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> It's ludicrous to think that laws need to be created to help protect the language of Shakespeare. While a nice line, it is wrong. Everything needs protection

by foljs 16y ago

> It's ludicrous to think that laws need to be created to help protect the language of Shakespeare. While a nice line, it is wrong. Everything needs protection. Especially great things, like the "language of Shakespeare". Now, this protection need not necessarily be in the form of law, but it sure needs to be in the form of effort.

sid0 16y ago
Everything needs protection. Do you have a logical or empirical basis for this statement, or is this an axiom for you?
- foljs 16y ago
  > Do you have a logical or empirical basis for this statement, or is this an axiom for you? Ignoring the passive-aggressiveness, yes, I have an empirical basis for this statement. Don't you? Ever heard of the "broken window" theory? Ever heard of entropy? Ever read the history of any cultural aspect, from poetry to jazz, to teaching, to coding? Everything needs protection --people putting in the effort, care, education, craftsmanship and hard work to keep it alive, to improve it and to resist the tendency to decay and dillution.
  - sid0 16y ago
    Ever heard of the "broken window" theory? Ever heard of entropy? Ever read the history of any cultural aspect, from poetry to jazz, to teaching, Yes, some things, those that are vulnerable, need protection. The Bengal tiger needs protection. The tribal languages in the Amazon need protection. English is in no way vulnerable, so it really doesn't need any protection. On the other hand, maybe you need to read the history of how English evolved into what it is today. It certainly isn't because of prescriptivist nonsense like "protect[ing]" the language from "decay and dilution". to coding? Funny you mention that -- one programming language that's been "protect[ed]" from "decay and dilution" a lot is Java, and look what a boring, unimaginative cesspool that's become.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    - foljs 16y ago
      > Funny you mention that -- one programming language that's been "protect[ed]" from "decay and dilution" a lot is Java, and look what a boring, unimaginative cesspool that's become. Huh? Java "protected from decay and dilution"? Witch the exception of SUN never liking native interface linking, Java was ANYTHING BUT protected from decay. Java went about adding and adopting stuff, from Swing to generics to annotations to functional stuff, to remoting, to various EE fads of the day, without ever thinking about whats best about the core language and how to keep it clean and agile. I would have liked it if in place of Java we had a purer language, like, say, Smalltalk.
      - sid0 16y ago
        Huh? Java "protected from decay and dilution"? Compare Java to C#. C# was originally a Java clone, but the designers liberally borrowed from everywhere, worrying about actual use cases and not purity of any sort. Today C# is at the boundary between mainstream and academic programming. (It has monads for God's sake. They don't call it monads, of course. They call it LINQ.) Java? It added generics after C# did, and only now is it finally going to add proper closures.
  - jodrellblank 16y ago
    Everything needs protection I'll go with everything which you want to continue into the future needs caring for, but purity of the Chinese language seems like a strange thing to be optimizing for and expending effort on instead of, say population happiness or ability to trade with other countries or healthcare or whatever. Who is keeping score on language purity and what makes it a metric worth doing well on? Here, the geolocal minority language is Welsh. It is kept on life support by a smallish and dwindling number of native speakers (virtually no only-Welsh speakers remain, 600,000 people identify as Welsh speakers, but the Wikipedia article suspiciously avoids mentioning how many of those consider themselves 'fluent'), and a government mandate that all official documents, announcements, roadsigns / etc. must be in Welsh as well as English, and mandatory teaching at school. I was wondering recently if it would be interesting to argue that forcibly teaching children a globally useless language for the sake of pleasing the adults who arbitrarily want it saved is a weak form of child abuse. It certainly isn't a form of educating children in a way that is in their best interest at least, which I'd think is a pretty strong heuristic for a useful education system. The main out against that argument is that language education in school is so ineffective and accounts for such a small amount of time that it's hardly a thing worth complaining about against the backdrop of all the other things which could be improved.
    - foljs 16y ago
      A language is not only letters and words and syntax. It is also a cultural heritage. It is a way of thinking and a way of life codified. > I was wondering recently if it would be interesting to argue that forcibly teaching children a globally useless language for the sake of pleasing the adults who arbitrarily want it saved is a weak form of child abuse. Actually, killing the language and the culture of a child because it is "useless globally" is cultural genocide. And it has happened way too much. Now for people conditioned to think that "evolution" should be applied to human matters, culture, this might not seem much. But go read the experiences of smaller cultures oppressed and eliminated by "global" or local mightier forces, and you can plainly see it's a different kind of holocaust. I want ways of life to change, die and whither organically, by their own cultural momentum. Not by "global forces" and market influence. And surely not by cultural imperialism.
evilduck 16y ago
I think the line was pointing out Shakespeare's tendency to just make up words and coin phrases as he needed. Had someone been "protecting" the language, the English language we know today would have been dramatically different. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare%27s_influence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare%27s_influence

by foljs 16y ago

sid0 16y ago

Everything needs protection. Do you have a logical or empirical basis for this statement, or is this an axiom for you?

