4 ms·

Serious question: what are the arguments in favor of language preservation?

thejteam 13y ago
I am not a linguist, but if it is true that language influences how we think then I would guess that it would be advantageous to have a multitude of thought patterns available.
- alphadogg 13y ago
  The built-in romantic assumption is that 7,776 different language would result in things like 7,776 solutions to one problem, which is likely not the case.
pouetpouet 13y ago
Languages shape the mind. A language gives a special outlook on life and has its own reality. There are also specific linguistic features that are interesting to linguists and help to comprehend how languages work. One could also draw a parallel with genetic diversity.
- epaladin 13y ago
  This has been my experience with picking up a second language. There are concepts that are expressed in a single Japanese word that seem like they would need a small book to explain adequately in English. Maybe there are places where the language and culture aren't so intertwined, but Japan at least isn't one of them. So as much as I think the grand flattening of the world is great in some ways, I would be a little sad if we ended up with a global monoculture catalyzed by the coalescing of languages. Other cultures are just fascinating to explore.
  - infruset 13y ago
    As a native French speaker, I agree with you. For technical discussions such as programming or engineering it can be argued that using one language (nowadays, obviously English) encourages cooperation and progress. However, in other domains, languages carry much more than a practical means of transmitting information, they bear a whole culture with them. Two examples which I hear and read a lot in the English speaking world but which are either impossible to translate in French or at least to utter without ridicule: "successful" (as in a person), and "evil" (as in, a dictator).
- gliese1337 13y ago
  In my opinion (as someone who works in NLP & computational linguistics), preserving more data on how languages can work is the most important bit. Languages do influence cognition a little bit, but not as much as most people think. Nevertheless, most people think that they do, and if you only know a few languages, its easy to get stuck thinking that, oh, this is how all languages must work, and this is inherently how people think. This is a problem in contemporary linguistics- the "big" languages are really heavily studied and theories are developed to describe them accurately, nevermind that they may completely fail for, say, Xhosa or Straits Salish. The bias has been decreasing over the last few decades, but getting a really good idea of the real fundamental underpinnings of human language depends on all those minority languages not disappearing, undocumented, before we're done. Of course, there are other reasons which are important to people working on other fields- languages are strongly tied to culture, and when a language dies, so does a lot of other cultural knowledge and practice that may be useful to ethnologists, psychologists, philosophers, etc.
- normloman 13y ago
  It's my understanding that the language you speaks has only a small effect on your outlook. The gist behind the Sapir Whorf hypothesis was that the number of concepts you could grasp was limited by the language you spoke. But I don't think most linguists seriously believe this anymore. Research has shown language to influence our outlooks in limited ways, and even those findings are suspect, since some of the differences can be explained by cultural differences. A good overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
sputknick 13y ago
I came here to ask the same thing. As I see if fewer languages lead to greater ease of commerce, which leads to increased wealth. It also leads to easier communication, which should lead to greater understanding and few conflicts. More wealth, less conflict. Sounds like a win all around!
DanielStraight 13y ago
Wikipedia[1] references a source[2] with a pretty good explanation: "As each language dies, many sciences - linguistics, anthropology, prehistory and psychology - lose one more precious source of data, one more of the diverse and unique ways that the human mind can express itself through a language's structure, vocabulary and idiom." Linguistics is obviously most affected. The variety of sounds and grammar used in languages in huge, and we wouldn't know about it without being able to study a lot of languages. I don't know if that has any economic value[3], but then neither does paleontology, but we consider that pretty important, important enough to preserve the available data. Really, as nice as it would be to keep these languages spoken, preserving a complete grammar and audio recording of individual sounds as well as longer spoken passages would be enough for most purposes. But the problem is that this is a lot of work, and languages are going extinct faster than we can document them. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_preservation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_preservation [2] http://www.ogmios.org/manifesto/index.htm http://www.ogmios.org/manifesto/index.htm [3] Well OK, some people get paid to invent languages for sci-fi/fantasy and a lot of linguistic data helps with that, but... that's not much.
- salient 13y ago
  It's a good thing Google managed to scan all of the world's old books then, and also that they are working on perfecting translation between dozens of these languages. I doubt much will be lost. Plus, we can see it as a new beginning from now on, when everything will be in English, and all new science would be used by all.
  - DanielStraight 13y ago
    The kind of languages we are talking about aren't recorded in books, many don't even have a written form. People have to go into the field and listen and record and write up grammars and such from scratch.
  - sneak 13y ago
    Just because Google has the data doesn't mean all humans do.
Jun8 13y ago
It's a cultural artifact so your question, I think, is equivalent to asking the value of preserving any cultural artifact, e.g. a Greek kylix or an Inca quipu. In addition to the above pure artifact preservation aspect language (when paired with a lot of text, this is not always the case, e.g. Etruscan language) can make available vast data about a community. When Asyyrian was decoded and the great libraries of tablets were discovered (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Ashurbanipal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Ashurbanipal), our knowledge of the culture of the Ancient Middle East increased exponentially.
at-fates-hands 13y ago
That's easy - your culture. "As languages disappear, cultures die. The world becomes inherently a less interesting place, but we also sacrifice raw knowledge and the intellectual achievements of millennia." Ken Hale, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, quoted in Davis, W. 1999. Language and your cultural identity are very tightly coupled. Without language you essentially lose your identity, which is why its crucial to preserve your language. It's one of your primary identifiers of you and your culture. Wenying Jiang stated it quite well in her paper, "The Relationship Between Culture and Language" when she says your culture is like an iceberg. Your language is the tip which sits above the water. The rest which sits under the water is the rest of your culture. Your customs, your religions, your societal norms. Link to her paper which is worth a read: http://203.72.145.166/ELT/files/54-4-3.pdf http://203.72.145.166/ELT/files/54-4-3.pdf Also consider the following: "With the loss of the languages, all kinds of wonderful things that the speakers did with their languages have also vanished, for example, some of the greatest works of oral literature ever produced–the multilingual performances with different characters speaking different languages that was found in the Pacific Northwest. The highly elaborate dances that accompanied the oral tradition are frequently also gone. Large amounts of local knowledge about fauna and flora, ecosystem management, local place names, spiritual values, and so on are all submerged, altered or gone because the original languages that expressed these concepts are gone or no longer well understood." source: http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2009/11/15/0005_native_american_vanishing_languages/ http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2009/11/15/0005_nati...
normloman 13y ago
We don't need to preserve languages per se. We need to record them before they disappear so that linguists, historians, and archaeologists will be able to decipher the written records of disappearing cultures.

