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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, 6,9

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 Why do they have to shoulder the burden of carrying an outdated relic just so some English speaking aristocrats can feel blessed about how diverse their world is?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.

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.