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The authors of the Old Testament for some reason failed to appreciate the cognitive benefits to multilingualism. They also didn't realise (as I believe Douglas
by unhammer 12y ago
The authors of the Old Testament for some reason failed to appreciate the cognitive benefits to multilingualism. They also didn't realise (as I believe Douglas Adams pointed out) the peace-preserving benefit of not being able to understand what your neighbour is saying about you. Or the possibility of machine translation which some day will remove that benefit again :)
Well, in all seriousness, "saving a language" can mean many things, beyond "using humans as storage devices". On the one end of the scale, it can simply mean "not trying to eradicate a language". There are countless cases throughout history where speakers of central/majority languages have tried eradicating other cultures or languages, see e.g. "The termination phase" in http://galdu.org/govat/doc/mindeengelsk.pdf#19 http://galdu.org/govat/doc/mindeengelsk.pdf#19 about Saami.
Or, getting slightly more actively involved, it could mean trying to be supportive of the people who actually want to use their language – like creating software/web site localisations, book translations, spell checkers / other language tech. It doesn't have to mean forcing people to learn a language they don't want to learn, just so they can be studied by linguists :-)
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I was a bit disappointed by the "need to save cultures" paragraph as well; tighter-knit isn't necessarily better, especially not if it means active antagonism against other groups. But you'd think there would be less antagonism between groups if speakers of a non-central language have the feeling that the language they grew up learning, the language their parents spoke to them, the language that's nearest to their self-identity, is considered by the majority/central group to be somehow "worthy" (and not just something that should go away because it's an annoyance).
- austerity 12y agoYeah, maybe I assigned some of my own meanings to what he said. It just so happened that I only hear about "saving a language" in the context of shoving it down the kids' throats in schools and giving official status to dead or near-dead languages for the purpose of creating "strong national identity".
- droithomme 12y ago"The authors of the Old Testament for some reason failed to appreciate the cognitive benefits to multilingualism." That is clearly not only not correct but is the opposite of the presentation in Genesis 11:4–9. This will be very clear if you could take just a few moments to go and read the story of Babel, which is a mythological account of the origin and benefits of language diversification. It is a very short story, only six verses long, that will take at most one minute to read. The Babel story is getting misrepresented here from its clear Biblical representation. Some here are spinning as a triumph of progress and advancement through efficient communication. In Genesis, it is given as a situation where common language allows people to display hubris while wasting effort on a completely useless project of attempting to build a tower to reach the sky. This project and its attitude is presented as clearly evil, and diversification of language, babelification, is given as a divine solution to the problem, which is presented as originating from cultural unity, common language, and concentration in a single area.