Languages in communist society?

[Mac]

Would there still be language diversity in a communist society?

[xub3rn00dlex]

Would there still be language diversity in a communist society?

Of course, just as there would be cultural diversity in a communist society.

[Le Rouge]

Communism is not about destroying every cultures and language for the sake of making everyone equal. Culture is a thing that make the world an interesting place to visit.

[xub3rn00dlex]

Communism is not about destroying every cultures and language for the sake of making everyone equal. Culture is a thing that make the world an interesting place to visit.

Don't forget the endless variations of food! *drools* The way I view it, communism would simply ( and this is a very simplified bought ) end the exploitation of labor and eliminate inequality. Languages, cultures, food, music... actually much of life would remain unchanged.

[Tenka]

Language diversity will exist for as long as people speak diverse languages. It's utterly impractical and impracticable and not the task of communism to go around trimming languages like excess growth of a shrub (though I think some languages will need minor reforms to eliminate ingrained sexism, including English). I think some efforts should be put to keeping a couple of languages I can think of from dying off naturally, too.

"Culture", on the other hand, is highly malleable and, under world socialism (communism), there cannot help but develop a single world culture that includes all the least regressive aspects of past cultures. That's how I see it anyway.

[Welshy]

Would there still be language diversity in a communist society?

Yes. First of because language is doomed (doomed is a too dark of a word, but meh) to change and to splinter into new languages.

Secondly, a lot of language death now a days is heavily connected to the oppression of regional, cultural, and/or ethnic groups by the group that holds power in its country. With the establishment of communism, such oppression would no longer exist. One tends to also see shifts in speakers from one language to another for economic reasons. So a speakers of language A make start switching to language B and pass language B onto their children because language B is the language of the economically more powerful region thus giving language A speakers and their children more economic opportunities. This too will be gone under communism. Though for the sake of international communication a Lingua Franca may be chosen.

[Kamos]

The way I see it, there should be one common language that all of humanity can speak. Further than that, I don't care.

[Rooster]

I'm sure that there will still be language diversity. I also don't see a need for a universal language (besides maybe the metric system). If there's a need for a universal language then one will pop up, the same way that money appeared when there needed to be a universal exchange equivalent. I'm not even sure how a universal language would be sustainable on a world wide scale. We can take English for example here and hear how different it is across even county borders here.

[manic expression]

I think there would be more language diversity, not less. With improved education, the average person would know at least a few languages aside from their mother tongues. The indigenous languages of the Americas would, with the enfranchisement of those presently oppressed nations, be strengthened and made more widespread. The languages of Africa would be raised from their present position of local, colloquial tongues. The minority languages of Europe would become more commonly-spoken as well (Basque, Catalan, Sami languages, Irish, Breton, etc.).

[Dogs On Acid]

Trying to impose a single external language would lead to Ethnic Nationalism.

[Devrim]

I think there would be more language diversity, not less.

I am not so sure about this. I think that the tendency at the moment is for languages to die out, approximately at the rate of one every fortnight. I don't see why communism would reverse that trend, and certainly there will be less languages than there are today, as many would have died before we got there.


With improved education, the average person would know at least a few languages aside from their mother tongues.

I think that the majority of the world population already speaks more than one language. Some sources say as much as two thirds. America is an exception to the rule.


The indigenous languages of the Americas would, with the enfranchisement of those presently oppressed nations, be strengthened and made more widespread. The languages of Africa would be raised from their present position of local, colloquial tongues. The minority languages of Europe would become more commonly-spoken as well (Basque, Catalan, Sami languages, Irish, Breton, etc.).

Why?

Devrim

[Welshy]

Most of the damage done to language diversity can't be undone. Right now about 3000 or so languages (about half all languages spoken today) will be extinct by I believe 2050. This will happen even if we have a revolution tomorrow and communism is established everywhere before 2050. And if global communism comes into existence, there will still be endangered languages that will eventual go extinct. The key is that we get rid of the aspects past societies that encouraged the death of minority languages, aid language communities in their efforts to save their languages and thoroughly document the languages are we can't save. In the end language death will sadly always occur, but new languages will arise from ones that currently exist today. What are considered dialects today will eventually become new languages tomorrow, and the languages of today will become language families. This also happens whether we like it or not.

[Iron Felix]

We should all just speak Russian, clearly it's the best language. You can speak your inferior languages in gulags.

[manic expression]

I am not so sure about this. I think that the tendency at the moment is for languages to die out, approximately at the rate of one every fortnight. I don't see why communism would reverse that trend, and certainly there will be less languages than there are today, as many would have died before we got there.
It's a matter of direction. After capitalism is overthrown, the languages that remain living will generally be able to find more recognition, more acceptance and more support. That's the point.


I think that the majority of the world population already speaks more than one language. Some sources say as much as two thirds. America is an exception to the rule.I think five is a pretty good target, personally.


Why?Because as the working class constitutes itself the nation, so too do the languages of the working class (as opposed to the language of the former ruling class) gain a new position. A lot of languages suffer not only because they lack a state that supports them, but also due to the tendency to favor the dominant tongue at the expense of another for the considerations of capitalist society. If you can't speak K'iche' and have anyone understand you in hospitals or schools or television shows, then the role of the language is much restricted and its speakers as well as the culture it embodies are marginalized.

In contrast to this sad state of affairs, the liberation of the masses brings with it the liberation of the languages of the masses. The tongue of a people should be unfailingly present in its schools, its government halls, its bookstores, its athletic events, its streets, its army (and its navy, if it has one), its media and its instructions for putting together furniture. That should be the goal of any order that is based on human right and human gain.

[Nox]

The problem with installing a new global language is that inevitably different regions will develop their own distinct accent, which will then develop into a dialect, which will then gradually develop into a separate language.

[Devrim]

In the end language death will sadly always occur, but new languages will arise from ones that currently exist today. What are considered dialects today will eventually become new languages tomorrow, and the languages of today will become language families. This also happens whether we like it or not.


The problem with installing a new global language is that inevitably different regions will develop their own distinct accent, which will then develop into a dialect, which will then gradually develop into a separate language.

I am not so sure about this. I think that the nature of the modern world, mass literacy and media, acts as a force against this. Certainly I don't see it happening at the speed it once did.

Devrim

[Devrim]

It's a matter of direction. After capitalism is overthrown, the languages that remain living will generally be able to find more recognition, more acceptance and more support. That's the point.

Why? I am not sure that they will find "more support", or what good it would do them.


In contrast to this sad state of affairs, the liberation of the masses brings with it the liberation of the languages of the masses. The tongue of a people should be unfailingly present in its schools, its government halls, its bookstores, its athletic events, its streets, its army (and its navy, if it has one), its media and its instructions for putting together furniture. That should be the goal of any order that is based on human right and human gain.

The languages of the masses in the USA are English and Spanish. Native American languages are spoken by tiny numbers of people and less and less by the day. The only one with any significant number of speakers is Navaho with just 170,000 self-professed speakers (bear in mind that not all of these will be native speakers and some will have a very limited knowledge of the language). The next nearest one is Ojibwa with 35,000. Linguists consider languages with less than 50,000 speakers to be moribund, and unable to recover.

Of the speakers of Navaho even only 2.9% of them are monolingual with no knowledge of English, which is less than 5,000 people. One would imagine that many of them are old, and will die off in the reasonably near future.

In a communist world, although there would no longer be active discrimination against certain languages, there would still be the many pressures in favour of the majority languages.

Even if we just look at the world of culture, the dominant language, in the case of the US, English, offers much more in terms of quantity than languages such as Navajo. I can't see this changing under communism. In fact I don't see that the tendency for minority languages to die out will change at all.

Devrim

[Demogorgon]

Why? I am not sure that they will find "more support", or what good it would do them.

As further to this, the trouble with expecting regional languages to thrive is that there is little reason to learn them if you live outside the area they are spoken. To take Scottish Gaelic for instance. It is only spoken in the Highlands and there is nobody who speaks it who does not also speak English to native standard so nobody visiting the Highlands could ever need it. Indeed nobody living in the highlands will ever need it either unless they live in remote areas where locals use it by default. There is in fact a tendency these days for people to attempt to learn Gaelic for cultural reasons and more people send their children to Gaelic schools these days, principally because they provide a good standard of education, but we are still talking about a tiny minority.

The same is true for most languages with few speakers. Native speakers naturally wish to keep them alive but no one else has any reason to learn them as it isn't necessary to communicate with their speakers.

When learning other languages people are naturally going to want to hone in on ones that are widely spoken. English naturally for those who are not native speakers, also Spanish naturally, increasingly Chinese languages (primarily Mandarin and Cantonese), Arabic and of course French remains popular.

We are unlikely to see a world with one language, but I think it is inevitable that as the world becomes more inter-connected that a few big ones come to dominate. I personally welcome people keeping their traditional languages alive, but these simply cannot become widely spoken tongues.

[manic expression]

Why? I am not sure that they will find "more support", or what good it would do them.
Quite a silly question. They will find more support because socialism defends human dignity, and with it the national identities of all peoples.


The languages of the masses in the USA are English and Spanish. Native American languages are spoken by tiny numbers of people and less and less by the day. The only one with any significant number of speakers is Navaho with just 170,000 self-professed speakers (bear in mind that not all of these will be native speakers and some will have a very limited knowledge of the language). The next nearest one is Ojibwa with 35,000. Linguists consider languages with less than 50,000 speakers to be moribund, and unable to recover.
Sorry, but that's a suspect definition of "moribund languages". Cite a linguist who says that recovery is impossible under 50,000 speakers and we'll talk.


Of the speakers of Navaho even only 2.9% of them are monolingual with no knowledge of English, which is less than 5,000 people. One would imagine that many of them are old, and will die off in the reasonably near future.
Strawman argument. My goal is not to have nations be monolingual, and I've stated as much quite clearly. Thus, obviously English and Spanish would be spoken among North American Indian nations, but in order to strengthen their traditional languages and defend the rights of their nation most education should be carried out in their own tongue.


In a communist world, although there would no longer be active discrimination against certain languages, there would still be the many pressures in favour of the majority languages.

Even if we just look at the world of culture, the dominant language, in the case of the US, English, offers much more in terms of quantity than languages such as Navajo. I can't see this changing under communism. In fact I don't see that the tendency for minority languages to die out will change at all.
Mandarin "offers much more in terms of quantity" than Danish, Armenian or even Polish. Would you not have a problem if they died out and were replaced by more widely-spoken languages?

The truth is that when it comes to languages, quantity is quite a secondary concern. Languages that are positively dwarfed by others in terms of speakers offer us innumerable riches, from culture to literature to the arts and more. That's why measuring a language's importance purely by the number of people who speak it is incredibly misguided. It is an important factor, though, which makes it all the more important that we enthusiastically support language diversity, so that languages like Cherokee might one day be the predominate language of a major city.

You know, Devrim, there's this great story about someone who sells his soul to the devil for immediate gain. It teaches us that those who trade what's most important for that which is most fleeting are tragically misled. It's called Faust, and it was written in German. But since German isn't spoken by as many people as Bengali and Portuguese are, I guess it doesn't matter much to you. :rolleyes:

[manic expression]

As further to this, the trouble with expecting regional languages to thrive is that there is little reason to learn them if you live outside the area they are spoken. To take Scottish Gaelic for instance. It is only spoken in the Highlands and there is nobody who speaks it who does not also speak English to native standard so nobody visiting the Highlands could ever need it. Indeed nobody living in the highlands will ever need it either unless they live in remote areas where locals use it by default. There is in fact a tendency these days for people to attempt to learn Gaelic for cultural reasons and more people send their children to Gaelic schools these days, principally because they provide a good standard of education, but we are still talking about a tiny minority.

The same is true for most languages with few speakers. Native speakers naturally wish to keep them alive but no one else has any reason to learn them as it isn't necessary to communicate with their speakers.
Scots Gaelic is far from useless. Just as one example: such a regional language can help you out in a lot of situations. Ever wanted to say something to a friend without anyone else understanding it? Scots Gaelic will do that easy.

I remember meeting a pair of Irishmen traveling through central Europe...and while the conversations of us Americans and Canadians were understood by everyone around us, these two Irishmen could talk and talk and talk in Irish with complete privacy. It's a very useful thing when you're traveling (or in any sort of negotiation, etc.).

And that's before we get to the fact that it's a significant part of Scottish culture, and that trading it away forever just because English has more capitalist economic power behind it is unjustifiable.


When learning other languages people are naturally going to want to hone in on ones that are widely spoken. English naturally for those who are not native speakers, also Spanish naturally, increasingly Chinese languages (primarily Mandarin and Cantonese), Arabic and of course French remains popular. Language learning is about what you need, but it's also about what you love. Lots of people learn Korean over Mandarin because they fall in love with Korean culture. The same goes for Swedish or Thai or Greek or Levantine Arabic. Saying people should learn this or that purely because it's widely spoken is just quatsch.

[Rafiq]

What do you mean by cultural preservation? Why should the champions of the revolution go out of their way to 'preserve' cultures and languages? Many of which (cultures) are extremely reactionary in some ways.

[Devrim]

Why? I am not sure that they will find "more support", or what good it would do them.Quite a silly question. They will find more support because socialism defends human dignity, and with it the national identities of all peoples.

I think the 'what good it will do them' is the more important part of the question. Today there are many minority languages that recieve state support and yet still continue to decline.


Sorry, but that's a suspect definition of "moribund languages". Cite a linguist who says that recovery is impossible under 50,000 speakers and we'll talk.

I don't think that anyone says recovery is absolutely 'impossible'. Perhaps I phrased it badly, and I should have said 'unlikely'. Andrew Dalby discusses this idea, and cites linguists who say this in his 'language in danger' (http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Language-in-Danger/Andrew-Dalby/e/9780231129008).


Mandarin "offers much more in terms of quantity" than Danish, Armenian or even Polish. Would you not have a problem if they died out and were replaced by more widely-spoken languages?

I don't think that whether I have a problem with it is really the question at all. The question is whether it is a process that is happening. Our feelings on it aren't really the issue.


The truth is that when it comes to languages, quantity is quite a secondary concern. Languages that are positively dwarfed by others in terms of speakers offer us innumerable riches, from culture to literature to the arts and more. That's why measuring a language's importance purely by the number of people who speak it is incredibly misguided.

Again the fact that they may 'offer us innumerable riches' isn't really the point. The point is whether they will die out or not.

In my own family, none of the generation younger than me can speak a more than a word or two of the native language of their great-great grandparents. This is what language death is about.

It doesn't mean that the people in my family wanted their language to go. In fact the reality is far from that. Many of them loved the language, and many were very nationalist minded. Yet it was a process that happened all the same. I think the question here is why this happens and whether it is a process that would continue to happen under socialism.

At the moment the process is clear. Major languages are tending to push smaller ones out of existance. You don't make any argument for why that would change rather your just trot out your political desires.


...so that languages like Cherokee might one day be the predominate language of a major city.

Cherokee has between 12,000 and 22,000 speakers. Can you really imagine it becoming the predominate language of a major city?


You know, Devrim, there's this great story about someone who sells his soul to the devil for immediate gain. It teaches us that those who trade what's most important for that which is most fleeting are tragically misled. It's called Faust, and it was written in German. But since German isn't spoken by as many people as Bengali and Portuguese are, I guess it doesn't matter much to you.

I read it. I think I read it in Arabic if I remember correctly. Maybe it was in English though. The point is that in both of them I could. It is part of the cultural world that speaking those two languages gives me access to. Is there a Navajo translation?

Devrim

[Devrim]

The same is true for most languages with few speakers. Native speakers naturally wish to keep them alive but no one else has any reason to learn them as it isn't necessary to communicate with their speakers.


And that's before we get to the fact that it's a significant part of Scottish culture, and that trading it away forever just because English has more capitalist economic power behind it is unjustifiable.

Whilst native speakers may 'wish' to keep them alive it doesn't mean that their actions actually help to keep them alive. The important thing is probably what language is spoken in the home, and many people who are native speakers of minority languages consciously make a shift in the language that they speak at home because they feel it is better for their kids.

I am not sure what it means by 'unjustifiable'. Do you feel that families need to justify which language they talk in over the breakfast table to you.

Devrim

[manic expression]

I think the 'what good it will do them' is the more important part of the question. Today there are many minority languages that recieve state support and yet still continue to decline.
IMO, there's state support and then there's state support. Every Irish politician since de Valera has had a whole lot of things to say about promoting Irish, but the measures they took didn't do the job, and Irish has been steadily declining since the Irish War of Independence. Measures taken just across the sea in Wales, in contrast, have actually increased the number of people who can speak Welsh and those who speak it regularly.


I don't think that anyone says recovery is absolutely 'impossible'. Perhaps I phrased it badly, and I should have said 'unlikely'. Andrew Dalby discusses this idea, and cites linguists who say this in his 'language in danger' (http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Language-in-Danger/Andrew-Dalby/e/9780231129008).
"In danger" = we should do something about it to keep it out of danger


Again the fact that they may 'offer us innumerable riches' isn't really the point. The point is whether they will die out or not.

In my own family, none of the generation younger than me can speak a more than a word or two of the native language of their great-great grandparents. This is what language death is about.

It doesn't mean that the people in my family wanted their language to go. In fact the reality is far from that. Many of them loved the language, and many were very nationalist minded. Yet it was a process that happened all the same. I think the question here is why this happens and whether it is a process that would continue to happen under socialism.

