avatar4321
09-18-2007, 05:21 PM
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070918/ap_on_re_us/endangered_languages
I think this is what stood out to me:
"When we lose a language, we lose centuries of human thinking about time, seasons, sea creatures, reindeer, edible flowers, mathematics, landscapes, myths, music, the unknown and the everyday."
As many as half of the current languages have never been written down, he estimated.
That means, if the last speaker of many of these vanished tomorrow, the language would be lost because there is no dictionary, no literature, no text of any kind, he said.
While I think its sad when we lose languages, I cant really help but wonder, if the language isnt written down, no one speaks it, nothing is written in it, what exactly have we lost?
Doesnt a language have to actually leave some knowledge to be lost, before we have lost something?
And if the people who are speaking the language are dying out, dont they have a responsibility for ensuring the language can be translated after their passing? Shouldnt they be responsible for creating a dictionary, a written language, a pronounciation key, if there is none?
I think this is what stood out to me:
"When we lose a language, we lose centuries of human thinking about time, seasons, sea creatures, reindeer, edible flowers, mathematics, landscapes, myths, music, the unknown and the everyday."
As many as half of the current languages have never been written down, he estimated.
That means, if the last speaker of many of these vanished tomorrow, the language would be lost because there is no dictionary, no literature, no text of any kind, he said.
While I think its sad when we lose languages, I cant really help but wonder, if the language isnt written down, no one speaks it, nothing is written in it, what exactly have we lost?
Doesnt a language have to actually leave some knowledge to be lost, before we have lost something?
And if the people who are speaking the language are dying out, dont they have a responsibility for ensuring the language can be translated after their passing? Shouldnt they be responsible for creating a dictionary, a written language, a pronounciation key, if there is none?