There are around 7,000 languages spoken in the world, but that number is shrinking. Unesco estimates that half could disappear by the end of the century. So how are languages lost, and what does that mean for the people who speak them?
There are around 7,000 languages spoken in the world, but that number is shrinking. Unesco estimates that half could disappear by the end of the century. So how are languages lost, and what does that mean for the people who speak them?
This is the second most damning evidence for catastrophic collapse of humanity, the MOST damning evidence being a lot of people are aware human languages are going extinct at an alarming rate but they don’t care because their brains are so broken by tech hype fads they don’t see we are truly destroying the last bits left to our humanity and home.
How is it that I can more easily convince someone to care about the diversity of the natural environment than it is to get someone to care about the diversity of human languages that represent generations of human intelligence honing thinking, communication and categorization tools in an unimaginable number of different contexts and situations’?
This is dire.
The key here is that techbro brainworms make you think communication is ALWAYS a means to an end instead of the genesis point for intelligence itself, and so techbros are always tying to skip past the artistry because they can’t control that, they can’t scale it up, they can’t stuff it into neatly categorized boxes or structured approaches and they can’t automate it, they just want the magic without allowing the conditions for magic to happen in the first place which is meeting every moment carrying the knowledge that it will be different in some new way than the last moment but being cautious not to pretend to know how.
The incomprehensible inefficiency in energy use of AI is a forced admission by people that want to play a 4x space empire game or Factorio-like factory games and dominate everything except in real life that this kind of mindset never leads to creation, only destruction… exhausting destruction that never ends. There is never a single place that kind of mindset can actually create anything, it is kind of shocking and disorienting and is the reason so many people spiral around endless denial finding solace in the fact that while this mindset is tragically and dangerously incomplete it is still very good for creating normal computer programs.
Techbros can only dissect love and shove it into woodchippers and show us the result covered in human blood while saying “Look what I made!” while they literally burn the world down, they are not only incapable of making art they are actually ideologically opposed to it at a basic level and will resort to hurting themselves to avoid accidentally making art and letting it become it’s own creative idea that escapes them.
“Wait! That is mine!!!” they will say grabbing at the thing as it unfolds its wings and becomes a living work of art, and then they will go into their house and get a shotgun before it can fly up into the sky too far risen into the day to be snuffed out by a meager gunshot.
While I am not a linguist, I am a herstorian, I don’t get this line of logic fully. I understand wanting to keep languages around and wanting things to be as they were. But when it comes to languages they evolve, merge and die off.
We should do what we can now to persevere these languages for future generations to look back on. We also shouldn’t force communities to be stuck with a language that cannot change or adapt to the world that is changing around it.
Modern day English doesn’t just come out of thin air, it comes from other languages and from its own evolution. Modern day England experienced multiple invasions and those invaders brought their own languages with them. Words from those languages were then added to English and we still use those day! And yes obviously the English’s own conquests and empire helped propel the language outwards. It also allowed new dialects of the language to sprout up all overworld and it has mixed with local languages.
We should not try to imitate what the French do with sectioning off the evolution of language as much as possible. Instead we need to let it evolve as naturally as we can. There will always be varying languages, no two groups will always agree on what’s best afterall.
Right now we are experiencing how the modern world (which has its own problems) and languages clash and change each other. The languages that are dying off now are in the exact same place past languages were in.
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The only dead language of any use is latin, and who said anything about violence?
My point is there is no such thing as a preserved language only a living or dead one.
The thing I am screaming into the void is that we are letting nothing evolve, we are in a mass extinction.