At the moment the process is clear. Major languages are tending to push smaller ones out of existance. You don't make any argument for why that would change rather your just trot out your political desires.
Major languages are pushing smaller ones out of existence because of capitalism. Economic opportunities are more and more in the language of the ruling class, most strongly that of the imperialists. Education is, too, largely done by the standards of the capitalist class. In a word, the process of "globalization" (which, in reality, is another word for what capitalism has been doing for centuries) is the culprit.

Now, any working-class revolution would do away with these forces. The equation would completely change: whereas today communities struggle to maintain languages that are denied a role in public life, socialism offers the ability for nations to focus on their own languages while keeping the presence of more influential languages. It's part-and-parcel to the right of nations to self-determination.

To speak to the issue plainly, a language like English has become more widespread in the past century because of the economic and political pressures of imperialism. Follow the money. That's why Bengali has more speakers than Japanese and yet so many endeavor to learn the latter without giving so much as a thought to the former. Do away with the cause and the pressure follows with it.


Cherokee has between 12,000 and 22,000 speakers. Can you really imagine it becoming the predominate language of a major city?
Certainly, if the right measures are taken. The Cherokee Nation (not the only Cherokee group around) has a membership of over 280,000...with time that could rise to a number able to populate a major city. Promote Cherokee language effectively throughout that demographic (all schools taught predominately in Cherokee, intensive language programs for all ages) and voila.

Even if that goal isn't reached, even if it's a region of towns with Cherokee as the predominate language, having those communities reclaim their languages would be a monumental step for progress.


I read it. I think I read it in Arabic if I remember correctly. Maybe it was in English though. The point is that in both of them I could. It is part of the cultural world that speaking those two languages gives me access to.
There's nothing like reading work of literature in their original language. You lose a lot with translations...and that's the point: You lose a lot. Forever.


Is there a Navajo translation?
There damn well will be.

[manic expression]

Whilst native speakers may 'wish' to keep them alive it doesn't mean that their actions actually help to keep them alive. The important thing is probably what language is spoken in the home, and many people who are native speakers of minority languages consciously make a shift in the language that they speak at home because they feel it is better for their kids.
"Better" how? Because they can get a job easier with the more widespread one? Because they know society doesn't accept languages that aren't spoken by the Queen and her capitalist masters?

It's incredible how you even imply that it's a matter of capitalism continuing to violate the self-determination of peoples and yet you're so neutral you might as well be commenting on the leaves turning orange.


I am not sure what it means by 'unjustifiable'. Do you feel that families need to justify which language they talk in over the breakfast table to you.No, but I know that you can't justify the permanent death of national languages in favor of whatever they speak on Wall Street.

[Demogorgon]

Scots Gaelic is far from useless. Just as one example: such a regional language can help you out in a lot of situations. Ever wanted to say something to a friend without anyone else understanding it? Scots Gaelic will do that easy.

I remember meeting a pair of Irishmen traveling through central Europe...and while the conversations of us Americans and Canadians were understood by everyone around us, these two Irishmen could talk and talk and talk in Irish with complete privacy. It's a very useful thing when you're traveling (or in any sort of negotiation, etc.).

Well to do that, not only would I have to learn Gaelic, I would have to find someone else that spoke it. Understand that I know no Gaelic whatsoever. Not even the words for "hello" and "goodbye". The same is true of nearly everybody I know. If I wanted to speak in a dialect others couldn't understand, I could speak Scots of course. Whether that is a separate language (like Norwegian is to Danish) or just a dialect of English (like Swiss German to German) is a matter of dispute but you can be damn sure you probably wouldn't understand it if I spoke it quickly.

Not that I have ever wanted to speak in a language that would exclude others from conversation of course.


And that's before we get to the fact that it's a significant part of Scottish culture, and that trading it away forever just because English has more capitalist economic power behind it is unjustifiable.

It has nothing to do with England or capitalism as it predates both capitalism and the Union with England. Gaelic was never the language of all Scotland, just the language of the Highlands and the concentration of power in the lowlands always marginalised it. Before the Union of the Crowns, let alone the act of Union, the Parliament of Scotland had defined the languages of Scotland as Scots and English. It outright ignored Gaelic. It wasn't the English doing that. Which isn't to say that Gaelic isn't important to Scottish Culture, but it is not a national language and English was not pushed into Scotland by England.

The British Government did attempt to suppress Gaelic in the Highlands in the eighteenth century after the Jacobite uprisings, but what really reduced the use of Gaelic is the dwindling population of the Highlands.


Language learning is about what you need, but it's also about what you love. Lots of people learn Korean over Mandarin because they fall in love with Korean culture. The same goes for Swedish or Thai or Greek or Levantine Arabic. Saying people should learn this or that purely because it's widely spoken is just quatsch.
Well someone greatly interested in Korea would do well to learn Korean as they could then read Korean literature, watch Korean films without subtitles and most importantly go to Korea and speak with the people there in their native language. There is much to be gained from that. With Gaelic that just isn't the case. Nobody speaks it as a sole language and there is little written in it that hasn't been translated.

The purpose of learning a language is ultimately so that you can speak to people who speak it and/or read literature written in it. That is why people mostly learn widely spoken languages.

I am not saying there is no reason to learn Gaelic. My brother for instance has become interested in the Highlands since moving there and sometimes says he is thinking about learning Gaelic (I can guarantee he will never get around to it of course, but that isn't the point). He has never found any instance where he needs it however.

[Agent Equality]

ENGLISH...everyone must speak english!!!!...lol

[Demogorgon]

IMO, there's state support and then there's state support. Every Irish politician since de Valera has had a whole lot of things to say about promoting Irish, but the measures they took didn't do the job, and Irish has been steadily declining since the Irish War of Independence. Measures taken just across the sea in Wales, in contrast, have actually increased the number of people who can speak Welsh and those who speak it regularly.

The Irish Government has done a lot more for Irish than the UK or Welsh Governments have done for Welsh. Welsh isn't that widely spoken of course, but there are parts of Wales where it is genuinely useful language to know and where people speak it as a first language in preference to English. The growth of the language is more down to cultural movements promoting its greater use than anything to do with the Government.

[manic expression]

Well to do that, not only would I have to learn Gaelic, I would have to find someone else that spoke it. Understand that I know no Gaelic whatsoever. Not even the words for "hello" and "goodbye". The same is true of nearly everybody I know. If I wanted to speak in a dialect others couldn't understand, I could speak Scots of course. Whether that is a separate language (like Norwegian is to Danish) or just a dialect of English (like Swiss German to German) is a matter of dispute but you can be damn sure you probably wouldn't understand it if I spoke it quickly.
Well, this is one of those things that should begin with the education system. Learning any language on your own is a tall order, and that's double for something with few resources. That's why I would propose immersion for marginalized languages in schools starting with kindergarten and moving on up. Keep the dominant language as a big part of the curriculum...bilingual education should be the goal.


Not that I have ever wanted to speak in a language that would exclude others from conversation of course.
That's what I thought...then I went to Morocco. :lol:


It has nothing to do with England or capitalism as it predates both capitalism and the Union with England. Gaelic was never the language of all Scotland, just the language of the Highlands and the concentration of power in the lowlands always marginalised it. Before the Union of the Crowns, let alone the act of Union, the Parliament of Scotland had defined the languages of Scotland as Scots and English. It outright ignored Gaelic. It wasn't the English doing that. Which isn't to say that Gaelic isn't important to Scottish Culture, but it is not a national language and English was not pushed into Scotland by England.

The British Government did attempt to suppress Gaelic in the Highlands in the eighteenth century after the Jacobite uprisings, but what really reduced the use of Gaelic is the dwindling population of the Highlands.
That's true, but then we can definitely consider Gaelic a language of the Highlands, no? Would you deem it a worthwhile goal to promote Gaelic fluency in that region?


Well someone greatly interested in Korea would do well to learn Korean as they could then read Korean literature, watch Korean films without subtitles and most importantly go to Korea and speak with the people there in their native language. There is much to be gained from that. With Gaelic that just isn't the case. Nobody speaks it as a sole language and there is little written in it that hasn't been translated.

The purpose of learning a language is ultimately so that you can speak to people who speak it and/or read literature written in it. That is why people mostly learn widely spoken languages.
I would dispute that claim. Like I said before, Bengali has more speakers than Japanese, but there's little doubt that more people outside of India take the time to learn Japanese more often than Bengali. And before anyone says that since lots of Bengali speakers also speak English it's not important to learn, I would remind them that speaking something like Bengali would open up so many doors in that region and radically change the way people approached you. Go to India speaking only English, you get treated like a tourist...go to India with a working knowledge of Hindi/etc., you get treated as a worthy guest.

As another example, I learned a pretty good bit of Swedish while I was there. Swedes speak English as well as anyone else, so I didn't need it to communicate (TV there is almost all in English), but it's a fun and rewarding language, and learning it showed some respect and understanding of Swedes. What I'm saying is...why not strive toward that? Keep English just the way it is but promote Gaelic alongside it...it's a win-win.


I am not saying there is no reason to learn Gaelic. My brother for instance has become interested in the Highlands since moving there and sometimes says he is thinking about learning Gaelic (I can guarantee he will never get around to it of course, but that isn't the point). He has never found any instance where he needs it however.
I hear that...as you allude to language is about more than need, but then again circumstance is a difficult obstacle. If we teach it to kids when they're able to soak up languages like a sponge, then it sidesteps those problems and also makes it a part of one's identity. The way I see it, if Paraguay can speak Spanish and Guarani, then the Highlands can do English and Gaelic. :)

[manic expression]

The Irish Government has done a lot more for Irish than the UK or Welsh Governments have done for Welsh. Welsh isn't that widely spoken of course, but there are parts of Wales where it is genuinely useful language to know and where people speak it as a first language in preference to English. The growth of the language is more down to cultural movements promoting its greater use than anything to do with the Government.
Right, that's why the method is as important as the effort, perhaps more so. From what I know, Irish is mandatory in all schools, but it's so tediously taught that few care about it. The only schools that teach it well are the few schools that are fully in Irish (like with the ones you pointed out with regard to Scots Gaelic). That's the real problem, and I think the efforts to promote Welsh should be analyzed and replicated.

If I can offer my non-professional take on it, I think pre-k and kindergarten should be fully in Irish at minimum, and summer programs in the Irish-speaking areas of the country should be free and assigned generous amounts of extra-credit. That might prove a good base with which to work towards widespread fluency.

[Tenka]

No, but I know that you can't justify the permanent death of national languages in favor of whatever they speak on Wall Street.
You can't justify people dying; you can't justify wildfires, hurricanes, etc. I wouldn't say language death is a totally natural phenomenon, considering the obvious imperialist contributions to it; but it is something that, in some cases, in today's context, is well nigh impossible to reverse. People in general just have no need and neither a desire to learn languages that don't actually facilitate communication, which is the basic function of a language; they grow up hearing and speaking and thinking in these languages that imperialists forced on their ancestors, and most have no interest in learning the ancestral tongue; can you blame them? The point is that it's not something that begs any justification -- it just is.

But of course, it is highly desirable to preserve as many languages as possible for anthropological reasons; it's just that many of them can't help but be on the decline in actual number of fluent speakers for aforementioned reasons. Mandatory education in any but the most widely-understood in ones area is pointless, to say the least; but education as such should be available for those that want to learn (hopefully not on the basis of some strange sort of retro-nationalism...).

[Demogorgon]

Well, this is one of those things that should begin with the education system. Learning any language on your own is a tall order, and that's double for something with few resources. That's why I would propose immersion for marginalized languages in schools starting with kindergarten and moving on up. Keep the dominant language as a big part of the curriculum...bilingual education should be the goal.I definitely support language immersion and bilingual education. Gaelic should not be the priority however. It should be an option of course, but it would be foolish to make it the main language we seek to teach. I think for the time being in Scotland French and Spanish are the best languages to teach, but we have to branch out. It was in the news a week or so back that some schools in Scotland are going to trial courses provided in partnership with the Chinese Government that will include learning Mandarin. I think this is a really good thing and hope it becomes standard. Children will gain far more from learning Mandarin than learning Gaelic. Gaelic should as I say be there for those who want it, but I would not make it compulsory beyond maybe some basic classes for children to learn about it.


That's true, but then we can definitely consider Gaelic a language of the Highlands, no? Would you deem it a worthwhile goal to promote Gaelic fluency in that region?It wouldn't do any harm, but given limited resources, it should not be the first language we seek to teach.


I would dispute that claim. Like I said before, Bengali has more speakers than Japanese, but there's little doubt that more people outside of India take the time to learn Japanese more often than Bengali. And before anyone says that since lots of Bengali speakers also speak English it's not important to learn, I would remind them that speaking something like Bengali would open up so many doors in that region and radically change the way people approached you. Go to India speaking only English, you get treated like a tourist...go to India with a working knowledge of Hindi/etc., you get treated as a worthy guest.Well people planning to spend time in India would definitely benefit from learning the language of the region they are going to, just as in your previous example, people who wish to spend time in Korea would be well advised to learn Korean, but these are not the languages that will most benefit the general public.


As another example, I learned a pretty good bit of Swedish while I was there. Swedes speak English as well as anyone else, so I didn't need it to communicate (TV there is almost all in English), but it's a fun and rewarding language, and learning it showed some respect and understanding of Swedes. What I'm saying is...why not strive toward that? Keep English just the way it is but promote Gaelic alongside it...it's a win-win.

If I were going to live in Sweden, I'd definitely try to learn Swedish as that is the first language there. Gaelic isn't even the first language of the Highlands really. I think support should be given in that anyone who wants to learn it should be able to take free classes in it. It is not, as I say, the most important language to learn.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Whilst native speakers may 'wish' to keep them alive it doesn't mean that their actions actually help to keep them alive. The important thing is probably what language is spoken in the home, and many people who are native speakers of minority languages consciously make a shift in the language that they speak at home because they feel it is better for their kids.


I think minority language speakers would have less incentive to assimilate in a socialist society. They consciously speak other languages around their children to improve the opportunities of their children, but in a socialist society with autonomous communities there will be opportunities in the native languages too.


I think the 'what good it will do them' is the more important part of the question. Today there are many minority languages that recieve state support and yet still continue to decline.


Examples? The question might not be the state assistance but how the state is assisting. Also, some ethnic groups might feel less culturally attached to their language than others.


I don't think that whether I have a problem with it is really the question at all. The question is whether it is a process that is happening. Our feelings on it aren't really the issue.
It is happening that languages are going extinct, but the structural causes for this process are largely social and economic conditions and whether those conditions can be changed. Only in the case of a few sad languages with a few dozen (or fewer) elderly speakers are "doomed" (and even then there is the possibility of preserving the language in some form).



Again the fact that they may 'offer us innumerable riches' isn't really the point. The point is whether they will die out or not.

In my own family, none of the generation younger than me can speak a more than a word or two of the native language of their great-great grandparents. This is what language death is about.

It doesn't mean that the people in my family wanted their language to go. In fact the reality is far from that. Many of them loved the language, and many were very nationalist minded. Yet it was a process that happened all the same. I think the question here is why this happens and whether it is a process that would continue to happen under socialism.

At the moment the process is clear. Major languages are tending to push smaller ones out of existance. You don't make any argument for why that would change rather your just trot out your political desires.
If you don't mind me asking, what was that language?

Its important to remember that the reasons why these languages are dying are quite complex. In particular, many are spoken in rural areas, many are spoken by poorly educated peasants, and there are very few wealthy areas, schools or employers which use the language. In a socialist society, there would be less pressure for rural speakers of indigenous languages to learn the hegemonic language because the rural-urban pressures and rural poverty would be reduced and employment opportunities can be offered in their vernacular.

In fact, sometimes you get the continued persistence of a language despite hundreds of years of repression by the government. Here we can see how a combination of structural economic realities and particular political policies has and continues to damage the survivability of what was once one of the most widely spoken languages of the "New World."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nahuatl#Modern_period


At present Nahuatl is mostly spoken in rural areas by an impoverished class of indigenous subsistence agriculturists. According to the Mexican national statistics institute, INEGI (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INEGI), 51% of Nahuatl speakers are involved in the farming sector and 6 in 10 receive no wages or less than the minimum wage.[36] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nahuatl#cite_note-40) From the early 20th century to at least the mid-1980s, educational policies in Mexico focused on the hispanization (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanization) (castellanización) of indigenous communities, teaching only Spanish and discouraging the use of indigenous languages.[37] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nahuatl#cite_note-41) As a result, today there is no group of Nahuatl speakers having attained general literacy in Nahuatl;[38] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nahuatl#cite_note-42) while their literacy rate in Spanish also remains much lower than the national average.[39] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nahuatl#cite_note-43) Even so, Nahuatl is still spoken by well over a million people, of whom around 10% are monolingual (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monolingualism). The survival of Nahuatl dialects as a whole is not imminently endangered, but the survival of certain dialects is, and some dialects have already become extinct within the last few decades of the 20th century

Yet despite this it survives as one of over 50 native languages in Mexico. The Mexican state is starting to actually support the language with more effort. Whether or not the language survives depends in part on how politically engaged the indigenous communities are, but also on how responsive the State is in improving the economic circumstances for those who know only this language.

Consider the inverse case of Hebrew, where a dead language was brought back into common usage (albeit in a somewhat reconstructed form). Here is a language which was extinct for centuries, yet it was reborn because it had a particularly economically and politically capable religious community which wanted to speak it. If the Jewish people can bring Hebrew back from the dead, there's no reason why indigenous communities cannot preserve still-living languages.



