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Aramaic, a Semitic language related to Hebrew and Arabic, was the common tongue of the entire Middle East when the Middle East was the crossroads of the world. People used it for commerce and government across territory stretching from Egypt and the Holy Land to India and China. Parts of the Bible and the Jewish Talmud were written in it; the original "writing on the wall," presaging the fall of the Babylonians, was composed in it. As Jesus died on the cross, he cried in Aramaic, "Elahi, Elahi, lema shabaqtani?" ("My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?")
But Aramaic is down now to its last generation or two of speakers, most of them scattered over the past century from homelands where their language once flourished. In their new lands, few children and even fewer grandchildren learn it. (My father, a Jew born in Kurdish Iraq, is a native speaker and scholar of Aramaic; I grew up in Los Angeles and know just a few words.) This generational rupture marks a language's last days. For field linguists like Khan, recording native speakers—"informants," in the lingo—is both an act of cultural preservation and an investigation into how ancient languages shift and splinter over time.
In a highly connected global age, languages are in die-off. Fifty to 90 percent of the roughly 7,000 languages spoken today are expected to go silent by century's end. We live under an oligarchy of English and Mandarin and Spanish, in which 94 percent of the world's population speaks 6 percent of its languages. Yet among threatened languages, Aramaic stands out. Arguably no other still-spoken language has fallen farther.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/how-to-save-a-dying-language-4143017/?all
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 31 2019, @03:10PM (19 children)
but don't insist on new people speaking dying languages.
both english and spanish are splitting into new languages right now, so it's not like the future will be too boring...
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 31 2019, @03:36PM
Given how enough people voluntarily learn to speak Klingon, Quenia etc.; to keep a language alive, or resurrect a dead one, you just need to find a way to attach a proper sort of incentive to it.
If the language associates with the social group "old losers", on the other hand, then it gets to die. The only way to save it, is re-associate it with something better, or at least more fun.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by nitehawk214 on Wednesday July 31 2019, @04:07PM (11 children)
I always notice these language hipsters crying over dying languages want other people to speak it as a first language. Wouldn't want to isolate themselves and their children.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 31 2019, @04:42PM (10 children)
In Europe, children routinely learn 3-4 languages and no one makes a big deal out of it.
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 31 2019, @05:06PM (9 children)
Of course, one of those languages has to be English.
I've already got that one covered.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 31 2019, @05:46PM (8 children)
To know just one single spoken language, is analogous to knowing just one single programming language.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 31 2019, @06:47PM (7 children)
Not really. Programming languages can be learned (and forgotten) in about a week. So I don't bother. If I ever need FORTRAN, I'll figure it out in a couple days.
A second language on the other hand is a major life choice that either *you* make or the people before you made.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 31 2019, @08:34PM (3 children)
and common everyday dictionary is an order of magnitude smaller than say Qt API. You let other people hypnotize you with "major life choice" bullshit, you just hobble your brain with unfounded fear of learning. Hereabouts, schoolchildren who chat between themselves in a three-language mix would not even understand what you bellyache about.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 31 2019, @10:00PM (2 children)
Look, to be FLUENT in a language is a major commitment.
It requires a lot of continual practice with other native speakers.
If on the other hand your goal is to be able to "get by" as a visitor to another country, then yes, the time commitment is much less.
It is my experience that people who claim to speak "3 or more languages" typically do not speak more than one of those very well. Maybe 2 at most.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 31 2019, @10:54PM (1 child)
I can only pity the narrowness of your experience.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 01 2019, @04:48AM
And I can only be amazed at your level of smugness.
I speak multiple languages myself, to varying degrees of fluency, which is why I am calling BS on your breezy little posts.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by c0lo on Thursday August 01 2019, @01:17AM (2 children)
There are paradigms that simply can't be supported by some languages - in other words, the "1984" Newspeak is a right approach for the purpose (and frightening):
Imagine trying to understand or think:
when all you can speak is BASIC (and basic English).
Yes, once you grok the above, chances are** learning and programming in any other language is a piece of cake, but practicing the concepts above in some of their "natural programming language" beforehand helps.
