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A counter to this that I'm aware of is Ukrainian and Polish. The soviet union tried to exterminate both during its heyday yet they've mostly completely revived

A counter to this that I'm aware of is Ukrainian and Polish. The soviet union tried to exterminate both during its heyday yet they've mostly completely revived despite the effort. Hindi is probably another example of a language that the british empire tried to exterminate yet it has seen a pretty decent resurgence. I don't think any of these languages really stayed around via force. They simply had a critical mass of speakers that never went away. For Irish and Welsh, the British empire arguably committed a genocide to eliminate them. It similarly happened to native american tribes in the US and canada. By my estimation, the two things that kill a language is the death of the native speakers of that language (discussed above) and the evolution of a language past what native speakers would recognize (Old/proto english and Latin for example).

alephnerd 1y ago
> Ukrainian and Polish. The soviet union tried to exterminate both Poland was not in the USSR. Polish remained the working language in the Polish People's Republic > Hindi is probably another example of a language that the british empire tried to exterminate Hindi-Urdu was never exterminated by the British. In fact, it was the British that helped make it the de facto language in most of South Asia. Before the British, Dari was the working language of administration. When the British began co-opting local administrations in the 19th century, Hindi-Urdu was used as the primary register, and my family has ancestral documents showing this change (Dari/Farsi to Urdu/Hindi to English for land documents). --------- The only dead language that I can think of that was revived was Hebrew, but modern Hebrew is entirely different from that which was spoken millennia ago, and is a mixture of litigurical Hebrew, Arabic (plenty of Mizrahi influence along with the Sabra movement during the start of Israel), Russian (heavily used for mechanical terms), and German (heavily used to scientific terms).
- asimpletune 1y ago
  Parts of Poland were annexed by the soviets and became part of Ukraine and Belarus.
  - barry-cotter 1y ago
    Completely irrelevant to whether the Polish language and cultural identity was suppressed. Most of historic Prussia is now part of Poland. No one claims that German was suppressed in East Germany.
  - alephnerd 1y ago
    > Parts of Poland were annexed by the soviets and became part of Ukraine and Belarus I don't want to touch that hot potato, but that region was extremely diverse, with a large Belarusian, Lithuanian, Yiddish (before WW2 sadly), German, and Ukrainian speaking populations. I don't think any ethnic group had an actual definitive majority in that region until after WW2.
  - pqtyw 1y ago
    Well yes but people who identified as Polish (e.g. upper/middle class and urban residents) were deported or a given a chance to leave west.
- barry-cotter 1y ago
  > The only dead language that I can think of that was revived was Hebrew, but modern Hebrew is entirely different from that which was spoken millennia ago, and is a mixture of litigurical Hebrew, Arabic (plenty of Mizrahi influence along with the Sabra movement during the start of Israel), Russian (heavily used for mechanical terms), and German (heavily used to scientific terms). Entirely different my ass. Modern Hebrew is closer to liturgical Hebrew than the language of Shakespeare is to that of Britney Spears. There are some areas with a great deal of borrowing of vocabulary but you could say the same thing of modern Russian or Japanese and no one would say they were “entirely different” from the language of 1800.
  - alephnerd 1y ago
