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Languages are going extinct. Good, bad, or indifferent?

What do you think of the fact that languages are dying out?

  • It's a good thing.

    Votes: 9 20.9%
  • It's a bad thing.

    Votes: 3 7.0%
  • It's a little of both.

    Votes: 18 41.9%
  • It's neither.

    Votes: 11 25.6%
  • I don't know.

    Votes: 2 4.7%

  • Total voters
    43
And that's what makes English marvelous--it's a melting-pot language. Because it's more fluid than other languages, it thrives.

And I don't remember who posted this earlier, but
Latin isn't quite dead.



Quite a few Catholics do use Latin, eh?
 
True, but you will always have a plurality of languages.

The languages that are going extinct are you know, things like amazonian rainforest tribal language that is spoken by 300 people. A worthless language with no real alphabet, great works of literature, etc. In all things, those people would be better served by learning portugesse.

Or some other such languages. So no language that has a decent population on the map isn't going extinct and won't go extinct. Just the languages that are... you know... pointless.
Anyway, this isn't good or bad. It's neither. It's just the march of time.



No one can stop time and/or change.

Not yet, anyhoo.
 
And that's what makes English marvelous--it's a melting-pot language. Because it's more fluid than other languages, it thrives.

And I don't remember who posted this earlier, but Latin isn't quite dead.

My kids are all taking Latin in school. It isn't a conversational language but it's an awesome language. I studied Latin in HS and kicked ass on my verbal SATs because of it. To this day when I don't know what a word means I wonder if it's from the Latin, and find that it usually is, and then I can figure it out.
 
Irish is not the official language I was told from an Irishman recently. If everything in Ireland is spoken in English then their language may too be slowly dying out!
 
So the obvious question is, who the hell do you think you are?
Next question is, what are you growing in that orchard?

I am Bodi!

That is a park. Rugby, Cricket and Soccer Fields...

This is the view from our porch and on the beach looking towards where I took that pic.

IMG_3877.jpg

IMG_0708.jpg

Nice scenery.

Looks like it might be a good place for a volcano to erupt some day.

It is active too...
 
I personally don't care, but I do think that it's a good thing because common understanding among people is a net positive. If we all speak the same languages, we can all communicate and lack of communication is a major factor in a lot of the world's problems. I'm not particularly enamored with culture, I think that culture ought to continue to evolve and change and improve and bad cultures, cultures that can't make the cut in the modern world, they ought to die. Good riddance to them. We need to keep moving forward, not cling to the past.
 
Quite a few Catholics do use Latin, eh?

Not that I know of. But--nota bene- attorneys and physicians and horticulturalists/botanists, and other researchers and educated people do.
 
My kids are all taking Latin in school. It isn't a conversational language but it's an awesome language. I studied Latin in HS and kicked ass on my verbal SATs because of it. To this day when I don't know what a word means I wonder if it's from the Latin, and find that it usually is, and then I can figure it out.

And whether they think about it, people use Latin every day...whether they're drawing a per diem or serving on an ad hoc committee or offering someone a quid pro quo or writing "for example" or "that is to say" in abbreviated form as e.g. and i.e.

Why Do Plants Have Latin Names? | Your Hub for Southern Culture
 
And whether they think about it, people use Latin every day...whether they're drawing a per diem or serving on an ad hoc committee or offering someone a quid pro quo or writing "for example" or "that is to say" in abbreviated form as e.g. and i.e.

Why Do Plants Have Latin Names? | Your Hub for Southern Culture

A lot of that has just been adopted into English. Latin isn't a conversational language today, it's just bits and pieces used in other languages.
 
I didn't claim it remains a conversational language; I said it's used every day.
 
I didn't claim it remains a conversational language; I said it's used every day.

Except it isn't, it's become English-ized. Those are just English words derived from Latin.
 
They are Latin words used in an English context, if anything.

1ad hoc adverb \ˈad-ˈhäk, -ˈhōk; ˈäd-ˈhōk\Definition of AD HOC
: for the particular end or case at hand without consideration of wider application

Origin of AD HOC
Latin, for this
First Known Use: 1659


Ad hoc - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary

All of English comes from other languages, just like virtually all modern languages. It doesn't matter where it started, it matters where it ended up. Latin didn't survive as a spoken language, only fragments of it survived elsewhere.
 
Except it isn't, it's become English-ized. Those are just English words derived from Latin.

No, the English translation for "per diem" is "per day," which is easier to say, and yet the Latin is used. When you abbreviate "exempli gratia" or "id est," those are Latin abbreviations rather than Anglicized words. Sometimes, the Latin is easier to write--e.g. "differentia" rather than "differentiation." And then there are the phrases such as the one I used this morning in an e-mail--"ex cathedra" (referring to the occasional conversation I need to have with my kids).
 
Except it isn't, it's become English-ized. Those are just English words derived from Latin.

Yeesh.
English is a Germanic language, not a Latin one. There's a bunch of Latin words because of the French influence but Latin has not been 'english-ized'(you might mean Anglicized). Latin is the root of Romance languages- Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese.
 
Quite a few Catholics do use Latin, eh?

I have aunts who think the church went the way of Satan when they stopped saying Mass in Latin.

You don't want to argue with my aunts.
 
I haven't seen a thread on this and thought it was kind of interesting.

There was a report recently that up to half of the world's currently spoken languages are in danger of dying out in the next century. Here's an article about it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/world/18cnd-language.html

The article paints it as a bad thing, but I'm not so sure it is. Fewer languages being spoken around the world means communication with other people gets easier.

What do you think?

Great thing! I look forward to a more homogenous world and I earnestly look forward to the day when mankind is united by one language.
 
Great thing! I look forward to a more homogenous world and I earnestly look forward to the day when mankind is united by one language.

Me too.

And that language should of course be Albanian.
 
I voted 'neither' because it's inevitable. It has been happening since time immemorial. Languages evolve, become more complex, then simplify, then some become lingua franca beyond mother-tongue speakers, and some become obsolete and disappear. I don't think it's something that can be changed through the actions of governments, but the popular will can change the trajectory of a language.
 
My only concern is all the untranslated data that gets discovered. Otherwise, I think it's great that people are throwing away their dumb language for something more sensible.
 
I haven't seen a thread on this and thought it was kind of interesting.

There was a report recently that up to half of the world's currently spoken languages are in danger of dying out in the next century. Here's an article about it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/world/18cnd-language.html

The article paints it as a bad thing, but I'm not so sure it is. Fewer languages being spoken around the world means communication with other people gets easier.

What do you think?

I think it fits in right along with grammar. In the English language, good grammar is becoming obsolete.
 
I haven't seen a thread on this and thought it was kind of interesting.

There was a report recently that up to half of the world's currently spoken languages are in danger of dying out in the next century. Here's an article about it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/world/18cnd-language.html

The article paints it as a bad thing, but I'm not so sure it is. Fewer languages being spoken around the world means communication with other people gets easier.

What do you think?

Natural evolution. There's not been an infinitely stable language yet, everything changes, everything evolves.
 
And that's what makes English marvelous--it's a melting-pot language. Because it's more fluid than other languages, it thrives.

And I don't remember who posted this earlier, but Latin isn't quite dead.

For sure. I'm learning it right now specifically to be able to read Cicero, Caesar and other Roman writers without the aid of a translation. My daughter is taking it in college.

As to the original question. There are thousands of dead language. They evolve and die just like species. It's the way of the world.
 
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