---
** no strong warranties. Try Malbolge [wikipedia.org] if you are inclined to disagree.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Friday August 02 2019, @02:35PM (1 child)
Your .sig is especially relevant to this conversation. :)
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 02 2019, @04:49PM
Except it's a footnote.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by DannyB on Wednesday July 31 2019, @06:28PM (2 children)
I wonder if they are simply splitting into dialects as opposed to languages?
Dialects are always a result of geography.
There is New York Upspeak, Southern Drawl, British English, and a subtle but detectable "Canadian" dialect, and then don't get me started on Australian. Oy saw a snike! Eat head beeg blow eyes and a huge tile!
No matter which dialect you hear, you would still describe it as "English", and be able to understand it.
In verses 5-6 of Judges 12 [biblegateway.com] in the old testament, there is an example of dialects. Whether you could pronounce "Shibboleth" or "Sibboleth" determined whether you got to live or die. The Hebrew letter ש pronounced either shin or sin, when read aloud makes either an "s" or an "sh" sound in a word. In modern use, the markings place a dot over the upper right or upper left to indicate which pronunciation should be used. Other markings are to indicate where vowels are pronounced, since all 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet are consonants. The modern markings make it unnecessary to airlift in shipments of vowels.
Maybe English and Spanish are splitting into other languages? Something largely unrecognizable to common English speakers.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 31 2019, @07:21PM
First it's dialects, then it's different languages. Just ask the Spanish and the Italians and the Portuguese about their Latin.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 31 2019, @08:32PM
Not quite. It has more to do with isolation of interactions. If I listen to an American talk (only receiving sound), I bet I can tell whether he is black or not.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 31 2019, @09:45PM (2 children)
Nobody suggests forcing people to learn dying languages, the usual focus is on preservation so that they're available in the future for people to study or learn. Learning classical Latin would be largely pointless for every day living as it lacks a significant amount of vocabulary for things that we do. And it gets worse with each passing year.
That's the nature of a dead language, there may be folks that can speak it, but it's not changing or evolving and there's limited ability to use it in any context.
(Score: 2) by martyb on Thursday August 01 2019, @04:54AM (1 child)
For everyday use, yes, I would agree there's not much need for that.
But then the second sentence took it a bit too far. Medical terminology (especially anatomy) is *rife* with words of Latin origin. I'm tempted to add organic chemistry but could be convinced there is a greater Greek than Latin influence there. Taxonomy (is that the right word? Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order,...) certainly has many Latin influences, as well. So, no, I do not regularly see doctors chatting in Latin, but I would dare say that having a working knowledge of the language would be a huge help in any studies in those fields.
My knowledge of Latin is quite limited, but I did teach myself how to read some Ancient Greek. That sure opened my eyes! Words that used to be a memorized sequence of letters and sounds suddenly took on new meaning when I learned the underlying words on which they were based. Off the top of my head example: What's the perimeter of something? Peri- means about or around. -meter means to measure. So, in this case, the perimeter would be, roughly, how far around it is. Forgive the less than mindblowing example, but it is hot and late so it will have to suffice. Hmmm. Suffice. Suffix. So, Suff- probably means at the end. And -ice waves hands about being or having the quality of. So, something about being at the end. And so I am. =)
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday August 01 2019, @02:10PM
Definitely agree with most of this. FYI:
Suffix is from Latin suffixus ("something fastened on"), the past participle of suffigere, which means "to fasten onto/under" from sub- + figere "to fasten." (Think of other words like affix and even fix, which mean to, well, "fix to/fasten" or "fix.")
Whereas suffice is ultimately from Latin sufficere, which means "to put under, to supply as substitute" and figuratively "to be adequate," from sub- + facere (often turns into -ficere in compounds) "to make/do."
Hint for etymology: words with su- followed by double letters are often combining forms in Latin using sub- + some other root word, where the b gets lost/transformed. And a huge number of English words come from Latin facere and its derivatives -- facere had dozens of different meanings in Latin depending on context, and with all the various compounds formed with prefixes, you get well over a hundred meanings in Latin that migrated in various ways to English, as noted in this table [wikipedia.org]. Actually, that table is really useful, as it makes clear that if you learn about a dozen Latin verbs and their combining forms, you'll see them in an enormous number of English words and thereby know where the words come from.