zompist bboard

Which is why someone whose interest is in communicating with someone nearby rather than trying to preserve a language in danger of dying would want to learn them.


You broke my sentence in half. I wasn't trying to be flippant - language death is a problem, I wholeheartedly agree (although calling it an emergency sounds just a tad alarmist).


Five hundred years ago someone wanting to get ahead in academia would be forced to learn Latin anyway because academic discourse took place in Latin as a matter of course; you'd still have to go learn French, German, Occitan, etc. to talk to other people. The two scenarios don't seem to be at all connected.


But when your motivation is talking to real living breathing people (as in the case of Beli Orao and myself) what good does knowing endangered languages do you? Knowing fifty endangered languages might get you a publication; knowing one thriving language might get you a career. You're assuming everyone has the same motivation in learning languages as yourself.


There are (according to Wikipedia) 1214 Makah, all living in Washington state (distance from me: approximately 4772 miles). By contrast, there are about 9.8 million speakers of Catalan (taking the distance of Barcelona, the capital of Catalonia, as representative, distance from me: 733 miles). If my sole interest in learning a language was communicating with other people, I'd get more out of learning Catalan than I would Makah - there's more speakers, and they're easier to get to.


I wish you every bit of luck in your endeavour. What you fail to grasp is not everyone is engaged in your same adventure - some just want to be able to talk to people.


It's a cute analogy, but language is not a house - one beam collapsing doesn't bring down the whole edifice.

*Today we are cancelling the Apocalypse*

_________________
Un llapis mai dibuixa sense una mà.

You can always learn a dead language.

Aramaic, Akkadian and those sort of languages are dead, but some people can speak them.

If what you want is to become a "living repository" of a language, it's not enough to just study it -- you would need to be near-fluent, or else all you would be preserving is a few broken bits. And you can't learn a language to fluency and maintain your competence in it unless you have access to other people who speak it, or at the very least a corpus of literature to read. So unless you propose to live among Makah speakers, you can't preserve their language in the same way they do.

And even if you did that, that's not even touching all the social factors that lead to language death even when there is a dedicated group of people who are struggling to preserve the language. Outsiders studying the language isn't going to change those factors at all. It isn't going to create a society where large numbers of children are learning the language and using it daily. It seems strange -- and pretty arrogant -- to learn a near-dead language all by yourself and then feel good because you've done something to help it live, when you really haven't helped at all.

If you want to study endangered languages and record them for future linguists to study, that's a different thing. It still doesn't save the language, but it prevents it from being utterly lost. But if all you do is learn it and then sit at home being happy that you've learned it, your knowledge dies with you anyway, so I'm not sure why we should be impressed by that or why we should want to emulate it.

This only makes sense if you think that how endangered an animal is is the only factor in deciding whether to study it. But this is obviously nonsense.
Why not?So? Why is this always good?

But I am not Makah. I will never be Makah. Or at least, becoming Makah would involve completely changing every facet of my life. I have no connexion to the Makah either diachronic or synchronic. English? It's my mother tongue. Irish? The language of my maternal linneage. Cumbrian dialect? My father grew up with it. French, German, Latin, Greek? All four essential ingredients in the European culture of which I am an inheritor. Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Czech, Polish... the languages of sibling nations whose rich reflections of my own culture will enhance my own identity.

Makah? It's nothing to do with me. Not only will I never BE Makah, I'll never even meet any Makah. Their cultural tradition is a tradition with which I have no contact whatsoever. Attempting to inveigle myself into that tradition would not only be pointless from my point of view, and tantamount to pointless from their point of view (I'm not going to convince many other Londoners to learn Makah, after all), but would also be of debateable legitimacy.

So sure, I'm in favour of endangered languages being revitalised, by persuading their constituencies to re-embrace them, but let's not pretend that I'm a part of that constituency.


If that's what you want to devote your life to, fine - although there are more important things, I think. But why should any of us do likewise?
Depends how quickly you can fix them. If you can just bolt on some reinforcements in five minutes, sure, prop up the weak one. But if it's going to take a few years of careful labour before you start seeing results, then you should shore up the strong one to 100%, because the 45% one's going whatever you do, and by the time you've admitted failure on it, the 85% one will be down and 45%, and there won't be anything you can do for either.

It also depends, of course, on the OTHER properties of the beams. If the stronger beam has great sentimental value and the weak one you don't care about, of course concentrate on the strong one. Likewise, if the strong one is holding up the important bit of your roof, and the weak one's only holding up your porch.

_________________
Blog: http://vacuouswastrel.wordpress.com/

But the river tripped on her by and by, lapping
as though her heart was brook: Why, why, why! Weh, O weh
I'se so silly to be flowing but I no canna stay!

Not to split your split, but did you see the Romanian resources I recommended?