foljs 16y ago
> Do you have a logical or empirical basis for this statement, or is this an axiom for you? Ignoring the passive-aggressiveness, yes, I have an empirical basis for this statement. Don't you? Ever heard of the "broken window" theory? Ever heard of entropy? Ever read the history of any cultural aspect, from poetry to jazz, to teaching, to coding? Everything needs protection --people putting in the effort, care, education, craftsmanship and hard work to keep it alive, to improve it and to resist the tendency to decay and dillution.
- sid0 16y ago
  Ever heard of the "broken window" theory? Ever heard of entropy? Ever read the history of any cultural aspect, from poetry to jazz, to teaching, Yes, some things, those that are vulnerable, need protection. The Bengal tiger needs protection. The tribal languages in the Amazon need protection. English is in no way vulnerable, so it really doesn't need any protection. On the other hand, maybe you need to read the history of how English evolved into what it is today. It certainly isn't because of prescriptivist nonsense like "protect[ing]" the language from "decay and dilution". to coding? Funny you mention that -- one programming language that's been "protect[ed]" from "decay and dilution" a lot is Java, and look what a boring, unimaginative cesspool that's become.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - foljs 16y ago
    > Funny you mention that -- one programming language that's been "protect[ed]" from "decay and dilution" a lot is Java, and look what a boring, unimaginative cesspool that's become. Huh? Java "protected from decay and dilution"? Witch the exception of SUN never liking native interface linking, Java was ANYTHING BUT protected from decay. Java went about adding and adopting stuff, from Swing to generics to annotations to functional stuff, to remoting, to various EE fads of the day, without ever thinking about whats best about the core language and how to keep it clean and agile. I would have liked it if in place of Java we had a purer language, like, say, Smalltalk.
    - sid0 16y ago
      Huh? Java "protected from decay and dilution"? Compare Java to C#. C# was originally a Java clone, but the designers liberally borrowed from everywhere, worrying about actual use cases and not purity of any sort. Today C# is at the boundary between mainstream and academic programming. (It has monads for God's sake. They don't call it monads, of course. They call it LINQ.) Java? It added generics after C# did, and only now is it finally going to add proper closures.
- jodrellblank 16y ago
  Everything needs protection I'll go with everything which you want to continue into the future needs caring for, but purity of the Chinese language seems like a strange thing to be optimizing for and expending effort on instead of, say population happiness or ability to trade with other countries or healthcare or whatever. Who is keeping score on language purity and what makes it a metric worth doing well on? Here, the geolocal minority language is Welsh. It is kept on life support by a smallish and dwindling number of native speakers (virtually no only-Welsh speakers remain, 600,000 people identify as Welsh speakers, but the Wikipedia article suspiciously avoids mentioning how many of those consider themselves 'fluent'), and a government mandate that all official documents, announcements, roadsigns / etc. must be in Welsh as well as English, and mandatory teaching at school. I was wondering recently if it would be interesting to argue that forcibly teaching children a globally useless language for the sake of pleasing the adults who arbitrarily want it saved is a weak form of child abuse. It certainly isn't a form of educating children in a way that is in their best interest at least, which I'd think is a pretty strong heuristic for a useful education system. The main out against that argument is that language education in school is so ineffective and accounts for such a small amount of time that it's hardly a thing worth complaining about against the backdrop of all the other things which could be improved.
  - foljs 16y ago
    A language is not only letters and words and syntax. It is also a cultural heritage. It is a way of thinking and a way of life codified. > I was wondering recently if it would be interesting to argue that forcibly teaching children a globally useless language for the sake of pleasing the adults who arbitrarily want it saved is a weak form of child abuse. Actually, killing the language and the culture of a child because it is "useless globally" is cultural genocide. And it has happened way too much. Now for people conditioned to think that "evolution" should be applied to human matters, culture, this might not seem much. But go read the experiences of smaller cultures oppressed and eliminated by "global" or local mightier forces, and you can plainly see it's a different kind of holocaust. I want ways of life to change, die and whither organically, by their own cultural momentum. Not by "global forces" and market influence. And surely not by cultural imperialism.

evilduck 16y ago

I think the line was pointing out Shakespeare's tendency to just make up words and coin phrases as he needed. Had someone been "protecting" the language, the English language we know today would have been dramatically different. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare%27s_influence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare%27s_influence