Languages Disappearing, does it matter?

[Sadena Meti]

There was a story on the BBC World Service today that it is estimated that half of the 6000 recorded languages will vanish in the next 60 years.

My question is, does it really matter? Wouldn't we be better off with less languages? I once tried to work out what the minimum number of languages we could get by with was, and I got it down to about 10.

Or is it a travesty? A loss of culture? Is the extinction of a language like the extinction of a species? One difference is that new languages can be made (Interlingua, Esperanto) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_auxiliary_language

[graymouser]

Personally, I'm an Esperanto speaker (and I know some Interlingua as well) but the world I'd want to see would be one where different people have their own individual languages, but there is one international language that more or less everyone speaks. This would be the best compromise between the right of everyone to the culture that is wrapped up in their "own" language and the creation of a new, international, socialist culture.

For historical reasons I think a planned auxiliary language would be the best option for the shared language. This is because national languages have long histories of colonialism associated with them, and a new socialist world should reject as much of that history as it can. I'm not particularly optimistic about it being Esperanto, although I like that language quite a bit, because of certain flaws in the language - the special characters (ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ and ŭ) that aren't in any other language or some character sets, the accusative case and adjectival accord, the sexism in some of its word formation, and a few other problems. But I think the fundamental idea is a good one.

Globalization has a tendency to do away with separate languages, which as a language-lover I feel is something of a shame. They should be preserved if possible, but I think the best way to do it may be to use a global auxiliary language so that communities are not pressured to lose their mother tongue in favor of a more widely spoken language.

[Sadena Meti]

But if you give a fringe community a new international language to use, they will end up using it in business, internet, education, science, etc. What reason would they have to continue using their original language?

This is what is happening to the languages dying out. People aren't going dumb, they are just adopting more popular languages. Wouldn't a logical progression of that mean that eventually their children will adopt an even more popular one, until we reach a singularity?

[hatzel]

Which is better?

More languages
Fewer languagesFixed :)

[GallowsBird]

Well I would hate fewer languages as I am interested greatly in linguistics and derive great pleasure from the study; so yes I think it does matter.

Though I am not opposed to a "lingua franca" that we all should learn like Esperanto or Interlingua... though maybe a new one as they are slightly Eurocentric and I am not too keen on them as a whole myself. Not that my view on them matters too much as they are better than nothing.

[Princess Luna]

From a scholarly point of view having languages vanish is sad, but in practical terms it really does not matter.

[graymouser]

But if you give a fringe community a new international language to use, they will end up using it in business, internet, education, science, etc. What reason would they have to continue using their original language?

This is what is happening to the languages dying out. People aren't going dumb, they are just adopting more popular languages. Wouldn't a logical progression of that mean that eventually their children will adopt an even more popular one, until we reach a singularity?
Perhaps, eventually. But language and culture are deeply mixed up in each other, and as such should be preserved. What is really important is that education be more equitable, and each group preserves the right to its own language if they want to make the effort to preserve it - not that language be preserved no matter what in an ahistorical way.

[Sadena Meti]

Perhaps, eventually. But language and culture are deeply mixed up in each other, and as such should be preserved. What is really important is that education be more equitable, and each group preserves the right to its own language if they want to make the effort to preserve it - not that language be preserved no matter what in an ahistorical way.

Culture, and thus language, is developed in the same was as animal species are: through isolation and specialization. See the Galapagos Islands.

The world is no longer isolated. I can be anywhere within 24 hours. Information can be anywhere in a matter a seconds.

The world is also no longer specialized, thanks to globalization. We do things the same way everywhere, more and more. There are very few examples of a location or a situation where a unique word would be called for.

Thus the reason the Tower of Babel fell has been undone. The Tower is being rebuilt. Language, and indeed culture, will die out. I believe historical trends of the last few centuries prove this.

If one thinks this good or bad is matter of opinion.

If one thinks this true or false is a matter of analyzing the facts and trends.

[RGacky3]

It does'nt matter.

[Kamos]

I say, let all languages disappear except for one. (English, most likely.) We do not need these cultural barriers, having too many as it is. Cultural diversity is overrated, and a source of a lot of conflict. I challenge anyone to provide one good, objective reason why more languages would be better in this aspect.

[Scary Monster]

I had no idea there were even 6000 recorded languages :D

[#FF0000]

It doesn't matter but for some reason it just makes me sad to think of that.

[Viet Minh]

How much of an effect do you think languages have on your thought processes? I've always wondered if language affects the way people think to some degree, for instance the way different languages use tenses, syntax, sentence structure etc. Even things like simile must form associations in the mind.

[hatzel]

How much of an effect do you think languages have on your thought processes?If you feel obliged to know, I'm definitely one of those people who subscribes to the idea that one's thought process and perception is entirely decided by the language one's thinking in. That is to say, our reality is determined by the language we use to express it. We could even take a totally mundane example...slugs and snails, for instance. In English, we distinguish between slugs and snails, hence they have different names. Experience interacting with Germans, though, you'll find that many of them (if they aren't all that great at English) will call a slug a snail, because they're both commonly called 'Schnecke' in German. I'm sure there are other languages, though, in which there are a wider range of words in common parlance, perhaps different words for different colours or types of slug or snail. They might not consider different types of snails, then, to be variations on the same basic creature, despite their various similarities. This would be comparable to how we distinguish between lions and tigers, or dogs and foxes. I know it's a hideously boring example, but it's the most simple one I could think of the portray the point...

[agnixie]

I'm a huge believer in "the more, the better"
It's also absolutely impossible to reduce to one unless you also advocate eugenics of the deaf and thought police against everyone forever. A monolingual world would not end war, end the murderous aspects of nationalism, end factions, etc.

[Tenka]

I say, let all languages disappear except for one. (English, most likely.) We do not need these cultural barriers, having too many as it is. Cultural diversity is overrated, and a source of a lot of conflict. I challenge anyone to provide one good, objective reason why more languages would be better in this aspect.

Not everyone likes communicating in such an ugly, cumbersome language as English. Cultural Hegemony of the primarily English-speaking countries is the only reason the language is so widely spoken today. Other languages will always be around; though the number is sure to keep declining, it will never be just English.

[agnixie]

Not everyone likes communicating in such an ugly, cumbersome language as English. Cultural Hegemony of the primarily English-speaking countries is the only reason the language is so widely spoken today. Other languages will always be around; though the number is sure to keep declining, it will never be just English.

That's also an important point; a hegemonic language is never there for neutral reasons.

[Meridian]

After every other language has dissolved, only Danish will remain as an impenetrable core of meaningless guttural sounds. It is known.

[Viet Minh]

English must be the worst language to learn with totally random spelling, and even worse if you learn English very well and come to the UK, and are trying to find somewhere like Worcestershire (pronounced woostersher). And even if you go to sarf lahndan you wouldn't understand a word they said! Innit!! :p

[Tim Finnegan]

Not everyone likes communicating in such an ugly, cumbersome language as English.
Aye! Aabody kens that the finest o langages is the braw Scots leid, renoont throuchoot the warld as the maist bonny breed of speech that is kent tae humanitee! ;)

[JustMovement]

I challenge anyone to provide one good, objective reason why more languages would be better in this aspect.

Poetry. Unlike prose, it is largely untranslatable, and the poetic tradition of every language is like a distinct work of art. Personally I would find it very sad if no one could read Leopardi, for example, in its original form.

[Dumb]

If you feel obliged to know, I'm definitely one of those people who subscribes to the idea that one's thought process and perception is entirely decided by the language one's thinking in. That is to say, our reality is determined by the language we use to express it. We could even take a totally mundane example...slugs and snails, for instance. In English, we distinguish between slugs and snails, hence they have different names. Experience interacting with Germans, though, you'll find that many of them (if they aren't all that great at English) will call a slug a snail, because they're both commonly called 'Schnecke' in German. I'm sure there are other languages, though, in which there are a wider range of words in common parlance, perhaps different words for different colours or types of slug or snail. They might not consider different types of snails, then, to be variations on the same basic creature, despite their various similarities. This would be comparable to how we distinguish between lions and tigers, or dogs and foxes. I know it's a hideously boring example, but it's the most simple one I could think of the portray the point...

A really good example in English is the way we handle the word "offense" - "take offense," "give offense," etc. In English, it sounds like offense is an equal exchange, with the giver and the recipient playing equal roles with equal level of choice. This construct makes it sound like you can blame other people for feeling offended.

In contrast, my Spanish-speaking friends tell me that the only normal equivalent in Spanish is "me molesta" ("[It] bothers me") - same thing in most other European languages, apparently. The idea that offense is a system of equal exchange is particular to English.

[JustMovement]

Another point. This is from memory, so tell me if im getting it wrong, but Gramsci said that universal languages are associated with the ruling classes. During Feudalism, in Europe, Latin, was the language of the ruling classes (the aristocracy and the clergy), later during capitalism it became French, and then English, depending on the dominant imperialist power.
Linguistic diversity, especially regional ones and dialects which before were considered vulgar (literally, think of the "vulgate" bible ), are the heritage of working class culture and in my opinion should be preserved.

[maskerade]

Guys, what are you saying? This is terrible, and a warning of the upcoming ethnocide that will take place. Neoliberal globalization doesn't allow for the survival of distinct cultures; traditional' cultural groups are no longer able to control their own fate, they lack land rights or have most likely had their land stolen, and flock to slums around cities looking for work where their language isn't relevant.

I don't see why this is desirable at all. A socialist economy is not incompatible with cultural self-determination.

What if it was your language that was going extinct?

[Dumb]

Damn. Now I feel bad about going to teach in Honduras next year.

[Sadena Meti]

I had no idea there were even 6000 recorded languages :D

Some are spoken by 1, 2, 3 people.

[hatzel]

Some are spoken by 1, 2, 3 people.
http://www.prlog.org/11255497-123people-logo.jpg

[Sadena Meti]

:confused:

[Sadena Meti]

I don't see why this is desirable at all. A socialist economy is not incompatible with cultural self-determination.

What if it was your language that was going extinct?


Why should it matter? Why should language matter, it's ideas that matter. Why should culture matter, it's function that matters.

I mean, unless we are talking about something like NEWSPEAK where it is designed to control thought (read 1984 if you don't know what I'm talking about, and re-read 1984 if you do know what I'm talking about because it's that good).

[Plagueround]

Annihilating languages sounds like ruling class propaganda to me. But then, changing the arm you hit us with doesn't change the body.

Chahta iskitini anumpuli li. Chisnato?

[Plagueround]

Why should it matter? Why should language matter, it's ideas that matter. Why should culture matter, it's function that matters.


Words influence ideas. The very existence of play on word easily demonstrates that, and that's probably the least complex example.

[agnixie]

Annihilating languages sounds like ruling class propaganda to me. But then, changing the arm you hit us with doesn't change the body.

Chahta iskitini anumpuli li. Chisnato?

Yeah, I find the whole "language doesn't matter, let's cut to only those of the imperialist great powers" thing a bit painful. At least some of the anti-imperialists are being consistent here too.

[Tim Finnegan]

Neoliberal globalization doesn't allow for the survival of distinct cultures; traditional' cultural groups are no longer able to control their own fate, they lack land rights or have most likely had their land stolen, and flock to slums around cities looking for work where their language isn't relevant.
Just to be picky, I'm not sure if globalisation is the root cause of language death, at least not as such. It's a very well established phenomenon, most notably in Europe- France once had dozens of distinct languages, now it has only a handful- but also with a history in other regions such as China and the Levant. It generally correlates with the concentration of power over a wide geographic area with a monocultural ruling class, and while globalisation certainly aids the formation of an internationalised ruling class, it does not emerge independent from systems of oppression and exploitation that give rise to that class. More significant is the process of individualisation which emerges under certain modes of production and breaks down the concentrated peasant commune, obliging individual communication between the ruling class and the exploited classes, and reaches its peak under industrial capitalism when the working class become absolutely individualised. Globalisation is responsible insofar as it plays a role in spreading and entrenching industrial capitalism, but to single it out as an actor rather than a mechanic owes, I think, more to rhetorical fashion than class analysis.


Why should it matter? Why should language matter, it's ideas that matter. Why should culture matter, it's function that matters.
Out of interest, and if it's not too personal, would it happen that your ethnic/cultural background is primarily English-speaking Northern European? It often seems that those least interested in cultural preservation are those who stand to lose very little of themselves from cultural homogenisation.

[ComradeMan]

Why should it matter? Why should language matter, it's ideas that matter. Why should culture matter, it's function that matters.



Are you the ambassador of the Borg?:laugh:

[graymouser]

Why should it matter? Why should language matter, it's ideas that matter. Why should culture matter, it's function that matters.

I mean, unless we are talking about something like NEWSPEAK where it is designed to control thought (read 1984 if you don't know what I'm talking about, and re-read 1984 if you do know what I'm talking about because it's that good).
Yeah, this is not a healthy attitude to be taking, and it's one that strikes me as incongruous coming directly before an endorsement of George Orwell, who after all wrote not only the appendix to 1984 but "Politics and the English Language" as polemics against the loss of the cultural functions of language.

It's far too analytical an attitude to take toward something as wrapped up in emotion and feeling as language is. The "mother tongue" is something that humans have a deep, intrinsic connection with. Human life properly expresses itself through language, and indeed the violence done to the quality of life by the degradation of language is one of the themes of 1984.

Your statement that "it's function that matters" is simply not true. Humans don't create language, culture and so forth by accident; it's a fundamental part of who we are. And any vision of a better world has to embrace that rather than taking this pseudo-rationalist attitude. It is not a sign of maturity to wipe away language and culture but rather a sign that you have missed out on an appreciation of what is worth fighting for.

[Kamos]

Out of interest, and if it's not too personal, would it happen that your ethnic/cultural background is primarily English-speaking Northern European? It often seems that those least interested in cultural preservation are those who stand to lose very little of themselves from cultural homogenisation.

I beg to differ.


Your statement that "it's function that matters" is simply not true. Humans don't create language, culture and so forth by accident; it's a fundamental part of who we are. And any vision of a better world has to embrace that rather than taking this pseudo-rationalist attitude. It is not a sign of maturity to wipe away language and culture but rather a sign that you have missed out on an appreciation of what is worth fighting for.

