Non-english-speaker culture is winging it through video games from before you knew English, only understanding 30% of the dialog.
In Crash Bandicoot 2 this one character says “I’m going to destroy the space station” and 6-year-old me thought he said “playstation” so I cried and turned the game off cause I was scared that he was gonna destroy my console.
Gaelic hasnt been lost. It’s never died or been brought back. There’s an unbroken line of native speakers going back to the beginning of the language. That doesn’t seem like a ‘lost’ language to me. Furthermore I’m not sure what ‘artificial life-support’ means in this context. Gaelic is given funding for schools because there’s still native speakers of the language. It’s no more artificial than money being given to schools for English language lessons.
If anything is ‘artificial’ its the imposition of a foreign language
(English) into a Gaelic majority zone and native speakers having to
fight for decades to be able to be taught in their own language. Native speakers being forced to learn English to exist within their own regions because a central government would not allow services to be given in a people’s own language.
But then the clock only goes back so far with people who wish that minority languages would just die. There’s nothing artificial about shooting someone but suddenly it becomes an ‘artificial’ act to maybe phone an ambulance?
“There’s nothing artificial about shooting someone but suddenly it becomes an ‘artificial’ act to maybe phone an ambulance?” — THIS RIGHT HERE
Also just gonna point out here:
In the UK, the languages Gaelige, Gaelic, Cymraeg and Kernewek (that’s Irish, Scottish, Welsh and Cornish respectively) didn’t just “die out.” There was a concerted effort by the English to kill them off.
For example, in Wales, if a child was heard speaking Welsh in a classroom, they’d be given a “Welsh Not”, a wooden plaque engraved with “WN” to hang around their neck. They’d pass it onto the next child heard speaking Welsh, and whoever had the Welsh Not at the end of the day was punished – usually with a beating.
Kernewek was revived after a long hard struggle by the Cornish folk, and is now being taught again, but a lot about it has been lost because everyone who grew up speaking it has died.
And languages are never revived “just because.” The language of a place can offer so much insight into its history, so if you’re content to let a language die then you’re content to let history die.
People talk about “dead” languages as if they dwindle away gradually, naturally coming to an end and evolving into something else, but that’s rarely the case. Languages like Cymraeg and Gaelige and especially Kernewek didn’t have the chance to die with dignity, they were literally beaten out of my parents and grandparents.
Is it any wonder every other country hate the English? We invade their country, steal their history, claim pieces of their history as ours or flat out re-write it, and kill every part of their culture that we can.
It’s a miracle that any of the Celtic languages survived, so even if you don’t see the point in keeping them alive, the actual natives of each country we’ve fucked over are clinging onto what heritage they have left through the only thing they can: their language.
Hey OP, póg mo thóin!
*snerk* xD
I would like to point all of these “just let it die” assholes directly at Hebrew.
The language was effectively dead. It had been murdered and forced-assimilated away.
But there was this dude named Ben Yehuda.
And he said “no.”
“The language of my people for four thousand years or more,” he said, “should not stop existing because of a bunch of assholes.” (Okay, this is a dramatic retelling. He probably didn’t actually say assholes.)
So he started an official movement to recreate Hebrew as closely as possible to how it had been spoken about a thousand years prior.
Today, ancient Hebrew is spoken by millions of Jews around the world weekly in our prayers and Torah readings, and modern Hebrew is the official language of eight and a half million people–many of them having been born speaking it as a first language. Many people in the first group also speak at least some modern Hebrew–and it’s possible you do, too! A lot of loan words from Hebrew and Yiddish have made their way into English (like klutz, mensch, and kibitz).
That’s hardly “on life support.” Hebrew is growing, living, and thriving because of the Enlightenment efforts of the 1800s. The same COULD be done for languages like Welsh, Navajo, and Basque if the larger powers that be said “this is important” rather than forcing a giant bastion of culture–the language in which a people lived, loved, thought, told stories, and explained their world–to die.
