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I think that it's some kind of natural selection among languages/cultures. Languages are just tools. If this tool is effective - people use it. Otherwise it "d

• caio1982 12y ago
  It's not just a tool, it's a mechanism to express thought. Different cultures, different people, different ways to put in other people's mind what's inside yours. Also, remember Chomsky, languages usually have an army and navy, so it's not as simple as "natural selection".
  • unhammer 12y ago
    Actually, the quote is from "an audience member at one of Max Weinreich's lectures" (well, logically that could be Chomsky, but most likely not ;)) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_an_army_and_navy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_a...
    • caio1982 12y ago
      Indeed, thanks!
  • pandaman 12y ago
    It's exactly as simple as natural selection. Because a language is not just expressing thought - it's driving it as well. Actually, it's exactly as the whole evolution in the animal world: languages are inheritable (parents teach their language to the children at the very least), mutable and there is a selection process among them, involving armies and navies among many other things.
• atlantic 12y ago
  Tools - effectiveness. It sounds obvious - when you're speaking English, where "think" and "thing" are related, and language has a pragmatic orientation. You're coming from an Anglo-Saxon paradigm, and you're not even aware of it. Your response exemplifies just why it's so valuable to preserve a diversity of languages.
  • jayvanguard 12y ago
    It demonstrates the value in academically preserving languages, but not in culturally "saving" them from extinction.
    • atlantic 12y ago
      An language is intertwined with a particular culture and geography to such an extent that, once the last native speakers die, it's gone for good, whatever happens academically. I don't think the aim here should be to culturally save just languages but the entire culture and lifestyle that spawns and nourishes them. At the very least, you'd have to put the brakes on the globalization movement, so as to preserve local cultural differentiation. It's very unlikely to happen.
      • LunaSea 12y ago
        Like the author, you still don't explain why culture should be saved though.
        • jayvanguard 12y ago
          I think you can just accept that as a tautology. If a bunch of humans want to save their culture then by definition it has some human value in saving it. A separate question is whether we have a duty to help _other_ cultures in their quest for self-preservation. I think there are altruistic reasons for doing so stemming from the fact that most people value their own culture so we can empathetically understand why others would want to preserve theirs. There are also interesting biological and sociological arguments around diversity and resilience of the species that don't rely on altruism. The question specifically about language is asking something different though. So this conversation should just be about languages where the group that spoke it no longer has enough interest to continue that tradition. So the question becomes should we save the language of other cultures for them? I don't think there is a strong case (other than academic preservation). Arguments about the intrinsic relationship of language to culture are valid but fall apart when the members of the culture itself don't care enough to preserve the language.