Thread: Languages dying

First of all, it's really amazing how English became the most common language in the world... And it's all because English people wanted it to be the first language in the world, and they realized at an early stage the importance of having their language as the main language in the world.

But as I said in my previous post, it's very important to learn your own native language, because it carries your culture and your history... Because people in different areas in the world must be different, because of their history that made their costums, herritage, and also language and others... So you can not expect that someone in Asia should live like someone in North America. And as I also said in my previous post, people should also learn a commong language like English.

In many coutries ordinary people do not have to learn a more common language, because their native language is more than enough for their normal life, unless they are in a field where English is the main language like IT...

And there are many countries that provide translations for almost everything that people would learn English to understand, because they feel that they are preserving their own culture by preserving their language.

But what if English was not the first language in the world? Maybe some people will be tryig to make their own language more and more common, because if a country's language is common, then it's culture will be common too.

Finaly, I don't want to see a world speaking only one language no matter what this language is, I would like to see everybody speak their own language, but at the same time know another common language in order to communicate better with the outside world( especially the western world ).

Note:
I'm sorry for my English, I know it's not good enough!

First of all, it's really amazing how English became the most common language in the world...

Its not. Chinese is.

But as I said in my previous post, it's very important to learn your own native language, because it carries your culture and your history

I really don't buy this argument, history, is factual, it can be written down in any language. The history of a people is unlikely to disappear merely because people stop speaking the language, know many people who speak Latin?

As for cultural identity, why is that a good thing? We just take it as given that maintaining our respective cultures is inherently good, well i don't buy it. What’s so good about splitting people into artificial groups? Left alone cultures merge. Why not let them?

Because people in different areas in the world must be different, because of their history that made their costums, herritage, and also language and others...

None of those things have to cause lasting differences, the only reason history has an impact is because it is the basis for cultural and economic differences, and both those can and do change with time.

Individuals will always be different, and its seems inevitable that there will always be certain levels of grouping, but that doesn't mean we should fight to preserve differences for the sake of preserving differences when we could just allow them to fade away.

So you can not expect that someone in Asia should live like someone in North America.

Today maybe not, but there is no reason why that should always be the case. Cultural differences merge, historical differences of themselves dont matter, economic issues are really the only differences that have the capacity to stick around, and even then there is room for change.

Finaly, I don't want to see a world speaking only one language no matter what this language is

Ok, what about a REAL master language, consider for a moment what would happen if people took a language's grammatical structure, and took the core mainstay words, then added to them. If the Inuit had to convert to English they would no doubt invent or merely port across new words for snow. What if every language did that?

Then you wouldn't lose any meaning at all. You would effectively have a language with a max vocabulary that was truly gargantuan, large numbers of people around the world would no doubt favour different words, but they would still share the same core, and hence all be able to communicate with each other.

Interestingly you can already see languages picking up words here and there, "le sandwich bar" "the buffet" come to mind.

Not that i think my scenario is particularly likely, it was merely food for thought.

Veritas vos Liberabit, Clyde.

Hi. This was an offtopic flamebait post. Now it's not.

I expect a PM complaining about this by the time I'm back from lunch. Let's see what happens.

-Govtcheez

edit: no PM

Of course I know that Chinese is the most common language in terms of native speakers, but I think that you know I didn’t mean that!

Although history is factual, it’s still best expressed with its native language, for example you cannot study Japanese literature in English, so your relation to your past will be weakened if not died.

And why is the relation with the past important? Because it’s simple why you became as you are now… Even if you want to change some cultural values, you have to study how they came out in the first place, and you cannot fully understand that in a language other than your native language, so any change in the current time, should be based on the study of history.

I’m not saying that people should be isolated, cultures are influenced by other cultures and that’s good, but each community should maintain its differences, because it makes its identity… For example, if you went to live in China, don’t you want to have your own identity, language, and customs! Would you like to speak Chinese and forget English, live the Chinese way of life, and not your own, of course I don’t mean that you should be isolated from the community, maybe Chinese people living with you will be influenced by your culture, and maybe you will be influenced by theirs as well.

I myself prefer the western lifestyle, because it’s the one that I live now, and it’s the one that I think is right, but others don’t think the same, they might prefer other lifestyles, so there should be some place were you can live the lifestyle you want.

Finally having one common language will make communication with the outside world much easier, but even without that one language, things are not that bad!

I’m sorry again for my Enlish!

