Kinda makes me sad...

[EricTheFred]

I'm not sure how it has anything to do with this forum, but a news report of a sad passing.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iuL9Be40nk88mX-w6sGtlpUdGNHwD8UBRCDG1

The death not only of a person, but the vanishing of an entire language... it's a strange thing to consider.

My wife's native language has only tens of thousands of speakers, and it isn't unreasonable to imagine that in the next hundred years somewhere, it will also vanish. Very few of her nephews and nieces have learned to speak it (and she can't read and write in it properly. It drives her nuts when one of her elder relatives sends her a letter, because she has to sound it out phonetically and hope for the best.)

The effects of globalization. An event like this just makes the world seem a little smaller.

[Momo-P]

It's sad...but also strange.

We all know languages die out, but I think most people associate that with stuff from the Bible or stupid civilizations like the mayans. It's like "that happened in the past" and we forget it's still happening now.

[Technomancer]

It's a terrible shame. On different sides of my family, I had relatives that spoke disappearing (now vanished) languages or dialects. Whole cultures are simply vanishing.

[Kat Walker]

Wow. Our world is losing so much of its culture, no longer through war or disease, but simply through globalization. Everybody is assimilating into one big, generic, faceless, Westernized modern society. As proud as I am of being American, i also can't help but mourn that it's diluted a lot of my ethnic identity.

[Technomancer]

Wow. Our world is losing so much of its culture, no longer through war or disease, but simply through globalization. Everybody is assimilating into one big, generic, faceless, Westernized modern society. As proud as I am of being American, i also can't help but mourn that it's diluted a lot of my ethnic identity.

It's not just a western mass-media phenomenon; as much as that's to blame plenty of other countries (both western and otherwise) have pursued explicit policies of assimilation and for want of a better word, suffocation, of minority cultures. Just consider the history of say, the Ainu in Japan for example.

[mitsuki lover]

It may be a bit ironic that the people who have been most responsible for saving and perserving native languages have been the missionaries that many people have denigrated as the forerunners of modernization.Indeed
without the many hymns,Bibles,cathecisms,etc.that the missionaries translated and printed into the native languages many more languages might be extinct than are in reality.

[Gabriel 9.0]

Yeah its very unfortunate to occur.

[EricTheFred]

[quote="Technomancer (post: 1194298)"]It's not just a western mass-media phenomenon]

The interesting thing to think about is, in the past (even fifty years or so ago), I doubt many people even had a concept of how many languages there were. Now, that same globalization trend that's spreading English language and American culture all over the world (and pulling so many pieces of many other cultures into it, like, for example, Japanese Anime) is also responsible for making us aware of these other cultures.

I mentioned my wife's language. In the old days, you would have had virtually no chance of ever hearing of it. Now, you can look up her ethnic on Wikipedia, (type in "Sambal People".) My wife is one of a little over one hundred thousand of these, fewer people than live in the suburb where we reside. Such a small ethnic lives half a world away, and yet, now you have heard of them.

Not only that, but a short time on Google turned up the following:
http://www.language-museum.com/s/sambal-tina.php
Showing Genesis Chapter I in her language.

And to think, the school didn't even allow her to speak in this language, much less read and write in it, while she was growing up.

[Gabriel 9.0]

There should be some sort of class that teaches every known language for future generations.

[Ingemar]

While it's sad, I suppose, the disappearance of nations is a simple fact of life. No one today mourns the passing of hundreds of nations of bygone era and even the great nations of old only survive in bits and pieces (think, for instance, of how many people you know who speak Koine in everyday conversation).

There are many factors, but I largely blame Alexander the Great.

[Mithrandir]

No one today mourns the passing of hundreds of nations of bygone era and even the great nations of old only survive in bits and pieces (think, for instance, of how many people you know who speak Koine in everyday conversation).

Having spent a great deal of time around sociologists and anthropologists, I think I have to disagree with you, here. SOME people mourn the passings of other nations/societies - just not you and/or society in general.

