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Is there any evidence of this common claim that obscure languages "may contain some of the most critical solutions to the problems we face as humans"? What kind

Is there any evidence of this common claim that obscure languages "may contain some of the most critical solutions to the problems we face as humans"? What kind of problems is he talking about there? Has it ever happened before? So what that a monkey is a "lice hunter"? In English, an anteater is an anteater and a wood splitter is a wood splitter. It's not a very special way of naming things. Maybe this language has no value to anyone except its own users, but they already speak it, so no effort is needed. These activists always have a dark intention in their ideas that they want some poor indigenous people to be burdened with the work of learning and using a dying language. If young Ojibwe people are choosing not to use it, then maybe it's because they don't want or need it. I also didn't learn much Morse code as a kid despite older people wanting me to. Turns out it's no longer as useful as it was back in their day. "Language, Treuer says, defines nations, connects generations and allows a culture to express its perspective on the world." Yes, and English does that job much better because you can actually communicate with the world and multiple generations. Different cultures do alter it with local slang or styles of speech and it's still intelligible while also defining their identity.

danieltillett 7y ago
No. It is kind of sad when a language dies, but for the individuals that might have once spoken that obscure language they are now instead speaking a more common language that opens up a much large world for them. They have a much greater chance of contributing to humanity if they have access to all that a common language provides.
kiba 7y ago
Is there any evidence of this common claim that obscure languages "may contain some of the most critical solutions to the problems we face as humans"? What kind of problems is he talking about there? Has it ever happened before? Does it need to? If a language interest a community, then it's reason enough to learn it. Anyway, if you're a deaf person, a sign language is going to be a hell lot more useful than a spoken language, since the deaf can effectively communicate in say...ASL, as opposed to spoken English. They do still need to learn English, if only to interact with the larger community. And ASL is interesting because you can some ideas communicate ideas more effectively than you could do through spoken words. ASL has a lot of opportunity for iconicity. I learned it because I am curious about the language with no practical application in mind, but hopefully one day in the future, I will use it to communicate with the deaf and that will be one of the coolest way I will ever help a person.
- lmm 7y ago
  > Does it need to? If a language interest a community, then it's reason enough to learn it. I've nothing against people voluntarily choosing to learn a language. But most language learning is done by children who are heavily pressured if not outright forced into it by their parents (who usually, hypocritically, do not put the same time into language learning themselves). That's cruel in my book.
  - mchaver 7y ago
    I think it is cruel that their language was taken away from them, but I find it inspiring they are trying to rebuild their linguistics community. Not every child will like what they are taught, but if they can create an environment where the language is used, the kids are likely to follow. I hardly see how that is cruel.
    - lmm 7y ago
      Were you ever made to learn a useless language? It feels even worse than a waste of your time because it's also taking up space in your brain. Just judging by my own experience of Welsh.
Apocryphon 7y ago
The first point does seem to be a bit of a thing in the direction of noble savage/naturalistic fallacy, in the way that appeals to stop Amazon deforestation on the basis of hidden uncovered local plants might prove to be miracle drugs that will safe humanity are overselling wonders previously unharmed by the modern world. That said, the preservation of endangered languages is definitely in of itself a valuable and noble pursuit of knowledge. It preserves our understanding of the past, at the very least. And for something more groundbreaking, there is the whole matter of the Pirahã: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8772388 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8772388 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=740687 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=740687
boomboomsubban 7y ago
>These activists always have a dark intention in their ideas that they want some poor indigenous people to be burdened with the work of learning and using a dying language. Learning multiple languages has been shown to provide many benefits to a child's wellbeing, though I don't see anyone forcing anybody to learn or use the language. >If young Ojibwe people are choosing not to use it, then maybe it's because they don't want or need it. Kids stopped using it because they are shipped to residential schools that used to punished use of their nativity language. There was no "choice" offered.
ivanbakel 7y ago
>Yes, and English does that job much better because you can actually communicate with the world and multiple generations. That's a misunderstanding of Treuer's point. English is able to define English nations and express the English cultural perspective. He's not arguing that language, generally, is a tool for communication - he's saying that specific languages each yield their own specific identities. To address the point more generally - languages do, for most speakers, have an influence on thought. People acknowledge that effect to varying degrees, from "you can't think what you can't express" to "language is intertwined with culture and culture differentiates thought" (i.e. not quite Sapir-Worf). As an anecdotal argument - monolingual speakers often expect translation to be one-to-one, bar idioms. The fact is languages differ in nuance for different kinds of terms, to the point where a mapping might be one-to-many, many-to-one, or completely absent - and those nuances can and do reflect different cultural attitudes. For example, there is no English equivalent to wel[1], the Dutch word for reinforcing a positive sentiment. [1]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wel#Dutch https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wel#Dutch
- jl6 7y ago
  This is a sidetrack, but is “wel” like “do”, as per the examples on Wiktionary? Or simply like the English word “well”?
  - ivanbakel 7y ago
    "wel" is basically nothing like the English "well", except in archaic speech. It is similar to "do", but you can't use "do" to positively affirm nearly as much as you could use "wel". There is simply no way to directly translate it, and it has no equivalent in English - though you can describe it, as the positive "not".
- mcswell 7y ago
  Agreed.
LatteLazy 7y ago
I'm with you, and frankly the other replies sort of prove your point. No one has given any example of what you asked for and everyone seems to think learning a language like that is easy and simple and won't displace more important activities...
- mcswell 7y ago
  This doesn't speak to the question, but as for language learning displacing more important activities: young children learn new languages pretty much effortlessly, and no one has found anything to indicate that second language learning as a small child gets in the way of anything else.
2snakes 7y ago
From what I gather from my Dad, who speaks a good amount of Ojibwemowin, the language has Nature conservation principles embedded in it.

