Like most Irish Americans, I have a sort of vague sentimental notion that the conversion of Ireland to an English-speaking nation is a linguistic and cultural tragedy. Like most Irish-Americans, I also would not want to actually live in a non-English-speaking nation. What I really want is to have learned Irish from my Grandmother, and be able to impress friends by ordering drinks in my ancestral tongue while on holiday. This is the sort of thing that makes my Irish friends complain--justly--that Irish-Americans would really like to see the whole country preserved as a sort of Colonial Williamsburg with shamrocks and twee wool caps.
This is not just a question for the Irish. Language Log is meditating on how we should feel more generally about linguistic loss:
Serious questions about the benefits (and perhaps the losses) of having an assortment of distinct native languages within one national society should be addressed through research that objectively determines and assesses the effects, not through emotional appeals to imagined cultural riches not vouched for by the language users themselves, or self-serving demands that aboriginal tongues be kept alive (by poor people) for (comparatively wealthy) linguists to study.
Something like half the world's languages are supposed to go extinct in the next century. I find it hard to believe that the bad outweighs the good here--it is a good thing that more of the world's people will be able to communicate with each other. Still, with each language that dies, something goes out of the world that can never be rekindled.
"Still, with each language that dies, something goes out of the world that can never be rekindled."
no doubt, like much of the native intelligence that is, by course, packed into the Languages themselves..
But the drink you ordered might well be what the Irish used to call Black Protestant Porter.
(I'm following the convention here of the Catholic Irish that no other sort of Irish are really Irish at all.)
And yet - how much of the most memorable and even characteristically Irish authors wrote in Gaelic? Beckett? No. Shaw? No. Swift? An Ascendency Protestant, to be sure, but still, no. Joyce? No in italics. Even Yeats, for all his involvement in the Celtic revival, wrote his best poetry in English.
It's too bad in a way that they are going, but on the other hand the idea of cutting people off from the rest of the world to use them as incubators for a dead language is mind bogglingly offensive. If they gotta go, they gotta go. There's a special place in heaven with Esperanto and QBasic for obsolete languages; they'll be happy there.
Failing languages are much like an outdated technology. Most everybody likes the novelty, cultural quirks, and sentiments they carry, and wants to see evidence of them preserved in museums; if you find an original piece lurking in your grandmother's attic, it's a neat experience. But very few people want the kind of work and inconvenience associated with doing real work by that means on a daily basis.
I can't find a good estimate now, but I remember seeing that vanishingly few of those soon to be extinct languages have a written or oral corpus of literature. Transition to another language would essentially effect conversation, not old cultural traditions. Not that this makes it okay, but it does tend to shift the balance away from "knowledge being extinguished" to "quaint tradition dying out."
I think it's kind of a shame that languages are dying, but I'm not sure it's my place to do anything. My grandfather spoke Sicilian, which is slowly whithering. And I like the idea of it still being spoken for generations to come. But I also kind of like the idea of Sicilian farmers hauling their produce to market in cheerily painted horse carts instead of Ford pick-ups. I would never try to keep them from adopting new transportation, and I don't think it's my place to convince them not to adopt a new language.
AM, that's a marvelous analogy. I'm very fond of outdated technology myself (the basement and back rooms of the Williams College physics building are a real treasure trove), but of course I never actually use it except to see if it still works.
When a language dies humanity loses some particular words and sound patterns, some poetry becomes inaccessible (or available only to scholars of the recondite), but the people of tomorrow won't have any trouble communicating. The main loss-- not of language so much as social interaction-- accrues to the aging speakers of a dying language. They cannot help but feel alienated.
Languages which serve a fair number of speakers don't die out readily-- look at, say, Navajo or Melpa. But languages with few speakers are liable to die out just because humans are social animals and now live in a world of wide communications and travel. People who want to live materially-better lives naturally wish to speak-- and contribute to-- popular languages.
I've been reading and hearing calls to maintain obscure languages since I was old enough pay attention. In every case, the methods proposed involve racism and raw force. The rare-language activists wish to force children of dying-language speakers to speak the obscure language, generally by preventing them from learning more popular languages. The rare-language activists cheerfully advocate the forced marginalization and impoverishment of young people based on their ancestors' languages!
I have no quarrel with linguists who want to record and preserve languages, in order that we might learn from them (in particular, learn more about the cognitive and structural underpinnings of human language).
But I regard plans to keep rare-language speakers and their offspring penned up on reservations, permanently poor and ignorant, in order to maintain those languages as astonishingly wicked. Particularly since the advocates for such oppression have no intention of preventing their own children from speaking popular languages, and for that matter, speaking the languages of their own eras.
Failing languages are much like an outdated technology
Languages do not die because there is something wrong with them. They are just the losers in a standards fight.