I read it. I think I read it in Arabic if I remember correctly. Maybe it was in English though. The point is that in both of them I could. It is part of the cultural world that speaking those two languages gives me access to. Is there a Navajo translation?

DevrimI think the point is that any work of literature, mythology, philosophy or poetry loses a lot in the translation. This is why Muslims are so caught up on learning the Koran in Arabic-they understand the importance of learning a text in its original language.


But of course, it is highly desirable to preserve as many languages as possible for anthropological reasons; it's just that many of them can't help but be on the decline in actual number of fluent speakers for aforementioned reasons. Mandatory education in any but the most widely-understood in ones area is pointless, to say the least; but education as such should be available for those that want to learn (hopefully not on the basis of some strange sort of retro-nationalism...).

I think if you encourage people outside of the linguistic community to learn it as a secondary language you will help to preserve it. Why not teach Puebloan languages to people in New Mexico, or tribal languages in rural India, as secondary languages? Why can't Han Chinese learn Tibetan, Chileans learn Mapuche, Russians learn Chechen, and Spaniards learn Basque? There's nothing wrong with raising children as bilinguals.


I definitely support language immersion and bilingual education. Gaelic should not be the priority however. It should be an option of course, but it would be foolish to make it the main language we seek to teach. I think for the time being in Scotland French and Spanish are the best languages to teach, but we have to branch out. It was in the news a week or so back that some schools in Scotland are going to trial courses provided in partnership with the Chinese Government that will include learning Mandarin. I think this is a really good thing and hope it becomes standard. Children will gain far more from learning Mandarin than learning Gaelic. Gaelic should as I say be there for those who want it, but I would not make it compulsory beyond maybe some basic classes for children to learn about it.

I dont know about Gaelic in specific but there are many languages, such as those in Latin America, with hundreds of thousands of native speakers. Teaching Mestizos the native languages of the area would do more to build solidarity between them and their indigenous neighbors. Other places like India and China have the same problem. Raising the children of non-speakers as bilinguals in the "native" languages would only have positive effects in such places.



I posted this earlier (i deleted it to edit it in with this one)
Linguistic autonomy should be one of the highest priorities of every communist society. On one hand, linguistic homogeneity adds superficially to efficiency insofar as it creates a common tongue for all people. But it has a host of negative effects which are hard to notice. First, children work more slowly when studying a language which they are not raised in. Second, language shapes a particular people's value systems and beliefs and that should be their autonomous decision insofar as they are respecting the rights of others. Third, languages often are particularly suited to certain environments (the cliche example is inuit knowing multiple words for "snow") which a hegemonic language lacks. And fourth (related to the second and third) a language is a great repository for cultural, philosophical and historical features which a group and society at large should try to preserve for humanity in general.

I think its chauvinistic to try to impost a hegemonic linguistic standard on society based on what the "majority" speaks. Everyone should know more than one language. Whether or not there should be a group of common languages which all people learn on top of local or indigenous questions is difficult to ask but broadly speaking all people have a right to preserve and raise future generations in their indigenous tongue, as well as creating new artistic and cultural content in that language.

[manic expression]

I definitely support language immersion and bilingual education. Gaelic should not be the priority however. It should be an option of course, but it would be foolish to make it the main language we seek to teach. I think for the time being in Scotland French and Spanish are the best languages to teach, but we have to branch out. It was in the news a week or so back that some schools in Scotland are going to trial courses provided in partnership with the Chinese Government that will include learning Mandarin. I think this is a really good thing and hope it becomes standard. Children will gain far more from learning Mandarin than learning Gaelic. Gaelic should as I say be there for those who want it, but I would not make it compulsory beyond maybe some basic classes for children to learn about it.
French and Spanish can be learned at a later time, while the window to get kids fluent in Gaelic is an important one that can't be ignored. Once you miss that window, it's a matter of "learn it when you find the time", something that proves a difficult obstacle to many people like your brother who would like to learn the language of the Highlands.

"Basic classes for children to learn about it" would yield the same negative results that Ireland's been seeing for years. Aggressive immersion across the board is needed or else the language will continue to be marginalized.


It wouldn't do any harm, but given limited resources, it should not be the first language we seek to teach.At the risk of sounding repetitious (:blushing:), if Gaelic is an important part of Highlands culture, why shouldn't it be first?


Well people planning to spend time in India would definitely benefit from learning the language of the region they are going to, just as in your previous example, people who wish to spend time in Korea would be well advised to learn Korean, but these are not the languages that will most benefit the general public.Sure, but it goes to show that numbers of speakers doesn't equal influence. It has to do with economic power in the age of imperialism. We shouldn't let that be our compass (not that you are, but it's important bear in mind).


If I were going to live in Sweden, I'd definitely try to learn Swedish as that is the first language there. Gaelic isn't even the first language of the Highlands really. I think support should be given in that anyone who wants to learn it should be able to take free classes in it. It is not, as I say, the most important language to learn.The irony is that, without much exaggeration, you could just as easily live in Sweden speaking only English as you could in Scotland. So why learn Swedish? Well, the answers are quite clear: it's part of the culture and history of the people, it shows respect and understanding of Swedes, it gives one a connection to the literature and art of Sweden, it's fun and different and it sounds awesome (och det är jete bra!). The only real difference with Gaelic is that Swedish hasn't been marginalized by the powers that be...but there's no reason why we can't change that.

With a little bit of effort and the right methods, the Highlands could be back to speaking their language while keeping English as a fluent first language...you get the language that belongs to Highland culture and you also get English, the most influential language in the world by a wide margin. Like I said, I see this as a win-win.

[Smyg]

Actually, we Swedes aren't that good in English. As a matter of fact, we're horrible. It just happens to be so that the rest of Europe is even more awful.

[Taikand]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban

All the other languages can (and maybe should) die, the last thing we need is language to splinter the human race.

[Demogorgon]

French and Spanish can be learned at a later time, while the window to get kids fluent in Gaelic is an important one that can't be ignored. Once you miss that window, it's a matter of "learn it when you find the time", something that proves a difficult obstacle to many people like your brother who would like to learn the language of the Highlands.

"Basic classes for children to learn about it" would yield the same negative results that Ireland's been seeing for years. Aggressive immersion across the board is needed or else the language will continue to be marginalized.

Well Irish people don't really need to know Irish and Highlanders (let alone other Scots) don't really need to know Gaelic. Our point of difference is that I simply do not see it as the be all and end all to promote marginal languages. I absolutely think that people should have the choice to learn Gaelic and as I said classes (including immersion) should be freely available to anyone who wants it. Gaelic language schools should also be maintained for those who wish to use them, but for most people it is pointless.


At the risk of sounding repetitious (:blushing:), if Gaelic is an important part of Highlands culture, why shouldn't it be first?More that it was. Modern Highlanders certainly have their own culture but most don't speak Gaelic. Gaelic is only part of modern culture in the Gaelic speaking areas and at the risk of stating the obvious, children brought up in those areas already learn it.


Sure, but it goes to show that numbers of speakers doesn't equal influence. It has to do with economic power in the age of imperialism. We shouldn't let that be our compass (not that you are, but it's important bear in mind).True, but you can't just ignore what languages have the strongest global pull. Learning a language has to benefit the learner and learning languages that will give the most potential to communicate and access information leads to the most benefit.


The irony is that, without much exaggeration, you could just as easily live in Sweden speaking only English as you could in Scotland. So why learn Swedish? Well, the answers are quite clear: it's part of the culture and history of the people, it shows respect and understanding of Swedes, it gives one a connection to the literature and art of Sweden, it's fun and different and it sounds awesome (och det är jete bra!). The only real difference with Gaelic is that Swedish hasn't been marginalized by the powers that be...but there's no reason why we can't change that.Probably, but it is just good manners to try to learn the local language if you are living there. If I were living in Sweden I would try to learn the language. Of course if I were just visiting I wouldn't bother. My Swedish vocabulary comprises of a grand total of three words and I wouldn't try to expand it for a visit.

The reason Swedish isn't marginalised is because it is a national language in a manner that Gaelic simply isn't.


With a little bit of effort and the right methods, the Highlands could be back to speaking their language while keeping English as a fluent first language...you get the language that belongs to Highland culture and you also get English, the most influential language in the world by a wide margin. Like I said, I see this as a win-win.
I don't really see why the Highlands should "go back" to anything. Simply learning Gaelic because it was the main language of the past is pretty pointless after all. Indeed Gaelic only dates back to the twelfth century, after the introduction of English to the rest of Scotland. Before that a proto-Gaelic language which is also the forebear of Irish was the language of the Highlands. Why not go back to that? It was the main language for longer after all.

I think as well you may misunderstand the Highlands a bit, it is not so distinct from the rest of Scotland that it would benefit from having a different language. Lots of Highlanders move down here and lots of us move to the Highlands. Lots of English people move to the Highlands as well. That flow would be interrupted if Gaelic became too strong.

[Devrim]

Certainly, if the right measures are taken. The Cherokee Nation (not the only Cherokee group around) has a membership of over 280,000...with time that could rise to a number able to populate a major city. Promote Cherokee language effectively throughout that demographic (all schools taught predominately in Cherokee, intensive language programs for all ages) and voila.


If I can offer my non-professional take on it, I think pre-k and kindergarten should be fully in Irish at minimum, and summer programs in the Irish-speaking areas of the country should be free and assigned generous amounts of extra-credit. That might prove a good base with which to work towards widespread fluency.

Doesn't it at any point occur to you that this may not be what people want? That people in Ireland may not want their kids to be sent to pre-school in Irish?

Personally, if my child were going to be learning a language in pre-school, I prefer that it wasn't a minority one with hardly any speakers who weren't equally fluent in a language that they already spoke. I'd rather it were Spanish, for example.

Devrim

[Android]

Aggressive immersion across the board is needed or else the language will continue to be marginalized.

This is utterly detached from reality. If anything approaching this was attempted in Ireland there would probably be a revolt.

Any attempt to revive the Irish language will inevitably fail in my opinion due to the objective tendency for minority languages to die off as I think as was Devrim described earlier in the thread and the reality that most people are at best indifferent or couldn't give a toss about the Irish language. I know I certainly don't.

Your whole approach is based on dreaming up schemes to revive a language, maybe you should consider the possibility that it is dead. That is even within going into the nationalist impulse of why it should be revived.

[Devrim]

I think minority language speakers would have less incentive to assimilate in a socialist society. They consciously speak other languages around their children to improve the opportunities of their children, but in a socialist society with autonomous communities there will be opportunities in the native languages too.

This is true, but I am not convinced that they are the only pressures, nor am I convinced that there would be such ethnically homogeneous communities in a socialist world.


If you don't mind me asking, what was that language?

Yes, I do (mind you asking). It is not something I really want in the public domain.


I think the point is that any work of literature, mythology, philosophy or poetry loses a lot in the translation.

Of course things lose a lot in translation. However, I can read every language in the world, and reading translations of much of world literature is as far as I will get.


This is why Muslims are so caught up on learning the Koran in Arabic-they understand the importance of learning a text in its original language.

You know different Muslims than me. In this country most of the Islamic schools teach people to recite without learning the Arabic language. They can read the Koran, but have no idea what it means in the original.

Devrim

[manic expression]

Doesn't it at any point occur to you that this may not be what people want? That people in Ireland may not want their kids to be sent to pre-school in Irish?

Personally, if my child were going to be learning a language in pre-school, I prefer that it wasn't a minority one with hardly any speakers who weren't equally fluent in a language that they already spoke. I'd rather it were Spanish, for example.
[/URL][URL="http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/0209/irish.html"]Not everyone shares your disinterest in culture (http://www.gaelport.com/default.aspx?treeid=37&NewsItemID=5622). And besides:

a.) Spanish isn't the language of Ireland, Irish is.
b.) As we've already established countless times, number of speakers means very little, and it matters even less when we're trying to revitalize a national language.
c.) Irish students have far more resources and opportunities to learn Spanish later in their studies than they do Irish.
d.) Hundreds upon hundreds of Irish progressives did not fight and die against anti-Irish oppression so that we could say "oh well screw Irish culture, let them speak the Queen's English and the King's Spanish".

[manic expression]

True, but you can't just ignore what languages have the strongest global pull. Learning a language has to benefit the learner and learning languages that will give the most potential to communicate and access information leads to the most benefit.
Well, what gives them that pull? Politics and economics, chiefly. There's also the sheer amount of people who speak it, but if you really think about it this doesn't mean much on its own. It's not like you're going to run out of people to speak to in Swedish...the only way it actually matters is if you're more likely to run into someone who speaks it, and that's dependent on local circumstances (thus everyone in the tourist industry down to a carpet salesman in Morocco can speak some passable English at least). There's travel, but as we noted rarer languages can be a real boon to a traveler.

This all points to the conclusion that smaller languages have an important place in our world. Not only that, but they define and inform the culture and identity of those who speak them. What would happen if Hungary gradually adopted German and Hungarian dwindled and died? Europe, and the world, would be poorer for it. What would happen if Quebec dropped its French and became Anglophone? North America, and the world, would definitely be poorer for it (Quebec makes our continent so much more interesting and enjoyable, I swear, if not for them it would be Mexico, America and America Lite...no offense to my Canadian sisters and brothers but that's how I see it).

Sure, some might gloat that Hungary is now more "connected" to the world...but at what cost? What would Hungarians have given up just to speak someone else's language (in an accent they'd mock on the streets of Vienna, no doubt)? They would have sold a crucial part of themselves, and it would be gone forever.

Now reverse that sad vision and look at what we could accomplish. What would happen if Scotland was able to get even 20% of the Highlands and Orkneys to speak Gaelic proficiently on a daily basis? It would reclaim a great deal of its national identity and it would increase cultural independence. And what's the drawback? Well, some people would whine about the money being spent on it...but that's about it.

Let's finally remember that encouraging early fluency in one language doesn't stop anyone from learning another one later on...in fact most agree that it makes it much easier. After Gaelic, Spanish, French and even Mandarin will be a breeze (aside from the characters, but I digress). If the fluency is achieved early, then it's absolutely no problem.


The reason Swedish isn't marginalised is because it is a national language in a manner that Gaelic simply isn't.
That's really what needs to change, in my estimation.

[Desperado]

I am not so sure about this. I think that the tendency at the moment is for languages to die out, approximately at the rate of one every fortnight. I don't see why communism would reverse that trend, and certainly there will be less languages than there are today, as many would have died before we got there.

Capitalism causes culture of the minority for the majority, necessarily stifling diversity and creativity. Just as the predominant ideas of an age are those of the ruling class, so is the predominant culture. The capitalist states in their formation stamped out their diverse dialects in order to create their "nations" (France, Italy and Spain being top examples) and today's imperialistic consumerism does similar. The latter is more obvious by the fact that the threat to diversity today isn't just English over other, but rather American over other.

[black magick hustla]

Doesn't it at any point occur to you that this may not be what people want? That people in Ireland may not want their kids to be sent to pre-school in Irish?

Personally, if my child were going to be learning a language in pre-school, I prefer that it wasn't a minority one with hardly any speakers who weren't equally fluent in a language that they already spoke. I'd rather it were Spanish, for example.

Devrim


This is interesting. My dad is khabyle (which is a berber grouping) and he chose to not teach us khabyle because it is a marginal language. He chose to teach us french instead. I think the obsession with marginal languages comes more from academics and certain minoritarian, nationalist groupings, not from normal people. I think leftists who choose to "protect culture" are expousing very artificial politics that have nothing to do with reality.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

This is true, but I am not convinced that they are the only pressures, nor am I convinced that there would be such ethnically homogeneous communities in a socialist world.


Why would there not be fairly ethnically homogenous communities? I agree that it will certainly increase ethnic heterogeneity in general, but that increase does not mean that communism will lead to mass migration to isolated areas like rural, agricultural, Mayan-dominated Chiapas.

They are not the only pressures, but they are the main ones, and a lot of these "other" pressures are only facing certain communities. For instance, rural Mayans from Chiapas and Guatemala, or better yet Amazonians in Brazil face far less non-economic pressure on their language than, say, Welsh speakers or Cherokee.



Yes, I do (mind you asking). It is not something I really want in the public domain.
Noted


Of course things lose a lot in translation. However, I can read every language in the world, and reading translations of much of world literature is as far as I will get.
This may be the case but it is still valuable to have people fluent in the language who understand the context and can have a greater appreciation for the work.



You know different Muslims than me. In this country most of the Islamic schools teach people to recite without learning the Arabic language. They can read the Koran, but have no idea what it means in the original.
It doesn't surprise me that this is the modern practice in Turkey, but many religions still attach greater value to the language it was first written in and from what I understand Islam is no different. Maybe Islam isn't the best example, but there are Hindu Brahmins many of whom still learn the Sanskrit. The whole Jewish resurrection of Hebrew is a good example too. Granted, this is something which applies much more to academics than non-academics, but insofar as particular communities have a certain attachment to a historical canon of prose (ie, Tamils with Tamil literature, etc) there will be a desire to raise people within that system.


Doesn't it at any point occur to you that this may not be what people want? That people in Ireland may not want their kids to be sent to pre-school in Irish?