Originally posted by Clyde
Group identity sucks ass, its an evolutionary throw-back, and instead of protecting it we should speed its demise.

I totally disagree here. Group identity is an evolutionary push-forward. What if a group of monkies never would have started to walk on two legs?

What if a group of people facing a new area never would have wanted to name the new things they found there. Like the Inuits who faced their sixty different kinds of snow, it was necessary for them to name them. The Beduins, on the other hand, might instead have faced sixty different kinds of sand. If these two groups would have been stuck to the language of their forefathers, they would have been having a harder to survive in their respective environments.

Language is an adaption to the surrounding environment, to the way you live, and is thus necessary to be different with different ways of life. However, I can agree to that grammar and syntax might possibly have been better, if it would have been the same all over the world.

What if a group of people facing a new area never would have wanted to name the new things they found there. Like the Inuits who faced their sixty different kinds of snow, it was necessary for them to name them. The Beduins, on the other hand, might instead have faced sixty different kinds of sand. If these two groups would have been stuck to the language of their forefathers, they would have been having a harder to survive in their respective environments.

Language is an adaption to the surrounding environment, to the way you live, and is thus necessary to be different with different ways of life. However, I can agree to that grammar and syntax might possibly have been better, if it would have been the same all over the world.

I think you're misunderstanding what i'm saying, what i meant by an evolutionary throw back, was merely a characteristic that no longer benefits modern man. (like uhh chest hair).

Besides, i don't see the correlation between developing new words and group mentality. I am not saying that based on different environments people shouldn't behave in slightly different ways (that happens all the time independent of national culture - people who live by the sea probably go to the beach more often than those who don't), it is the artificial catagorisation that i think is harmfull: The view that "I am with this group, and you are with that group" is detrimental. It seems an inherent part of human nature, and is to a certain extent inevitable BUT there are many instances where its effects could lessen, and i think in most of those instances we should let it, rather than fighting to protect it.

This argument is becoming more and more interesting…

This argument doesn't work, just because people stop speaking a language doesn't mean academics have stop learning it for historical reasons.

Here you are limiting the access of history to academic people only, why don’t ordinary people have access to it too, without having to learn a language that’s already dead…
If you have a language that’s developed enough like any other modern language, and it’s been there for a long time, why let it die?! And again I say, it’s still important to speak another common language, because if you can not make your language common, you have to speak a common one.

Just look at Latin, ancient Greek, they are no longer spoken but people still learn them for academic purposes and as such no history is lost.

I think that it’s different in the case of Latin, because languages like English developed from Latin( if I’m right ), so it’s evolution here, not change, and the same applies to ancient Greek, which means that people developed the language and they are using that new language, and it’s different from the case where you have to adopt a new language.

why should the history of England be more important to me than the history of say South America? It shouldn't.

I think it should be, because you are from England and not fron South America… What you are now, is the results of what happened in the past.

it is possible to understand cultural values without learning the language

It will not be a perfect understanding… We all know that translation cannot “translate” everything form a language to another, many things are going to be altered, for example if you are reading an English translation of a novel, no matter how good the translation is, it’s not as if you were reading the original French novel, and that’s just a novel not a whole nation’s history.

The British managed to change cultural values all over the world without having a freaking clue about the cultures they were stomping on.

You know they forced them to do that, although they did not succeed in most of the cases, people did not express those values in the public, but they were still believing in them, maybe they became more attached to them, because they were forced to abandon them.

I am not advocating forcing cultures to adopt specific values or characteristics, but i do think there is something to be said for allowing cultures to merge.

I don’t want culture to “merge”, and I want them to “communicate”, and if two cultures were to “merge” that should take a VERY long time, and this usually happens to minorities living in certain communities, so the minorities’ cultures merges into the majorities’.

I'm not superhuman, I’m a product of our time, you're right in that I wouldn't really like to instantly lose my "identity". BUT that doesn't mean i should fight to save it. You go back a few hundred years, when the concept of organ transplants came up, and people thought it was horrible, it felt inherently wrong to chop up humans, just because something feels wrong doesn't mean it is.

You shouldn’t “fight” to save it if you don’t like it.
But if you do, you should, because you have the right to live as you wish without “fighting”, of course as long as you are not interfering with other people life, but if you don’t like at the first place, just leave it, and adapt another one.

I'm from England and i do x,y and z, and think a, b, and c,. And your from South Africa and you do 1, 2, and 3, and thing 5, 6, and 7. Bollocks to that.

