Extinct languages or in "danger" of extinction

[Guijarro]

Must we mourn extinct languages (Hittite, Assyrian, Latin, Maya, etc.) or languages in "danger" of extinction (like, in my country, Bable, Chapurreau, Leonés, Extremeño, and what not)? Is it better to try and make those crippled languages alive, as they have done in my country with Basque, Gallego and to a lesser extent, Catalan? They called it "Linguistic Normalization", and they have reached the paradoxical point where people of the same old country, Spain, have difficulties in understanding fellow citizens.

A paradox indeed! Languages were invented as tools to help us communicate, but in some places, like in my county, they help making people unable to communicate with others.

The normal course of affairs is like this: a nation acquires power (political and economic) and the language they use becomes so popular that lots of people want and do learn it in order to be near those power circles. It's what happened with French, Italian and Spanish before and is now happening clearly with English. No political institution has ruled that English MUST be learned by almost everyone in the world. Everyone in the World has a clear notion that English is a very important tool to have if you want to be "in" and so they try to learn it FREELY, by their own will.

Traditionalists in Europe (I don't know in the US with the Tea-Party and all that) have lost all their arguments to stop progress and remain stagnant in "what was good for my father is good enough for me". Neither religion, habits, tastes, ways of dressing, etc can be now proposed as important reasons to stop cultural progress.

Languages, however, have this romantic hue that makes them THE ONLY ARGUMENT traditionalists have which is backed happily by a crowd of progressive people unaware of what they are backing. It is almost a sin to say that when a language does not help people to communicate, the best it can do is to fall into oblivion and disappear, as so many other cultural things have without anybody caring about them (i.e., Roman chariots,  which were so fashionable in Ben Hur's time, diligences, arrows, you name it!)

But one cannot say that. Language idolatry is still very much in fashion nowadays, even among linguists!

[freknu]

So you're a cultural capitalist...

[Guijarro]

Maybe.

Like the old village chief of the following story:

The writer and diplomat, Henri Lopès, told us a nice story that happened to him, when, as a young revolutionary, he was preaching the importance of particular cultures and languages in his country, Congo-Braza, which had to be taught to people in lieu of the French language of the colonial tyrant.

Eventually, in one of those retired small villages, the local chief replied to him publicly:

"That's all very well, but you DO speak French, don't you? We, in our village we speak (say) Lingala, and we communicate wonderfully with our neighbours. We do not need to be taught this language; we speak it and we know how to use it with no problems. So, what we want from the Revolution is to be taught an international language like French with which we may communicate and read about the rest of the world".

This village chief had a lot more sense than our (Spanish) politicians, and, btw, French is still the official language of Congo-Braza!

[Daniel]

There are certainly reasons for international communication. And those are good reasons to create, for example, Esperanto, so we all speak one language. But there are also reasons that the Esperanto movement has (almost entirely) failed: it's not the language of a people, but the language of an idea (internationalism). Language is about identity as much as it is about communication. So international languages are very useful: if you want money/power/status/etc. you must be able to communicate enough to get it. But that doesn't mean that local languages need to be eliminated. The problem is when momentum or more malicious forces destroy the local languages along the way. It's also often layered, where English is taking over some functions of Spanish, and Spanish is taking over some functions of Basque, etc.

As a linguist, I selfishly want other languages to exist so that I can study them. And I'm aware of that being a problematic perspective. But I don't expect anyone to continue speaking a language just so that I can study them. Instead, I think they should do what they want-- learn English (or Spanish etc.) as needed/desired, and continue with their own local language as much as and as well as it works. In some cases individuals/groups decide that their language has no more value and that they want to assimilate to the larger language. In other cases, such as Basque, the groups want to preserve and continuing using their language. While a lot of this is complicated and potentially controversial, I feel that the latter case (that of Basque speakers wanting to speak Basque) is a clear one that should be supported. As for abandoning a language? That's fine, if they want to, but at the same time I wonder whether they fully understand the big picture of it or if they're just being influenced by external linguistic capitalism.

But in the end the picture for linguists is clear enough:
1. No language is better than any other language. But some exist in positions of power, etc., so they may serve more desirable functions. (Educating people about this is important-- it's not that their language can't be used for business, for education, or on the internet, just that it isn't currently.)
2. Languages are disappearing and will continue to do so: it's time for fieldwork. Our theories of linguistics will be horribly biased toward certain (that is, standard average European plus a few more) languages after the rest are gone and we'll never have a good sense of things like "Universal Grammar", whatever that may be.
In the future all we'll be able to say as linguists is "Yes, languages like English are indeed a lot like English!"

