#dying languages

[sweaterstitches]

friendly linguistics reminder that learning a language and not then like. using it frequently and teaching your kids (if you have them) that language and the culture that comes along with it, you aren’t actually doing much of anything to ‘save’ a dying language or dialect. there’s a reason linguists seek out native speakers, especially monolingual ones, and not someone who learned it secondary to their primary language.

it’s the same principle as primary & secondary sources in historical research. a secondary source is never going to be a primary source. it’s useful, yes; but if, say, a colonial power went through and destroyed all of a culture’s artifacts, a sketch one of them made of an object is never going to be the same as the now destroyed original.

dying languages aren’t dying because people don’t care, they’re dying because current or historical forces have decided they needed to be destroyed.

languages aren’t just their words, they’re their speakers. they’re the culture it was born out of. they’re the physical places their words sought to describe.

[mental-mona]

From Judeo-Greek to Karaim, Oxford courses on 12 rare Jewish languages aim to keep heritages alive - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

A free online program from Oxford University goes way beyond Yiddish and Ladino.

[granolagaeilgeoir]

You know what? Let's stop teaching kids English. Let's stop teaching kids Spanish and French and Russian and German and Mandarin; All of these languages have been around for ages. They’re not going anywhere. They’ll be fine.

Teach kids Latin. Teach kids Irish. Teach kids Navajo, Ainu, Saami, Krymchack. Teach kids the dying or dead languages so that they’re kept alive because regardless of where any of us are from, our past is riddled with beautiful, ancient languages and cultures that should not be lost, that deserve to be brought into the light and embraced for the wonders that they are. Everything we are leads back to these roots, so let’s teach kids to explore them and start digging.

“Is fearr Gaeilge briste, ná Béarle cliste.”

[cinnabargirl]

"Well of course I'm not going to teach my children *small/dying minority language*. What is it useful for? I'm only going to teach them *widely spoken language that is most likely widely spoken due to unhinged imperialism and genocide* that way they will have more use in the world :)" If you say that shit I'm going to call social services on you and I hope you never see your kids again and that they grow up to hate you.

[qupritsuvwix]

7,000 known languages on this planet! And half are down to a very few speakers.

This is mind-boggling to me. I barely speak one language and understand a few words of three or four others.

7,000 languages! Some without alphabets, dictionaries or collected literature, so no online access or libraries. Some have never been “taught”. You live in that area, you talk like that.

Seven Thousand ways of saying, “Hello” and “why are you doing that?”

Thirty five hundred ways of saying, “Goodbye”.

[noelcollection]

Above is a 1778 textbook on the Scottish Gaelic language. Scottish Gaelic was widely spoken, but began declining in the 11th century. Today, about 60,000 people speak the language, mostly in Northern Scotland.

Images from: William Shaw's An analysis of the Galic language. Edinburgh : printed by W. and T. Ruddiman; for R. Jamieson ..., 1778. Call Number: PB1523 .S5 1778 Catalog record: https://bit.ly/2Og7W2H

[fluentforeverapp]

The Taushiro tribe vanished into the jungles of the Amazon basin in Peru generations ago. Amadeo García García is now the last native speaker of their language. When he goes, an entire culture will disappear. We went to find him. “For those languages that are in this critical situation, many times it seems their fate is already sealed — that’s to say, it’s hard to ever recover a language at this stage,” said Agustín Panizo, a government linguist trying to document Taushiro. “Amadeo García, he wants Taushiro to come back. He wants it, he dreams of it, he longs for it, and he suffers to know that he’s the last speaker.”

Excerpt: 

Human history can be traced through the spread of languages. The Phoenicians spanned the ancient Mediterranean trade routes, bringing the alphabet to the Greeks and literacy to Europeans. English, once a small language spoken in southern Britain, is now the mother tongue of hundreds of millions across the world. The Chinese dialects are more than a billion strong.

But the entire fate of the Taushiro people now lies with its last speaker, [Amadeo García García,] a person who never expected such a burden and has spent much of his life overwhelmed by it.

“That’s Amadeo there: Almost no one understands him when he’s speaking his language,” said William Manihuari, watching Amadeo fish alone from a canoe on a recent day.

“And when he dies, no one is left,” added José Sandi, a 12-year-old boy who watched as well.

The waters of the Peruvian Amazon were once a vast linguistic repository, a place where every turn of the river could yield another dialect, often completely unintelligible to people living just a few miles away. But in the last century, at least 37 languages have disappeared in Peru alone, lost in the steady clash and churn of national expansion, migration, urbanization and the pursuit of natural resources. Forty-seven languages remain here in Peru, scholars estimate, and nearly half are at risk of disappearing.

The Taushiro were among the world’s last hunter-gathers. To count in their language, they had words only for the numbers one, two, three and many. And by the time Amadeo was born, their population had shrunk so drastically that they had no names in a traditional sense: Amadeo’s father was simply iya, or father, his mother iño, or mother, his sister and brother ukuka and ukuñuka.

“For those languages that are in this critical situation, many times it seems their fate is already sealed — that’s to say, it’s hard to ever recover a language at this stage,” said Agustín Panizo, a government linguist trying to document Taushiro. “Amadeo García, he wants Taushiro to come back. He wants it, he dreams of it, he longs for it, and he suffers to know that he’s the last speaker.”

This is a short excerpt. Read the full article and watch the related video at nytimes.com >

Interested in learning a foreign language? The Fluent Forever app is coming in 2018.

[spork]

Hey guys, I think it’s REALLY important to save dying languages. Already at least 500 known languages have died off (can you imagine how many we don’t know about have gone extinct)!

In case you’re wondering why should I care about dying languages? I made a video detailing 6 reasons why!

If you could watch and subscribe I’d really appreciate it :)