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?
Only if your understanding of human language is that it is simply a tool for life, not an expression of life or intelligence itself.
No you are catastrophically wrong, but most people agree with you all the same and damn us all for that.
When we all speak exactly the same language, that will be by definition the moment we have reached a point of no return in the destruction of our own species.
I disagree, if we use English as an example, there are clear differences between the English spoken in NY and Texas even though both are within USA, and there are differences between England and Scotland, these differences are even within the same country. The advantage is that the understanding of a concept framed in one of these regions, can spread more easily across all English language regions.
Which is probably a major reason English is one of the richest languages we have. On the downside it’s also a mess, but it enables you and I to communicate, while a 100 years ago there would be near zero chance I would understand any English at all!
So you can’t deny the very clear advantage of being able to communicate and share ideas.
Of course any language is an expression of life intelligence and defining abstract ideas. It’s not just an expression of it, but also how we think. Language is a tool to both form and express our thoughts.
So what exactly is your point? Because I don’t get it from your other post either.
It’s not the richest language (en), but it likely the most flexible.
I know this is how you think, this is the rigid terms in which computer programmers, engineers and people bound up in totalitarian thinking in some form or another ALWAYS frame things and honestly I understand, it is very similar to how to very effectively tackle a technical problem… but this is not a technical problem this is a question of life.
You will never come up with the concept or learn how to explain it to people without the diversity, intelligence, creativity and new ideas that a diversity of languages and really everything brings to the table in the first place and the person you are speaking to won’t be intelligent enough to understand in a meaningful way either. You are looking at the inefficiencies of diversity and dismissing the stability, growth and innovation it brings in a way that worries me because I see the ideology everywhere.
How is you argument fundamentally different than just rephrasing a totalitarian argument in terms of language, “It would be better and more efficient if we only had ONE LANGUAGE, ONE GOVERNMENT, ONE WAY”. No it wouldn’t, it would be efficient at conveying simplistic, empty instructions across an utterly broken populace unable to think for themselves in any meaningful way which is in my opinion quite a distasteful form of efficiency.
You have just reframed the concept, role and artistry of language in a way where you have disguised how threatening a loss of diversity in it will be towards pushing things toward collapse, degradation and violence of some kind.
You do not demonstrate or indicate any mechanism whatsoever that would support this claim. Also it’s VERY unclear what you mean by “everything” in this context?
You also haven’t shown how being able to communicate is a disadvantage, or how NOT being able to communicate helps learn new concepts?
Is there a single philosophical idea or abstract concept you can point to that originated only because the philosopher spoke a specific language?
Or do you have anything to demonstrate how “life” is better in one language as opposed to another.
Or even just how it makes us culturally “richer” that there are hundreds of languages we don’t understand?
Well, after wasting my time reading their verbal diarrhea, I think they may have a point.
On a more serious note, while communication efficiency increases productivity, it also alters the balance of power. In our case, it allows larger structures (i.e. the UN, US, international businesses) to more effectively exert their will over local structures. If you are for instance, a Chilean anarchist, a Russian businessman, or a Papuan village elder, it’s not in your interest at all.
Further, if you are afraid of the misinformation potential of AI to manipulate people recognize that a person can easily learn two languages and learn to understand how to leap in ways between them that a LLM could never do.
If you want an LLM to learn how to speak fluently in two languages you have to create two ecological catastrophies in order to make it happen, I just have to read a book.
Just by virtue of conversing in different languages and more importantly finding a joy in their confounding diversity and endless lessons they subvert our worldviews with, we make it harder and harder for LLMs to be used by authoritarian entities to steer the conversation in ways that are evil, disrespect the opinions of others or degrade the nuance of conversations that are too important for them to let us have.
People mistake AI being shown to be able to copy human language in a given context so well that humans can’t distinguish between robots and humans anymore in that context as proof that AI is more intelligent than us and we are hopeless against it, but in reality it is simply an exhaustive proof the vital diversity (in that particular context) necessary to create new ideas died long ago.
Ima be real I’m not 100% sure what you’re on about. I’d agree that LLMs can’t really function to dissolve identitarian barriers, though they are clearly much more effective than prior methods. Things change and they rarely roll back, unfortunately.