Is it a fundamental part of who we are, now? I could totally imagine myself speaking English as my first language in a world where no other languages existed. Your statements ("a part of who we are", "what is worth fighting for") are abstract and hollow. Besides, once the whole world speaks one language (whichever it is), not including sign language for deaf people which I'm sure was only mentioned to nitpick, it would take only a few generations and everyone would get used to the situation. The difference? No more artificial cultural barriers to separate people. Finally, regarding poetry and such - it's a sacrifice we'd have to make. Works of art will be lost, but new ones will have to be conceived. On a forum which is explicitly for revolutionaries, it is astonishing how many people are unwilling to think about a radical change and cling to the inefficient language system. I'd expect to see this on a forum for conservatives.

[ComradeMan]

.....

It wouldn't work anyway. No sooner than everyone spoke the same language regional forms would appear and the whole process would start again- that's unless of course we had some kind of global monoculture. Language is also the product of the culture, that's why Italians have spaghetti and the rest of the world uses the Italian word and so on...

Whether we will have a global monoculture or Earthcivilisation and Gaian language etc in the future is another question- who knows?

[Viet Minh]

Languages will never die out unless there is a global plan to eradicate them, there are still speakers of Latin and Ancient Greek for example. What is happening however is languages are becoming conjoined, for example Spanglish which is fairly widely-spoken.

[Rooster]

I think it's kinda depressing when languages disappear through conquest and suppression. But language disappearance involves a lot more than just the language going out of fashion. It can point towards things like ethnic suppression so in that case, it does matter. The role of English as an international language points to the hegemony of US and British roles in industry and culture. I do think much most people learn English to help them getting work and I think that points towards such things as the destruction of their old social solidarities.

How many native English speakers can speak a second language fluently? When I travel, I notice that in the tourist parts, most people can speak English. Many English and Americans speak only a few words of the local language. Personally I think that's kinda rude. You're going to some country and you're not bothering to learn a few phrases.

I don't think language disappearance in itself is a good or bad thing. The reasons why some languages disappear or are suppressed does matter as I think it points to other deeper things.

[Tjis]

More or less languages is irrelevant. There are only two things that matter in a language, and those are expressive power (what you can easily express with it) and comprehension (who will understand it).

There is actually already a language widely understood all around the world: gesture language. Pointing, waving and mimicking can express your desire to eat or sleep no matter where in the world you are. But it's limited to elementary patterns of behavior that you will find everywhere. It's expression power is very limited.
Then there's the opposite end, languages that are only spoken by few but have great expressive power within some domain. Two professionals in some field might seem to be speaking English, using common English words, but still be incomprehensible to the uninitiated. This is because in order to communicate comfortably, many fields have assigned new meanings to old words. Programmers for example use words such as 'function', 'inheritance', and 'curry' in a different way than non-programmer English speaking people would. Though this is not enough to be considered a separate language, this is the same process which has diverged languages since the dawn of humanity.

The goal of expressive power and the goal of wide comprehensibility conflict. In any language, spoken, written or otherwise communicated, there's only a limited amount of 'symbols' (sounds, signs, gestures) available for use. The only way to express more concepts than the amount of symbols available is to combine them into 'words' (a particular arrangement of symbols). In any naturally spoken language, often used concepts tends to be assigned to short words, and less used concepts to longer words. But which concepts are expressed often and which are not is different in different places, cultures and social circles. Since language evolves naturally, it is not possible to give any word a fixed meaning without strictly enforcing this somehow. Instead, words will acquire new (related) meanings and drop meanings that are no longer relevant to its speakers. concepts will get shorter words when they are often used, or longer words when they are not. And since this is different in different places, cultures and social circles, languages diverge. The best one can hope for is universal comprehensibility for a limited set of relatively universal concepts (like the eating and sleeping in gesture language), but not great expressive power.

So there will always be a need for multiple languages spoken by minorities for their cultural or professional niches. But the reverse is not the case: multiple languages does not necessarily mean more expressive power. Nor does having fewer languages automatically mean better comprehensibility. As long as everyone is able to express what they need to express, all is well.

[Sadena Meti]

Languages will never die out unless there is a global plan to eradicate them, there are still speakers of Latin and Ancient Greek for example. What is happening however is languages are becoming conjoined, for example Spanglish which is fairly widely-spoken.

The news item that started this thread says that languages do die out naturally, because other languages overtake them. The kids learn the new language, use it more than the old language, and by the next generation they don't even teach the old language.

How many Native Americans can still speak their native tongues? (This is a bad example if you know a bit of history, but let's ignore that). I met a fair few "Natives" (one drop rule) in prison and none of them could speak a word. Admittedly this was not a statistically unbiased sample of people.

My bunkie, who was Hispanic, spoke only slightly more Spanish that I did, and I can barely order beer and ask where the bathroom is (two phrases that go together nicely).

[Viet Minh]

There is actually already a language widely understood all around the world: gesture language. Pointing, waving and mimicking can express your desire to eat or sleep no matter where in the world you are. But it's limited to elementary patterns of behavior that you will find everywhere. It's expression power is very limited.

And not always reliable, in one culture nodding your head (vertically) means no, shaking it horizonatlly means yes. And in Sicily putting out your thumb means 'I fucked your mother' - so hitchhikers have found out to their cost. But 96% of communication is non-verbal so they say.



Then there's the opposite end, languages that are only spoken by few but have great expressive power within some domain. Two professionals in some field might seem to be speaking English, using common English words, but still be incomprehensible to the uninitiated. This is because in order to communicate comfortably, many fields have assigned new meanings to old words. Programmers for example use words such as 'function', 'inheritance', and 'curry' in a different way than non-programmer English speaking people would. Though this is not enough to be considered a separate language, this is the same process which has diverged languages since the dawn of humanity.


Computational terminology drives me insane! Every program seems to have to invent a whole new word for something, or use a word that has no relation to it whatsoever.



So there will always be a need for multiple languages spoken by minorities for their cultural or professional niches. But the reverse is not the case: multiple languages does not necessarily mean more expressive power. Nor does having fewer languages automatically mean better comprehensibility. As long as everyone is able to express what they need to express, all is well.

The key there is (are?) loanwords, Karate works nicely rather than saying 'Empty Hand', Sake sounds better than rice wine.


The news item that started this thread says that languages do die out naturally, because other languages overtake them. The kids learn the new language, use it more than the old language, and by the next generation they don't even teach the old language.

Dont forget how much that language changes from generation to generation old bean. inb4 balderdash :lol:

[Tjis]

And not always reliable, in one culture nodding your head (vertically) means no, shaking it horizonatlly means yes. And in Sicily putting out your thumb means 'I fucked your mother' - so hitchhikers have found out to their cost. But 96% of communication is non-verbal so they say.

Obviously not every gesture is universal. But some are. If I point at a piece of food, then point at someone else, then mimic eating something, that's pretty universal for 'go ahead and eat that food'.
Making an angry face and screaming while pointing towards the exit of your residence is pretty universal for 'GET OUT!!!'.
Smiling and extending the arms to the side with palms visible to whoever you are trying to communicate with is universal for 'I am harmless'.

I could go on but I think the point is clear.

[Sadena Meti]

Making an angry face and screaming while pointing towards the exit of your residence is pretty universal for 'GET OUT!!!'.

Or "Close the damn door, it's freezing in here!"



Smiling and extending the arms to the side with palms visible to whoever you are trying to communicate with is universal for 'I am harmless'.


This one is universal, almost unbelievable so. Though they Israeli army still has been known to shoot at you (hopefully warning shots) just the same.

[graymouser]

Is it a fundamental part of who we are, now? I could totally imagine myself speaking English as my first language in a world where no other languages existed. Your statements ("a part of who we are", "what is worth fighting for") are abstract and hollow. Besides, once the whole world speaks one language (whichever it is), not including sign language for deaf people which I'm sure was only mentioned to nitpick, it would take only a few generations and everyone would get used to the situation. The difference? No more artificial cultural barriers to separate people. Finally, regarding poetry and such - it's a sacrifice we'd have to make. Works of art will be lost, but new ones will have to be conceived. On a forum which is explicitly for revolutionaries, it is astonishing how many people are unwilling to think about a radical change and cling to the inefficient language system. I'd expect to see this on a forum for conservatives.
What an arrogant lot of nonsense this is. First, it ignores my actual position - if you read my first post in this thread, which is only the third or fourth in, I am for global bilingualism - in favor of a strawman of "cling[ing] to the inefficient language system." That's plain dishonesty, and your demagogy about a "forum for conservatives" needs to be rejected with full force. Personally I think most languages would probably go to a status like that of Irish or Welsh: kept around and learned for aesthetic and cultural value but not necessarily the daily language of most people. Maybe 10% of people would want to learn them - but pretending that 100% would or even could only use the international language (especially a scenario as culturally supremacist as global English) is really idiotic.

Second, internationalism does not mean mass cultural annihilation. Such a thing would be unthinkable; a genuine internationalism must embrace the differences between people without allowing them to be used as dividing lines. The idea that all people should be homogenized is something that no revolutionary worth the term has ever embraced. Your view is a nightmarish dystopia hardly worth considering.

[Che a chara]

The preservation of languages and dialects is paramount to history, knowledge and self-determination.

[Tim Finnegan]

I beg to differ.
Traditionally, that phrase is followed by some elaboration. It doesn't really mean much by itself.

[hatzel]

Traditionally, that phrase is followed by some elaboration. It doesn't really mean much by itself.You're applying standard debate practice to RevLeft. The OI forum at that. Big mistake.

[Leonid Brozhnev]

Aye! Aabody kens that the finest o langages is the braw Scots leid, renoont throuchoot the warld as the maist bonny breed of speech that is kent tae humanitee! ;)

You sound like my goddamn granddad... :lol: Or should I say, 'granpaw'...

OT... I would've said fewer languages would be simpler to manage, or a universal language if people feel inclined to learn one. Although Its sad to see languages disappear, it's just something that happens, there's bigger problems out there than worrying about how people communicate, especially when most languages have been butchered by text and internet speak. Butchered? I meant 'altered'.

[Kamos]

Traditionally, that phrase is followed by some elaboration. It doesn't really mean much by itself.

Well, if it wasn't clear enough...

"It often seems that those least interested in cultural preservation are those who stand to lose very little of themselves from cultural homogenisation."
-> I'm hardly interested in cultural preservation, despite having quite a bit to lose from cultural homogenisation. I'm from Hungary, and you don't find Hungarian culture anywhere else.

[Sadena Meti]

There seems to be two phases in history which lead to the creation and destruction of language. When we, our truly ancient North African ancestors, the first Homo Sapiens, we spread out, we went to new place, we left each other behind. We became different. Then, historical ages passed. Slowly, we start coming back together. Roads, Roman roads, trade caravans. Languages begin to interact. Some become dominant for the sake of ease (usually of trade, diplomacy, etc.)

Now there are new roads. Roads in the sky, roads over wires. It's a game of musical chairs. Each time the music stops, one unlucky language drops out. The logical progression is that it will reduce and reduce until only a small number, who knows, maybe one, remains. It's a mathematical trend backed up by observed data.

In 60 years we'll have half as many languages. Perhaps in another 60 it will half again, down to 1500. In this progression, in 540 years there will be 12 languages left. In 720 years there will be 1 language. Except this isn't a linear progression, this is an exponential progression we are dealing with. Powers come into play. It will happen much faster. English is already the lingua franca globally, even though it should be Mandarin by numbers alone. The Chinese learn English, the English do not learn Chinese. Guess which language is going to vanish? Shall I mention Hindi? Another billion speakers. Few people learn Hindi, many Indians learn English.

The moral value of the loss of language is debatable. But what is not debatable is that it is going to happen.

Let me run a quick exponential growth (loss in this case). Inverse asymptote.
The first column is years, the second column is languages.

000 6000
060 3000
090 1500
105 750
113 375
116 188
118 94
119 47
120 23
120 12
120 6
120 3
120 1


120 years to 1 language. The mathematical assumption is that each halving of number of languages takes half as much time.

[Tim Finnegan]

Let me run a quick exponential growth (loss in this case). Inverse asymptote.
The first column is years, the second column is languages.

000 6000
060 3000
090 1500
105 750
113 375
116 188
118 94
119 47
120 23
120 12
120 6
120 3
120 1


120 years to 1 language. The mathematical assumption is that each halving of number of languages takes half as much time.
http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/files/2009/07/extrapolating.png

Point being, the mechanics of language death are far more complex than the relentless march of some as-yet unidentified over-culture.

[Sadena Meti]

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/files/2009/07/extrapolating.png

The cartoon is wrong. It is displaying a linear growth graph, so the punch line should be "By late next month, you'll have over sixty husbands."

[Tim Finnegan]

The cartoon is wrong. It is displaying a linear growth graph, so the punch line should be "By late next month, you'll have over sixty husbands."
Your contributions to this forum are highly valued.

[Sadena Meti]

Point being, the mechanics of language death are far more complex than the relentless march of some as-yet unidentified over-culture.

First of all, the over-culture isn't unidentified. It's business, science, technology, and the Internet.

Second, we have a factual assertion by an expert source that approximately 3000 of the approximately 6000 existing languages will be dead in 60 years. Most of these will be fringe languages and dialects. Portuguese isn't going anywhere (though I wish it would). If it wasn't for Brazil we could get rid of Portuguese, and convert Portugal to Castilian Spanish. It's only 10 million people. Unite the Iberian Peninsula under a common language. Sorry I'm rambling here, but these were some of my ideas when I was trying to get the world down to 10 languages.

[black magick hustla]

the working class has no culture

[Sadena Meti]

the working class has no culture
The working class has no culture. The working class has no language. The working class has no investment to lose.

[Sadena Meti]

Your contributions to this forum are highly valued.
I have a logical and analytical mind. I notice these things.

[Tim Finnegan]

First of all, the over-culture isn't unidentified. It's business, science, technology, and the Internet.
I don't think that you know what "culture" means.