[Doubleshadow]

That really rips my heart up to hear it. What she must have felt watching generations of memory, tradition, and passed down hopes and dreams vanish into the wind. I can't imagine what it's like to be the last of your kind, knowing that no one else will know what you knew.
It pains me to think people groups disappear, either through assimilation or genocide. So much gets lost, the unique ideas and cultures the highlight the differences in people that can be used to understand both the individual and the culture, help make discernable what has be taken for granted to be real or true or right, to see the ideas of a person who is nothing like you. Languages themselves express the ideas of a culture: how they view themselves, others, the structure of the society, and how it regards itself in relation to the rest of the universe because words themselves restrict how one thinks. A different language gives people the opportunity to think in ways they never did before and express concepts they couldn't otherwise. What a huge loss.

[Dante]

Ah... don't worry humanity never learns its lessons, so we'll just phase out all languages except English, Spanish or Chinese and then build another big huge tower (and an ego to go with it) and God will just knock it down again and give us new languages !

Ok, so maybe that's not going to happen, and I have to admit the loss of languages and cultures today is rather sad, but also persued by society in general. The same is going to happen sooner or later with the native american cultures as well because the predominant culture never seems to have any respect for minority cultures within that society. Languages also are handed down like genetics once written in words... this is why the English language is so pathetically awkward to write in today, it needed to brew for a few more years.

To another end though, the loss of a language is something beautiful, it shows that peoples that were once seperate and confounded by different tongues now can speak and understand each other... at least to a written extent even if not at an emotional or spiritual level. Today we each come from a vast variety of genetic pasts, but we're all on here speaking English and able to have fun and communicate with each other. If you all retained your first order tribal languages its likely none of us would have ever come to know one another. In the end, if the western civilization is boring and bland we are the only ones responcible for it. Admittedly we can yell at our governments for not supporting the arts more, but they only go so far. We as a people think about how to get the most done for the least, and generally this comes in the form less is bore. But if we ever desired to truly create a culture, we could found a cultural renasaince unlike anything the world ever saw before... but in the end, to some extent or less, that choice is ours.

[Righteousss]

if we closely think about it, our country is one of the few that still has pure descendents of those originals who've inhabited the land far before other major civilizations have came to denominate over it. It's like history on two legs. Once their gone we not only lose them but we lose a great link between our country and it's vital past.

[Mr. SmartyPants]

Uhm... if you want to count the very small percentage of Native Americans living across the United States, then sure.

And you're totally forgetting like tons of other countries out in the world right now, like China or countries in Africa.

[Technomancer]

if we closely think about it, our country is one of the few that still has pure descendents of those originals who've inhabited the land far before other major civilizations have came to denominate over it. It's like history on two legs. Once their gone we not only lose them but we lose a great link between our country and it's vital past.

I agree that it's a sadly vanishing remnant, but this problem is much larger than than just North America. I've already mentioned the Ainu of Japan, whilst in China and Russia, there are many slowly vanishing languages. Even in Europe there are numerous languages under grave threat such as Breton, or Sami or Vlach, and probably others as well.

[Ingemar]

Reminds me of a factoid that I read stating that half of the world's 6000 languages are expected to disappear within this century.

[Righteousss]

didnt I say "one of the few" >_<

[Dante]

didnt I say "one of the few" >_<

Few refers to a number around three, but I don't believe that is what you were trying to convey by the use of the word few, perhaps many would be a better choice, but in the end I suppose that doesn't matter... Of course you could be using a version of English completely different from our own in which case this correction should be ignored to avoid further damaging your culture .

[Righteousss]

um yeah... for your intillect

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/few
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/few

[termyt]

I guess I have a slightly different take on this than most. The good news is this wonderful woman took the time to sit down with a linguist to preserve her language for all times. With the spread of information, the time spent logging her language and culture will not likely be lost ever. Future generations will read first hand accounts of her language and people and not have to piece it together through archeological remains and best guesses. Her language didn’t die, it retired.

To me, though, Globalization is not a dirty word. I think of all the things we can accomplish if we unified in language and culture. The United States is an excellent example of this. We still fight and bicker and have great differences of opinion – many of these based on differences in culture – but we do so unified as a single country. A country whose culture and language is a blending of hundreds of cultures and languages.

Irish, Scots, Italians, French, Dutch, Scandinavians, Welsh, Greek, Turks, Spaniards – they used to kill each other every chance they got. Here in America, they live side by side and they marry each other’s daughters. It’s a wonderful and beautiful thing.