7 ms·

> Preserving their traditional alphabet and de-colonializing their culture is a good thing, no matter how I look at it There are downsides to any situation. E.

> Preserving their traditional alphabet and de-colonializing their culture is a good thing, no matter how I look at it There are downsides to any situation. E.G: - cost - available resources for education and work - adding one more obstacles for different cultures to be able to understand each other I'm french, and in my country, language protection is a big thing. It's also why we have such a terrible ability to speak english, which create way more problems than it solves. Language preservation is overrated. Sure, it's nice. But compared to one day, having the entire earth speak the same language, be able to communicate and understand each other better? Small price to pay. It get why they do it. Mongolia is a very peculiar culture, and I don't think it benefits much from mondialisation. Quite the contrary. And it's a way for their society to break from a painful part of their history. But to me, it seems, at least on the long run, a step backward. Every time a language dies, like latin or summerian did, we gain uniformity. There are enough source of diversity in humanity to not need to add it to the very structure we use to exchange information. Granted, the cyrillic alphabet is not very universal, but it is certainly more common than the traditional mongolia alphabet. Now since I don't live there, I may be missing some crucial informations. Maybe the population still massively use the old alphabet unofficially and it makes sense. Maybe the use of the cyrillic alphabet brough problems I can't see. So of course, I'm not the right peson to judge the situation. But I wanted to bring a counter point to this the enthusiastic parent comment. We tend to react in a very emotional way when it's about culture, and I'm not sure it benefits our specie.