Second, we have a factual assertion by an expert source that approximately 3000 of the approximately 6000 existing languages will be dead in 60 years. Most of these will be fringe languages and dialects. Portuguese isn't going anywhere (though I wish it would).
That's exactly my point. The steady decline which you suggested has nothing to do with the actual status of various languages. It's completely non-empirical.


If it wasn't for Brazil we could get rid of Portuguese, and convert Portugal to Castilian Spanish. It's only 10 million people. Unite the Iberian Peninsula under a common language. Sorry I'm rambling here, but these were some of my ideas when I was trying to get the world down to 10 languages.
And this is just you being weird.


The working class has no culture. The working class has no language. The working class has no investment to lose.
To quote Chris Morris, don't you think that's rather stupid?

[Plagueround]

the working class has no culture

Are you suggesting the working class will have no common forms of shared expression, language, values, and art? A homogenous society worldwide?

[Sadena Meti]

Are you suggesting the working class will have no common forms of shared expression, language, values, and art?


the working class has no culture

In its current state, is what I think he was getting at. The globally oppressed working class has nothing. Except, to quote Marx, chains.

[Plagueround]

How many Native Americans can still speak their native tongues? (This is a bad example if you know a bit of history, but let's ignore that). I met a fair few "Natives" (one drop rule) in prison and none of them could speak a word. Admittedly this was not a statistically unbiased sample of people.


I think we're somewhat of a different case than languages that are just vanishing because they aren't being used. Language reclamation has become a top priority on just about every reservation and territory, tribal schools are attempting to reverse the damage the boarding schools did, and there is a renewed interest in protecting and practicing our culture instead of just accepting the dominant culture. But then, i don't know if that's just because we were pushed against for so long.

Ish-nosekat nowa.

[graymouser]

In its current state, is what I think he was getting at. The globally oppressed working class has nothing. Except, to quote Marx, chains.
That's referring to productive property, not cultural expression. Similarly, "workers have no country" does not mean that workers have no culture. Particularly workers when they fight develop a counter-culture of their own, with their own songs, images, stories and ideas. Is "L'Internationale" nothing? "A las barricadas"? "The Preacher and the Slave"? The "Red Wedge" picture in my avatar? These are all real examples of culture held exclusively by the working class. This kind of pseudo-rational reductivism does nothing to build a functional left that can fight back.

[Thirsty Crow]

The poll question is just...ridiculous.

Firstly, in a historical epoch of global integration (economic and cultural), communication is a very important affair. Therefore, a common language is more or less necessary.
Nowadays, it is the English language that fulfills this role, and the root causes of this fact are related to a more sinister fact - that of imperialism-driven capitalism, which has also been producing a form of a monoculture (although, this point is debatable), and we can easily call this process "cultural imperialism".

Now, when we speculate on this same issue within the context of a hypothetical post-capitalist - communist - world order, we are also forced to conclude that a common language will be necessary in one form or another.
But the process of language death, which is taking place right now, is not, in my opinion, necessary in order that this linguistic situation is facilitated. More precisely, this process does not and cannot guarantee the development of a unity in militancy of the global proletariat. Local and regional cultures, and work on their preservation, are no threat for the struggle for communism, under one condition: that they are divorced, if necessary, from any kind of nationalism.

Within hypothetical global communist society/societies, I see no problem with cultural work which would aim at preserving languages and specific cultural forms (as I firmly believe that associated producers will be able and willing to engage critically with their "national" history and historical culture). Cultural diversity is very much compatible with global communism, in my opinion.

When it comes to the before mentioned common language, maybe people will agree to follow the example of Esperanto: every group of related languages may form "their Esperanto" (since, let's say, some African language groups are, in structure, radically different from Germanic languages).

[agnixie]

There seems to be two phases in history which lead to the creation and destruction of language. When we, our truly ancient North African ancestors, the first Homo Sapiens, we spread out, we went to new place, we left each other behind. We became different. Then, historical ages passed. Slowly, we start coming back together. Roads, Roman roads, trade caravans. Languages begin to interact. Some become dominant for the sake of ease (usually of trade, diplomacy, etc.)

Now there are new roads. Roads in the sky, roads over wires. It's a game of musical chairs. Each time the music stops, one unlucky language drops out. The logical progression is that it will reduce and reduce until only a small number, who knows, maybe one, remains. It's a mathematical trend backed up by observed data.

In 60 years we'll have half as many languages. Perhaps in another 60 it will half again, down to 1500. In this progression, in 540 years there will be 12 languages left. In 720 years there will be 1 language. Except this isn't a linear progression, this is an exponential progression we are dealing with. Powers come into play. It will happen much faster. English is already the lingua franca globally, even though it should be Mandarin by numbers alone. The Chinese learn English, the English do not learn Chinese. Guess which language is going to vanish? Shall I mention Hindi? Another billion speakers. Few people learn Hindi, many Indians learn English.

The moral value of the loss of language is debatable. But what is not debatable is that it is going to happen.

Let me run a quick exponential growth (loss in this case). Inverse asymptote.
The first column is years, the second column is languages.

000 6000
060 3000
090 1500
105 750
113 375
116 188
118 94
119 47
120 23
120 12
120 6
120 3
120 1


120 years to 1 language. The mathematical assumption is that each halving of number of languages takes half as much time.

You just made every linguist on the board twitch. This is not only bad statistics, this is bad linguistics. This is to linguistic theory what Dan Brown novels are to historical novels. You understand nothing of language change, evolution, formation, etc.

[Sadena Meti]

The poll question is just...ridiculous.

Firstly, in a historical epoch of global integration (economic and cultural), communication is a very important affair. Therefore, a common language is more or less necessary.
Thank you.


Nowadays, it is the English language that fulfills this role, and the root causes of this fact are related to a more sinister fact - that of imperialism-driven capitalism, which has also been producing a form of a monoculture (although, this point is debatable), and we can easily call this process "cultural imperialism". Perhaps a bad thing, but an inevitable thing.


When it comes to the before mentioned common language, maybe people will agree to follow the example of Esperanto: every group of related languages may form "their Esperanto" (since, let's say, some African language groups are, in structure, radically different from Germanic languages).This was kind of what I was working on back in my pontifications on cutting down the number of languages. 1. Latin Spanish for Central and South American. 2. English for USA, Canada and England (and the Falkland Islands for some bloody reason). 3. Russian for (guess) Russia and some of eastern Europe. 4. Mandarin for China. They have GOT to get rid of all those dialects.

Standard Chinese or Mandarin (Putonghua, based on the Beijing dialect) (official), Yue (Cantonese), Wu (Shanghainese), Minbei (Fuzhou), Minnan (Hokkien-Taiwanese), Xiang, Gan, Hakka dialects, minority languages (see Ethnic groups entry)
note: Mongolian is official in Nei Mongol, Uighur is official in Xinjiang Uygur, and Tibetan is official in Xizang (Tibet)5. Hindi for India. 6. Esperanto for Europe and Scandinavia. 7. Arabic or the Near East, Middle East, and North Africa. And then 8, 9, and 10 for Africa "Esperantos". Eventually 8, 9, and 10 could be consolidated.

[Thirsty Crow]

Thank you.

I don't think you should thank me since you didn't interpret what I said correctly (due to your ridiculous "mathematical reductionism").

The number of languages does not need cutting down. Various languages can side by side with an agreed upon common language for a given geographical and cultural area.
You have no right in demanding that a good number of languages go into oblivion (and what about their speakers, what if they do not agree with your plan?) since cultural and linguistic diversity need not stand in the way of global integration within a hypothetical communist society.

[agnixie]

Let's dissect



Perhaps a bad thing, but an inevitable thing.
No, your maths sleight of hand was nonsense by someone who knows fuck all about how languages work.



This was kind of what I was working on back in my pontifications on cutting down the number of languages. Pontificating on ignorance is still ignorance.



1. Latin Spanish
No such thing

2. English for USA, Canada and England (and the Falkland Islands for some bloody reason).
Not much of a change, it's just cementing the effects of 5 centuries of violent imperialism after all. Applies also to number 1, but number one has the added problem that latin spanish doesn't exist.



3. Russian for (guess) Russia and some of eastern Europe.
Because all these slavic languages are all the same, duh.


4. Mandarin for China.

A dialect only spoken by half the country.


5. Hindi for India.

A quick check on a map of the states of India would tell you it's not even the language of a third of the population.


6. Esperanto for Europe and Scandinavia.

With only 15 million speakers? That doesn't follow any trend, doesn't make any sense, and while esperanto is a nice auxiliary language, it was never intended as more than that.


7. Arabic or the Near East, Middle East, and North Africa.

I'm sure the Persians of Afghanistan and iran, and the various turkic peoples, will be absolutely delighted. Along with, obviously, the Israelis.



And then 8, 9, and 10 for Africa "Esperantos". Eventually 8, 9, and 10 could be consolidated.
On what basis do you even judge for Africa?

Also, you completely forget southeast asia , Japan, etc. Your pontifications have nothing to do with linguistics of any sort, just some random futurology bullshit. If I had to compare it to other futurology project, your idea is basically about as scientifically sound as Atlantropa. Glorious cultural imperialism in the name of... what exactly? It serves no purpose whatsoever.

[Sadena Meti]

You have no right in demanding that a good number of languages go into oblivion (and what about their speakers, what if they do not agree with your plan?) since cultural and linguistic diversity need not stand in the way of global integration within a hypothetical communist society.

This has nothing to do with a demand, this has to do with evolution. Natural selection! The most fit survives. Languages will vanish at an ever increasing rate if we like it or not (exponential laws apply to many things, even bacterial growth), if it is "moral" or not, if it is "good" or not.

[agnixie]

this has nothing to do with a demand, this has to do with evolution. Natural selection! The most fit survives. Languages will vanish at an ever increasing rate if we like it or not (exponential laws apply to many things, even bacterial growth), if it is "moral" or not, if it is "good" or not.

Evolution doesn't work this way! Especially not language evolution.

[Thirsty Crow]

This has nothing to do with a demand, this has to do with evolution. Natural selection! The most fit survives. Languages will vanish at an ever increasing rate if we like it or not (exponential laws apply to many things, even bacterial growth), if it is "moral" or not, if it is "good" or not.
You're quite deluded if you think that cultural work is futile when it comes to language death
Furthermore, you're completely deluded if "exponential laws" which apply to bacterial growth also apply, as a blind force which cannot be tempered with, to language change.

[Sadena Meti]

No, your maths sleight of hand

I laid out all the rules for the calculations. How is that slight of hand?


No such thing (Latin Spanish)Latin American Spanish is very distinct from Castilian Spanish. Who's ignorant of linguistics now?


A dialect (Mandarin) only spoken by half the country.A dialect spoken as a PRIMARY language by half the country. To say nothing of SECONDARY languages.


A quick check on a map of the states of India would tell you it's not even the language of a third of the population.See above.


With only 15 million speakers? That doesn't follow any trend, doesn't make any sense, and while Esperanto is a nice auxiliary language, it was never intended as more than that.Esperanto was designed for ease of adoption. Right now the lingua franca in the EU is English and French. We could easily choose one of those instead of Esperanto if you like.


I'm sure the Persians of Afghanistan and iran, and the various turkic peoples, will be absolutely delighted. Along with, obviously, the Israelis.Again, see above statement about PRIMARY and SECONDARY languages. Arabic is widespread throughout the near and middle east. As for the Israelis, I think that the 7,473,052 of them deserve to be inconvenienced.


On what basis do you even judge for Africa?On research and reading. Regional similarities. There are linguistic exceptions, like South Africa, but the rest can be grouped together by language GROUPS.


Also, you completely forget southeast AsiaProbably Arabic for Indonesia due to intensely strong Muslim influence, and Mandarin for the rest of southeast Asia


JapanFuck. I did forget Japan. Fuck. I dunno, English? It is a dominant secondary language there.

[Thirsty Crow]

You're fucking crazy, that's for sure.
Maybe you should open a supermarket of potential "primary" (meaning: institutionally, politically imposed dialect) languages in which people may choose from a whole variety of choices without any regard to concrete linguistic situations and langauge history.

[agnixie]

I laid out all the rules for the calculations. How is that slight of hand?
The rules for your calculations were utter, complete nonsense with shit fuck all to do with linguistics. Starting from that point, everything else you said flowed in the same direction.



Latin American Spanish is very distinct from Castilian Spanish. Who's ignorant of linguistics now?

There is no one dialect of spanish called latin american spanish. There are many with diverging degrees of mutual intelligibility. Nice try pulling that stunt though.



On research and reading. Regional similarities. There are linguistic exceptions, like South Africa, but the rest can be grouped together by language GROUPS.
Your research and reading seems awfully limited.



Probably Arabic for Indonesia due to intensely strong Muslim influence, and Mandarin for the rest of southeast Asia

The average muslim outside of the arab countries can only string enough arab together to sound vaguely coherent while praying.



Fuck. I did forget Japan. Fuck. I dunno, English? It is a dominant secondary language there.
Yeah about as much as english in India and South Africa (and by that I mean :laugh: )

[Sadena Meti]

Evolution doesn't work this way! Especially not language evolution.
The hell it doesn't!

Evolution works that way on species, languages, even ideas. Even MP3 files on file sharing networks (long story but interesting).

Proof, adoption of words.

A foreign word comes into contact with an existing language. If it describes the concept better, it is adopted. It survives, the replaced words die out. They are out competed.

[agnixie]

The hell it doesn't!

Evolution works that way on species, languages, even ideas. Even MP3 files on file sharing networks (long story but interesting).

Proof, adoption of words.

A foreign word comes into contact with an existing language. If it describes the concept better, it is adopted. It survives, the replaced words die out. They are out competed.

No, actually it doesn't work that way. Meaning change massively even with borrowings. A ton of borrowed words have meanings entirely different from their foreign root. You're basically going for "memeology". And no, it's not teleological.

[Thirsty Crow]

The hell it doesn't!

Evolution works that way on species, languages, even ideas. Even MP3 files on file sharing networks (long story but interesting).

Proof, adoption of words.

A foreign word comes into contact with an existing language. If it describes the concept better, it is adopted. It survives, the replaced words die out. They are out competed.

You literally have no idea what you're talking about.

