Re: NATLANG: English Homework - Keeping alive languages of minorities?

I saw an article yesterday (I'll dig it up) discussing the decline of
indigenous languages, for example in Madagascar there are 23 such
langauges but they are declining rapidly since Portuguese became the
official language upon thier independence in '75.  They adopted the
language of thier colonial oppressors, and it's killing off thier own
tongues despite efforts to save them.  How ironic.  Even Prussian is
dead as a spoken language, I did find a website once that had all the
known constructions of Prussian, but no one actually speaks it anymore.
In America, bilingualism would probably be dead already if not for
Hispanic immigration,  we tend to be so culturally short sighted.  Until
a few years ago, we didn't even start teaching foreign languages until
high school, while research shows that a person's ability to learn
language declines after age 11.  We've missed the boat all these years.
I've always spoken a little Spanish around my kids, but they never
really seemed to pick it up.  Until this year, when my 16 year old began
studying Spanish in HS.  Where six months ago I could answer the phone
in Spanish and hear "what dad?"  she now spits it right back at me.  She
told me "I'm suprised how easy it is!"  I'm guessing it's because she's
heard the patterns and structures all her life, it's just now coming
together with formal training.  Hope it works with the Russian and Farsi
too.
  One of you mentioned cultural domination of "advanced" cultures over
"primitive" cultures.  I think it's a very primitive culture that would
allow, even force, the richness of a language to die out from our
world.  The article on Madagascar suggested that when a language falls
out of use, culture traditions and even survival techniques die along
with it.  They gave as an example some of the isolated island tribes off
of India, they spaek languages that are in danger of disappearing, but
they still still speak and still preserve thier culture, isolated as
they are.  Their language and the cultural and environmental wisdom
preserved therein showed them the subtle changes in the environment
which warned them to higher ground- just before the tsunami hit.  It was
speculated that without the knowledge preserved within and intrinsically
linked to thier native tongue they too would have been washed away.
Just some rambling random thoughts!  Good day!
G L King

Roger Mills wrote:

>Carsten:
>I didn't get the same impression as David P., though perhaps the analogy was
>imperfectly drawn, w.r.t. language loss in the Americas vs. Europe-- and may
>not be apt in any case.
>
>In the Americas it was a combination of (1) cultural domination (the old sad
>story of contact between "primitive" and "advanced" cultures) + (2) imperial
>motives (occupying lands that were perceived as "empty" or at least "not
>being used" by "those heathen".
>
>(1) hasn't been the case in Europe for centuries-- all Eur. cultures are
>essential equal. Only nuts and fanatics hold that [X culture] is "inferior"
>to [Our culture]. Furthermore, for a long time, the linguistic situation in
>Eur. has been essentially static--aside from Cornish, Dalmatian, and the
>Slavic languages once spoken in Prussian territory (Wendish? Polabian?), I
>don't believe any others have actually died out. Some that might have been
>called endangered 50 years ago, seem to be resisting death-- Basque, Breton,
>Provençal and even Irish. Polish, despite the country's history of
>occupation/division, continues to flourish. That IMO is because--
>
>(2) in Eur. was seldom more than attempts at territorial domination; and
>furthermore, the various invasions tended to be temporary.
>
>Switzerland ought to be the model for the new Europe--several  "official"
>languages that everyone (at least every bureaucrat, at first) learns with
>reasonable facility. There's no need, probably, for _every_ Eur. language to
>be "official", but at the same time no reason why the use of "unofficial"
>languages should be in any way discouraged or stigmatized. There's simply no
>reason why one shouldn't speak/read/write Lithuanian or Irish or whatever at
>home, but carry on international business in some other language.  It will
>involve an interesting conjunction of provincialism/nationalism vs.
>internationalism.
>
>Eventually, perhaps, one or another lang. will be accepted as THE language
>of government and commerce (much as "Malay"--a minority L1 but widely used
>as lingua franca) was adopted as the national language of Indonesia. But
>unlike there, it need not become by choice or fiat, the language of the
>majority of the people, merely an auxiliary tool.
>
>(Note too that Indonesian, because it presents itself as the only means of
>access to "modern" (read: Western) culture, combined with a bit of Javanese
>(the actual majority people) imperialism, is driving many regional languages
>toward extinction; this need not happen in Eur. because of the basic
>cultural equality, which doesn't exist in Indonesia).
>
>Hmm-- not sure I've said anything, but maybe another perspective has
>stimulated your thinking.
>Roger :-))
>
>
>
>

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