Do you think it’s right for me to make you do 1, 2, 3 and think 5, 6, and 7, do you think I have the right to do it!? Even if you did 1, 2, and 3 and thought 5, 6, 7, but you don’t believe in them, how is that any good?!

Group identity sucks ass, its an evolutionary throw-back, and instead of protecting it we should speed its demise.

Now that is nonsense… Group identity is an evolutionary push-forward, because a community with many group identities will have each identity influencing other identities, and after all have a better understanding of each other.


I’m saying that if you and I have different identities, or different values, we can still live in peace, you don’t have to believe as I do, and neither do I have to believe as you do. We can learn from each other, which is good for both of us, and maybe we will eventually change some of our own values, based a new and more developed understanding of things.

To summarise i don't think arguments for keeping languages "alive" on historical of "identity" grounds are valid because "dead" languages can be used for historical purposes and I don't think a strong sense of "identity" that separates groups of humans is a good thing.

I think that languages are better when they are not died, and there is no reason to let them die, while we can at the same time communicate with other people and learn from them.

Here you are limiting the access of history to academic people only, why don’t ordinary people have access to it too, without having to learn a language that’s already dead…

Detailed history is an academic subject. Ordinary people do have access to it in a general sense though; anyone can learn about Roman history and culture, Latin is not a precursor.

The only people who really want to submerse themselves totally in a given culture for historical reasons, are academics, and they have no problem learning languages.

Your historical argument really doesn't work.

I think that it’s different in the case of Latin, because languages like English developed from Latin( if I’m right ), so it’s evolution here, not change, and the same applies to ancient Greek, which means that people developed the language and they are using that new language, and it’s different from the case where you have to adopt a new language.

..... not following you.

My point was merely that Latin and ancient Greek are dead languages yet that is not a barrier to our grasp of their respective histories. No i am not have a a perfect grasp of exactly what the Illiad said but i have a pretty good idea, the only people who want a perfect grasp of the Illiad are academics.

I think it should be, because you are from England and not fron South America… What you are now, is the results of what happened in the past.

So? Why does my geographical location on the Earth matter? Why does how i got here matter?

I should value ALL histories equally. Or atleast I think a world where people valued ALL histories equally, a world where people weren't divided up into their little meaingless groupings would be a better world.

It will not be a perfect understanding… We all know that translation cannot “translate” everything form a language to another, many things are going to be altered, for example if you are reading an English translation of a novel, no matter how good the translation is, it’s not as if you were reading the original French novel, and that’s just a novel not a whole nation’s history

See my point about the Illiad.

You know they forced them to do that, although they did not succeed in most of the cases, people did not express those values in the public, but they were still believing in them, maybe they became more attached to them, because they were forced to abandon them.

I know, you seemed to be saying that inorder to change cultural values you needed to understand them, evidently not.

I don’t want culture to “merge”, and I want them to “communicate".

IMO one inevitably leads to the other.

and if two cultures were to “merge” that should take a VERY long time, and this usually happens to minorities living in certain communities, so the minorities’ cultures merges into the majorities’.

It will no doubt take a long time, my point is merely that it is a good thing so we shouldn't fight it.

Minority populations in other countries gradually shed their own culture in favour of the culture they are in, but thats not exactly what i mean (though the process is similar). What I mean by cultural blending is two separate cultures becoming more and more similar presumeably eventually reaching a point where they are no longer distinct (this is what people are so terrified of happening in Europe).

You shouldn’t “fight” to save it if you don’t like it.
But if you do, you should, because you have the right to live as you wish without “fighting”, of course as long as you are not interfering with other people life, but if you don’t like at the first place, just leave it, and adapt another one.

But i do like it, or atleast it feels nice, but what feels nice, is not neccessarily the best thing for humanity, since i think humanity would be better off without artificial groupings i therefore support cultural merging despite the fact that i do like being English and would feel a certain sense of loss in the demise of that "identity".

Ok your argument here seems to be:

People have the right to live the way they want, with multiple cultures they can sample them all and pick the best one, whereas if there is only one uber culture they wouldn't have the choice, right?

Doesn't work like that, if that were true how do you explain the fact that almost everyone in the west chooses to stay in the West?

They choose to stay within the confines of Western culture because they prefer Western culture, and why do they prefer Western culture? Because the criteria they judge cultures on (food, language, customs/religions, laws, etc.) are formed due to the cultural enviornment they grew up in!