If English, Spanish, Chinese etc become common in their stead, it is not because those languages are inherently superior. It is just that those languages happened to be spoken by people who were militarily, politically or commercially successful at some point in the past.
It can be rekindled. If the peak oil and global warming people are right, the world will have to revert back (at least somewhat) to the much more isolated and insular world that produced 20-30 thousand languages. And lo, (eventually) there will be 20-30 thousand languages again.
It can be rekindled. If the peak oil and global warming people are right, the world will have to revert back (at least somewhat) to the much more isolated and insular world that produced 20-30 thousand languages. And lo, (eventually) there will be 20-30 thousand languages again.
Well, I don't think anyone was saying that the popular languages are somehow inherently superior.
However, the purpose of language is to communicate. If for demographic/political/whatever reason a particular language has lost so many speakers that you start losing the ability to interact easily with your neighbors and the ability to access foreign language works translated into your language and all that, it is the same effect as if you were running around in 2008 running DOS or something. So in that respect dying languages are similar to obsolete technology, but not because the language is inherently inferior; just practically inferior as a tool of communication.
See HD-DVD v. Blu-ray for an example of technology doomed not by inferiority so much as unpopularity.
Mark Seecof's comment brought to mind the Savage Resorts of Huxley's Brave New World. Penning people off for the amusement of the wealthy is evil. Languages have always died off, have always changed, and making language more important than the people who speak/could speak it is no different than forcing traditional (ie, inefficient) methods of farming on people.
Being partially of Irish descent I think it would be nice to be able to speak Irish Gaelic. But then using the same logic I would need to be able to speak Welsh, English, Cherokee, German, French, Norse, Algonquin, Scottish Gaelic, Scots, several other languages I don't know about.
I am American. Because we have a common language this country works. We need the common language. It just so happens that it is English.
Being partially of Irish descent I think it would be nice to be able to speak Irish Gaelic. But then using the same logic I would need to be able to speak Welsh, English, Cherokee, German, French, Norse, Algonquin, Scottish Gaelic, Scots, several other languages I don't know about.
I am American. Because we have a common language this country works. We need the common language. It just so happens that it is English.
Languages do not die because there is something wrong with them. They are just the losers in a standards fight.
Indeed, and the loser in a standards fight quickly becomes obsolete. Outdated doesn't mean broken, by the way.
Re: It's too bad in a way that they are going, but on the other hand the idea of cutting people off from the rest of the world to use them as incubators for a dead language is mind bogglingly offensive.
This ignores the possibility of bilingualism-- a very American outlook of course. However many people around the world (including many who are illiterate and destitute) can speak more than one language as a matter of course. It's not an either/or choice bewteen language A and language B. With the right policies it can be both. Of course for many languages it already is too late.
Re: If the peak oil and global warming people are right, the world will have to revert back (at least somewhat) to the much more isolated and insular world that produced 20-30 thousand languages.
Even if people travel less, our communications technology (which uses very little energy) is not going to go away. Also, the ancient world and probably even the prehistoric world saw many languages go the way of the dinosaur: what became of Cretan or Etruscan or Sumerian or the Keltic tongues of Gaul?
However many people around the world (including many who are illiterate and destitute) can speak more than one language as a matter of course. It's not an either/or choice bewteen language A and language B. With the right policies it can be both.
Unfortunately, we're back to the same old problem: the "right policies" would have to be isolationist as a matter of course. If a first party speaks language A fluently and has a modest understanding of B, and a second party speaks B fluently and has a modest understanding of C, and the two of them organize a system of international trade, C is a dead language in one generation and A disappears in two to three generations.
Re: If a first party speaks language A fluently and has a modest understanding of B, and a second party speaks B fluently and has a modest understanding of C, and the two of them organize a system of international trade, C is a dead language in one generation and A disappears in two to three generations.
Huh? That's not how things have worked historically. Why do you think East Africa or India have so many languages? Both regions were well integrated into both local and global trade networks for centuries, without becoming monoglot. The reason is that neither area was ever under a single political authority (or at least not long enough for it to matter) so that there existed no power that could impose a single language on people.
Or another example: Greek, Aramaic, Coptic and Armenian survived side by side in the Middle East for centuries. The Greeks and the Romans had no interest in forcing eveyone to use just one single language; Middle Easterners learned Greek to trade and deal with their rulers but kept their own tongues alive and well at home, until Islam eventually put a high premium on Arabic.
Learning a language is hard. Bilingualism can help to mitigate, at considerable expense, the problem of multiple languages, but it's better for all involved if it's not necessary at all.
IMO, all this hand-wringing over extinction of languages is mush-headed romanticism. If there are no important written works to preserve (and if there are, they can be translated) the extinction of a language is to all intents and purposes an unmitigated good.