Borrowing does not involve a "struggle" of different lexical items. It rather has something to do with the fact that some phenomena of the technical civilization have been given a name in a specific language, which then is transposed, in one way or another, into various other languages which didn't have a lexical item designating this phenomena before.


No, actually it doesn't work that way. Meaning change massively even with borrowings. A ton of borrowed words have meanings entirely different from their foreign root. You're basically going for "memeology". And no, it's not teleological.That is another aspect of borrowing, and yet again Sadena, you are proven ignorant as hell.

YOu have no idea what you're talking about, really.

[Sadena Meti]

Let's look at some raw numbers, shall we:


Mandarin Chinese 12.65%, Spanish 4.93%, English 4.91%, Arabic 3.31%, Hindi 2.73%, Bengali 2.71%, Portuguese 2.67%, Russian 2.16%, Japanese 1.83%, Standard German 1.35%, Javanese 1.27% (2008 est.)
note: percents are for "first language" speakers only

40.55% of the world speaks 11 languages as FIRST LANGUAGES. God knows what the stats would be if we included second languages.

More raw numbers on English:


First language: 309–400 million
Second language: 199 million–1.4 billion
Overall: 500 million–1.8 billion

So you are talking about almost a quarter to a third of the world speaking English TODAY.

[Sadena Meti]

Finally found some good data on SECONDARY speakers. But it is too much to post, so I'll link first and then flood.

http://www.vistawide.com/languages/top_30_languages.htm


Language approximate # of speakers Where is it spoken as an official language?
1. Mandarin Chinese NATIVE: 873 million
2nd: 178 million
TOTAL: 1.051 billion OFFICIAL: People's Republic of China, Republic of China, Singapore
2. Hindi NATIVE: 370 million
2nd:120 million
TOTAL: 490 million OFFICIAL: India, Fiji
3. Spanish (http://www.vistawide.com/spanish/spanish.htm) NATIVE: 350 million
2nd: 70 million
TOTAL: 420 million OFFICIAL: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Spain, United States (New Mexico, Puerto Rico, Uruguay, Venezuela
4. English NATIVE: 340 million
TOTAL: 510 million OFFICIAL: Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, The Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belize, Botswana, Brunei, Cameroon, Canada, Dominica, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Fiji, The Gambia, Ghana, Grenada, Guyana, Hong Kong (People's Republic of China), India, Ireland, Jamaica, Kenya, Kiribati, Lesotho, Liberia, Malawi, Maldives, Malta, Marshall Islands, Maritius, Micronesia, Namibia, Nauru, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevs, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Solomon Islands, Somolia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Swaziland, Tanzania, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu, Uganda, United Kingdom, United States, Vanuatu, Zambia, Zimbabwe.
5. Arabic (http://www.vistawide.com/arabic/arabic.htm) NATIVE: 206 million
2nd: 24 million
TOTAL: 230 million
[World Almanac est. total 255 million] OFFICIAL: Modern Standard Arabic: Algeria, Bahrain, Chad, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Niger, Oman, Palestinian Territories, Quatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, Western Sahara, Yemen. | Hasaniya Arabic: Mauritania, Senegal
NATIONAL: Mali
Note: These figures combine all the varieties of Arabic. Some data sources, e.g. CIA World Fact Book, World Almanac, Ethnologue, treat these varieties as separate languages.
6. Portuguese NATIVE: 203 million
2nd: 10 million
TOTAL: 213 million OFFICIAL: Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, East Timor, Guinea-Bissau, Macau (People's Republic of China), Mozambique, Portugal, São Tomé e Príncipe.
7. Bengali NATIVE: 196 million
TOTAL: 215 million OFFICIAL: Bangladesh, India (Tripura, West Bengal)
8. Russian NATIVE: 145 million
2nd: 110 million
TOTAL: 255 million OFFICIAL: Abkhazia (part of Georgia), Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyyrgyzstan, Russia, Transnistria (part of Moldova).
9. Japanese (http://www.vistawide.com/japanese/japanese.htm) NATIVE: 126 million
2nd: 1 million
TOTAL: 127 million OFFICIAL: Japan, Palau
10. German (http://www.vistawide.com/german/german.htm) NATIVE: 101 million
2nd: 128 million
TOTAL: 229 million OFFICIAL: Austria, Belgium, Germany, Italy (South Tyrol), Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Poland, Siwtzerland
Language # of speakers Where is it spoken as an official language?
11. Panjabi Western: 60 million
Eastern: 28 million
TOTAL: 88 million OFFICIAL: India (Punjab)
NATIONAL: Pakistan
12. Javanese 76 million OFFICIAL: Indonesia (esp. Java)
13. Korean 71 million OFFICIAL: North Korea, South Korea
14. Vietnamese NATIVE: 70 million
2nd: 16 million
TOTAL: 86 million OFFICIAL: Vietnam
15. Telugu NATIVE: 70 million
2nd: 5 million
TOTAL: 75 million OFFICIAL: India (Andhra Pradesh)
16. Marathi NATIVE: 68 million
2nd: 3 million
TOTAL: 71 million OFFICIAL: India (Daman and Diu, Goa, Maharashtra)
17. Tamil NATIVE: 68 million
2nd: 9 million
TOTAL: 77 million OFFICIAL: India (Tamil Nadu), Singapore, Sri Lanka
18. French (http://www.vistawide.com/french/french.htm) NATIVE: 67 million
2nd: 63 million
TOTAL: 130 million OFFICIAL or NATIONAL: Belgium, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Canada, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo-Brazzaville, Congo-Kinshasa, Côte d'Ivoire, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, France, French Polynesia, Gabon, Guernsey, Guinea, Haiti, India (Karikal, Pondicherry), Italy, Jersey, Lebanon, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Mali, Martinique, Mauritius, Mayotte, Monaco, New Caledonia, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, Seychelles, Switzerland, Togo, United States (Louisiana), Vanuatu.
19. Urdu NATIVE: 61 million
2nd: 43 million
TOTAL: 104 million OFFICIAL: India (Jammu and Kashmir), Pakistan.
20. Italian (http://www.vistawide.com/italian/italian.htm) 61 million OFFICIAL: Croatia (Istria Country), Italy, San Marino, Slovenia, Switzerland.
Language # of speakers Where is it spoken as an official language?
21. Turkish NATIVE: 60 million
2nd: 15 million
TOTAL: 75 million OFFICIAL: Bulgaria (Kurdzhali Province and areas of South and East Bulgaria), Cyprus, Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, Turkey
22. Persian 54 million OFFICIAL: Afghanistan, Iran, Tajikistan.
23. Gujarati 46 million OFFICIAL: India (Gujarat, Daman and Diu, Dadra and Nagar Haveli).
24. Polish 46 million OFFICIAL: Poland
25. Ukrainian 39 million OFFICIAL: Ukraine, Transnistria (part of Moldova).
26. Malayalam 37 million OFFICIAL: India (Kerala, Lakshadweep, Mahe).
27. Kannada NATIVE: 35 million
2nd: 9 million
TOTAL: 44 million OFFICIAL: India (Karnataka).
28. Oriya 32 million OFFICIAL: India (Orissa).
29. Burmese NATIVE: 32 million
2nd: 10 million
TOTAL: 42 million OFFICIAL: Myanmar.
30. Thai NATIVE: 20 million
2nd: 40 million
TOTAL: 60 million OFFICIAL: Thailand.

[Sadena Meti]

Now I did the math on the totals in the last post, and it comes out to 5,079 million people speaking 30 languages, as Primary or Secondary. That's 73% of the world. Which leaves 27% speaking the other 5,970 languages.

Now, given that back in the prehistoric days there were functionally an unlimited number of languages, imagine the situation then and the situation now as a pie chart. Do you see a trend? A million tiny slices, to 30 big slices and 6000 tiny ones.

[agnixie]

Now I did the math on the totals in the last post, and it comes out to 5,079 million people speaking 30 languages, as Primary or Secondary. That's 73% of the world. Which leaves 27% speaking the other 5,970 languages.

Most of these stats are largely falsified by the governments of these countries. The native population for french is underestimated, ironically (usually it's wildly overestimated) - it ignores Quebec, Wallonia, French Switzerland. The 2nd language part, however, ignores parts of the former french colonies.

[Sadena Meti]

So you are saying there should be even more of the colonial languages. Which would just make my point stronger.

[Sadena Meti]

Oh, and as an afterthought, whoever hit my rep (I can't see who because I'm restricted) for "Languages Disappearing,... (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=2087864#post2087864) 23rd April 2011 06:42 latent cultural imperialism.
How can I be a cultural imperialist when I abhor all culture? I don't care who wins the language wars, I just look forward to a global language.

[Reznov]

I do not believe it matters personally. The more workers can speak the same language and unite, the more we can internationally interact and work with fellow proletarians.

Although, I believe learning your ancestral or familial language is up to the individual, and that individual has a right to study and learn it of course (Keep books printed in the original language etc...)

[Sadena Meti]

It seems that most (I'll be brave and say 2/3rds) of the posters (friends and enemies alike) have to some degree agreed that a single international language is desirable/inevitable. I am not saying they have agreed that the extinction of existing languages is favorable.

The question is if you have this language that everyone speaks, what is the rational for preserving the other ones? Fun? I can write in runes, and I do so when I don't want people to be able to read what I'm writing. In fact I used to have a stack of diaries all in runic which baffled the police. Sadly I also had one in English which had some disturbing things written in it. My Little Black Book is entirely in runic. I'm getting off the point. There's no need for anyone to be able to produce runic writings. There is a need for scholars to be able to read runic writings, but we are talking about less than 1/10 of 1% of the population needing to translate historical or cultural documents into the global language.

So I ask, if we had a serviceable global language that 100% of the world spoke fluently, what is going to keep the other languages alive?

[Tim Finnegan]

I do not believe it matters personally. The more workers can speak the same language and unite, the more we can internationally interact and work with fellow proletarians.
"Second language" and "lingua franca" are both phrases that should come bounding into view at this point.

[Sadena Meti]

"Second language" and "lingua franca" are both phrases that should come bounding into view at this point.
But if the language is used universally, why make it the SECOND language.

Let me give you an example of when using a more important language as a second language is harmful. Real cases. Child of first family of immigrants speaks X language at home and Y language at school. Second family of immigrants speaks Y language at home to encourage integration and thus also Y language at school. Which child do you think does better at school? The second.

[Tim Finnegan]

How can I be a cultural imperialist when I abhor all culture? I don't care who wins the language wars, I just look forward to a global language.
Yeah, you say that, but we all know damn well that the dissolution of regional culture in effect means the at least hemispheric hegemony of white, Anglo-American culture, and, wouldn't you know, that happens to be your own.

As I've said previously, it's easy to argue for global assimilation if you're already taken as the norm.


But if the language is used universally, why make it the SECOND language.
Because it doesn't have to be the either/or choice you present it as. You can have both international communicative ease and cultural autonomy, if you put in the effort.


Let me give you an example of when using a more important language as a second language is harmful. Real cases. Child of first family of immigrants speaks X language at home and Y language at school. Second family of immigrants speaks Y language at home to encourage integration and thus also Y language at school. Which child do you think does better at school? The second.
Can I see some statistics for that?

[Sadena Meti]

As I've said previously, it's easy to argue for global assimilation if you're already taken as the norm.
It's also easy to argue for it if you've already given everything up. I'm a mutt.

[agnixie]

But if the language is used universally, why make it the SECOND language.


Just, no. There are such things as stable bilingualism and diglossia. You keep thinking your ideas are brilliant, but you show a very distinct lack of clue where it comes to the subject at hand. Languages are not cultivated bacteria, they're a social phenomenon.

[Sadena Meti]

Can I see some statistics for that?
Google "academic performance of ESL students". Most of the results that are good are PDFs so I can't paste them.

[Sadena Meti]

Just, no. There are such things as stable bilingualism and diglossia. You keep thinking your ideas are brilliant, but you show a very distinct lack of clue.

Monkeys and Lemurs

When something comes along that is so much better than the competition, there is no reason for the competition to exist, and it is often destroyed, as the lemurs were (except on Madagascar which had broken off from Africa before the monkeys evolved).

P.S. Going offline for a while.

[agnixie]

Monkeys and Lemurs

When something comes along that is so much better than the competition, there is no reason for the competition to exist, and it is often destroyed, as the lemurs were (except on Madagascar which had broken off from Africa before the monkeys evolved).

P.S. Going offline for a while.

This is not how languages work. Languages do not evolve like species. Social circumstances can affect them and they don't fill niches for the most part. The comparison is beyond absurd.

[MarxSchmarx]

Language preservationists have done a terrible, terrible job at publicizing their cause. This thread is a case in point.

The heritage argument is not exactly impressive. On the whole I think language as such are benign (as opposed to religion), but elders have little moral imperative to coerce individual young people to embrace their ancestor's language - especially when the cost of doing so is to deprive young people either of money spent on more pressing concerns or their mastery of a language that is key to their material well being.

So one concern is that languages are repositories of how people interacted with their environment. Language diversity reflects the diverse interactions people have with their environment.

In Australia for example there is a language called Guugu Yimithirr with tons of words for directions (as in south south west etc..), and instead of asking "How are you doing?" the speakers of this language ask "In which direction are you going?" Apparently people who speak this language and use it on a daily basis orient themselves differently and think about their relation to the external world differently:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/magazine/29language-t.html

If the language we use affects how we interact with our surroundings, then losing a language means that we have one less perspective we can bring to the table to solve problems.

At least as I see it, this is the most direct, utilitarian case for language preservation.

Having said that, I find myself agreeing with Sadena Meti on this.

Even these arguments don't strike me as a terribly impressive case for language preservation - rather, it seems more like an academic curiosity, one whose maintenance comes at enormous social cost that is hard to justify. After all, scientific and technical progress does benefit from "diversity" but only up to a point. Largely monolingual societies like Japan and even the UK (which until comparatively recently had been becoming steadily more monolingual) have shown that this kind of progress in practical matters does not require linguistic diversity. While linguistic diversity may accelerate the progress, the cost of maintaining it can be prohibitively large. I think for example the Irish curriculum is needlessly burdened by the mastery of Irish required of its pupils, and South Korea has been phasing out a fragment of its linguistic heritage - the archaic Hwanji system - as being a needless drain on resources.

