Talk:Endangered language

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[edit] Native American

re virtually all Native American languages in danger of becoming extinct? What about Tlingit, the languages of Alaska, Zuni, Cherokee, etc.? -- Zoe

I'd still like some info about the question above. Especially Cherokee. It seems to be still thriving. -- Zoe

Yes, basically all Native American languages are endangered (although I believe that in South America the situation in many places is better — however, I know so little about that continent). If you want to learn more about this, a good place to start is here:
  • Hale, Ken; Krauss, Michael; Watahomigie, Lucille J.; Yamamoto, Akira Y.; Craig, Colette; Jeanne, LaVerne M. et al. (1992). Endangered languages. Language, 68 (1), 1-42.
Look this up at your local library. (If you cant get a hold of this for some reason, let me know. Maybe I can email a copy of it to a few folks, although I probably cant email it to a million people...). Peace.
- Ish ishwar 07:51, 2005 Feb 23 (UTC)
One point about Navajo: It is often reported that Navajo is a thriving language and that this language has the most native speakers of all other indigeneous languages in North America. This is true. However, it is also true that there are not as many children learning Navajo as there were, say, 40 years ago. So, if this is true of Navajo, it is very very true of so many other languages. - Ish ishwar 00:36, 2005 Mar 5 (UTC)

The list of Native American endangered languages in the Endangered Languages article seems odd. It includes Catawba (which is apparently extinct, not endangered) and Klamath-Modoc (most probably also extinct, it had one single speaker in 1998), as well as Lakota, a dialect of a language with more than 26,000 speakers. An expert on the subject should probably check the list. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.226.87.165 (talk) 14:24, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] quote from "Endangered languages"

Since I feel that this is important, I am providing a quote from the above mentioned paper (1st 4 paragraphs) in the hopes that others will be intrigued enough to take a look:

"Like most people who have done linguistic field work for thirty years or so, I have worked on languages which are extinct, eight of them in my case, and I have studied, and continue to study, many languages which are seriously imperiled. My experience is far from unusual, and the testimony of field workers alone would amply illustrate the extent of language loss in the world of the present era.
"It is reasonable, I suppose, to ask what difference it makes. On the one hand, one might say, language loss has been a reality throughout history; and on the other, the loss of a language is of no great moment either for science or for human intellectual life.
"I think, personally, that these ideas are wrong and that language loss is a serious matter. Or, more accurately, it is part of a process which is itself very serious.
"From what I have been able to learn, based on the model of early-modern and contemporary hunting and gathering and mobile agricultural peoples, the process of language loss throughout most of human history, i.e. the period prior to the development of large states and empires, has been attended by a period of grammatical merger in situations of multilingualism, in geographically confined areas, and among quite small communties—as, for example, in parts of Arnhem Land and Cape York Peninsula, Australia, and in the bilingual Sumu and Miskitu communties of Central America. By contrast, language loss in the modern period is of a different character, in its extent and in its implications. It is part of a much larger process of LOSS OF CULTURAL AND INTELLECTUAL DIVERSITY in which politically dominant languages and cultures simply overwhelm indigenous local languages and cultures, placing them in a condition which can only be described as embattled. The process is not unrelated to the simultaneous loss of diversity in the zoological and botanical worlds. An ecological analogy is not altogether inappropriate. We understand to some extent the dangers inherent in the loss of biological diversity on this earth. It is correct to ask, I think, whether there are also dangers inherent in the loss of linguistic diversity...." (Hale et al. 1992: 1-2)

And another bit:

"Of supreme significance in relation to linguistic diversity, and to local languages in particular, is the simple truth that language—in the general, multifaceted sense—embodies the intellectual wealth of the people who use it. A language and the intellectual productions of its speakers are often inseparable, in fact. Some forms of verbal art—verse, song, or chant—depend crucially on morphological and phonological, even syntactic, properties of the language in which it is formed. In such cases the art could not exist without the language, quite literally. Even where the dependency is not so organic as this, an intellectual tradition may be so thoroughly a part of a people's linguistic ethnography as to be, in effect, inseparable from the language.
"In this circumstance, there is a certain tragedy for the human purpose. The loss of local languages, and of the cultural systems that they express, has meant irretrievable loss of diverse and interesting intellectual wealth, the priceless products of human mental industry. The process of language loss is ongoing. Many linguistic field workers have had, and will continue to have, the experience of bearing witness to the loss, for all time, of a language and of the cultural products which the language served to express for the intellectual nourishment of its speakers..." (Hale et al. 1992: 36)

The essays in this article are the following:

  • On endangered languages and the safeguarding of diversity.
  • The world's languages in crisis.
  • Local reactions to perceived language decline.
  • A constitutional response to language endangerment: The case of Nicaragua.
  • An institutional response to language endangerment: A proposal for a Native American Language Center.
  • Doing Mayan linguistics in Guatemala.
  • Language endangerment and the human value of linguistic diversity.

