Re: O membranza, sì cara e fatal...

Leo Caesius wrote:

>      So, while Italian is by no means an international auxiliary language,
> it has its uses and has left its imprint.  Even if we were not to judge
> Italian on its many aesthetic and cultural qualities, there would be no
> shortage of reasons for which Italian will continue to thrive
No, there's no doubt about that.  But I wouldn't be so sure about the
"dialects", what are actually distinct languages like Neapolitan or Venetian.
I wouldn't be surprised if these languages died out in the next century or so.

>      "Languages do not die easily."
>      And, even if they do die, what's to stop some nutcase from reviving
> them and giving them a second life?
This does, of course, assume that there is enough knowledge of what
the language was like to even begin such a project.  Hebrew is a statistical
outlier;  very few languages are privileged with such an abundant literature
or a people so totally dedicated to reading and learning and understanding it
as a language and not just as a conveyor of culture (which it is too, of course).

>      My personal thought is that a movement to revive a language has a
> better chance to succeed than a movement which promotes a language which was
> never spoken (such as our constructed languages).
That's probably true.  But neither are terribly likely, for the reasons I
mentioned above.

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Tom Wier   |     "Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."
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