[Guijarro]

Here we go with the Basque language myth, yet again!

In the secluded valleys of Biscay (Vizcaya in Spanish), poor and enslaved people spoke in different dialects which did not help them to communicate with each other or to find out about the world at large. It was a very convenient state of affairs for Basque rich people and patrons of the land, who did not dream of learning to speak Basque. It was an almost feudal society... until it became slowly by slowly industrialized in the beginning of the XXth century. But rich patrons did not want to loose their advantages and tried desperately to keep poor people from learning an international language (French or Spanish). As always, they relied on the traditional catholic church which, by their indication, started to teach local dialects to local people in their seminars --so they kept quiet and subdued!

Some philologists of the time, however, interested by linguistic archaeology, began to study the Basque languages and, eventually, came out with the theory that Basque was the origin of the Spanish people, and language, once it melted with Carthaginian and Latin, giving a unique kind of Romance language. That sort of mythology (nationalism, normally, does not really on scientific facts, but rather on poetry) was very much in use until the thirties of last century (and there are some important philologists today that still defend that thesis).

In 1931, the Biscayan representative in the Central Government, gave a very emotional speech along the same lines that the Congolese chieftain said to Henri Lopès in my story above. He claimed that Basque was a very minority set of different dialects which kept people  apart and illiterate, so that the Basque rich could exploit them at their will. This shouldn't be allowed by the Republic, who had the duty to teach them Spanish to make them finally aware of their rights.

But a representative of the conservative (traditionalist) party, belonging to a very rich Biscayan family, Sabino Arana, shouted back that Biscayan was the language of different people, a lot purer than those socialist spaniolists. It was the first time (1931) that the language had been used in such differencing way. Sabino Arana became the leader of Basque Nationalism, and, as he was neither a linguist (but a conservative (traditionalist) politician), nor could speak a word of Basque (as no person belonging to the rich did), he started to invent the NEWBASQUE language.

So when you study today's Basque, you are studying a language invented by a non linguist with the help of some "aficionados" who freely imagined what the language should look like. But you are right, this contraption has become the official language of the separatist Basque nation, and probably it is in some cases a mother language for some. I take it, they are very few, but... oh well!

Just as ETA, the terrorist movement, that has killed more people than the yihaddists have, is admired by some unaware romantic foreigners as a liberation movement, ant the Newbasque is studied by eager archeologianlinguits. Some study other invented languages, like the one presented by Tolkien.

I prefer to know a bit of English, French, and eventually, Arabic and Chinese. But I am a "capitalist" (I wish I were!)

[freknu]

With study upon study showing the benefits of polylinguism, I'm surprised this would even be a problem. You can always learn one or two "global" languages alongside your native tongue(s).

Taken in that context it is no longer about "effective communication", "cultural progress", or any other buzzword of the day, but rather an authoritarian attempt at controlling which languages are deemed to be superior and thus allowed to exist. The cultural and linguistic equivalent of eugenics if you ask me :/

Heh, Übersprachen.

The problem is not that we speak too many languages, the problem is that we don't communicate.

And just because Eddie is funny:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dz4Ps55Rx40

[Guijarro]

1) I am not against knowing languages (the more, the better)

2) I am not against local dialects or languages (everybody has the right to speak in whatever way they want.

3) I am not even against linguists who like archaeology and want to study old and (almost) forgotten languages.

What I am against is:

3) In a country like mine, politicians COMMAND people to speak in one way or another to make differences manifest. So, whereas people speaking, say, English, from Australia, Britain, the US and so on, think they are all speaking English, we have managed to make people aware of the differences between their speak and those of their neighbours. In The Cid Campeador's time you could travel from Coruña in the north west of the Peninsula to Barcelona with no problem. If politicians had it their way, today, you should be able to speak, gallego, neoasturianu, castellano viejo, eusquera batua, neoaragonés and catalan. Maybe yo like this sort of polyglotism which separates people. I don't.

4) Inventing heroic poetry on the old origin of languages, which defies every serious analysis.