"the idea of cutting people off from the rest of the world to use them as incubators for a dead language is mind bogglingly offensive"
As a linguist I can't think of a single program for maintenance of a minority language that encouraged monolingualism in the minority language. The almost universal goal is active bilingualism (so that children can comfortably speak both the minority and majority language).
"There's a special place in heaven with Esperanto."
What on earth gave you the idea that Esperanto is 'dead'? The esperanto wikpedia does have 90,000,000 articles.
"Bilingualism can help to mitigate, at considerable expense, the problem of multiple languages, but it's better for all involved if it's not necessary at all."
So what's Mexico to do? Stop English instruction in schools are begin English only schools?
Or am I misunderstanding you?
"the conversion of Ireland to an English-speaking nation is a linguistic and cultural tragedy"
So the ends do justify the means?
Yes, it most certainly would be a tragedy if Ireland was more like ... Finland.
Megan, you've summed up my feelings on Irish Gaelic precisely. Every year or so, I think about learning it. Then I remember that (1) it's really hard, and (2) the Irish all speak English, so there's no situation where I would need to speak it. It's just a romantic notion I'll never realize, like making all my own furniture. So Erin go Bragh and all that, but it's a lot easier for people of the world to get along when we speak the same language.
I lived in Hong Kong for several years, and when I first moved there, I began taking Cantonese lessons. To my surprise, almost every local that found out that I was trying to learn Cantonese was bewildered. They kept asking me "why would you want to learn another language when you already know English?"
From a practical aspect, they should all learn English. It's the language of business, of engineering, of airline pilots, it opens up wide areas of the internet, and of current research and reference materials (and let's not forget Hollywood movies and TV shows!).
So no, Mexico shouldn't stop English instruction, but it's not at all clear that US schools should sacrifice other material in order to teach foreign languages. For those that already speak English, the benefits of a second language don't necessarily outweigh the opportunity costs. [And I say that as a practical matter, even though I listen to 'learn French in your car' and am still plugging away at my Cantonese tapes now and then, long after having left Hong Kong. I'm choosing to try to learn other languages for personal reasons, in spite of the inefficiency.]
"From a practical aspect, they should all learn English."
define 'they'
"So no, Mexico shouldn't stop English instruction, but it's not at all clear that US schools should sacrifice other material in order to teach foreign languages."
So Mexico should sacrifice other material in order to teach a foreign language? Is that what you're saying? What material precisely?
Michael Farris,
Mexican children will have more wealth opportunities from learning English than anglo-American children will by learning Spanish. It's called an investment, and one pays off better than the other.
Re: Learning a language is hard.
No it's not. Every one of us has done exactly that, or we could not be posting here. Even mentally deficient people generally learn at least one language. The trick is to learn languages when one is a child and such learning comes naturally. Bilgualism and polylingualism occurs as naturally as single-language learning if a child grows up in an environment where more than one language is in regular use by people around him/her.
Half Canadian. Of course I think that it's worthwhile for Mexican children to learn English and for more reasons than 'wealth opportunities'.
Similarly, I think it's worthwhile for Angol-American children to learn Spanish or other foreign languages. Again, money ain't everything. Language learning gives you a lot more than just a language.
Michael Farris -
Of course money isn't everything and there are other advantages to learning a language. But what is the opportunity cost? University faculty discussions regarding which courses should be required always get bogged down with these issues. People go from "it's valuable to learn about music/art/accounting/economics/history/engineering/a foreign language" to "it should be a required course". The problem is that even though each course is valuable, that requirement crowds out another course that could have been taken instead that would also have been valuable.
On languages, there are benefits either way, but in addition to the other benefits, there is an added econonmic bonus for a Mexican child learning English that is unlikely to occur for a US child learning Spanish. Assuming that the cultural benefits are the same, the big difference in economic benefits can be pivotal.
"If there are no important written works to preserve (and if there are, they can be translated) the extinction of a language is to all intents and purposes an unmitigated good."
This is a rather snobby thing to say.
The variety of languages allows us to understand the different ways people can relate to culture and their environment. And there is no reason a language surviving dooms the person to be some kind of museum relic. The last woman to speak Eyak was active in Alaskan issues and politics. People are perfectly capable of speaking more than one language fluently.
Someone else brought up Esperanto, but that's kind of a silly example. That was a constructed language that's only a century old. It was never the language of any people and was never particularly common at any point. Numerically I'd guess it's not much smaller now than before. I believe it even has a thousand "native speakers" and I take it the Baha'i and the Japanese sect Oomoto encourage learning it. Its failure is mostly the failure to reach its grandiose dream of being a major world language.