    > Entirely different my ass I do NOT appreciate that tone. .להזדיין > Modern Hebrew is closer to liturgical Hebrew than the language of Shakespeare is to that of Britney Spears. Modern English and Shakespearean or Medieval English are very different, and I feel the difference between modern colloquial Hebrew and liturgical Hebrew are similar.
    - barry-cotter 1y ago
      תודה על הדעה. אני מסיים כאן
stackedinserter 1y ago
USSR didn't try to "exterminate" Ukrainian, where did you get this? We spoke Ukrainian all my childhood, it was taught at school, there were TV shows, magazines and newspapers in Ukrainian. It was alive and very actively used, at least in 80's.
- cogman10 1y ago
  I had a Ukrainian friend and I thought he'd told me that Russian was strongly encouraged. I thought the state had a stronger policy towards making sure everyone spoke russian. I just looked it up and it appears that wasn't something the USSR ever really did.
  - thaumasiotes 1y ago
    It would have been the normal thing to do. But the USSR went the other way because it was committed to the idea of being several separate soviet republics, so it pushed the idea of Ukrainian language and culture as something distinct from Russian in order to present the idea of a Soviet Ukrainian Republic as something distinct from the Soviet Russian Republic.
  - stackedinserter 1y ago
    It was "strongly encouraged" in the way that English is "strongly encouraged" in any US company. 3/4 of the company can speak Hindi but in all hands meeting everyone speaks English because it's the only language that everyone in the room understands and speaks (poorly, lol).
- cobbzilla 1y ago
  I know some Ukrainians who say the exact opposite— Russian was taught in schools, all the big important jobs went to Russians, at firms where Russian was spoken, government business was conducted in Russian, and so on. It’s curious how these accounts can be so different, so I’m going to choose to believe the folks I’ve met in person on many occasions.
  - deleted 1y ago
barry-cotter 1y ago
> A counter to this that I'm aware of is Ukrainian and Polish. The soviet union tried to exterminate both during its heyday yet they've mostly completely revived despite the effort. Ukrainian and Belarusian were both standardised and made official languages of education and administration under the early Soviet Union, with substantial state investment. Policies did later shift toward Russification, especially under Stalin, but even then Ukrainian continued to be used widely. There was no consistent Soviet attempt to “exterminate” Polish. Poland remained outside the USSR, and while the Soviets repressed Polish culture during occupations, they never pursued linguistic elimination in the way the Russian Empire once had. > Hindi is probably another example of a language that the british empire tried to exterminate yet it has seen a pretty decent resurgence. Hindi/Urdu/Hindustani was one of the main administrative and cultural languages under the Raj, particularly in the north. It coexisted with English and was used extensively by colonial authorities. Far from trying to wipe it out, the British helped entrench it across large parts of India. In Congress India, Hindi has been promoted heavily by the state, often to the frustration of non-Hindi speaking regions. > I don't think any of these languages really stayed around via force. They simply had a critical mass of speakers that never went away. Agreed. > For Irish and Welsh, the British empire arguably committed a genocide to eliminate them. “Arguably.” In Ireland, British policy during the famine amounted to criminal negligence or depraved indifference, but not genocide in the strict sense. In Wales, there was systematic suppression of the language, especially in education, but nothing close to genocide.
StefanBatory 1y ago
... No? I'm Polish, Soviet Union never tried to exterminate Polish language! Russian Empire, possibly, but not Soviets. Are you confusing those periods?