_________________

XinuX, have you changed your handle? You're from before me but I don't recall you from before.


Both of you seem to be equally short-sighted and not understanding that different folks learn languages for different reasons. I couldn't care less about Cockroach or Sal's motivation.

I've no idea why you think that's got anything to do with what I said. I was making the point that not everyone shared Cockroach's reasons for learning languages. I wasn't sharing my own motivation - I'm not learning a language. At least, not properly, though I'm sporadically trying to grab back a bit of German.

_________________
Blog: http://vacuouswastrel.wordpress.com/

But the river tripped on her by and by, lapping
as though her heart was brook: Why, why, why! Weh, O weh
I'se so silly to be flowing but I no canna stay!

But that's basically the point Io is making, though he attributed the potential motivations that you're talking about to you. Like you say, not everyone shares the same motivation for learning a language, and the different motivations make different people prioritize different kinds of languages.

This seems like something that's not that productive to argue about, as it's arguing about personal motivations. Or at least that seems to be what it's boiling down to.

Which was the point Salmoneus was making in the first place. At least that was my read.

Yeah, the thesis of what I was saying in response to Cockroach was that the argument was at crossed purposes because we're not learning languages for the same reasons.

Yes, the PDF is pretty useful. Might hop onto IRC in the hope of finding people to practice with.

No, I'm just a chronic absentee.

I remember trying to read David Crystal's book on language death and endangered languages. The problem was that at my absolute best I can barely care about language death in a detached intellectual way - for whatever reason, I'm just incapable of feeling that it's an emergency. I don't want to say that people who think it is an emergency are wrong (though what you're doing conlanging in the face of such a global tragedy I'd like to know).

I guess I just don't see how the death of a language I don't speak hurts me. I'd love to hear how I'm wrong, though.

_________________

I thought it wasn't that long ago that we had a pretty meaty thread about language death and why/whether it matters, but I can't find it now, so maybe it was pruned.

From a linguistics perspective, language death obviously matters because if a language dies before it is investigated, we lose all information about it. Our knowledge of how human languages work is only as good as our data, and a lost language is a lost data point.

Whether language death "matters" aside from that is a much trickier question. Obviously it matters to some people for highly personal reasons -- it's their own language and they want it to survive. There are also people who believe that the entire human race loses something important when any language goes extinct, but I'm not sure I buy that position, so I'll leave it to someone who does believe in it to explain.

Newflash: Most people don't like learning languages and linguistics just for fun, but instead want to use them to communicate with others. Romance languages have a much larger pool of speakers and material/literature than dying languages do, so the choice is obvious.


Why do you think diversity is inherently good and assimilation is inherently bad?

I'll be using a bad word, but I don't intend to insult you with it, but that's being pretty much egoist.

It's not a bad thing. We live and die, groups appear and disappear, as I have alluded to in another thread. There were many languages before us, and there will be even more after. There's no need to consider much about others, at the first level.

However, like all things on this planet, diversity is its own garantee. The more diverse we are, the more answers we can bring to a given issue, which makes us more quickly adaptable if need be. While I'm not sure distinct languages is a evolutionary advantage of itself, the fact that it shows us our divisions and how we group and maintains a certain diversity might be a right way to sense the emergency in dying languages. That's how I think it's becoming urgent. You don't save a language for its own sake (unless you're a linguist, as others pointed out), but I would save it for the sake of the group it might maintain.

Imagine the French language, which I speak. But I don't speak it like a Hex-lander. Never ever call me "French". I'm not, and I'm quite happy I don't live in Hex-land. Very much, and some Hex-landers actually agree. And the Joual division that it brings is a mark of that distinction. While not essential, it's an easy way to spot one's own within a crowd. So I'll be able to maintain a community and a distinction with them, as I wish. More obscur and isolated languages have the same effect, with more differences.

Ultimately, it's "mostly" superficial. I could be part of X-group if I spoke another language with the members of X-group. But the specific language makes it possible for me to identify with them, and from there, form a distinct, autonomous and, most importantly, different community, which will increase diversity, which will give some form of garantee to survive.

(I do, however, loathe people that want to maintain a language for the sake of it without any social project behind. It's all fun to have your poor natives speak language Whatever, if you don't give them any means to insure their lives, you'll just create a poor gettho from which its members won't be able to get out, unless they do exactly what you don't want them to do, abandon their ancestral language.

And rich doesn't mean Occidental here; I'd be happy to see my neighboring Attikamekw going back to their traditionnal hunter-gatherer lifestyle, as they were happy and healthy and emotionally rich that way. Rich means "living a worthy and fulfilling life".)

_________________
"Ez amnar o amnar e cauč."
- Daneydzaus

Yiuel, why does this identiy matter *SO* much to you? Why do you want so badly to be distinct, different, and to be able to identify your own within a crowd?

