Comments about ‘Vanishing languages a 'tragedy'’

What's the big deal? With all the bad things going on in the world today how can the extinction of an obsolete language be termed a tragedy? It only a tragedy to handful of pHDs who have nothing else to worry about.

They teach some of these dead languages to kids in school -- what a waste of time. They should be studying English and working hard on their math skills. It's a complete waste of time to teach them Goshute or any other dead language. It doesn't help them to get jobs in the future and it doesn't help them retain their culture. These kids are Americans and it's a waste of precious school time to teach them this useless junk.

Take one linguistics class and you will understand this tragedy. Language circumscribes how we think. The loss of a language is the loss of ideas, of human capacity.

Are you serious? Get out of your bubble; come out from under your rock. Language IS culture, and preserving diversity in language and culture is just as important to humanity as preserving various "obsolete" species is to the environment. You have no idea how much history as you know it has been pieced together with mainly linguistic evidence. This has nothing to do with your fear that somehow America is going to stop using English.

Geez, let's be stupid and celebrate it. I love Utah sometimes..

Perhaps part of the reason for the two negative comments is this article itself. I don't know whether the problem was caused by the reporter or by the interviewee (in which case, the reporter should have picked up on the problem).

The article states: "'Another example of the importance of languages around the world . . . [identifies grain] . . .'Without it, our chances of survival could be less,' he said. 'It could be important to humanity.'"

Unfortunately, there is a glaring lack of transitions. There is no explanation as to WHY loss of language means that society would lose the knowledge of this important grain. After all, if one language is lost, the people using that grain will obviouslyu be using another language.

I always tell my freshman compoposition students that it is up to the author to draw the connections. They should never assume that the reader know what they are thinking or mean.

Prediction: The only loanguages that MOST of the World will speak in the next 500 years:

1) Chinese
2) Spanish
3) English
4) French
5) Russian/Slavic

The natural phenomenon, "survival of the fittest" found another casualty. Languages become extinct because of the constant changing world we live in, people want technology over preserving language. How is that a tragedy?

The fewer languages, the better, so we can all communicate with each other.

While I agree that teaching and learning the core subjects needs to be focused on in school, I also agree that losing these languages is also a bad thing. The knee jerk reaction to this story might be to say, "Who cares." But if we stop and think about it, these PhD's might have a point. With that said, I don't plan on handing over any of my time or money to support the PhD'd cause either.

utwingnut

I am a retired Ph.D. professor of linguistics. Yes, to academics it is a tragedy. But I neither celebrate or lament the loss. There are far greater concerns for me and for this world.

We don't need no dang old langudges. We got english and thas good enuf.

Global warming, beaches disappearing, and now the loss of language? The real question is where will we put our tax dollars. Perhaps we could create a whole new "language preservation culture" with thousands of jobs. People could learn from the one Australian aborigone who speaks it and start a community of PHDs speaking a dead language. The tragedy is it may take some funds from our fight against global warming. How can anyone even think about other problems in the world when global warming will annihilate the entire human population in the next 100 years - then ALL languages will be extinct because no one will be left.

Language is important and anyone who speaks more than one language knows how learning the second language teaches you to think differently about verbal communication. However, to say that loosing obscure languages of the indigenous people of various continents is some how tragic is a bit of a stretch. The article offered no reason why this is a bad thing.

Hallo:

Ciamar a tha sibh?

Several years ago, while serving my Church mission guarding a ranch in Utah, I learned that biologically (I was adopted), I had Scottish ancestry.

Having recently seen the movie, "BRAVEHEART", the knowledge that I belonged to an ancient Highland clan thrilled me beyond words.

In my attempts to learn a few words and phrases of the disappearing Gaidhlig tongue, I learned from an LDS high school teacher in Scotland that the students in her Gaelic class prefer to speak English, regarding speaking Gaelic as "not cool".

I have a copy of the Bible in Gaelic, but even the LDS Church does not have Gaelic speaking missionaries or publish a Gaelic edition of the Book of Mormon, considering it a waste of resources, since the few Scots who still speak Gaelic also speak English.

Gaelic spoken in Ireland and Scotland are two separate languages.

Tapadh leibh.

Slainte mhath!

Is Mise Le Meas,

John Robert Mallernee
Official Bard of Clan Henderson
Armed Forces Retirement Home
Washington, D.C. 20011-8400

Some peoples are able to sustain dual languages and some are not. Hebrew went from nearly dead language to one spoken regularly by millions in the course of a single century, whil most of its speakers still manage to speak a second language, frequently English.

Meanwhile, even Native Americans who speak English are struggling economically. Teaching them their historical tongue - one in which almost no literature exists and which no more than a few thousand speak - is doing them a disservice.

The purpose of language is to communicate. A language which allows you to communicate with hundreds of millions of people is superior to one which only allows you to communicate with a few thousand.

We should do our best to preserve records of these languages for posterity's sake, but it may not be realistic to expect people to actually speak them.

I'm not that concerned with languages being lost. In fact, I'd love it if everyone spoke the same language because it would dramatically simplify living in today's global community. However, I AM deeply concerned about losing knowledge that is not yet written and translated into a widely-used language, such as English. Here's a solution: for all those languages in danger of extinction, round up tons of university students worldwide and send them on study abroad programs to these communities with endangered languages (linguistic scholars at the world's universities would coordinate this project). Then have them ensure that all the critical language-specific knowledge is written down. Next, have scholars or lay persons who speak these languages translate the written content into English. Finally, digitize all that content and publish it on the Internet. Problem solved.

While it is somewhat sad to see an old language with its ties to a different time and a different culture slowly disappear, you have to keep grounded in reality and realize that most people's lives are dependent and forged on practicality instead of sentimentality, and the languages and "old ways" usually disappear because they have been replaced with a more convenient or advantageous method or idea. Why, even the English language continues to evolve; new words to convey things are introduced all of the time. If languages are mixing and melding that just oges to show that we are continuing to destroy old cultural barriers and divides and the world is continuing to become a smaller and smaller place. Is that good or bad? Depends on how we all end up treating each other. That is the real concern.

Prediction... I think you’re forgetting Arabic and Hebrew... don't underestimate the power of religion.

Greetings:

Another very interesting aspect to this question of obscure languages are the artificial languages created either as a practical global experiment, i.e., Esperanto, or as part of a fantasy, i.e., the languages invented by author J.R.R. Tolkien, actually indulged in by contemporary aficianados.

Due to the powerful influence of the United States of America (Hooray for US!!!), English has become so dominate that all airlines, regardless of nationality, are required to use it, as a safety factor.

Thanks to the British Empire, English remains the official language of India, as it is the only way to unify the numerous different ethnicities.

I'm fascinated by the similarities in various languages, along with symbols and ancient legends which are common to several countries, some of which are geographically far apart.

To me, it's indicative of the migration and interaction of all mankind, as civilizations evolved.

If our research can successfully trace it all back to its origins, we'll find - - - ?

Thank you.

John Robert Mallernee
Armed Forces Retirement Home
Washington, D.C. 20011-8400