zompist bboard

http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/article ... ius_grant/

Jessie Little Doe Baird was overcome at the news that her 17 years of linguistic work — resurrecting the language the Wampanoag people spoke and wrote until at least the mid-1800s — had landed her a MacArthur Fellows “genius grant’’ of $500,000.

Personally, I think it's an awesome project, and one that I hope is successful as well as duplicated for several other languages.

I'm as gay for yay-linguistic-diversity as anyone, and hope this and other language revivals were successful, but only in the same way that I *hope* there is an afterlife (reminder: hardcore atheist talking here), so in my personal opinion that's money that won't go anywhere. I don't see how you're ever going to get a population of ethnically-Wampanoag Anglophones in New England to start actually using Masachusett to use as a medium of communication. Remind me, how's that Ubykh revival movement going?

Also, Ms. Baird sounds a bit loony. (Psssst.. lemme let you in on a secret: prophecies aren't real. And dead people can't talk to you in dreams.)

Still, we always do have Hebrew as a proof of the possibility.

The thing about Hebrew is that it was revived in very specific circumstances... there was a need for a single medium of communication, for a start, to unify a nation that had little else in common culturally (well, that's a bit of an overstatement, but you understand). Whilst English fulfilled that to a degree, Hebrew had massive state backing and religious/ethnic/sentimental appeal. It's hard to see any kind of language revival happening on a large scale without similar circumstances.

How's Cornish revival going btw?

Io wrote:How's Cornish revival going btw?

Hmm, not that badly, if you consider all the factors... it apparently has 2000 fluent speakers. There're only a very small few who're native, though, and I can't see it growing much beyond what they currently have.

YngNghymru wrote:The thing about Hebrew is that it was revived in very specific circumstances... there was a need for a single medium of communication, for a start, to unify a nation that had little else in common culturally (well, that's a bit of an overstatement, but you understand). Whilst English fulfilled that to a degree, Hebrew had massive state backing and religious/ethnic/sentimental appeal. It's hard to see any kind of language revival happening on a large scale without similar circumstances.

It didn't have state backing when there wasn't a state. Plus, so far as I know most of the settlers were Yiddish speakers from Russia, so Yiddish might easily have won out instead.

zompist wrote:It didn't have state backing when there wasn't a state. Plus, so far as I know most of the settlers were Yiddish speakers from Russia, so Yiddish might easily have won out instead.

Were they predominantly Russian? I thought Russia tried to prevent Jewish emigration.

Also, you're right - but I don't know if Hebrew would've survived the first generation of learners - at least to the degree it did - without the new Israeli school system.

Regardless, some of the circumstances for Hebrew remain unusual. One of them is that most of the immigrants were already familiar with Biblical Hebrew to varying degrees; another is that they were making a hard effort to come together as a people and join in on a quest to create a nation for themselves at a time when that was actually possible.

When the remaining ethnic Wampanoag make a concerted effort to all emigrate to one particular place that would be their own and not be immersed in a larger American society, then they may have some success at re-acquiring their language as a vital component of daily life. Short of that, Cornish is about as good as it gets.

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But if we get to indulge in frivolous wishing, mine is for the remaining several thousand speakers of Patagonian Welsh to all up stakes and move back to the parts of Wales where Welsh remains strongest, so that they and the locals would have no other language in common. That could do a lot to shore it up, and it can't hold on much longer in Patagonia in any case.

YngNghymru wrote:

zompist wrote:It didn't have state backing when there wasn't a state. Plus, so far as I know most of the settlers were Yiddish speakers from Russia, so Yiddish might easily have won out instead.

Were they predominantly Russian? I thought Russia tried to prevent Jewish emigration.

Czarist (imperial) Russia? The more Jews left, the better, as far as they were concerned.

In Soviet times all emigration became problematic, although some people managed to leave anyway. By that time, Jewish immigration to Palestine was from all over Eastern and Central Europe, in part because (some) Jews suspected what was coming, and there were not that many other places eager to take them (the British tried to stop them from coming into Palestine as well, but illegal imigration there was well-organized).

As for why not Yiddish - I think that's because Yiddish was associated with oppression and subservience. Or, as in my native Hungary where many Jews became assimilated, Yiddish was seen as a hick language - why not speak Hungarian, the language of the country you live in?

gsandi wrote:In Soviet times all emigration became problematic, although some people managed to leave anyway.

Yes, exactly - and Israel was founded in 1948, 30 years after the Soviets came to power. So by that point, at least, Israel was linguistically and culturally diverse.

I think one relevant factor in the success of Hebrew is that members of the Zionist movement were already deeply committed to "intentional culture." Some of them were observant Jews; many of the rest were hardcore commune-startin' socialists. Either way they were used to living outside the mainstream for largely ideological reasons, often in ways that took a lot of effort to maintain. Hebrew was just one more high-commitment lifestyle choice for a bunch of speakers who had already demonstrated (just by showing up!) that they were okay with high-commitment lifestyle choices.

I'm not sure what other groups there are these days that are that large and that gung-ho about doing shit the hard way on principle. The Old-order Amish, maybe? I suppose if the Amish all threw their weight behind, I dunno, Sumerian or something, they might have similar success. But then the Amish are big on tradition, and don't seem to have the urge to just UP AND REARRANGE EVERYTHING that, say, the left-wing kibbutzniks had; it's hard to imagine them deciding all of a sudden that reviving Sumerian was the thing to do. I'm definitely not sure who else has the commitment and experience with doing-it-the-hard-way and the progressive/revolutionary vibe.

(I suppose there's always, you know, revolutionaries. The Zapatistas are supposedly doing pretty well drumming up support for Tzotzil and Tzeltal — though of course those languages weren't dead yet. Maybe we could persuade the far-right survivalist milita nuts here in the US to hold off on stockpiling guns and brush up on their Sumerian first.)

The Hebrew revival still came from a very specific cultural moment, which would be very difficult to replicate. Same with Esperanto, for what it's worth.

YngNghymru wrote:

gsandi wrote:In Soviet times all emigration became problematic, although some people managed to leave anyway.

Yes, exactly - and Israel was founded in 1948, 30 years after the Soviets came to power. So by that point, at least, Israel was linguistically and culturally diverse.

Um, the founding of Israel was far later than the revival of Hebrew.

The key figure is Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, who moved to Palestine in 1881. The period of migration from Russia I mentioned was between 1904 and 1914. (Note that "Russia" then included a good chunk of what's now Eastern Europe.)

I'm going to learn Lushootseed Salish so I can earn a prize by reviving it...

u? gwelapu halh siya?ya?.

zompist wrote:Um, the founding of Israel was far later than the revival of Hebrew.

I know that. What I was saying is that I'm not sure Hebrew would've survived, at least to the extent it has, without the massive state support Israel then provided it with. I was under the impression (incorrectly?) that prior to Israel being established, Hebrew was revived, but had a relatively small number of speakers. Presumably they set up Hebrew-medium schools and everything beforehand, but...

YngNghymru wrote:

zompist wrote:Um, the founding of Israel was far later than the revival of Hebrew.

I know that. What I was saying is that I'm not sure Hebrew would've survived, at least to the extent it has, without the massive state support Israel then provided it with. I was under the impression (incorrectly?) that prior to Israel being established, Hebrew was revived, but had a relatively small number of speakers. Presumably they set up Hebrew-medium schools and everything beforehand, but...

As far as I can tell, by about 1920 it was becoming obvious that an Israeli state would be Hebrew speaking.