Posted on 10/15/2011 10:32:36 PM PDT by Cronos
Why would it be a tragedy? Things change. The world is smaller.
The world will speak English in time.
Most likely an English-Mandarin-Spanish mix.
Hardly a tragedy. Not even an inconvenience. As matter of fact, it's the learning of yet another language that is an inconvenience. The world is getting smaller, ties between countries - stronger. It makes no sense to cling to old ways and cultivate a village-specific language that you have noone to talk to outside.
Some parts of culture are tied to the language. Reading translated books is not the same as reading them in the original language. But it's better than not reading them at all, or spending years on learning the language (poorly.)
I would understand if humans could learn languages easily and quickly by taking a pill or sleeping a few hours under a brain programming machine. But that isn't so. Human life is short, and learning of languages is hard for most people. I know a foreign language or two, but I woudn't want to study another one at this time.
The worst part is that all the languages on Earth are basically the same in terms of usefulness for exchange of ideas. Some are a bit more verbose (French) and some are a bit terser (English) but in essence they are all adequate; that's why we can translate books. There is no human language on Earth that would be significantly better than any other for any practical purpose. English frequently wins because of its simplicity, but that's minor. There is no language, for example, that would losslessly condense a chapter from Plato into one sentence. It means that learning more languages gives you only diminishing returns.
It should be retained by the people at the very least as a second-language if not on par with Han Chinese
To lose a language is to lose a sense of self -- as with the Scots.
Also, the world is learning English, but English is also devolving into various "dialects" -- rapidly.
Not really true. English due to its easy-going nature (or rather, how it is now, not Edwardian/Victorian English) tends to simplify much and lose much of the nuances that are there in other languages -- also, with the lose of grammar such as declinations etc. a lot of the shades of meaning are lost
similarly, in German it is easier to put literature, philosophy, but poetry works better in Romance or Celtic or Slavic languages.
To describe many subtle differences in philosophy, Latin or preferably Greek are far better tools. etc. etc.
The world will speak Arabic. With the brain damage that follows.
-- not necessarily. It also depends on the language family of the languages learned -- if they are all Germanic (English, German, Dutch, Swiss-German) or Scandanavian, there is not a difference. But if one learns a language from another branch of the Indo-European family tree or even better a non-Indo-European language, it does make you think in a different way -- frequently the way we think is also determined by the language we are communicating in and even the way we elaborate.
English is the language of the Internet, international commerce, and popular entertainment (films and music) and therefore no other language will replace its premier position any time soon. Even if our elites sell us out economically to China and India, those nations will need to communicate with us in English in order to sell to us.
Not the entire world. Not me in my lifetime. I will never speak an arab word.
“Meng Shujing with her grandson, Shi Junguang, and great-grandson, Shi Yaobin,.....”
Personally, I never, ever, read “news” that start with man-in-street names like this.
How in the world would anyone go around telling people that they should learn a language that they don't want to learn?
I fully agree that a certain lost tribe of Pigmy warriors might have had a language that could be interesting from certain philological aspects. But does a scientist have a power, legal or moral, to force some other people to retain a language just because he, the scientist, thinks it's a good idea, culturally? Knowledge of a language is not free; in this example the child could learn Manchu or he could learn Japanese or English or Russian. What choice would give him the most benefit in life? Very few people have a natural affinity for languages.
with it the culture and distinctiveness of the people disappear
It's the "if the tree falls in a forest but there is nobody to hear it" argument. Why would anyone in particular want to be so distinctive? I don't see too many Native Indians walking around in the city in feathers and moccasins. That is part of their culture, but for some reason they think they'd be better off joining the world, not setting ourselves apart from it. Again it seems like people are told to do something because someone else believes that it's in global interests of humanity. I can think of many things offhand that would certainly benefit the humanity as a whole, but unfortunately I don't know how to convince any given human to do them - especially when it requires sacrifices. AGW theory is one hot example here; a bunch of people tell us that we must mend our ways, or else the end is nigh. Why aren't we so happy with their orders?
To lose a language is to lose a sense of self -- as with the Scots.
"A witty saying proves nothing," as Voltaire said once. Nobody is forcing anyone to forget or stop using a language. It's happening because people want it to happen.
similarly, in German it is easier to put literature, philosophy, but poetry works better in Romance or Celtic or Slavic languages.