danieltillett 7y ago

No. It is kind of sad when a language dies, but for the individuals that might have once spoken that obscure language they are now instead speaking a more common language that opens up a much large world for them. They have a much greater chance of contributing to humanity if they have access to all that a common language provides.

kiba 7y ago

Is there any evidence of this common claim that obscure languages "may contain some of the most critical solutions to the problems we face as humans"? What kind of problems is he talking about there? Has it ever happened before? Does it need to? If a language interest a community, then it's reason enough to learn it. Anyway, if you're a deaf person, a sign language is going to be a hell lot more useful than a spoken language, since the deaf can effectively communicate in say...ASL, as opposed to spoken English. They do still need to learn English, if only to interact with the larger community. And ASL is interesting because you can some ideas communicate ideas more effectively than you could do through spoken words. ASL has a lot of opportunity for iconicity. I learned it because I am curious about the language with no practical application in mind, but hopefully one day in the future, I will use it to communicate with the deaf and that will be one of the coolest way I will ever help a person.

lmm 7y ago
> Does it need to? If a language interest a community, then it's reason enough to learn it. I've nothing against people voluntarily choosing to learn a language. But most language learning is done by children who are heavily pressured if not outright forced into it by their parents (who usually, hypocritically, do not put the same time into language learning themselves). That's cruel in my book.
- mchaver 7y ago
  I think it is cruel that their language was taken away from them, but I find it inspiring they are trying to rebuild their linguistics community. Not every child will like what they are taught, but if they can create an environment where the language is used, the kids are likely to follow. I hardly see how that is cruel.
  - lmm 7y ago
    Were you ever made to learn a useless language? It feels even worse than a waste of your time because it's also taking up space in your brain. Just judging by my own experience of Welsh.

Apocryphon 7y ago

The first point does seem to be a bit of a thing in the direction of noble savage/naturalistic fallacy, in the way that appeals to stop Amazon deforestation on the basis of hidden uncovered local plants might prove to be miracle drugs that will safe humanity are overselling wonders previously unharmed by the modern world. That said, the preservation of endangered languages is definitely in of itself a valuable and noble pursuit of knowledge. It preserves our understanding of the past, at the very least. And for something more groundbreaking, there is the whole matter of the Pirahã: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8772388 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8772388 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=740687 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=740687

boomboomsubban 7y ago

>These activists always have a dark intention in their ideas that they want some poor indigenous people to be burdened with the work of learning and using a dying language. Learning multiple languages has been shown to provide many benefits to a child's wellbeing, though I don't see anyone forcing anybody to learn or use the language. >If young Ojibwe people are choosing not to use it, then maybe it's because they don't want or need it. Kids stopped using it because they are shipped to residential schools that used to punished use of their nativity language. There was no "choice" offered.

ivanbakel 7y ago

>Yes, and English does that job much better because you can actually communicate with the world and multiple generations. That's a misunderstanding of Treuer's point. English is able to define English nations and express the English cultural perspective. He's not arguing that language, generally, is a tool for communication - he's saying that specific languages each yield their own specific identities. To address the point more generally - languages do, for most speakers, have an influence on thought. People acknowledge that effect to varying degrees, from "you can't think what you can't express" to "language is intertwined with culture and culture differentiates thought" (i.e. not quite Sapir-Worf). As an anecdotal argument - monolingual speakers often expect translation to be one-to-one, bar idioms. The fact is languages differ in nuance for different kinds of terms, to the point where a mapping might be one-to-many, many-to-one, or completely absent - and those nuances can and do reflect different cultural attitudes. For example, there is no English equivalent to wel[1], the Dutch word for reinforcing a positive sentiment. [1]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wel#Dutch https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wel#Dutch

jl6 7y ago
This is a sidetrack, but is “wel” like “do”, as per the examples on Wiktionary? Or simply like the English word “well”?
- ivanbakel 7y ago
  "wel" is basically nothing like the English "well", except in archaic speech. It is similar to "do", but you can't use "do" to positively affirm nearly as much as you could use "wel". There is simply no way to directly translate it, and it has no equivalent in English - though you can describe it, as the positive "not".
mcswell 7y ago
Agreed.

LatteLazy 7y ago

I'm with you, and frankly the other replies sort of prove your point. No one has given any example of what you asked for and everyone seems to think learning a language like that is easy and simple and won't displace more important activities...

mcswell 7y ago
This doesn't speak to the question, but as for language learning displacing more important activities: young children learn new languages pretty much effortlessly, and no one has found anything to indicate that second language learning as a small child gets in the way of anything else.

2snakes 7y ago

From what I gather from my Dad, who speaks a good amount of Ojibwemowin, the language has Nature conservation principles embedded in it.