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The State of the 7,168 Living Languages: 14% are dying

jerryjerryjerry 3y ago
[flagged]
- jjdeveloper 3y ago
  There’s only one real language … JavaScript.
abdullahkhalids 3y ago
Small languages are dying because it's not economically viable for their communities to keep speaking them. But many large languages are also degrading, because of similar reasons. Computing technology has a big part to play in this. It's still a huge pain to use RTL languages in many places. Bidi text is even worse. Keyboards, character sets and what not are still not standardized.
- kanbara 3y ago
  small languages have also died out because of colonialism, national identity laws, and a host of other factors. i agree, though, that computing could be sooo great for these languages if we moved past weatern paradigms
interbased 3y ago
What is the benefit of keeping a language alive, other than to not lose the knowledge/creativity from books written in the language? If those books are translated into a more widely-used language that isn't dying, would that make it okay for the language to die? Is it purely out of respect for the culture of the language? The only other thing I can think of is that the folks that use the dying language don't know any other languages - which I can understand (no pun intended).
- serf 3y ago
  languages facilitate different modes of thinking, I suppose one of the dangers in letting less commonly used languages die off is that it would seemingly promote more homogeneity in human thought.
  - zilti 3y ago
    The influence of language on thought is marginal; theories like sapphir-whorf have been falsified many times.
- kanbara 3y ago
  translation doesn’t always carry the same weight. look at the bible— entire sentences that have different meanings or subtext. in one language, a verb may mean “to do something as your responsibility” and in a translation it may simply be “to undertake a task” — this sort of nuance is lost really easily. additionally, books and written word doesn’t always equate to having saved knowledge. think about the tribe and kin concepts in many indigenous languages. entire ways of life can be lost. we know a lot from our europe’s ancestral indo-europeans lived from the reconstructions of proto-indo-european by way of the modern languages and written history but there is so much we do not know that is just lost.
  - lelanthran 3y ago
    > additionally, books and written word doesn’t always equate to having saved knowledge. think about the tribe and kin concepts in many indigenous languages. entire ways of life can be lost. we know a lot from our europe’s ancestral indo-europeans lived from the reconstructions of proto-indo-european by way of the modern languages and written history but there is so much we do not know that is just lost. Sure, things are lost, but were they valuable other than to students of history?
    - tetris11 3y ago
      > Sure, things are lost, but were they valuable other than to students of history? I detest this line of thinking because it assigns more worth to things that yield immediate results, or places a low importance on the impact of history. Were Fermat's theorems valuable only to students of Mathematics, or did they inspire some of the greatest minds to later push the envelope in many unrelated fields?
apantel 3y ago
Things die, new things are born, things die, new things are born. It’s the circle of life. It’s natural and ok for things to die.
lelanthran 3y ago
That's just a side-effect less isolated communities. As more and more people from within different communities interact, the value of a common language increases and the value of the isolated language decreases. The eventual equilibrium is going to be maybe 3 languages left, with each individual in the world able to speak at least 2 of them. Any effort expended on keeping languages alive is pointless.
- kaashif 3y ago
  > Any effort expended on keeping languages alive is pointless. Pointless ultimately, maybe. But languages can even be revived from nothing to have millions of native speakers, see Hebrew.
  - lelanthran 3y ago
    > Pointless ultimately, maybe. But languages can even be revived from nothing to have millions of native speakers, see Hebrew. But, it's a lot of effort and energy expended: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_language#Current_status https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_language#Current_status > The Haifa municipality has banned officials from using English words in official documents, and is fighting to stop businesses from using only English signs to market their services.[85] In 2012, a Knesset bill for the preservation of the Hebrew language was proposed, which includes the stipulation that all signage in Israel must first and foremost be in Hebrew, as with all speeches by Israeli officials abroad. The bill's author, MK Akram Hasson, stated that the bill was proposed as a response to Hebrew "losing its prestige" and children incorporating more English words into their vocabulary.[86] With enough energy (time, money and influence), you can revive any language, even dead ones. You can do that, and you can continue expending more effort into making sure it doesn't decline again, but eventually whatever is popular globally is going to dominate, even in the face of legislative actions that force the use of the language. Each generation will have less and less use (outside of forced use) for the non-popular language. Even though Latin is extensively legislated for use in Law, and used popularly in the Sciences, it still died.
Proven 3y ago
[dead]
RecycledEle 3y ago
Over 90% of the "7,168" languages they mention are slightly different dialects of common languages. Arabic probably makes up 1/3 of those "7,168" languages. I think the claim that there are "7,168" languages is a result of publish-or-perish.