Never trust anyone who wants to diminish the methods in which meaning is conveyed.
A language is only dead, if life transcends its power to remain eloquent.
I mean for fucks sake, we still teach Latin in school. I don’t see why we shouldn’t teach other “dead or dying” languages, in fact there should be more of an emphasis on these languages specifically because many people still speak them and different languages can have great cultural significance from region to region.
Dead languages are the history of modern tongues. Does this mean we should forget all history and ignore everything it teaches us about ourselves? Of course not. Therefore all languages are valid whether or not they are spoken by groups in everyday life. They are teaching you history.
Stop being scornful of your past.
I’m not being scornful. I studied Latin and I absolutely loved it. I’m not arguing that we should stop teaching it. But placing value on languages like Ancient Greek or Latin (both fairly “dead” in their own rights), while simultaneously ignoring “dying languages” (especially if the argument to support this is that they’re not useful anymore, even though people in the region still use it) is hypocritical at best and probably a little racist at worst. That was the point I was trying to make.
I wasn’t talking about you. I was using the figurative “you” for all humanity.
I do that. It’s my “thing”.
Do not go gentle into that dark night.
Rage, rage, against the dying of the light
Go OFF
Mughal invasion almost killed Sanskrit. Why isn’t Sanskrit dead yet? Because people took great care to preserve the language in the form of mantras and shlokas. Even though it’s not used in everyday conversation, it’s used in temples and prayers even to this day.
So I used to have a Russian friend who had a pretty thick accent and like a lot of Russians tended to eschew articles. She would say things like “Get in car.” And stuff.
Well one day this asshole who had been kind of tagging along with us asks her why she talks like that because it makes her sound dumb and I still remember her response word for word.
“Me? Dumb? Maybe in America you have to say get in THE car because you are so stupid that people might just get in random car, but in Russia we don’t need to say that. We just fucking know because we are not stupid.”
One time I was proof reading a paper for a Russian student. As I was correcting her paper with her, the many mistakes in her grammar started weighing on her. I asked her what was wrong, and she said, almost sobbing,
“In Russian I am so intelligent and clear. In English I am like [an] idiot”
Respect to anyone trying to master a foreign language. I get so sad thinking about that student.
So there’s a Japanese slang term, ‘chuunibyou’, that roughly translates to “Middle School 2nd Year Syndrome.” It is used to describe the stupid phases people go through when they are 14, like pretend to be really hardcore, act like they know everything, say they have mystical powers, etc.
Gaelic hasnt been lost. It’s never died or been brought back. There’s an unbroken line of native speakers going back to the beginning of the language. That doesn’t seem like a ‘lost’ language to me. Furthermore I’m not sure what ‘artificial life-support’ means in this context. Gaelic is given funding for schools because there’s still native speakers of the language. It’s no more artificial than money being given to schools for English language lessons.
If anything is ‘artificial’ its the imposition of a foreign language
(English) into a Gaelic majority zone and native speakers having to
fight for decades to be able to be taught in their own language. Native speakers being forced to learn English to exist within their own regions because a central government would not allow services to be given in a people’s own language.
But then the clock only goes back so far with people who wish that minority languages would just die. There’s nothing artificial about shooting someone but suddenly it becomes an ‘artificial’ act to maybe phone an ambulance?
“There’s nothing artificial about shooting someone but suddenly it becomes an ‘artificial’ act to maybe phone an ambulance?” — THIS RIGHT HERE
Also just gonna point out here:
In the UK, the languages Gaelige, Gaelic, Cymraeg and Kernewek (that’s Irish, Scottish, Welsh and Cornish respectively) didn’t just “die out.” There was a concerted effort by the English to kill them off.
For example, in Wales, if a child was heard speaking Welsh in a classroom, they’d be given a “Welsh Not”, a wooden plaque engraved with “WN” to hang around their neck. They’d pass it onto the next child heard speaking Welsh, and whoever had the Welsh Not at the end of the day was punished – usually with a beating.