Finally a language could be catalogued and stored and dusted off as necessary. More often than not, I imagine hiring a wee bit more linguists and anthropologists would suffice to maintain the insights a language can bring.

Nevertheless it is a subject about which I don't know much about, and I'm sure there are better arguments for language preservation out there. At least this thread has stimulated my interest in pursuing this case a bit further.

[Thirsty Crow]

Because it doesn't have to be the either/or choice you present it as. You can have both international communicative ease and cultural autonomy, if you put in the effort.

I think this is the most important point which is beyond Sadena's understanding, unfortunately.

[hatzel]

Let me give you an example of when using a more important language as a second language is harmful. Real cases. Child of first family of immigrants speaks X language at home and Y language at school. Second family of immigrants speaks Y language at home to encourage integration and thus also Y language at school. Which child do you think does better at school? The second.Why is the problem in this case people speaking other languages, rather than with the education system? Since when did we start saying 'if you're going to come to our darling English (for example)-speaking land, YOU'D BETTER SPEAK ENGLISH!!!', as if there was some unbreakable tie between the soil and the culture of those who live on it? Isn't it ever so slightly non-leftist to attempt to legitimise immigrant disadvantage by blaming the migrants themselves for not instantly adopting the culture of their new masters, rather than saying that perhaps schools should be set up to teach in minority languages, or even the whole education system itself should be reformed? Oh, wait, I remember now...you're restricted, which presumably means that we don't have to expect you to come out with anything that doesn't stink of national chauvinism from a greatly privileged position...:thumbdown:

[agnixie]

Language preservationists have done a terrible, terrible job at publicizing their cause. This thread is a case in point.

The heritage argument is not exactly impressive. On the whole I think language as such are benign (as opposed to religion), but elders have little moral imperative to coerce individual young people to embrace their ancestor's language - especially when the cost of doing so is to deprive young people either of money spent on more pressing concerns or their mastery of a language that is key to their material well being.


Actually, the situation tends to be the reverse. It's the younger generations pushing the elders to teach them. At least in native american communities.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

Some are spoken by 1, 2, 3 people.

What did Che say? "One, two, many Vietnams..." How about, "1, 2, many speakers of an endangered language"

[Rooster]

How many native English speakers can speak a second language fluently? Just out of curiosity.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

I have not read all the posts but it seems Sadena Meti is leaving out the development of creoles, some of which today are spoken by millions of people. As the world continues to "globalise" under either capitalism or socialism, we can expect much more cultural hybridization, and this will be reflected in languages. This has happened many times in the past. From around the 16th to the early 19th century or so there was a fascinating lingua franca spoken though out the Mediterranean, more or less based on Italian but with huge mixtures of Spanish, Arabic, English, and other tongues. In the move Blade Runner, set in 2020 (obviously dated) there were two hybrid languages spoken in southern California. We are currently witnessing the development of a language in Hawaii, based on English but w/huge influences from Hawaiian, Japanese, Tagalog,and Cantonese.I've been told by one person from India that "Hinglish" popular among young people, isn't just a set of slang words but is developing its own grammar and can be regarded as an evolving language.

[Devrim]

Out of interest, and if it's not too personal, would it happen that your ethnic/cultural background is primarily English-speaking Northern European? It often seems that those least interested in cultural preservation are those who stand to lose very little of themselves from cultural homogenisation.


Yeah, you say that, but we all know damn well that the dissolution of regional culture in effect means the at least hemispheric hegemony of white, Anglo-American culture, and, wouldn't you know, that happens to be your own.

I'm going to lay my cards on the table before we start. I speak English as, I think, a native speaker. My first language as a child was a local language, and although I can still speak, I struggle with 'adult' vocabulary. I also speak another world language well, and get by reasonably in the language of the country where I live. In addition I can order a meal and do the shopping in a few European languages.

My first point is that the social planners on this thread are living in their own fantasy land. Those who propose stipulating a language for various regions are in a world of their own:


7. Arabic for the Near East, Middle East, and North Africa.


I'm sure the Persians of Afghanistan and iran, and the various turkic peoples, will be absolutely delighted. Along with, obviously, the Israelis.


Again, see above statement about PRIMARY and SECONDARY languages. Arabic is widespread throughout the near and middle east. As for the Israelis, I think that the 7,473,052 of them deserve to be inconvenienced.

Regardless of your disdain for the Israelis there are actually about 150 million people who are native speakers of Turkish and Persian, and no, Arabic isn't widespread in these countries.

Who do you really think you are to tell others what language to speak?

In the country where I live until very recently speaking of minority languages, with one particular one in mind, was illegal. The penalty for speaking them in the privacy of your own home was a minimum of six months in prison. Now personally, I fail to see how anybody who calls themselves a socialist, or even a human being can support policies like that. This was a language, which according to official (i.e. completely unreliable) statistics was spoken by nearly a million and a half people.

It is not the job of socialists to try to force people to speak one language or another.

On the other hand I am not a great supporter of language preservation. People tend to speak the languages that are useful for them, and I don't think it is the job of communists to try to encourage them to speak them when they are not. I know more than a few kids, whose first language is different from that of their parents, whose first language was different from that of their grandparents. That is just the way of the world.

Are languages valuable in themselves? To the people who speak them obviously yes, and also to linguists and other academics. If people speak the language in their home that they think will help their kids get on in life better though, who are we to tell them that they must teach their kids the language of their grandparents?

Languages have always died, and will continue to do so. Of the six thousand languages spoken in the world today many will go extinct, with the native American and Australian languages probably making up the greatest number of them.

Of course, this is not going to be a process that continues exponentially until there is one language left. There is a language in this country called Laz. It has about 26,000 native speaker here, which is slightly less than English. It will go extinct within a few generations. However the language of the state is in no danger of this whatsoever.

In my opinion the idea of telling people what language they have to speak is horrific. People should also have the opportunity to study languages they want to. If people don't want to speak languages and they die out, well that is life, or, I suppose, death.

Devrim

[Sadena Meti]

Actually, the situation tends to be the reverse. It's the younger generations pushing the elders to teach them. At least in native american communities.

I think that is a bit of an exception, because it has to do with identity, and that resurges from time to time. In most of the dying languages (this is from the BBC report) the remaining speakers are all very old. The younger generations want nothing to do with it. The younger generation want to learn the lingua franca and leave the farm, go to the city and make their fortunes (separate thread, Global Urbanization exceeds 50% a few years ago).

[Sadena Meti]

Who do you really think you are to tell others what language to speak?

It is not the job of socialists to try to force people to speak one language or another.


Who said anything about telling who to speak what or enforcing laws? My premise has been based on mathematical progression (shit now I'm not sure if it's a progression or a regression). My argument is that the reduction in languages will continue until only very few are left. And all this started from the BBC World Service.

[Sadena Meti]

It might make some of the posters happier to consider that the universal language could end up being Mandarin Chinese, given a. the population size and b. the economic position of China (set to become the real world power).

So in 120 or 720 years, depending on the model, we could all be speaking Mandarin.

[RGacky3]

I doubt it, right now Chineese students learn English, not the other way around.

[Sadena Meti]

I doubt it, right now Chineese students learn English, not the other way around.
Yeah, I made that point earlier, I was just trying to throw the dogs a bone.

[JustMovement]

OK, Im from Naples- Naples is a big first world (most of it) city. modern, urbanized, etc. Almost everyone in Naples speaks neapolitan, the dialect, as well as italian. Its not that similar to italian, in fact spanish is probably more similar. And trust me its is NOT dying out. Everyone, young and old speaks it. Everyone, or at least almost everyone, are completely fluent in Italian. Neapolitan, amongst younger people, is used as a slang, while Italian is used for school, tv, work etc etc.
Do I think efforts should be made to preserve neapolitan? No. But i dont think we need to get rid of it. In Italy italian is usually the main language and the dialect is the slang, and i think thats a good analogy. If we ever have a universal language that would be great, but on any reasonable timeline, the other languages will definetly remain for day to day use, just like we have slang and informal language in English. I dont think these need to be preserved, but it would be crazy to stamp them out on purpose.

[mosfeld]

I've noticed, from reading the first page, no more, that most advocating "less languages" or those who don't care about the eradication of languages are those that are from Anglophone nations. I think it's very easy for Amerikans, for example, to say that it doesn't matter because it's not their language that's being eradicated..

[Sadena Meti]

They are not being eradicated, they are dying out, naturally.

[Sadena Meti]

I notice that no one ever replies to the posts where I provide numbers and statistics.
Like "5,079 million people speaking 30 languages, as Primary or Secondary. That's 73% of the world. Which leaves 27% speaking the other 5,970 languages."
It makes the whole issue rather pointless, don't you think? The linguistic hegemony is already an established fact.

[mosfeld]

They are not being eradicated, they are dying out, naturally.

Maybe I should've worded it differently: It's easy for people from Anglophone countries to be apathetic or to not care about other languages which are dying out, because it's not their language. I'm much better at speaking English than my natural language, mainly due to Amerikan cultural imperialism, and I think that's a shame. It's not natural, either -- It's the direct effect of imperialism.

[Sadena Meti]

I remember from the BBC program there was a Mexican dialect that has only two speakers left and they can't document it because the two people are not on speaking terms :D

[Weezer]

Sadena Meti, first off, your arguments aren't getting you anywhere and honestly I don't even see what you're trying to get across anymore. Just someone ban him already.

Language extinction has been a method and tactic of imperialism for centuries. With the American expansion deeper into the North American continent, many Native Americans were beaten and ridiculed(probably killed as well) if they spoke their native language and were forbidden to speak it.

Regardless of whether or not having thousands of languages is efficient or not(Efficiency is bullshit anyways) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4D36R1xXpZk), we, as revolutionary leftists, need to respectful to other cultures, it is not within our principles to impose a language upon a people who speak a different one.

As brought up earlier, what if your native language was going extinct? I know I would be annoyed were trying to undermine my native culture and trying to make me speak their language.

Languages are also a matter of interest and hobby for many millions of people, me included. I enjoy that the fact that this earth and it's people has spawned thousands of languages, I find linguistics fascinating.

There are also numerous concepts that some languages have, and others do not. Take English for example, look how many concepts do not exist in it. (http://ask.metafilter.com/10490/What-concepts-do-not-exist-in-the-English-language)

[mosfeld]

Just someone ban him already. I agree with your post except this part. He has done nothing to deserve a ban.

[Sadena Meti]

Language extinction has been a method and tactic of imperialism for centuries. With the American expansion deeper into the North American continent, many Native Americans were beaten and ridiculed (probably killed as well) [massively unsubstantiated claim] if they spoke their native language and were forbidden to speak it.

Regardless of whether or not having thousands of languages is efficient or not (Efficiency is bullshit anyways) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4D36R1xXpZk), we, as revolutionary leftists, need to respectful to other cultures, it is not within our principles to impose a language upon a people who speak a different one.


For at least the third time, we are not talking about imposing languages or driving them to extinction, but a process of natural (and social) selection reducing the total number of languages spoken.

The original questions were:
Does the vanishing of languages matter?
Are we better off with more languages?
Are we better off with fewer languages?

[agnixie]

For at least the third time, we are not talking about imposing languages or driving them to extinction, but a process of natural (and social) selection reducing the total number of languages spoken.

The original questions were:
Does the vanishing of languages matter?
Are we better off with more languages?
Are we better off with fewer languages?

No, you are talking about such a process, which doesn't exist.

There are no such niches and your understanding of linguistics is so idiotic that I want to pull my hair out.

[Devrim]

Who said anything about telling who to speak what or enforcing laws?

That is what your world plan of who should speak what languages reminds me of. Whether you are doing it or not, it must come as no surprise to you that many do.


I notice that no one ever replies to the posts where I provide numbers and statistics.
Like "5,079 million people speaking 30 languages, as Primary or Secondary. That's 73% of the world. Which leaves 27% speaking the other 5,970 languages."
It makes the whole issue rather pointless, don't you think? The linguistic hegemony is already an established fact.


My premise has been based on mathematical progression (shit now I'm not sure if it's a progression or a regression). My argument is that the reduction in languages will continue until only very few are left.

Your premise it blatantly absurd though. The fact that minority languages are dying out doesn't mean that the languages of nation states will die out.

Devrim

[Wanted Man]

A really good example in English is the way we handle the word "offense" - "take offense," "give offense," etc. In English, it sounds like offense is an equal exchange, with the giver and the recipient playing equal roles with equal level of choice. This construct makes it sound like you can blame other people for feeling offended.

In contrast, my Spanish-speaking friends tell me that the only normal equivalent in Spanish is "me molesta" ("[It] bothers me") - same thing in most other European languages, apparently. The idea that offense is a system of equal exchange is particular to English.

In Dutch, you can say "aanstoot nemen" and "aanstoot geven" (take and give offense, respectively). I don't know whether this is also true in other Germanic languages. Also, the English word "offense" has a Latin root. Can it be used in the same way (offense as equal exchange) in Latin? What about French and other Romance languages?


I notice that no one ever replies to the posts where I provide numbers and statistics.
Like "5,079 million people speaking 30 languages, as Primary or Secondary. That's 73% of the world. Which leaves 27% speaking the other 5,970 languages."
It makes the whole issue rather pointless, don't you think? The linguistic hegemony is already an established fact.

I don't think many people are interested in your boring-ass pseudoscience.

[El Chuncho]

I say, let all languages disappear except for one. (English, most likely.) We do not need these cultural barriers, having too many as it is. Cultural diversity is overrated, and a source of a lot of conflict. I challenge anyone to provide one good, objective reason why more languages would be better in this aspect.

Because learning languages is fun and many languages are beautiful for different reasons.

And as you say that cultural diversity is overrated, I would like to see how you enjoy going around the world just to holiday in a country with the same culture; no matter which landmass you visit. How dull. :rolleyes:

Anyway I am just popping on holiday to what was once India, to sample the local foods like fish and chips, to learn a bit of the local dialect (standard English), to visit the churches and to enjoy the bank holiday festival, with all the people in floats dressed up as TV characters. Great fun! Who needs curries, Hindi, the temples and stupas and the traditional Hindu festivals, those things were so bourgeois and overrated! :tt2:

[Sadena Meti]

No, you are talking about such a process, which doesn't exist.

