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The world has always had a handful of linguae francae. Greek, Aramaic, Latin, English (Python, JavaScript), etc. each serve(d) valuable purposes. This article

The world has always had a handful of linguae francae. Greek, Aramaic, Latin, English (Python, JavaScript), etc. each serve(d) valuable purposes. This article seems to cast standardized communication in a negative, borderline (if not outright) discriminatory light, which struck me as odd.

Y_Y 7y ago
I think it's a bit oxymoronic to have a lingua franca that's also the target of unfair discrimination. Of course you can have elitism, but in the end most people have to trade with the common coin.
pjc50 7y ago
A language carries a history, a culture, a literature (not necessarily written!) and an identity. Abandoning a minority language abandons those. It's very easy for native English speakers to say English should be the only language because it has only upsides for them, and they need not give up anything, and they have never been coerced into using it. Whereas I suspect 99% of people who say things like "we don't need UTF-8, the world can be ASCII-only" would go absolutely bananas if they woke up tomorrow and found that HN was now a mandatory-Mandarin forum. Some minority languages were actively suppressed during the colonialism of the 19th and 20th centuries. It was part of the point of the "residential schools" system of Canada, Australia and elsewhere: take children away from their parents and beat their language out of them. A few languages have managed to go from repressed to national language status: Irish, Hebrew, probably others.
- DeathArrow 7y ago
  >A language carries a history, a culture, a literature (not necessarily written!) and an identity. Abandoning a minority language abandons those. I don't see how me writing a tech article in English or my own language means abandoning others "culture, literature (not necessarily written!)". Am I required to learn 7000 languages?
  - pjc50 7y ago
    It doesn't and you're not. That would obviously make no sense.
- account42 7y ago
  > It's very easy for native English speakers to say English should be the only language It's also very easy to assume that everyone advocating for using a common language is a native English speaker.
- DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
  Hebrew is the only successfully revived language that I know of, and it was revived under circumstances that are really pretty unique. Irish has had "national language" status for 100 years, during which time it has continued to decline. Strong government support for the language - making it a requirement for government jobs, teaching it to schoolchildren, defining regions of the country where Irish should be the primary everyday language - weren't enough to prevent the continued decline of the language. I think the problem with the sort of language policy that Ireland pursued is that language is a practical tool for most people. A lot of people liked the idea of Irish coming back (especially back when speaking Irish was a political statement against English colonialism), but in everyday life in Ireland, English is vastly more useful. The last monolingual Irish speaker died in 1998.[1] You will never encounter anyone who only knows how to speak Irish. Back when there were monolingual Irish speakers, they lived in some of the poorest areas of Ireland and hoped that their children would learn English, so that they would have better opportunities. In some ways, the language policy backfired. Some people actually viewed it as oppressive, because they didn't see the point of learning a language that was of no practical use to them in everyday life, and they weren't able to get certain jobs unless they spoke that language. There's a funny TV series that explores how useful the Irish language is in everyday life, which aired on Ireland's Irish-language station.[2] The host tries to go through his life using only Irish. Most of the Irish people he encounters have the proficiency of your average adult who took a foreign language many years ago in school and never used it again. A few people can speak it well. Many more are confused. But it's sobering to watch it and think about what it would actually take to revive Irish as the primary language of communication in Ireland, or why you would want to do so. With Irish, there's also the peculiarity that it's not really the language of Irish culture. Ireland is world-famous for its English-language literature. 1. Seán Ó hEinirí: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Se%C3%A1n_%C3%93_hEinir%C3%AD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Se%C3%A1n_%C3%93_hEinir%C3%AD 2. No Béarla: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyll-bBZzyk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyll-bBZzyk
keiferski 7y ago
These were almost all languages of a particular class, usually the ruling class. And typically the establishment of a lingua franca involved the suppression of other local languages - the story of French is a classic example.

Y_Y 7y ago

I think it's a bit oxymoronic to have a lingua franca that's also the target of unfair discrimination. Of course you can have elitism, but in the end most people have to trade with the common coin.

pjc50 7y ago

A language carries a history, a culture, a literature (not necessarily written!) and an identity. Abandoning a minority language abandons those. It's very easy for native English speakers to say English should be the only language because it has only upsides for them, and they need not give up anything, and they have never been coerced into using it. Whereas I suspect 99% of people who say things like "we don't need UTF-8, the world can be ASCII-only" would go absolutely bananas if they woke up tomorrow and found that HN was now a mandatory-Mandarin forum. Some minority languages were actively suppressed during the colonialism of the 19th and 20th centuries. It was part of the point of the "residential schools" system of Canada, Australia and elsewhere: take children away from their parents and beat their language out of them. A few languages have managed to go from repressed to national language status: Irish, Hebrew, probably others.

DeathArrow 7y ago
>A language carries a history, a culture, a literature (not necessarily written!) and an identity. Abandoning a minority language abandons those. I don't see how me writing a tech article in English or my own language means abandoning others "culture, literature (not necessarily written!)". Am I required to learn 7000 languages?
- pjc50 7y ago
  It doesn't and you're not. That would obviously make no sense.
account42 7y ago
> It's very easy for native English speakers to say English should be the only language It's also very easy to assume that everyone advocating for using a common language is a native English speaker.
DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
Hebrew is the only successfully revived language that I know of, and it was revived under circumstances that are really pretty unique. Irish has had "national language" status for 100 years, during which time it has continued to decline. Strong government support for the language - making it a requirement for government jobs, teaching it to schoolchildren, defining regions of the country where Irish should be the primary everyday language - weren't enough to prevent the continued decline of the language. I think the problem with the sort of language policy that Ireland pursued is that language is a practical tool for most people. A lot of people liked the idea of Irish coming back (especially back when speaking Irish was a political statement against English colonialism), but in everyday life in Ireland, English is vastly more useful. The last monolingual Irish speaker died in 1998.[1] You will never encounter anyone who only knows how to speak Irish. Back when there were monolingual Irish speakers, they lived in some of the poorest areas of Ireland and hoped that their children would learn English, so that they would have better opportunities. In some ways, the language policy backfired. Some people actually viewed it as oppressive, because they didn't see the point of learning a language that was of no practical use to them in everyday life, and they weren't able to get certain jobs unless they spoke that language. There's a funny TV series that explores how useful the Irish language is in everyday life, which aired on Ireland's Irish-language station.[2] The host tries to go through his life using only Irish. Most of the Irish people he encounters have the proficiency of your average adult who took a foreign language many years ago in school and never used it again. A few people can speak it well. Many more are confused. But it's sobering to watch it and think about what it would actually take to revive Irish as the primary language of communication in Ireland, or why you would want to do so. With Irish, there's also the peculiarity that it's not really the language of Irish culture. Ireland is world-famous for its English-language literature. 1. Seán Ó hEinirí: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Se%C3%A1n_%C3%93_hEinir%C3%AD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Se%C3%A1n_%C3%93_hEinir%C3%AD 2. No Béarla: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyll-bBZzyk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyll-bBZzyk

keiferski 7y ago

These were almost all languages of a particular class, usually the ruling class. And typically the establishment of a lingua franca involved the suppression of other local languages - the story of French is a classic example.