hypnotist 6y ago
>> nearly six million in Inner Mongolia, a Chinese region who use the traditional script is used. seems it is used a lot already - they are just making it a standard.
- _-___________-_ 6y ago
  Used a lot in a different country, fwiw.
adrianN 6y ago
The French language protection is the reason why the league of nations didn't adopt Esperanto as an official language. I'm quite grumpy about that.
- madhadron 6y ago
  I'm not. Why would someone's conlang project be given status alongside something with millions of speakers and centuries of literature?
  - adrianN 6y ago
    Because it's easy to learn and very useful as an international language.
    - madhadron 6y ago
      Easy to learn? It has gender and number and a lot of inflection which are hardly easy for many of the world's speakers. Pidgin English appears to do a better job at what Esperanto claims to be ideal for.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    - Koshkin 6y ago
      I’d say Spanish would be a much better fit. Much easier to learn than many other languages. (Another good candidate would be Malaysian.)
lonesword 6y ago
> Every time a language dies, like latin or summerian did, we gain uniformity And that's not necessarily a good thing. It is not just a language that dies, but a part of the culture also dies with the language. I do get the appeal of the world having one language, but attaining it at the cost of diversity would be a _big_ price to pay. I speak a southern Indian language called Malayalam (34 million speakers). There are some things that are simply untranslatable to English - these words/concepts are closely tied to the way we live. Now if everyone in my town starts speaking only English suddenly, it would definitely affect the way they think[1], function, and would inevitable change the culture. I am not claiming that change is bad, simply arguing that preserving a language might help preserve a culture. [1] IIRC there's been some scientific literature on this. I'll look it up and edit this post when I get time
- billfruit 6y ago
  Yes, but this is about script. Some languages like Turkish and Vietnamese are doing fine adopting the foreign Latin script as Languages. Sometimes people want/demand change in the direction of modernity too. I think during 1911 revolution in China, the people were really fed up with the system in place for centuries that they wanted it totally rid off; there was very serious discussion about adopting Esperanto as the language of the new republic.
  - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    > there was very serious discussion about adopting Esperanto as the language of the new republic. No, there wasn’t. As a former Esperantist (very dedicated and active at the organizational level in UEA), I remember a lot of these claims being pitched to the public about how Esperanto was so esteemed here or there in history that it was almost used officially, but if you actually looked into the facts, never was serious consideration given to using Esperanto. At best there was just one or two government officials involved in these historical events who were Esperantists themselves, but they had no influence in this regard. These are the sort of disingenuous claims about Esperanto that Marcus Sikosek sought to debunk in his book Esperanto sen mitoj, and they do more harm than good to Esperanto and they make the movement look kooky.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
dntbnmpls 6y ago
> - adding one more obstacles for different cultures to be able to understand each other Even if it was true, why would this matter? Just because you share an alphabet doesn't mean you can understand each others culture. > It's also why we have such a terrible ability to speak english, which create way more problems than it solves. Such as? > Mongolia is a very peculiar culture What's peculiar about it? It's no more peculiar than any other culture. But I'm guessing you meant it's a unique culture. But even then, it's not. It's part of the greater nomadic central asian culture. > Language preservation is overrated. If that was true, we'd all be speaking latin. Thank god for language preservation, otherwise, we wouldn't have shakespeare, mark twain and the world's most productive language. Think about all the art, history, culture, value that would have been lost had people like you succeeded in the past. > Every time a language dies, like latin or summerian did, we gain uniformity. Simply not true. The "death" of latin brought linguistic/cultural/etc diversity. When european nations started teaching in their own national languages and when they started worshipping in their national languages rather than latin, it created more diversity. > We tend to react in a very emotional way when it's about culture, and I'm not sure it benefits our specie. Why doesn't it benefit our species? You act like if we all used the same alphabet and spoke the same language, we'd have some kind of utopia. You act like people who speak the same language don't have wars with each other, don't brutalize each other and have cultural differences. It seems like you've bought into the globalist monoculture nonsense. Where we all think alike, talk alike, eat in the same fast food joints and live alike in cities that all look alike. For our species sakes, I hope not.
- sametmax 6y ago
  The only reason we can even have this important debate is because the whole thread can communicate in english.
  - DeathArrow 6y ago
    I can communicate in English even if it isn't my native language. That's true for many others. If anything, I see an argument for being bilingual, not for English as the only language.
- 6y ago
Mediterraneo10 6y ago
> In my country, language protection is a big thing. It's also why we have such a terrible ability to speak english The latter does not inevitably follow from the former. "Language protection" has been a big thing in Finland inasmuch as the Finnish intelligentsia has historically preferred coining new words from Finnish roots instead of adopting foreign vocabulary (so tietokone for ‘computer’) and there is heavy state subsidy for local cultural productions in Finnish, but Finns nevertheless have great proficiency in English. > Every time a language dies, like latin or summerian did, we gain uniformity. What? Latin died as a native language by splitting up into a large series of dialects across Europe that were no longer mutually intelligible by the late first millennium. Europe did not gain any uniformity by that process.
- koheripbal 6y ago
  > The latter does not inevitably follow from the former. Some subject always loses out when you need to teach something extra. Education is not infinite.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - jsjolen 6y ago
    Interesting! Would you like to expand on that argument?
  - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    If you are referring to the idea that children need to spend their precious school hours only on "useful subjects", then you ought to consider that many young people these days mainly learn English through osmosis while watching television programs etc. at home. So, whether time during their school day is spent focusing on aspects of their native language or not doesn’t make a difference for their ability to communicate internationally. As for "Efficient communication is probably the most important factor in peace", that kind of idealism doesn't hold in practice. The peoples of Yugoslavia could efficiently communicate with each other because they shared essentially the same language, but it still didn't stop them from descending into brutal warfare. Even today, peoples of two antagonistic countries can often communicate with one another in English, but they go on despising each other nevertheless.
ken 6y ago
> There are enough source of diversity in humanity to not need to add it to the very structure we use to exchange information. Strongly disagree. Who are we to decide which aspects of someone else’s culture are worth saving, and which can be thrown under the bus in the name of efficiency? Why not architecture, or dress, or food, or religion? Are you only taking issue because this one has a particular impact on computers? > We tend to react in a very emotional way when it's about culture, and I'm not sure it benefits our specie. What is our purpose, without culture? We’re not robots.
- gspetr 6y ago
  >Why not architecture, or dress, or food All of these have a very limited use as a means of conveying information, mostly because the medium itself is static. > or religion? Funny you would mention religion. Christianity, Islam and Judaism mention the tower of Babel or something similar to it, implying that splitting the humanity into many languages was God's punishment for defiance. "6 And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. 7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. 8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city." If we are to believe this, then returning to one language for the entire humanity would simply be a return to our most natural, original state as was meant by our creator.
bloak 6y ago
> Every time a language dies, like latin or summerian did, we gain uniformity. So when Latin evolved into French, Italian, Spanish, ... we gained uniformity? I'm not convinced!
Koshkin 6y ago
> we have such a terrible ability to speak english Curiously, native English speakers have a terrible ability to speak French (even though they are not as protective of their language). Personally, I think that this is because these two languages, despite being “neighbors” and in some respects related, are at different extremes of some kind of phonetic spectrum. (Learning the written language, on the other hand, is a breeze and fun.)
baud147258 6y ago
I don't think the rumored bad English-speaking capacities of the French are coming from the protection of the French language, but rather from an inadequate teaching methods and funding.

