A small town in Sweden fights to preserve Elfdalian, a dying forest language(pri.org)
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A small town in Sweden fights to preserve Elfdalian, a dying forest language
https://www.pri.org/stories/2021-05-06/small-town-sweden-fights-preserve-elfdalian-dying-forest-language
276 comments
As someone personally close to the matter, I've come to think the action of the French school system has been overblown for ideological reasons, and that's the organic mechanics of acculturation that were very much in play in France have been completely forgotten, in particular as it pertains to urban migration, economic mobility and the growth of tertiary sector. Even if the French State did nothing, Occitan wouldn't be much better now if you look at the data from neighboring countries.
It's my personal opinion, but the reason the educational program of the French Republic was successful is because it gave an outlet to a need people had. They wanted to move up, they wanted to speak French. Don't deny them agency.
It's my personal opinion, but the reason the educational program of the French Republic was successful is because it gave an outlet to a need people had. They wanted to move up, they wanted to speak French. Don't deny them agency.
> They wanted to move up, they wanted to speak French. Don't deny them agency.
This is a manipulation. What you are saying is that in order to move up in French society, they are required to speak French, and therefore they learned French in order not to be suppressed. But you're disguising it in weird wokeness language.
You could use the same phrasing about skin-bleaching to make it sound like people who were against it were the actual oppressors, denying brown people their agency, speaking for brown people, saying that brown people are making bad decisions for themselves, and actively trying to keep brown people from enjoying the success that skin-bleaching would bring them. It's pretty reprehensible framing, but common. It's even used against brown people themselves, like in this case it's being used against Occitan speakers.
I want to note that this framing is reprehensible, regardless of the facts on the ground, or the particular subject. You could just as well be arguing for women to get breast implants, or for orthodox Jews to make themselves available on Saturdays.
This is a manipulation. What you are saying is that in order to move up in French society, they are required to speak French, and therefore they learned French in order not to be suppressed. But you're disguising it in weird wokeness language.
You could use the same phrasing about skin-bleaching to make it sound like people who were against it were the actual oppressors, denying brown people their agency, speaking for brown people, saying that brown people are making bad decisions for themselves, and actively trying to keep brown people from enjoying the success that skin-bleaching would bring them. It's pretty reprehensible framing, but common. It's even used against brown people themselves, like in this case it's being used against Occitan speakers.
I want to note that this framing is reprehensible, regardless of the facts on the ground, or the particular subject. You could just as well be arguing for women to get breast implants, or for orthodox Jews to make themselves available on Saturdays.
> They wanted to move up, they wanted to speak French.
As a native speaker of one of the languages that France is successfully removing, I find your words deeply offensive. The suppression of languages of France has not been a peaceful or voluntary process, but a very violent one. Shit; school kids were ridiculed and reprimanded by speaking other non-french languages at the recreation yards! How evil is that?
We have agency. Problem is that we are overwhelmed by a much powerful opponent that is actively trying to eliminate us. Now I'm living in Paris, and I'm sad and dismayed at the incomprehension of most native french speakers to the plight of the people of their own country.
As a native speaker of one of the languages that France is successfully removing, I find your words deeply offensive. The suppression of languages of France has not been a peaceful or voluntary process, but a very violent one. Shit; school kids were ridiculed and reprimanded by speaking other non-french languages at the recreation yards! How evil is that?
We have agency. Problem is that we are overwhelmed by a much powerful opponent that is actively trying to eliminate us. Now I'm living in Paris, and I'm sad and dismayed at the incomprehension of most native french speakers to the plight of the people of their own country.
I have directly observed and interacted with quite a few people who went through that process. Those who stayed in the village, or kept a social network there despite moving to the city, more or less all speak it still despite having learned French in school and being told the patois was best forgotten. Those who despise it the most and don't speak it anymore are those who moved out, climbed the social ladder and became mid or upper class in a city. Schooling certainly favoured that outcome, but it was ultimately determined by economics. If France had followed a less radical path, Occitan, Breton and others would be declining instead of dying, but they'd still end dead soon enough.
On a side note, I find the whole victim mentality attached to that subject deplorable, in particular coming from young people who've never been through any sort of actual oppression. People have all the tools nowadays to perpetuate their language, but there's a lot more whining than actually putting the work into teaching it to their kids and actively speaking it.
On a side note, I find the whole victim mentality attached to that subject deplorable, in particular coming from young people who've never been through any sort of actual oppression. People have all the tools nowadays to perpetuate their language, but there's a lot more whining than actually putting the work into teaching it to their kids and actively speaking it.
If France had followed a less radical path, Occitania might be a separate nation today. There's no denying the efficacy of the French nationalist movement.
>Occitania might be a separate nation today
There might have been a State across the lines of Old Gascony, and one across the lines of the lands of the Counts of Barcelona and Provence. But an "Occitan nation" is pure fantasy. There's never been much of a unifying cultural force (even at the peek of the Troubadour age), even less of a political one (save for France itself). That word "occitania" wasn't even used before the 70s and it's still far from widespread use outside of Languedoc, and for some reason Italy.
People have way too many daydreams about that stuff. But having one major Gallo-Romance nation is a natural outcome, even if the way the French State was re-factored around the turn of the 19th c. looks forced.
There might have been a State across the lines of Old Gascony, and one across the lines of the lands of the Counts of Barcelona and Provence. But an "Occitan nation" is pure fantasy. There's never been much of a unifying cultural force (even at the peek of the Troubadour age), even less of a political one (save for France itself). That word "occitania" wasn't even used before the 70s and it's still far from widespread use outside of Languedoc, and for some reason Italy.
People have way too many daydreams about that stuff. But having one major Gallo-Romance nation is a natural outcome, even if the way the French State was re-factored around the turn of the 19th c. looks forced.
There had never been a Finnish state prior to the 20th century, either.
The audacity of French nationalists; I love France but I really cannot stand that!
They speak of "the village", but it's in fact many major cities in the country (Marselha, Tolosa, Perpinyà, Strossburi, Brest, Naoned) that were not French-speaking less than a couple of centuries ago. For some people, anything out of Paris is a tiny country village without importance.
They speak of "the village", but it's in fact many major cities in the country (Marselha, Tolosa, Perpinyà, Strossburi, Brest, Naoned) that were not French-speaking less than a couple of centuries ago. For some people, anything out of Paris is a tiny country village without importance.
"Naoned", that is to say Nantes, has never been Breton speaking. Same for Rennes. They were part of the March of Brittany set up to specifically defend against the Bretons, but they successfully annexed it in the commotion left by the Norsemen. The court of Brittany became French-speaking when it moved there.
Also, nobody in Marseille writes "Marselha", If you want to do some out of place indigenous rights dog whistling, the proper orthography in Provencal is Marsiho. Normalized Occitan is of ill repute in Provence, and so is the associated Occitanism.
Also, nobody in Marseille writes "Marselha", If you want to do some out of place indigenous rights dog whistling, the proper orthography in Provencal is Marsiho. Normalized Occitan is of ill repute in Provence, and so is the associated Occitanism.
Of all places, HN was probably the last one where I would have expected to read such a disgusting defence of linguistic genocide.
I'm at a loss. Honestly cannot reply to such bullshit without strong words.
I hope some day you will understand that what you are saying is not alright, but I won't be able to help you in that. Have a good day.
I'm at a loss. Honestly cannot reply to such bullshit without strong words.
I hope some day you will understand that what you are saying is not alright, but I won't be able to help you in that. Have a good day.
> if you look at the data from neighboring countries.
Which neighboring countries, exactly? Minority languages in Spain were suppressed for decades under the Franco government, and intermittently under assorted Spanish monarchies and republics before that. Germany had a diglossia between Hochdeutsch and assorted local tongues, and some of those local tongues still exist because the state saw them as legitimate regional dialects of the standard language. Italy never put nearly as much of a premium on suppressing the regional languages whose literature had contributed to Standard Italian, and those dialects have survived much better than e.g. Sardinian or Franco-Provencal.
Which neighboring countries, exactly? Minority languages in Spain were suppressed for decades under the Franco government, and intermittently under assorted Spanish monarchies and republics before that. Germany had a diglossia between Hochdeutsch and assorted local tongues, and some of those local tongues still exist because the state saw them as legitimate regional dialects of the standard language. Italy never put nearly as much of a premium on suppressing the regional languages whose literature had contributed to Standard Italian, and those dialects have survived much better than e.g. Sardinian or Franco-Provencal.
There are numerous counterexamples of minority languages that have prospered despite the presence of a majority language that granted economic opportunity. Why didn't the Finns and Estonians just abandon their languages for Russian, the Hungarians theirs for German, or the Yugoslavians Serbian? If the Occitans had had their own country, e.g., if France had been carved up like Russia or Austria-Hungary had been, I see no reason why their language wouldn't still be commonly spoken.
"Don't deny them agency"
Dear god this is such a great statement. So many people working in international development fetishize life out in the village. Its like they want people to live in some kind of frozen time bubble as museum Fremen.
Dear god this is such a great statement. So many people working in international development fetishize life out in the village. Its like they want people to live in some kind of frozen time bubble as museum Fremen.
But that's not how assimilation happens these days right? People are begging to come to wealthy countries. In this scenario everyone speaking English or whatever is the dominant language in two generation is a good thing for economic equality and cultural cohesion. Take Sillicon Valley is a positive example of good integration.
Immigration to the USA and nation-building in France do seem like very different things, yes.
In France, the project of creating a French nation and a French people required taking a diversity of cultures and languages that already existed in the territory, and trying to standardize and unify them. This is what modern nationalism did in many parts of Europe.
The USA is a different kind of project, wherein people from Europe came to take over the continent from it's previous inhabitants, stamping out the various cultures and languages that were on this continent by displacing whole peoples, not by assimilating them. Initially there were different European groups that were also kind of fighting each other for power. Obviously the ones from England were the dominant power in creating the United States of America, but other European cultures existed on the continent for a while too, the Lone Star State in Texas actually had three official state langauges -- English, Spanish, and German (yup).
So, yeah, these were very different things. I'd start from the actual history in comparing them.
I guess the commonality is the end result of homogenizing culture and suppressing cultural diversity for the purposes of political power.
In France, the project of creating a French nation and a French people required taking a diversity of cultures and languages that already existed in the territory, and trying to standardize and unify them. This is what modern nationalism did in many parts of Europe.
The USA is a different kind of project, wherein people from Europe came to take over the continent from it's previous inhabitants, stamping out the various cultures and languages that were on this continent by displacing whole peoples, not by assimilating them. Initially there were different European groups that were also kind of fighting each other for power. Obviously the ones from England were the dominant power in creating the United States of America, but other European cultures existed on the continent for a while too, the Lone Star State in Texas actually had three official state langauges -- English, Spanish, and German (yup).
So, yeah, these were very different things. I'd start from the actual history in comparing them.
I guess the commonality is the end result of homogenizing culture and suppressing cultural diversity for the purposes of political power.
I suspect it's oversimplified to think of homogenization as being a topdown process driven by the quest for power. A lot of it can be bottom-up - as the article describes, parents deliberately chose to teach their children Swedish. The advantages of speaking the "bigger" language are obvious: it'll open a wider set of opportunities. That's why people all over Europe teach their children English. If anything, their states probably have an incentive to push French, German etc., but English opens doors.
> it'll open a wider set of opportunities.
Which in almost all cases are the result of top-down processes. You're arguing that individual adjustments to change are the agents of change.
English gives opportunity because of the colonial foundation created by English invasion being transferred to the US, due to their long-term Western military hegemony resulting from their distance from a destructive pair of European wars.
Of course, a lingua franca is good, but the cultural and professional domination is too much in my opinion. US culture is awful, but is heavily marketed and sold (and ironically is almost all of foreign manufacture due to the continuing trade deficit/strong dollar policy. US professional dominance is due to its corruption, lack of regulation and labor rights, military aggression providing and preserving new markets, and diplomatic aggression making it the gatekeeper to those markets.
The dominance of English is a result of that, just like the domination of Latin, Spanish, and French (or Arabic for that matter) were. It's something that's happening, not something to be supported.
edit:
> But the national government of Sweden is a different story. They currently consider Elfdalian a dialect of Swedish, not its own language.
> Speaking in Elfdalian, Swedish MP Peter Helander recently asked Parliament why that’s the case. But before Culture Minister Amanda Lind could answer the question, the parliamentary speaker interrupted them both to say that only Swedish may be spoken in the chamber. Helander said the "only Swedish" remark proves his point, that Elfdalian should be considered its own language.
I don't know how much more official a condemnation of a minority language can be.
Which in almost all cases are the result of top-down processes. You're arguing that individual adjustments to change are the agents of change.
English gives opportunity because of the colonial foundation created by English invasion being transferred to the US, due to their long-term Western military hegemony resulting from their distance from a destructive pair of European wars.
Of course, a lingua franca is good, but the cultural and professional domination is too much in my opinion. US culture is awful, but is heavily marketed and sold (and ironically is almost all of foreign manufacture due to the continuing trade deficit/strong dollar policy. US professional dominance is due to its corruption, lack of regulation and labor rights, military aggression providing and preserving new markets, and diplomatic aggression making it the gatekeeper to those markets.
The dominance of English is a result of that, just like the domination of Latin, Spanish, and French (or Arabic for that matter) were. It's something that's happening, not something to be supported.
edit:
> But the national government of Sweden is a different story. They currently consider Elfdalian a dialect of Swedish, not its own language.
> Speaking in Elfdalian, Swedish MP Peter Helander recently asked Parliament why that’s the case. But before Culture Minister Amanda Lind could answer the question, the parliamentary speaker interrupted them both to say that only Swedish may be spoken in the chamber. Helander said the "only Swedish" remark proves his point, that Elfdalian should be considered its own language.
I don't know how much more official a condemnation of a minority language can be.
I agree that some processes are top down. My point was just that the choice to learn a national or global language is often bottom up.
I think saying "US culture is awful" weakens your point. US culture is extremely diverse, from The Rock to Jeff Koons. It's also central to the twentieth century. Dismissing it all as awful doesn't make much sense.
I think saying "US culture is awful" weakens your point. US culture is extremely diverse, from The Rock to Jeff Koons. It's also central to the twentieth century. Dismissing it all as awful doesn't make much sense.
I was pretty surprised when I went to parts of Texas where people still using German (alongside English of course).
It's a pity that Gresham's Law ended up making English almost ubiquitous, to the detriment of the many languages from all around the world. (I don't think I need to mention the many advantages that counterbalance this.)
It's a pity that Gresham's Law ended up making English almost ubiquitous, to the detriment of the many languages from all around the world. (I don't think I need to mention the many advantages that counterbalance this.)
> I guess the commonality is the end result of homogenizing culture and suppressing cultural diversity for the purposes of political power.
So the native population was obviously suppressed in a bid for political power, but were any other cultures oppressed into homogenizing for the purpose of solidifying someone’s political power? Did someone oppress the Germans to cause them to speak English, or did they assimilate for the obvious economic and social efficiencies? Homogenized culture is the result, but it’s not clear to me that it was nefarious in these cases.
So the native population was obviously suppressed in a bid for political power, but were any other cultures oppressed into homogenizing for the purpose of solidifying someone’s political power? Did someone oppress the Germans to cause them to speak English, or did they assimilate for the obvious economic and social efficiencies? Homogenized culture is the result, but it’s not clear to me that it was nefarious in these cases.
For Texas Germans, some of A, some of B. Churches in central Texas towns with significant German-speaking populations commonly worshiped in German, and those towns had German-language newspapers up through the 1920s and 30s. The drop-off appears to have started around World War 1, and was pretty much complete by WW2. Some of my high school classmates (born ca. 1980) had German and/or Czech-speaking grandparents who grew up in the 20s and 30s, but tried raising their children as English speakers. Result: my classmates' parents could always understand Oma and Opa, but their grandchildren couldn’t, which was part of why German was an unusually popular foreign language option at my high school (the excellence of the long-time German teacher was the rest).
But (1) that’s just a regional phenomenon and (2) it doesn’t indicate any top-down pressure to convert to boost someone’s political power.
Short answer, it's "complicated" in that there are always multiple things going on at once, but... yes. And the ways it's "complicated" are weirder than you might think. Like that Germans were actually one of the least "assimilating" significant non-English European populations here in the 19th century. Actual histories often don't match our assumptions based on current ideologies.
Fighting Everything German in Texas, 1917–1919 https://www.jstor.org/stable/24449071
"…World War I not only intensified fears that the "melting pot" was failing, but also broadened this concern to include German Americans as a suspect ethnic group. Before the war, German Americans were one of the most respected immigrant groups in America, having achieved success in many spheres. Brewery magnate Adolf Busch, intellectual and U.S. Senator Carl Schulz, and financier John D. Rockefeller were among the German Americans who had risen to prominence in the United States. Significantly, German Americans acquired their favorable reputation despite being the ethnic group most resistant to assimilation…"
"…Furthermore, Texans’ historic distrust of German Texans helped inspire anti-German activities. During the antebellum period, slaveholders had viewed German Texans with suspicion, especially after an 1854 convention of German Texans adopted an anti-slavery resolution. In fact, only a minority of German Texans supported this resolution, but most Texans did not understand that subtlety. They were preoccupied with German Texans’ common culture which prevented them from discerning political, religious, and social differences among Germans…"
"…Claiming that German Texans’ ethnicity was equivalent to disloyalty, many council of defense members in Texas were determined to purge all traces of German culture from their state…"
(DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6563.1994.tb00925.x for your sci-hub needs...)
But my main point is that these are very different situations -- national projects in Europe unifying/homogenizing various long-existed local geographically-specific cultures (I'm not sure 'assimilation' is even the right word here). Vs America, where various European populations came, only in the last few hundred years, displaced local geographically-specific cultures, and then competed with each other for political power or cultural hegemony as they expanded to take land the previous occupants were displaced from, also sometimes forming communities together (in which they were all newcomers to the land). Just two very different situations; although i tried to say there were some commonalities in the way cultures are homogenized/unified, I am sympathetic to the idea that "why are you even looking for commonalities these are such different situations".
I think we often over-simplify the diversity of historical paths with this stuff, assuming that the way we now look at "culture" or "nationality" or "race" has always been the way people did, and/or was inevitable. But these things were built, in the not too recent past, and didn't work the same way they work now even in recent history, and worked differently in different places.
Fighting Everything German in Texas, 1917–1919 https://www.jstor.org/stable/24449071
"…World War I not only intensified fears that the "melting pot" was failing, but also broadened this concern to include German Americans as a suspect ethnic group. Before the war, German Americans were one of the most respected immigrant groups in America, having achieved success in many spheres. Brewery magnate Adolf Busch, intellectual and U.S. Senator Carl Schulz, and financier John D. Rockefeller were among the German Americans who had risen to prominence in the United States. Significantly, German Americans acquired their favorable reputation despite being the ethnic group most resistant to assimilation…"
"…Furthermore, Texans’ historic distrust of German Texans helped inspire anti-German activities. During the antebellum period, slaveholders had viewed German Texans with suspicion, especially after an 1854 convention of German Texans adopted an anti-slavery resolution. In fact, only a minority of German Texans supported this resolution, but most Texans did not understand that subtlety. They were preoccupied with German Texans’ common culture which prevented them from discerning political, religious, and social differences among Germans…"
"…Claiming that German Texans’ ethnicity was equivalent to disloyalty, many council of defense members in Texas were determined to purge all traces of German culture from their state…"
(DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6563.1994.tb00925.x for your sci-hub needs...)
But my main point is that these are very different situations -- national projects in Europe unifying/homogenizing various long-existed local geographically-specific cultures (I'm not sure 'assimilation' is even the right word here). Vs America, where various European populations came, only in the last few hundred years, displaced local geographically-specific cultures, and then competed with each other for political power or cultural hegemony as they expanded to take land the previous occupants were displaced from, also sometimes forming communities together (in which they were all newcomers to the land). Just two very different situations; although i tried to say there were some commonalities in the way cultures are homogenized/unified, I am sympathetic to the idea that "why are you even looking for commonalities these are such different situations".
I think we often over-simplify the diversity of historical paths with this stuff, assuming that the way we now look at "culture" or "nationality" or "race" has always been the way people did, and/or was inevitable. But these things were built, in the not too recent past, and didn't work the same way they work now even in recent history, and worked differently in different places.
WRT Germans in Texas, that’s highly regional—I don’t know that it generalizes broadly to America. It also doesn’t demonstrate a top-down pressure to assimilate in order to build up another group’s political power, but rather an overblown fear that German-Americans (I am German-American, for the record) had conflicting interests.
I’m not trying to “gotcha” you, but “pressure to assimilate in order to grow someone’s political power” doesn’t sound like an accurate characterization of American history as I understand it.
I’m not trying to “gotcha” you, but “pressure to assimilate in order to grow someone’s political power” doesn’t sound like an accurate characterization of American history as I understand it.