Personally, if my child were going to be learning a language in pre-school, I prefer that it wasn't a minority one with hardly any speakers who weren't equally fluent in a language that they already spoke. I'd rather it were Spanish, for example.In theory a community should have autonomy over whether to protect the culture or let things change. Many communities will autonomously chose to preserve their heritage if given the resources. I think the degree to which a community has assimilated historically probably has a lot to do with it. So not every Irish county would want to adopt the Irish language as a first language, but many might. The same is true with indigenous languages in the Americas, India, China and other parts of the world where large hegemonic languages exist next to the smaller native ones to varying degrees. It is more than possible as you indicate that some communities which are not so attached to their language might allow their languages to go extinct, but there will be many communities too who respond to their conditions quite differently than others.

[HEAD ICE]

dead @ manic_expression, an american, trying to uncle tom an irishman :lol:

[Pioneers_Violin]

The world needs a common language that is spoken in many places.
Right now, commercial interests drive this for the most part and we use English, because their old Empire spread it around like a horrible disease. After the collapse of Capitalism we're still going to need a "universal" language that is understood by at least a few in most regions.

I've been thinking about this for awhile.
English is a truly horrible choice. It's hard to learn, the spelling makes no sense, letters are often redundant or inconsistent in their sound and usage and you can't even tell how to pronounce a lot of very common words by looking at them. And that's just the alphabet, spelling and pronunciation!
English would make a better basis for a secret code system than a language.

So if not English, what?
Are we likely to evolve a completely new language, maybe based on text-talk?
Or maybe bad 'ol English can be rehabilitated into something that makes some kind of sense?

Or maybe we'll settle on an existing language, one that a large number of people already speak and one that isn't as ridiculously bad as English.
I narrowed it down to two likely candidates, based on the direction I feel their respective countries are headed.

Chinese and Russian.

Both have quite a long history of use, one is spoken by a country with the biggest population and the other with the biggest land mass. Both countries are currently on the rise after having had some recent difficulties, have huge resources, terrific people and well-established, even ancient cultures.
As I understand it, Chinese is easier to speak but the alphabet is more difficult.

So I settled on Russian and set about learning it fairly recently.
So far, Russian makes a whole lot more sense than English. The letters make consistent sounds, words are spelt the way they sound and Russian doesn't seem to bother with a lot of the more useless subtleties and redundancies of English.

So far, Russian seems to make a LOT more sense than English for use as a widespread language.
Plus, the Cyrillic alphabet LOOKS cool! :lol:

Ой... я сюда попал или не сюда? :confused:

[Dzerzhinsky's Ghost]

I think initially there would probably still be language diversity but I think overtime there might eventually evolve a universal language but I think this would be the result of etymological evolution not socio-cultural revolutionary policy.

[manic expression]

I think the obsession with marginal languages comes more from academics and certain minoritarian, nationalist groupings, not from normal people. I think leftists who choose to "protect culture" are expousing very artificial politics that have nothing to do with reality.
That's not true. See evidence below...

Like this (http://www.bbc.co.uk/voices/multilingual/welsh.shtml):
The aims of the Welsh Language Board seem to have general support. According to a recent opinion poll 67% of people in Wales thought that more should be done to promote Welsh.

Or this (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/6256142.stm)

Or this (on Irish) (http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/support-for-irish-language-strongest-in-east-407677.html):
In Dublin 41.9% of people supported reviving the language, while 48.5% backed it in the mid-east and south east.

40% of the capital is a "minoritarian grouping"?

Or how about this (on Basque) (http://www.noticiasdegipuzkoa.com/2011/01/21/sociedad/euskadi/el-72-de-los-vascos-cree-que-los-funcionarios-que-atienden-al-publico-deben-hablar-euskera):
El 67% apoya las políticas para favorecer esta lengua y el 72% cree que los funcionarios que atienden al público deben hablarla

About three out of four Basques support the increase of Basque in public life. Not "normal people", you say?


Of course things lose a lot in translation. However, I can read every language in the world, and reading translations of much of world literature is as far as I will get.
I see this as one of the main problems...it's not about you. It's not that you might be satisfied with reading translations, it's that your proposals would kill languages so that practically no one could understand their own culture to their fullest.

So it's not about your convenience and satisfaction, it's about us. It's about how richer we are with more languages rather than fewer languages.

[piet11111]

Why not teach people 2 languages their own regional one and 1 international one.

[Devrim]

[/URL][URL="http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/0209/irish.html"]Not everyone shares your disinterest in culture (http://www.gaelport.com/default.aspx?treeid=37&NewsItemID=5622).


I am not 'disinterested' in culture, but if you look at the thing you are actually quoting there it says that 61% think that Irish should be studied at school as a second language in the same way that people in the UK study French. It doesn't mean that they thing that Irish should be imposed as a first language in schools, and it does mean that 39% don't want even that.


a.) Spanish isn't the language of Ireland, Irish is.

So what? Interestingly probably the people who would be most alienated by proposals like this would be immigrants such as the large number of Somalis or Poles that you see in Dublin nowadays.


b.) As we've already established countless times, number of speakers means very little, and it matters even less when we're trying to revitalize a national language.

But then I am not trying to revitalize it.


Or this (on Irish):
In Dublin 41.9% of people supported reviving the language, while 48.5% backed it in the mid-east and south east.

40% of the capital is a "minoritarian grouping"?

Yes, 40% is a minority.


I see this as one of the main problems...it's not about you. It's not that you might be satisfied with reading translations,

No, its not about me. Everybody has to be satisfied reading translations. Nobody can speak all the languages of the world. Actually I imagine I can read a novel in more languages than you can though.


it's that your proposals would kill languages so that practically no one could understand their own culture to their fullest.

You may not have noticed this, but I haven't made any proposals beyond what I would want for my own kids. It is you who are making great proposals about how to organise other people's lives. What I have said is that people will decide for themselves, and that I don't think everybody will necessarily want to revive dying languages.

Devrim

[Devrim]

Why would there not be fairly ethnically homogenous communities? I agree that it will certainly increase ethnic heterogeneity in general, but that increase does not mean that communism will lead to mass migration to isolated areas like rural, agricultural, Mayan-dominated Chiapas.

I think that one of the things about full communism is that rural isolated areas will not exist in the same way as they do today. Part of the communist project is 'the abolition of the difference between town and country'. I don't believe that there would be poor rural areas as there are today.


In theory a community should have autonomy over whether to protect the culture or let things change. Many communities will autonomously chose to preserve their heritage if given the resources. I think the degree to which a community has assimilated historically probably has a lot to do with it. So not every Irish county would want to adopt the Irish language as a first language, but many might. The same is true with indigenous languages in the Americas, India, China and other parts of the world where large hegemonic languages exist next to the smaller native ones to varying degrees. It is more than possible as you indicate that some communities which are not so attached to their language might allow their languages to go extinct, but there will be many communities too who respond to their conditions quite differently than others.

I agree with the main point here. People will decide for themselves. How many will decide either way is something that we can't know, though I suspect it will be as time goes by smaller than some here might imagine.

Devrim

[manic expression]

I am not 'disinterested' in culture, but if you look at the thing you are actually quoting there it says that 61% think that Irish should be studied at school as a second language in the same way that people in the UK study French. It doesn't mean that they thing that Irish should be imposed as a first language in schools, and it does mean that 39% don't want even that.
A majority of respondents - 41% - said that students should be required to study Irish at Leaving Cert level because it is our native tongue and 39% said the language is central to our culture and heritage.

Emphasis very much mine. Those numbers will doubtlessly increase if Irish can become more widespread.


So what? Interestingly probably the people who would be most alienated by proposals like this would be immigrants such as the large number of Somalis or Poles that you see in Dublin nowadays.So what? So you're privileging Spanish over a language that is intertwined with Irish culture, arts and history. Not that you would care about Irish finally being vanquished by its enemies after centuries of trying.

Further, why would immigrants be "most alienated"? I'm not saying someone who emigrates to Ireland needs to be fluent in Irish before they can get a job, I'm saying that early fluency in Irish education and the gradual reintroduction of Irish throughout everyday life should be a priority.


But then I am not trying to revitalize it.Because you don't care about Irish culture.


Yes, 40% is a minority.Don't be thick...40% of Dublin is "normal people", not some small grouping you seem to believe.


No, its not about me. Everybody has to be satisfied reading translations. Nobody can speak all the languages of the world. Actually I imagine I can read a novel in more languages than you can though.With all these language skills you possess, I wonder how you translated "nobody can speak all the languages of the world" into "I don't care if Irish dies a quiet death".


You may not have noticed this, but I haven't made any proposals beyond what I would want for my own kids. It is you who are making great proposals about how to organise other people's lives. What I have said is that people will decide for themselves, and that I don't think everybody will necessarily want to revive dying languages.Of course you're proposing wide-reaching policies. Not instituting early Irish immersion is just as much a proposal as doing so, and with heavier (and irreversible) consequences to boot.

[eyedrop]

We had a compulsory completely useless language we had to learn in school (new-norwegian), it is almost universally hated by students. The silly thing is that it counts way more on your grade average than maths.

Few people like to be forced to learn something that doesn't give them any useful skills, such as gaelic wouldn't.

PS! Speaking amoungst yourself in a language other people don't understand is rude.

[Pioneers_Violin]

PS! Speaking amoungst yourself in a language other people don't understand is rude.

We get a lot of that here!
Chicago is a City of Immigrants with the majority from Mexico and Poland, though people from practically every country are around.

One of my ex-roomates is fluent in Filipino and Indonesian. When out shopping, if someone was babbling loudly in either language or even in Mandarin, she would get very angry and scold them in their own tongue for being rude. They were universally shocked as she is very Irish! :lol:

I play this game from time to time: I'll scold people speaking loudly in Spanish in either Russian, German, or really fast British English. It's even more fun if I know them at least a little or happened to understand a word or two of their conversation.
Sometimes, one of my fun-loving Polish friends will join in to make things completely incomprehensible. :laugh: Or we'll start our own annoying Polish-Rooskie argument and drown out the Spanish/Palestinian/Filipino/whatever one.

My point is to be equally annoying to them right back in a language they don't understand. It usually doesn't work, but it's fun anyway.

[Demogorgon]

We had a compulsory completely useless language we had to learn in school (new-norwegian), it is almost universally hated by students. The silly thing is that it counts way more on your grade average than maths.

Few people like to be forced to learn something that doesn't give them any useful skills, such as gaelic wouldn't.

PS! Speaking amoungst yourself in a language other people don't understand is rude.Yeah, this is really true. Try forcing kids to learn a language that they know they will get no benefit from just encourages resentment and they won't apply themselves to it properly.

The trouble as well with opinion polls showing people want these minor languages to be "promoted" is that people will tend to always say yes. If an opinion pollster asked me if I wanted Gaelic to be vaguely "promoted" by answer would be "yes", but there would also be the unspoken proviso "so long as it involves absolutely no effort on my part". That's the trouble with these romantic notions of reviving languages.

[manic expression]

Yeah, this is really true. Try forcing kids to learn a language that they know they will get no benefit from just encourages resentment and they won't apply themselves to it properly. [...]

If an opinion pollster asked me if I wanted Gaelic to be vaguely "promoted" by answer would be "yes", but there would also be the unspoken proviso "so long as it involves absolutely no effort on my part". That's the trouble with these romantic notions of reviving languages.
If we introduce such languages at a very young age, it requires essentially no effort on the part of the learners. Kids under 10-12 years of age pick up languages like nobody's business...plus, no 9-year old is going to say "well this isn't worth it because look at the comparative table of languages per speaker".

[Demogorgon]

If we introduce such languages at a very young age, it requires essentially no effort on the part of the learners. Kids under 10-12 years of age pick up languages like nobody's business...plus, no 9-year old is going to say "well this isn't worth it because look at the comparative table of languages per speaker".
Children do pick up languages extremely quickly. But you do them little credit if you don't think they won't notice they are learning a language that won't do them any good.

Also, even if we leave aside the whole area of why we even should prioritise teaching minority languages, where exactly are you going to find the teachers for this great revival? In Scotland for instance there certainly aren't enough Gaelic speaking teachers for what you propose.

[Thirsty Crow]

Of course you're proposing wide-reaching policies. Not instituting early Irish immersion is just as much a proposal as doing so, and with heavier (and irreversible) consequences to boot.
Here we go again with the logical contradictions.
Imagine this: a person who does not propose a certain set of policies (in this case, cultural and language policies) is in fact proposing wide-reaching policies...by the sole virtue of not proposing a definite set of policies.

How ridiculous can you get?

[HEAD ICE]

thank god we have plastic paddies to save irish culture from the irish

[manic expression]

Children do pick up languages extremely quickly. But you do them little credit if you don't think they won't notice they are learning a language that won't do them any good.
At pre-k and kindergarten levels? Highly doubtful. If they're thinking about their employment and social prospects in relation to their language skills at that level, then I want whatever they're having for breakfast.


Also, even if we leave aside the whole area of why we even should prioritise teaching minority languages, where exactly are you going to find the teachers for this great revival? In Scotland for instance there certainly aren't enough Gaelic speaking teachers for what you propose.That will take care of itself in a generation or two. It's basically a guaranteed job for anyone who speaks Gaelic fluently...which provides more motivation for those who achieve a basic fluency in the language.

Of course, that wouldn't matter so much in a socialist society, but regardless it's pertinent to the immediate situation which is what we're discussing.


Imagine this: a person who does not propose a certain set of policies (in this case, cultural and language policies) is in fact proposing wide-reaching policies...by the sole virtue of not proposing a definite set of policies.
The absence of early Irish immersion is in itself a policy.

[Thirsty Crow]

The absence of early Irish immersion is in itself a policy.
Only if you butcher the meaning of word "policy" and use it in a way it is not used. Something you're good at when it's convenient for you to accuse other users of supporting something, even though they've stated more than once that they are not in fact proposing a political position, or putting forward a set of policies, on the issue at hand. That's a vital aspect of your debating strategies, it seems.

[Devrim]

Yes, 40% is a minority.
Don't be thick...40% of Dublin is "normal people", not some small grouping you seem to believe.

Actually, I didn't make that comment about it 'not being from normal people'. I think that lots of 'normal people' are interested in these sort of things, just as lots aren't.

Just on a totally different point though what is this with calling me 'thick'? You really are, with the possible exception of Miles, the rudest person on this board.

I don't really think that insulting people is going to change their ideas, nor do I think that it convinces anybody else.

One of the reasons that left communists have some respect in this board far beyond there numbers, and as we all know left communism is a tiny irrelevant tendency at the moment, is because the people who are left communists are polite to people and try to make reasoned arguments instead of insulting them.

The ICC, for example, wouldn't allow people to talk to people like that, not just on message boards, but in general.

You really put across a poor impression of yourself, and your organisation. I don't think that you will take any time to reflect on this, and will probably just reply with a random insult, but if you were to do so, not only would it make this board, in my own humble opinion, a slightly better place, but also you might be able to portray your organisation in a more positive light.

Devrim

[Devrim]

Because you don't care about Irish culture.
...With all these language skills you possess, I wonder how you translated "nobody can speak all the languages of the world" into "I don't care if Irish dies a quiet death".

I think that Irish will die and unavoidable 'quiet death', and I don't care enough about the language to do anything about it.


Of course you're proposing wide-reaching policies. Not instituting early Irish immersion is just as much a proposal as doing so, and with heavier (and irreversible) consequences to boot.

As I said earlier, I am not proposing any policies. If people decide, in a socialist society, to make a conscious effort to save the language, all well and good. If they don't, it is their choice.


The absence of early Irish immersion is in itself a policy.

Which again is not something I am advocating. What I am saying is that people will decide.

Devrim

[manic expression]

Actually, I didn't make that comment about it 'not being from normal people'. I think that lots of 'normal people' are interested in these sort of things, just as lots aren't.
Then if you read the context of the point I was making, you wouldn't have felt compelled to respond in the manner in which you did.


Just on a totally different point though what is this with calling me 'thick'? You really are, with the possible exception of Miles, the rudest person on this board.
Meaning "obtuse"...the context of the point was quite clear and you either ignored it or didn't take the time to comprehend what was being said. The fact that 40% isn't a simple majority does not disprove what I was arguing.


One of the reasons that left communists have some respect in this board far beyond there numbers, and as we all know left communism is a tiny irrelevant tendency at the moment, is because the people who are left communists are polite to people and try to make reasoned arguments instead of insulting them.
Is that so?

thank god we have plastic paddies to save irish culture from the irish


You really put across a poor impression of yourself, and your organisation. I don't think that you will take any time to reflect on this, and will probably just reply with a random insult, but if you were to do so, not only would it make this board, in my own humble opinion, a slightly better place, but also you might be able to portray your organisation in a more positive light.
That's your opinion...but I do get along quite fine with many posters even through disagreements. At any rate, if you take such offense at me saying that the point you made was irrelevant to the discussion and that it honestly came off as petty one-upmanship, then I'm not sure what to tell you.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

This is interesting. My dad is khabyle (which is a berber grouping) and he chose to not teach us khabyle because it is a marginal language. He chose to teach us french instead. I think the obsession with marginal languages comes more from academics and certain minoritarian, nationalist groupings, not from normal people. I think leftists who choose to "protect culture" are expousing very artificial politics that have nothing to do with reality.

Middle class liberals are especially huge on this stuff. There are sorts of NGOs and non-profits out there that aim to preserve obscure languages with mere handfuls of speakers.

[manic expression]

I think that Irish will die and unavoidable 'quiet death', and I don't care enough about the language to do anything about it.
I very much hope you are proven wrong, and if that be so then Ireland will be richer for it.


