Re: Survival of minority languages (was Re: World English (was: ...))

I previously sent this message but it seems it couldn't be received.
  I try again
Actually I think in a lab experience english would perdure
but the growing number on conlang and people wanting to create
conworlds and consocieties
looks to me like an urge of a babel way to smash down the  tower of
globalisation
and the power of the internet and global communication promotes this
mouvement, the same way it promotes inuktitut or welsh.

It's true that english is a marvellous auxlang, and it is so as long
as you don't meet any native speaker.
if you do, you're suddenly an "underspeaker". If english succeeds to
become a real internationnal language, disconnected from the language
spoken in england or US
it could perdure, but i'm affraid a now falling of the US empire,
would make people reject english or beeing helped in this rejection
thru all kind of nationnalism.
Erb

Le 28 déc. 08 à 19:29, Jörg Rhiemeier a écrit :

> Hallo!
>
> On Fri, 26 Dec 2008 09:01:23 +0000, R A Brown wrote:
>
>> Welsh has survived because, as Jörg, observed:
>> "When it comes to chances of survival of minor languages,
>> a key issue is how much the language is considered worth
>> preserving by its own speakers, and AFAIK in Wales there
>> indeed is a strong awareness that the Welsh language is
>> worth preserving."
>>
>> An even better example, of course, is Basque which, against all odds,
>> has survived the encroachment of Romance for an even longer time that
>> Welsh has survived the encroachment of English (and Basque on the
>> French
>> side of the Pyrenees does not have the political support that is
>> currently enjoyed by Welsh).
>
> As for my conlangs:
>
> I make a similar assumption for the modern Albic languages.
> These languages are spoken by small groups in the UK and
> Ireland, also in Iceland and on the Azores, Madeira and
> Canary Islands.  They survived where other, larger languages
> died out: there is one Albic language in Somerset and another
> in Yorkshire where Celtic has disappeared long ago, also
> at least one on the Canaries where Guanche is as dead as a
> dodo.
>
> How did the Albic languages survive pressure from English
> and Spanish which was too much for more widely spoken
> languages (Celtic, Berber) which moved in after the
> Commonwealth of the Elves fell?  The reason is that at all
> times, the surviving Elvish communities never considered
> their own languages outdated rustic patois, but an asset
> to carry forth into the future.  They have always been
> aware of their value.  After the fall of the Commonwealth,
> the Elves became something like an ethnic minority cum
> secret society.  (Some people here perhaps remember John
> Fisher's Anta, to mention a similar concept.)  They always
> remembered that they were the offspring of a once great
> civilization and the heirs of a rich cultural heritage
> to be handed down from generation to generation.
>
> ... brought to you by the Weeping Elf