Happy languaging! - Ish ishwar 00:41, 2005 Mar 5 (UTC)

[edit] Yiddish

I coulda sworn Yiddish was on the endangered list? Or is it not-quite-endangered-yet? -Penta 07:09, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC) Nope, as far as I know it's going quite well, mainly among smaller communities outside of Israel. I think quite a few Orthadox in Israel speak it as well, but I'm not sure.

[edit] quote

here is quote from a SIL paper:

“The only person I have left to talk to is a linguist and talking to a linguist is no fun.” — Amerindian woman’s comment to Joshua Fishman (Fishman 2000:24)

  • Fishman, Joshua A. 2000. Reversing language shift: RLS theory and practice revisited. Assessing ethnolinguistic vitality: Theory and practice: Selected papers from the third International Language Assessment Conference, ed. by Gloria Kindell and M. Paul Lewis, 1–25. Dallas: SIL International.

[edit] Non-factoidism

What does this mean?

"It is unclear whether such a monolingual culture would be stable enough to actually reap such putative benefits."

This an opinion veiled in didactic irony ("it is unclear whether", meaning "I don't think"), followed by a complete POV conjecture about a future event that is at this stage entirely unpredictable ("such a monolongual culture would be stable enough...") ending in a finale of fireworks and SAT synonyms that mean, essentially, "to be profitable".

So to put it in other words, the meaning of this sentence is "I don't think, in my opinion, although this hasn't happened yet, that a monolingual culture would be more profitable than a multilingual culture."

Can this be deleted?

And by that I mean, this should be deleted because it is not a fact, but a point of view.

(though I agree with the opinion... vive la polyglossie !)

Daniel

[edit] POV paragraph?

Causes

Children in the early to mid 1900s within the current USA and Canadian states and provinces were often stolen or their family was tricked into giving them to government agency 'residential schools'.

The residential schools in the USA and Canada, then proceeded to severely abuse the Native American Children in ways that many people can not even imagine. For example, many of those Native American Indian Children would get their tongues pierced with needles as a punishment from the nuns, when ever they dared to speak their own language. The residential schools also molested the Native American Children and abused them to the point of killing them often. The children were told on a daily basis that they were not loved nor wanted by their own families or anyone in the outside world. Those children were raised by people that never viewed them as fellow human beings, only because they did not speak english and were not raised to blindly follow the religion of the day. Many adults still exist today that survived the residential school abuse.

Looks biased to me.

  • I agree, have tagged this section as WP:NPOV. Kwarizmi 17:22, 27 November 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Severe bias

This article is pure propaganda by people who think it would be just awfull if we could all talk to each other easily. It makes the assumption that if theres only one language there can be only one way of thinking. Last time I checked, ideas mattered not just the words you say them with. The article says that a one language world would be frozen and new ideas would be put down. Saying its bad for a culture to shift languages sounds like being frozen and avoiding outside ideas to me. My own oppinion is that people should choose to be like they want too and not worry about what their culture tells them to act like. The article should just state the fact that languages are going out of use and not give a sermon on how thats terrible. --74.38.99.188 23:53, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Those are some pretty strong words. I went through and read the article again, looking for the bias that you spoke of. I'm having trouble seeing what, in the actual words written, you're identifying as bias. The article does not say anything like "a one language world would be frozen and new ideas would be put down," at least not that I could find. It looks to me like the article is quite neutral and factual. Where it talks about views of endangered languages, it identifies them as views, and presents them in quite a balanced way. Maybe you could be more explicit about what you see as biased, to help us improve the article?
As an aside, running your contribution through a spell checker would help you to be taken more seriously. A contribution that's full of spelling and grammar errors communicates a degree of carelessness and disrespect to your readers that can lead to them discounting what you have to say. Just a friendly suggestion. Waitak 16:53, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] template placement - language pages, right?

Just realized this WP appliews to a lot of articles in the NorthAmNative and in the BC and other Canadian wikiprojects; as noted all are endangered; is it redundant to include this WP'stemplate on, say, Tahltan language or St'at'imcets language or Halkomelem?Skookum1 (talk) 04:17, 13 March 2008 (UTC)