alephnerd 1y ago

> Ukrainian and Polish. The soviet union tried to exterminate both Poland was not in the USSR. Polish remained the working language in the Polish People's Republic > Hindi is probably another example of a language that the british empire tried to exterminate Hindi-Urdu was never exterminated by the British. In fact, it was the British that helped make it the de facto language in most of South Asia. Before the British, Dari was the working language of administration. When the British began co-opting local administrations in the 19th century, Hindi-Urdu was used as the primary register, and my family has ancestral documents showing this change (Dari/Farsi to Urdu/Hindi to English for land documents). --------- The only dead language that I can think of that was revived was Hebrew, but modern Hebrew is entirely different from that which was spoken millennia ago, and is a mixture of litigurical Hebrew, Arabic (plenty of Mizrahi influence along with the Sabra movement during the start of Israel), Russian (heavily used for mechanical terms), and German (heavily used to scientific terms).

asimpletune 1y ago
Parts of Poland were annexed by the soviets and became part of Ukraine and Belarus.
- barry-cotter 1y ago
  Completely irrelevant to whether the Polish language and cultural identity was suppressed. Most of historic Prussia is now part of Poland. No one claims that German was suppressed in East Germany.
- alephnerd 1y ago
  > Parts of Poland were annexed by the soviets and became part of Ukraine and Belarus I don't want to touch that hot potato, but that region was extremely diverse, with a large Belarusian, Lithuanian, Yiddish (before WW2 sadly), German, and Ukrainian speaking populations. I don't think any ethnic group had an actual definitive majority in that region until after WW2.
- pqtyw 1y ago
  Well yes but people who identified as Polish (e.g. upper/middle class and urban residents) were deported or a given a chance to leave west.
barry-cotter 1y ago
> The only dead language that I can think of that was revived was Hebrew, but modern Hebrew is entirely different from that which was spoken millennia ago, and is a mixture of litigurical Hebrew, Arabic (plenty of Mizrahi influence along with the Sabra movement during the start of Israel), Russian (heavily used for mechanical terms), and German (heavily used to scientific terms). Entirely different my ass. Modern Hebrew is closer to liturgical Hebrew than the language of Shakespeare is to that of Britney Spears. There are some areas with a great deal of borrowing of vocabulary but you could say the same thing of modern Russian or Japanese and no one would say they were “entirely different” from the language of 1800.
- alephnerd 1y ago
  > Entirely different my ass I do NOT appreciate that tone. .להזדיין > Modern Hebrew is closer to liturgical Hebrew than the language of Shakespeare is to that of Britney Spears. Modern English and Shakespearean or Medieval English are very different, and I feel the difference between modern colloquial Hebrew and liturgical Hebrew are similar.
  - barry-cotter 1y ago
    תודה על הדעה. אני מסיים כאן

stackedinserter 1y ago

USSR didn't try to "exterminate" Ukrainian, where did you get this? We spoke Ukrainian all my childhood, it was taught at school, there were TV shows, magazines and newspapers in Ukrainian. It was alive and very actively used, at least in 80's.

cogman10 1y ago
I had a Ukrainian friend and I thought he'd told me that Russian was strongly encouraged. I thought the state had a stronger policy towards making sure everyone spoke russian. I just looked it up and it appears that wasn't something the USSR ever really did.
- thaumasiotes 1y ago
  It would have been the normal thing to do. But the USSR went the other way because it was committed to the idea of being several separate soviet republics, so it pushed the idea of Ukrainian language and culture as something distinct from Russian in order to present the idea of a Soviet Ukrainian Republic as something distinct from the Soviet Russian Republic.
- stackedinserter 1y ago
  It was "strongly encouraged" in the way that English is "strongly encouraged" in any US company. 3/4 of the company can speak Hindi but in all hands meeting everyone speaks English because it's the only language that everyone in the room understands and speaks (poorly, lol).
cobbzilla 1y ago
I know some Ukrainians who say the exact opposite— Russian was taught in schools, all the big important jobs went to Russians, at firms where Russian was spoken, government business was conducted in Russian, and so on. It’s curious how these accounts can be so different, so I’m going to choose to believe the folks I’ve met in person on many occasions.
- deleted 1y ago

barry-cotter 1y ago

> A counter to this that I'm aware of is Ukrainian and Polish. The soviet union tried to exterminate both during its heyday yet they've mostly completely revived despite the effort. Ukrainian and Belarusian were both standardised and made official languages of education and administration under the early Soviet Union, with substantial state investment. Policies did later shift toward Russification, especially under Stalin, but even then Ukrainian continued to be used widely. There was no consistent Soviet attempt to “exterminate” Polish. Poland remained outside the USSR, and while the Soviets repressed Polish culture during occupations, they never pursued linguistic elimination in the way the Russian Empire once had. > Hindi is probably another example of a language that the british empire tried to exterminate yet it has seen a pretty decent resurgence. Hindi/Urdu/Hindustani was one of the main administrative and cultural languages under the Raj, particularly in the north. It coexisted with English and was used extensively by colonial authorities. Far from trying to wipe it out, the British helped entrench it across large parts of India. In Congress India, Hindi has been promoted heavily by the state, often to the frustration of non-Hindi speaking regions. > I don't think any of these languages really stayed around via force. They simply had a critical mass of speakers that never went away. Agreed. > For Irish and Welsh, the British empire arguably committed a genocide to eliminate them. “Arguably.” In Ireland, British policy during the famine amounted to criminal negligence or depraved indifference, but not genocide in the strict sense. In Wales, there was systematic suppression of the language, especially in education, but nothing close to genocide.

StefanBatory 1y ago

... No? I'm Polish, Soviet Union never tried to exterminate Polish language! Russian Empire, possibly, but not Soviets. Are you confusing those periods?