Only if you butcher the meaning of word "policy" and use it in a way it is not used. Something you're good at when it's convenient for you to accuse other users of supporting something, even though they've stated more than once that they are not in fact proposing a political position, or putting forward a set of policies, on the issue at hand. That's a vital aspect of your debating strategies, it seems.
Try not to let your perception of me color your view of this particular issue.

Not having science taught in school is a policy. Not having literature taught in school is a policy. Not offering Mandarin classes is a policy.

[Thirsty Crow]

Try not to let your perception of me color your view of this particular issue.I have no perception of "you". I only have a perception of the debating strategies pursued by a person going under the monicker "manic expression" here at revleft. I could speculate on all sorts of characteristics that define you as a person, but that would be irrelevant as hell, and unproductive.


Not having science taught in school is a policy. Not having literature taught in school is a policy. Not offering Mandarin classes is a policy.
You can repeat statements like these as long as you want, the fact that such a repetition is analogous to the repetition of magic formulas stands.
As much as you'd like to impute specific propositions to a user here, I'm afraid that simple facts are not on your side.

[manic expression]

I could speculate on all sorts of characteristics that define you as a person, but that would be irrelevant as hell, and unproductive.
Good, then we can be done with this meaningless point.


You can repeat statements like these as long as you want, the fact that such a repetition is analogous to the repetition of magic formulas stands.
As much as you'd like to impute specific propositions to a user here, I'm afraid that simple facts are not on your side.The statements I just said are self-evidently true. To deny a certain subject in school is a policy in and of itself. You haven't tried to contend otherwise so we can be comfortably assured this is the case. Therefore, to propose that Irish immersion not be instituted throughout Irish schools is indeed a proposal that entails a certain policy.


Middle class liberals are especially huge on this stuff. There are sorts of NGOs and non-profits out there that aim to preserve obscure languages with mere handfuls of speakers.
Two can play that game. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQaMqh-lh3k)

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Two can play that game. (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQaMqh-lh3k)

Right. Because not making a pet project out of preserving obscure languages is obviously the same as expressing open hostility toward a particular ethnic/national/religious group.

Your typical style of "debate"...

[Demogorgon]

I have to ask Manic Expression, do you wish to save all dying or indeed mostly dead, languages? If so are you willing to accept all the consequences of that including potentially preventing new languages from evolving and if not how do you choose which ones are to be saved?

[Thirsty Crow]

The statements I just said are self-evidently true. To deny a certain subject in school is a policy in and of itself. You haven't tried to contend otherwise so we can be comfortably assured this is the case. Therefore, to propose that Irish immersion not be instituted throughout Irish schools is indeed a proposal that entails a certain policy.

First, there would have to be an organized effort to institute the subject, and indeed if the authorities responsible for the curriculum decide that it is not needed/appropriate whatever, then it would be reasonable to conclude that this particular subject is in conflict with their policy (and do notice that there are possible reasons for this exclusion other than some sort of chauvinism/disregard for culturally conservative campaigns).

And no one proposed what you claim people proposed. You're ignoring explicit statements which contradict your argument which is not based in any of the posts here.
In stead, what users proposed here is that nothing should be decided by enclosed groups of communist militants, posing as the cultural elite which enforces cultural legislation, and that the people in question should in fact decide. Would you like to argue against this proposition?

[manic expression]

Right. Because not making a pet project out of preserving obscure languages is obviously the same as expressing open hostility toward a particular ethnic/national/religious group.

Your typical style of "debate"...
If you want to play the big-pot association game but can't face it when it's applied to your own position, that's not my problem. The speaker in the video said that Irish is a "dead tongue" and that it was an unnecessary waste of money to give attention to it since it's rarely understood. No "open hostility toward a particular ethnic/national/religious group" there. So watch the video honestly and tell me exactly how you don't share the same sentiment.

[manic expression]

I have to ask Manic Expression, do you wish to save all dying or indeed mostly dead, languages? If so are you willing to accept all the consequences of that including potentially preventing new languages from evolving and if not how do you choose which ones are to be saved?
I think it can come down to some form of triage. I think if a language enters double digits, there's very little that can be done at that point. Triple-digits is greatly precarious in itself, but some effort should be made if possible IMO. Even reviving a dead language wouldn't be out of the question, and it's happened before...so all of this comes down to the circumstances faced, there's no "one-size-fits-all" rubric that we can use IMO.

I'm fine with new languages evolving...if there was some Anglo-Irish sort of hybrid going on I wouldn't see too much reason to stop it. It's just a matter of keeping a language in common use, especially one with such central importance to a culture.


First, there would have to be an organized effort to institute the subject, and indeed if the authorities responsible for the curriculum decide that it is not needed/appropriate whatever, then it would be reasonable to conclude that this particular subject is in conflict with their policy (and do notice that there are possible reasons for this exclusion other than some sort of chauvinism/disregard for culturally conservative campaigns).
I'm not sure what you're arguing here.


And no one proposed what you claim people proposed. You're ignoring explicit statements which contradict your argument which is not based in any of the posts here.
In stead, what users proposed here is that nothing should be decided by enclosed groups of communist militants, posing as the cultural elite which enforces cultural legislation, and that the people in question should in fact decide. Would you like to argue against this proposition?It is you who are ignoring explicit statements of my own. I've demonstrated time and again that Irish people are very strongly in support of their language.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

tell me exactly how you don't share the same sentiment.

I'm not an Orange loyalist politician from Northern Ireland. I guess you needed me to clear that up.

You know, white nationalist/racialists in the U.S. oppose the war in Iraq. Some of them also support the DPRK regime. By your line of (or lack of) reasoning, you are no different from them, since you hold the same positions.

[manic expression]

I'm not an Orange loyalist politician from Northern Ireland. I guess you needed me to clear that up.
No, no. That's quite irrelevant to what I asked. Again, explain to me how you don't share the sentiment that was expressed in the video on the subject at hand (ie the words stated in the video, that Irish is a "dead tongue" and that it's a "waste of money" to support). We'll focus on that for now.


You know, white nationalist/racialists in the U.S. oppose the war in Iraq. Some of them also support the DPRK regime. By your line of (or lack of) reasoning, you are no different from them, since you hold the same positions.It's not my line of reasoning.

[black magick hustla]

That's not true. See evidence below...

Like this (http://www.bbc.co.uk/voices/multilingual/welsh.shtml):
The aims of the Welsh Language Board seem to have general support. According to a recent opinion poll 67% of people in Wales thought that more should be done to promote Welsh.


lets be clear here. nobody wants to have languages proactively destroyed. if you ask a mexican in the streets if they think nahuatl should be taught optionally at school, they will probably say yes, in the same way if you ask them if they think advanced physics should be taught optionally at school. however there is a difference between these people and the ideologues that jump on the whole defending language nonsense. i think its a difference to give some passing lipservice to "protecting culture" than the middle class hobby of adding great political significance to the destruction of languages.

[Thirsty Crow]

I'm not sure what you're arguing here.
These are the necessary conditions for one to conclude that an absence of a language as a subject in education is a matter of policy. These are necessary to distinguish between the situation of contemporary American secondary education in which, I assume, there is no option to learn Serbian, for instance (in this situation, this lack is not a matter of policy, implying a systematic degradation of "cultural heritage" or the communicative capabilities of students).


It is you who are ignoring explicit statements of my own. I've demonstrated time and again that Irish people are very strongly in support of their language.
OK, one final shot.
The topic of this thread is language diversity, or language preservation in fact, in a hypothetical global communism.
It has been acknowledged that there is a historical linguistic process called language death.
Within the scope of the topic of the thread, nobody here called for, proposed a systematic education and cultural policy that Gaelic/whichever language immersion not be instituted. In fact, people clearly stated that this is a matter of the community in hand to decide upon.
You, on the other hand, are trying to turn this explicit statements into something they're not. It's a transparent, dishonest and honestly, lame attempt. I don't even know why should you, whose reasoning skills are probably all good and well, have this simple facts pointed to you again and again. But do retain your irrational zeal for attacking positions that are not being put forward, by all means do. Just don't try to rationalize it.

Apart from this, some of your comments on the nature of language are plain absurd.
If I recall correctly, you did in fact state that learning Swedish enabled you to understand Swedes better.
That's a load of bullshit, and an irrational, magical view on language.
There is no connection whatsoever between the phonetic, grammatical and lexical properties of a language, Swedish in this instance, and the character of the groups of people that are using it. You could argue that by studying the historical grammar (I don't think you did that) and the history of the lexicon one can derive an insight into the history of the geographical region in question, but that would be a far cry from your preposterous statement that somehow you understand Swedes better.

[Red Commissar]

I think by the time a "Communist society" is ever formed we'll be to the point where many languages which are already in dire straits have probably gone extinct. We're already seeing cases of that right now. Unfortunately only the languages of dominant groups in their parts of the world will probably survive by that point. It will be unfeasible, I'm afraid, to revive extinct or at least functionally extinct languages as things currently stand. I'm not sure if a Communist society would be able to change this.

The main, real difference that will occur is that people will no longer be marginalized or persecuted for speaking a certain language and/or belonging to a culture that is repressed in some form, as we've seen in some countries in the world currently. If people choose to attempt to revive a language that has passed I guess that's up to them.

[manic expression]

lets be clear here. nobody wants to have languages proactively destroyed. if you ask a mexican in the streets if they think nahuatl should be taught optionally at school, they will probably say yes, in the same way if you ask them if they think advanced physics should be taught optionally at school. however there is a difference between these people and the ideologues that jump on the whole defending language nonsense. i think its a difference to give some passing lipservice to "protecting culture" than the middle class hobby of adding great political significance to the destruction of languages.
What about if you asked the average Nahuatl speaker whether or not they would like their language to receive equal treatment in schools, courts, banks and the like? What if you asked them if they would like their children to be taught, to an equal standard as otherwise (including the study of Spanish), predominately in Nahuatl?

The big difference here with Irish that has to be pointed out is that a language like Nahuatl cannot be considered the language of all of Mexico. The real aim of such a policy here can't be nationwide by any means, it should start chiefly with communities that still actively speak Nahuatl and want to strengthen it...and then use that base to expand the programs and increase fluency more generally to the point of it being parallel with Spanish within certain states/regions (much like Paraguay and Guarani).

Are workers actively involved in the promotion of marginalized national languages? Sometimes they are and sometimes they aren't. With Nahuatl, it's been the peasantry that's kept it alive for about 500 years while the middle and then ruling class scorned it or actively suppressed it. Without that key and continuing contribution, there would be no tongue to preserve, let alone promote.

But if there was any doubt that working-class voices aren't in favor of promoting marginalized languages, I think they can be put to rest by James Connolly, writing here in The Language Movement (http://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1898/10/language.htm):

Therefore, I say to our friends of the Gaelic movement - your proper place is in the ranks of the Socialist Republican Party, fighting for the abolition of this accursed social system which grinds us down in such a manner; which debases the character and lowers the ideals of our people to such a fearful degree, that to the majority of our workers the most priceless manuscript of ancient Celtic lore would hold but a secondary place in their esteem beside a rasher of bacon.

Help us to secure to all our fellow-countrymen, a free, full, and happy life; secure in possession of a rational, human existence, neither brutalised by toil nor debilitated by hunger, and then all the noble characteristics of our race will have full opportunity to expand and develop. And when all that is good in literature, art and science is recognised as the property of all – and not the heritage of the few – your ideals will receive the unquestioned adhesion of all true Irishmen.

I do not ask you to cease for a moment your endeavours on your present lines of education, but only to recognise in us your natural allies, as you should recognise that those who, under any pretext, however specious, would ask you to help them to perpetuate that British capitalism – which now thwarts you at every turn – is your enemy and the enemy of your cause.

[Thirsty Crow]

What do you think, what is Connolly talking about when he mentions the national and racial characteristics which are being wiped out by capitalism?

[manic expression]

These are the necessary conditions for one to conclude that an absence of a language as a subject in education is a matter of policy. These are necessary to distinguish between the situation of contemporary American secondary education in which, I assume, there is no option to learn Serbian, for instance (in this situation, this lack is not a matter of policy, implying a systematic degradation of "cultural heritage" or the communicative capabilities of students).
Rejecting Serbian courses in education is certainly a policy...why wouldn't it be?


Apart from this, some of your comments on the nature of language are plain absurd.
If I recall correctly, you did in fact state that learning Swedish enabled you to understand Swedes better.
That's a load of bullshit, and an irrational, magical view on language.
There is no connection whatsoever between the phonetic, grammatical and lexical properties of a language, Swedish in this instance, and the character of the groups of people that are using it. You could argue that by studying the historical grammar (I don't think you did that) and the history of the lexicon one can derive an insight into the history of the geographical region in question, but that would be a far cry from your preposterous statement that somehow you understand Swedes better.
No, it's not bullshit. I was able to understand Swedes better because culture is not a collection of isolated things...it's quite a wide product of many smaller portions. Language is one of these.

More than this, language changes the way you relate to people. For instance, there's no exact match for the word "please" in Swedish (there's snälla and vänligen, but they're out of place in most contexts) so you change your intonation when you're asking for something. You can also say "tack" (thanks), but it's not the same thing.

Like it or not, admit it or not, but those kinds of translations change the way we approach the world. That's why my position on this is lagom. :laugh:

[manic expression]

What do you think, what is Connolly talking about when he mentions the national and racial characteristics which are being wiped out by capitalism?
I do not ask you to cease for a moment your endeavours on your present lines of education, but only to recognise in us your natural allies, as you should recognise that those who, under any pretext, however specious, would ask you to help them to perpetuate that British capitalism – which now thwarts you at every turn – is your enemy and the enemy of your cause.

It's quite clear that he supported the immediate promotion of Irish. And on edit:

I do believe in the necessity, and indeed in the inevitability of an universal language; but I do not believe it will be brought about, or even hastened, by smaller races or nations consenting to the extinction of their language. Such a course of action, or rather of slavish inaction, would not hasten the day of a universal language, but would rather lead to the intensification of the struggle for mastery between the languages of the greater powers.

And again on edit because Connolly is so on-point:

Besides, it is well to remember that nations which submit to conquest or races which abandon their language in favour of that of an oppressor do so, not because of the altruistic motives, or because of a love of brotherhood of man, but from a slavish and cringing spirit.

From a spirit which cannot exist side by side with the revolutionary idea.

[Thirsty Crow]

Rejecting Serbian courses in education is certainly a policy...why wouldn't it be?
There was no rejection since there was no proposition in the first place, and there was no rational reason to do that.
Again, you're butchering the meaning of words. Try to use them as they are in fact commonly used.



No, it's not bullshit. I was able to understand Swedes better because culture is not a collection of isolated things...it's quite a wide product of many smaller portions. Language is one of these.
So, your basically equating a collective national identity with "culture", without any explanation.
Also, show me how exactly does language contribute to the production of "culture" (supposing that there is a single "language", supposing that there is a single, homogenous culture) and specific aspects of this culture.


More than this, language changes the way you relate to people. For instance, there's no exact match for the word "please" in Swedish (there's snälla and vänligen, but they're out of place in most contexts) so you change your intonation when you're asking for something. You can also say "tack" (thanks), but it's not the same thing.

Like it or not, admit it or not, but those kinds of translations change the way we approach the world. That's why my position on this is lagom. :laugh:
Oh, here we have a late admirer of the Sappir-Worf hypothesis. Which remained a hypothesis, and a metaphysical one as well.

The example you gave is completely useless and really irrelevant when it comes to such bold statements.
First, your description of the lexical items of snälla and vänligen as "out of place in most contexts" is so vague that it's practically useless.
Secondly, intonation and pitch are also factors in English language, very similar in fact to the example you gave.
But the most important problem is how the hell does simple intonation and possible discrepancy in connotation and specific contextual use of these equivalents, how does that change the way we approach the world? This is a load of bullshit, to be frank, to suggest that minute variations in specifics points to the differences in how we approach the world. Hell, if you were hell bent on going for it, you could find differences everywhere, irreducible differences in fact, which cannot and do not constitute any whole.
So, you in fact got to know something about the specific ways in which Sweds use some aspects of their language. To confuse that with "Swedes", to argue that this constitutes the irreducible difference, would be to fall into the trap of ethnic determinism.

Also, a better example would be, one that Sappir and Worf used, an Australian Aboriginal language which has no grammatical items corresponding for "left" and "right", and use the lexical items denoting the sides of the world, "east" and "west" in stead. So imagine three spoons on the table, and someone says that the biggest one is to the west of the iron one.
Yet even then linguists easily showed how the whole conceptual apparatus employed to argue that there is a definite difference in ways we conceptualize the world is not in fact attributable to the agency of language.


a whole bunch of Connolly quotes
I asked a very specific question. You dodged it.
What are the "racial and national characteristics" Connolly speaks about, and how did they came about?

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

I think that one of the things about full communism is that rural isolated areas will not exist in the same way as they do today. Part of the communist project is 'the abolition of the difference between town and country'. I don't believe that there would be poor rural areas as there are today.


I agree that there won't be poor rural areas under communism, but that doesn't mean that the population distribution from today won't remain more or less the same. While the world might be more equal, there's no reason to think that there would be a huge influx in the number of migrants coming in to these areas. The wealth distribution may change and the rural/urban divide might fade away but people will still have certain cultural, historical and social ties to certain areas that others don't have. Even if there are migrants from parts of the world where other languages are spoken, there is no reason why these migrants cannot learn the local indigenous language as much as the indigenous communities learn the hegemonic language as a second tongue.