5) Trying to put the blame for that situation on one language, Castilian-Spanish, as if it had been imposed by political power, like they did with their own mini-languages, when people in Spain learned Spanish because they needed to. Like we now study English. Nobody has ever decided that Castilian was the official language of the country, except Franco and the Falange, which were as traditionalists as the others are.

Otherwise, who cares?
 
You want to learn chapurreau, cheso, or fragolí? By all means!

Be my guest.

I am still more interested in Chinese or Arabic, if you don't mind.

[freknu]

3) In a country like mine, politicians COMMAND people to speak in one way or another to make differences manifest.

Politicians, or people?

So, whereas people speaking, say, English, from Australia, Britain, the US and so on, think they are all speaking English...

Yet acutely aware of the fact that they speak different dialects, which at times are not entirely mutually intelligible.

In The Cid Campeador's time you could travel from Coruña in the north west of the Peninsula to Barcelona with no problem. If politicians had it their way, today, you should be able to speak, gallego, neoasturianu, castellano viejo, eusquera batua, neoaragonés and catalan.

I haven't studied Italic languages, but from what I've learned is that "Spanish" is not a singular language descending from a singular Latinate branch, but rather a spectrum of related languages from many related Latinate branches. Thus everyone may speak a standard Spanish, but also a native Latinate dialect that they grew up with, which may or may not be mutually intelligible with all other languages in Spain.

If there indeed are differences and these Latinate dialects still exist, why force people to abandon them? If there are people and groups working for the cause of vitalising and strengthening these dialects, why should that not be allowed?

Then again, I haven't studied any of these issues so I can only guess.

Maybe you like this sort of polyglotism which separates people. I don't.

Why would it separate people?

4) Inventing heroic poetry on the old origin of languages, which defies every serious analysis.

Well, that is silly, I cannot disagree on that.

5) Trying to put the blame for that situation on one language, Castilian-Spanish, as if it had been imposed by political power, like they did with their own mini-languages, when people in Spain learned Spanish because they needed to. Like we now study English. Nobody has ever decided that Castilian was the official language of the country, except Franco and the Falange, which were as traditionalists as the others are.

No idea — that is far beyond my knowledge of the historical and contemporary linguistic situation in Spain. I don't necessarily object to linguistic purism as such, only to ultrapurism. However, I cannot make any conclusion from ignorance.

[Guijarro]

Politicians (like Sabino Arana, the most wellknown one) COMMAND a given dialect should be used shunning all others. People are happy with their own ways of speaking, and no problem has ever arisen, for they knew that if you wanted to be widely understood you should use the most spread out language, which is learned at school. It happens in Switzerland, in Canada, etc. It happens in Africa. But Spain is different, like the franquist propaganda claimed.

For the tenth time: nobody forces people to abandon their dialect. Some politicians want that this or that dialect becomes by law (!!) the national language of a given local group, eradicating all the rest of the spectrum and, above all, the most extended language in the country. To speak Spanish in my country is in some parts the equivalent of committing a mortal sin. I understand that you don't understand, for you come from a "normal" nation (whatever that is) and it is impossible to figure out the crazy schemes of some post-Franco politicians.

Polyglotism à la Spanish, then, is devised on purpose to separate people into small territories, forbidding the most widely used Latin dialect so that they have difficulties in communicating. Incredible, eh? But that's the truth.

Finally, the only person I have heard commenting that English and American were very similar except in their language was Oscar Wilde... and it was meant as a joke.

Latin America speaks Spanish, like some of us here in Spain. The rest of Spaniards avoid speaking Spanish. They speak Gallego, Basque, Catalan ... you name it!

A nice madhouse, I tell you.

[freknu]

Some politicians want that this or that dialect becomes by law (!!) the national language of a given local group...

Oh! These are not regions and its people trying to preserve their dialects by giving them official status and protecting and encouraging their private, public, and official use alongside a common language — but rather some individuals and groups trying to legislate specific dialects for specific regions/groups and outright banning anything else, not taking into account any linguistic data or actual usage?

Creating artificial Reiche?

Jaysus HMS ducking christ... why didn't you just say so!? o_O

I understand that you don't understand, for you come from a "normal" nation (whatever that is)...

Well, I don't know about "normal"... but in my country it's simply "ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Sprache" by the Persussuomalaiset (Arse-Finns), as I call them — their real name is Perussuomalaiset (True Finns, Foundation Finns) — versus recognising that the native languages of Finland are Finnic, Samic, and Norse, and thus recognising that these should be given official status and acknowledged as the responsibility of our nation.