There are no such niches and your understanding of linguistics is so idiotic that I want to pull my hair out.

Yes, and I pulled words like linguistic hegemony out of my ass.

[Sadena Meti]

Originally Posted by Sadena Meti http://www.revleft.com/vb/revleft/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=2088346#post2088346)
I notice that no one ever replies to the posts where I provide numbers and statistics.
Like "5,079 million people speaking 30 languages, as Primary or Secondary. That's 73% of the world. Which leaves 27% speaking the other 5,970 languages."
It makes the whole issue rather pointless, don't you think? The linguistic hegemony is already an established fact.I don't think many people are interested in your boring-ass pseudoscience.
How is a factual reporting of current data pseudoscience?

[Olentzero]

When it's improperly analyzed. You're taking the discredited theory of Social Darwinism (survival of the fittest = the strongest survive) and applying it to languages without the slightest regard to how languages come about, evolve, and pass away - or the more forceful mechanisms behind the more recent changes which have nothing to do with a language's supposed superiority and more to do with the armed might of the state promoting it. Besides which your linear progression of languages, if run backwards, leads to the preposterous conclusion that at the dawn of human history, early hominids were fluent in several million languages each, seeing as how the human population has increased over time while - according to your model - the number of languages has decreased.

Several posters in this thread have pointed out that many language died out because their native populations were actively obliterated by imperialism, or because the ruling class of the state in which they lived declared their native language illegal. (Take Irish Gaelic, for example. Or Basque.) This is a phenomenon that should fill any thinking socialist with revulsion, if not horror, and we should support the right of cultural preservation through linguistic preservation.

I'm not sure who it was upthread who talked about utilitarian costs as a consideration in deciding which languages to preserve but that's utter bullshit. Socialist and communist societies wouldn't dream of applying the criterion of cost-effectiveness to culture. In fact, demanding that our current capitalist governments actually spend money on linguistic preservation instead of billions on wars and subsidies to industries that drown our planet in pollution is not a bad idea.

[graymouser]

How is a factual reporting of current data pseudoscience?
Well, let's start with the fact that your bolded quote notes that the "30 languages" are spoken as primary or secondary. Presumably this includes things like Mandarin and Hindi - which would simply devastate your 72% figure, as it's probably close to a billion people who speak one of those languages as their secondary but not in their everyday life. It's similar with things like Bahasa Indonesia, which is a modified version of a Malay language but not really anybody's primary language. It's also using deceptive assumptions, like the idea that there is a language called "Arabic" that is spoken from Morocco to Iraq. Relatively speaking it would be like considering all the Romance languages to be "Latin" and calling French, Spanish and Italian "local dialects." In any case, many of the 72% do indeed speak languages outside of your "30."

By including secondary languages in your statistics, and then attempting to extrapolate from these numbers, you are deeply distorting the facts.

[Sadena Meti]

These facts were derived from a complete and long table of data provided in the quote prior. It listed primary and secondary speakers, so your examples were taken care of.

I'm sure there are people who speak tertiary languages. The point is they use their primary language first, secondary language less, etc.

No distortion. For the full data, see http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2087918&postcount=79

[Sadena Meti]

Besides which your linear progression of languages, if run backwards, leads to the preposterous conclusion that at the dawn of human history, early hominids were fluent in several million languages each, seeing as how the human population has increased over time while - according to your model - the number of languages has decreased.

As I said in an earlier post, the diversity of languages was due to the dispersement of humans as over millions of years they spread across the Earth and became isolated from each other. The decline in diversity came as we become homogeneous and unified.


There seems to be two phases in history which lead to the creation and destruction of language. When we, our truly ancient North African ancestors, the first Homo Sapiens, we spread out, we went to new place, we left each other behind. We became different. Then, historical ages passed. Slowly, we start coming back together. Roads, Roman roads, trade caravans. Languages begin to interact. Some become dominant for the sake of ease (usually of trade, diplomacy, etc.)

Now there are new roads. Roads in the sky, roads over wires. It's a game of musical chairs. Each time the music stops, one unlucky language drops out. The logical progression is that it will reduce and reduce until only a small number, who knows, maybe one, remains. It's a mathematical trend backed up by observed data.

See also
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_contact#Linguistic_hegemony

[sokpupet]

Indigenous languages define the people and lands of occupancy. The loss of indigenous languages measures the spread of certain cultures or culture. The earth used to be a large place growing ever smaller. As human beings, we have always wanted to understand our surroundings and language is a barrier to that end. I have seen in my life time how the English language seems to be more of a universal language than any other. It seems to be a matter of global politics and trade. Good or bad, I believe we will move to a handful of languages should we survive that long. As a world society we don't seem to mind if animals go extinct and I don't see language to be much different.

[agnixie]

Yes, and I pulled words like linguistic hegemony out of my ass.

Probably not, but even that, you used badly.

As mentioned, Arabic is a macolanguage, and Castillian has increasingly been becoming a macro-language as well (for another historical case: Quechua was relatively unified at the height of the inca empire; today, it's split into roughly four dialect continuums all calling themselves a variation of the word Quechua). French has been following such a progression in African countries where it's spoken, and english has quite a few dialects that are mixed enough that they will likely be separate languages in a century or two.

Language change doesn't stop, and it's not teleological. A language is a form of communication used within a community, and the moment you step out of this direct community, you already start to experience variations.

And for an anarchist, what you're proposing is frighteningly authoritarian, just saying.

[Sadena Meti]

Language change doesn't stop, and it's not teleological. A language is a form of communication used within a community, and the moment you step out of this direct community, you already start to experience variations.

And the moment you step into this direct community with a new language, you MAY experience hegemony.


And for an anarchist, what you're proposing is frighteningly authoritarian, just saying.And for the fourth time, I am not and have never advocating imposing language, merely commenting (positively) on their demise. Besides, this falls more under my Utilitarian Populist side.

[Thirsty Crow]

And for the fourth time, I am not and have never advocating imposing language, merely commenting (positively) on their demise. Besides, this falls more under my Utilitarian Populist side.

But you did advocate imposing specific languages as "official languages" of entire regions.

Oh, and something else: it must be really hard to be THAT schizophrenic and incorporate your "utilitarian populism" alongside anarchism within a unified thought process.

[Sadena Meti]

But you did advocate imposing specific languages as "official languages" of entire regions.
Oh that was just some of my prison musings. "If I ran the world..." Fictionalizing.
It could also be viewed as a prediction of how the dominant languages will spread.


Oh, and something else: it must be really hard to be THAT schizophrenic and incorporate your "utilitarian populism" alongside anarchism within a unified thought process.A. Ban - use of mental illness as an insult. Just as bad as "how gay an idea is that?!" There was a long thread on this in years past that concluded calling people retarded or morons or the use of any language derogatory towards the mentally ill was unacceptable.

B. Schizophrenics don't have split minds. That's more Dissociative Disorder or Borderline Personality Disorder. (see how well read I am?)

C. Who said my thinking is unified? I am pulled in many directions, and I see truths and lies in many philosophies. My stance is in the middle of the four viewpoints, with forays into one viewpoint or another when it becomes the one appropriate for a discussion.

[agnixie]

And the moment you step into this direct community with a new language, you MAY experience hegemony.

And for the fourth time, I am not and have never advocating imposing language, merely commenting (positively) on their demise. Besides, this falls more under my Utilitarian Populist side.

Are you one of these elusive Anarcho-Juche...

Also you're commenting on nothing. You're doing Dawkins-esque bullshit based on the mistaken notion that languages are like bacteria. If you wonder why people outside of Dawkins' field hate the bombastic asshole: that's what you're doing. You're not right, you know sweet fuck all about the subject, and you're acting as though a cursory look at tertiary documentation gave you amazing insights into it. There's a spectrum between "intellectual snobbery" and "someone who knows nothing trying to act as though they did".


Oh that was just some of my prison musings. "If I ran the world..." Fictionalizing.

If you ran the world, you wouldn't be an anarchist.


And the moment you step into this direct community with a new language, you MAY experience hegemony.

No, that's not how it works. Hegemony is a more elaborate concept than that. And so is language contact.

[Olentzero]

As I said in an earlier post, the diversity of languages was due to the dispersement of humans as over millions of years they spread across the Earth and became isolated from each other. The decline in diversity came as we become homogeneous and unified.[/URL]All right, let's try this again. Based on your asymptote calculations, if we run backwards from today the number of languages will increase. So the further we go back, the more languages. So, say, if we go back about 70,000 years, we're going to have something on the order of millions, if not billions, of languages around.

Which is where we run into a problem. See, somewhere between 69,000 and 77,000 years ago, a volcano on the Indonesian island of Sumatra [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory"]blew up rather spectacularly (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_contact#Linguistic_hegemony); the theory is that it plunged the planet into 6-10 years of a volcanic winter and reduced the population of the human race to somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000 breeding pairs. Which means either at that point we were a race of hyperpolyglots, with each individual fluent in millions or even billions of languages, or we became such hyperpolyglots immediately following the eruption, so as to keep on schedule for your language extinction scheme 120 years from now. Because the human race had plenty of spare time after a hard day of trying like hell not to die out so they could invent billions of languages that wouldn't last.

In short, your hypothesis is pure bullshit with no basis in reality whatsoever.

[Sadena Meti]

All right, let's try this again. Based on your asymptote calculations, if we run backwards from today the number of languages will increase. So the further we go back, the more languages. So, say, if we go back about 70,000 years, we're going to have something on the order of millions, if not billions, of languages around.
Actually, the history of languages goes back farther than that from what I heard off the BBC.

Don't think of a never ending asymptote. Think of a bell curve. The asymptotes exist at the beginning and the end.

Better image? Expansion, contraction.

[Thirsty Crow]

A. Ban - use of mental illness as an insult.
Hell, I might as well be banned for being very careless with words. Though, I think you'd agree with my poor attempt at defending myself, if I said that "You're a moron/retard" does not fall into the same category as my previous statement.

All in all, sorry for that.

But I still claim that your "utilitarian populism" in the form of proposing extremely authoritarian measures for "common language development" does not in any way conform to the broadly conceived anarchist principles (in fact, it just might be that you're quite hypocritical in your ecclecticism).

[Olentzero]

Actually, the history of languages goes back farther than that from what I heard off the BBC.

Don't think of a never ending asymptote. Think of a bell curve. The asymptotes exist at the beginning and the end.

Better image? Expansion, contraction.Still with very little data from you to back it up apart from a few numbers reflecting the current situation and a whole lot of unfounded speculation. Color me extraordinarily unconvinced.

[Sadena Meti]

Still with very little data from you to back it up apart from a few numbers reflecting the current situation and a whole lot of unfounded speculation. Color me extraordinarily unconvinced.

Well we've only been documenting languages for a short time. Of course there isn't enough data to say convincingly this is going to happen at this rate, all you have are projections. And math can be trusted. I admit my exponential decrease was a leap (each halving taking half as much time), but I had to come up with some rules. Maybe each halving will take 3/4ths as much time. But even if we discard the exponential model and just stick with linear, it's only 720 years to L-Day. And I do say ONLY 720 years because that's amazingly fast when you consider how long language in some form has been in use (and I wish I had the figures with me because it was rather staggering the estimate on how old spoken language was).

But the original claim stands. Half the languages will be gone in 60 years. This is not an event. This is a phenomenon. It will continue.

[Tim Finnegan]

But the original claim stands. Half the languages will be gone in 60 years. This is not an event. This is a phenomenon. It will continue.
I don't think that anyone disputes this, they just dispute the non-empirical, non-materialistic model you offer by way of explanation, and the ridiculously Whiggish results you draw from it.

[Sadena Meti]

I made some observations, made some projections (which were empirical within their rules), and encouraged conversation and debate with some controversial conclusions. I'm rather proud of this thread. Then again, I was proud of the thread that got me Restricted. Too bad more people didn't vote, just posted. End result looks roughly 2:1 in favor of languages, though I did read many interesting and different endorsements for a universal language.

I suppose it's time to wind this thread down. Although...

[Tim Finnegan]

I made some observations, made some projections (which were empirical within their rules)...
Not in the slightest. Empiricism would demand hard data evidencing the claim you trend- of universal and roughly uniform language homogenisation- while all you've offered is a broad historical trend and a single fallacious assumption based on that trend. That's not up to snuff, m'fraid.

Too bad more people didn't vote, just posted.
Well, to be quite fair, the question was completely inane. You can't expect a high turnout for that.

[Sadena Meti]

I suppose it's time to wind this thread down. Although...

Someone, who will remain nameless, because I'm Restricted and can't find out, gave me a rep hit halfway through this thread.


Languages Disappearing,... (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=2087908#post2087908) 24th April 2011 04:11 seriously, stop posting

Cowardly. Can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen. Silence those who disagree with you. Cowardly.

How I wish a kindly Admin would give me a name...

[Olentzero]

I made some observations, made some projections (which were empirical within their rules), and encouraged conversation and debate with some controversial conclusions. I'm rather proud of this thread. Then again, I was proud of the thread that got me Restricted.I've always been leery of those who place more value in the ability of their pronouncements to cause controversy than whether or not they accurately reflect reality. I'll have to remember this next time I see you post.

[Sadena Meti]

Well, to be quite fair, the question was completely inane. You can't expect a high turnout for that.

To anyone in IRL who has come up against the language barrier, the question is not inane.

P.S. Love your avatar.

[Sadena Meti]

I've always been leery of those who place more value in the ability of their pronouncements to cause controversy than whether or not they accurately reflect reality. I'll have to remember this next time I see you post.
I admit to being an online agitator. IRL agitator too now that I think of it, but to a lesser degree. Instability favors change. Instability also favors the masses, but that's another thread.

[Olentzero]

To anyone in IRL who has come up against the language barrier, the question is not inane.