hypnotist 6y ago

>> nearly six million in Inner Mongolia, a Chinese region who use the traditional script is used. seems it is used a lot already - they are just making it a standard.

_-___________-_ 6y ago
Used a lot in a different country, fwiw.

adrianN 6y ago

The French language protection is the reason why the league of nations didn't adopt Esperanto as an official language. I'm quite grumpy about that.

madhadron 6y ago
I'm not. Why would someone's conlang project be given status alongside something with millions of speakers and centuries of literature?
- adrianN 6y ago
  Because it's easy to learn and very useful as an international language.
  - madhadron 6y ago
    Easy to learn? It has gender and number and a lot of inflection which are hardly easy for many of the world's speakers. Pidgin English appears to do a better job at what Esperanto claims to be ideal for.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - Koshkin 6y ago
    I’d say Spanish would be a much better fit. Much easier to learn than many other languages. (Another good candidate would be Malaysian.)

lonesword 6y ago

> Every time a language dies, like latin or summerian did, we gain uniformity And that's not necessarily a good thing. It is not just a language that dies, but a part of the culture also dies with the language. I do get the appeal of the world having one language, but attaining it at the cost of diversity would be a _big_ price to pay. I speak a southern Indian language called Malayalam (34 million speakers). There are some things that are simply untranslatable to English - these words/concepts are closely tied to the way we live. Now if everyone in my town starts speaking only English suddenly, it would definitely affect the way they think[1], function, and would inevitable change the culture. I am not claiming that change is bad, simply arguing that preserving a language might help preserve a culture. [1] IIRC there's been some scientific literature on this. I'll look it up and edit this post when I get time

billfruit 6y ago
Yes, but this is about script. Some languages like Turkish and Vietnamese are doing fine adopting the foreign Latin script as Languages. Sometimes people want/demand change in the direction of modernity too. I think during 1911 revolution in China, the people were really fed up with the system in place for centuries that they wanted it totally rid off; there was very serious discussion about adopting Esperanto as the language of the new republic.
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  > there was very serious discussion about adopting Esperanto as the language of the new republic. No, there wasn’t. As a former Esperantist (very dedicated and active at the organizational level in UEA), I remember a lot of these claims being pitched to the public about how Esperanto was so esteemed here or there in history that it was almost used officially, but if you actually looked into the facts, never was serious consideration given to using Esperanto. At best there was just one or two government officials involved in these historical events who were Esperantists themselves, but they had no influence in this regard. These are the sort of disingenuous claims about Esperanto that Marcus Sikosek sought to debunk in his book Esperanto sen mitoj, and they do more harm than good to Esperanto and they make the movement look kooky.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