Those interests are not defined by language, what you are implying did not help the British against the Americans, or anywhere else for that matter.
Having your own thoughts and culture as an anarchist or businessman or as a village elder does not depend on language. And being isolated from other cultures tend to result in less developed cultures that have lower quality of life.
So why would you want to keep lesser developed cultures less developed?
Differences in language never prevented an authoritarian power to exert their will over minorities or neighboring countries. I have not seen any example of this advantage shown anywhere ever, and I’ve been hearing about “the problem” of lost languages for 50 years now.
First, want to note that I’m not arguing for anything like the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, I don’t think that language can really change your cognition, though it clearly has some affect on social organisation.
While this may seem true in a sort of logical, definitional sense (one cannot construct a symbolic method for determining a person’s interests, given their language, or vice versa). It’s not true in a connectionist sense. The human brain picks up on associations between everything, and one of those associations is language-&-behaviour. In my experience people will often prefer people with similar socio-linguistic signifiers. One might call it irrational, but I’m not sure I would label it that, when there really is a probabilistic link between language and political alignment. Though, If you speak a prestige dialect you may not have experienced this, I would encourage you to keep your eyes open for it.
I’m not 100% sure what you mean by developed, as this is a notoriously difficult to define word. However if you’re talking about technological development, as in, the ability of the culture to impose its will over reality, then yes I would agree. I didn’t intend to make any moral statements in my original post. Note however, that if the goal of the people of the culture is (axiomatically), to retain their culture & language, then assimilating is not an effective way to achieve that goal, even if it grants them access to more effective tools.
I would really encourage you to do some reading, if you look at the historical record, this is something that happens frequently, though it comes and goes throughout different periods. A few examples.
But again, it’s not binary. Language differences are not sufficient to prevent imperial influence, but decrease the probability of effective power projection. They also interlink with other factors i.e. cultural & religious differences often cause communities to resist external rule, and language mediates the spread of those ideas.
I’ve heard this so often from anthropologists, and it annoys the hell out of me. One obvious measure would be literacy, another would be life expectancy. These are generally improved through science, if a culture fails to leverage science and wealth to improve such measures, the science is void, and the culture remains less developed compared to a competing society that does. It’s one of the things that really annoy me about anthropologists, that they haven’t made clear guidelines to measure quality and level of a culture. It’s like it’s considered racism to argue that one society can be less developed, when it’s a fact that there are differences in development today and historically.
For instance if a tribe in the rain forest is 100% illiterate and only has 30 year life expectancy, then by all sensible definitions that’s a poorly developed culture. That does not mean they don’t have other forms of culture, because they are born with the same potentials we are. But they haven’t evolved their culture or society to improve life conditions like we have done over hundreds of years of building on prior knowledge.
That’s the kind of examples I meant, but if they cooperated, they weren’t conquered, they joined together as the Roman Empire. Back then ordinary citizens had no influence on such matters. It was decided by the ruling class which was very separate even from rich people like merchants or bankers.
Yes I’ve also heard for my own country (Denmark) that in medieval times royalty and nobility barely spoke Danish, they spoke German or French. They still went to war against each other, and I don’t really see how it supports your point?
That was late 19th century, and they tried to make Bosnians practically change nationality, that’s a near impossible thing to do, especially over a short time-span. As a counter to that, I could mention countries that united despite different languages like Canada with English and French, and Switzerland that has no less than 3 languages, and of course China that has many languages, 7 main language groups and hundreds spoken by small minorities. This has not prevented China from becoming the worlds most populous country, and remaining pretty stable as a country through centuries.
Decolonization had nothing to do with language, it happened mostly because of WW2 that weakened the colonial powers. Also it was of course the right thing to do, although I’m very uncertain that was much of a factor. But today colonization is absolutely seen as immoral if it’s against the will of the local population.
Not really IMO, it’s more if it’s a common language, it is more seen as a family country, and the occupied country is treated better and possibly integrated. While with different languages, the occupied territory will generally be seen as 2nd rate and be discriminated against.