We were talking about Texas, I brought up Germans in Texas and you responded to that -- so I found an article about the history in Texas. I can find other articles from other parts of the U.S., but at this point I feel like you've shown whatever I find, I think you have your mind made up about, as you say, "American history as you understand it", and are uninterested in historical evidence that might complicate that.
As I understand it, the history is more diverse and complicated than you understand it. I shared one source to that end, you dismissed it because it didn't match your preferred narrative.
But again, my main point was not that one sentance.
As I understand it, the history is more diverse and complicated than you understand it. I shared one source to that end, you dismissed it because it didn't match your preferred narrative.
But again, my main point was not that one sentance.
My issue is that your example doesn’t actually support the thesis (see my previous post). So if you can’t produce an example that supports your thesis then it’s going to be hard to persuade just about anyone.
There was certainly a great amount of pressure against German during and following WWI. As an example of the sort of public sentiment at that time, the artist Grant Wood (famous for American Gothic) even had a spat with the Daughters of the American Revolution a decade after the war:
> In 1927, Wood was commissioned to create a stained glass window in the Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Unhappy with the quality of domestic glass sources, he used glass made in Germany. The local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) complained about the use of a German source for a World War I memorial, as Germany had been an enemy of the US in that war. They expressed a lingering anti-German sentiment in society, and other people in Cedar Rapids also protested the German source. As a result, the window was not dedicated until 1955.[2]
> Wood was said to have described the DAR as "those Tory gals" and "people who are trying to set up an aristocracy of birth in a Republic."[3] Five years later Wood painted Daughters of Revolution, which he described as his only satire. He emphasized the contrast of three aged women in faded dresses framed against the heroic painting of Washington Crossing the Delaware, which, ironically, was painted in Germany by the German-American artist Emanuel Leutze.[1] Wood depicted his mother's clothing on the models, including a lace collar and amber pin he bought for her in Germany.[4]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daughters_of_Revolution
German names became anglicised, German newspapers disappeared, and German stopped being taught in schools.
Whether German would have survived without this sort of persecution is not really knowable, but it did happen.
> In 1927, Wood was commissioned to create a stained glass window in the Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Unhappy with the quality of domestic glass sources, he used glass made in Germany. The local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) complained about the use of a German source for a World War I memorial, as Germany had been an enemy of the US in that war. They expressed a lingering anti-German sentiment in society, and other people in Cedar Rapids also protested the German source. As a result, the window was not dedicated until 1955.[2]
> Wood was said to have described the DAR as "those Tory gals" and "people who are trying to set up an aristocracy of birth in a Republic."[3] Five years later Wood painted Daughters of Revolution, which he described as his only satire. He emphasized the contrast of three aged women in faded dresses framed against the heroic painting of Washington Crossing the Delaware, which, ironically, was painted in Germany by the German-American artist Emanuel Leutze.[1] Wood depicted his mother's clothing on the models, including a lace collar and amber pin he bought for her in Germany.[4]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daughters_of_Revolution
German names became anglicised, German newspapers disappeared, and German stopped being taught in schools.
Whether German would have survived without this sort of persecution is not really knowable, but it did happen.
Sure there was anti-German sentiment, but it doesn’t appear to be for the alleged purpose of improving another group’s political power. It’s also not clear to me how widespread this anti-German sentiment was (was it limited to nationalist instituions)? I hail from ~45 minutes away from Cedar Rapids from German stock on both sides (immigrated around the 1850s) in an area that is very German (lots of Weber’s, Becker’s, Youngblut’s, Vogel’s, etc) and I’ve never heard anything about people feeling compelled to forget their native language. Rather the sentiment I’ve heard was always that they just wanted to integrate into their new society. Obviously we’re both dealing in anecdotes, and I’m not trying to disprove yours, but rather understand how both fit in the larger historical narrative.
A useful comparison may be to Spanish in the United States today.
As for how widespread this was, some examples at the time included a lynching of a German seeking naturalisation:
> One such death of note was that of Robert Prager, a German seeking naturalization in St. Louis, Missouri who was accused on the night of April 14, 1914, of being a German spy by a mob of 300 "men and boys" after he had allegedly shared words at a socialist meeting earlier that evening. The jail where he had taken refuge from the crowds was quickly overrun and being stripped of his clothes, he was led down Main Street with a rope tied around his neck, and was forced to walk the route, and with shattered glass bottles being thrown down in his walking path, he was forced to sing patriotic songs. He was forced during this walk to kiss an American flag which had been wrapped around him. He was walked to a hanging tree at the edge of town where he was lynched. In an article from The St. Louis Global-Democrat, it was reported that there had been multiple incidences of mobs tarring and feathering individuals.
Note that this was prior to US entry into World War I.
Language bans:
> Language use had also been the primary focus of legislation at state and local levels. Some of these regulations included the publication of charters banning speaking German within city limits. A total ban on the teaching of German in both public and private education could be found in at minimum 14 states including ome states would extend this to ban the teaching of all languages except for english, although the majority who would ban non-english languages typically only banned German. A total ban on teaching German in both public and private schools was imposed for a time in at least 14 states, including California, Indiana,[11] Wisconsin,[12] Ohio, Iowa and Nebraska. California's ban lasted into the mid-1920s. The Supreme Court case in Meyer v. Nebraska ruled in 1923 that these laws were unconstitutional.[13]In October 1918, a bill intended to restrict federal funds towards states that enforced English-only education was created. On April 9, 1919, Nebraska enacted a statute called "An act relating to the teaching of foreign languages in the state of Nebraska," commonly known as the Siman Act. It provided that "No person, individually or as a teacher, shall, in any private, denominational, parochial or public school, teach any subject to any person in any language other than the English language." It forbade foreign instruction to children who had not completed the eighth grade.I n Montana, speaking German was banned in public for two years during World War I.[14] Pennsylvania's legislature passed a German-language ban, but it was vetoed by the governor. Churches during this period such as the Lutheran Church became internally divided over services and religious instruction in German and English.[15]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_language_in_the_United_...
In Iowa in particular:
> Harding's proclamation codified four rules for the state. First, Iowa schools - public, parochial and private - could only teach in English. Second, public conversations, including on trains and over the telephone, must be in English. Third, speeches or public addresses could only be given in English. Fourth, churches cannot conduct public worship services in any language other than English. We know this proclamation today as the Babel Proclamation.
https://www.thegazette.com/guest-columnists/a-century-ago-io...
As for how widespread this was, some examples at the time included a lynching of a German seeking naturalisation:
> One such death of note was that of Robert Prager, a German seeking naturalization in St. Louis, Missouri who was accused on the night of April 14, 1914, of being a German spy by a mob of 300 "men and boys" after he had allegedly shared words at a socialist meeting earlier that evening. The jail where he had taken refuge from the crowds was quickly overrun and being stripped of his clothes, he was led down Main Street with a rope tied around his neck, and was forced to walk the route, and with shattered glass bottles being thrown down in his walking path, he was forced to sing patriotic songs. He was forced during this walk to kiss an American flag which had been wrapped around him. He was walked to a hanging tree at the edge of town where he was lynched. In an article from The St. Louis Global-Democrat, it was reported that there had been multiple incidences of mobs tarring and feathering individuals.
Note that this was prior to US entry into World War I.
Language bans:
> Language use had also been the primary focus of legislation at state and local levels. Some of these regulations included the publication of charters banning speaking German within city limits. A total ban on the teaching of German in both public and private education could be found in at minimum 14 states including ome states would extend this to ban the teaching of all languages except for english, although the majority who would ban non-english languages typically only banned German. A total ban on teaching German in both public and private schools was imposed for a time in at least 14 states, including California, Indiana,[11] Wisconsin,[12] Ohio, Iowa and Nebraska. California's ban lasted into the mid-1920s. The Supreme Court case in Meyer v. Nebraska ruled in 1923 that these laws were unconstitutional.[13]In October 1918, a bill intended to restrict federal funds towards states that enforced English-only education was created. On April 9, 1919, Nebraska enacted a statute called "An act relating to the teaching of foreign languages in the state of Nebraska," commonly known as the Siman Act. It provided that "No person, individually or as a teacher, shall, in any private, denominational, parochial or public school, teach any subject to any person in any language other than the English language." It forbade foreign instruction to children who had not completed the eighth grade.I n Montana, speaking German was banned in public for two years during World War I.[14] Pennsylvania's legislature passed a German-language ban, but it was vetoed by the governor. Churches during this period such as the Lutheran Church became internally divided over services and religious instruction in German and English.[15]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_language_in_the_United_...
In Iowa in particular:
> Harding's proclamation codified four rules for the state. First, Iowa schools - public, parochial and private - could only teach in English. Second, public conversations, including on trains and over the telephone, must be in English. Third, speeches or public addresses could only be given in English. Fourth, churches cannot conduct public worship services in any language other than English. We know this proclamation today as the Babel Proclamation.
https://www.thegazette.com/guest-columnists/a-century-ago-io...
> But that's not how assimilation happens these days right?
What about cultural imperialism? A language shapes your identity because it literally gives the grammar to your thoughts. But other cultural goods like music, netflix, youtube, tv, you name it, do shape our cultural grammar just as much. This is a point I don't expect anyone already embedded in the dominant culture to find salient, because the culture we are in is as transparent as sea is to fish.
> People are begging to come to wealthy countries
If people had comparable prospects at home, so few would actually leave. If you look at the non-asylum-seeking immigration reasons (i.e. the "beggars" in your words), it is primarily about economic hardship, with persecution, violence, war, human rights added on top. Guess what, in an interconnected international arena, wealthy countries have more culpability about those conditions than we care to admit.
What about cultural imperialism? A language shapes your identity because it literally gives the grammar to your thoughts. But other cultural goods like music, netflix, youtube, tv, you name it, do shape our cultural grammar just as much. This is a point I don't expect anyone already embedded in the dominant culture to find salient, because the culture we are in is as transparent as sea is to fish.
> People are begging to come to wealthy countries
If people had comparable prospects at home, so few would actually leave. If you look at the non-asylum-seeking immigration reasons (i.e. the "beggars" in your words), it is primarily about economic hardship, with persecution, violence, war, human rights added on top. Guess what, in an interconnected international arena, wealthy countries have more culpability about those conditions than we care to admit.
> Guess what, in an interconnected international arena, wealthy countries have more culpability about those conditions than we care to admit.
That has been talked about ad nauseam for the past 10 years. Maybe it's time to remember that non-wealthy countries have more culpability for their own conditions than anyone dares to mention?
That has been talked about ad nauseam for the past 10 years. Maybe it's time to remember that non-wealthy countries have more culpability for their own conditions than anyone dares to mention?
> That has been talked about ad nauseam for the past 10 years.
Imperialism goes way more back than 10 years. It probably has been nauseating for some for at least a century.
> Maybe it's time to remember that non-wealthy countries have more culpability for their own conditions than anyone dares to mention?
Sounds like you've made the exact calculus to rank order culpability. I'm very interested to hear how we all can objectively arrive at this conclusion.
Alternatively, you could tell us a state that haven't been at the receiving end of a war, coup, resource exploitation, economic warfare etc. and still managed to screw up their quest for self-determination.
Imperialism goes way more back than 10 years. It probably has been nauseating for some for at least a century.
> Maybe it's time to remember that non-wealthy countries have more culpability for their own conditions than anyone dares to mention?
Sounds like you've made the exact calculus to rank order culpability. I'm very interested to hear how we all can objectively arrive at this conclusion.
Alternatively, you could tell us a state that haven't been at the receiving end of a war, coup, resource exploitation, economic warfare etc. and still managed to screw up their quest for self-determination.
Zimbabwe, Argentina, off the top of my head
I'm not an expert in histories of those countries, but could you be forgetting a massively bloody military coup in 70s in the name of anticommunism in Argentina, or a history of complete international isolation and 15 years of civil war between Rhodesia and Zimbabwe thanks to British colonialism?
A decade of destabilisation in both countries could have been the straw that broke the camel's back, sure.
Argentina was already out of the rich-countries-club by the time the 70's had come around, and the bloody military coup you reference is likely the inevitable political instability that comes surely after sustained economic instability.
And as for Zimbabwe, the "civil-war" was hardly a destabilising event for the country, and the international isolation was easily evaded, this is well documented. I think Zimbabwe, once the bread basket of Africa as Rhodesia, is a great example of how self-determination might undermine an improperly equipped nation.
Argentina was already out of the rich-countries-club by the time the 70's had come around, and the bloody military coup you reference is likely the inevitable political instability that comes surely after sustained economic instability.
And as for Zimbabwe, the "civil-war" was hardly a destabilising event for the country, and the international isolation was easily evaded, this is well documented. I think Zimbabwe, once the bread basket of Africa as Rhodesia, is a great example of how self-determination might undermine an improperly equipped nation.
> A language shapes your identity because it literally gives the grammar to your thoughts.
So what happens when you learn a second, or third, or fourth language fluently? [Like, say me?]
Do you suddenly have multiple-personalities?
Complete bollocks.
So what happens when you learn a second, or third, or fourth language fluently? [Like, say me?]
Do you suddenly have multiple-personalities?
Complete bollocks.
Knowing four languages isn't the same as thinking in them. It took me quite a while after becoming fluent in English to having errant thoughts in English. Both languages can influence my thinking - sometimes I'll think of half of a concept in English and finish off the thought in my native language. This is most common when I'm dealing with math or numbers.
> A language shapes your identity because it literally gives the grammar to your thoughts.
So does your 'identity' (whatever that is) change half way through the sentence. In you head?
Are you literally a different person at either end of your sentence?
SMH.
So does your 'identity' (whatever that is) change half way through the sentence. In you head?
Are you literally a different person at either end of your sentence?
SMH.
What? No. The change happens when you learn the language and start thinking in those concepts. It's like learning mathematics or programming: once you learn them, you notice the patterns elsewhere in life too. I don't think the difference in natural languages is as big as with learning programming or mathematics, but I imagine that there's some difference.
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> Complete bollocks.
Thanks for your sophisticated analysis.[1]
Psycho-activeness of language has an incredible depth of account from philosophy to semiotics. But a simple enough paper I found for you that exemplifies (not exhaustively proves) my claim is Holtgraves & Kashima, 2008. It is freely accessible.
Additionally equivocating personality, identity and pathologies like dissociative personality is going to mislead us, because they are strawman arguments.
Think of yourself growing up. Turning to an adult was a change in identity. Do you remember the day you switched from being a child to being an adult? Was it a psychopathology to become an adult? Are you completely dissociated from childhood memories, and seemingly, your childhood ego-states?
Finally I will pull another comment of yours in this thread;
> No here is the thing: none of this has affected my identify at all, not even in the slightest.
The thing with identity is that it is not entirely transparent to us. You don't know who you are as much as you think you do. Not only that, if language is the ground on which our identities form, by definition you wouldn't realize a change in identity due to change in grounding. By these accounts you wouldn't be the most reliable witness to assess your identity change.
[1] I know sarcasm is frowned up in this forum but I wanted to give an example of how we use language to emotionally regulate ourselves. We can sublimate our anger by creating a contradictory perspective to salience the unfairness of the opposing perspective. It gives us a strategy out of merely attacking back in kind. Collect thousands of tools like this together and you bet it significantly contributes to your identity.
Thanks for your sophisticated analysis.[1]
Psycho-activeness of language has an incredible depth of account from philosophy to semiotics. But a simple enough paper I found for you that exemplifies (not exhaustively proves) my claim is Holtgraves & Kashima, 2008. It is freely accessible.
Additionally equivocating personality, identity and pathologies like dissociative personality is going to mislead us, because they are strawman arguments.
Think of yourself growing up. Turning to an adult was a change in identity. Do you remember the day you switched from being a child to being an adult? Was it a psychopathology to become an adult? Are you completely dissociated from childhood memories, and seemingly, your childhood ego-states?
Finally I will pull another comment of yours in this thread;
> No here is the thing: none of this has affected my identify at all, not even in the slightest.
The thing with identity is that it is not entirely transparent to us. You don't know who you are as much as you think you do. Not only that, if language is the ground on which our identities form, by definition you wouldn't realize a change in identity due to change in grounding. By these accounts you wouldn't be the most reliable witness to assess your identity change.
[1] I know sarcasm is frowned up in this forum but I wanted to give an example of how we use language to emotionally regulate ourselves. We can sublimate our anger by creating a contradictory perspective to salience the unfairness of the opposing perspective. It gives us a strategy out of merely attacking back in kind. Collect thousands of tools like this together and you bet it significantly contributes to your identity.
> by definition you wouldn't realize a change in identity due to change in grounding.
Neither then would anyone else, including the OP.
Neither then would anyone else, including the OP.
I mean we are digging a tangential hypothetical but still that’s not true. The other people are not changing, the grounding through which they are perceiving you
is not changing. Whereas due to the recursive nature of self-reflection, your own change of the way through which you observe change itself is liable to be in your blind spot. This is how self deception works.
No, not complete bollocks.
Learning new languages does add different layers to your personality.
I am native-level fluent in three languages, and have some level of fluency in three more.
Learning a new language opens a complete new door to a new culture, and way of thoughts through books, movies, songs, and so much more.
Even if you don't spend time to learn a culture well, i.e. don't listen to music or read literature, learning a new grammar, and very importantly, new words, do reshape you, and gives you new perspectives and ways of thoughts.
Learning new languages does add different layers to your personality.
I am native-level fluent in three languages, and have some level of fluency in three more.
Learning a new language opens a complete new door to a new culture, and way of thoughts through books, movies, songs, and so much more.
Even if you don't spend time to learn a culture well, i.e. don't listen to music or read literature, learning a new grammar, and very importantly, new words, do reshape you, and gives you new perspectives and ways of thoughts.
I too speak three(four) language at absolute native level and three (two) at conversational level. And one at a beginner level.
Some of these a polysynthetic languages, others are agglutinative. Two are tonal, and one doesn't have an alphabet.
No here is the thing: none of this has affected my identify at all, not even in the slightest. Same person: just different sounds for things.
Presumably my testimony counts as well.
Some of these a polysynthetic languages, others are agglutinative. Two are tonal, and one doesn't have an alphabet.
No here is the thing: none of this has affected my identify at all, not even in the slightest. Same person: just different sounds for things.
Presumably my testimony counts as well.
The last residential school in Canada closed in 1996. People in their middle ages today remember being forced to assimilate across the globe. It's not some long-ago thing. The people who supported these systems are still alive, still influencing policy.
And the US federal government was funding church run boarding schools of similar character in the US into the 1960s under the “Indian Civilization Act”, so only about a generation more distant.
wonder how many are still alive who would support this
It's certainly happening in China. Regional dialects like Cantonese—which you would still hear routinely in American Chinatowns—are slowly being replaced with Mandarin via the school system. These dialects are not yet lost, but within a few generations they may rarely be spoken. Why would they be when everyone learns Mandarin in school?
Sure, there is nothing wrong with people immigrating somewhere and assimilating to the local culture. But one needs to draw a distinction between that and a nationalist government privileging the national language over regional languages. This is not so common today, although we live with the consequences of past nationalist movements which have sent many minority languages on an inexorable route to oblivion. And then there's China...
> This is not so common today...
It's happening in india today. It's very sad.
It's happening in india today. It's very sad.
> But that's not how assimilation happens these days right?
That is exactly how it happens today. The process your parent describes is a currently ongoing one in France.
That is exactly how it happens today. The process your parent describes is a currently ongoing one in France.
Learning a language for economic or practical reasons doesn't mean you forget your own language. The silicon valley example is more likely to make English evolve than to make a hundred other languages extinct.
In the case of Sweden, which is already a small population, it must be difficult to keep having used for a very minority language in a modern world. In order for a language to survive, nowadays, you need the language to also be very present on the internet. That means having a big community of native speakers and creators, media, literature, art, cinema, education, work... That's expensive and makes little sense for populations that are quite small I would reckon.
In the case of Sweden, which is already a small population, it must be difficult to keep having used for a very minority language in a modern world. In order for a language to survive, nowadays, you need the language to also be very present on the internet. That means having a big community of native speakers and creators, media, literature, art, cinema, education, work... That's expensive and makes little sense for populations that are quite small I would reckon.
> In this scenario everyone speaking English or whatever is the dominant language in two generation is a good thing for economic equality and cultural cohesion.
If this is the pathway we choose/are forced down, will the term ‘culture’ be needed? We will all be the same.
If this is the pathway we choose/are forced down, will the term ‘culture’ be needed? We will all be the same.
California, Oklahoma, and Ireland all speak English but have very different cultures. Most large cities have different cultures within 10 miles of each other.
I bring up these counterpoints only to say that while language is a major factor in culture, there are still many other factors.
I bring up these counterpoints only to say that while language is a major factor in culture, there are still many other factors.
