Is preserving languages a good thing?

[onlinebiker]

Preserving a language?


How?

Put a few verbs and a couple of adjectives in a bottle of formaldehyde?

[downbeatplumb]

In the UK in wales they have to extremes to save the welsh language. Pointlessly really. everyone in Wales speaks English and Welsh is a cumbersome language that has just meant extra large road signs in English and welsh.

Time to get rid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvlQXPNwrqo

[LastPoet]

In the UK in wales they have to extremes to save the welsh language. Pointlessly really. everyone in Wales speaks English and Welsh is a cumbersome language that has just meant extra large road signs in English and welsh.

Time to get rid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvlQXPNwrqo

That cumbersome language may sound romantic to sheep. Just saying

[Mr Greene]

In the UK in wales they have to extremes to save the welsh language. Pointlessly really. everyone in Wales speaks English and Welsh is a cumbersome language that has just meant extra large road signs in English and welsh.

Time to get rid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvlQXPNwrqo

That cumbersome language may sound romantic to sheep. Just saying

But is it worth making it compulsory in schools all the way to GCSE level at the expense of learning a modern language, (French/German) reducing childrens future employability across Europe/the world. Should they be making it a factor in public sector jobs (which are the only ones with decent job security) ensuring that these go to people who grew up west of an imaginary line regardless of their actual ability to perform the job?
I would have no problem with it were it optional, but it's a compulsory waste of time and the kids treat it as such.

[paulpablo]

Extinction, in all of its forms, is immune to any human endeavor. Language is an evolving entity. The English spoken in America today, is not quite the same language as it was 50 years ago, nor is that version the same as it was 50 years prior to that. The more humans intermingle, the more cultures fuse, the more homogenized communication between them becomes. More than likely, there isn't anyone alive today who will live long enough to witness the Spanglishization of all human communication, but that day may be on the horizon.

I don't think the main topic is about any of this. 

I think the topic is more about languages that are spoken by just a tiny amount of people and there's big efforts to preserve them even though in a lot of cases the people speaking the language usually know a more mainstream language aswell and there's little reward or use in their being the other language.

I think an example could be the Welsh language, I could be wrong my memory and knowledge on this is pretty vague but I don't think many people exist who know Welsh who don't also know English very fluently. And there was some debate about the government spending money on keeping the language going and teaching it even though a lot of people didn't care about it.  

I've been to Wales a lot and I don't think I've ever heard anyone speaking Welsh while I was there. In north Wales it's more common for them to sound scouse, like people from Liverpool.

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In the UK in wales they have to extremes to save the welsh language. Pointlessly really. everyone in Wales speaks English and Welsh is a cumbersome language that has just meant extra large road signs in English and welsh.

Time to get rid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvlQXPNwrqo

I just read this after I made my post, yeh this is the kind of thing I thought the main topic was about.

[Mr Greene]

I think an example could be the Welsh language, I could be wrong my memory and knowledge on this is pretty vague but I don't think many people exist who know Welsh who don't also know English very fluently. And there was some debate about the government spending money on keeping the language going and teaching it even though a lot of people didn't care about it.  

I've been to Wales a lot and I don't think I've ever heard anyone speaking Welsh while I was there. In north Wales it's more common for them to sound scouse, like people from Liverpool.

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In the UK in wales they have to extremes to save the welsh language. Pointlessly really. everyone in Wales speaks English and Welsh is a cumbersome language that has just meant extra large road signs in English and welsh.

Time to get rid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvlQXPNwrqo

I just read this after I made my post, yeh this is the kind of thing I thought the main topic was about.

Along the A55 a lot of the people are Scouse or Mancunian.
You need to get out to places like Blaenau Ffestiniog, Llanberis or Beddgelert before you'll find anyone actually speaking the language.

[viocjit]

I think it is important to preserve languages even if there are evolution over time because language or a dialect of a language is tied to a culture.
I think it is important to preserve cultural diversity and preserve languages alongside its dialects and sub-dialects is a way to do so.

Each languages have dialects and sub-dialects.
For example among the dozen of English dialects there are British English and American English.
Among the dozen of sub-dialects of British English there are Received Pronunciation , Cockney and Mancunian.
Among the dozen of sub-dialects of American English there are General American , Inland Northern English and Western American English.

We lose time when we translate something in another language but languages are tied to ours cultures of humanity and work in any language contain reflect of a particular culture and this reflect is lose if done in another language and this is why it is important to keep work in original language.
If we suppress a language we eliminate a culture.
Learn a foreign language = Learn another culture that our and learn there are others ways to think.

Communicate with another person can be difficult if he / she doesn't know your language and you don't know his / her language.
You can have a language in common like English but you would have difficulty to communicate if this is not the mother tongue of this person or your because language are tied to a culture. Therefore you would do mistakes while communicating.
It does exist artificial languages to facilitate intercultural communications like Esperanto , Ido , IALA etc...

[FlatAssembler]

Or when people use croatian toponyms to suggest that well documented attempts at ethnic cleansing, in living memory, never happened.  To a person who participated in the conflict, no less.  That's definitely a problem, that's the rabbit hole op went down and mentions in his post....and is now blaming on dead languages.

Learning a language didn't do that to you, Flat.

Well, it didn't exactly do that to me, but it enabled that it happens to me that I come to the idea that ironic names prove that there is a conspiracy involved.

[FlatAssembler]

I have started this discussion on a forum about linguistics, if you are interested:
http://linguistforum.com/linguist%27s-lo...ood-thing/

[Rank Stranger]

Diversity is pretty well necessary to stabilize any complex system. It's true of aquariums, and it's true of societies. A big part of any culture is encoded in the language. There's no stopping said current mass language-extinction, but IMO it'd be a real stretch to say that's a good thing.