I agree with the main point here. People will decide for themselves. How many will decide either way is something that we can't know, though I suspect it will be as time goes by smaller than some here might imagine.
I think that it will have a lot to do with the historical context of the language and the group in question. The resurrection of Hebrew is an interesting opposite extreme from cases of civilizations or cultures who gave up their language in favor of total assimilation, so clearly there is a large range of possibilities. Any socialist government should allow some amount of community self-determination in the language taught as a first language in their schools, with a preference towards bilingual education of some sort. This doesn't mean forced language preservation, (which is a legitimate cause and not just liberal babble but I can see the argument that it shouldn't be pursued contrary to the rights or interests of the culture/language group in question), but it does mean recognizing the importance which language has and building a space for minority communities to coexist.


lets be clear here. nobody wants to have languages proactively destroyed. if you ask a mexican in the streets if they think nahuatl should be taught optionally at school, they will probably say yes, in the same way if you ask them if they think advanced physics should be taught optionally at school. however there is a difference between these people and the ideologues that jump on the whole defending language nonsense. i think its a difference to give some passing lipservice to "protecting culture" than the middle class hobby of adding great political significance to the destruction of languages.

I think it depends on the context. Most Spanish-speaking Mexicans would rather learn Spanish as the first language of their schooling, and with good reason. It is simply better to start school in your vernacular. However, for the same reason, many Mexicans who speak Nahuatl as a first language will want to keep the schools. This is why there are Nahuatl language schools in Mexico that offer bilingual education. There are also Yucatecan, Zapotecan, Mixtecan etc schools in those parts of the country. Evo Morales gained a lot of political capital by pushing the indigenous languages. So it's not like all groups in the world are necessarily trending towards assimilation.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-14534703


Should Creole replace French in Haiti's schools?

Comments (69) (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-14534703#dna-comments)
By Cordelia Hebblethwaite BBC News http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/54634000/jpg/_54634246_afp96750306.jpg
Creole is the mother tongue in Haiti, but children do most of their schooling in French. Two hundred years after Haiti became the world's first black-led republic, is the use of French holding the nation back?
"The percentage of people who speak French fluently is about 5%, and 100% speak Creole," says Chris Low.
Continue reading the main story (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-14534703#story_continues_1) “Start Quote

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/54682000/jpg/_54682418_michelbymelaniegonick.jpg
It's like a toddler who is forced to start walking with a blindfold”
Michel DeGraff Associate Professor of Linguistics at MIT
"So it's really apartheid through language."
Ms Low is co-founder of an experimental school, the Matenwa Community Learning Center, which has broken with tradition, and conducts all classes in Creole.
Educating children in French may work for the small elite who are fully bilingual, she argues, but not for the masses.
Most linguists would share her view - that education in vernacular languages is best - says Prof Arthur Spears, a linguist and anthropologist at City University in New York, and an expert on Creole.
"That is what children arrive at school speaking, and it's obviously going to be better for them to learn in that language," he says.
Michel DeGraff, a Haitian professor of linguistics based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US, describes educating children in a foreign language as "a well-proven recipe for academic failure".
He argues that French should be taught in Haiti as a second-language - after children have learnt basic literacy skills in Creole.
"Learning to first read and write in a foreign language is somewhat like a toddler who is forced to start walking with a blindfold, and the blindfold is never taken off," he told the BBC World Service.
Job prospects No matter which indicators you pick, Haiti has an appalling record on education.
One recent report (http://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/1goal-back-to-school-sept-2010.pdf)rated it as the third worst place in the world, after Somalia and Eritrea, to go to school.
Continue reading the main story (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-14534703#story_continues_2) A brief history of Haitian Creole

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/54690000/jpg/_54690192_hulton3419757.jpg


It emerged towards the end of the 18th Century as slaves from Africa began mixing African languages with French
Lots of the vocabulary comes from French, but the grammar is quite different
Spelling was standardised in 1979
A law called the Bernard Reform was introduced in the early 1980s, designed to boost Creole in schools
The 1987 constitution states that French and Creole are both official languages in Haiti


It's estimated that about one-third of children never enrol at primary school, and only about one in 10 complete secondary school.
Prof DeGraff is working with the Matenwa school to try to prove the case for mother tongue education, in studies with the children there, showing - for example - their progress in maths (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CU4NuFcK8D0), when taught in Creole.
But if the weight of expert opinion supports mother tongue schooling, not all Haitians agree.
Interestingly, those most opposed tend to come from the poorest backgrounds, who speak little or no French, and see school as the best place to correct that.
Twenty-five-year-old Daphnee Charles, who is among the 1% of Haitians who go to university, attributes her academic success to the Catholic primary school selected by her parents - who did not go to school themselves and speak no French at all.
"You would have [extra] homework to do if the sisters caught you speaking Creole, even during playtime - they didn't want you to speak Creole," she says.

But the tough policy worked for her, as she now speaks two languages to a high standard.
"When you can speak two languages, you can have a better job. It can open many doors," she says.
Theodule Jean-Baptiste, who is studying medicine, is also unconvinced.
"Whether we want it or not, we are influenced by French because of the history of colonialism - this is not something we can get rid of quickly," he told the BBC World Service.
"I don't think education should be only in Creole - Creole is not a scientific language."
English and Spanish The belief is widely held in Haiti that Creole is somehow a primitive, inferior language - possibly because of its origins in the days of slavery.
http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/54684000/jpg/_54684678_fletch5342438139_b06acda370_o.jpg The earthquake in 2010 destroyed about 80% of schools
But linguists are at pains to counter this perception.
Creole is "fully expressive", as well as being rich in imagery and wisdom says Prof DeGraff.
"Most have accepted the ideology of elites which says that if you go to school it's in French - that Creole is not worthy of being used, and that Creole is not a complete language," adds Prof Spears.
"Most parents accept that same ideology, just as in most societies, most of the masses accept the ideology of the ruling elite."
More than 30 years ago, a law known as the Bernard Reform (http://commissioneducation.ht/images/documentspublics/gtef-lois-1979-creole.pdf) was introduced in Haiti, with the specific aim of boosting education in Creole - but critics say it has never been implemented.
The Haitian Ministry of Education accepts that textbooks in Creole are in short supply, though it says Creole is already being used widely in classrooms, alongside French.
But the question of Creole or French as the language of instruction appears to be of less concern to the Ministry than the very different question - how to give students a good grounding in English or Spanish.
These are the languages, according to the Ministry of Education's Pierre-Michel Laguerre, that will really open up the world for Haitian children.
This shows some of the benefits of teaching in the minority language, some of the pitfalls of teaching in a hegemonic language, and the difficulties in starting an indigenous language program. On the contrary, people are happy to learn the language, the problem is that there aren't enough resources or academic books/material/media in these marginal languages.

[manic expression]

There was no rejection since there was no proposition in the first place,
You just made one, and I just rejected it. ;)

To look to an example with a bit of relevance instead of your worthless tangents, if Serbian was an endangered language and all of former Yugoslavia was speaking English, and someone rejected the idea of early Serbian immersion in Serbian schools...that isn't a policy? Your obliviousness to the immediacy of the issue is really at the core of your mistake.


So, your basically equating a collective national identity with "culture", without any explanation.
Also, show me how exactly does language contribute to the production of "culture" (supposing that there is a single "language", supposing that there is a single, homogenous culture) and specific aspects of this culture.
Yes, language is intertwined with culture. There's a reason why art-forms that are adopted from other countries with other languages preserve their own nomenclature for techniques and concepts in that art-form. Ever tried to use sheet music that tries to substitute the Italian musical terms for English ones? I have. It's idiotic, it's cheap and it doesn't work. That's why few composers would ever consider doing such a thing. Forte possesses a unique meaning that you can't fully express if you change it to Strong or Loud.


Oh, here we have a late admirer of the Sappir-Worf hypothesis. Which remained a hypothesis, and a metaphysical one as well.

The example you gave is completely useless and really irrelevant when it comes to such bold statements.
First, your description of the lexical items of snälla and vänligen as "out of place in most contexts" is so vague that it's practically useless.
Imagine that...words and their respective meanings are useless to someone who doesn't know a certain language. Stunning. What was my point again? Oh, right, that you can't fully understand a culture that uses such terms unless you try to figure out a bit of the distance between them. Go to Sweden saying vänligen all the time and see what reaction you get. Your ignorance is my proof.


Secondly, intonation and pitch are also factors in English language, very similar in fact to the example you gave.
But the most important problem is how the hell does simple intonation and possible discrepancy in connotation and specific contextual use of these equivalents, how does that change the way we approach the world? This is a load of bullshit, to be frank, to suggest that minute variations in specifics points to the differences in how we approach the world. Hell, if you were hell bent on going for it, you could find differences everywhere, irreducible differences in fact, which cannot and do not constitute any whole.
So, you in fact got to know something about the specific ways in which Sweds use some aspects of their language. To confuse that with "Swedes", to argue that this constitutes the irreducible difference, would be to fall into the trap of ethnic determinism.
:lol: Yes, intonation are factors, but in this specific example they aren't employed in the same way in order to express the concept of "please". You'd know the difference if you've tried to speak the language.

Your little jab on "ethnic determinism" has nothing to do with my words, so it deserves no response.


Also, a better example would be, one that Sappir and Worf used, an Australian Aboriginal language which has no grammatical items corresponding for "left" and "right", and use the lexical items denoting the sides of the world, "east" and "west" in stead. So imagine three spoons on the table, and someone says that the biggest one is to the west of the iron one.
Yet even then linguists easily showed how the whole conceptual apparatus employed to argue that there is a definite difference in ways we conceptualize the world is not in fact attributable to the agency of language.
It's not about "agency of language" (whatever that might mean), it's about the importance of one's own tongue in one's own identity, as a part of their national identity and their own culture. As Connolly said:

Besides, it is well to remember that nations which submit to conquest or races which abandon their language in favour of that of an oppressor do so, not because of the altruistic motives, or because of a love of brotherhood of man, but from a slavish and cringing spirit.

From a spirit which cannot exist side by side with the revolutionary idea.

THAT is what we are looking at here. Are the Irish to abandon THEIR OWN TONGUE in favor of the language of their oppressors? Are the Irish to leave all the voices of their ancestors silent and mute in favor of the language with the most capitalist power behind it?

You reject the place of language in the right of nations to self-determination because you don't care a bit for those nations at all.


I asked a very specific question. You dodged it.
What are the "racial and national characteristics" Connolly speaks about, and how did they came about?
This is what you asked for:

What do you think, what is Connolly talking about when he mentions the national and racial characteristics which are being wiped out by capitalism?

Here, it certainly includes language, as he wrote the article praising the efforts of Irish education and pointing out what was its greatest obstacles (capitalism). You, on the other hand, make cheap excuses and rationalizations for that very obstacle of capitalism. In this subject, you are an enabler of that force, for you disparage and indeed oppose the efforts to counteract it.

[manic expression]

Connolly so well exposes the English hegemonists here (http://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1898/10/language.htm):

I cannot conceive of a Socialist hesitating in his choice between a policy resulting in such self-abasement and a policy of defiant self-reliance and confident trust in a people's own power of self-emanciaption by a people.

[Kornilios Sunshine]

Communism doesn't have the intention to change the culture of some country,therefore yes every country will still have its own seperate language.

[Rooster]

Few people like to be forced to learn something that doesn't give them any useful skills, such as gaelic wouldn't.

That's the thing. Gaelic does provide a use in certain areas and in certain professions. The more people who want to learn or speak Gaelic then the more useful the language would become. There is a very well renowned school here where Gaelic is the main language taught. It's extremely popular because it has a good track record as a result, parents are being tested on if they can speak Gaelic to any reasonable extent. It's always useful to learn things for other reasons than just learning them. Few people dislike being forced to learn things that do give them useful skills (how many of us enjoyed maths in school?).

[Rooster]

It has nothing to do with England or capitalism as it predates both capitalism and the Union with England. Gaelic was never the language of all Scotland, just the language of the Highlands and the concentration of power in the lowlands always marginalised it. Before the Union of the Crowns, let alone the act of Union, the Parliament of Scotland had defined the languages of Scotland as Scots and English. It outright ignored Gaelic. It wasn't the English doing that. Which isn't to say that Gaelic isn't important to Scottish Culture, but it is not a national language and English was not pushed into Scotland by England.

I think that's rather a simple explanation of the history of Scotland. There's been a variety of languages throughout Scottish history with a bunch of them dying off or being promoted. Gaelic was the language of Scotland as spoken by the kings of the country (hence the name Alba) and by the people as seen by widespread Gaelic place names. Before the union of the crowns, English was introduced into the court which was, throughout certain points in history, subservient to the English crown or bowing to English hegemony. It is no surprise then that the last places where Gaelic is spoken is in the farthest to reach and most isolated parts of the country where the political power of the central belt was weakest.


The British Government did attempt to suppress Gaelic in the Highlands in the eighteenth century after the Jacobite uprisings, but what really reduced the use of Gaelic is the dwindling population of the Highlands.

Which was caused by?

[eyedrop]

There are also some negative points with having your mother tongue a small language.

Higher education will be in a foreign language, as you can't expect good material in your mother-tongue for the 50 students

You have to speak to people outside your country in a foreign tongue, which plenty of people don't like, as you can see in how norwegians, in Spain, for example tends to keep to other norwegians which hardly promotes internationalism

[Devrim]

THAT is what we are looking at here. Are the Irish to abandon THEIR OWN TONGUE in favor of the language of their oppressors?

The thing is that for the majority of people in Ireland today it is not their own tongue. Only 36% of the population of the Republic of Ireland, 29% of the population of Ireland as a whole, claim to have any knowledge of the Irish language, many of whom have very little knowledge more than a few words. At most the number of native speakers is 1.2% of the population, at the lowest 0.4%.

The native language of the overwhelmingly vast majority of people today in Ireland is English, and Irish is not 'their own tongue'.


Are the Irish to leave all the voices of their ancestors silent and mute in favor of the language with the most capitalist power behind it?

You could change that question to 'Are the Irish to leave all the voices of their ancestors silent and mute in favor of the language that they themselves speak today?'.

You seem here to be going dangerously near to some sort of 'blood and soil' nationalism. As we have established Irish is not the 'language of the people'. It is as you point out, the language of their ancestors, but to suggest that people should abandon their own language in favour of one that their ancestors spoke in many cases over a century ago is, in my opinion, absurd. perhaps the English should take up Anglo-Saxon.


Therefore, to propose that Irish immersion not be instituted throughout Irish schools is indeed a proposal that entails a certain policy.

Yet I don't propose that 'Irish immersion not be instituted throughout Irish schools'. I think that is something that people will decide for themselves. I don't propose that Irish immersion be instituted in schools, but that is something different.

Devrim

[manic expression]

The thing is that for the majority of people in Ireland today it is not their own tongue. Only 36% of the population of the Republic of Ireland, 29% of the population of Ireland as a whole, claim to have any knowledge of the Irish language, many of whom have very little knowledge more than a few words. At most the number of native speakers is 1.2% of the population, at the lowest 0.4%.

The native language of the overwhelmingly vast majority of people today in Ireland is English, and Irish is not 'their own tongue'.
Irish is the language of Ireland. Recent developments have denied most Irishmen access to the language of their nation, but that is why action must be taken to reverse this.


You could change that question to 'Are the Irish to leave all the voices of their ancestors silent and mute in favor of the language that they themselves speak today?'.
If you don't want to ask yourself the uncomfortable question of why they speak English and not their national language, that's on you.


You seem here to be going dangerously near to some sort of 'blood and soil' nationalism. As we have established Irish is not the 'language of the people'. It is as you point out, the language of their ancestors, but to suggest that people should abandon their own language in favour of one that their ancestors spoke in many cases over a century ago is, in my opinion, absurd. perhaps the English should take up Anglo-Saxon.
English is roughly half Germanic and half Latinate (via Norman French). The rest is made up of contributions from Scandinavian languages, and some later additions of Greek and others. English is essentially the modern version of Anglo-Saxon after centuries of evolution.

I've already said that if Irish were to start to adopt words from other languages, I wouldn't have much of a problem with it.

So it's not the same thing and you know it.


Yet I don't propose that 'Irish immersion not be instituted throughout Irish schools'. I think that is something that people will decide for themselves. I don't propose that Irish immersion be instituted in schools, but that is something different.
Then I suppose 40% of Dublin students should be in early immersion classes right now, right?

[Invader Zim]

French and Spanish can be learned at a later time, while the window to get kids fluent in Gaelic is an important one that can't be ignored. Once you miss that window, it's a matter of "learn it when you find the time", something that proves a difficult obstacle to many people like your brother who would like to learn the language of the Highlands.


I quite agree that it is very difficult to come to languages later in life. Unfortunately I don't speak Welsh despite the fact that my grand father was a first-language speaker. Trying to pick the language up now, while something I would like to do, is a very difficult time consuming process and I wish the language had never left the family.

I know people who are incredibly proud of the language and it makes up a large part of their personal idenity, and in some ways I kind of envy that. That said I know people who were taught the language from infancy who refuse to use it, and believe it is a pointless festering anachronism that inhibits progress and opportunity in Wales.


Aggressive immersion across the board is needed or else the language will continue to be marginalized.

The problem is that you don't want it to go too far the other way either. It reaches the point where, if you can't speak Welsh, it can be very difficult to get a job, especially in some parts of the country. yet even in these regions, where the language is at its strongest, it is still very much a minority language. It seems unfair to penalise people who can speak the primary language of a region but cannot speak a minority language.