I am not a linguist, but if it is true that language influences how we think then I would guess that it would be advantageous to have a multitude of thought patterns available.

alphadogg 13y ago
The built-in romantic assumption is that 7,776 different language would result in things like 7,776 solutions to one problem, which is likely not the case.

pouetpouet 13y ago

Languages shape the mind. A language gives a special outlook on life and has its own reality. There are also specific linguistic features that are interesting to linguists and help to comprehend how languages work. One could also draw a parallel with genetic diversity.

epaladin 13y ago
This has been my experience with picking up a second language. There are concepts that are expressed in a single Japanese word that seem like they would need a small book to explain adequately in English. Maybe there are places where the language and culture aren't so intertwined, but Japan at least isn't one of them. So as much as I think the grand flattening of the world is great in some ways, I would be a little sad if we ended up with a global monoculture catalyzed by the coalescing of languages. Other cultures are just fascinating to explore.
- infruset 13y ago
  As a native French speaker, I agree with you. For technical discussions such as programming or engineering it can be argued that using one language (nowadays, obviously English) encourages cooperation and progress. However, in other domains, languages carry much more than a practical means of transmitting information, they bear a whole culture with them. Two examples which I hear and read a lot in the English speaking world but which are either impossible to translate in French or at least to utter without ridicule: "successful" (as in a person), and "evil" (as in, a dictator).
gliese1337 13y ago
In my opinion (as someone who works in NLP & computational linguistics), preserving more data on how languages can work is the most important bit. Languages do influence cognition a little bit, but not as much as most people think. Nevertheless, most people think that they do, and if you only know a few languages, its easy to get stuck thinking that, oh, this is how all languages must work, and this is inherently how people think. This is a problem in contemporary linguistics- the "big" languages are really heavily studied and theories are developed to describe them accurately, nevermind that they may completely fail for, say, Xhosa or Straits Salish. The bias has been decreasing over the last few decades, but getting a really good idea of the real fundamental underpinnings of human language depends on all those minority languages not disappearing, undocumented, before we're done. Of course, there are other reasons which are important to people working on other fields- languages are strongly tied to culture, and when a language dies, so does a lot of other cultural knowledge and practice that may be useful to ethnologists, psychologists, philosophers, etc.
normloman 13y ago
It's my understanding that the language you speaks has only a small effect on your outlook. The gist behind the Sapir Whorf hypothesis was that the number of concepts you could grasp was limited by the language you spoke. But I don't think most linguists seriously believe this anymore. Research has shown language to influence our outlooks in limited ways, and even those findings are suspect, since some of the differences can be explained by cultural differences. A good overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity

sputknick 13y ago

I came here to ask the same thing. As I see if fewer languages lead to greater ease of commerce, which leads to increased wealth. It also leads to easier communication, which should lead to greater understanding and few conflicts. More wealth, less conflict. Sounds like a win all around!

DanielStraight 13y ago

Wikipedia[1] references a source[2] with a pretty good explanation: "As each language dies, many sciences - linguistics, anthropology, prehistory and psychology - lose one more precious source of data, one more of the diverse and unique ways that the human mind can express itself through a language's structure, vocabulary and idiom." Linguistics is obviously most affected. The variety of sounds and grammar used in languages in huge, and we wouldn't know about it without being able to study a lot of languages. I don't know if that has any economic value[3], but then neither does paleontology, but we consider that pretty important, important enough to preserve the available data. Really, as nice as it would be to keep these languages spoken, preserving a complete grammar and audio recording of individual sounds as well as longer spoken passages would be enough for most purposes. But the problem is that this is a lot of work, and languages are going extinct faster than we can document them. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_preservation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_preservation [2] http://www.ogmios.org/manifesto/index.htm http://www.ogmios.org/manifesto/index.htm [3] Well OK, some people get paid to invent languages for sci-fi/fantasy and a lot of linguistic data helps with that, but... that's not much.

salient 13y ago
It's a good thing Google managed to scan all of the world's old books then, and also that they are working on perfecting translation between dozens of these languages. I doubt much will be lost. Plus, we can see it as a new beginning from now on, when everything will be in English, and all new science would be used by all.
- DanielStraight 13y ago
  The kind of languages we are talking about aren't recorded in books, many don't even have a written form. People have to go into the field and listen and record and write up grammars and such from scratch.
- sneak 13y ago
  Just because Google has the data doesn't mean all humans do.

Jun8 13y ago

It's a cultural artifact so your question, I think, is equivalent to asking the value of preserving any cultural artifact, e.g. a Greek kylix or an Inca quipu. In addition to the above pure artifact preservation aspect language (when paired with a lot of text, this is not always the case, e.g. Etruscan language) can make available vast data about a community. When Asyyrian was decoded and the great libraries of tablets were discovered (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Ashurbanipal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Ashurbanipal), our knowledge of the culture of the Ancient Middle East increased exponentially.

at-fates-hands 13y ago

That's easy - your culture. "As languages disappear, cultures die. The world becomes inherently a less interesting place, but we also sacrifice raw knowledge and the intellectual achievements of millennia." Ken Hale, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, quoted in Davis, W. 1999. Language and your cultural identity are very tightly coupled. Without language you essentially lose your identity, which is why its crucial to preserve your language. It's one of your primary identifiers of you and your culture. Wenying Jiang stated it quite well in her paper, "The Relationship Between Culture and Language" when she says your culture is like an iceberg. Your language is the tip which sits above the water. The rest which sits under the water is the rest of your culture. Your customs, your religions, your societal norms. Link to her paper which is worth a read: http://203.72.145.166/ELT/files/54-4-3.pdf http://203.72.145.166/ELT/files/54-4-3.pdf Also consider the following: "With the loss of the languages, all kinds of wonderful things that the speakers did with their languages have also vanished, for example, some of the greatest works of oral literature ever produced–the multilingual performances with different characters speaking different languages that was found in the Pacific Northwest. The highly elaborate dances that accompanied the oral tradition are frequently also gone. Large amounts of local knowledge about fauna and flora, ecosystem management, local place names, spiritual values, and so on are all submerged, altered or gone because the original languages that expressed these concepts are gone or no longer well understood." source: http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2009/11/15/0005_native_american_vanishing_languages/ http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2009/11/15/0005_nati...

normloman 13y ago

We don't need to preserve languages per se. We need to record them before they disappear so that linguists, historians, and archaeologists will be able to decipher the written records of disappearing cultures.