Kernewek was revived after a long hard struggle by the Cornish folk, and is now being taught again, but a lot about it has been lost because everyone who grew up speaking it has died.
And languages are never revived “just because.” The language of a place can offer so much insight into its history, so if you’re content to let a language die then you’re content to let history die.
People talk about “dead” languages as if they dwindle away gradually, naturally coming to an end and evolving into something else, but that’s rarely the case. Languages like Cymraeg and Gaelige and especially Kernewek didn’t have the chance to die with dignity, they were literally beaten out of my parents and grandparents.
Is it any wonder every other country hate the English? We invade their country, steal their history, claim pieces of their history as ours or flat out re-write it, and kill every part of their culture that we can.
It’s a miracle that any of the Celtic languages survived, so even if you don’t see the point in keeping them alive, the actual natives of each country we’ve fucked over are clinging onto what heritage they have left through the only thing they can: their language.
Hey OP, póg mo thóin!
*snerk* xD
I would like to point all of these “just let it die” assholes directly at Hebrew.
The language was effectively dead. It had been murdered and forced-assimilated away.
But there was this dude named Ben Yehuda.
And he said “no.”
“The language of my people for four thousand years or more,” he said, “should not stop existing because of a bunch of assholes.” (Okay, this is a dramatic retelling. He probably didn’t actually say assholes.)
So he started an official movement to recreate Hebrew as closely as possible to how it had been spoken about a thousand years prior.
Today, ancient Hebrew is spoken by millions of Jews around the world weekly in our prayers and Torah readings, and modern Hebrew is the official language of eight and a half million people–many of them having been born speaking it as a first language. Many people in the first group also speak at least some modern Hebrew–and it’s possible you do, too! A lot of loan words from Hebrew and Yiddish have made their way into English (like klutz, mensch, and kibitz).
That’s hardly “on life support.” Hebrew is growing, living, and thriving because of the Enlightenment efforts of the 1800s. The same COULD be done for languages like Welsh, Navajo, and Basque if the larger powers that be said “this is important” rather than forcing a giant bastion of culture–the language in which a people lived, loved, thought, told stories, and explained their world–to die.
I’d like to go back on something I said earlier.. as long as it’s the correct spelling or term where you live, it’s correct. Dialects and spelling/term differences don’t make you superior. I now realize that’s a stupid ass mindset to have. Unless you’re doing so as a joke to poke fun at someone..but if you’re doing it seriously and without a shred of irony, stop.
I started Hebrew, which is why I’ve been dead on this blog, but I don’t think I can ever properly convey to you guys the sheer cultural whiplash of spending years learning Japanese from Japanese teachers and then trying to learn Hebrew from an Israeli
Japanese: you walk into class already apologizing for being alive Hebrew: you walk into class, the teacher insults you and you are expected to insult her back
Japanese: conjugates every single verb based on degree of intended politeness, nevermind keigo and honorifics Hebrew: Someone asked my teacher how to say “excuse me” and she laughed for several seconds before saying we shouldn’t worry about remembering that since we’ll never need to say it
Japanese: if you get one stroke wrong the entire kanji is incomprehensible Hebrew: cursive? script? fuck it do whatever you want, you don’t even have to write the vowels out unless you feel like it
Japanese: the closest thing there is to ‘bastard’ is an excessively direct ‘you’ pronoun Hebrew: ‘bitch’ translates directly
Fun fact: Israel has possibly the lowest power-distance metric of any culture in the world, while Japan has one of the highest. I didn’t realize that the CTO of my company was the CTO until somebody else told me, because everybody called him by his first name and engaged in mutual shit-talking/playful insults with him.
In Japan, even calling your boss by the wrong honorific is liable to get you in trouble.
And apparently there’s some sciencey cooperative venture going on between Israel and Japan in an official diplomatic capacity. I want to be a fly on the wall when Japanese and Israeli scientists work together.
ifesbob 