[Tifosi]

Irish is the language of Ireland.

Pictish, Norn and less so Scottish Gaelic are all historic languages from my part of the Highlands. Why is Scottish Gaelic, a language which was never really spoken here seen as 'the historic language of Scotland' when Pictish or Norn isn't?

Of course the answer is obvious. Gaelic is on it's death bed today, while Pictish and Norn where on theirs nearly a thousand years ago.

I struggle to see how any language can be labeled as the 'true' language of a country. The people that lived north of Hadrians Wall didn't speck Gaelic, they spoke Pictish for the most part.

[Devrim]

Irish is the language of Ireland.

What does that mean? It isn't the language of the majority of people, and hasn't been for over a century, and I would suspect for much longer though there are no figures from the period.

Are you suggesting that there is some sort of genetic connection between Irish people and the Irish language, or the land and the language?

Whatever you think it is not the language of the majority of people in Ireland.


Recent developments have denied most Irishmen access to the language of their nation, but that is why action must be taken to reverse this.

Recent developments have seen an expansion of Irish medium education in Ireland. The overwhelming majority of students in Ireland receive some Irish education. All schools that receive public money are obliged to teach the language.


If you don't want to ask yourself the uncomfortable question of why they speak English and not their national language, that's on you.

I know why. It is because of imperialism and capitalist economic development. The facts of history don't make me uncomfortable.


Then I suppose 40% of Dublin students should be in early immersion classes right now, right?

In Ireland 10% of students receive primary education, and 3% receive secondary education at gaelscoil.

But why should 40% of kids in Dublin be in them. According to the link you gave referring to this statistic earlier:


In total 93% of those who took part in the survey want to have Irish revived or preserved.

However, this isn't the amount of people who want to send their kids to Irish medium schools.

As BMH said earlier:


lets be clear here. nobody wants to have languages proactively destroyed. if you ask a mexican in the streets if they think nahuatl should be taught optionally at school, they will probably say yes,

Yet, despite the fact that there is 93% of the population who want to revive or preserve the language they don't send their kids to Irish schools.

Most people support the idea of saving the language, but very few of them care enough about it to send their kids to those schools.

Devrim

[Devrim]

lets be clear here. nobody wants to have languages proactively destroyed. if you ask a mexican in the streets if they think nahuatl should be taught optionally at school, they will probably say yes, in the same way if you ask them if they think advanced physics should be taught optionally at school. however there is a difference between these people and the ideologues that jump on the whole defending language nonsense. i think its a difference to give some passing lipservice to "protecting culture" than the middle class hobby of adding great political significance to the destruction of languages.

Interestingly the piece that ME quoted before on Ireland contained this:


The report, which did not take in Northern Ireland, found the groups most in favour of reviving the language were the young, men, city dwellers and the better educated.

Which certainly implies 'middle class', and incidentally is almost exactly the opposite of the demographic most likely to be Irish speakers.

Devrim

[manic expression]

I struggle to see how any language can be labeled as the 'true' language of a country. The people that lived north of Hadrians Wall didn't speck Gaelic, they spoke Pictish for the most part.
IIRC, that began to change at around the 10th Century or so. Gaelic was gradually introduced and then became the language of the Highlands.

One of the issues, though, is that just because a marginalized language today wasn't forever spoken since the dawn of man doesn't mean it isn't worth protecting and promoting. The fact is we can't do anything about Pictish (especially since we don't really know what it sounded like)...but we can do something about Gaelic, and anyone who says otherwise is mistaken.


Whatever you think it is not the language of the majority of people in Ireland.And? It is the language of Ireland because it is intertwined with just about every nook and cranny of Irish culture and history.

I'm not sure why you want to wave around the achievements of imperialism as evidence that Irish is somehow no longer Irish. Whatever you think, Irish is the language of that nation, and history will quite comfortably bear this out. English is the language of colonization and imperialism, you've even admitted as much below.


Recent developments have seen an expansion of Irish medium education in Ireland. The overwhelming majority of students in Ireland recieve some Irish education. All schools that recieve public money are obliged to teach the language.Good...however, it should be done more effectively.


I know why. It is because of imperialism and capitalist economic development. The facts of history don't make me uncomfortable.Do you oppose imperialism and capitalist economic development? If so, then why the borderline-complicity in their consequences?


In Ireland 10% of students recieve primary education, and 3% recieve secondary education at gaelscoil.

But why should 40% of kids in Dublin be in them. According to the link you gave refering to this statistic earlier:

However, this isn't the amount of people who want to send their kids to Irish medium schools.You neglect to mention that gaelscoil is in great demand, and that entry into such institutions is highly competitive. It's not that no one wants to go, it's that there aren't enough of them.


Yet, despite the fact that there is 93% of the population who want to revive or preserve the language they don't send their kids to Irish schools.

Most people support the idea of saving the language, but very few of them care enough about it to send their kids to those schools.Again, the reason matriculation into gaelscoil isn't higher is because spots are so limited. If the number of gaelscoil institutions were increased, more students would quite enthusiastically be enrolled into them.

[Devrim]

And? It is the language of Ireland because it is intertwined with just about every nook and cranny of Irish culture and history.

Just as English is. Look at the great works of Irish literature. What language are they written in? The fact remains that it is a language, which the majority of people in Ireland today don't speak a word of.


English is the language of colonization and imperialism, you've even admitted as much below.

English was imposed upon Ireland by colonisation and imperialism. It doesn't mean that today it isn't the language of the overwhelming majority of the people in Ireland, and even the 1% who may speak Irish as a native language are all fluent in English.


You neglect to mention that gaelscoil is in great demand, and that entry into such institutions is highly competitive. It's not that no one wants to go, it's that there aren't enough of them.

Again, the reason matriculation into gaelscoil isn't higher is because spots are so limited. If the number of gaelscoil institutions were increased, more students would quite enthusiastically be enrolled into them.

Yes, demand is high. I would even imagine that some of that demand is because people want their kids to speak Irish. However, I am pretty sure that it is not the reason that many people want to send their kids their.

Devrim

[Android]

Most people support the idea of saving the language, but very few of them care enough about it to send their kids to those schools.

This is an important point. While people may say they would like to learn to speak Irish etc. It is essentially a notional statesmen arising of peoples idea of what it means to be Irish. Which is expressed in lots of ways, one of the most comical is how every politician is obligated to utter a few words no matter how terrible his or her grasp of the language is, they just vomit them out. This notional thing of belonging also has it effects on immigrants as well, you often see on the news etc immigrants declaring how there children are learning Irish or have took up Irish dancing (child abuase I tell you!).

There is also a stereotype that dovetails with the section of the report Devrim quote, that people who send there children to Irish-medium schools are well-to-do urban middle-class types whose motivation is at least in part to separate their children from immigrants. I do not live in Ireland all year round now so I don't know how accurate it is.

[manic expression]

Just as English is. Look at the great works of Irish literature. What language are they written in? The fact remains that it is a language, which the majority of people in Ireland today don't speak a word of.
Most Swedish musical artists sing in English...does that mean it's the language of Sweden? The sway of English has influenced culture of course, but it is not the locus of culture, it is a recent addition compelled by capitalist convenience. It should be noted that even the opponents of Irish education efforts recognize that it has historically been the tongue to serve the Irish people, and there is little more to add to this conclusion.

You're right that the majority of people in Ireland don't speak Irish...which means they don't speak their nation's own language. Is this anything but an additional highlighting of the importance of Irish revival?


English was imposed upon Ireland by colonisation and imperialism. It doesn't mean that today it isn't the language of the overwhelming majority of the people in Ireland, and even the 1% who may speak Irish as a native language are all fluent in English.As you said, this is due to "imperialism and capitalist economic development"...both things that simply cannot be the compass of any people's identity.


Yes, demand is high. I would even imagine that some of that demand is because people want their kids to speak Irish. However, I am pretty sure that it is not the reason that many people want to send their kids their.However sure you might be, the fact remains. If there were more gaelscoil institutions, more students would be able to be educated in their nation's language. The Irish people support efforts to promote Irish, and so it is perfectly logical that this would be the case.

[Android]

However sure you might be, the fact remains. If there were more gaelscoil institutions, more students would be able to be educated in their nation's language. The Irish people support efforts to promote Irish, and so it is perfectly logical that this would be the case.

But it is not that simple. Yes, there is a demand for gaelscoil places, but I don't believe it is due to a deep desire on the part of people to learn Irish, there are many factors that go into parents sending their children to Irish-medium schools. The one you mention is just one.

If your point that "the Irish people" want to revive the Irish language was true, then surely the availability of places in Irish-medium schools would not be an insurmountable obstacle if there existed the wish on a mass scale to revive the Irish language. The truth is any support insofar as it exists does not go beyond a passive sentiment in my experience.

[Thirsty Crow]

I struggle to see how any language can be labeled as the 'true' language of a country. The people that lived north of Hadrians Wall didn't speck Gaelic, they spoke Pictish for the most part.
It can if you wander into the territory of the ethnic nationalist cultural imagination.
Something which our biggest and most vocal proponent of "aggressive immersion" (implying that thwarted cultures, in their linguistic aspects, can just continue from the developmental moment at which they've been stopped, which is a ridiculous idea*) probably aware of, that being the reason he didn't respond to the statement of his advocacy being borderline "blood and soil" nationalist.

* here's a good indication of such an ide that is in fact being propagated:



As you said, this is due to "imperialism and capitalist economic development"...both things that simply cannot be the compass of any people's identity.

So every single cultural aspect that can be shown to stand in relation to imperialism must be aggressively fought and marginalized by means of a revival of the language intimately linked to the feudal culture of the region in question (it was the language of the feudal culture, a matter of fact) which would then serve as the basis on which cultural development would take place, but with concrete reference to the feudal past, since there are a whole host of cultural phenomena due to imperialism and capitalist economic development, which would in fact necessitate a formation of people's identity outside those boundaries (and since there can be no present identity based on an identity in the future), meaning within the boundaries of the feudal world.

[manic expression]

But it is not that simple. Yes, there is a demand for gaelscoil places, but I don't believe it is due to a deep desire on the part of people to learn Irish, there are many factors that go into parents sending their children to Irish-medium schools. The one you mention is just one.

If your point that "the Irish people" want to revive the Irish language was true, then surely the availability of places in Irish-medium schools would not be an insurmountable obstacle if there existed the wish on a mass scale to revive the Irish language. The truth is any support insofar as it exists does not go beyond a passive sentiment in my experience.
Learning a language without instruction is an extremely difficult task. It would be difficult enough for an English speaker to tackle something closely related like Dutch or French on their own...imagine Irish! It's vital that, if the people of Ireland want the language revitalized (and they do), that it be introduced at a very early age. Expecting people to learn Irish in their free time when they have to worry about work, taxes, bills, their family and everything else is just out of touch with reality.

That's why the "they're not learning it on their own so obviously they don't care" argument is paper-thin IMO. Communists look to society-wide solutions, do we not?


It can if you wander into the territory of the ethnic nationalist cultural imagination.
Something which our biggest and most vocal proponent of "aggressive immersion" (implying that thwarted cultures, in their linguistic aspects, can just continue from the developmental moment at which they've been stopped, which is a ridiculous idea*) probably aware of, that being the reason he didn't respond to the statement of his advocacy being borderline "blood and soil" nationalist.
It has very little to do with ethnicity. I didn't respond to the charge because it's silly and has no relevance. By the very same token, I could say that you're in league with the Orange Order, and yet I don't.


So every single cultural aspect that can be shown to stand in relation to imperialism must be aggressively fought and marginalized by means of a revival of the language intimately linked to the feudal culture of the region in question (it was the language of the feudal culture, a matter of fact) which would then serve as the basis on which cultural development would take place, but with concrete reference to the feudal past, since there are a whole host of cultural phenomena due to imperialism and capitalist economic development, which would in fact necessitate a formation of people's identity outside those boundaries (and since there can be no present identity based on an identity in the future), meaning within the boundaries of the feudal world.English and French were languages of feudal culture...I don't see you popping champagne at the thought of their demise. So now we've established a clear bias in your position.

As for your points on identity, I only recognize the factors that contribute to identity. That includes the language of a nation...and in the case of Ireland, it's Irish, and polls show Ireland agrees.

[Devrim]

Most Swedish musical artists sing in English...does that mean it's the language of Sweden?

No, but then almost the entire population of Sweden aren't native English speakers.


The sway of English has influenced culture of course, but it is not the locus of culture, it is a recent addition compelled by capitalist convenience.

We obviously have a very different understanding of the term recent. The English language has been present in Ireland since the 12th century and has been the predominant language in its largest city since soon after. It has been the predominate language in the whole country since probably the time of the famine. It is not a 'recent' addition.


It should be noted that even the opponents of Irish education efforts recognize that it has historically been the tongue to serve the Irish people, and there is little more to add to this conclusion.

I don't consider myself in any way an 'opponent of Irish education'. As I have said already I am not against it. Nor am I for it. What I think is that in a communist world people will make their own choices about languages, and that they may very well be different from what you advocate.


You're right that the majority of people in Ireland don't speak Irish...which means they don't speak their nation's own language. Is this anything but an additional highlighting of the importance of Irish revival?

To me this comes across as a bit of a bizarre concept. They do speak their own language.


It has very little to do with ethnicity. I didn't respond to the charge because it's silly and has no relevance. By the very same token, I could say that you're in league with the Orange Order, and yet I don't.

It wasn't a charge. What I said was this:


You seem here to be going dangerously near to some sort of 'blood and soil' nationalism.

Let's ask a question though. A woman I know lives in England. She was born in Ireland, and is not an Irish speaker, though her parents were native speakers. Her ex-husband is the same except his grandparents on one side and great grandparents on the other were Irish speakers.

Is Irish the language of her kids, who were born in a different country, and don't speak a word of it, yet nevertheless they are 'ethnically' Irish?

A second question about her cousin, whose situation is similar except for the fact that she lives in Dublin. Is Irish the language of her kids, who were born in Ireland yet don't speak a word of the language?


However sure you might be, the fact remains. If there were more gaelscoil institutions, more students would be able to be educated in their nation's language. The Irish people support efforts to promote Irish, and so it is perfectly logical that this would be the case.

What is a fact is that there are more people who want to go there than there are places. Now some of them undoubtedly want their kids to be educated in Irish. However, I suspect that the primary motivation for many is something different.

Do you have any idea what it might be?

Even so, the numbers involved are tiny. Only 3% have their kids educated in Irish at secondary school level. If the demand were double the capacity, which it isn't, it would still be a tiny minority.

Devrim

[manic expression]

No, but then almost the entire population of Sweden aren't native English speakers.
Then your point here doesn't prove what you think it proves.


We obviously have a very different understanding of the term recent. The English language has been present in Ireland since the 12th century and has been the predominant language in its largest city since soon after. It has been the predominate language in the whole country since probably the time of the famine. It is not a 'recent' addition.
By the standards you're using, "the majority of Irish people", it certainly is.


I don't consider myself in any way an 'opponent of Irish education'. As I have said already I am not against it. Nor am I for it. What I think is that in a communist world people will make their own choices about languages, and that they may very well be different from what you advocate.
Not when over 90% of people living in Ireland want to revitalize the Irish language.


To me this comes across as a bit of a bizarre concept. They do speak their own language.
It's not the language of their nation, it's the language that is in Ireland because of (in your words) "imperialism and capitalist economic development".


It wasn't a charge. What I said was this:

Let's ask a question though. A woman I know lives in England. She was born in Ireland, and is not an Irish speaker, though her parents were native speakers. Her ex-husband is the same except his grandparents on one side and great grandparents on the other were Irish speakers.

Is Irish the language of her kids, who were born in a different country, and don't speak a word of it, yet nevertheless they are 'ethnically' Irish?

A second question about her cousin, whose situation is similar except for the fact that she lives in Dublin. Is Irish the language of her kids, who were born in Ireland yet don't speak a word of the language?
Irish is the language of the Irish nation, and so if they identify with Ireland then it is a tradition that does belong to them. Few can hold them at fault for not speaking it, though, as it's not a problem that comes down to "individual responsibility" but of society as a whole. The same goes for the second question.

But regardless it has nothing to do with ethnicity.


What is a fact is that there are more people who want to go there than there are places. Now some of them undoubtedly want their kids to be educated in Irish. However, I suspect that the primary motivation for many is something different.

Do you have any idea what it might be?
Gaelscoil institutions have an excellent standard of education, and this is unsurprising given the advantages of being bilingual. But your attempted mind-reading doesn't really have much to do with the facts...which tell us that the vast majority of people living in Ireland want Irish to be revitalized.


Even so, the numbers involved are tiny. Only 3% have their kids educated in Irish at secondary school level. If the demand were double the capacity, which it isn't, it would still be a tiny minority.
If.

[Demogorgon]

I think it may be time to put a point across concerning Ireland and language. The first version of English recognisable as the same language as that spoken today is Middle English, that came about due to the Norman Invasion in 1066. England first took control in Ireland in 1168.

Why do some people here feel that the linguistic consequences of one invasion are acceptable but those of another invasion 102 years later are not? To be sure the later invasion took much longer to change the language. Old English was gone by 1154 whereas English did not become the main language of Ireland until around 1800. However, it should also be noted that the language we call Irish today only emerged after the initial Norman/English invasion and was influenced by that. Perhaps the Irish should ditch attempts to learn modern Irish and go back to Middle Irish?

