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A major factor in language death is parents choosing not to speak the language to their children. So apparently people are plenty willing to give up those thing

A major factor in language death is parents choosing not to speak the language to their children. So apparently people are plenty willing to give up those things. The flip side is it's easy to wax poetic about the importance of preserving language and culture when you will not face major barriers because of your language or dialect.

schoen 9y ago
Your observation is valid, but there can sometimes be quite a bit of angst and suffering in this process, both when parents choose not to pass on heritage languages (that their children wish had been passed on) and when children choose not to speak heritage languages (that their parents wish they'd continued to speak). I've experienced this within my own family and heard about it very often in other families -- even where the languages in question aren't endangered in the least! Sometimes the parents or children involved found this to be quite a hard and quite a stressful decision, and the people on the other side of the generation gap don't always feel entirely comfortable with the decision. But you're right to point out that this doesn't have to involve any sort of coercion or compulsion; it's often just people making choices about what they think is best for their own families at a given point in time.
irrational 9y ago
>A major factor in language death is parents choosing not to speak the language to their children. And this happens with even major languages. I have a coworker who's grandparents immigrated to the US from Spain. Her parents knew Spanish, but didn't speak it to her. Now she has no way to communicate with her grandparents because she only knows English.
- kwhitefoot 9y ago
  Spanish is one of the most widely spoken languages on the planet. I have lived over half my life in Norway and my children have lived all their life here it would never have occurred to me to bring them up monolingual in Norwegian. I was going to write "Why on earth did they not speak it to her?" but of course it is quite likely that there were perfectly good reasons in the time and place. And I know it isn't quite as simple because my language is English but I think the point still stands that she was ill served by the decision to not speak Spanish at home. Not only because she can't speak to her grandparents but also because she cannot experience Spanish culture quite as directly as she might have.

schoen 9y ago

Your observation is valid, but there can sometimes be quite a bit of angst and suffering in this process, both when parents choose not to pass on heritage languages (that their children wish had been passed on) and when children choose not to speak heritage languages (that their parents wish they'd continued to speak). I've experienced this within my own family and heard about it very often in other families -- even where the languages in question aren't endangered in the least! Sometimes the parents or children involved found this to be quite a hard and quite a stressful decision, and the people on the other side of the generation gap don't always feel entirely comfortable with the decision. But you're right to point out that this doesn't have to involve any sort of coercion or compulsion; it's often just people making choices about what they think is best for their own families at a given point in time.

irrational 9y ago

>A major factor in language death is parents choosing not to speak the language to their children. And this happens with even major languages. I have a coworker who's grandparents immigrated to the US from Spain. Her parents knew Spanish, but didn't speak it to her. Now she has no way to communicate with her grandparents because she only knows English.

kwhitefoot 9y ago
Spanish is one of the most widely spoken languages on the planet. I have lived over half my life in Norway and my children have lived all their life here it would never have occurred to me to bring them up monolingual in Norwegian. I was going to write "Why on earth did they not speak it to her?" but of course it is quite likely that there were perfectly good reasons in the time and place. And I know it isn't quite as simple because my language is English but I think the point still stands that she was ill served by the decision to not speak Spanish at home. Not only because she can't speak to her grandparents but also because she cannot experience Spanish culture quite as directly as she might have.