Why save dying languages?

The NY Times had an interesting article on dying languages today. There were lots of interesting comments. I had this to say. I would love to be able to offer dying languages at LingQ one day. If people want them to survive they will.

"It should be up to the speakers of these languages to decide their fate, not for armies of moralizers and linguists. Often the complicated grammar books and committees of experts that seem to be required to maintain a language end up killing it. All we need is the speakers, some recording devices, some transcripts and some internet sites that everyone can access, as well as a good online dictionary. No UN committees, academic studies or other diversions which just end up feeding wealthy western academics looking for something exotic to do."

Comments

[a bunch a noise]

Does any language carries cultural unique charge that comes from generation to generation, or in other words, does a language have encoded bygone era messages?

And if so, does it mean, that with the loss of the language comes the partial loss of one's true oneness. The school system I attended, put strongly into me the thinking that the way we think and see the things are strongly related to the language we use. By assimilating with the language we subconsciously adopt the centuries developed relationships with our surroundings and subsequently with the loss of the language we are loosing this masterly expertise altogether.

[Steve Kaufmann]

This may be true, bunch, but we also gain the new evolving cultural environments. I feel this is merely a matter of individual will, on the part of the speakers of the language, and not an overarching moral issue as it is sometimes made out to be.

[Kevin Geoghegan]

It was nice to see most of the comments to that article sticking up for language diversity. I guess those that lose their cultural identity always have the likes of McDonald's to look forward to ;-)

There was an article about language death on the BBC website recently (seems to be a topical subject):

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8311000/8311069.stm

[Steve Kaufmann]

I doubt that eating hamburgers is any more a sign of lost cultural identity than eating pasta, sushi, or Chinese dim sum, nor do I see a connection with dying languages. It is simply up to the speakers of those languages.

[William]

Here in Hong Kong, I attended a conference today about the Internet and blogging in Asia. One of the presenters were some of the people at Global Voices- a website dedicated to translating interesting news and blog posts from around the world into different languages. Interestingly, they talked about how they were starting to branch out and develop Global Voices pages for languages that have small internet communities and to indigenous languages. In other words, by translating interesting content in and out of indigenous and marginalized languages, they were helping to give the languages life, increase literacy, and provide for cultural and linguistic preservation (through content).

http://globalvoicesonline.org/

This, I believe, is probably the key: creating or producing content in the dying languages, and giving their speakers and their communities a platform for keeping it alive, through interesting content.

Simply having linguistic studies and grammar books is not enough. Grammar books and linguistic studies are simply like photographs. A photograph of a dying person doesn't keep them alive.

I think indigenous people had the money, knowledge, and self-confidence to create interesting content (which they often don't), then their sons and daughters would be able more likely to interact using the language on a daily basis. With the Internet, this should be entirely possible.

[Steve Kaufmann]

LingQ can definitely contribute to the maintenance of languages spoken by few people, effectively and at little cost.

[Brian Barker]

Hello Steve

Concerning the campaign to save endangered and dying languages, can I point to the contribution, made by the World Esperanto Association, to UNESCO's campaign.

The commitment was made, by the World Esperanto Association at the United Nations' Geneva HQ in September.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch v=eR7vD9kChBA&feature=related

Your readers may be interested in http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_YHALnLV9XU Professor Piron was a translator with the United Nations in Geneva.

A glimpse of Esperanto can be seen at http://www.lernu.net