Dying Languages

Great post from Abiola on attempts to preserve Ladino, a kind of Spanish Yiddish and how such efforts are probably futile. This certainly strikes a chord with the ongoing campaign here to preserve the Irish language.

Those who seek to preserve dying languages ought to ask themselves if they aren't trying to keep others frozen in the ways of the past for their own edification and entertainment, like so many animals on a game reserve. Languages live, change and die all the time, and it's far too tempting to make a fetish of their preservation when there are so many more worthy objectives to which time and energy can be devoted.

There are two principal problems here:

1) The only way a language can survive and thrive is by demand, not command. Heavy-handed government efforts to force children to learn minority languages or reward their use, apart from infringing on principles of individual choice and equal treatment, tend to be counterproductive and actually speed up the very decline they purport to stem. This has been the Irish experience up until the last decade or so.

2) As Abiola notes, There is a significant benefit to learning "majority languages". Speaking English or Spanish fluently opens up myriad possibilities for an individual, the same is true to a slightly lesser extent for Portuguese and French. Wider usage of minority languages, outside of middle class enthusiasts, is necessarily at the expense of learning and using such "majority languages".

If a language dies out, it is because insufficient numbers of people see a benefit in keeping it going. It may be regrettable but language enthusiasts would do better to record those dying languages for prosperity before they die naturally instead of maintaining them in the equivalent of a persistent vegetative state.

Comments

[Jon Ihle]

I'm not sure that applying yourself to a minority language always comes at the expense of a majority language, although I think the reverse is true. It is possible to speak one thing at home and another in public. And languages, as a key part of culture, are worth the effort of preservation. Coercion is a related issue, but not the only one at play here.

My grandmother spoke Yiddish exclusively - as did the other 200,000 people of Brownsville, Brooklyn in the 1920s - until she went to school. Two generations later all I have to show of the mama loshen are a few dozen words and the occasional bout of Woody Allen-style meshugass. This represents a radical break with the past - if not with history - and that has not-insignificant consequences. I want my 40 acres and a mule! (Oh, wait. That's someone else's birthright. You see what I mean!)

[Frank McGahon]

I'm not sure that applying yourself to a minority language always comes at the expense of a majority language

I'm not saying that it always comes at the expense of the majority language at an individual level but in aggregate that's what happens. Learning a language is an "expensive" time investment. Most people won't bother with more than one, so if you promote minority languages and succeed in spreading usage outside of middle class/higher educated homes (more likely to sustain more than one language) you are going to reduce majority language usage and consequent opportunities for those people.

[Jon Ihle]

You're assuming that speaking a minority language requires learning it as a second-language. If you're preserving - rather than promoting - there is no expensive time investment. Ask anyone who grew up in a bilingual household: it takes no extra effort to acquire two languages.

[Frank McGahon]

Not at all, I'm referring to the aim to widen minority language use outside of the traditional areas. For many families it wouyld be similar to learning a second language.. In any case the same applies to those families who have traditionally used the minority language. There is still a hassle in using two languages regularly. people who are motivated will make the effort, those who aren't won't and the less-regularly-used language will wither.

[Peter Nolan]

There's probably more fluent speakers of Chinese in Dublin than there are of Irish. Maybe it's time to recognise it as a minority and specialist interest.

Virtually none of the second and subsequent generations of Chinese immigrants born in Britain or America seem to keep up either the spoken or written language, which surprised me. I suppose if everyone's studying in medical school, there's no time!