Being a mostly self-taught polyglot, I've come up against the language barrier plenty of times. The question is inane. No, we wouldn't be better off with less languages, because up until now the general method for deciding which languages survive has been 'might makes right' - forcible denial of indigenous culture at the hands of imperialism and colonialism.

I'd rather build a society that seeks to preserve the languages that are dying out, even if only to keep them for the linguistic record and the occasional scholar seeking a bit of diversion by learning something nobody else knows.

Traveling around a monolingual planet would be, to me, very similar to only eating at McDonald's no matter where I went (or, horror of horrors, only having McDonald's available no matter where I went). No, thank you! Give us the option of trying something new and different! Long live linguistic diversity!

[Sadena Meti]

Traveling around a monolingual planet would be, to me, very similar to only eating at McDonald's no matter where I went (or, horror of horrors, only having McDonald's available no matter where I went). No, thank you! Give us the option of trying something new and different! Long live linguistic diversity!

Every country I've been to, I've made a point of going to McDonald's just for the hell of it. Canada, Mexico, Northern Ireland, France, England. I was too young to do it in the Bahamas. I don't know why, it's just a piece of home.

So you are clearly on the side of linguistic diversity. But where do you stand on the development of a universal language to use alongside? Make it everyone's second language? You speak French, she speaks Spanish. After a moment of awkwardness, you both switch to Esperanto.

[Olentzero]

So you are clearly on the side of linguistic diversity. But where do you stand on the development of a universal language to use alongside?Mi estas Esperantisto!

[Sir Comradical]

Not everyone likes communicating in such an ugly, cumbersome language as English. Cultural Hegemony of the primarily English-speaking countries is the only reason the language is so widely spoken today. Other languages will always be around; though the number is sure to keep declining, it will never be just English.

English has its advantages, namely its ability to absorb words from other languages, its ability to turn nouns into verbs etc. What language do you prefer?

[Plagueround]

Languages have always died, and will continue to do so. Of the six thousand languages spoken in the world today many will go extinct, with the native American and Australian languages probably making up the greatest number of them.


You may be right, however let me assure you we are doing everything we can to reverse this trend.

Anumpa moma-kvt illih pullachi?

[Olentzero]

Go on wit ya bad Choctaw self!

[NecroCommie]

Language is a tool, a means of communication. Any other value imposed upon language is arbitary I think, and therefore I must support a standard language that would be spoken by all and everyone. Whatever languages people would speak in addition to that language is of no importance, nor is it necessary to impose useless symbolic values upon languages regardless their "imperial history".

[agnixie]

Language is a tool, a means of communication. Any other value imposed upon language is arbitary I think, and therefore I must support a standard language that would be spoken by all and everyone. Whatever languages people would speak in addition to that language is of no importance, nor is it necessary to impose useless symbolic values upon languages regardless their "imperial history".

Spoken like someone who has no notion of culture.

[Tim Finnegan]

English has its advantages, namely its ability to absorb words from other languages, its ability to turn nouns into verbs etc. What language do you prefer?
I think that reflects the historical willingness of English-speakers to engage in such borrowing, rather than any particular quality of English itself.

[GallowsBird]

I think that reflects the historical willingness of English-speakers to engage in such borrowing, rather than any particular quality of English itself.

And in the case of many French words (especially their over-use by toffs) it reflects the language of the upper-class (originally Norman-French) being seen as more polite than that of the peasant. But in the Early Modern Era (1500-1600s) onwards they did seem to go out of their way to find new loanwords... it was a little odd in my opinion. :confused:

[Tim Finnegan]

And in the case of many French words (especially their over-use by toffs) it reflects the language of the upper-class (originally Norman-French) being seen as more polite than that of the peasant. But in the Early Modern Era (1500-1600s) onwards they did seem to go out of their way to find new loanwords... it was a little odd in my opinion. :confused:
My favourite was when they arbitrarily changed "bisket" to "biscuit", for no other reason whatsoever than that it looks slightly fancier.

[GallowsBird]

And in the case of many French words (especially their over-use by toffs) it reflects the language of the upper-class (originally Norman-French) being seen as more polite than that of the peasant. But in the Early Modern Era (1500-1600s) onwards they did seem to go out of their way to find new loanwords... it was a little odd in my opinion. :confused:

And I agree it doesn't have much to do with the quality of the language, which is hard to judge (if not impossible)... I prefer Scandinavian, Gaelic, Slavic, Japonic and Amerind languages if I am being honest.

[agnixie]

And in the case of many French words (especially their over-use by toffs) it reflects the language of the upper-class (originally Norman-French) being seen as more polite than that of the peasant. But in the Early Modern Era (1500-1600s) onwards they did seem to go out of their way to find new loanwords... it was a little odd in my opinion. :confused:

For part of it, it was probably just ingrained in upper class english and scottish cultures. The cultural pull of Paris was starting to get pretty big even before the norman invasion.

[GallowsBird]

For part of it, it was probably just ingrained in upper class english and scottish cultures. The cultural pull of Paris was starting to get pretty big even before the norman invasion.

That is true. A very small amount were borrowed before it during the reign of Edward the Confessor, partly as he grew up in Normandy (and brought a few lords to England with him). Also Kent (home of the Jutes) was very connected to the Frankish state and adopted much of their fashion and culture... which makes it ironic as they became quite rebellious during the post-Notman era.

[Sadena Meti]

Hmm... every since I asked people to vote not just post, it's gone from 66 to 33 over to 60 to 40. But I know how much some of you people hate me talking about mathematical trends.

[Tim Finnegan]

But I know how much some of you people hate me talking about mathematical trends.
It's really that the fact that the trends are fallacious nonsense that we object to.

[Tablo]

I don't like the disappearance of languages, but it is going to naturally happen. Hopefully we will make some effort to preserve culture though.

[Sadena Meti]

It's really that the fact that the trends are fallacious nonsense that we object to.

You have two large, tall, connected beakers of water. One is full, one is empty. Water is slowly flowing from the full one to the empty one. You watch for 10 minutes, and the process continues at a constant rate.

What conclusions and predictions can you make? 2, but I won't say what they are.

[Tim Finnegan]

You have two large, tall, connected beakers of water. One is full, one is empty. Water is slowly flowing from the full one to the empty one. You watch for 10 minutes, and the process continues at a constant rate.

What conclusions and predictions can you make? 2, but I won't say what they are.
That's absurdly over-reductive.

[Sadena Meti]

That's absurdly over-reductive.
Actually the point that would have been made had nothing to do with the language argument, but with observation and prediction. You know, science.
Knowing this, want to take a shot at the two possible predictions?

[Tim Finnegan]

Actually the point that would have been made had nothing to do with the language argument, but with observation and prediction. You know, science.
And it is exactly your inability to make accurate observations- rough statistical trends hardly constituting as much in regards to a complex set of systems like this- that mark your arguments out as baseless.

[agnixie]

Hmm... every since I asked people to vote not just post, it's gone from 66 to 33 over to 60 to 40. But I know how much some of you people hate me talking about mathematical trends.

I voted.

Also, that's a fallacy. You are not a misunderstood savant, you are a pretentious twit with a little bit of knowledge.

[NecroCommie]

I don't understand why people panic over culture. Languages have been disappearing since time immemorial, yet we have an abundant supply of ancient culture still preserved. Hell! Some of the culture that has disappeared has done so not due to the language not being used, but because the original manuscripts have been destroyed or lost. A language disappearing has not been the end of the cultural products made in that language.

Even with all these languages dying and morphing, globally the culture has not only grown more rich, but is also more available to larger parts of the population. The last bit is actually a feature I find more important than the existence of a rich culture, and it also happens to be a feature supported by universal language. I know for a fact that finnish literature is as dull as hell, and it really could use morphing into some foreign influence.

[agnixie]

Languages have been disappearing since time immemorial, yet we have an abundant supply of ancient culture still preserved.

Good joke. Also between the Authoritarian Anarchism and the attempt to quantify cultures, I'm not sure which is more hilariously ridiculous.


the culture
There's more than one culture


I know for a fact that finnish literature is as dull as hell
Yeah, well, some of it is actually good, or that can be rectified. A lot of the cultures whose languages are at risk of dying out have pretty amazing literary cultures. And ultimately, I don't see what this vulgar utilitarianism has to do with the real world. Or, hell, to do with utilitarianism.

[NecroCommie]

Good joke. Also between the Authoritarian Anarchism and the attempt to quantify cultures, I'm not sure which is more hilariously ridiculous.
Did you have a point or are you just being a jackass?



There's more than one culture

Ok, "the cultural products of the world". Better? I am terribly sorry if english is not my native language. Then again it's not like pointing out "imperfect" usage of language is something that would actually change anything, or as if you didn't know what I was talking about.


... or that can be rectified.
Indeed, by actually doing some good literature, which would not be a very finnish cultural feature.

But fortunately this boogeyman that you call "utilitarianism" needs not to be artificially brought to society. Languages have always died, and the trend is that they will die with greater numbers than before. And why stop this? Are these people actally going to tell me that I should not abandon finnish, that I should stick with some forgotten language no one speaks? People from small language groups have been abandoning their language for very concrete and real reasons. Obscure and difficult languages do not allow them to communicate with large enough demograph in the modern world, so when they have noticed that they use their native language less and less they start to realize how pointless the language was to begin with.

If someone does not want to live with their native language, who are we to stop them?

[Olentzero]

Languages have always died, and the trend is that they will die with greater numbers than before. And why stop this? Are these people actally going to tell me that I should not abandon finnish, that I should stick with some forgotten language no one speaks?Wait a second, let me get this straight - you are a native Finnish speaker and you're actually looking forward to the death of your mother tongue?
People from small language groups have been abandoning their language for very concrete and real reasons. Obscure and difficult languages do not allow them to communicate with large enough demograph in the modern world, so when they have noticed that they use their native language less and less they start to realize how pointless the language was to begin with.Mitä vittua, how elitist can you get?! If a language was pointless to begin with, it never would have evolved in the first place. And to judge a language as 'pointless' for reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with that language and more to do with the history of imperialism and the conquest of nations by other nations... words fail me, except to think 'ja vitut' when you lay claim to being a socialist.


If someone does not want to live with their native language, who are we to stop them?If the entire nation of Finland wanted to abandon Finnish, then yes, you'd have a point. But they don't. Then again neither do the Finns whose native language is Swedish, but that hasn't stopped the Finnish right wing from telling them they need to give it up.

[ComradeMan]

Languages have always died, and the trend is that they will die with greater numbers than before. And why stop this?

So has cholera and typhoid- why cure it?

[NecroCommie]

Wait a second, let me get this straight - you are a native Finnish speaker and you're actually looking forward to the death of your mother tongue?
Nope, that would be attaching pointless symbolism to the language. It can exist if it will, but if it is to disappear it would do so because the speakers of such language would choose languages more useful or more to their liking, a case in which I would have no reason to miss that language even if it is my native one.


Mitä vittua, how elitist can you get?! If a language was pointless to begin with, it never would have evolved in the first place.
I fail to see the elitism in the statement even if your interptation of it were correct.

Having said that, I guess I could have worded it a bit better, yes languages have a meaning when they are born, but when we understand this we must also understand that if they die they die because of an actual reason.


And to judge a language as 'pointless' for reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with that language and more to do with the history of imperialism and the conquest of nations by other nations... words fail me, except to think 'ja vitut' when you lay claim to being a socialist.

Luckily language politics do not come into the picture when defining socialists from non-socialists. Besides, my allegiance is not to some socialist dogma but to human welfare.

Still, I have to wonder what makes you attach values to languages, other than their value as a tool of communication.


If the entire nation of Finland wanted to abandon Finnish, then yes, you'd have a point. But they don't. Then again neither do the Finns whose native language is Swedish, but that hasn't stopped the Finnish right wing from telling them they need to give it up.
Actually, no one is telling them to give it up. And the will to retain swedish as an official language is mostly a centrist thing, "wing-people" both left and right have been known to oppose the status of swedish as an official language. This goes especially to the young generation of finnish communists, who wish for the "official-language" thingy to be a thing for municipalities to decide, not for the entire finnish state as a one huge blob.

[Olentzero]

I fail to see the elitism in the statement even if your interptation of it were correct.This language is pointless because fewer people speak it and it should die out. This language is not pointless (and therefore more desirable) because more people speak it. That's elitism right there - the idea that one language is somehow better than another, regardless of the criterion used to assess both.
Having said that, I guess I could have worded it a bit better, yes languages have a meaning when they are born, but when we understand this we must also understand that if they die they die because of an actual reason.And those actual reasons have more often than not been related to imperialism and conquest. Which means therefore that socialists and revolutionaries should fight for their preservation - preferably in an active milieu.
Luckily language politics do not come into the picture when defining socialists from non-socialists.I'll put Lenin's conscious policy of making sure pronouncements were put into the local languages wherever they were published alongside Stalin's forced Russification of the entire USSR and let you decide whether your statement is accurate or not.
Still, I have to wonder what makes you attach values to languages, other than their value as a tool of communication.Because, simply put, I don't see languages as merely a tool of communication. Seeing language as a tool of communication equates the statement "She's not all that pretty, but I love her" with Shakespeare's My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun... - it says the first is just as good, if not more efficient, than the second, and allows no room for the infinite varieties of form and rhythm that can be constructed in a language.
"wing-people" both left and right have been known to oppose the status of swedish as an official language.That's a mistake of the Finnish left. Minority languages should be given equal status.
This goes especially to the young generation of finnish communists, who wish for the "official-language" thingy to be a thing for municipalities to decide, not for the entire finnish state as a one huge blob.American political philosophy has a similar idea, called "states' rights" - the individual states should be allowed to decide policy on issues, to a greater or lesser extent. Problem is, it's been used more for oppression than liberation; for example, the individual states are claiming the right to decide whether gays and lesbians can marry so as to systematically deny them that right. Just as marriage should be a civil right decided at the national level, so with language policy. Decisions at the municipal level are no solution.