How ironic to pick Ireland as an example of English speaking.
The irony here generally applies to Oklahoma and perhaps California as well, and these three regions are perhaps much more culturally similar due to the imposition of language on a region with such effectiveness. I'm not sure if that's the point they were trying to make.
I think it does make the same point. The cultural similarities were achieved but it wasn’t without loss or consequence. There may have been less bloodshed though?
While I wouldn't say they have "very" different cultures relative to almost anywhere in the non-English speaking realm, I would definitely agree that language isn't the only factor. However, more language unification would at least theoretically continue to increase cultural cohesion.
Not really, I would say France is closer to Ireland culturally than Oklahoma.
For example, Catholics are the largest religious group in Ireland and France. Oklahoma is only 4.9% Catholics with Baptist being it’s largest religious group.
For example, Catholics are the largest religious group in Ireland and France. Oklahoma is only 4.9% Catholics with Baptist being it’s largest religious group.
[deleted]
While I absolutely agree history and culture should be preserved - it’s not so simple.
Take your comment as an example. HN has people worldwide interacting with each other in this forum BECAUSE we are all speaking a known common language (English).
If worldwide schools didn’t commonly teach English (or whatever the next dominant language might be) we wouldn’t be able to communicate with each other in this thread if we all spoke 100+ different languages.
Take your comment as an example. HN has people worldwide interacting with each other in this forum BECAUSE we are all speaking a known common language (English).
If worldwide schools didn’t commonly teach English (or whatever the next dominant language might be) we wouldn’t be able to communicate with each other in this thread if we all spoke 100+ different languages.
There's a big difference between "you should take a course in English, it's really useful" and "we will punish you for speaking your own language" (as happened numerous times and is what the comment you replied to is talking about).
>Public schooling, nationalism, and the decline of regional languages all coincided for a reason.
Slightly tangential, but Sweden has decided to call the Westrobothnian dialect of Swedish “Bondska” the direct translation of which is basically “Farmerish”.
Now I don’t support the stigmatization of farmers, but it’s hard to deny that “bondig”/“farmerish” has been used as a derogative to separate them from “city people” or whatever they’re trying to suggest.
As I understand it, Elfdalian is further removed from Swedish, but has been similarly classified as a rural dialect instead of its own language. Further complicated by the fact that the are other dialects in the area called Dalmål (direct translation “valleyspeak” maybe?), and as far as I can tell are related to both Swedish and Elfdalian..
(I just an interested amateur, so I’m absolutely open to corrections from people with first hand experience of speaking Elfdalian or Westrobothnian)
Slightly tangential, but Sweden has decided to call the Westrobothnian dialect of Swedish “Bondska” the direct translation of which is basically “Farmerish”.
Now I don’t support the stigmatization of farmers, but it’s hard to deny that “bondig”/“farmerish” has been used as a derogative to separate them from “city people” or whatever they’re trying to suggest.
As I understand it, Elfdalian is further removed from Swedish, but has been similarly classified as a rural dialect instead of its own language. Further complicated by the fact that the are other dialects in the area called Dalmål (direct translation “valleyspeak” maybe?), and as far as I can tell are related to both Swedish and Elfdalian..
(I just an interested amateur, so I’m absolutely open to corrections from people with first hand experience of speaking Elfdalian or Westrobothnian)
Dalmål (Dalecarlian) is from my understanding (and simplified) a bit of a continuum from Swedish to Elfdalian. The closer you get to Älvdalen the less intelligible it is for Swedish speakers.
I can, after spending some time there, understand some "moramål" (the variation spoken in and around Mora) but I have a much harder time understanding "orsamål" (same but around Orsa). Elfdalian is much less intelligible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalecarlian_language
I can, after spending some time there, understand some "moramål" (the variation spoken in and around Mora) but I have a much harder time understanding "orsamål" (same but around Orsa). Elfdalian is much less intelligible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalecarlian_language
Yep, and it blows my mind that in France especially this process of language loss is still accepted and ongoing and essentially encouraged. Breton, Basque, Alsatian German, etc. will be extinct within a generation on French territory, and that will be on purpose and this is happening inside a contemporary postmodern nation inside the European Union.
There are all sorts of reasons to keep minority language communities thriving, I won't get into them here. But hell, tourism alone is a good one. It's part of the local flavour of a place.
There are all sorts of reasons to keep minority language communities thriving, I won't get into them here. But hell, tourism alone is a good one. It's part of the local flavour of a place.
It is a bit of delicious irony that the French are so indignant about English supplanting their language in so many institutions. I guess the shoe being on the other foot doesn't feel so great.
“Destroy”, “assimilate” and “identity” sound very alarming. But beware, the opposite of synthetic or forced language preservation also results in the exact same brutality, or worse.
Because the "brutality" of cultural preservation doesn't sound alarming at all...
I think it is absolutely vital that we preserve minority languages.
We engage, enhance and preserve our culture through language: spoken and written. Each language is shaped via its environment and is different as a result from all others.
English is often called French (lingua Franca - the language of the Franks). It is routinely used as an intermediary language because it is very simply structured and can take quite a lot of abuse and still remain intelligible.
Let's go Scottish (no, not Pictish) and consider Mr Burns: and we should start here - https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/mouse/
"Oh what a panic is in your heart" is genius.
This is so obviously a bloke who is looking at a mouse. So few words and yet so much meaning - that's genius.
We engage, enhance and preserve our culture through language: spoken and written. Each language is shaped via its environment and is different as a result from all others.
English is often called French (lingua Franca - the language of the Franks). It is routinely used as an intermediary language because it is very simply structured and can take quite a lot of abuse and still remain intelligible.
* No diacritics (accents etc)
* Vowels can be mispronounced but the meaning remains
* Word order can be fluid: Nominally: subject object verb but not enforced and can be broken for effect
* Borrow words are actively encouraged
* English *can* sound beautiful, if you put your back into it
Let's go Scottish (no, not Pictish) and consider Mr Burns: and we should start here - https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/mouse/
Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous beastie,
O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
"Oh what a panic is in your heart" is genius.
This is so obviously a bloke who is looking at a mouse. So few words and yet so much meaning - that's genius.
That is not why English is used as a lingua franca. There have always been such languages, often with none of those features.
English is a lasting lingua franca because two world-dominating powers in a row - the United Kingdom and the United States - were English-speaking, producing a run of more than a century with an important trading partner and diplomatic contact speaking that language.
It's gotten deeply enough embedded that it will probably survive fading US (relative) power, but inserting theories about the nature of the language itself doesn't add any explanatory power over just looking at the history
English is a lasting lingua franca because two world-dominating powers in a row - the United Kingdom and the United States - were English-speaking, producing a run of more than a century with an important trading partner and diplomatic contact speaking that language.
It's gotten deeply enough embedded that it will probably survive fading US (relative) power, but inserting theories about the nature of the language itself doesn't add any explanatory power over just looking at the history
> English is a lasting lingua franca because two world-dominating powers in a row - the United Kingdom and the United States - were English-speaking, producing a run of more than a century with an important trading partner and diplomatic contact speaking that language.
I'd say that it's mostly the US that counted. At least in Europe, before US dominance became clear (say before 1930), the French language was lingua franca and hardly anyone spoke English.
I'd say that it's mostly the US that counted. At least in Europe, before US dominance became clear (say before 1930), the French language was lingua franca and hardly anyone spoke English.
"At least in Europe" is the important part; British influence made it the lingua franca by 1900 or 1920 in South and Southeast Asia, eastern and southern Africa, most of the Mashriq, &c &c. (To this day local varieties of English in many of these places retain Britishisms.)
But yes, AFAIU English has only really become the Big One in the EU in the last 50 years or so.
But yes, AFAIU English has only really become the Big One in the EU in the last 50 years or so.
There was a shift to Anglo-Saxon culture already after World War 1 because of the outcome of the war. As an example you can see that in first names of people born in the 1920s
As an aside I always find it strange when people call the Anglophonic world “Anglo-Saxon”. The original Anglo-Saxons were a very different people with a very different language (mutually unintelligible) than modern Anglophones. Of course I understand that terms become overloaded and so on, but it seems interesting and pertinent considering we’re discussing language and identity.
True, bad choice of words considering the topic, not much left of Anglo-Saxon identity today.
When I grew up (Sweden) I remember that Anglo-Saxon as a term was much more commonly used in daily press and books than today.
Reading the Wikipedia entry it seems like the my use of the term Anglo-Saxon is more common in the non-Anglophonic world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxons#Legacy
When I grew up (Sweden) I remember that Anglo-Saxon as a term was much more commonly used in daily press and books than today.
Reading the Wikipedia entry it seems like the my use of the term Anglo-Saxon is more common in the non-Anglophonic world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxons#Legacy
Yeah, I had a French friend call me “Anglo-Saxon” and I was very confused. Most Americans aren’t even nominally familiar with the term and I only knew it in its historical sense.
I'll disagree:
Languages are tools for communication. In a world where everyone can easily talk to anyone else, that tool can't be 6000 separate languages.
Old people don't like it, but languages are always changing. Latin became ~20 different languages after Rome fell. If someone had enforced a "no language left behind" policy, French or Spanish would never have been spoken.
What's important is that we can talk to each other, not what vocabulary and grammar we happen to use.
[I wrote this in my second language]
Languages are tools for communication. In a world where everyone can easily talk to anyone else, that tool can't be 6000 separate languages.
Old people don't like it, but languages are always changing. Latin became ~20 different languages after Rome fell. If someone had enforced a "no language left behind" policy, French or Spanish would never have been spoken.
What's important is that we can talk to each other, not what vocabulary and grammar we happen to use.
[I wrote this in my second language]
Or another perspective: latin itself was part of larger group of languages spoken in the area, which wiped out a lot of local languages as the republic and later the empire expanded.
Umbrian, Oscan, Picene, Etruscan. Then Ligurian, Venedic, Liburnian, Illyiric, then Gaulish, Aquitanian.
The list goes on. They did live a trace in the romance languages that then spawned after latin dominance was over, but it's hard to quantify as in many (not all) of these languages shared a common ancestry with latin.
The main forces that drove the creation of romance languages out of latin however do not lie in this substrate, but to a combination of natural language drift and the admixture of the languages of the new rulers and immigrants (e.g. Germanic tribes like the Franks, Longobards, Vandals, Visigoths, ...).
In most cases their influence was not strong enough (or lasted enough) to fully displace the latin culture present throughout southern Europe.
But had latin been left to just naturally diverge into many dialects without foreign rulers, the character of the romance languages we have today would have been likely quite difference. They could have perhaps ended up being a more similar between each other, but the lack of a unified central power and cultural attractor means they would probably have diverged anyway.
Keep in mind that Latin was still used (written and spoken) as a culture language for a long time after the fall of the Roman empire. This relieved the local languages from the pressure of being mutually intelligible with people from other parts of Europe the elites, merchants, clergy etc had to interact with.
Umbrian, Oscan, Picene, Etruscan. Then Ligurian, Venedic, Liburnian, Illyiric, then Gaulish, Aquitanian.
The list goes on. They did live a trace in the romance languages that then spawned after latin dominance was over, but it's hard to quantify as in many (not all) of these languages shared a common ancestry with latin.
The main forces that drove the creation of romance languages out of latin however do not lie in this substrate, but to a combination of natural language drift and the admixture of the languages of the new rulers and immigrants (e.g. Germanic tribes like the Franks, Longobards, Vandals, Visigoths, ...).
In most cases their influence was not strong enough (or lasted enough) to fully displace the latin culture present throughout southern Europe.
But had latin been left to just naturally diverge into many dialects without foreign rulers, the character of the romance languages we have today would have been likely quite difference. They could have perhaps ended up being a more similar between each other, but the lack of a unified central power and cultural attractor means they would probably have diverged anyway.
Keep in mind that Latin was still used (written and spoken) as a culture language for a long time after the fall of the Roman empire. This relieved the local languages from the pressure of being mutually intelligible with people from other parts of Europe the elites, merchants, clergy etc had to interact with.
I think the best argument for keeping dying languages "alive" is to be able to study the way they make meaning. Some words and phrases are not directly translatable to certain languages because that is not how those speakers think about the world. This is fascinating and possibly useful. When languages die we lose these ideas and ways of thinking and the bounds of consciousness become ever so slightly smaller.
Linguistics is an important and fascinating science. I'm all for studying dead and dying languages in all ways possible.
What I'm strongly against is forcing kids to learn an impractical language because old people can't let go of the past and/or want to win political battles.
What I'm strongly against is forcing kids to learn an impractical language because old people can't let go of the past and/or want to win political battles.
I am not advocating for the last one but what if the kid actually liked learning that language? What if local TV had memorable cartoons and more nice things (books, songs,etc)?
This is the Catalan case. Grey-ish as life I guess.
This is the Catalan case. Grey-ish as life I guess.
"I'm all for studying dead and dying languages in all ways possible.
What I'm strongly against is forcing kids to learn an impractical language because old people can't let go of the past and/or want to win political battles."
You are basically "strongly against" new generations inheriting most of their parents' identity. That is not OK, however you spin it.
You are basically "strongly against" new generations inheriting most of their parents' identity. That is not OK, however you spin it.
I would make a distinction between “forced to learn” (i.e., top down by government or social pressure) and “learning naturally in the home”. The latter isn’t “forced” in any useful sense of the term (or else everyone is “forced” to learn their native language). I can be against one and not the other. Not sure if that’s what the OP was intending, however.
Kids will automatically speak the language their parents speak.
You've misunderstood.
You've misunderstood.
It’s interesting to think of the USA breaking up & having the plains riders of Kansaston speaking a different language than the hill people of Coloradona.
Overall, English has the same sprawl that Latin had. I suspect that frequent written communication has made drifts more subtle
Vulgar Latin is quite hard to study because people didn't write that down. They wrote a written language approximating Classical Latin, which was just the language of Rome around 100 BC, and probably also just the prestige dialect of the patricians at that time.
What people actually spoke in daily life was... different.
First there is the huge influence of Greek and the languages of the peoples the Romans conquered.
Then, one has to consider that the immigrants coming to Rome (forced or otherwise) had to learn Vulgar Latin as well, which always contributes tendencies to simplify.
Ultimately, people were probably fine talking to each other in a mix of languages, both each using a separate language, or by forming creoles, as long as they got to understand each other. Records and contracts then got written down in Latin.
What people actually spoke in daily life was... different.
First there is the huge influence of Greek and the languages of the peoples the Romans conquered.
Then, one has to consider that the immigrants coming to Rome (forced or otherwise) had to learn Vulgar Latin as well, which always contributes tendencies to simplify.
Ultimately, people were probably fine talking to each other in a mix of languages, both each using a separate language, or by forming creoles, as long as they got to understand each other. Records and contracts then got written down in Latin.
Minor correction: Romance languages are evolved out of Vulgar Latin, not Latin itself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulgar_Latin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulgar_Latin
I'll always argue that the more diverse our languages are and are allowed to be: the better. Some of the words my mum used were pretty descriptive, just like the Burns (Scottish geezer) poem.
My mum was a Devon girl, born in 1942 on a farm, near Dartmouth. She experienced things like German PoWs working on the land and then married a soldier, oh and she was a soldier herself - I still have her commissioning certificate on the wall. My parents were both Captains.
Most of what she had to say was just the usual stuff with a few changes (and an accent that was gorgeous to listen to but nearly unintelligible if she wanted it to be) but sometimes she would trot out a word that painted a vivid picture that English didn't cater for properly without some help or a borrow word.
You only have to go back one or two generations when things get sticky.
"What's important is that we can talk to each other" - I totally agree but I'd like to see some richness in the discussion. "lol stuff" and "awks" etc are not very usefull.
My mum was a Devon girl, born in 1942 on a farm, near Dartmouth. She experienced things like German PoWs working on the land and then married a soldier, oh and she was a soldier herself - I still have her commissioning certificate on the wall. My parents were both Captains.
Most of what she had to say was just the usual stuff with a few changes (and an accent that was gorgeous to listen to but nearly unintelligible if she wanted it to be) but sometimes she would trot out a word that painted a vivid picture that English didn't cater for properly without some help or a borrow word.
You only have to go back one or two generations when things get sticky.
"What's important is that we can talk to each other" - I totally agree but I'd like to see some richness in the discussion. "lol stuff" and "awks" etc are not very usefull.
The Franks were not French, and the original Lingua Franca, as another commenter noted, was called Sabir, a pidgin language of the eastern Mediterranean from the 11th through the 19th centuries. [1]
Furthermore, English is our current lingua franca not because of its grammar or linguistic quirks, but rather because it has been the primary language of two consecutive world superpowers starting in the 18th century.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_Lingua_Franca
Furthermore, English is our current lingua franca not because of its grammar or linguistic quirks, but rather because it has been the primary language of two consecutive world superpowers starting in the 18th century.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_Lingua_Franca
Thank you, that was bothering me. The Franks spoke Frankish which is a Germanic language. Their vassals spoke a dialect of Vulgar Latin which would eventually become French.
The Franks were French, after the 7th c. or so. By the time of Fredegarius, their Germanic origins were all but forgotten. For nearly the entirety of the Middle Ages, « Frank » meant a Catholic of Gaul who's cultural language is Latin or a Catholic, depending on the context.
Yes, for a time, there was some overlap, but regardless, the terms "Frank" and "French" are not synonymous.
The two names indicate different cultures, languages, and ethnic origins. The OP's comment is misleading.
The two names indicate different cultures, languages, and ethnic origins. The OP's comment is misleading.
That's a dichotomy that's fairly recent in historiography, and doesn't at all fit with historical usage. If memory serves right and came about in the wake of the rise of the Bourgeoisie and the French Revolution, with the need to conveniently give the nobility a foreign tint.
Moreover the Germanicity of the so-called barbarian tribes, including Pre-Merovingian Franks, has to be reassessed now with what we know about identity politics in the Late Roman and Post-Roman World. People might have played at being barbarians a lot more than actually being it, in a very comparable way you see Americans pretending to be this or that.
Moreover the Germanicity of the so-called barbarian tribes, including Pre-Merovingian Franks, has to be reassessed now with what we know about identity politics in the Late Roman and Post-Roman World. People might have played at being barbarians a lot more than actually being it, in a very comparable way you see Americans pretending to be this or that.
> Word order can be fluid: Nominally: subject object verb but not enforced and can be broken for effect
this sentence wrote fact from, think then, English truly different language studied experience exist no, my guess correct?
word order English grammar among absolute nightmare is!
(In plain English: Considering what you wrote, I guess that you never studied a language truly different from English, am I right?)
this sentence wrote fact from, think then, English truly different language studied experience exist no, my guess correct?
word order English grammar among absolute nightmare is!
(In plain English: Considering what you wrote, I guess that you never studied a language truly different from English, am I right?)
I’m curious to know: which language is that a literal translation from? (Given the V-final word order, postpositions and use of ‘exist’, I’d guess either Korean or Japanese.)
I don't know about the grandparent comment but many languages that have cases markers have a much more fluid word order, since the function of each word is already tagged by the case ending. The word order is then used to carry emphasis. Wikipedia has examples where the same sentence is written in half a dozen different word orders.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_order#Hungarian
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_order#Hungarian
Loosely based on Korean, but I "fixed" some words so that they match an equivalent English usage, because otherwise it's cheating. :)
Ah, thanks for clarifying! A further question: which words did you ‘fix’?
What I wrote can be "translated" word-by-word to an acceptable Korean passage, but if I wrote it natively, the end result would be something like:
이런("like this") 문장을(sentence) 쓰신(wrote) 걸로(thing + with/from) 볼(see) 때(time/when), 영어와(English + with) 정말로(truly) 다른(different) 언어를(language) 공부해(study) 보신("see" or try) 적이(time) 없는(not exist) 것(thing) 같네요(similar), 맞습니까(correct + question marker)?
Of course it's more or less gibberish, unless you already know, e.g., verb "see" also means "try" and "similar" means "that's my guess".
이런("like this") 문장을(sentence) 쓰신(wrote) 걸로(thing + with/from) 볼(see) 때(time/when), 영어와(English + with) 정말로(truly) 다른(different) 언어를(language) 공부해(study) 보신("see" or try) 적이(time) 없는(not exist) 것(thing) 같네요(similar), 맞습니까(correct + question marker)?
Of course it's more or less gibberish, unless you already know, e.g., verb "see" also means "try" and "similar" means "that's my guess".
OK, this really did seem like complete gibberish at first, to a far greater extent than I was expecting. But after staring at it for a while (and reading through a Korean reference grammar I had lying around), I think I can mostly see how this corresponds to the English translation:
• 이런 문장을 쓰신 ‘like.this sentence wrote’ = ‘[you] wrote a sentence like that’, remembering that Korean is generally head-final. IIRC most East Asian languages allow elision of verbal arguments; I’m assuming this clause omits ‘you’.