Thus allowing the respective regions, groups, and individuals to preserve their language and culture in an increasingly hostile world where identity and culture is more often seen as oppressive and discriminatory than as richness.

Getting into some finer detail you find some other bollocks, but that's the basic conflict.

An artificial Reich versus reality.

[Daniel]

Guijarro, even if all of that is true (it sounds like a one-sided biased perspective to me, to be honest) there is no reason that ethnic/historical/geographic/etc Basques should speak a Romance language (Spanish, etc.) rather than Basque (whether it be a dialect or koine). And it's far from artificial, but just standardized. The same can be said of German, Greek, etc., even English and Spanish, today.

In the end, language is arbitrary. All that really matters is:
1. Communication.
2. Identity.
3. Linguistic data.
4. History, literature, knowledge, etc., within the language (like names of local species of plants or animals).


And for the record when I studied Basque (with a bilingual Basque-Spanish native speaker) we learned quite a bit about the (realistic) dialect situation and that what was in the book was a sort of koine. I don't see that as problematic. When I've traveled and used Spanish it hasn't sounded much like my textbook either!

With study upon study showing the benefits of polylinguism, I'm surprised this would even be a problem. You can always learn one or two "global" languages alongside your native tongue(s).

Individually, yes. As a society globalization seems to eventually take over in many cases. There are some places where this works, but I'm not sure what everything will look like in 500 years!
It's not that you can't learn multiple languages, just that I'm not sure how stable a multilingual situation will remain in the modern world. Once you're bilingual, it's easy to (eventually, at some point, only needs to happen once, with constant pressure) move on to the global language.

[Guijarro]

I wonder what bias you find in my historical account. That until 1931, Basque was considered the origin of Spanish? Since it is widely claimed that Basque is a remnant of Iberian dialects, it could have some truth in it. Or is it that from that time on, and in accordance with ultra-nationalist political movements in Europe (nazis, facists, and so on), some people like Sabino Arana, tried to discover the essence of the Basque Volk in its (invented) language?   I have honestly tried to give you historical facts, but if you know better, I'd like to hear your unbiased account.

My position on your list above,

1. Communication.
Yes, language is a convenient tool for that
2. Identity.
Yes, language is the way each person has to formalise her/his environment. For me, there is only MAÑANA, MEDIODÍA, TARDE and NOCHE. For you there is MORNING, NOON, AFTERNOON, EVENING, NIGHT. For me there are LENGUAJE, LENGUA and IDIOMA, whereas for you there is only LANGUAGE. In that sense, I agree.

In the sense that language could be considered the perceivable equivalent of race or territory, I prefer to be careful. I lived for 40 years under a fascist dictator, and any trace of nationalism, patriotism, etc, makes me a bit nervous. This is perhaps the reason of your cavalier indictment of my biased account, come to think of it. If it is, then yes, I am not nationalist, nor patriotic in any sense, as I am not religious. I feel human, period.
 
3. Linguistic data.
OK, if you like archaeology, I understand. Pity that present day Basque is a modern contraption invented last century, but ...oh well, who cares? BTW, when I was studying in Edinburgh, aeons ago, some of the linguistics department staff invented a new language, NOVISH, to illustrate different linguistic problematic possibilities. This was really an interesting language for a linguist, with no hint of romanticism, nationalism, racism or any other more or less disgusting -ism attached to it.

4. History, literature, knowledge, etc., within the language (like names of local species of plants or animals).
Basque did not have any literature until after 1931. Traditional Church had put in some Basque dialects (with a completely wild orthography, for it had never been written before) sermons, bible texts, and so on. The whole of the Basque literature that we now have dates from after 1931.

Of course, I am biased. But telling the truth sometimes is, I'm afraid.

(On the other hand, I would never indulge in that biased account with Catalan. It has always been a widely used language).


 

[Daniel]

I wonder what bias you find in my historical account.

That you only focus on the negative and that you propose these facts as if they discount the general cultural history of the Basques. (Minor details are certainly up for debate-- for example I think it's silly to consider Basque to be a linguistic isolate because it's actually a family of closely related languages, not just dialects, and we don't consider Indo-European, as a family, to be an isolate. But that has no bearing on whether Basques should/could/would speak Basque, in whichever form they wish.)