_________________
<King> Ivo, you phrase things in the most comedic manner

It probably shouldn't bother me, and it's not a "standard" word anyway, but it really should be "yous". This should be obvious because it's morphologically plural. It's even got an actual plural morpheme on it for christ's sake.

(also it's more obvious that it doesn't rhyme with mouse)

There's a mouse louse about this house.

_________________

Finlay, you're turning pedantically bitter about spelling and shit, next thing we know your username will be capitalised!

_________________
<King> Ivo, you phrase things in the most comedic manner

I remember that we touched the you/youse/yous/you all/y'all... thing a few years ago in this forum. We talked a lot about it and the best forms of the pronoun are obvious to me, but I want to use yous(e) instead of the other forms; I find youse more orthographically appealing than yous. Only to show that in my case the use of that form is a conscious election, not a mistake.

_________________
Un llapis mai dibuixa sense una mà.

Is that all you retain of what I said?

There are many reasons why I would want to be different from some other people. I don't want to share the "conservative" views of other people, for one. I'd like to see a city working like how Montreal was 100 years ago (with distinct, autonomous and rich English and French neighborhoods), which again posits differences with some people who don't want to ever see that. Basically, being different is, to me, try something else. Is there anything wrong with wanting something else.

As for being distinct and being able to identify your own within a crowd, it's to be able to live those differences with them, simply.

Identity itself (especially a specific) isn't important, you build yourself one with your peers anyway. But you might want to build a community relationship with a community you deem worthy of your participation. I might part ways with Quebec (and, more broadly, Canada) in the near future. I'll be part of other groups, relating and having fun and living a life with them. I also happen to value relationships a lot, especially those of mutually benefitting kind, which doesn't hurt. That is, what I find important is not one's own identity, but one's relationships.

_________________
"Ez amnar o amnar e cauč."
- Daneydzaus

I've been called worse.
My problem is, I already have a cultural identity, coming from a particular place and group of people and way of talking. I understand preventing language death from a scientific curiosity point of view, I just can't feel that much passion for it.

I think part of my problem is also part of the reason I'm a fraud on this board - I'm too fascinated by English. Everytime I think I'll start conlanging (or studying Mohawk, or even Russian or Spanish for heaven's sake) I just fall in love with English again. Usually because I just started rereading David Foster Wallace.

Finally, I will say that the desire to preserve a culture almost inevitably creates a zombie culture. For example, you said you'd be happy if the Attikamekw went back to their hunter gatherer lifestyle (and presumably, so would they - not trying to contradict you.) But then, their culture stops being a dynamic, living culture that they can change. It is now pressed between panes of glass in a museum - they are forever constrained by "traditional Attikamekw culture" and can't change things without abandoning everything that makes them Attikamekw. My ancestors were once hunter gatherers, as were yours, but they were free to innovate, or not, as they chose. Most groups that are hunter-gatherers now don't have that choice - instead they have the choice between being Attikamekw, or becoming white. Which, for the children, means the choice between learning Attikamekw and hunting, or learning English and driving cars, all of which only marginalizes the Attikamekw more, makes them more extreme, their language more on the brink of death.

_________________

Make an English-based conlang, but make it good. It would be awesome, and more unique than something made with the idea "no! english bad! avoid english influence!!!!"

_________________

Indeed, but from the POV of practical communication it would be pointless, since it's clear from your posts that you have a near-native (at least) knowledge of English.

From the POV of a native English speaker there is really no point in learning another language for communication, unless you expect to find yourself in some rather odd and out of the way part of the world (parts of the former USSR? Mongolia? Remote part of S. America? New Guinea Highlands?) Everywhere else the 'natives' will not only be able, but will generally insist on speaking English.

The only reason for English speakers to learn languages are (a) cultural, e.g. connecting with your ancestors, or the people where you now happen to live, or maybe where you'd like to go and live, and (b) interest. Clearly, strange and exotic languages (many of which are now endangered) are interesting and provide many insights into how language functions, whereas romance langs are boring! boring! boring!

(OK, blame it all on School French which came close to killing forever my inate interest in languages).

_________________
Kyn nag ov den skentel pur ...

Course their culture can still change. It's just not to be lost. It can change in slightly more subtle ways, maybe slower and more gradually. When people want to preserve Lezgian, they don't mean they're rejecting syncope; they just mean for it to continue existing.

I think the point is more that you would be able to communicate with the speaker in order to learn the language, something which is not quite so easy if you don't have contact with any native speaker.

Well I've met many people who speak very little English. My German grandmother for example. And a fair many people in Reunion. And that's with me having only been to one place (India (and that wasn't for long)) outside the EU.