Are languages really worth preserving?

Berlusconi   Fri May 23, 2008 7:19 am GMT
Are endangered languages REALLY worth preserving? Throwing away all things PC, is there actually any reason to preserve a language which has been displaced by a more dominant language (eg, regional European languages)? I think it is just all sentimental and in the end is an economic, educational and cultural burden. It damages national cohesion and communication. Those languages with a few thousand speakers left and speakers over 50 especially. Why are they trying to get young people to learn them when they will NEVER need it.

But alas, people are too petty and close-minded to abandon their own particular vocal cord distortions in the name of societal progression.
Guest   Fri May 23, 2008 10:29 am GMT
If all languages other than Chinese (for example) were abolished, would the world be better off? Certainly, international communication would be easier, but would we lose something of our cultural heritage?
suomalainen   Fri May 23, 2008 11:07 am GMT
I quote David Crystal (freely from my memory): "If English or any other language managed to succumb all the other languages, it would be the worst intellectual catastrophe that could ever meet mankind".
William Wallace   Fri May 23, 2008 11:13 am GMT
>>But alas, people are too petty and close-minded to abandon their own particular vocal cord distortions in the name of societal progression.<<

I HATE LEFTISTS ! Beter live in Hitler's Germany than along/among people like you !
Berluscnoi   Fri May 23, 2008 12:03 pm GMT
<<I HATE LEFTISTS ! Beter live in Hitler's Germany than along/among people like you !>>

Better go join a Neo-nazi group because people like I are all around you! Everytime you walk down the street you're passing them by the hundreds. Now would you REALLY want to live in Nazi Germany? Surely it's not THAT bad when you walk down the street , is it?
Guest   Fri May 23, 2008 12:18 pm GMT
Guest   Fri May 23, 2008 3:02 pm GMT
All languages are worth preserving excluding French.
Guest   Fri May 23, 2008 3:09 pm GMT
I don't think so. There's a reason that no one wants to speak it anymore.
Antichrisis   Fri May 23, 2008 3:15 pm GMT
Is human life really worth preserving?
Hitler   Fri May 23, 2008 3:19 pm GMT
Considering the damage the human being is causing to Mother Nature, the answer is a big NO. We all should be exterminated. The Earth doesn't deserve such a nocive being.
Guest   Fri May 23, 2008 4:24 pm GMT
There should only be 5 languages, screw all the others.
Xie   Fri May 23, 2008 4:38 pm GMT
>>Are endangered languages REALLY worth preserving? Throwing away all things PC, is there actually any reason to preserve a language which has been displaced by a more dominant language (eg, regional European languages)? I think it is just all sentimental and in the end is an economic, educational and cultural burden.

If you would let me put it in a more chit-chat (less "academic") way... while I agree that the opinions of the minorities, as represented by their languages, are not to be underrepresented, just like some the linguists, I'd also say it's up to THEIR own decisions to preserve or give up all those tongues. If I were an American with ancestors from all over Europe....oh, no, or, in reality, that I HAVE ancestors who might speak some Altaic languages, or some middle Chinese languages, am I supposed to learn all of them, perhaps their modern counterparts? Language shift could be either catastrophe or, simply, changes in the eyes of the ones who experience.

On one hand, I regard languages as something transmitted from someone to some others; but on the other, if it should be transmitted indirectly, like reading books of dead white guys (or Chinese guys, in Chinese cases) or... if the language is simply something so much far removed from my daily and spiritual life, then I don't really see the point of doing so. Despite all the complicated human feelings and thoughts, I can't really tell, though not to pretend to be in any way neutral, that whether any given language you can find on earth (or Esperanto, almost exclusively on the internet, like some secret code...) is more worth learning than another. Even with government support, national languages don't really have much more support than others. As I see it, from my perspective, most of us would either end up remaining mono/bi/trilingual, but rarely in any way beyond it. And despite all sorts of western-style egalitarian and liberal slogans I often hear and even accept (while sometimes suspecting myself of being hypocritical), isn't it true for a great many individuals that, when you are already fluent in some of them, there's no point of acquiring more? Or simply for preserving some tongues of _others_ through encouraging them to talk?

For me, languages are like human beings as reproductive animals. If you happen not to have sons, or no children at all, your lineage will end; but unless for some "feudal" reasons or just that you want to maintain it, what's the point to do it stubbornly, without considering that it could be no good (to someone) at all? Languages don't get nasty like humans, but just like the hobby of learning languages, I can't always assume there must be someone I know (would-be children, would-be friends, etc) who can be asked to develop the same hobby or inherit all of my languages, probably without ANY changes at all.

Then, I'd say, just like how people fix their chaotic spellings with a long history, and how people try to other fellow native speakers their own "proper, native language", trying to fix a language like a commandment is domineering.
William Wallace   Fri May 23, 2008 4:49 pm GMT
"There should only be 5 languages, screw all the others."

Why 5 and not 1 ? Why 1 and not 3000 ? When a language disapperas a civilization, a part of the world culture is lost.
What Berlusconi advocates is destruction of civilization for what he names "societal progression" in other words for economic reasons. He thinks that no matter the language culture is the same, but is not.
Xie   Fri May 23, 2008 5:11 pm GMT
I don't think your so-called leftist view is apathetic. For all the commercial complications, I couldn't help saying that I myself have been a self-confessed language socialist - or better called a communist bandit, which I made up - for using the p2p. Sounds silly? Maybe, and everyone uses it just like doing some finger exercises with p2p programs. But I do see our OP's point, because in real terms languages are DARN difficult: you have to spend a lot of time, even if you want to learn, to master everything of it. For communication purposes, then one language only is the best.

But for me, there's more than that. In the idealist side of me, I think using the p2p helps me to struggle to communicate with a unknown people, or a unknown people who have access to the same subject (such as Latin, which no living people speak natively). While I acknowledge people's efforts, as a mere mortal, commercial interests have been largely too expensive to afford, exactly at least for communication alone.

So, to make life easier, I then see the point of p2p, for example, when it's impossible to (and to be so cultural-cidal) "get" rid of most languages. Socialists do learn languages to translate ideas to help with progression, even though some of their historical predecessors had destroyed much more than they could build (which is ironic).
Berlusconi   Fri May 23, 2008 11:00 pm GMT
I think Xie has some good points, although I don't know what p2p is.

But anyway, I think it should be up to the people what language they want to speak. Often you have a situation where all the old people are bemoaning the fact that young people don't care about their original language any more, that all they want to do is learn English/Spanish/Chinese/French/whatever, and go and make something out of themselves in the big city etc etc... And who's to say they can't? It's their life, the old people already lived their life and too bad for them if they don't like it, so why can't the younger generation?

I don't support destruction of culture just for the sake of it, but when nobody really gains anything what is the point? Even if they get some kind compulsory teaching into the schools , unless EVERYBODY uses the language for daily purposes not enough people will become fluent to conserve it. It's a battle which cannot be won, and especially when no one really cares whether it's won or not.

And by the way, languages have been dying since the dawn of humanity, so I don't buy this 'loss of civilisation' claim... Language death is natural. And it will continue into the future until the end of humanity, whenever that may be...