khiranoの日記： Language Death 2

Christian Einfeldt Mon, Dec 13, 2004 at 10:30AM To: [e-mail] Cc: Kazunari Hirano On Sunday 12 December 2004 05:13, Kazunari Hirano wrote: > Hi, > > http://www.caslt.org/research/languagedeath.htm > I have read a book, (Japanese translated) "Language Death" by > David Crystal. He has spent a lot of time of his life on > preservation of Welsh. I have thought about this, too. There is a book out in English called, Spoken Here, by Mark Abley. That book talks about the death of languages, and after interviewing folks from Ajerbijian and Lithuania at OOoCon2004 in Berlin, I thought that OOo might be able to help save those languages. This is a very profound problem, though, Hirano. Based on what I read in Spoken Here, language is very much tied to place. For example, Mark Abley examines the dying languages of Aborigines in Australia. One of those languages has only two speakers left, both in their 70s, and because those two are male and female, and adult male and females in that culture can't talk to one another unless they are married or in a formal setting, the language will die with them. :-( But the author talks about anthropologists who merely record the language and the experiences of the people who speak dying languages, and the author makes the point that a language is a living thing, and must be used to be preserved. Ultimately, I do think that OOo and FLOSS are going to help save some dying languages. But there must be a sufficiently large population to use computers, and they must have a society which advanced to the point of meaningful computer use. The forces of death of languages is also cultural. For example, these Aboriginal languages are dying in part because children are being exposed to English, and children are creators of new languages! Unlike adults, children have a much easier time learning new language. So much so, in fact, that when children are exposed to new languages, those children start blending languages! Slowly but surely, the old language fades, and new languages are created. The English language changes and grows rapidly, as do all languages. But the English language is one of those big languages that, like Mandarin or French or Spanish, tends to swallow the smaller languages it touches, according to Mark Abley > What can we do? What should we do? We, OOo, can help provide cultures with one tool to help preserve their culture. But ultimately, it comes down to societies keeping themselves together. Those societies that are able to maintain meaningful, consistent contact among their members will survive. Those cultures which are not able to maintain such meaningful, consistent contacts, unfortunately will probably slowly fade, as children pick up new languages, and create a third language from the blend of languages they here. I guess that the good news about this is that as the human family goes on line and children get exposed to one another, more and more people will be able to speak a bit of several languages, as children form friendships in distant countries when young, and preserve those friendships over the course of their lives. Here in San Francisco, just 2 blocks from my office, is a Chinese school, where children go on Saturday to learn to read and write and speak Chinese (don't know which dialect, sorry). I just happened to be going past that school as the kids were coming out, and I asked the kids why then had school on Saturday. They said that it was "Chinese school". They said that their parents make them go there to learn to read and write Chinese. The kids then hurried off, and I didn't have the opportunity to learn more, such as what dialect, etc. But the point is, that Chinese school is a way that the Chinese in San Francisco are preserving their culture. First of all, San Francisco has lots of distinct neighborhoods. SF is a small city, but people tend to live in areas where their language is spoken. For example, near City Hall is a part of town called "little Saigon." Of course, there is Chinatown; and the Mission, where Spanish is predominant; and North Beach, where Italian is spoken; and the Richmond, where Russian is spoken. San Francisco is not blakanized, meaning that people don't just huddle in their own communities, but instead travel around the city. So you can usually hear Russian and Vietnamese and Mandarin and Cantonese, etc all over the city. But those languages are surviving because they have large populations in their home countries. Smaller languages which occupy smaller territories have painful and unique challenges. But I do think that the Internet will help save some languages, at the same time that it destroys others, unfortunately. The Internet will help people of a distinct culture find each other. But the Internet will also introduce children to children from other parts of the world. IMHO, it is a good thing for children to meet and understand other children; but one inevitable by-product of introducing children to each other is that they will start naturally speaking each others' languages, and creating new "pidgin" languages, and that will kill some smaller languages. :-( Christian Einfeldt 415-351-1300