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I think it is absolutely vital that we preserve minority languages. We engage, enhance and preserve our culture through language: spoken and written. Each lan

• mattmanser 5y ago
  Why is it vital? What does it add to life, the universe, or anything? Almost no-one in the world has any significance. Of the 7 billion people alive today, 6,990,000 of them will be utterly forgotten in 200 years time. It will be as if they didn't exist. Why is one extremely niche language so important compared to those 6,990,000 actual, real life, people? It happened, it had no impact on human history, it was forgotten. End of story, stop making a big deal about it. History is for the meaningful, not the things that wouldn't even make the minor footnotes.
  • bpiche 5y ago
    My impression of this comment is that it is overgeneralizing, reductive, and pretty nihilist. That being said I do agree that minority languages, like our lives, are ultimately, in the fate of the great cosmic void, meaningless. But no, minority languages aren’t completely useless. Every language is a window into the structure of human language, which is something we are still trying to understand. Some people might tell you that sort of linguistics is also useless, but that’s a different conversation. I would compare it to the sad loss of knowledge that results from another animal species going extinct. There are secrets in its genome that we will now never discover.
  • magicsmoke 5y ago
    As someone who speaks a language that may be going the way of the dodo in a couple of years, watching his family back home decide not to pass it onto the next generation because it has no economic value and takes away from the rat race of school and jobs, and knowing there's no objection I can make because having grown up in a foreign country means I can't even speak it correctly, I'm afraid I have to agree with that bleak assessment. Waxing poetic about how minority languages should be preserved seems hollow when the minorities themselves don't see the point. Why do they have to shoulder the burden of carrying an outdated relic just so some English speaking aristocrats can feel blessed about how diverse their world is? There are days when it feels like fighting a losing war. Digging up a few old movies to hear the sounds of a dying language and wondering if your kids will care enough to keep this game of broken telephone going into its final rounds, and why you have the right to impose that burden on them in the first place. Maybe it's better if they never know what they lost. I recently found out that my parents could have taught me two other languages that are also dying out, but they decided not to because who in the world would I use them with? Then I shrugged and went on with my day.
  • chomp 5y ago
    The HOA of my neighborhood allows 4 species of trees. They are very good trees, native to the area, and grow up to be very beautiful. At first glance while driving down the street, the neighborhood looks nice and practical. I was looking at aerial shots of my home the other day for solar installation options, and when I looked at the broader picture, it was a bit soulless. Everything was optimized to be inoffensive and suit the lowest common denominator of taste. The yards and trees and landscaping of each house all are from the same list of plants everyone is familiar with, which are optimized for practicality (hard to kill, and look somewhat okay.) My anecdote doesn’t fit this situation as an analogy but it shares a common thread in that limiting diversity reduces the humanity of the system, and makes the world more boring as a result. Not everything has to be min maxed and optimized. Some things that humanity has invented are worth dragging with us just so that the world does not slide further into hyper-optimization.
    • staticautomatic 5y ago
      I think it’s a very effective analogy.
    • thegrimmest 5y ago
      I agree, but I don't think it's exclusively about optimization. I look at language more or less as a communication protocol. The data flowing over the protocol takes the shape of thoughts and ideas. The diversity of these is not being limited. In fact, the diversity of your possible experiences is expanded as you can communicate meaningfully with people totally unlike you. In English I can communicate with native speakers who are subsistence farmers in Africa, programmers in Europe or rocket scientists in America. This is great! If we all agree about the way we move our mouth parts it'll only serve to increase the diversity of ideas and people we can be exposed to. It's akin to various languages all adopting QWERTY, or the Latin alphabet before it. Nothing is lost due to lack of diversity in protocol.
      • andrewzah 5y ago
        Certain concepts are more difficult or less difficult to express depending on the language. I think somewhat differently in Korean than English. Translating existing text can be very difficult and nuanced because of how concepts can be expressed differently. This also ignores the issue that the majority of the world would have to abandon their language, no matter what language is picked. And how do you pick a language? It’s entirely arbitrary. You can argue for Chinese just as well as you can for English.
  • JackeJR 5y ago
    Going by the what is implied, it stands to reason that everything is meaningless except for those that represents or aids in a significant improvement in our lives or change our fate as a human race. This is neglecting how these developments came to be. We don't know when Einstein was born that he will go on to discover a world changing equation and theorem. If we don't give diversity such as these minority languages to thrive, we may simply be creating an environment that is so sterile and constant that any new innovations have little chance of happening from a lack of stimulation.
  • ElViajero 5y ago
    > It will be as if they didn't exist. That is not how the world works. The fact that most people is not in the history books does not mean that they were not important. > History is for the meaningful, not the things that wouldn't even make the minor footnotes. But, minor footnotes have changed the history of empires. A disease that moves to one person to another, and one traveler, can spread it around changing the live of hundreds, millions a few generations later, all humanity after a few centuries. That we do not have the capacity to understand the complexity of all human interactions does not mean that it is not important. History is presented as the act of a few chosen individuals because history is told to promote national feelings, and because humans relate easily to histories of families and power.
