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…

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?

  • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    22·
    3 days ago

    Differences in language never prevented an authoritarian power to exert their will over minorities or neighboring countries.

    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,

    • Buffalox@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      4 days ago

      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.

      • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        12·
        4 days ago

        I suppose that’s the point of the first picture, but I have no idea what the point of the second picture is.

        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).