That's sort of like saying that because Germany (or America, or whatever) has a complicated political history, we (everyone) shouldn't speak those languages. It has no relevance to the matter at hand and is, in that sense, biasing.

In the sense that language could be considered the perceivable equivalent of race or territory, I prefer to be careful.

No, but I did not suggest that either. I don't have any personal stake in which languages people speak (except my bias as a linguist in preferring diversity). In fact, I don't like English too much and would prefer to switch it for another native language (though the access it gives is, of course, useful).
But in the end, are you really trying to defend the idea that it's a good thing that the 300+ native american languages are now, for the most part, reduced to a few speakers or extinct, with a handful of exceptions? I just don't see how you can have that position. They were systematically wiped out, especially with the influence of boarding schools.

So idealistically maybe you can take a neutral position that it doesn't matter, but in doing so you're de facto supporting the efforts that have been made to wipe out minority languages. To me, that seems problematic.

3. Linguistic data.
OK, if you like archaeology, I understand.

Haha, no. It's not about history. It's about the present. We, as linguists, want to understand how languages work. If you aren't interested in diversity to do that, you're doing something very very wrong. As I said, if you approach it that way, you'll find that all languages work just like English!
(But as I said, this is very biased: I don't feel a legitimate reason to burden everyone with speaking diverse languages just for my research, but if they do, I think that's great and convenient!)

Basque did not have any literature until after 1931.

Untrue! Berzoas are a (unique?) Basque form of oral literature, and I expect there is more general oral literature as well.

(On the other hand, I would never indulge in that biased account with Catalan. It has always been a widely used language).

Huh? So the number of speakers does determine a language's worth? What a bizarre opinion from a linguist!

[Guijarro]

It must be my English, for you seem to get me all wrong:

1. I don't mind people using whatever lingo they like any time.

2. I object to crazy efforts on nationalist grounds to favour one or another AGAINST the freedom that should be the rule,as in (1) above. Languages are not naturally imposed by laws. Even less by nationalistic, racist and/or romantic longings.

3. Of course there had to be some "oraliture" in  Basque. There is such a thing in Gaditan (the Cadiz dialect) as well. But LITERATURE was created in the first part of XXTh century, whether you like it or not. Basque nationalists don't like it, and they try all sorts of romantic lies to join the old tradition.

4. You are right. I am not in love with any natural language. As a linguist of the cognitive persuasion, I am interested in how humans, i.e., all humans, use their linguistic tool to help them organize their world and manifest their messages to others. I am interested in the feats of Humanity (with capital H) , not in how it is realised in Lingala, Mayan, or Cheso. This interest I leave for philologists, which I am not. With your permission, of course.

5. You never become aware (or, even less, comment on) the fact that, before 1931, Basque was the very gist of the Spanish Volk. It was considered THE Spanish essence. As the "dark Iberians" we are, we came from them.

Imagine that your grand-dad who had an enormous large family, until it reached your generation, suddenly decided to say that all these people are NOT his family, and that he is UNIQUE. And he would start another true family, with which you had nothing to share, God forbid!. I know the example is ludicrous, but ... oh well! It rings a similar tone.

6. I AN NOT AGAINST BASQUE, for Heaven's sake! I am astonished at politicians resurrecting and imposing on others imagined contraptions for romantic, nationalist and racist reasons, and at the fervour it creates on some philologists who in other aspects of their lives are progressively minded. Is that not clear? I don't know how to say it otherwise. Therefore, in the case of Catalan, as the language does not have to be reinvented, it is free for people to choose and speak it in whatever way they like.

I am curious to learn what you have taken me to mean, this time.

[Daniel]

So what's the big deal then? Politicians get linguistic issues wrong (we know that, right)? And people can speak as they wish? Seems fine to me.

But remember, minority languages eventually fade away into the majority language. So whatever political 'mythology' might keep them alive seems like a fair head start.

I am interested in the feats of Humanity (with capital H) , not in how it is realised in Lingala, Mayan, or Cheso. This interest I leave for philologists, which I am not. With your permission, of course.

This borders on a strange problem that some linguists have: you're interested in the big picture but not data. As long as you do use reasonable data (and not all from English, please!) I guess that's ok. I'm interested in the big picture too. But I am looking at diverse languages to do that (recently at Mayan and Lingala actually, not Cheso though).