Some of the languages that are "better for poetry" gain that position due to their immense complexity. In Russian every noun has six cases, as I understand, and they are all written differently, except when they are not :-) With a language that malleable you certainly can write some poetry; but how many people would be willing to learn that language just to read your verses? You can't take a rush course of a language that is barely sufficient for a tourist and then go and dive into some serious literature. You'd get a cardboard cutout of the work, even if that much.
English due to its easy-going nature (or rather, how it is now, not Edwardian/Victorian English) tends to simplify much and lose much of the nuances that are there in other languages -- also, with the lose of grammar such as declinations etc. a lot of the shades of meaning are lost
There is a theorem in computer science that says: "For every sufficiently advanced computer language there is a program that prints its own source code." Applied to natural languages, the same reasoning tells us that any human language is sufficiently advanced to express any meaning. You may lose brevity, but all the bits of information will be there.
By the way, did you notice that a good half of "War and Peace" is written in French? Of course that is immediately translated into the primary language of the book, be it Russian or English. The author used French to create the proper atmosphere but that message was quickly lost along with the knowledge of French among the aristocracy. Did the use of a foreign language add much to the message? I doubt it; after all, I can't read French :-) Besides, the dialogs primarily deal with quite pedestrian matters; here is a quick example:
"Ah! ne me parlez pas de ce départ, ne m'en parlez pas. Je ne veux pas en entendre parler"
"Oh, don't speak of his going, don't! I won't hear it spoken of,"
What is here to be excited about? What did I lose by not reading it in French?
Also, the world is learning English, but English is also devolving into various "dialects" -- rapidly.
Languages always were a great tool to divide and conquer. If you want to create your own secret society there is nothing better than to start with your own secret language (Michael Moorcock wrote on that subject.) People who want to work with some other people learn their language. People who want to set themselves apart create their own language.
In this aspect you can reasonably complain that people are not only coming together but also separating. This is natural; it always happened and will probably be happening for a while. You may have reasons to be concerned that some people are setting themselves apart, but this has nothing to do with the language; the language is an effect of a 3rd order. The primary cause of separation lies elsewhere.
It’s the way of the world. They simply can’t all survive. At least we live in a time where things can be recorded and the language will not become truly “lost”.
Because of Indian languages, American has a huge amount of languages considered “critically endangered” with less than a hundred speakers. Some only have five or so speakers left. For instance, there are only about 10 speakers of Wichita left, all old folks.
Found this really interesting website. You can pop in parameters and find some interesting stuff out.
http://www.unesco.org/culture/languages-atlas/index.php
you're somewhat right about the language of the Internet, but not completely -- Chinese and even Russian are taking hold with newer releases that are unicode compatible. You are more or less correct about international commerce, though it is French in Francophone west Africa and Spanish in Latin America and Arabic in the Middle East when they trade among themselves
you are wrong about popular entertainment -- I was surprised when I moved to Poland last year that many Poles didn't know some common American movies, cartoons etc. that for us is common cultural knowledge -- they have their own films in their own languages
And friends in India point out that they make the most movies -- in fact they have several "hollywoods" in different langauges: hindi, tamil, oriya, marathi, konkani, telugu, malayalam etc. -- and these are surprisingly popular in Russia and the Middle East and South-East Asia.
BTW, the phrase you quoted is not mine.
I’m sure we’ve already lost thousands of languages. It’s call evolution. I don’t care.
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| GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach | |
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Thanks Cronos....the dominant Han, who today account for 93 percent of the country's 1.3 billion people, according to official statistics.Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. |
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As a second language English speaker I can tell you there is a difference between speaking English and thinking in English. We might speak excellent English, but we don't think in English, some of us think in Swahili, Hausa, Hindi etc.
That is why it is extremely foolhardy to suggest, for example, that the Americans and Indians share the same values simply because many Indians speak English.
It's also true that Americans vastly overestimate the reach of Hollywood. In Africa for example, Nigerian movies rule. Most Africans don't know who Brad Pitt is but are emotionally connected to Nigerian actors. In the Gulf states and South Asia, Bollywood rules. Latin American telenovelas have a cult following in places as diverse as Russia, Mexico and much of Africa (I grew up watching "The Rich also Cry").
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