[NecroCommie]

This language is pointless because fewer people speak it and it should die out. This language is not pointless (and therefore more desirable) because more people speak it. That's elitism right there - the idea that one language is somehow better than another, regardless of the criterion used to assess both.
Once again, language is a tool of communication and not some mystic essence of the person speaking it. And no, my oppinion on a language has nothing to do with how big it is. My oppinion on a language depends on whether or not the users of the language themselves consider other languages more useful. Ingria is one language about to be forgotten, and for a reason too. The ingrian youth find russian alot more useful in russia, and I just have to agree! If there is no useful point in the ingrian youth to speak ingrian, then why speak ingrian?

The point of the language is to be understood, not to enforce some useless gaps between cultural identities.


And those actual reasons have more often than not been related to imperialism and conquest. Which means therefore that socialists and revolutionaries should fight for their preservation - preferably in an active milieu.
Is this based on something else than a hunch? Why artificially enforce language groups, I just don't see this as a valid point.


I'll put Lenin's conscious policy of making sure pronouncements were put into the local languages wherever they were published alongside Stalin's forced Russification of the entire USSR and let you decide whether your statement is accurate or not.
I don't see how two policies made by two dead men in one lonely corner of space and history have anything to do with what I said.


Because, simply put, I don't see languages as merely a tool of communication. Seeing language as a tool of communication equates the statement "She's not all that pretty, but I love her" with Shakespeare's My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun... - it says the first is just as good, if not more efficient, than the second, and allows no room for the infinite varieties of form and rhythm that can be constructed in a language.
Actually, most linguistics would agree with me that the two examples communicate slightly different things, making the example useless as an argument. Even the stress, pronounciation ect can communicate things, but in no way does this relate to my claims.


That's a mistake of the Finnish left. Minority languages should be given equal status.
That's exactly why swedish should not be an official language. There are alot of somalis, russians and estonians in finland, in many areas much more so than there are swedish. Only swedish is an official language because the swedish population is generally taken very rich (even compared to finns), highly educated and politically unified. Besides, I don't think you quite know what it means to be an official language in finland. Swedish being an official language basically means that because there is a swedish majority in the southern archipelago and the ostrobothnian coast, every single finn everywhere in finland not only has to learn swedish as a mandatory language, but also that swedish is a language required by public servants even in areas where there is no swedish minority, but other very sizeale minorities are abundant.


American political philosophy has a similar idea, called "states' rights" - the individual states should be allowed to decide policy on issues, to a greater or lesser extent. Problem is, it's been used more for oppression than liberation; for example, the individual states are claiming the right to decide whether gays and lesbians can marry so as to systematically deny them that right.
So the fact that independence can be mis-used is an argument against independence?


Just as marriage should be a civil right decided at the national level, so with language policy. Decisions at the municipal level are no solution.
Actually, it is the only solution to prevent absurdities. In northern finland there is no need for swedish, but the languages spoken by the populace are finnish and sami, in western finland swedish is the majority language with a finnish minority (except in the big cities), in southern finland english and finnish dominate the public sphere so much that other language groups are more or less marginal, and in eastern finland russian is needed but swedish is basically absent.

How is it that you would choose the languages of public servants in every region without demanding fluent speech of over five languages in every region? Answer: Standardized language used by all and everyone, or independece in language policy?

[Olentzero]

Urgh, I can tell this debate is about to lose any sense of productivity. Line-by-line dissections and responses are a sure sign of a debate's imminent lapse into didacticism. Nevertheless, a few final thoughts.
Once again, language is a tool of communication and not some mystic essence of the person speaking it.I never asserted language was some mystic essence, but it is certainly much more than a tool of communication.
If there is no useful point in the ingrian youth to speak ingrian, then why speak ingrian?For the same reason Welsh speakers in England want to speak Welsh. Same reason I, as an American citizen descended from Swedish immigrants, taught myself Swedish. (Or Russian, for that matter, although that was more political than ancestral.)
I don't see how two policies made by two dead men in one lonely corner of space and history have anything to do with what I said.You said you didn't think language policy entered into it when differentiating between socialists and non-socialists. I provided an example.
Actually, most linguistics would agree with meHie thee to Wikipedia to learn about "Appeal to Invisible Authority" and come back when you realize why this doesn't work as an argument.
That's exactly why swedish should not be an official language. There are alot of somalis, russians and estonians in finland, in many areas much more so than there are swedish.This is why Russian, Somali, and Estonian should also be official languages (as well as Saami).
Swedish being an official language basically means that because there is a swedish majority in the southern archipelago and the ostrobothnian coast, every single finn everywhere in finland not only has to learn swedish as a mandatory language, but also that swedish is a language required by public servants even in areas where there is no swedish minority, but other very sizeale minorities are abundant.I'm gonna ask some of my Finnish comrades here in Stockholm if that is in fact the case. French and English are the official languages of Canada, but they don't have a mandatory nationwide French education policy, as far as I know.
So the fact that independence can be mis-used is an argument against independence?It's a pity you don't play baseball. You seem to do some great work out of left field. That's a deliberately obtuse interpretation of my statement, which was simply to say that language policy should be decided at the national level, not lower down.
Actually, it is the only solution to prevent absurdities. In northern finland there is no need for swedish, but the languages spoken by the populace are finnish and sami, in western finland swedish is the majority language with a finnish minority (except in the big cities), in southern finland english and finnish dominate the public sphere so much that other language groups are more or less marginal, and in eastern finland russian is needed but swedish is basically absent.So again make all six languages (Finnish, Swedish, Saami, Estonian, Russian, and Somali) official languages, then determine what needs to be published in which languages where the need is greatest. Again, at the national level.
How is it that you would choose the languages of public servants in every region without demanding fluent speech of over five languages in every region? Answer: Standardized language used by all and everyone, or independece in language policy?Back to Wikipedia with you, this time to learn about 'false dichotomy'. Don't bother coming back this time, however; I have a 'three strike' rule about dirty tricks in arguments and you've wasted all yours in one post. Congratulations.

[Devrim]

For the same reason Welsh speakers in England want to speak Welsh. Same reason I, as an American citizen descended from Swedish immigrants, taught myself Swedish.

But most people don't want to, and you can't force them too. Personally I don't understand at all why you decided to learn Swedish. I know loads of people in London with kids who can't speak more than a few words of Kurdish or Turkish. So what?

Devrim

[Olentzero]

Where have I advocated forcing anyone to learn a language, arkadaşım?

[NecroCommie]

Urgh, I can tell this debate is about to lose any sense of productivity. Line-by-line dissections and responses are a sure sign of a debate's imminent lapse into didacticism. Nevertheless, a few final thoughts.
OK, so I try to be more compact with this one.

Before beginning though, I might add that giving oneself a cheap excuse to leave the debate "with the last words" is one cheap trick in itself. Luckily you are not the only one reading this thread so I still have a reason to reply. In addition, I can assure you that no "cheap tricks" were used with malicious intentions. I actually care about what is right, if you have arguments that can convince me then I am happy to change my stance on the issue. Having said that, I cannot find your arguments convincing for the following reasons.

First of all, your "example" of language policies making distinctions between socialists and non-socialists is not a very valid one because the actions of Lenin and/or Stalin are not the defining features of socialism. I am not trying to suggest we should force standard language on all, so a historical act of such an action is not a valid argument against my stance which suggests something completely different.

Then the point which (granted, was formed as an authority argument) you summarily rejected because of the superficial form it was expressed in. I must ask you, do you think the meanings of the sentences you provided were the same? Because I don't, I think they communicate two slightly different things and as such I don't see how my point of language being a tool of communication is somehow against expression or art. (I understand, nowhere did you say my suggestion was against expression or art, but that is the point you are trying to make is it not?)

And I assure you there was nothing deliberate about my "obtuse interpretation" of your statement. Was not your argument, that the municipal independence on this legistlative matter could be abused? Then does it not follow that my argument is valid? I am afraid this is my 100% honest understanding of your argument, and any possible misunderstandings you will have to elaborate for me to understand.

And about the official language business, this is purely a finnish legistlative matter. In finland the status of "official language" means that the language is mandatory for everyone to learn in elementary and/or junior high-schools. In addition to this all public servants must prove their expertise of this language if they are to have a job anywhere in the country, regardless such "trivial" matters such as whether or not there is any minorities of such language within 500 mile radius.

Now, there has been some suggestions as to taking english and/or russian as a third or fourth official language, but no single party has taken these issues as their own. Only the abolition of swedish as an official language has gathered any support with any party, and it has done so both left and right.

The municipal independence in linguistic policies would have advantages to all municipalities. For the archipelago municipalities there would no longer be the straining job of finding someone, anyone in the region, to speak finnish for the non-existent finnish customers of the public institutions. Similarly in the eastern municipalities would no longer have to strain their resources to please those ever absent swedish minorities, and they would also be free to embrace russian as an official language.

But then again you don't have to take my word for it. There is a finnish subforum right here in revleft, and I am sure anyone there would be willing to answer any questions you might have.

[Olentzero]

I admit I have a short fuse when it comes to my arguments being misconstrued, and I lose patience rapidly once I see it going on. I got a lot of that left over from hanging out on a message board that wasn't even remotely sympathetic to Marxism and it did wonders for my blood pressure to simply say "If you can't address my argument directly, I got nothing more to say to you" and bail.

Having said that, I'll retract my dramatic flourish about final words and try to address what seem to be the main points of the argument.

My point that municipal independence could be abused on the subject is not an argument against municipal independence (or even independence in general), period - and perhaps that is not what you meant to say but that's what it sounded like.

To try to refine the point, I do not believe the municipalities should be given the option of 'yes' or 'no' on dealing with official languages. They should definitely be given the option of which official languages they need to work with based on demographic makeup and such factors, but national policy should not allow them to say "Suck it up and learn Finnish".

So, as you noted in a previous post, eastern Finland could work primarily with Russian and Finnish, western Finland with Finnish and Swedish, and so on and so forth. Publications with a national distribution (tax forms, for example) should be made available in all the official languages and places like airports should have signs in all official languages.

I certainly disagree with everyone in Finland being made to learn Swedish - that's linguistic imperialism, and I can understand left resistance to it even as I disagree with their conclusions - but I also think Swedish should be given support as an official language. Children whose native language at home is Swedish should be provided bilingual education, same as immigrant kids. Saami should also be taught in schools where the local populations demand it. There is much that could and should be done to preserve linguistic communities in Finland.

There are Marxists who argue that language is not simply a tool of communication and that it should not be viewed as such. I just picked up a copy of A Marxist Philosophy of Language (http://www.haymarketbooks.org/pb/A-Marxist-Philosophy-of-Language) by Jean-Jacques Lecercle that I plan on reading later this year after I get through some of the other books I ordered at the same time. It could be productive to revisit this debate further down the road.

[Viet Minh]

You have two large, tall, connected beakers of water. One is full, one is empty. Water is slowly flowing from the full one to the empty one. You watch for 10 minutes, and the process continues at a constant rate.

What conclusions and predictions can you make? 2, but I won't say what they are.

At some point both will be equally full? I don't know, there are too many other possible factors. Someone could enter the room and smash them both, one could have a leak and the other is being filled by a tap, rather than one filling the other as you'd assume from the connection, which could be above either water level, or blocked off. The only conclusion you can draw for certain is that there are two beakers. Interesting question, sort of like the the lying demon and truth-telling angel guarding heaven and hell.

[Thirsty Crow]

There are Marxists who argue that language is not simply a tool of communication and that it should not be viewed as such. I just picked up a copy of A Marxist Philosophy of Language (http://www.haymarketbooks.org/pb/A-Marxist-Philosophy-of-Language) by Jean-Jacques Lecercle that I plan on reading later this year after I get through some of the other books I ordered at the same time. It could be productive to revisit this debate further down the road.
Language is indeed a tool of communication, but what is problematic here is not how we define language, but communication.
What I'm getting at is the following: everyday communication aside (whose primary purpose is providing useful information regarding something relevant to speakers; of course, there are other aspects here to investigate, but they are not important for my point), there are other comunicative functions performed by a given language, and we could call that functions cultural. Literature, as a form of communication, is particularly susceptible to this claim.
In this sense, language preservation also functions as cultural preservation. And I hold the position that a "critical support" for a group's cultural legacy ("critical support" for me means recognizing the oppressive aspects of a group's cultural heritage, as well as the historical social basis for certain cultural atittudes and cultural artefacts) does not inherently clash with a committment to global communism (if it is properly divorced from any kind of nationalism).

I don't know, perhaps I am biased since I like to engage in "creative writing" (as an amateur). Maybe that produced the notion of the importance of language.

As far as Devrim's objection is concerned, sure, there are many people who will not want to actively participate in langauge preservation. And they must not be coerced into doing so, without doubt. But I don't see why should those who are interested in this kind of activities be discouraged from doing so.

[Olentzero]

Just to be clear: I am not saying that language is not a tool of communication. I am saying that language is not simply a tool of communication. Big difference.

[Sadena Meti]

This language is pointless because fewer people speak it and it should die out. This language is not pointless (and therefore more desirable) because more people speak it. That's elitism right there - the idea that one language is somehow better than another, regardless of the criterion used to assess both.

OK, analogy. Metric vs Standard. More people use metric. Shouldn't we get rid of standard? Or should we preserve it because it is part of the US's "culture"?

[graffic]

I think its a bad thing because i think speaking more than one language enhances your life experience and view of the world. I heard someone say they actually started to "think" in their new language they learned which must be incredible. I actually hate language learning personally and am envious of so called "natural linguists" because for some reason i am very bad at languages. I failed at French/German in high school and have recently learnt a bit of hebrew and arabic but made no progress. My teacher questioned whether i was "dislexic" or had problems learning my own native language because i was at the bottom of the class and for some reason just could not get anywhere. In every other subject i was always either top or middle of the class. Its compared to learning an instrument but at least the painstaking slow practice involved learning an instrument you get satisfaction hearing the melody coming along. With a language you just spend 6 months to a year of boredom learning meaningless words/grammar sounding like a retard until you eventually become fluent.

[Olentzero]

OK, analogy. Metric vs Standard. More people use metric. Shouldn't we get rid of standard? Or should we preserve it because it is part of the US's "culture"?Crap analogy. A measurement system is a tool. A language is not simply a tool. The standard of efficiency and simplicity by which we judge measurement systems cannot be mechanically applied to languages.