  • pjc50 5y ago
    History is usually the process of deciding what's meaningful, to whom, and for what purpose.
  • bigpeopleareold 5y ago
    > History is for the meaningful I respectfully take exception to this, only because I realized for far too long that I felt under the thumb of this idea. If I do a thing, will it have meaning to enough people? I mean, this is fine in the long-term when historians record history, but I could care less what the rest of the 7 billion people might think when I decide. for example, if I want to take up a course in the language of my grandparents, then neither the opinions of my grandparents, parents or whether it is useful should stop me. It might not be economically feasible (except in the country of its origin) but talking only about what is "meaningful" can pretty much also exclude most creative human effort, even if that effort only impresses upon a few individuals. This is not an argument for "diversity", which is a non-goal for most people. Instead, this is simply not being locked down to the whims of a zeitgeist every time you ask whether something you find interesting, which can have some educational value, is actually a meaningful thing to pursue.
  • hutzlibu 5y ago
    "History is for the meaningful, not the things that wouldn't even make the minor footnotes. " History is the sum of everything that happened. Not just the few "glory" moments of some dudes, historians liked. (And it seems they mainly liked those with the highest kill count.) "Almost no-one in the world has any significance" Everything and everyone has significance to their own time and place. The world would not be complete and working like it is, if one thing is missing. Now and as to why Elfdalian is specifically important? It is the closest alive language to old norse. Many people are trying to reconnect with their culture roots, after centuries of monocultural imperialism trying to cut them. So yes, the world would move one without Elfdalian, but personally I like a colorful, vibrant culture. Where not every place looks and sounds the same - only then I would consider it all insignificant, as all is the same shit anyway. But it is not and I support efforts to fight against that and for rich local cultures.
• schoen 5y ago
  > Nominally: subject object verb but not enforced and can be broken for effect Nominal English word order is SVO, not SOV. :-)
• fnord77 5y ago
  I had to google half the words in that poem. "sleekit" -> slick or sleek "laith" -> loath still haven't figured out what "na", "awa" and "sae" are
  • jschwartzi 5y ago
    awa = away, sae = so He’s saying the mouse needn’t leave so quickly.
  • DoreenMichele 5y ago
    Na should be "not." Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous beastie, O, what a panic’s in thy breastie! Thou need na start awa sae hasty, "Translation"/update to more standard current English: Small, sleek, cowering timorous beast Oh, what a panic in your chest. You need not start away so quickly.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  • CobrastanJorji 5y ago
    Googling for short foreign words that look like misspelled English words is gonna be tough. I recommend something like the Online Scots Dictionary: https://www.scots-online.org/dictionary/scots_english.php https://www.scots-online.org/dictionary/scots_english.php
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • Pinus 5y ago
    I am not competent to rate the linguistic quality of this translation, but it certainly is amusing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQXpznIhT08 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQXpznIhT08 .
• azernik 5y ago
  That is not why English is used as a lingua franca. There have always been such languages, often with none of those features. English is a lasting lingua franca because two world-dominating powers in a row - the United Kingdom and the United States - were English-speaking, producing a run of more than a century with an important trading partner and diplomatic contact speaking that language. It's gotten deeply enough embedded that it will probably survive fading US (relative) power, but inserting theories about the nature of the language itself doesn't add any explanatory power over just looking at the history
  • burntoutfire 5y ago
    > English is a lasting lingua franca because two world-dominating powers in a row - the United Kingdom and the United States - were English-speaking, producing a run of more than a century with an important trading partner and diplomatic contact speaking that language. I'd say that it's mostly the US that counted. At least in Europe, before US dominance became clear (say before 1930), the French language was lingua franca and hardly anyone spoke English.
    • tored 5y ago
      There was a shift to Anglo-Saxon culture already after World War 1 because of the outcome of the war. As an example you can see that in first names of people born in the 1920s
      • throwaway894345 5y ago
        As an aside I always find it strange when people call the Anglophonic world “Anglo-Saxon”. The original Anglo-Saxons were a very different people with a very different language (mutually unintelligible) than modern Anglophones. Of course I understand that terms become overloaded and so on, but it seems interesting and pertinent considering we’re discussing language and identity.
        • tored 5y ago
• BurningFrog 5y ago
  I'll disagree: Languages are tools for communication. In a world where everyone can easily talk to anyone else, that tool can't be 6000 separate languages. Old people don't like it, but languages are always changing. Latin became ~20 different languages after Rome fell. If someone had enforced a "no language left behind" policy, French or Spanish would never have been spoken. What's important is that we can talk to each other, not what vocabulary and grammar we happen to use. [I wrote this in my second language]
  • devoutsalsa 5y ago
    It’s interesting to think of the USA breaking up & having the plains riders of Kansaston speaking a different language than the hill people of Coloradona.
    • ludamad 5y ago
      Overall, English has the same sprawl that Latin had. I suspect that frequent written communication has made drifts more subtle
  • brutusborn 5y ago
    I think the best argument for keeping dying languages "alive" is to be able to study the way they make meaning. Some words and phrases are not directly translatable to certain languages because that is not how those speakers think about the world. This is fascinating and possibly useful. When languages die we lose these ideas and ways of thinking and the bounds of consciousness become ever so slightly smaller.