[flagged]

jjdeveloper 3y ago
There’s only one real language … JavaScript.

Small languages are dying because it's not economically viable for their communities to keep speaking them. But many large languages are also degrading, because of similar reasons. Computing technology has a big part to play in this. It's still a huge pain to use RTL languages in many places. Bidi text is even worse. Keyboards, character sets and what not are still not standardized.

kanbara 3y ago
small languages have also died out because of colonialism, national identity laws, and a host of other factors. i agree, though, that computing could be sooo great for these languages if we moved past weatern paradigms

interbased 3y ago

What is the benefit of keeping a language alive, other than to not lose the knowledge/creativity from books written in the language? If those books are translated into a more widely-used language that isn't dying, would that make it okay for the language to die? Is it purely out of respect for the culture of the language? The only other thing I can think of is that the folks that use the dying language don't know any other languages - which I can understand (no pun intended).

serf 3y ago
languages facilitate different modes of thinking, I suppose one of the dangers in letting less commonly used languages die off is that it would seemingly promote more homogeneity in human thought.
- zilti 3y ago
  The influence of language on thought is marginal; theories like sapphir-whorf have been falsified many times.
kanbara 3y ago
translation doesn’t always carry the same weight. look at the bible— entire sentences that have different meanings or subtext. in one language, a verb may mean “to do something as your responsibility” and in a translation it may simply be “to undertake a task” — this sort of nuance is lost really easily. additionally, books and written word doesn’t always equate to having saved knowledge. think about the tribe and kin concepts in many indigenous languages. entire ways of life can be lost. we know a lot from our europe’s ancestral indo-europeans lived from the reconstructions of proto-indo-european by way of the modern languages and written history but there is so much we do not know that is just lost.
- lelanthran 3y ago
  > additionally, books and written word doesn’t always equate to having saved knowledge. think about the tribe and kin concepts in many indigenous languages. entire ways of life can be lost. we know a lot from our europe’s ancestral indo-europeans lived from the reconstructions of proto-indo-european by way of the modern languages and written history but there is so much we do not know that is just lost. Sure, things are lost, but were they valuable other than to students of history?
  - tetris11 3y ago
    > Sure, things are lost, but were they valuable other than to students of history? I detest this line of thinking because it assigns more worth to things that yield immediate results, or places a low importance on the impact of history. Were Fermat's theorems valuable only to students of Mathematics, or did they inspire some of the greatest minds to later push the envelope in many unrelated fields?

apantel 3y ago

Things die, new things are born, things die, new things are born. It’s the circle of life. It’s natural and ok for things to die.

lelanthran 3y ago

That's just a side-effect less isolated communities. As more and more people from within different communities interact, the value of a common language increases and the value of the isolated language decreases. The eventual equilibrium is going to be maybe 3 languages left, with each individual in the world able to speak at least 2 of them. Any effort expended on keeping languages alive is pointless.

kaashif 3y ago
> Any effort expended on keeping languages alive is pointless. Pointless ultimately, maybe. But languages can even be revived from nothing to have millions of native speakers, see Hebrew.
- lelanthran 3y ago
  > Pointless ultimately, maybe. But languages can even be revived from nothing to have millions of native speakers, see Hebrew. But, it's a lot of effort and energy expended: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_language#Current_status https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_language#Current_status > The Haifa municipality has banned officials from using English words in official documents, and is fighting to stop businesses from using only English signs to market their services.[85] In 2012, a Knesset bill for the preservation of the Hebrew language was proposed, which includes the stipulation that all signage in Israel must first and foremost be in Hebrew, as with all speeches by Israeli officials abroad. The bill's author, MK Akram Hasson, stated that the bill was proposed as a response to Hebrew "losing its prestige" and children incorporating more English words into their vocabulary.[86] With enough energy (time, money and influence), you can revive any language, even dead ones. You can do that, and you can continue expending more effort into making sure it doesn't decline again, but eventually whatever is popular globally is going to dominate, even in the face of legislative actions that force the use of the language. Each generation will have less and less use (outside of forced use) for the non-popular language. Even though Latin is extensively legislated for use in Law, and used popularly in the Sciences, it still died.

Proven 3y ago

[dead]

RecycledEle 3y ago

Over 90% of the "7,168" languages they mention are slightly different dialects of common languages. Arabic probably makes up 1/3 of those "7,168" languages. I think the claim that there are "7,168" languages is a result of publish-or-perish.