dntbnmpls 6y ago

> - adding one more obstacles for different cultures to be able to understand each other Even if it was true, why would this matter? Just because you share an alphabet doesn't mean you can understand each others culture. > It's also why we have such a terrible ability to speak english, which create way more problems than it solves. Such as? > Mongolia is a very peculiar culture What's peculiar about it? It's no more peculiar than any other culture. But I'm guessing you meant it's a unique culture. But even then, it's not. It's part of the greater nomadic central asian culture. > Language preservation is overrated. If that was true, we'd all be speaking latin. Thank god for language preservation, otherwise, we wouldn't have shakespeare, mark twain and the world's most productive language. Think about all the art, history, culture, value that would have been lost had people like you succeeded in the past. > Every time a language dies, like latin or summerian did, we gain uniformity. Simply not true. The "death" of latin brought linguistic/cultural/etc diversity. When european nations started teaching in their own national languages and when they started worshipping in their national languages rather than latin, it created more diversity. > We tend to react in a very emotional way when it's about culture, and I'm not sure it benefits our specie. Why doesn't it benefit our species? You act like if we all used the same alphabet and spoke the same language, we'd have some kind of utopia. You act like people who speak the same language don't have wars with each other, don't brutalize each other and have cultural differences. It seems like you've bought into the globalist monoculture nonsense. Where we all think alike, talk alike, eat in the same fast food joints and live alike in cities that all look alike. For our species sakes, I hope not.

sametmax 6y ago
The only reason we can even have this important debate is because the whole thread can communicate in english.
- DeathArrow 6y ago
  I can communicate in English even if it isn't my native language. That's true for many others. If anything, I see an argument for being bilingual, not for English as the only language.
6y ago

Mediterraneo10 6y ago

> In my country, language protection is a big thing. It's also why we have such a terrible ability to speak english The latter does not inevitably follow from the former. "Language protection" has been a big thing in Finland inasmuch as the Finnish intelligentsia has historically preferred coining new words from Finnish roots instead of adopting foreign vocabulary (so tietokone for ‘computer’) and there is heavy state subsidy for local cultural productions in Finnish, but Finns nevertheless have great proficiency in English. > Every time a language dies, like latin or summerian did, we gain uniformity. What? Latin died as a native language by splitting up into a large series of dialects across Europe that were no longer mutually intelligible by the late first millennium. Europe did not gain any uniformity by that process.

koheripbal 6y ago
> The latter does not inevitably follow from the former. Some subject always loses out when you need to teach something extra. Education is not infinite.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- jsjolen 6y ago
  Interesting! Would you like to expand on that argument?
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  If you are referring to the idea that children need to spend their precious school hours only on "useful subjects", then you ought to consider that many young people these days mainly learn English through osmosis while watching television programs etc. at home. So, whether time during their school day is spent focusing on aspects of their native language or not doesn’t make a difference for their ability to communicate internationally. As for "Efficient communication is probably the most important factor in peace", that kind of idealism doesn't hold in practice. The peoples of Yugoslavia could efficiently communicate with each other because they shared essentially the same language, but it still didn't stop them from descending into brutal warfare. Even today, peoples of two antagonistic countries can often communicate with one another in English, but they go on despising each other nevertheless.

ken 6y ago

> There are enough source of diversity in humanity to not need to add it to the very structure we use to exchange information. Strongly disagree. Who are we to decide which aspects of someone else’s culture are worth saving, and which can be thrown under the bus in the name of efficiency? Why not architecture, or dress, or food, or religion? Are you only taking issue because this one has a particular impact on computers? > We tend to react in a very emotional way when it's about culture, and I'm not sure it benefits our specie. What is our purpose, without culture? We’re not robots.

gspetr 6y ago
>Why not architecture, or dress, or food All of these have a very limited use as a means of conveying information, mostly because the medium itself is static. > or religion? Funny you would mention religion. Christianity, Islam and Judaism mention the tower of Babel or something similar to it, implying that splitting the humanity into many languages was God's punishment for defiance. "6 And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. 7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. 8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city." If we are to believe this, then returning to one language for the entire humanity would simply be a return to our most natural, original state as was meant by our creator.

bloak 6y ago

> Every time a language dies, like latin or summerian did, we gain uniformity. So when Latin evolved into French, Italian, Spanish, ... we gained uniformity? I'm not convinced!

Koshkin 6y ago

> we have such a terrible ability to speak english Curiously, native English speakers have a terrible ability to speak French (even though they are not as protective of their language). Personally, I think that this is because these two languages, despite being “neighbors” and in some respects related, are at different extremes of some kind of phonetic spectrum. (Learning the written language, on the other hand, is a breeze and fun.)

baud147258 6y ago

I don't think the rumored bad English-speaking capacities of the French are coming from the protection of the French language, but rather from an inadequate teaching methods and funding.