    • BurningFrog 5y ago
      Linguistics is an important and fascinating science. I'm all for studying dead and dying languages in all ways possible. What I'm strongly against is forcing kids to learn an impractical language because old people can't let go of the past and/or want to win political battles.
      • 5y ago
• mannerheim 5y ago
  The original lingua franca was not French, but Sabir, a Romance-based pidgin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_Lingua_Franca https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_Lingua_Franca
• yongjik 5y ago
  > Word order can be fluid: Nominally: subject object verb but not enforced and can be broken for effect this sentence wrote fact from, think then, English truly different language studied experience exist no, my guess correct? word order English grammar among absolute nightmare is! (In plain English: Considering what you wrote, I guess that you never studied a language truly different from English, am I right?)
  • bradrn 5y ago
    I’m curious to know: which language is that a literal translation from? (Given the V-final word order, postpositions and use of ‘exist’, I’d guess either Korean or Japanese.)
    • jobigoud 5y ago
      I don't know about the grandparent comment but many languages that have cases markers have a much more fluid word order, since the function of each word is already tagged by the case ending. The word order is then used to carry emphasis. Wikipedia has examples where the same sentence is written in half a dozen different word orders. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_order#Hungarian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_order#Hungarian
    • yongjik 5y ago
      Loosely based on Korean, but I "fixed" some words so that they match an equivalent English usage, because otherwise it's cheating. :)
      • bradrn 5y ago
        Ah, thanks for clarifying! A further question: which words did you ‘fix’?
        • yongjik 5y ago
          What I wrote can be "translated" word-by-word to an acceptable Korean passage, but if I wrote it natively, the end result would be something like: 이런("like this") 문장을(sentence) 쓰신(wrote) 걸로(thing + with/from) 볼(see) 때(time/when), 영어와(English + with) 정말로(truly) 다른(different) 언어를(language) 공부해(study) 보신("see" or try) 적이(time) 없는(not exist) 것(thing) 같네요(similar), 맞습니까(correct + question marker)? Of course it's more or less gibberish, unless you already know, e.g., verb "see" also means "try" and "similar" means "that's my guess".
• theli0nheart 5y ago
  The Franks were not French, and the original Lingua Franca, as another commenter noted, was called Sabir, a pidgin language of the eastern Mediterranean from the 11th through the 19th centuries. [1] Furthermore, English is our current lingua franca not because of its grammar or linguistic quirks, but rather because it has been the primary language of two consecutive world superpowers starting in the 18th century. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_Lingua_Franca https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_Lingua_Franca
  • throwaway894345 5y ago
    Thank you, that was bothering me. The Franks spoke Frankish which is a Germanic language. Their vassals spoke a dialect of Vulgar Latin which would eventually become French.
  • Bayart 5y ago
    The Franks were French, after the 7th c. or so. By the time of Fredegarius, their Germanic origins were all but forgotten. For nearly the entirety of the Middle Ages, « Frank » meant a Catholic of Gaul who's cultural language is Latin or a Catholic, depending on the context.
    • theli0nheart 5y ago
      Yes, for a time, there was some overlap, but regardless, the terms "Frank" and "French" are not synonymous. The two names indicate different cultures, languages, and ethnic origins. The OP's comment is misleading.
      • Bayart 5y ago
        That's a dichotomy that's fairly recent in historiography, and doesn't at all fit with historical usage. If memory serves right and came about in the wake of the rise of the Bourgeoisie and the French Revolution, with the need to conveniently give the nobility a foreign tint. Moreover the Germanicity of the so-called barbarian tribes, including Pre-Merovingian Franks, has to be reassessed now with what we know about identity politics in the Late Roman and Post-Roman World. People might have played at being barbarians a lot more than actually being it, in a very comparable way you see Americans pretending to be this or that.
• dmitriid 5y ago
  > English is often called French (lingua Franca - the language of the Franks). It is routinely used as an intermediary language because it is very simply structured and can take quite a lot of abuse and still remain intelligible. You didn't even for a second stop to think why English language uses a Latin term to call a language the language of the Francs? Latin was the original "lingua franca" of Europe. For historical and traditional reasons. Then France was the largest, baddest, most powerful country, and everyone wanted to be like France. But in the past several centuries Britain and then the US were the biggest, baddest, most economically powerful countries, and it's beneficial to know and speak English. People didn't use Latin or French because they were simpler. People don't use English because it's "simpler than French". If that was the case, everyone would've switched to Turkish, for example, as it's very, very, very simple compared to any European language. Chinese was the lingua franca of Asia for centuries before English even became a thing in the 19th century. Because it was the biggest baddest empire around. Don't get too surprised if Chinese becomes the lingua franca of the world 20 years from now.
• Bayart 5y ago
  The use of English has nothing to do with its supposedly inherent qualities. That's the sort of intellectual masturbation your get from Brits once in a while, and it's nauseating. It's got everything to do with the complete dominance of the US of war, money and culture after WW2.