• 이런 문장을 쓰신 걸로 볼 때 ‘like.this sentence wrote thing-WITH see when’ = ‘since [I] saw [you] wrote a sentence like that…’. I’m assuming here that 이런 문장을 쓰신 is acting as some sort of subordinate clause, and that 때 ‘when’ is not purely temporal but also has some sort of resultative meaning, as with English ‘since’. But I’m not at all sure what role 걸로 ‘thing-WITH’ is playing in this clause.
• 영어와 정말로 다른 언어를 ‘English-WITH truly different language’ = ‘a language truly different from English’. This puzzled me for a while until I remembered that relative clauses in Korean go before the noun. English requires a different adposition here than Korean does, but that’s very normal.
• 영어와 정말로 다른 언어를 공부해 보신 ‘English-WITH truly different language study try’ = ‘try to study a language truly different from English’.
• 영어와 정말로 다른 언어를 공부해 보신 적이 없는 ‘English-WITH truly different language study try time not.exist’ = ‘the time doesn’t exist when [you] tried to study a language truly different from English’.
• 것 같네요, 맞습니까 ‘thing similar, correct-Q’ = ‘[this] thing is my guess, correct?’
Thus, a literal translation would be: ‘Since [I] saw [you] wrote a sentence like that, the time doesn’t exist when [you] tried to study a language truly different from English, [this] thing is my guess, correct?’
Is my analysis at all correct? If so, the only thing I’m still confused about is the purpose of 걸로 in the first clause, and I’d be interested to know if there’s an explanation for that.
(Incidentally, I find it really amazing how many ways different languages have to say the same thing, and how a perfectly grammatical sentence in one language can become complete gibberish in another.)
• 이런 문장을 쓰신 ‘like.this sentence wrote’ = ‘[you] wrote a sentence like that’, remembering that Korean is generally head-final. IIRC most East Asian languages allow elision of verbal arguments; I’m assuming this clause omits ‘you’.
• 이런 문장을 쓰신 걸로 볼 때 ‘like.this sentence wrote thing-WITH see when’ = ‘since [I] saw [you] wrote a sentence like that…’. I’m assuming here that 이런 문장을 쓰신 is acting as some sort of subordinate clause, and that 때 ‘when’ is not purely temporal but also has some sort of resultative meaning, as with English ‘since’. But I’m not at all sure what role 걸로 ‘thing-WITH’ is playing in this clause.
• 영어와 정말로 다른 언어를 ‘English-WITH truly different language’ = ‘a language truly different from English’. This puzzled me for a while until I remembered that relative clauses in Korean go before the noun. English requires a different adposition here than Korean does, but that’s very normal.
• 영어와 정말로 다른 언어를 공부해 보신 ‘English-WITH truly different language study try’ = ‘try to study a language truly different from English’.
• 영어와 정말로 다른 언어를 공부해 보신 적이 없는 ‘English-WITH truly different language study try time not.exist’ = ‘the time doesn’t exist when [you] tried to study a language truly different from English’.
• 것 같네요, 맞습니까 ‘thing similar, correct-Q’ = ‘[this] thing is my guess, correct?’
Thus, a literal translation would be: ‘Since [I] saw [you] wrote a sentence like that, the time doesn’t exist when [you] tried to study a language truly different from English, [this] thing is my guess, correct?’
Is my analysis at all correct? If so, the only thing I’m still confused about is the purpose of 걸로 in the first clause, and I’d be interested to know if there’s an explanation for that.
(Incidentally, I find it really amazing how many ways different languages have to say the same thing, and how a perfectly grammatical sentence in one language can become complete gibberish in another.)
lol never thought I'd tutor Korean in HN, but why not... :)
> But I’m not at all sure what role 걸로 ‘thing-WITH’ is playing in this clause.
It's a bit cheating, because 것 "thing" is kinda special and combines with the preceding verbal clause to create a noun clause. A better translation (if I were to teach Korean) would be "that". So, "이런 문장을 쓰신 것" is "that [you] wrote a sentence like this".
-으로 보다 (literally, "see with X") is an idiom meaning "considering X" - so "... 걸로(=것+으로) 볼 때" means literally "when [I] see that ...", or more naturally, "considering ..."
Also, the auxiliary verb 보다 (try - or "see" when used as a main verb) is a bit harder to explain but less forceful than English "try", which sometimes implies a lot of effort. Korean 보다 is similar to usages like "Please try this cookie!" or "Sure, I'll try walking next time." In our current sentence it's more like "[you] didn't have any experience studying ..."
Final "것 같네요" uses the same "thing/that" which takes the preceding clause, and "-것 같다" is an idiom meaning "I guess ...", i.e., "I guess that you haven't studied ..."
So, I guess you got most of the grammar right from very few clues. :)
> But I’m not at all sure what role 걸로 ‘thing-WITH’ is playing in this clause.
It's a bit cheating, because 것 "thing" is kinda special and combines with the preceding verbal clause to create a noun clause. A better translation (if I were to teach Korean) would be "that". So, "이런 문장을 쓰신 것" is "that [you] wrote a sentence like this".
-으로 보다 (literally, "see with X") is an idiom meaning "considering X" - so "... 걸로(=것+으로) 볼 때" means literally "when [I] see that ...", or more naturally, "considering ..."
Also, the auxiliary verb 보다 (try - or "see" when used as a main verb) is a bit harder to explain but less forceful than English "try", which sometimes implies a lot of effort. Korean 보다 is similar to usages like "Please try this cookie!" or "Sure, I'll try walking next time." In our current sentence it's more like "[you] didn't have any experience studying ..."
Final "것 같네요" uses the same "thing/that" which takes the preceding clause, and "-것 같다" is an idiom meaning "I guess ...", i.e., "I guess that you haven't studied ..."
So, I guess you got most of the grammar right from very few clues. :)
> lol never thought I'd tutor Korean in HN, but why not... :)
And I never thought I’d learn Korean on HN either! But I appreciate anyone willing to talk to me about a topic of interest.
> It's a bit cheating, because 것 "thing" is kinda special and combines with the preceding verbal clause to create a noun clause. A better translation (if I were to teach Korean) would be "that". So, "이런 문장을 쓰신 것" is "that [you] wrote a sentence like this".
Huh, this is interesting! I haven’t come across this particular example of grammaticalisation before, but the World Lexicon of Grammaticalisation informs me that the same development has also occurred in Japanese (and apparently Ik as well), which makes me suspect areal factors.
> So, I guess you got most of the grammar right from very few clues. :)
Good to know! Though I must admit to ‘cheating’ as well… I’m very interested in linguistics, and Korean word order has many similarities to some other languages I’ve looked at. Also, I had to find a Korean reference grammar online before I could understand some parts :) But I’m still a bit surprised I was as successful as I was.
And I never thought I’d learn Korean on HN either! But I appreciate anyone willing to talk to me about a topic of interest.
> It's a bit cheating, because 것 "thing" is kinda special and combines with the preceding verbal clause to create a noun clause. A better translation (if I were to teach Korean) would be "that". So, "이런 문장을 쓰신 것" is "that [you] wrote a sentence like this".
Huh, this is interesting! I haven’t come across this particular example of grammaticalisation before, but the World Lexicon of Grammaticalisation informs me that the same development has also occurred in Japanese (and apparently Ik as well), which makes me suspect areal factors.
> So, I guess you got most of the grammar right from very few clues. :)
Good to know! Though I must admit to ‘cheating’ as well… I’m very interested in linguistics, and Korean word order has many similarities to some other languages I’ve looked at. Also, I had to find a Korean reference grammar online before I could understand some parts :) But I’m still a bit surprised I was as successful as I was.
Why is it vital? What does it add to life, the universe, or anything?
Almost no-one in the world has any significance. Of the 7 billion people alive today, 6,990,000 of them will be utterly forgotten in 200 years time. It will be as if they didn't exist.
Why is one extremely niche language so important compared to those 6,990,000 actual, real life, people? It happened, it had no impact on human history, it was forgotten.
End of story, stop making a big deal about it. History is for the meaningful, not the things that wouldn't even make the minor footnotes.
Almost no-one in the world has any significance. Of the 7 billion people alive today, 6,990,000 of them will be utterly forgotten in 200 years time. It will be as if they didn't exist.
Why is one extremely niche language so important compared to those 6,990,000 actual, real life, people? It happened, it had no impact on human history, it was forgotten.
End of story, stop making a big deal about it. History is for the meaningful, not the things that wouldn't even make the minor footnotes.
My impression of this comment is that it is overgeneralizing, reductive, and pretty nihilist. That being said I do agree that minority languages, like our lives, are ultimately, in the fate of the great cosmic void, meaningless. But no, minority languages aren’t completely useless. Every language is a window into the structure of human language, which is something we are still trying to understand. Some people might tell you that sort of linguistics is also useless, but that’s a different conversation.
I would compare it to the sad loss of knowledge that results from another animal species going extinct. There are secrets in its genome that we will now never discover.
I would compare it to the sad loss of knowledge that results from another animal species going extinct. There are secrets in its genome that we will now never discover.
As someone who speaks a language that may be going the way of the dodo in a couple of years, watching his family back home decide not to pass it onto the next generation because it has no economic value and takes away from the rat race of school and jobs, and knowing there's no objection I can make because having grown up in a foreign country means I can't even speak it correctly, I'm afraid I have to agree with that bleak assessment. Waxing poetic about how minority languages should be preserved seems hollow when the minorities themselves don't see the point. Why do they have to shoulder the burden of carrying an outdated relic just so some English speaking aristocrats can feel blessed about how diverse their world is?
There are days when it feels like fighting a losing war. Digging up a few old movies to hear the sounds of a dying language and wondering if your kids will care enough to keep this game of broken telephone going into its final rounds, and why you have the right to impose that burden on them in the first place. Maybe it's better if they never know what they lost. I recently found out that my parents could have taught me two other languages that are also dying out, but they decided not to because who in the world would I use them with? Then I shrugged and went on with my day.
There are days when it feels like fighting a losing war. Digging up a few old movies to hear the sounds of a dying language and wondering if your kids will care enough to keep this game of broken telephone going into its final rounds, and why you have the right to impose that burden on them in the first place. Maybe it's better if they never know what they lost. I recently found out that my parents could have taught me two other languages that are also dying out, but they decided not to because who in the world would I use them with? Then I shrugged and went on with my day.
The HOA of my neighborhood allows 4 species of trees. They are very good trees, native to the area, and grow up to be very beautiful. At first glance while driving down the street, the neighborhood looks nice and practical.
I was looking at aerial shots of my home the other day for solar installation options, and when I looked at the broader picture, it was a bit soulless. Everything was optimized to be inoffensive and suit the lowest common denominator of taste. The yards and trees and landscaping of each house all are from the same list of plants everyone is familiar with, which are optimized for practicality (hard to kill, and look somewhat okay.)
My anecdote doesn’t fit this situation as an analogy but it shares a common thread in that limiting diversity reduces the humanity of the system, and makes the world more boring as a result. Not everything has to be min maxed and optimized. Some things that humanity has invented are worth dragging with us just so that the world does not slide further into hyper-optimization.
I was looking at aerial shots of my home the other day for solar installation options, and when I looked at the broader picture, it was a bit soulless. Everything was optimized to be inoffensive and suit the lowest common denominator of taste. The yards and trees and landscaping of each house all are from the same list of plants everyone is familiar with, which are optimized for practicality (hard to kill, and look somewhat okay.)
My anecdote doesn’t fit this situation as an analogy but it shares a common thread in that limiting diversity reduces the humanity of the system, and makes the world more boring as a result. Not everything has to be min maxed and optimized. Some things that humanity has invented are worth dragging with us just so that the world does not slide further into hyper-optimization.
I think it’s a very effective analogy.
I agree, but I don't think it's exclusively about optimization. I look at language more or less as a communication protocol. The data flowing over the protocol takes the shape of thoughts and ideas. The diversity of these is not being limited. In fact, the diversity of your possible experiences is expanded as you can communicate meaningfully with people totally unlike you. In English I can communicate with native speakers who are subsistence farmers in Africa, programmers in Europe or rocket scientists in America. This is great!
If we all agree about the way we move our mouth parts it'll only serve to increase the diversity of ideas and people we can be exposed to. It's akin to various languages all adopting QWERTY, or the Latin alphabet before it. Nothing is lost due to lack of diversity in protocol.
If we all agree about the way we move our mouth parts it'll only serve to increase the diversity of ideas and people we can be exposed to. It's akin to various languages all adopting QWERTY, or the Latin alphabet before it. Nothing is lost due to lack of diversity in protocol.
Certain concepts are more difficult or less difficult to express depending on the language. I think somewhat differently in Korean than English. Translating existing text can be very difficult and nuanced because of how concepts can be expressed differently.
This also ignores the issue that the majority of the world would have to abandon their language, no matter what language is picked. And how do you pick a language? It’s entirely arbitrary. You can argue for Chinese just as well as you can for English.
This also ignores the issue that the majority of the world would have to abandon their language, no matter what language is picked. And how do you pick a language? It’s entirely arbitrary. You can argue for Chinese just as well as you can for English.
There seems to be some confusion here. I don't think anyone is proposing that we shouldn't be able to communicate meaningfully with people totally unlike us. Knowing an additional language doesn't have that effect, believe it or not.
The view of language as "the way we move our mouthparts", a protocol for transparently transfering ideas is simplistic. Even if you ignore or discount linguistic relativity, languages have political and aesthetic functions.
Take a rhyme, for example. It can't easily be translated accurately because the language used is itself part of what it expresses. There's no simple onion model with distinct, unleaky layers for natural languages where words are a protocol and thoughts are the content; that's a reductionist misconception on your part.
The view of language as "the way we move our mouthparts", a protocol for transparently transfering ideas is simplistic. Even if you ignore or discount linguistic relativity, languages have political and aesthetic functions.
Take a rhyme, for example. It can't easily be translated accurately because the language used is itself part of what it expresses. There's no simple onion model with distinct, unleaky layers for natural languages where words are a protocol and thoughts are the content; that's a reductionist misconception on your part.
> Knowing an additional language doesn't have that effect, believe it or not.
This seems absurd. Being able to have a conversation is orders of magnitude more effective than the mimicry and hand signals that must be resorted to when you truly don't speak the same language.
> languages have political and aesthetic functions.
Right, but politics and aesthetics are also ideas that are transferred via language. It's really just a protocol. What was lost when most European languages adopted the Latin alphabet? Or when the Chinese empire standardized the writing system?
> Take a rhyme, for example
What additional information is transferred in a rhyme? What meaning?
> a reductionist misconception on your part.
What can you do with language that does not constitute the expression of a thought or an idea?
This seems absurd. Being able to have a conversation is orders of magnitude more effective than the mimicry and hand signals that must be resorted to when you truly don't speak the same language.
> languages have political and aesthetic functions.
Right, but politics and aesthetics are also ideas that are transferred via language. It's really just a protocol. What was lost when most European languages adopted the Latin alphabet? Or when the Chinese empire standardized the writing system?
> Take a rhyme, for example
What additional information is transferred in a rhyme? What meaning?
> a reductionist misconception on your part.
What can you do with language that does not constitute the expression of a thought or an idea?
> This seems absurd. Being able to have a conversation is orders of magnitude more effective than the mimicry and hand signals that must be resorted to when you truly don't speak the same language.
How does my point contradict that? I am saying that knowing an additional language takes nothing away. I speak English to you because I understand that we both understand it. That hasn't made me forget my mother tongue. That is to say, knowing (and using) an additional language didn't have the effect on me that I couldn't communicate with people that don't understand my mother tongue.
> Right, but politics and aesthetics are also ideas that are transferred via language.
Point is that language itself can constitute a political message or an aesthetic expression.
> What was lost when most European languages adopted the Latin alphabet? Or when the Chinese empire standardized the writing system?
Writing is an expression in itself, hence things like calligraphy and type setting. We perceive it and meaning is derived from our impressions of it. What was lost, insofar that writing systems were actually lost, was probably many lifetimes' worth of calligraphic tradition, especially in China where calligraphy is considered a very important art form, though I'm sure many of these traditions are still maintained by enthusiasts.
> What additional information is transferred in a rhyme? What meaning?
I don't see how this question can come from anything but a position of total philistinism, so I probably misunderstand it. Rhyme and rhythm in general is rhetorically and aesthetically useful so as to make an expression impactful, evocative and memorable, or simply funny and delightful. You may have heard of music and poetry. What happens when you take away the meter and rhythm from song or poetry? Information is definitely lost. If I hear a limerick, and you here an prosaic retelling of the exact same circumstances, I know something which you don't. Whether this information is useful or actionable to you is another question.
Have you heard of puns? They get lost in translation. Perhaps to Siri and Alexa it didn't matter in the first place, but it did to me and (hopefully) you.
> What can you do with language that does not constitute the expression of a thought or an idea?
You misread me. My objection isn't with the notion that language is a tool to express thoughts and ideas, but with the notion that it's a transparent protocol for doing so rather than something that is inherently part of the expression. The thoughts and ideas can be—and frequently are—colored by the language itself. Because there is music and poetry in the English language that is basically inexpressible in other languages without great artistic license, if we forget English, that work is lost.
How does my point contradict that? I am saying that knowing an additional language takes nothing away. I speak English to you because I understand that we both understand it. That hasn't made me forget my mother tongue. That is to say, knowing (and using) an additional language didn't have the effect on me that I couldn't communicate with people that don't understand my mother tongue.
> Right, but politics and aesthetics are also ideas that are transferred via language.
Point is that language itself can constitute a political message or an aesthetic expression.
> What was lost when most European languages adopted the Latin alphabet? Or when the Chinese empire standardized the writing system?
Writing is an expression in itself, hence things like calligraphy and type setting. We perceive it and meaning is derived from our impressions of it. What was lost, insofar that writing systems were actually lost, was probably many lifetimes' worth of calligraphic tradition, especially in China where calligraphy is considered a very important art form, though I'm sure many of these traditions are still maintained by enthusiasts.
> What additional information is transferred in a rhyme? What meaning?
I don't see how this question can come from anything but a position of total philistinism, so I probably misunderstand it. Rhyme and rhythm in general is rhetorically and aesthetically useful so as to make an expression impactful, evocative and memorable, or simply funny and delightful. You may have heard of music and poetry. What happens when you take away the meter and rhythm from song or poetry? Information is definitely lost. If I hear a limerick, and you here an prosaic retelling of the exact same circumstances, I know something which you don't. Whether this information is useful or actionable to you is another question.
Have you heard of puns? They get lost in translation. Perhaps to Siri and Alexa it didn't matter in the first place, but it did to me and (hopefully) you.
> What can you do with language that does not constitute the expression of a thought or an idea?
You misread me. My objection isn't with the notion that language is a tool to express thoughts and ideas, but with the notion that it's a transparent protocol for doing so rather than something that is inherently part of the expression. The thoughts and ideas can be—and frequently are—colored by the language itself. Because there is music and poetry in the English language that is basically inexpressible in other languages without great artistic license, if we forget English, that work is lost.
> The HOA of my neighborhood allows 4 species of trees.
WTF? What's the attraction of such a place. Cheap rent? No coloured people? Why would one choose to live in such an artificial place?
WTF? What's the attraction of such a place. Cheap rent? No coloured people? Why would one choose to live in such an artificial place?
Total stranger comments about the HOA's silly rules.
You: He's a racist.
Not everything is a race issue. If you think it is, get new friends and read more.
You: He's a racist.
Not everything is a race issue. If you think it is, get new friends and read more.
English, do you speak it?
I never said anything whatsoever about them. I asked a question.
I never said anything whatsoever about them. I asked a question.
If you want to live in a newish build with decent schools, you have slim pickings in my area. Planning on flipping my house and moving to a rural area once the kids don’t need public schooling anymore. Probably once this solar loan is paid off.
Going by the what is implied, it stands to reason that everything is meaningless except for those that represents or aids in a significant improvement in our lives or change our fate as a human race.
This is neglecting how these developments came to be. We don't know when Einstein was born that he will go on to discover a world changing equation and theorem. If we don't give diversity such as these minority languages to thrive, we may simply be creating an environment that is so sterile and constant that any new innovations have little chance of happening from a lack of stimulation.
This is neglecting how these developments came to be. We don't know when Einstein was born that he will go on to discover a world changing equation and theorem. If we don't give diversity such as these minority languages to thrive, we may simply be creating an environment that is so sterile and constant that any new innovations have little chance of happening from a lack of stimulation.
> It will be as if they didn't exist.
That is not how the world works. The fact that most people is not in the history books does not mean that they were not important.
> History is for the meaningful, not the things that wouldn't even make the minor footnotes.
But, minor footnotes have changed the history of empires. A disease that moves to one person to another, and one traveler, can spread it around changing the live of hundreds, millions a few generations later, all humanity after a few centuries.
