way though (in school) creates resentment for the language in question and achieves the opposite of what it was going for.

It's a school subject. That's all it is, a school subject. If people are resentful because a language is taught to them in school, they likely would have been resentful without it as well.
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МаркомаÐ
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Russian Federation
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 Message 24 of 42
01 June 2011 at 8:38pm | IP Logged 
Dragomanno wrote:
and Lithuanian under Soviet Union.

Total false. Where did you get this information?


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