khiranoの日記： Language Death 3

Jonathon Blake Tue, Dec 14, 2004 at 6:57AM To: [e-mail] Kazunari Hirano wrote: >I have read a book, (Japanese translated) "Language Death" by David Crystal. >The rate of death computes at one language dying roughly every two weeks!! The situation is not helped by linguistic departments that don't see the value in studying threatened languages. On the flip side, a new conlang appears about one a fortnight. Most of them formulated out of attempts to understand the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. >When I was a university student, I learnt that about 6000 languages were spoken across the globe. That is probably a low balled figure. [The Phillipinces, for example, recognizes 600 different langauges. Several Asian countries have 500 + different languages. The US has over 500 different native languages. ] >What do you think can OpenOffice.org help them survive? OOo by itself won't suffice. OOo + Firefox, Thunderbird, Sunbird, etc + Linux + other FLOSS software can put a dent into "language death". One of the strengths of FLOSS is that localization is trivial. [All it takes is one person who has the desire, and time to localize one project.] >http://www.openoffice.org/editorial/aynu_team.html How many objections to Aynu localization does the Japanese government have? [Or has their 2 000+ year old policy of getting rid of Anyu, and other indigenous Japanese people been changed?] Christian wrote: >One of those languages has only two speakers left, both in their 70s, and because those two are male and female, Ethnologue.com lists the number of native speakers [and where they live] for most of the languages that are on the "critically endangered" list. [There are roughly 450 languages on that list.] The interesting thing is that once a language is extinct, it can be revived, if there is enough information about it. Hebrew is probably the best known language that has been revived from the Dead. Manx and Cornish are both in the process of being revived. Languages like Alabama, Ontario, and Miami, OTOH, probably won't be revivable, simply because there is an amazing lack of information about them. >makes the point that a language is a living thing, and must be used to be preserved. Languages need a community to live in. Most language death comes as a result of government action prohibiting a community to adhere to its cultural norms. > But there must be a sufficiently large population to use computers, I think that the more critical issue is number of native speakers. Less than fifty speakers, and the language is "critically endangered". Regardless of the number of _current_ speakers, I think that L10N can help preserve at least the written language. As computers drop in price, they will spread out into the "great wild yonder", and revive threatened languages. >The English language changes and grows rapidly, as do all languages. Strange as it might sound, in some areas, English is on the "threatened language" list. >> 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. >more people will be able to speak a bit of several languages Do you really want to see more people speak like they do in South Africa? Start a sentence in one language, finishing it in a second language, and including anywhere between one and five other languages in that same sentence? [That is in additional to creole's like TostiTaal, which is a hybrid of English, Zulu, and Afrikaans. and Fanegalo, which is simplification of umpteen nguni languages, with a smattering of English, and Afrikaans.] >They said that it was "Chinese school". They said that their parents make them go there to learn to read and write Chinese. Some research indicates that learning to read and write Chinese, or Japanese, increases the intellectual quotient of an individual, _if_ they start learning it before age six. [Reading those languages "light" up both sides of the brain.] >But I do think that the Internet will help save some languages, at the same time that it destroys others, unfortunately. Kevin has an interesting set of word lists for various languages that was created merely by scraping websites in those languages. It seems that if somebody can write in a language, there is a website in that language. [Don't know about Vai, since it doesn't have a Unicode assignment yet, and AFAIK, nobody has created a complete font for it. If you can point me to a complete font of Vai, please do so.] > But the Internet will also introduce children to children from other parts of the world. If the kids are in countries other than the US, that will happen. If they are in the US, they'll be doing well to figure out that Washington DC in not in one of the states of the United States. >naturally speaking each others' languages, and creating new "pidgin" languages, and that will kill some smaller languages. :-( Creole's and pidgin languages have along and colorful history. More than one state of the us has had a Governor who could only speak the local pidgin, or creole. Sander wrote: >Lithuanian has "only" over 3 million or so native speakers ... I don't think its precisely in need of being saved Those numbers put it on the "threatened" list. You do know that English is a threatened language in the US, don't you. [With practical demonstrations of that coming from ex-vp's and ex-president's.] xan jonathon