That we do not have the capacity to understand the complexity of all human interactions does not mean that it is not important. History is presented as the act of a few chosen individuals because history is told to promote national feelings, and because humans relate easily to histories of families and power.
That is not how the world works. The fact that most people is not in the history books does not mean that they were not important.
> History is for the meaningful, not the things that wouldn't even make the minor footnotes.
But, minor footnotes have changed the history of empires. A disease that moves to one person to another, and one traveler, can spread it around changing the live of hundreds, millions a few generations later, all humanity after a few centuries.
That we do not have the capacity to understand the complexity of all human interactions does not mean that it is not important. History is presented as the act of a few chosen individuals because history is told to promote national feelings, and because humans relate easily to histories of families and power.
History is usually the process of deciding what's meaningful, to whom, and for what purpose.
> History is for the meaningful
I respectfully take exception to this, only because I realized for far too long that I felt under the thumb of this idea. If I do a thing, will it have meaning to enough people?
I mean, this is fine in the long-term when historians record history, but I could care less what the rest of the 7 billion people might think when I decide. for example, if I want to take up a course in the language of my grandparents, then neither the opinions of my grandparents, parents or whether it is useful should stop me. It might not be economically feasible (except in the country of its origin) but talking only about what is "meaningful" can pretty much also exclude most creative human effort, even if that effort only impresses upon a few individuals.
This is not an argument for "diversity", which is a non-goal for most people. Instead, this is simply not being locked down to the whims of a zeitgeist every time you ask whether something you find interesting, which can have some educational value, is actually a meaningful thing to pursue.
I respectfully take exception to this, only because I realized for far too long that I felt under the thumb of this idea. If I do a thing, will it have meaning to enough people?
I mean, this is fine in the long-term when historians record history, but I could care less what the rest of the 7 billion people might think when I decide. for example, if I want to take up a course in the language of my grandparents, then neither the opinions of my grandparents, parents or whether it is useful should stop me. It might not be economically feasible (except in the country of its origin) but talking only about what is "meaningful" can pretty much also exclude most creative human effort, even if that effort only impresses upon a few individuals.
This is not an argument for "diversity", which is a non-goal for most people. Instead, this is simply not being locked down to the whims of a zeitgeist every time you ask whether something you find interesting, which can have some educational value, is actually a meaningful thing to pursue.
"History is for the meaningful, not the things that wouldn't even make the minor footnotes. "
History is the sum of everything that happened. Not just the few "glory" moments of some dudes, historians liked. (And it seems they mainly liked those with the highest kill count.)
"Almost no-one in the world has any significance"
Everything and everyone has significance to their own time and place. The world would not be complete and working like it is, if one thing is missing.
Now and as to why Elfdalian is specifically important? It is the closest alive language to old norse. Many people are trying to reconnect with their culture roots, after centuries of monocultural imperialism trying to cut them.
So yes, the world would move one without Elfdalian, but personally I like a colorful, vibrant culture. Where not every place looks and sounds the same - only then I would consider it all insignificant, as all is the same shit anyway. But it is not and I support efforts to fight against that and for rich local cultures.
History is the sum of everything that happened. Not just the few "glory" moments of some dudes, historians liked. (And it seems they mainly liked those with the highest kill count.)
"Almost no-one in the world has any significance"
Everything and everyone has significance to their own time and place. The world would not be complete and working like it is, if one thing is missing.
Now and as to why Elfdalian is specifically important? It is the closest alive language to old norse. Many people are trying to reconnect with their culture roots, after centuries of monocultural imperialism trying to cut them.
So yes, the world would move one without Elfdalian, but personally I like a colorful, vibrant culture. Where not every place looks and sounds the same - only then I would consider it all insignificant, as all is the same shit anyway. But it is not and I support efforts to fight against that and for rich local cultures.
> Nominally: subject object verb but not enforced and can be broken for effect
Nominal English word order is SVO, not SOV. :-)
Nominal English word order is SVO, not SOV. :-)
> English is often called French (lingua Franca - the language of the Franks). It is routinely used as an intermediary language because it is very simply structured and can take quite a lot of abuse and still remain intelligible.
You didn't even for a second stop to think why English language uses a Latin term to call a language the language of the Francs?
Latin was the original "lingua franca" of Europe. For historical and traditional reasons.
Then France was the largest, baddest, most powerful country, and everyone wanted to be like France.
But in the past several centuries Britain and then the US were the biggest, baddest, most economically powerful countries, and it's beneficial to know and speak English.
People didn't use Latin or French because they were simpler. People don't use English because it's "simpler than French". If that was the case, everyone would've switched to Turkish, for example, as it's very, very, very simple compared to any European language.
Chinese was the lingua franca of Asia for centuries before English even became a thing in the 19th century. Because it was the biggest baddest empire around. Don't get too surprised if Chinese becomes the lingua franca of the world 20 years from now.
You didn't even for a second stop to think why English language uses a Latin term to call a language the language of the Francs?
Latin was the original "lingua franca" of Europe. For historical and traditional reasons.
Then France was the largest, baddest, most powerful country, and everyone wanted to be like France.
But in the past several centuries Britain and then the US were the biggest, baddest, most economically powerful countries, and it's beneficial to know and speak English.
People didn't use Latin or French because they were simpler. People don't use English because it's "simpler than French". If that was the case, everyone would've switched to Turkish, for example, as it's very, very, very simple compared to any European language.
Chinese was the lingua franca of Asia for centuries before English even became a thing in the 19th century. Because it was the biggest baddest empire around. Don't get too surprised if Chinese becomes the lingua franca of the world 20 years from now.
The original lingua franca was not French, but Sabir, a Romance-based pidgin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_Lingua_Franca
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_Lingua_Franca
I had to google half the words in that poem.
"sleekit" -> slick or sleek
"laith" -> loath
still haven't figured out what "na", "awa" and "sae" are
"sleekit" -> slick or sleek
"laith" -> loath
still haven't figured out what "na", "awa" and "sae" are
awa = away, sae = so
He’s saying the mouse needn’t leave so quickly.
He’s saying the mouse needn’t leave so quickly.
Na should be "not."
Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous beastie, O, what a panic’s in thy breastie! Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
"Translation"/update to more standard current English:
Small, sleek, cowering timorous beast
Oh, what a panic in your chest.
You need not start away so quickly.
Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous beastie, O, what a panic’s in thy breastie! Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
"Translation"/update to more standard current English:
Small, sleek, cowering timorous beast
Oh, what a panic in your chest.
You need not start away so quickly.
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Googling for short foreign words that look like misspelled English words is gonna be tough. I recommend something like the Online Scots Dictionary: https://www.scots-online.org/dictionary/scots_english.php
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I am not competent to rate the linguistic quality of this translation, but it certainly is amusing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQXpznIhT08 .
Across the world, the trend seems to be for people to speak a local language, and a lingua franca. The former carries their cultural heritage and identity, the latter opens economic opportunities.
For a lot of people, investing in their local language is a luxury, if it comes at the expense of deeper engagement with the lingua franca. We see this decision being made across the world, as the population urbanizes and leaves their local culture behind. Few can afford not to.
In this case, it sounds like Elfdalian is up against both Swedish and English.
If people are capable of and willing to learn three or more languages to native fluency, then that is of course their prerogative. But at some point, I believe it becomes unethical to promote investment in a hyper-local language if the effect is to detract from the economic opportunities of lingua francas.
For a lot of people, investing in their local language is a luxury, if it comes at the expense of deeper engagement with the lingua franca. We see this decision being made across the world, as the population urbanizes and leaves their local culture behind. Few can afford not to.
In this case, it sounds like Elfdalian is up against both Swedish and English.
If people are capable of and willing to learn three or more languages to native fluency, then that is of course their prerogative. But at some point, I believe it becomes unethical to promote investment in a hyper-local language if the effect is to detract from the economic opportunities of lingua francas.
That isn't what "lingua franca" means, which is a poor start to your "it's better to only know one language" argument.
“a language that is adopted as a common language between speakers whose native languages are different.”
What do you think it means?
What do you think it means?
It means a secondary language, not a primary one.
Merriam-Webster disagrees: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lingua%20franca
Wikipedia explains the "auxiliary language" meaning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingua_franca
I think that in some highly developed societies, and in particular in Scandinavia, this trend is actually good for endangered languages. The lingua franca of Scandinavia is English. The region, which is comparable in population size to a large German federal state or a medium-ish US state, has four different majority languages (Danish, Swedish, Bokmål, Nynorsk, all mutually intelligible, which increases the acceptance of imperfect language) and dialects play an important role for local identity. Of course, as a Scandinavian one has to learn one of these four languages to some extent, but the growing importance of English -- as a consequence of almost universal English proficiency and an influx of skilled foreigners not only to the capitals but also to the periphery -- narrows the gap between these languages and minority languages like Elfdalian and Sámi. As a consequence, the appreciation of the general population of language as a form of local identity also grows.
Finnish adds an interesting twist to this. That language is completely different from the ones you listed, so casual mutual intelligibility flies right out the window. My guess is that Finnish and other Scandinavians mostly use English or Swedish to talk to each other.
> The region, which is comparable in population size to a large German federal state or a medium-ish US state
Scandinavia (counting only Sweden, Norway and Denmark) has a population of about 21 million, so it's actually bigger than any German state, and about the same size as Florida (3rd largest US state). If you count Finland too, it's about the size of Texas, so California is the only US state that's meaningfully bigger.
Scandinavia (counting only Sweden, Norway and Denmark) has a population of about 21 million, so it's actually bigger than any German state, and about the same size as Florida (3rd largest US state). If you count Finland too, it's about the size of Texas, so California is the only US state that's meaningfully bigger.
Summarizing an entire language, and thus everyone ever spoke it, with economics is a good metaphor of the current shallow consumer culture we live in. If it is not on Netflix it doesn’t exist.
Interesting that the language has preserved proto-Germanic eth (ð) and other voiced fricatives. Similar to English (or Icelandic). And also like English has kept the 'w' (spoken like English instead of the 'v' sound like in other Germanic languages).
Yes. Another invaluable data set for comparative and historical linguistics.
Yep you have to wonder how many other odd dialects and small population languages have been lost in that last couple centuries that would blow holes in our theories of classification.
It's easy to not realize that many European langauges used to be much more diverse. Every area or even town in "Italy" spoke slightly different language. In some cases there really were language gradients, the further away two towns were, the less intelligible their language. Languages were a continuum.
The national project required standardizing one language calling it "Italian". It's part of making one "Italian" people too. There are good reasons that decisions of where language boundaries are -- and what language is spoken how -- become so "political".
The national project required standardizing one language calling it "Italian". It's part of making one "Italian" people too. There are good reasons that decisions of where language boundaries are -- and what language is spoken how -- become so "political".
Doesn't Italy still have a region that only speaks Austrian German?
Yes, South Tyrol.
Some of the comments against preserving languages sadden me, but I have to accept it--that there are big matters of meaning that we are going to disagree on.
I stand firmly with preserving language, and with that culture. I hope to do my part by learning more of my family's culture, and learning the language and culture of someone else (maybe more). From some of the other comments I get a sense of a line of thought where the primary goal is the well-being of the lot of individuals in the world. And its hard to argue against that. Yet, I want there to exist a diversity of peoples, and those things that come with it.
I stand firmly with preserving language, and with that culture. I hope to do my part by learning more of my family's culture, and learning the language and culture of someone else (maybe more). From some of the other comments I get a sense of a line of thought where the primary goal is the well-being of the lot of individuals in the world. And its hard to argue against that. Yet, I want there to exist a diversity of peoples, and those things that come with it.
Those comments probably come from people shouting about "diversity" all day long but who are uneasy at the slightest actual bit of diversity like language or opinion. In my country it's the republic (so the left) that planned and implemented destruction of local languages, which lived for over a millennium without issue under the French crown.
People are free to do with their free time what they like, but I think the language preservationists need to make it simple to learn their language. That means documenting everything as much as possible and making it easy to find.
When I search Elfdalian, there's the facebook group for learning the language, but that's hardly the platform to teach a language. Imo, it would help much more to copy the structure of existing courses, write a wikibook, or make a homepage to aggregate all the links in one place.
Were I to want to explore the language, I would need to know the alphabet and its sounds, common phrases, the grammar, have flip cards (anki is great for that), have ways to passively consume the language meaning music, videos, articles, subtitles for popular films, etc., ways to practice it with others (forums, subreddit, frequent, physical or virtual meetups, and so on), and, most importantly, it should be available without being physically present.
If you don't make it easy to learn, consume, and practice, then make it at least easy to archive.
When I search Elfdalian, there's the facebook group for learning the language, but that's hardly the platform to teach a language. Imo, it would help much more to copy the structure of existing courses, write a wikibook, or make a homepage to aggregate all the links in one place.
Were I to want to explore the language, I would need to know the alphabet and its sounds, common phrases, the grammar, have flip cards (anki is great for that), have ways to passively consume the language meaning music, videos, articles, subtitles for popular films, etc., ways to practice it with others (forums, subreddit, frequent, physical or virtual meetups, and so on), and, most importantly, it should be available without being physically present.
If you don't make it easy to learn, consume, and practice, then make it at least easy to archive.
Your implied standpoint is that it’s only worth preserving if you can engage with it. Imagine having the same attitude towards endangered animals “why should we preserve the giant turtles when I can’t even find a shop that will sell me one?”
The language is intimately tied to the people and the culture. It’s not like they want to push random people around the world to learn it just for a laugh.
The language is intimately tied to the people and the culture. It’s not like they want to push random people around the world to learn it just for a laugh.
You're making assumptions about my implications and comparing two completely different things.
A well archived language can be reborn again - a dead species can't (yet).
Furthermore, where are you taking that I'm advocating forcefully spreading a language?
I'm stating a two very simple facts:
1. If you want a language to stay alive, you need speakers.
2. If you want a language to outlive speakers, you need to archive it well.
Since we live in a world of choice, you'll have to do something in order to let people choose to become a speaker of that language.
Furthermore, where are you taking that I'm advocating forcefully spreading a language?
I'm stating a two very simple facts:
1. If you want a language to stay alive, you need speakers.
2. If you want a language to outlive speakers, you need to archive it well.
Since we live in a world of choice, you'll have to do something in order to let people choose to become a speaker of that language.
With all that hype about AIs and the like, did anyone think about creating one whose only purpose is to keep old languages alive by learning them then keeping them untouched, except for integrating new discoveries, so that they would be preserved even in the case the last human speaking them dies or becomes too old to teach?
“My parents spoke Elfdalian with each other, and with my grandma and my aunts and uncles and everyone around,” Schütt said. “But when they turned to me, they spoke Swedish.”
Schütt said her parents spoke Swedish with her because that’s what was spoken in schools. Students were even discouraged to speak Elfdalian in the classroom. Now, there’s only about 2,500 speakers left.
This same story has played out in so many different places around the world.
Schütt said her parents spoke Swedish with her because that’s what was spoken in schools. Students were even discouraged to speak Elfdalian in the classroom. Now, there’s only about 2,500 speakers left.
This same story has played out in so many different places around the world.
Consolidating what we do (language, money, etc.) while honoring and keeping local culture alive is a huge issue everywhere, as the globe continues to shrink via technology and diplomacy. It's a root factor in practically every issue and will continue to be. Not sure what the answer is that results in more than crappy themed restaurants.
I still don't understand why losing another language is a bad thing. I realize that another language creates another way of thinking, culture, and way to express oneself which leads to a good variation instead of having a unified "one world view." I really am not coming off as someone ignorant thinking "the whole world should speak english!" What I'm getting at is, if it's a very insignificant language like that and nobody bothers learning it anymore, what is the point aside from looking for something to do? It's a dying language. Much like a dying culture of an extinct people. Reviving it and forcing people to retain it will not be doing anyone favors either.
I think having culturally distinct languages is fine on a macro level, but at the scale of this minor language, it's really as useful as arrowhead you find in the ground here in the States. At one time this was useful, but now is no longer that time.
I think having culturally distinct languages is fine on a macro level, but at the scale of this minor language, it's really as useful as arrowhead you find in the ground here in the States. At one time this was useful, but now is no longer that time.
I think the thing that doesn't make sense to me about all of these language preservation efforts is the idea that a language has to have people actively speaking it.
That's a gigantic lift, that takes a ton of effort. Even if you teach a new generation they likely won't keep using it in their day to day.
Why not just catalog it? Get the most experienced speakers to record hundreds of hours of audio of it, if it had a writing system catalog that too.
Problem solved. Language preserved. Otherwise you're fighting a losing battle trying to keep a language actively being used when only a few thousand people know it still.
That's a gigantic lift, that takes a ton of effort. Even if you teach a new generation they likely won't keep using it in their day to day.
Why not just catalog it? Get the most experienced speakers to record hundreds of hours of audio of it, if it had a writing system catalog that too.
Problem solved. Language preserved. Otherwise you're fighting a losing battle trying to keep a language actively being used when only a few thousand people know it still.
Because you need to have native speakers in order to properly analyse the language. Let’s say you have a corpus and you’ve found two words that seem nearly synonymous: what’s the difference between them? A native speaker might be able to tell you about such subtle differences, but it can be impossible to know otherwise. Or, let’s say you’ve found an affix with an unusual distribution — if you want to test your theory of where it is allowed, you’ll need to have a native speaker to double-check if you’re using it correctly. Or even at a more fundamental level, one of the first things any book about field linguistics mentions is that it’s nearly impossible to transcribe audio without going through it with a native speaker, because you won’t necessarily be able to perceive all the sounds at first. (Disclaimer: I’m not a linguist myself, but I’ve seen this advice mentioned several times.) Problems like this are why language preservation generally ends up as a race against time until the last native speaker dies.
It sounds like the main argument you're making is that having a record wouldn't catch every single edge case. But maybe that's okay? If you get 90% of the value of preserving the language and you miss the 10%, it's probably still worth doing vs. trying to artificially keep a language alive.
If you read about this language, it emerged from Old Norse. Do you think there was some kind of "Preserve Old Norse" movement?
I just don't see how an effort like this could possibly succeed. If you make kids learn it, the chances of them retaining fluency in it are pretty low I'd think? They'd have to be using it a lot. And I think most people would probably rather their kids learn English as a second language.
I guess a solution would be to teach the kids English and Elfdalian instead of English and Swedish, and then when they need to talk to people from other regions they just use English as the lingua franca.
If you read about this language, it emerged from Old Norse. Do you think there was some kind of "Preserve Old Norse" movement?
I just don't see how an effort like this could possibly succeed. If you make kids learn it, the chances of them retaining fluency in it are pretty low I'd think? They'd have to be using it a lot. And I think most people would probably rather their kids learn English as a second language.
I guess a solution would be to teach the kids English and Elfdalian instead of English and Swedish, and then when they need to talk to people from other regions they just use English as the lingua franca.
> It sounds like the main argument you're making is that having a record wouldn't catch every single edge case. But maybe that's okay? If you get 90% of the value of preserving the language and you miss the 10%, it's probably still worth doing vs. trying to artificially keep a language alive.
The problem is, it probably won’t be 90/10. I worry that it may be more like 50/50 or even 10/90, though to be sure I’d have to ask a linguist who’s actually worked in the field.
> If you read about this language, it emerged from Old Norse. Do you think there was some kind of "Preserve Old Norse" movement?
There’s a difference between evolution into a new language and language death. The former makes no difference to language diversity: the old language is just as interesting as the new one. (Or, in many cases, it increases diversity, because one language can split into multiple daughter languages.) The latter decreases language diversity, as a spoken language is irretrievably lost.
> I just don't see how an effort like this could possibly succeed. If you make kids learn it, the chances of them retaining fluency in it are pretty low I'd think? They'd have to be using it a lot. And I think most people would probably rather their kids learn English as a second language.
I don’t disagree. Language revival rarely if ever succeeds. This is why it’s important to do as much linguistic work on each language as possible while native speakers are still alive — simply making records of the language is not enough.
The problem is, it probably won’t be 90/10. I worry that it may be more like 50/50 or even 10/90, though to be sure I’d have to ask a linguist who’s actually worked in the field.
> If you read about this language, it emerged from Old Norse. Do you think there was some kind of "Preserve Old Norse" movement?
There’s a difference between evolution into a new language and language death. The former makes no difference to language diversity: the old language is just as interesting as the new one. (Or, in many cases, it increases diversity, because one language can split into multiple daughter languages.) The latter decreases language diversity, as a spoken language is irretrievably lost.
> I just don't see how an effort like this could possibly succeed. If you make kids learn it, the chances of them retaining fluency in it are pretty low I'd think? They'd have to be using it a lot. And I think most people would probably rather their kids learn English as a second language.
I don’t disagree. Language revival rarely if ever succeeds. This is why it’s important to do as much linguistic work on each language as possible while native speakers are still alive — simply making records of the language is not enough.