The whole notion of going back to some past age and learning the "true national language" is incredibly stupid anyway. The national language of a country is the language spoken by the people there. It is no good saying that was caused by imperialism because the world is the way it is today because of imperialism and the task is to build something better, not return to the culture and language of our pre-industrial ancestors. Regardless of what blood and soil nationalists may think.

[ColonelCossack]

If you have billions of people, even if they all speak the same language, it would splinter off first into dialects then into whole new languages as a matter of course- mostly because of the massive amount of people. They wouldn't all be able to stay connected to such a degree that they all still speak in the same way. Small changes would grow and eventually become whole languages- like the butterfly effect. That's how languages formed in the first place, I reckon.

Also when we have communism ther'll probably be even more people than there are now.

[Demogorgon]

I think that's rather a simple explanation of the history of Scotland. There's been a variety of languages throughout Scottish history with a bunch of them dying off or being promoted. Gaelic was the language of Scotland as spoken by the kings of the country (hence the name Alba) and by the people as seen by widespread Gaelic place names. Before the union of the crowns, English was introduced into the court which was, throughout certain points in history, subservient to the English crown or bowing to English hegemony. It is no surprise then that the last places where Gaelic is spoken is in the farthest to reach and most isolated parts of the country where the political power of the central belt was weakest.

Different Kings at different times spoke different languages. Some of them were in fact French speakers. However the language of the King is not the language of the people. Various languages were spoken in different parts of Scotland, most of them being forgotten today. Anyway in Southern Scotland, Old English became the dominant language by the ninth century and was later replaced by Middle English. By the twelfth century it had evolved into the Scots language though English as spoken in England was retained by the elite.

There was plenty of subservience to England throughout Scottish history but English being spoken in Scotland predates that and the first language recognisable to modern speakers (middle English) emerged here at the same time as in England.


Which was caused by?
Landowners committing genocide to allow for profitable sheep farming. Of course population decline continued after that. The Highlands could not really be industrialised much after all.

[Welshy]

I am not so sure about this. I think that the nature of the modern world, mass literacy and media, acts as a force against this. Certainly I don't see it happening at the speed it once did.

Devrim

Languages change at different speeds and there are a lot sociological factors that play into when people use what form of a language. But in the US with in the past 50 years a massive vowel shift took place in a dialectal region that was once about as close as one can get to General American English (the standard dialect of the US). And this shift is still going on. This is not to say that we haven't experienced a good deal of leveling across dialects, but this leveling is most likely temporary and doesn't reach everyone as there is a tendency among groups of people to change their speech to reinforce cultural identities. For one of my linguistics classes last year we had to read a shit ton of studies on this and it was rather shocking how strong this can be.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

No. All languages would be outlawed by the party. The party would make up a new, more proletarian language that would stamp out all cultural-language inequalities.:lol:

But in all seriousness, I don't see how a political system can attempt to destroy something as culturally endemic as language. Language is the basis for human hegemony in the world, it allows us to demonstrate and share our vastly superior intellect and skills amongst/with the rest of the populace.

And, to point out for the millionth time, Socialism is a system whereby the people rule themselves, not where 'the party' rules on behalf of the people. So, no, it would be pretty much impossible to produce an in-organic alteration of the development of language.

[Welshy]

Middle class liberals are especially huge on this stuff. There are sorts of NGOs and non-profits out there that aim to preserve obscure languages with mere handfuls of speakers.

Recording these languages provide Linguists with a larger pool of data from which we can use for more theoretical work which can translate into practical applications in computer technology. Also this work is done with the people who speak the language and would like to see it survive and there are instances where the preservation is initiated and completely controlled by the speakers of the language who frequently are hardly middle class liberals. That attitude that only middle class liberals like doing anything that helps increase the knowledge pool of the human wreaks of anti-intellectualism.

EDIT: Also all this talk about Irish in the context of preserving and reviving languages is horribly eurocentric as most language revitalization projects have nothing to do with Europe and are centered around the languages of North and South America where language death is heavily connected to genocide and colonialism.

[Devrim]

By the standards you're using, "the majority of Irish people", it certainly is.

Unless you are discussing geological time English is not a 'recent' addition. It has been the dominant language, and the language of the majority of people in Ireland at least since the famine.


Irish is the language of the Irish nation, and so if they identify with Ireland then it is a tradition that does belong to them. Few can hold them at fault for not speaking it, though, as it's not a problem that comes down to "individual responsibility" but of society as a whole. The same goes for the second question.

But regardless it has nothing to do with ethnicity.

So what is it about then? Is it about a 'feeling of Irishness'?


Gaelscoil institutions have an excellent standard of education, and this is unsurprising given the advantages of being bilingual. But your attempted mind-reading doesn't really have much to do with the facts...

Don't you think that the 'educational advantages' whilst possibly having something to do with being bilingual, are quite likely more connected to the sort of people who send their kids of those sort of schools.


...which tell us that the vast majority of people living in Ireland want Irish to be revitalized.

This is where you completely miss the point. They certainly do, but then I am sure there has been no group of speakers throughout history who wanted their language to die. Nevertheless, they do even despite peoples best efforts to revive them.

Devrim

[Devrim]

If you have billions of people, even if they all speak the same language, it would splinter off first into dialects then into whole new languages as a matter of course- mostly because of the massive amount of people. They wouldn't all be able to stay connected to such a degree that they all still speak in the same way. Small changes would grow and eventually become whole languages- like the butterfly effect. That's how languages formed in the first place, I reckon.


Languages change at different speeds and there are a lot sociological factors that play into when people use what form of a language. But in the US with in the past 50 years a massive vowel shift took place in a dialectal region that was once about as close as one can get to General American English (the standard dialect of the US). And this shift is still going on. This is not to say that we haven't experienced a good deal of leveling across dialects, but this leveling is most likely temporary and doesn't reach everyone as there is a tendency among groups of people to change their speech to reinforce cultural identities. For one of my linguistics classes last year we had to read a shit ton of studies on this and it was rather shocking how strong this can be.

But don't thinks such as mass literacy, and the mass media mean that when these shifts take place, they take place over much wider areas than before, in some cases whole countries in the American case to a certain extent across the entire English speaking world?

Devrim

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

We should shift the discussion from "Nations" to ethnicities and autonomous community rights. This shouldn't have to do with the "Irish nation" as that is a social construct however at the same time the autonomous rights of any community in Ireland to recognize Irish as the most culturally significant language in their area


This should bring us from talking about things like what language the Irish state should claim as Irish to what language best suits the local needs. If one part of Ireland values the language as important to their heritage or valuable to teach their children, etc, then it will be taught. Otherwise it won't.

This is something important to think of regarding Native American, African, Indian and other languages, as well as certain minority European languages like Basque. The liberation of their culture and language does not need to be done in a nationalist context. The Nahuatl language or Mayan language should not be preserved for some mythical Nahuatl or Mayan national identity, but instead should be preserved to protect the very real cultural diversity which exists in the language but isn't really associated with any national identity. They should be preserved because there are still communities which primarily speak that language, because it has a corpus of texts and stories unique to it, and because it is the right of indigenous communities to teach their children the languages of the ancestors (this is true of Irish, Celts, Native Americans, and so on).

In other words, why bring up the "N" word? Nationalism is an unnecessary concept (and can be a dangerous ideology) and one can have an internationalist defense of local language autonomy. In fact, in light of so many linguistic groups with no corresponding "national identity", it would be important to give an answer to this problem that does not rely on it, as the aforementioned Mayans and Nahuatl peoples going on down to small tribal languages with tens of thousands of speakers.

[Devrim]

EDIT: Also all this talk about Irish in the context of preserving and reviving languages is horribly eurocentric as most language revitalization projects have nothing to do with Europe and are centered around the languages of North and South America where language death is heavily connected to genocide and colonialism.

I am not sure what to say about this really. It is just one example, which as Ireland is basically an English speaking country many people are familiar with. If you had wanted to discuss other examples, you were welcome to bring them up.

What I suppose rankles is the moment something isn't focused on America in a board which is dominated by North Americans, there is an accusation of 'horrible Eurocenterism'. I live in Asia. I could have discussed languages in this country such as Ubykh, the last speaker of which died in 1992, or Laz, which is down to about 30,000 speakers, but people would have known very little about them. If I had would that have been 'horribly Asia Minorcentric'.

Devrim

[Welshy]

But don't thinks such as mass literacy, and the mass media mean that when these shifts take place, they take place over much wider areas than before, in some cases whole countries in the American case to a certain extent across the entire English speaking world?

Devrim

That's always very possible. The dialects in the US cover a fairly large area. http://aschmann.net/AmEng/index_files/AmericanEnglishDialects.gif

But overall if there are going to be any instances of dialect leveling it will probably happen with in specific regions (US/Canada, England, Scotland, Oceania and so on) rather than the entire english speaking world since these regions are isolated enough that they will develop independently.

[Welshy]

I am not sure what to say about this really. It is just one example, which as Ireland is basically an English speaking country many people are familiar with. If you had wanted to discuss other examples, you were welcome to bring them up.

What I suppose rankles is the moment something isn't focused on America in a board which is dominated by North Americans, there is an accusation of 'horrible Eurocenterism'. I live in Asia. I could have discussed languages in this country such as Ubykh, the last speaker of which died in 1992, or Laz, which is down to about 30,000 speakers, but people would have known very little about them. If I had would that have been 'horribly Asia Minorcentric'.

Devrim

Well seeing how I also said South America, I could careless if we talk about North America in particular. I wouldn't have a problem with talking about the languages going extinct in Asia either. I just said North and South America because there were hundreds up on hundreds of languages that are now either dead or are just about dead and from most of my experience they have been the main focus of revitalization projects, which was the topic at hand. If we were just talking about language death then Europe would still be largely irrelevant as only a couple languages there are dying, as oppose to rest of the world were languages are being rapidly replaced by languages spoken by their European conquerors. Also talking about reviving a European language gives off an image of a bunch of white nationalists trying to revive the language for their purposes (I know that's not necessarily the case in Ireland) rather than the reality of small groups trying to regain some autonomy from a group of people who conquered and murdered their people.

[manic expression]

Unless you are discussing geological time English is not a 'recent' addition. It has been the dominant language, and the language of the majority of people in Ireland at least since the famine.
And again, we need to ask why that was the case.


So what is it about then? Is it about a 'feeling of Irishness'?
It's about speaking the tongue of your nation. It has to do with national identity.

Those are unrelated to ethnicity.


Don't you think that the 'educational advantages' whilst possibly having something to do with being bilingual, are quite likely more connected to the sort of people who send their kids of those sort of schools.
I would think it'd be a combination of the two. I've seen many upper-class and middle-class schools with pretty low academic standards. Most of the Ivy League schools up until the 70's are a good example...the "Gentleman's C" means exactly what it seems.


This is where you completely miss the point. They certainly do, but then I am sure there has been no group of speakers throughout history who wanted their language to die. Nevertheless, they do even despite peoples best efforts to revive them.
That's overly-determinist. There's nothing that says Irish has to die. Nothing.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

It's about speaking the tongue of your nation. It has to do with national identity.
Nothing.

Who cares? National identity ought to be destroyed with the nation state and related concepts. Nothing but nonsensical ideas in the mind, anyway. Ideas that deserve no heeding to.

Why are you so keen on preserving national identities? Is it that blood-and-soil nationalism that is bubbling up inside you?

[Welshy]

Who cares? National identity ought to be destroyed with the nation state and related concepts. Nothing but nonsensical ideas in the mind, anyway. Ideas that deserve no heeding to.

Why are you so keen on preserving national identities? Is it that blood-and-soil nationalism that is bubbling up inside you?

I think Manic Expression is confusing national identities for cultural identities. Language is very strongly connected to cultural identity. To advocate the destruction of cultures/languages/dialects in favor for one culture/language/culture, is a pretty chauvinistic thing to do.

[manic expression]

Who cares? National identity ought to be destroyed with the nation state and related concepts. Nothing but nonsensical ideas in the mind, anyway. Ideas that deserve no heeding to.

Why are you so keen on preserving national identities? Is it that blood-and-soil nationalism that is bubbling up inside you?
As Welshy rightly pointed out, my conception of national identity is closely related, indistinguishable in fact, from cultural identity.

Nations, remember, are made from a shared culture, a shared history, a shared geographical region and a shared language. Promoting the destruction of this is inexplicable, and furthermore impossible. Without these cultural aspects drawn from the historical experiences of all peoples, we would have no stories, no music, no dance...we would have nothing.

And what is the reason for popping champagne bottles at the thought of the death of cultural identities? "Solidarity"? "Unity"? It is some rare species of solidarity that patently disrespects not only the wishes of the majority of a people, but demands that they assimilate into some global culture that would inevitably be dominated by the same cultures that once dominated them under colonialism and imperialism. It is likewise some funny form of unity, for universal standardization makes unity an oxymoron.

We call ourselves internationalists for a very good reason. International literally means "between/among nations". It does not mean "the absence of nations". To be an internationalist, one must necessarily respect and uphold distinct nations.

[Demogorgon]

As Welshy rightly pointed out, my conception of national identity is closely related, indistinguishable in fact, from cultural identity.

Nations, remember, are made from a shared culture, a shared history, a shared geographical region and a shared language. Promoting the destruction of this is inexplicable, and furthermore impossible. Without these cultural aspects drawn from the historical experiences of all peoples, we would have no stories, no music, no dance...we would have nothing.

And what is the reason for popping champagne bottles at the thought of the death of cultural identities? "Solidarity"? "Unity"? It is some rare species of solidarity that patently disrespects not only the wishes of the majority of a people, but demands that they assimilate into some global culture that would inevitably be dominated by the same cultures that once dominated them under colonialism and imperialism. It is likewise some funny form of unity, for universal standardization makes unity an oxymoron.

We call ourselves internationalists for a very good reason. International literally means "between/among nations". It does not mean "the absence of nations". To be an internationalist, one must necessarily respect and uphold distinct nations.
Cultural identities cannot be seen as one and the same with nations because the latter has a geographically defined area and the former does not. Wherever you have a lot of people, you are going to have lots of cultures coexisting. It is unusual to see different national identities in the same place (there are exceptions like Northern Ireland of course, but it is unusual).

The distinction is crucial because your emphasis on nations means you think certain cultural norms are tied to land, whereas I do not. "Ireland" is the island in North West Europe, not any culture, people in Ireland can have any cultural identity they wish. There is a culture historically associated with the country (though I suspect not quite like you imagine) but it is hardly the only one there and it certainly isn't confined to Ireland, the Irish having settled all around the world. To say people "should" hold to any culture because of their geographical location is suspect, to take it a step further and say they should hold to historical-rather than current-culture makes it utter nonsense and pure romanticism.

[Devrim]

But overall if there are going to be any instances of dialect leveling it will probably happen with in specific regions (US/Canada, England, Scotland, Oceania and so on) rather than the entire english speaking world since these regions are isolated enough that they will develop independently.

No region though is as isolated as it was in the period before the dawn of the modern era. Mass media and mass literacy sees to that. English as spoken on both sides of the Atlantic is still mutually comprehensible, and whilst various accents and dialects have developed, it is still one language.

It is now four hundred years since the English colonised Georgetown. The divergence in the language in no way mirrors that of vulgar Latin over a similar period.

Devrim

[Devrim]

Well seeing how I also said South America, I could careless if we talk about North America in particular. I wouldn't have a problem with talking about the languages going extinct in Asia either. I just said North and South America because there were hundreds up on hundreds of languages that are now either dead or are just about dead and from most of my experience they have been the main focus of revitalization projects, which was the topic at hand. If we were just talking about language death then Europe would still be largely irrelevant as only a couple languages there are dying, as oppose to rest of the world were languages are being rapidly replaced by languages spoken by their European conquerors.

Well surely the think to have done would have been to explain why Irish wasn't a good example rather than to throw around accusations of Euro-centerism.


Also talking about reviving a European language gives off an image of a bunch of white nationalists trying to revive the language for their purposes (I know that's not necessarily the case in Ireland) rather than the reality of small groups trying to regain some autonomy from a group of people who conquered and murdered their people.

Do white people have some how less rights to 'regain some autonomy'?

Devrim

[Devrim]

Unless you are discussing geological time English is not a 'recent' addition. It has been the dominant language, and the language of the majority of people in Ireland at least since the famine.And again, we need to ask why that was the case.

I don't think we do. I think we have already stated the basic reasons why it happened and even agreed on them. What is in contention here is whether English is a 'recent' imposition on Ireland as you would have it, or whether it has been the language of the majority of Irish people since at least the famine, which is now over 150 years ago.


It's about speaking the tongue of your nation. It has to do with national identity.

Those are unrelated to ethnicity.

What then is national identity related to? Please explain as you you appear to be skirting around the issue.


I would think it'd be a combination of the two. I've seen many upper-class and middle-class schools with pretty low academic standards. Most of the Ivy League schools up until the 70's are a good example...the "Gentleman's C" means exactly what it seems.

I would imagine it is more to do with the nature of the schools. I am not suggesting at all that these are upper class schools, but ones which draw a substantial part of their students from the 'middle class', which has caused the competition for places. Still though, you recognise that it is not only about Irish education.


That's overly-determinist. There's nothing that says Irish has to die. Nothing.

No, there isn't, but I would imagine that it is highly likely, and that as a living language, it will have ceased to exist within at most fifty years.

Devrim