Just as many other countries we (Denmark) have a German speaking minority, and in Germany there’s a Danish speaking minority. Historically the border has moved both ways to get these minorities home on both sides. But after WW2 a border was finally mutually agreed upon, and today those minorities are protected on both sides.
So having different languages is as much the cause for war, as it prevents that and oppression as you claim. Are the Danes near the border oppressed by Denmark because we got some territory back after WW2? Of course they aren’t that claim is ridiculous! But that’s an easy interpretation of your claim.
But thanks for explaining your view, and although I don’t agree I understand your point better.
The idea that literacy and life-expectancy are signs of a more “developed” country is essentially just racist colonialist propaganda.
Many cultures worldwide have traditionally transmitted knowledge orally, and their societies were built around this, with lots of in-person meetings to disseminate information. If a person speaks their traditional language and is well-versed in their traditional culture, but does not read or write (because they don’t need to), then by the standard of literacy they will be deemed as less “developed” than some 4-chan troglodyte.
Likewise, life expectancy past a certain age is kind of a ridiculous metric. People seriously believe that the longer you can stay geriatric, the more “developed” your country is.
Meanwhile, metrics like knowledge of botanical medicine or percentage of communal land ownership are often left out of these scoreboards of “development”. Things that can materially improve people’s lives are only seen as having value when non-Indigenous people do them. It is racism through and through.
Forget the wisdom of the Navajo at your peril because not everyone else will.
We named it after an indigenous people from our home, a home some of us invaded into while some of us were brought against their will precisely for the trauma it bore (and yet the rainbow of rhythms they brought to share despite!), the some of us that were already here are from a family that experienced this gift first and yet it took war in response to genocide for those in power to see their wisdom and yet even as we paid dearly for that lesson we still struggle to admit we are actively trying to erase our teachers.
Before you dismiss the responsibility of entering into a foreign conversation and honoring our grief, our love and our sorrow by living together with us, consider the kind of animal that may rise from the hills that have witnessed it all and yet persisted, if you do not listen.
Even when they chain this animal to genocide, we know the truth of what it was intended to remember and never to forget, just ask Chelsea Manning,
My wife just explained to me that Navaho Indians were used for communications by the Americans, because the Germans didn’t understand it. That’s quite clever of course.
I suppose that’s the point of the first picture, but I have no idea what the point of the second picture is.
Pretty sure that’s the radome on an Apache.
Normally I am ideologically opposed to not explaining things if other friendly people ask, but in this case the lack of explanation is the point.
I know what meaning that “symbol” has and so do many people, but you do not, and that gives us power to have a conversation outside your grasp in plain sight.
You are perfectly capable of figuring out what the second picture is, but it would already be too late in this metaphor for you to learn if we weren’t having a conversation and instead fighting (which I do not desire).
There are no philosophers if there is only one mind and one language because ideas are constructed of intersections (or is it puns? I have confused myself), and the ports of the world have and always will speak pidgin even if we pretend it is Official English or whatever the language of the next empire is.
I don’t need to, try actually talking to an indigenous person, evolutionary biologist or an environmental scientist and if they can stand talking to you for more than 5 minutes they may explain it to you.
I don’t need to, that isn’t my point, my point is you are trying to take a shortcut to intelligence and communication that involves hurling empty symbols back and forth at strangers, that will never lead anywhere unless you and that stranger start to develop a unique language specific to that context that honors and remembers that context… and yes we can do that right now but guess what makes human language such a gift to us that it was passed down to us and entrusted in our stewardship? Do you not see how you are spitting on that gift with your words?
Yes, you can always plant a new 200 year old tree if you cut the 200 year old tree down… but you will have to wait 200 years to experience the true complexity and power that is latent in the seed again.
If you think I am arguing for NOT understanding each other you aren’t actually listening to what I am saying, what I am saying is you are lying to yourself about being able to convey anything once you reach the point you desire and admire and seem to think would be a highwater mark for communication and intelligence.
edit another thought on why I used everything here, you are right I was vague and gesturing at like… everything but that really is the point, there is no intelligence without a fecund context in which to weave it together and that requires diversity in as many different axis as possible to increase the likelihood of it being possible in a given context.