>may be more like 50/50 or even 10/90
Maybe for some languages that are at the point of only having 2 speakers left. But at that point, you likely couldn't revive the language anyways. For this language, they absolutely should be able to record it in its current state in an extremely comprehensive way.
>There’s a difference between evolution into a new language and language death.
But Old Norse did die. It happened to sprout several new languages, most of which are not in danger of dying out like Danish and Swedish. The original Old Norse is gone though.
You seem to only be valuing a language based on if it's a net plus or minus to the "Language Diversity" which as you're using it seems to mean the number of distinct languages that are currently spoken natively by currently alive humans. Old Norse dying was -1 but sprouted many new languages so +n. Where Elfdalian dying would just be -1.
I would think a language would be of value based on the content of the language itself, for linguists to study.
>simply making records of the language is not enough.
I would consider doing linguistic work on the language with native speakers to be part of making records of the language. I don't think we're in disagreement here.
The original idea I was pushing against was trying to artificially keep a language alive by trying to keep large population groups speaking it natively. It goes against how language has always worked.
Maybe for some languages that are at the point of only having 2 speakers left. But at that point, you likely couldn't revive the language anyways. For this language, they absolutely should be able to record it in its current state in an extremely comprehensive way.
>There’s a difference between evolution into a new language and language death.
But Old Norse did die. It happened to sprout several new languages, most of which are not in danger of dying out like Danish and Swedish. The original Old Norse is gone though.
You seem to only be valuing a language based on if it's a net plus or minus to the "Language Diversity" which as you're using it seems to mean the number of distinct languages that are currently spoken natively by currently alive humans. Old Norse dying was -1 but sprouted many new languages so +n. Where Elfdalian dying would just be -1.
I would think a language would be of value based on the content of the language itself, for linguists to study.
>simply making records of the language is not enough.
I would consider doing linguistic work on the language with native speakers to be part of making records of the language. I don't think we're in disagreement here.
The original idea I was pushing against was trying to artificially keep a language alive by trying to keep large population groups speaking it natively. It goes against how language has always worked.
> Maybe for some languages that are at the point of only having 2 speakers left. But at that point, you likely couldn't revive the language anyways. For this language, they absolutely should be able to record it in its current state in an extremely comprehensive way.
Not at all. Even for languages with many more speakers you can get these sorts of problems.
For a very concrete example, consider this Japhug text [0]. I consider myself fairly knowledgable about phonetics, and I can read the transcribed text out loud. But listening to the accompanying recording, I can barely hear the distinctions between many of the sounds, or figure out where the word boundaries are. Such a recording can only be transcribed by carefully going through it with a native speaker.
Or, for a report by a more experienced linguist, here’s e.g. R.M.W. Dixon (2010) on the subject:
> All texts should be transcribed in the field. In the early stages the linguist should not attempt transcription without a native speaker by their side. As the linguist gets to know the language better they can attempt an initial transcription on their own, but should always then go over it in detail with a consultant. In the case of a language I had been working on for more than thirty years (Dyirbal) I could get a new text 95 per cent right, but there were always a few points that I missed the proper meaning or full significance of, and had to have them pointed out by an expert consultant. One thing one should never do is just record texts in the field and try to transcribe them later on, back at base (whether one is working on phonetics, phonology, grammar, discourse, or whatever); this is a sure recipe for an incompetent analysis.
[0] https://pangloss.cnrs.fr/corpus/show?lang=en&mode=pro&oai_pr...
> But Old Norse did die. It happened to sprout several new languages, most of which are not in danger of dying out like Danish and Swedish. The original Old Norse is gone though.
It did not die. There is a difference between language death and language evolution. In the latter process, there is no one point at which you can say, ‘Old Norse is dead and gone’; it is simply the case that speakers of the language found Old Norse texts less and less intelligible until they could no longer be understood. But the Old Norse language itself is hardly gone: many of its features are preserved in the derived languages, and Old Norse may still be reconstructed by comparison between its daughters.
Perhaps a more illustrative example would be Old English. Is Old English ‘dead’? Possibly, but it never ‘died’: it just gradually evolved into Middle English and then Modern English (and Scots).
> You seem to only be valuing a language based on if it's a net plus or minus to the "Language Diversity" which as you're using it seems to mean the number of distinct languages that are currently spoken natively by currently alive humans.
Not at all. I agree with you that languages are valuable because they give a unique perspective to both their native speakers and linguists at large. A natural consequence of this viewpoint is that one extra language is a net good, but I don’t think a language is valuable only because of this.
> I would consider doing linguistic work on the language with native speakers to be part of making records of the language. I don't think we're in disagreement here.
Ah, in that case we are indeed in agreement. I had assumed that by ‘making records’ you had meant only making audio recordings etc. I should have clarified what you meant exactly.
> The original idea I was pushing against was trying to artificially keep a language alive by trying to keep large population groups speaking it natively. It goes against how language has always worked.
I don’t think it’s a good idea to ‘artificially’ keep languages alive if there’s no reason to do so — but if a linguistic community wants to keep a language alive, then why not?
Not at all. Even for languages with many more speakers you can get these sorts of problems.
For a very concrete example, consider this Japhug text [0]. I consider myself fairly knowledgable about phonetics, and I can read the transcribed text out loud. But listening to the accompanying recording, I can barely hear the distinctions between many of the sounds, or figure out where the word boundaries are. Such a recording can only be transcribed by carefully going through it with a native speaker.
Or, for a report by a more experienced linguist, here’s e.g. R.M.W. Dixon (2010) on the subject:
> All texts should be transcribed in the field. In the early stages the linguist should not attempt transcription without a native speaker by their side. As the linguist gets to know the language better they can attempt an initial transcription on their own, but should always then go over it in detail with a consultant. In the case of a language I had been working on for more than thirty years (Dyirbal) I could get a new text 95 per cent right, but there were always a few points that I missed the proper meaning or full significance of, and had to have them pointed out by an expert consultant. One thing one should never do is just record texts in the field and try to transcribe them later on, back at base (whether one is working on phonetics, phonology, grammar, discourse, or whatever); this is a sure recipe for an incompetent analysis.
[0] https://pangloss.cnrs.fr/corpus/show?lang=en&mode=pro&oai_pr...
> But Old Norse did die. It happened to sprout several new languages, most of which are not in danger of dying out like Danish and Swedish. The original Old Norse is gone though.
It did not die. There is a difference between language death and language evolution. In the latter process, there is no one point at which you can say, ‘Old Norse is dead and gone’; it is simply the case that speakers of the language found Old Norse texts less and less intelligible until they could no longer be understood. But the Old Norse language itself is hardly gone: many of its features are preserved in the derived languages, and Old Norse may still be reconstructed by comparison between its daughters.
Perhaps a more illustrative example would be Old English. Is Old English ‘dead’? Possibly, but it never ‘died’: it just gradually evolved into Middle English and then Modern English (and Scots).
> You seem to only be valuing a language based on if it's a net plus or minus to the "Language Diversity" which as you're using it seems to mean the number of distinct languages that are currently spoken natively by currently alive humans.
Not at all. I agree with you that languages are valuable because they give a unique perspective to both their native speakers and linguists at large. A natural consequence of this viewpoint is that one extra language is a net good, but I don’t think a language is valuable only because of this.
> I would consider doing linguistic work on the language with native speakers to be part of making records of the language. I don't think we're in disagreement here.
Ah, in that case we are indeed in agreement. I had assumed that by ‘making records’ you had meant only making audio recordings etc. I should have clarified what you meant exactly.
> The original idea I was pushing against was trying to artificially keep a language alive by trying to keep large population groups speaking it natively. It goes against how language has always worked.
I don’t think it’s a good idea to ‘artificially’ keep languages alive if there’s no reason to do so — but if a linguistic community wants to keep a language alive, then why not?
Probably the human tendency for loss aversion. No one today cares about the exact preparations and steps needed to prepare an offering of sheep intestines to Zeus other than a some PhDs in classical studies, but I could imagine ancient Greeks thinking that their youth deciding to worship Roman or Christian gods was a bad thing that took away from their cultural heritage. But after that event happened, no one today really cares or notices the loss of the precise minutia of ancient Greek cultural practices and values.
If another random species of lemur died off and we never sequenced its genome, you might not care. But many scientists would. That arrowhead you discount as useless is another data point to an anthropologist. One man’s trash is unfortunately another man’s dissertation and a window into the past.
Edit: an apostrophe
Edit: an apostrophe
Yes, these niche languages are essential for comparative linguistics and sometimes more generally.
Why not? As far as "looking for something to do", preserving a dying language seems a lot more interesting than a lot of other things people do with their spare time.
The incuriousness in this thread is atypical of the board in my opinion.
At one point I used to think that language diversity was actually a net bad thing for humanity, because it decreases our ability to communicate and so on. These days language technology and machine translation are solving that communication issue and we may choose to preserve dying languages for the sake of understanding how language itself works, how humans migrated in the past, and so on.
At one point I used to think that language diversity was actually a net bad thing for humanity, because it decreases our ability to communicate and so on. These days language technology and machine translation are solving that communication issue and we may choose to preserve dying languages for the sake of understanding how language itself works, how humans migrated in the past, and so on.
Some languages open your understanding of the other ones from the same family tree.
Learn one, and you are partially learning the other.
Learn one, and you are partially learning the other.
Preserving an old language is great. Preserving it by having young people who's first language is this obscure language probably is doing a disservice to those young people and the older people probably knew that.
Kids can learn two first languages just fine
Some kids can. Some kids definitely learn only one language really well and struggle with a second indefinitely.
I'm sure there's some cut-off and a way to do it right and so-forth. But are the surviving native speak of an obscure language in some rural village going to suss that out.
Plus a lot of kids who a language just when they're young go to forget. I remember, growing up, a friend who could understand but not speak Urdu. He wasn't going to perpetuate the language.
I'm sure there's some cut-off and a way to do it right and so-forth. But are the surviving native speak of an obscure language in some rural village going to suss that out.
Plus a lot of kids who a language just when they're young go to forget. I remember, growing up, a friend who could understand but not speak Urdu. He wasn't going to perpetuate the language.
It’s so sad too. I think nation states have destroyed a lot of local cultures. Sometimes intentionally, sometimes not.
Yep, just look at Germany which used to be very diverse, now I'm not e en sure there's a TV. station in Low German
Not sure why you're being downvoted, it's true.
Some of the Low German dialects have been preserved by Anabaptist religious community speakers here in North America ("Plautdietsch" among Mennonites). And others (Amish, Hutterites) speak interesting High German dialects.
Some of the Low German dialects have been preserved by Anabaptist religious community speakers here in North America ("Plautdietsch" among Mennonites). And others (Amish, Hutterites) speak interesting High German dialects.
I sometimes wonder what percentage of people can't speak the same language their grandparents spoke.
With China and India it must be hundreds of millions.
With China and India it must be hundreds of millions.
My grandmother speaks fluent English, but also fluent Italian. Problem is, it's what I'll call "pre-radio Italian" - where there was no single Italian language, but rather a great many dialects that sort-of sounded the same, until radio and (later) television came and unified them all into one language.
I bring this up because she often references words that only loosely resemble the modern forms. A good example is a number of her childhood figures who she affectionately calls "azi" - this is actually a version of the modern Italian "zio" (uncle). It gets much worse with foods, which really no amount of Googling can ever resolve a recipe, or even a description.
I bring this up because she often references words that only loosely resemble the modern forms. A good example is a number of her childhood figures who she affectionately calls "azi" - this is actually a version of the modern Italian "zio" (uncle). It gets much worse with foods, which really no amount of Googling can ever resolve a recipe, or even a description.
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I'm not sure what's sad about it. What good is a language if no one speaks it? In the ideal world, wouldn't everyone speak the same language?
It's only not sad if you live with a completely utilitarian life where art and the beauty of human creation have no value.
Why don't we all just listen to one song, wear the same outfit and live in identical homes?
Regardless of whether they're useful, unique and irreplaceable information will be lost when minority languages are gone, as this information exists only in the minds of the remaining speakers. It isn't possible to back up this kind of information like we do with the Internet Archive or something.
Why don't we all just listen to one song, wear the same outfit and live in identical homes?
Regardless of whether they're useful, unique and irreplaceable information will be lost when minority languages are gone, as this information exists only in the minds of the remaining speakers. It isn't possible to back up this kind of information like we do with the Internet Archive or something.
Don't you think everyone speaking the same language would promote flourishing in human creativity? Wouldn't being able to have a meaningful conversation with someone completely and totally different than yourself inspire you? Isn't that what made the internet a thing? It's really just a set of communication protocols that everyone agreed to speak.
>Don't you think everyone speaking the same language would promote flourishing in human creativity?
Not necessarily. Sometimes creativity may flourish better if developed independently without common influences.
>the internet
Websites could be analogous to language in this case. Why use hacker news when you could use twitter or reddit? Independent subgroups can produce more interesting or unique discussion.
Not necessarily. Sometimes creativity may flourish better if developed independently without common influences.
>the internet
Websites could be analogous to language in this case. Why use hacker news when you could use twitter or reddit? Independent subgroups can produce more interesting or unique discussion.
> Independent subgroups can produce more interesting or unique discussion.
Right but the point is that all of these independent subgroups use the same protocols to communicate (i.e. web standards). Anyone who has a client that can understand these is able to interact with the entire internet. As we can see, standardizing protocols does not limit the ideas which can be expressed over those protocols.
Right but the point is that all of these independent subgroups use the same protocols to communicate (i.e. web standards). Anyone who has a client that can understand these is able to interact with the entire internet. As we can see, standardizing protocols does not limit the ideas which can be expressed over those protocols.
I guess it depends where you consider the separation. Even among the web, people don't only post in one language. And among the English-speaking web, Reddit has absorbed forums almost entirely which I would consider to be a negative.
I think if you take a look at the internet, you’ll discover that there are large numbers of people who speak the same language who can’t have meaningful conversations or inspire one another.
Language isn’t the barrier here.
Language isn’t the barrier here.
The sadness of losing a language is distinct from the question of whether it would be better if everyone spoke the same language.
Just like in programming, different spoken languages have different capabilities-- certain ideas are easier to express in one language versus another. Some concepts don't even have words across languages. And there's beauty and rhythm, the way words rhyme, so even if you can express the same concepts, the network of how those concepts play off each other is different.
Having shared languages is awesome, allowing people to communicate together. But having only one language would be a great tragedy. It'd be like saying all paintings can only use one color.
Having shared languages is awesome, allowing people to communicate together. But having only one language would be a great tragedy. It'd be like saying all paintings can only use one color.
I don't think the painting analogy applies. You can add words and meanings to languages. If we all spoke the same language, we'd iterate on it until it could express all the ideas that we have. We may lose some rhyming along the way, but it seems a small price to pay for universal, clear communication.
Eventually new languages would be created. Why? Because everyone wouldn't iterate at the speed or even the same direction.
Right, but if we standardize the language, we can keep track of and de-duplicate all the iterations, much like we do with web standards.
Yeah, it's sad that we're losing unique and interesting languages, but most people only learn 1-3 languages in their life. It's probably economically better for them to focus on ones that are spoken by larger groups of people.
It's weird that most of the discussion is focused on a false dichotomy between a single universal language for all humanity, and preserving every single language that exists today even if they only have a few dozen speakers. The reality is that most minority languages will die out, but we'll still have more languages with hundreds of thousands of speakers and backed by modern education systems than anyone could realistically learn in a lifetime.
Languages do not map to eachother one to one. The works of Shakespeare, for instance, are untranslatable to another language, without some loss of meaning.
Some are not phased by the loss of historic culture in that brave new world, but not everyone feels the same way.
Some are not phased by the loss of historic culture in that brave new world, but not everyone feels the same way.
> Languages do not map to eachother one to one. The works of Shakespeare, for instance, are untranslatable to another language, without some loss of meaning.
But isn't it exactly why in the ideal world everyone would speak the same language? Otherwise, due to the untranslatability, every Shakespeare is lost to the rest of the world that doesn't speak his language.
But isn't it exactly why in the ideal world everyone would speak the same language? Otherwise, due to the untranslatability, every Shakespeare is lost to the rest of the world that doesn't speak his language.
English somewhat often adopts foreign words when we don't have a word that means exactly the same thing.
Ideas and experiences precede words and inform language, not the other way around.
Ideas and experiences precede words and inform language, not the other way around.
It's not lost to the world, you just need to learn the still-living language it's written in.
And on whatever lingua franca you choose to adopt, there will be an unbounded number of yet-to-be-written-works-of-shakespeare, that this language would lack the ability to express.
And on whatever lingua franca you choose to adopt, there will be an unbounded number of yet-to-be-written-works-of-shakespeare, that this language would lack the ability to express.
> It's not lost to the world, you just need to learn the still-living language it's written in.
Just?
Given how complex every language is, and the level of mastery that is required to read and appreciate the hypothetical Shakespeare of that language, and the time and effort that is required to achieve this level of mastery, this is highly impractical.
Just?
Given how complex every language is, and the level of mastery that is required to read and appreciate the hypothetical Shakespeare of that language, and the time and effort that is required to achieve this level of mastery, this is highly impractical.
Language encodes within it's systems, a built-up treasure trove of human meaning. A universal language looses a humongous amount of meaning. Its usefulness is in merely communicating functionality. In short, such a "universal" will fragment for the need to enrich this substandard language. Remember, human language needs to be rich.
I'm not sure that any meaning is truly lost. Can you find a word in any language that isn't described by a short sentence in English? The differences seem mostly in the level of verbosity required to elucidate an idea.
The problem is that it’s not just words. For instance, if you speak Tariana, every grammatical sentence must have a marker expressing how you know the sentence is true (‘evidentiality’). In Kalam, you only have ~100 verbs, all of which have extremely broad meanings, and any more complex verbal meaning must be created by composing together the verbs you have available. In White Hmong, every noun can occur with a ‘classifier’; its presence or absence specifies whether the noun has been newly introduced or not. And sure, I suppose you could lump all these together as ‘differences in verbosity’, but those differences matter: they mean that the most natural way to express something in Tariana, say, is going to be very different to the most natural way to express something in English, and a translation would lose some of the meaning of the Tariana sentence. (And a complete translation, losing no meaning whatsoever, would end up so verbose as to be almost useless.)
Can you give a specific example of a word in Kalam or Tariana that cannot be expressed with a short sentence in English? It would follow that a short sentence in Kalam or Tariana may translate to a long sentence or short paragraph in English. I'm sure the same would be true the other way around. But doesn't this reinforce the idea that the difference is mainly in verbosity? And that the differences lie in which ideas can be expressed concisely and which must be expressed verbosely?
> Can you give a specific example of a word in Kalam or Tariana that cannot be expressed with a short sentence in English? It would follow that a short sentence in Kalam or Tariana may translate to a long sentence or short paragraph in English.
I’m not sure there are any examples which cannot be expressed with a short English sentence, but here’s one from Tariana:
Masitetakakakadekaɾupidanapitaniki.
‘We did not make each other smoke again at all, so I leant from someone else.’
The problem with this translation is that it doesn’t completely get across the ‘feel’ of the original — e.g. the fact that this information was learnt from someone else is an integral part of the original sentence, whereas specifying this in English feels somewhat unnatural.
> I'm sure the same would be true the other way around.
Exactly. A Kalam example:
Bin ak ñapanŋaŋ anup sop ak wki d ap tan d ap yap geb.
‘The woman is soaping her child.’
> And that the differences lie in which ideas can be expressed concisely and which must be expressed verbosely?
This is not something I entirely disagree with. Generally speaking, anything which can be expressed in one language can be expressed in another. The differences go beyond verbosity though: it is often the case that such a complete translation sounds really unnatural. For instance, Kalam sentences make it easy to express motion, so you get a lot of sentences like:
I’m not sure there are any examples which cannot be expressed with a short English sentence, but here’s one from Tariana:
Masitetakakakadekaɾupidanapitaniki.
‘We did not make each other smoke again at all, so I leant from someone else.’
The problem with this translation is that it doesn’t completely get across the ‘feel’ of the original — e.g. the fact that this information was learnt from someone else is an integral part of the original sentence, whereas specifying this in English feels somewhat unnatural.
> I'm sure the same would be true the other way around.
Exactly. A Kalam example:
Bin ak ñapanŋaŋ anup sop ak wki d ap tan d ap yap geb.
‘The woman is soaping her child.’
> And that the differences lie in which ideas can be expressed concisely and which must be expressed verbosely?
This is not something I entirely disagree with. Generally speaking, anything which can be expressed in one language can be expressed in another. The differences go beyond verbosity though: it is often the case that such a complete translation sounds really unnatural. For instance, Kalam sentences make it easy to express motion, so you get a lot of sentences like:
Bin pataj ogok am yg pak dad ap-elgp-al…
woman young the go dig hit carrying come-PST.HAB-3PL…
I used to think the same thing, but empirically it seems that diverse ecosystems are healthier and more resilient to unexpected pressures, and this seems to be universally true.
