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Learning rare or dying languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Cultural Experiences in Foreign Languages |  | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes  Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 17 of 24 17 September 2010 at 3:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I feel like a poet this morning so what the heck:
A culture's language is like a rose's thorns; if you remove them, it becomes defenseless and is no longer a rose. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| aricarrot Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5718 days ago 20 posts - 23 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish | Message 18 of 24 17 September 2010 at 3:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I really do think at least an essential part of the culture dies with a language. Every single language has a unique grammar and nuances. I truly think that if someone places the verb at the end of a sentence versus the beginning or middle, they are looking at the world from a different perspective that shouldn't be lost in the quest to understand humanity. Translating and preserving stories and songs is only a small portion of the culture. I think many of you will agree that reading a translation often doesn't capture the exact mood or feeling of the original. The information of the story gets passed on but not the how the people themselves understood it.
Also, I can't believe that any group would want their language to die out. Many were oppressed in the past or were largely assimilated. Speaking their native or tribal languages was viewed as a cultural disadvantage or a sign of a low social status. While many of those judgmental beliefs have largely dissolved, parents of children can't bring themselves to speak their language to them. They can't get over the profiling they faced enough to preserve the language that is so central to their people. And again, of course, no one's going to be in serious danger if a language dies out. But small languages are disappearing faster than ever in our global economy that prizes a few widely spoken languages. I'm only suggesting "knowledge for knowledge's sake" and the possibility of looking at the world from a perspective that could be lost. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| galindo Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5207 days ago 142 posts - 248 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, Japanese Studies: Korean, Portuguese | Message 19 of 24 17 September 2010 at 3:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
I corrected my post. However, in the future you should keep in mind that when you see a single error in a post that is otherwise correct, you can be 100 percent sure that the poster is aware of proper usage, is not confused, and simply made a typo or an editing slip. In those cases it does border on rude to get annoyed at it, especially if you haven't said anything else in the thread and that is your only contribution. If you see a post by a native speaker that has genuinely bad grammar or spelling mistakes, then feel free to point it out. Otherwise, you should probably leave it alone; this is the internet, and it is full of annoying mistakes, even on a language forum. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| galindo Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5207 days ago 142 posts - 248 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, Japanese Studies: Korean, Portuguese | Message 20 of 24 17 September 2010 at 4:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I don't think that SOV order gives a language some kind of special perspective; all it does is make translating to a SVO language more difficult because it can ruin punch lines. Some cases where unique perspectives do show up are languages that use the cardinal directions to indicate locations rather than front-back-left-right, and languages that require certain constructions that focus on things like how certain the speaker is that an event occurred or how they found out about something. That does force people to think differently, and is interesting to study.
It's probably true that every single language and culture that has ever existed has something unique and beautiful about them, and hypothetically it would be great if every one of them was fully documented and preserved in some form. Realistically, that's ridiculous. I agree that translations are often inadequate, but that isn't really a good case for preserving every single language ever. I don't think that any group actively wants their language to die out, but what usually happens is that many kids from marginalized cultures who grow up bilingual aren't particularly attached to their parent's language, and don't see a need to pass it on to their kids. It's especially hard for them to be interested in it when there is hardly any media in that language, and most of the entertainment they consume is in a more widely-spoken one. The only reason this might trouble someone is if they think the culture that is being left behind is somehow better; a language is not in any way more unique or special than another simply by virtue of being spoken by fewer people. It can be sad if a language is stamped out through oppression, but even then that does not make the language any more special or worthy of being saved, unless the people of that culture truly want to. I don't understand why so many people have such a romantic view of small languages, as if it is beautiful for people to be sectioned off into tiny communities and maintain some kind of 'cultural purity.' The benefits of having a group of widely spoken languages far outweigh the 'unique perspectives' found in thousands of smaller ones. Cultural variety and different perspectives will always exist, even if many languages die out. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 21 of 24 17 September 2010 at 4:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm pretty sure more languages have gone extinct than there are languages now. Besides, every language today is the result of older languages not having been preserved, so to speak. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| aricarrot Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5718 days ago 20 posts - 23 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish | Message 22 of 24 18 September 2010 at 3:54am | IP Logged | |||||
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I don't understand why so many people have such a romantic view of small languages,
as if it is beautiful for people to be sectioned off into tiny communities and maintain some kind of 'cultural purity.' The benefits of having a group of widely spoken languages far outweigh the 'unique perspectives' found in thousands of smaller ones. Cultural variety and different perspectives will always exist, even if many languages die out. I'm not suggesting cultural purity or that people be cut off from others. People today who speak local languages often do speak a widely spoken one as well. There's no reason to believe that smaller languages can't be preserved without sacrificing the benefits of global languages. I'm only suggesting (to myself mostly; I'm not even trying to convince anyone) that learning a rare or dying language might be a fun and worthwhile use of time while perhaps extending our knowledge of the human experience. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| galindo Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5207 days ago 142 posts - 248 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, Japanese Studies: Korean, Portuguese | Message 24 of 24 18 September 2010 at 5:49am | IP Logged | |||||
That bilingualism is exactly the reason those languages are dying, though! Just think about it: if you were raised with two languages, and one of them was only spoken by your parents and local community, didn't have much entertainment and perhaps little or no literature, and the other was spoken by many people and had tons of books, music, and films available, which would you gravitate towards? (By you I mean a 'normal' person, not someone with a passion for languages.) Over time, fewer and fewer people remain motivated to pass on that language to their own children, especially if they marry someone outside that language group. Keep in mind that languages spoken by fewer than 100,000 speakers almost always have significantly more complex grammars and morphology (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100121140347.h tm). A quote from the article: "A remaining puzzle is why languages with few speakers are so complex in the first place. One possibility, explored by researchers, is that features such as grammatical gender and complex conjugational systems, while difficult for adult learners to master, may facilitate language learning in children by providing a network of redundant information that can cue children in on the meanings of words and how to string them together." That complexity may give these languages a certain "specialness" or at least make them more unique, but I don't think having dozens of ways to make nouns plural adds some kind of amazing perspective that simpler languages are lacking. The "network of redundant information" that is often a feature of these languages simply helps children learn, and doesn't actually mean that they are expressing significantly different ideas or ways of seeing the world. (Except in some rare cases.) That's why I don't think anything major is being lost as populations move toward more widespread, less complex languages.
Oh, I definitely agree with that. But it still doesn't make sense to put too much effort into maintaining bilingualism in a community where one language is clearly dying. If the people themselves want to keep a traditional language alive, then they need to find more ways of making it attractive to the younger generation. Teaching it to kids in school isn't enough; there has to be more interesting material that can only be accessed in that language, as well as music and other entertainment. For an outsider to dabble in one of these languages is just an interesting hobby that might expand their worldview, but to actually learn one to a high level requires more than mere linguistic curiosity and an interest in learning more about the human experience. I just don't like the way "saving languages" is talked about as some kind of philanthropic effort. By the time a language gets small enough that people are concerned about saving it, the culture has already been diluted and it's not usually worth trying to reverse a natural process. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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