> diverse ecosystems are healthier and more resilient to unexpected pressures, and this seems to be universally true.
This is quite true in evolutionary biology (from which you are even borrowing the term ecosystem), where the ever-changing environment puts different evolutionary pressures on a population of organisms, and the more genetically diverse a population is, the higher its chance to adapt to the pressure.
I am not sure that this biological model holds true when applied to social systems. I find it hard to imagine that artificial barriers to information flow in human populations are particularly adaptive (unless, perhaps, an isolation from the frenzied social media due to a natural language barrier is considered adaptive).
This is quite true in evolutionary biology (from which you are even borrowing the term ecosystem), where the ever-changing environment puts different evolutionary pressures on a population of organisms, and the more genetically diverse a population is, the higher its chance to adapt to the pressure.
I am not sure that this biological model holds true when applied to social systems. I find it hard to imagine that artificial barriers to information flow in human populations are particularly adaptive (unless, perhaps, an isolation from the frenzied social media due to a natural language barrier is considered adaptive).
> In the ideal world, wouldn't everyone speak the same language?
Why exactly?
Why exactly?
So we can all communicate as clearly as possible?
Why do you assume that a single language would enable that?
It could just as easily have the opposite effect, of eliminating a wide range of expression and nuance, thus reducing the capacity for clear communication in absolute terms.
It could just as easily have the opposite effect, of eliminating a wide range of expression and nuance, thus reducing the capacity for clear communication in absolute terms.
> It could just as easily have the opposite effect, of eliminating a wide range of expression and nuance
Why would that happen?
Expression and nuance is produced by the speakers of a language. Therefore, if different groups of speakers of a hypothetical common language had a need to express different nuances, they would evolve the language in such a way that it would become capable of expressing these nuances.
Consider how dominant modern languages can serve hugely different social groups: scholars, petty criminals, soldiers, scientists, sports fans, social justice warriors, and so on, with each group having different ranges of nuances of expression.
Why would that happen?
Expression and nuance is produced by the speakers of a language. Therefore, if different groups of speakers of a hypothetical common language had a need to express different nuances, they would evolve the language in such a way that it would become capable of expressing these nuances.
Consider how dominant modern languages can serve hugely different social groups: scholars, petty criminals, soldiers, scientists, sports fans, social justice warriors, and so on, with each group having different ranges of nuances of expression.
> they would evolve the language in such a way that it would become capable of expressing these nuances.
Would they? Or would they need to fork the language away from the common base?
Nuance and expression are produced by the speakers of the language having distinct experiences and finding distinct ways to express them.
Understanding other people doesn’t magically come from having the same language. It requires learning to understand their experiences.
Would they? Or would they need to fork the language away from the common base?
Nuance and expression are produced by the speakers of the language having distinct experiences and finding distinct ways to express them.
Understanding other people doesn’t magically come from having the same language. It requires learning to understand their experiences.
> Or would they need to fork the language away from the common base?
One does not simply fork a language :-) There must be a strong centrifugal (nationalist, separatist) political force for people to do so.
> Nuance and expression are produced by the speakers of the language having distinct experiences and finding distinct ways to express them.
Yes. Take a fisherman, a doctor, a frontend web developer, a fashion model, or a homeless beggar. They all have vastly different experiences. They all, however, can speak the same natural language to talk to each other. That language has the power to encompass the experiences and the nuances of all these different groups of people. I would not understand the professional jargon of a fisherman or a fashion model, while the homeless beggar may not understand the professional jargon of a frontend web developer; but we will all share the same grammar and the same core vocabulary, so that we can communicate what we want when we occasionally bump into each other.
> Understanding other people doesn’t magically come from having the same language. It requires learning to understand their experiences.
I am not sure what this means, and I am not after that kind of understanding anyway. I would be plenty happy if people shared the same native language when speaking at web conferences or writing documentation. Or if I could go to a shop anywhere and buy what I need, without resorting to a ridiculous pantomime; or listen to news, or to stop announcements in the public transport, or chat with a stranger, and lots of other small mundane things that we use our language for. I have no desire to understand the experiences of the most part of the humanity anyway; only some that I am interested in.
One does not simply fork a language :-) There must be a strong centrifugal (nationalist, separatist) political force for people to do so.
> Nuance and expression are produced by the speakers of the language having distinct experiences and finding distinct ways to express them.
Yes. Take a fisherman, a doctor, a frontend web developer, a fashion model, or a homeless beggar. They all have vastly different experiences. They all, however, can speak the same natural language to talk to each other. That language has the power to encompass the experiences and the nuances of all these different groups of people. I would not understand the professional jargon of a fisherman or a fashion model, while the homeless beggar may not understand the professional jargon of a frontend web developer; but we will all share the same grammar and the same core vocabulary, so that we can communicate what we want when we occasionally bump into each other.
> Understanding other people doesn’t magically come from having the same language. It requires learning to understand their experiences.
I am not sure what this means, and I am not after that kind of understanding anyway. I would be plenty happy if people shared the same native language when speaking at web conferences or writing documentation. Or if I could go to a shop anywhere and buy what I need, without resorting to a ridiculous pantomime; or listen to news, or to stop announcements in the public transport, or chat with a stranger, and lots of other small mundane things that we use our language for. I have no desire to understand the experiences of the most part of the humanity anyway; only some that I am interested in.
> I have no desire to understand the experiences of the most part of the humanity anyway
Nobody is arguing that a common language wouldn’t make mundane everyday transactions more convenient.
The argument is that a significant range of expression, nuance, culture and even experience would be lost in service of your goal of easier to use public transport, shopping etc.
It’s fine for you not to be interested in the experiences of the most part of humanity. Let’s just not pretend that there is a trade-off that many people do care about.
Nobody is arguing that a common language wouldn’t make mundane everyday transactions more convenient.
The argument is that a significant range of expression, nuance, culture and even experience would be lost in service of your goal of easier to use public transport, shopping etc.
It’s fine for you not to be interested in the experiences of the most part of humanity. Let’s just not pretend that there is a trade-off that many people do care about.
I did mention both a mundane case (shopping) and a specialised case (web conferences and technical documentation). Which is to say, I am interested in the experiences of web developers, but not, for example, of naval officers or fashion models. A common language would give me access to a larger pool of web developer experiences, just as is would give anyone who is into fashion access to a wider range of experiences of similarly-minded people. The absence of a common language prevents that.
> Let’s just not pretend that there is a trade-off
There are several assumptions behind this position.
One, that there are human experiences that require a very particular natural language to be expressed. That you need a whole unique system of phonology, morphology, syntax, etc. to be able to express your experience. I am not sure that this is the case.
The other is that the co-existence of a multitude of languages allows us to capture and communicate human experiences better.
Finally, as the life goes on, and the language — any language — evolves, we lose access to the previously expressed experiences anyway. So one language or many, we won't preserve human experiences.
> Let’s just not pretend that there is a trade-off
There are several assumptions behind this position.
One, that there are human experiences that require a very particular natural language to be expressed. That you need a whole unique system of phonology, morphology, syntax, etc. to be able to express your experience. I am not sure that this is the case.
The other is that the co-existence of a multitude of languages allows us to capture and communicate human experiences better.
Finally, as the life goes on, and the language — any language — evolves, we lose access to the previously expressed experiences anyway. So one language or many, we won't preserve human experiences.
> they would evolve the language in such a way that it would become capable of expressing these nuances
But everyone else that didn't evolve that couldn't understand it even though they speak the same language? Isn't how an evolution for a new language begins?
But everyone else that didn't evolve that couldn't understand it even though they speak the same language? Isn't how an evolution for a new language begins?
> Isn't how an evolution for a new language begins?
Consider evolution in biology. A species becomes distinct from another species when their individual members can no longer interbreed to produce fertile offspring. For an ancestor species to split into new ones, its populations have to be separated — either geographically (in the so-called allopatric speciation), or by the difference in reproductive timing (allochronic speciation). The point is, something needs to happen that breaks the free mixture of organisms between populations.
It should be similar with languages — the societies that speak them get separated, and the language they speak evolves separately in different directions to become mutually incomprehensible. Which, with the current state of communication, is only likely to happen if humans become an interplanetary or an intergalactic species. On the same planet, we have plenty of opportunities to mix together and talk to each other, which, were there a hypothetical common language, should prevent it from splitting into multiple languages.
Consider a major modern language. It will contain multiple jargons/slangs/argots that are barely comprehensible to each other (e.g. the medical jargon, or the physics jargon, or Cockney rhyming slang, and so on); and yet they contain a large mutually comprehensible common core that makes television, radio, shopping, conversations between strangers, and so on possible.
Consider evolution in biology. A species becomes distinct from another species when their individual members can no longer interbreed to produce fertile offspring. For an ancestor species to split into new ones, its populations have to be separated — either geographically (in the so-called allopatric speciation), or by the difference in reproductive timing (allochronic speciation). The point is, something needs to happen that breaks the free mixture of organisms between populations.
It should be similar with languages — the societies that speak them get separated, and the language they speak evolves separately in different directions to become mutually incomprehensible. Which, with the current state of communication, is only likely to happen if humans become an interplanetary or an intergalactic species. On the same planet, we have plenty of opportunities to mix together and talk to each other, which, were there a hypothetical common language, should prevent it from splitting into multiple languages.
Consider a major modern language. It will contain multiple jargons/slangs/argots that are barely comprehensible to each other (e.g. the medical jargon, or the physics jargon, or Cockney rhyming slang, and so on); and yet they contain a large mutually comprehensible common core that makes television, radio, shopping, conversations between strangers, and so on possible.
> It should be similar with languages
That is an assumption. In this day and age of globalism, multiculturalism and fast technology advancement the measurement of geographically distance for creating a split can paradoxically be an inverse.
Two groups of people can live next to each other geographically but have hard time understanding each other and not only that both can be uninterested in changing that.
What this means is that you can live geographically at one point and share nothing with those around you but communicate to galaxies far away far away with people you do.
That is an assumption. In this day and age of globalism, multiculturalism and fast technology advancement the measurement of geographically distance for creating a split can paradoxically be an inverse.
Two groups of people can live next to each other geographically but have hard time understanding each other and not only that both can be uninterested in changing that.
What this means is that you can live geographically at one point and share nothing with those around you but communicate to galaxies far away far away with people you do.
> Two groups of people can live next to each other geographically but have hard time understanding each other and not only that both can be uninterested in changing that.
Isn't this description also an assumption? Do you have an example of this? Groups of people who have the same language, but have hard time understanding each other? The closest I can think of is dialects, e.g. regional dialects of British English or British English as opposed to Australian English or South African English, or Australian English; but again, they are mutually comprehensible, and the more cultural exchange happens between these communities the more comprehensible they should be.
Isn't this description also an assumption? Do you have an example of this? Groups of people who have the same language, but have hard time understanding each other? The closest I can think of is dialects, e.g. regional dialects of British English or British English as opposed to Australian English or South African English, or Australian English; but again, they are mutually comprehensible, and the more cultural exchange happens between these communities the more comprehensible they should be.
> Isn't this description also an assumption? Do you have an example of this? Groups of people who have the same language, but have hard time understanding each other?
There are two obscure tribes found in a remote part of the North American continent in which this phenomenon can be observed. I believe one calls itself ‘the Democrats’ and the other ‘the Republicans’.
There are two obscure tribes found in a remote part of the North American continent in which this phenomenon can be observed. I believe one calls itself ‘the Democrats’ and the other ‘the Republicans’.
You can see the beginning of new languages evolving with the the mix of multiculturalism, taking words and expressions from their old languages and adding to the new language where they live. And because the majority does not have these words and expressions, and probably never will, eventually they will diverge. Yiddish is a example of this.
Languages are more than just encodings for meaning -- the language you think in gives you the basic units of meaning that you use to navigate the world. You can put 'untranslatable' into Google to look at lists of words to gain an intuitive understanding of what it is like to have access to another language. My quick search turned up this - https://www.boredpanda.com/untranslatable-words-found-in-tra... - which I think gives a good impression. Reading this list, you feel the impact of useful ideas, circles drawn around things you had never quite realized were things before, words you wish you had.
You might think it's a problem you can remedy by borrowing words from other languages until you have all the concepts. But it's not that simple. Languages are a whole ecosystem -- words, idioms, culture, ways of seeing and being, grammars -- they come together into an inimitable whole. The whole system is like those words; if you cannot have it, you lose ways of seeing the world.
Borrowing words still loses things -- it loses connections and connotations. Maybe I don't need the German "handschuh" (hand-shoe) because I have "glove", but I gain something by the perspective even if the literal meaning is the same. A favorite word of mine from ancient Greek is apo-kara-dokia -- it means eager, expectant watchfulness, that feeling the moment the lights go low and the movie is about to start, but sustained and persistent, like watching the tunnel at the airport waiting for someone you love to arrive, waiting and knowing they will. Like "handshoe", it has a literal breakdown -- "watching from the head" -- that captures those wide eyes and forward leaning alertness in the moment. English has "anticipation" or any number of shabby substitutes, but there's no competing with the Greek.
You can't just add onto vocabulary endlessly in one language. English doesn't have 'handshoes' precisely because it does have 'gloves', and it doesn't have 'watching-from-the-head' precisely because it does have anticipation. Words die out if you don't use them, and you lose whole ways of seeing the world.
Another thing you lose is when one word has two meanings, but they're really sort of related. For example, ancient Greek 'pharmacon' means "drugs" (like pharmacy), but it also means "sorcery", and I very much enjoy the connection that those are sort of subjectively similar things. The more expansive concept doesn't have an equivalent in English, and I'm the poorer for it -- but the richer for another language having taught me to see things that way.
It's easy to explain with words. It's harder to explain with grammar. But you encounter the same phenomenon. Some languages have tenses and cases with more precise or less precise or just different meanings that the ones you grew up with -- and like the different words drawing bigger or smaller or just different circles around concepts, they give you another window into thinking about the world.
But it all works together. The breaking-down-and-constructing aspect of German as a language is related to the way Germans are given to engineering, and the way German philosophers approach the world. If you encounter them in something other than their native language, you miss something of the whole. Translators will sometimes borrow words to try to fill the gap, but it's a poor substitute. Likewise, the logical precision and colorful concepts of ancient Greek inform the way its epic poets and ancient philosophers moved through the world -- and again, they are poorer in translation.
Even idioms enrichen. The Chinese "Heaven is high and the emperor is far away" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven_is_high_and_the_emperor... -- is so very Chinese in experience, and the fact that the Chinese saying itself is a pithy four words makes it work all the better in the context in which it is apropos. If we lost the Chinese language and its experience and culture, perhaps we could still say literally the same thing, but could not say quite exactly this, not with all its force of experience and history and character. And we would be poorer.
Languages and cultures and philosophies and histories and environments all feed back on each other, and they are this phenomenon of creating ways of seeing things, happening over and over in many contexts, building into a cohesive whole. This is why they are valuable to study and valuable to preserve.
You might think it's a problem you can remedy by borrowing words from other languages until you have all the concepts. But it's not that simple. Languages are a whole ecosystem -- words, idioms, culture, ways of seeing and being, grammars -- they come together into an inimitable whole. The whole system is like those words; if you cannot have it, you lose ways of seeing the world.
Borrowing words still loses things -- it loses connections and connotations. Maybe I don't need the German "handschuh" (hand-shoe) because I have "glove", but I gain something by the perspective even if the literal meaning is the same. A favorite word of mine from ancient Greek is apo-kara-dokia -- it means eager, expectant watchfulness, that feeling the moment the lights go low and the movie is about to start, but sustained and persistent, like watching the tunnel at the airport waiting for someone you love to arrive, waiting and knowing they will. Like "handshoe", it has a literal breakdown -- "watching from the head" -- that captures those wide eyes and forward leaning alertness in the moment. English has "anticipation" or any number of shabby substitutes, but there's no competing with the Greek.
You can't just add onto vocabulary endlessly in one language. English doesn't have 'handshoes' precisely because it does have 'gloves', and it doesn't have 'watching-from-the-head' precisely because it does have anticipation. Words die out if you don't use them, and you lose whole ways of seeing the world.
Another thing you lose is when one word has two meanings, but they're really sort of related. For example, ancient Greek 'pharmacon' means "drugs" (like pharmacy), but it also means "sorcery", and I very much enjoy the connection that those are sort of subjectively similar things. The more expansive concept doesn't have an equivalent in English, and I'm the poorer for it -- but the richer for another language having taught me to see things that way.
It's easy to explain with words. It's harder to explain with grammar. But you encounter the same phenomenon. Some languages have tenses and cases with more precise or less precise or just different meanings that the ones you grew up with -- and like the different words drawing bigger or smaller or just different circles around concepts, they give you another window into thinking about the world.
But it all works together. The breaking-down-and-constructing aspect of German as a language is related to the way Germans are given to engineering, and the way German philosophers approach the world. If you encounter them in something other than their native language, you miss something of the whole. Translators will sometimes borrow words to try to fill the gap, but it's a poor substitute. Likewise, the logical precision and colorful concepts of ancient Greek inform the way its epic poets and ancient philosophers moved through the world -- and again, they are poorer in translation.
Even idioms enrichen. The Chinese "Heaven is high and the emperor is far away" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven_is_high_and_the_emperor... -- is so very Chinese in experience, and the fact that the Chinese saying itself is a pithy four words makes it work all the better in the context in which it is apropos. If we lost the Chinese language and its experience and culture, perhaps we could still say literally the same thing, but could not say quite exactly this, not with all its force of experience and history and character. And we would be poorer.
Languages and cultures and philosophies and histories and environments all feed back on each other, and they are this phenomenon of creating ways of seeing things, happening over and over in many contexts, building into a cohesive whole. This is why they are valuable to study and valuable to preserve.
The small town in question is Älvdalen, which gives the name to the language (Älvdal-ian).
I wonder why it's not spelled that way in English; or, for that matter, why it's not called övdalsk (after Övdaln, which is what the locality is called in that language).
I wonder why it's not spelled that way in English; or, for that matter, why it's not called övdalsk (after Övdaln, which is what the locality is called in that language).
Because Elfdalian sounds way more sexy than Övdalsk.
Indeed, it makes it sound like some elf language while it's actually just "river valley" language (älv=river, dal(en)=valley).
“Älv” can mean either river or elf, I think depending on tone?
En älva = one “elf” (Not like elves in Anglo fantasy novels)
When conjoining the a can be removed depending on dialect, thus älvdalen could mean elf valley. I don’t know the true history of the word though!
En älva = one “elf” (Not like elves in Anglo fantasy novels)
When conjoining the a can be removed depending on dialect, thus älvdalen could mean elf valley. I don’t know the true history of the word though!
No, they are distinct words.
En älv - a river.
En älva - an elf or fairy.
Älvens strand - the side of the river.
Älvans öron - the ears of the elf.
Älvdalen - the valley of the river
Älvans dal - the valley of the elf.
Although they do seem to have similar Latin-Germanic roots, if one can decipher the ancient etymological book here: http://runeberg.org/svetym/1298.html
En älv - a river.
En älva - an elf or fairy.
Älvens strand - the side of the river.
Älvans öron - the ears of the elf.
Älvdalen - the valley of the river
Älvans dal - the valley of the elf.
Although they do seem to have similar Latin-Germanic roots, if one can decipher the ancient etymological book here: http://runeberg.org/svetym/1298.html
I disagree that “älvdalen” could not mean valley of the älvor.
Grammatically, yes but practically, no.
There are multiple rivers with "älv" as a suffix in Sweden, among them the biggest and most economically/historically significant. This means that any possessive formed by "älv-" automatically would refer to a river.
If you'd set your Swedish language fantasy world where there's a place called "Älvdalen", readers would be confused. It would be like calling Minas Tirith Stockholm.
There are multiple rivers with "älv" as a suffix in Sweden, among them the biggest and most economically/historically significant. This means that any possessive formed by "älv-" automatically would refer to a river.
If you'd set your Swedish language fantasy world where there's a place called "Älvdalen", readers would be confused. It would be like calling Minas Tirith Stockholm.
Both those spellings have letters not actually standard for English. Presumably, it was anglicized.
The umlaut is not a thing for standard English.
The umlaut is not a thing for standard English.
>The umlaut is not a thing for standard English.
Pardon me, but that sounds a bit naïve (sorry, couldn't resist!).
We seem to do it often enough to have a Wikipedia entry:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_terms_with_diacritical...
Pardon me, but that sounds a bit naïve (sorry, couldn't resist!).
We seem to do it often enough to have a Wikipedia entry:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_terms_with_diacritical...
That's a diaeresis, not an umlaut. Same symbol but different phenomena. An umlaut is a sound shift in a vowel to make it more like another vowel. For example in Icelandic a word like "Katla" will decline the final "a" to "u," which then causes the first "a" to become "ö". The a -> ö shift is umlaut. A diaeresis, however, marks a vowel that is pronounced separately from an adjacent vowel instead of as a diphthong.
The letter Ä is a separate letter in Swedish and many other languages. It is not just an A with an umlaut mark or a diaeresis. The Ä in Älv is not a shifted vowel.
For example, some style guides still call for cooperate to be spelt as coöperate (most notably, The New Yorker), but this has largely fallen out of fashion.
As the intro states, most such words are loan words. And my phone doesn't prompt me with an autocorrect adding the diacritical marks if I type naive. It's becoming increasingly acceptable to just leave it off and English language keyboards tend to lack the ability to type such marks.
When I try to type in French, I can copy-paste from something if I want it written correctly or make my apologies for the deficiencies of my American keyboard.
When I try to type in French, I can copy-paste from something if I want it written correctly or make my apologies for the deficiencies of my American keyboard.
Any language that begins with Elf- and features forests is clearly doing their marketing right. "Give me the five second pitch!" "Sympathy for cutesie elf people living in a forest in Sweden". Internet win.
The name in English seems a bit gimmicky. "Älv" in the context means "river" and not "elf". I guess someone choose to use this play on words in the translation to pique interest and garner sympathy.
Before 1902 the name of the parish was written Elfdalen so I'm not sure it's just a translation thing.
Edit: Ok, never mind. It's definitely a translation thing: "The English name of the vernacular was introduced in Dahl & Koptjevskaja-Tamm (2005)."
Very recent too.
Edit: Ok, never mind. It's definitely a translation thing: "The English name of the vernacular was introduced in Dahl & Koptjevskaja-Tamm (2005)."
Very recent too.
More likely that they wanted the names to sound similar rather than being equivalent, and it's not that often one translates place names.
> "Give me the five second pitch!"
a stallion battalion
defending the medallion
war crying in Elfdalian
a charging foe rapscallionMissed opportunity: Pygmalion.
I never really get why you need to preserve naturally dying language no matter what.
Can anyone explain in simple words — if something abstract is dying naturally (not by force or someones bad intentions etc.), why we need to waste resorces and energy to saving it?
Don't we people have higher priority issues right now?
Can anyone explain in simple words — if something abstract is dying naturally (not by force or someones bad intentions etc.), why we need to waste resorces and energy to saving it?
Don't we people have higher priority issues right now?
Language is a connection to your ancestors, it is a time machine to their world, to speak and think like they did, and without the toil of your ancestors you wouldn’t be here, and by preserving it and passing it on to future generation we all still exist even after we die.
If im already speaking another language i already lost this type of connection, then why it matters?
Preserve as in archive is a critically important task, and with recursive problems of today's archived books/audio/video being accessible with next century's tech. Preserve as in routine use is a terrible idea. If this article was written in Elfdalian, none of us would understand it. And even among themselves, speakers will struggle to express new concepts like "Fully homomorphic encryption" for which native words were never invented. There is a lot of elegance in MS-DOS software and some even write new code as a hobby. But if you distribute your code on floppies nowadays, you will not get anywhere useful.
Wherever one stands regarding the question, it's easy to see that preserving disappearing languages as spoken languages is futile. Young people are naturally not interested in speaking dying languages, it's the old folks who want to preserve them. Yes, they can teach the language in kindergartens and schools, but often they can't even find proper native speakers as teachers anymore when there simply aren't many left. It's a form of necromancy, languages evolve and die naturally, long term we can't do anything to prevent their deaths.
We need to preserve history like you say. But even historic records can be and have been re-written. Imo we should be most concerned with the cultures and attitudes that shape our current languages.
> And even among themselves, speakers will struggle to express new concepts like "Fully homomorphic encryption" for which native words were never invented.
Then they can just do what english speakers did and incorporate some greek words into their language as there doesn't seem to be be any good native words for it in english either.
Then they can just do what english speakers did and incorporate some greek words into their language as there doesn't seem to be be any good native words for it in english either.
> Elfdalian sounds nothing like the country’s national language, Swedish
Well that's provably false. Different yes, "nothing like" is an hyperbole.
> But the national government of Sweden is a different story. They currently consider Elfdalian a dialect of Swedish, not its own language.
Okay...
> Speaking in Elfdalian, Swedish MP Peter Helander recently asked Parliament why that’s the case. But before Culture Minister Amanda Lind could answer the question, the parliamentary speaker interrupted them both to say that only Swedish may be spoken in the chamber.
Well, congratulations, you played yourself!
It is obvious that it is not that different, linguists can talk all day about what makes a language vs. a dialect, but it is obvious here that it's much closer to a dialect than a new language.
Same with all the "multiple different latin derived-languages" at some point, if your neighbour speaks something different than you who cares? Are you going to be so petty that you won't understand him? So maybe it's not a whole new language, it's just you that talks in a slight different way?
Too much nationalism sucks, and too much regionalism can be petty in the extreme.
Well that's provably false. Different yes, "nothing like" is an hyperbole.
> But the national government of Sweden is a different story. They currently consider Elfdalian a dialect of Swedish, not its own language.
Okay...
> Speaking in Elfdalian, Swedish MP Peter Helander recently asked Parliament why that’s the case. But before Culture Minister Amanda Lind could answer the question, the parliamentary speaker interrupted them both to say that only Swedish may be spoken in the chamber.
Well, congratulations, you played yourself!
It is obvious that it is not that different, linguists can talk all day about what makes a language vs. a dialect, but it is obvious here that it's much closer to a dialect than a new language.
Same with all the "multiple different latin derived-languages" at some point, if your neighbour speaks something different than you who cares? Are you going to be so petty that you won't understand him? So maybe it's not a whole new language, it's just you that talks in a slight different way?
Too much nationalism sucks, and too much regionalism can be petty in the extreme.
Övdalian diverged from Swedish and other Scandinavian languages quite a while ago. You can tell this from the voiced dental fricative, 'ð' (the 'th' in 'the' and 'father'), which is present in only Icelandic and Faroese, and the 'w' which is still pronounced like a 'w' in words like 'wattn' (water), 'warg' (wolf), and 'will' (to want), unique among modern Scandinavian languages, and indeed Germanic languages as a whole apart from English.
Thanks for the explanation, that sounds really interesting.
Not sure it kept the w on the words where ON dropped it but apparently it did (maybe)? There's a reddit thread with orð>worð/uorð but not much more. (And they use warg instead of ulf so...)
Here's an Övdalian song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2pxZJ6uFvg
You can hear the 'w' sound here, in a couple uses of the copula. Compare Övdalian 'werið' with Swedish 'varit' and Icelandic/Faroese 'verið', Övdalian 'war' with Swedish, Icelandic, and Faroese 'var' (also English 'were', 'was', derives from the same Proto-Germanic root).
There are actually two Old Norses. By AD 1000 or so, proto-Norse had diverged into Old West Norse and Old East Norse (probably still mutually intelligible dialects at this time). The former's descendents would become Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese, and a couple of dead variants in e.g. the Shetland Isles and Greenland. The latter's descendents would become Swedish, Danish, and Övdalian. We have far more records of OWN than OEN, but one thing we do know is that unlike OWN, OEN preserved the 'w' sound, which was eventually lost in Swedish and Danish.
Övdalian also preserves some grammatical aspects of Old Norse. Modern standard Swedish has no case system, but Övdalian has a three-case system (nom, acc, dat; compare Icelandic and Faroese which have those and gen). Modern standard Swedish has two genders, common and neuter, but Övdalian retains the three gender system that's present in Icelandic, Faroese, and some dialects of Norwegian.
At the same time, it's clearly quite different from Old Norse, unlike Icelandic which is famously conservative (n.b. that Icelandic has had sound changes that are not reflected in the written language, though, so even it isn't the same as Old Norse a thousand years ago). There is some Swedish influence here, the word for boy is 'påyk', cognate with 'pojke' which is not of Norse origin, but Finnish 'poika' (the Old Norse word was 'drengr' which is used in Icelandic, Faroese, and Danish; Norwegian uses 'gutt').
You can hear the 'w' sound here, in a couple uses of the copula. Compare Övdalian 'werið' with Swedish 'varit' and Icelandic/Faroese 'verið', Övdalian 'war' with Swedish, Icelandic, and Faroese 'var' (also English 'were', 'was', derives from the same Proto-Germanic root).
There are actually two Old Norses. By AD 1000 or so, proto-Norse had diverged into Old West Norse and Old East Norse (probably still mutually intelligible dialects at this time). The former's descendents would become Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese, and a couple of dead variants in e.g. the Shetland Isles and Greenland. The latter's descendents would become Swedish, Danish, and Övdalian. We have far more records of OWN than OEN, but one thing we do know is that unlike OWN, OEN preserved the 'w' sound, which was eventually lost in Swedish and Danish.
Övdalian also preserves some grammatical aspects of Old Norse. Modern standard Swedish has no case system, but Övdalian has a three-case system (nom, acc, dat; compare Icelandic and Faroese which have those and gen). Modern standard Swedish has two genders, common and neuter, but Övdalian retains the three gender system that's present in Icelandic, Faroese, and some dialects of Norwegian.
At the same time, it's clearly quite different from Old Norse, unlike Icelandic which is famously conservative (n.b. that Icelandic has had sound changes that are not reflected in the written language, though, so even it isn't the same as Old Norse a thousand years ago). There is some Swedish influence here, the word for boy is 'påyk', cognate with 'pojke' which is not of Norse origin, but Finnish 'poika' (the Old Norse word was 'drengr' which is used in Icelandic, Faroese, and Danish; Norwegian uses 'gutt').
> it is obvious here that it's much closer to a dialect than a new language
It is not obvious at all since Swedish speakers don't understand it. Two distinct languages might be mutually intelligible, but dialects must have intelligibility otherwise they are not dialects.
It has been very conservative to Old Norse, possibly even more so than modern Icelandic.
> Same with all the "multiple different latin derived-languages" at some point, if your neighbour speaks something different than you who cares? Are you going to be so petty that you won't understand him? So maybe it's not a whole new language, it's just you that talks in a slight different way?
Very strange take. Are you saying that French and Spanish speakers are "petty" for not naturally understanding each other? That we just "talk in a slight different way"? You do realize native Spanish speakers don't magically understand spoken Portuguese or Catalan, right?
It is not obvious at all since Swedish speakers don't understand it. Two distinct languages might be mutually intelligible, but dialects must have intelligibility otherwise they are not dialects.
It has been very conservative to Old Norse, possibly even more so than modern Icelandic.
> Same with all the "multiple different latin derived-languages" at some point, if your neighbour speaks something different than you who cares? Are you going to be so petty that you won't understand him? So maybe it's not a whole new language, it's just you that talks in a slight different way?
Very strange take. Are you saying that French and Spanish speakers are "petty" for not naturally understanding each other? That we just "talk in a slight different way"? You do realize native Spanish speakers don't magically understand spoken Portuguese or Catalan, right?
> Two distinct languages might be mutually intelligible
> It has been very conservative to Old Norse, possibly even more so than modern Icelandic.
Interesting. Note that mutual intelligibility is not symmetrical. Yes, Icelandic is very similar to ON in writing, but in pronunciation it changed a lot. Not sure how close Elfdalian is to it.
> Are you saying that French and Spanish speakers are "petty" for not naturally understanding each other?
No, no, I'm referring to the more nuanced divisions/dialects. Something like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Italy#/media/File...
Or the Langues d'Oil between their geographical neighbours.
> You do realize native Spanish speakers don't magically understand spoken Portuguese or Catalan, right?
But Portuguese speakers do understand Spanish better ;) http://spanishlinguist.us/2013/05/the-lopsided-mutual-intell...
> It has been very conservative to Old Norse, possibly even more so than modern Icelandic.
Interesting. Note that mutual intelligibility is not symmetrical. Yes, Icelandic is very similar to ON in writing, but in pronunciation it changed a lot. Not sure how close Elfdalian is to it.
> Are you saying that French and Spanish speakers are "petty" for not naturally understanding each other?
No, no, I'm referring to the more nuanced divisions/dialects. Something like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Italy#/media/File...
Or the Langues d'Oil between their geographical neighbours.
> You do realize native Spanish speakers don't magically understand spoken Portuguese or Catalan, right?
But Portuguese speakers do understand Spanish better ;) http://spanishlinguist.us/2013/05/the-lopsided-mutual-intell...
Would you consider Danish and Swedish separate languages or are they dialects?
This is one of the lowest mutual intelligibility pairs if you don't count Icelandic/Faroese, so different languages. Very similar, of course, but different (especially since Danish had more outside influence) - one source https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Percentages-of-correct-a...
Now is Elfdalic more or less similar than Danish to Swedish? Based on the article video it seems there's some marked difference but probably more understandable than Danish.
Now is Elfdalic more or less similar than Danish to Swedish? Based on the article video it seems there's some marked difference but probably more understandable than Danish.
As a Swede I understand Danish better than Elfdalic. Elfdalic sounds closer to Icelandic and Faroese. Elfdalic also has other characters in their alfabet.
I guess that has to do with that Elfdalic has been somewhat frozen in time, they speak closer to what we spoke in the region during the early middle ages.
It is true that how languages sound does not equate to closeness of relationship, Swedish and Norwegian are much closer in sound than Swedish and Danish, but Swedish and Danish both belong to the family of East Nordic languages and Norwegian, Icelandic and Faroese to West Nordic.
Here is Tennysons poem Ring out Wild Bells in
Elfdalic https://youtu.be/-3Q9kLgsHIs
Swedish https://youtu.be/TID9osnlsiY
I'm not a linguist so I don't have the expertise to say if Elfdalic should be classified as a separate language or not, scientifically it may very well be a dialect, but if some one spoke to me like in the video I wouldn't recognize it as Swedish or any of the common dialects Swedish.
I guess that has to do with that Elfdalic has been somewhat frozen in time, they speak closer to what we spoke in the region during the early middle ages.
It is true that how languages sound does not equate to closeness of relationship, Swedish and Norwegian are much closer in sound than Swedish and Danish, but Swedish and Danish both belong to the family of East Nordic languages and Norwegian, Icelandic and Faroese to West Nordic.
Here is Tennysons poem Ring out Wild Bells in
Elfdalic https://youtu.be/-3Q9kLgsHIs
Swedish https://youtu.be/TID9osnlsiY
I'm not a linguist so I don't have the expertise to say if Elfdalic should be classified as a separate language or not, scientifically it may very well be a dialect, but if some one spoke to me like in the video I wouldn't recognize it as Swedish or any of the common dialects Swedish.
Cool, thanks for explaining it. I only know Swedish very superficially so I couldn't really tell how Elfdalic it sounds to native speakers.
(I'm guessing exposure to Danish also makes Danish easier to understand for Swedes)
(I'm guessing exposure to Danish also makes Danish easier to understand for Swedes)
Duolingo has courses on Navajo, Gaelic, and even Klingon and High Valerian. Maybe they would be interested in helping this language as well?
Whenever I read of this particular language I think of all the other small dialects that could be considered separate languages but are not.
E.g. in the much smaller country of Denmark there are a lot of dialects that are not mutually intelligible. A person from the very north of Jutland would probably have a hard time understanding someone from the remote island of Bornholm.
There are dialects with two and three genders without considering these to be separate languages:
https://dialekt.ku.dk/dialektkort/#map=2 (in Danish)
Beware governmental efforts to "enliven" dying cultures: In Soviet Russia they tried to promote minority languages with rubles and quickly those organizations were occupied with creeps had nothing to do with minorities. When asked, this minority culture was their "hobby" and they were "busy" studying the language. This was starkly revealed, when in 1990 Finland invited certain Finnic minorities to move in. They were hired by Nokia for example and it was scary to watch, most of those Ivans had nothing to with Finland, they were swarthy Cossacks with no language skills. And now Finland has 30 000 Russian minority, who consider themselves Russians with their own schools and churches and shit.
> They were hired by Nokia for example and it was scary to watch, most of those Ivans had nothing to with Finland, they were swarthy Cossacks with no language skills. And now Finland has 30 000 Russian minority, who consider themselves Russians with their own schools and churches and shit.
This is a complete non-sequitur. You generally expect any neighboring countries to have ethnic minorities, especially in bordering territories, such as the Murmansk/St Petersburg regions and Finland.
Are you implying that somehow this community of Russian people in Finland exists exclusively because they somehow "scammed" their way into the country by pretending to know a language?
I find it fairly hard to believe that Nokia would hire "swarthy Cossacks with no language skills" and frankly your tone is pretty offensive towards what seems to be benign immigration.
This is a complete non-sequitur. You generally expect any neighboring countries to have ethnic minorities, especially in bordering territories, such as the Murmansk/St Petersburg regions and Finland.
Are you implying that somehow this community of Russian people in Finland exists exclusively because they somehow "scammed" their way into the country by pretending to know a language?
I find it fairly hard to believe that Nokia would hire "swarthy Cossacks with no language skills" and frankly your tone is pretty offensive towards what seems to be benign immigration.
Perhaps you are already aware, but if not: one of the tricks in the Russian playbook is to build an ethnic group within their neighbours, as a way of annexing parts.
Krimea for example was 'liberated' in 2014 from the yoke of Ukrainian oppression by Russian-ethnic groups, and 'spontaneously attached itself to Russia'. The 'rebels' all had uniforms, no insignias but SIGINT has analysed the names of the people talking over the radio and many were Russian army officers.
Imagine Mexico organizing radio talkshows and political groups for Mexicans to liberate themselves from the Gringo oppression. They demand that the official language be Mexican. That Mexican history be thought in school. More and more the mexicans in California are unhappy. Until one day there is a 'rebellion'. And the Mexican state 'generously comes to the aid of their poor opressed brethern'
Seen in that light, does the POV of GP make more sense?
Krimea for example was 'liberated' in 2014 from the yoke of Ukrainian oppression by Russian-ethnic groups, and 'spontaneously attached itself to Russia'. The 'rebels' all had uniforms, no insignias but SIGINT has analysed the names of the people talking over the radio and many were Russian army officers.
Imagine Mexico organizing radio talkshows and political groups for Mexicans to liberate themselves from the Gringo oppression. They demand that the official language be Mexican. That Mexican history be thought in school. More and more the mexicans in California are unhappy. Until one day there is a 'rebellion'. And the Mexican state 'generously comes to the aid of their poor opressed brethern'
Seen in that light, does the POV of GP make more sense?
There is a cost associated with misunderstanding.
If everybody spoke the same language wouldn't the world be a better place?
I think everybody agrees on that. But nobody can agree which language should be the chosen one.
If everybody spoke the same language wouldn't the world be a better place?
I think everybody agrees on that. But nobody can agree which language should be the chosen one.
This is very much American idea of "diversity". Drink Starbucks, watch corpo rainbows all day long and sing hallelujah. But remember you have to speak our language and have our way of life, that's the diversity after all!
In many cases you have to speak "our language" if you want "us" to understand you.
But that shouldn't mean that you "have to have our way of life", whatever that means.
Diversity is good I believe, as long as we can understand each other.
But that shouldn't mean that you "have to have our way of life", whatever that means.
Diversity is good I believe, as long as we can understand each other.
> I think everybody agrees on that.
I think everybody agrees that you don't mean everybody but most, many, or possibly only the people I associate with.
It takes only one counter example to disprove a statement of universality and I'm fairly sure I am not the only one to disagree with you.
I think everybody agrees that you don't mean everybody but most, many, or possibly only the people I associate with.
It takes only one counter example to disprove a statement of universality and I'm fairly sure I am not the only one to disagree with you.
So can you provide that counter example? It is hard if not impossible to agree with you if you don't say what it is you disagree with exactly.
I agree that surely there can be many people who disagree with my statements. But that is trivial and not very interesting. The question is why or how they disagree with it.
I agree that surely there can be many people who disagree with my statements. But that is trivial and not very interesting. The question is why or how they disagree with it.
Elfdalian. Isn't that a language they spoke in the Middle-Earth?
Well it's closely related to Old Norse and J.R.R Tolkien was a linguist and used Old Norse as an inspiration. So they might be from the same family.
For instance, in France, 39% of the population spoke Occitan in 1860. In 1993 the Occitan-speaking population was 7%, and that number is surely fewer now. This was the result of a concerted effort to create a French nation, enforced through the public education system by abusing schoolchildren until they hated their native tongue.[0]
Language is a crucial aspect of identity (but by no means the only one), and 19th century nationalists understood this. The first generation become ashamed to speak their language, the second generation never learn it, and the third become full-fledged assimilated members of the nation. If there is a different group of people in your country who resemble you but have a different identity, destroy their language and their religion, and now you are the same.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vergonha