blingās notes #1: where have all the languages gone?
initially, i thought of doing a more cohesive summary for these chapters. but as i tend to post handwritten notes (and not easily readable), i thought i would just throw up my notes from my reading of vanishing voices through this semester. i may or may not make separate posts about what i write, but please feel free to engage with anything i put down. :-] bolded points are for my own clarity for assignments
Language death is occurring more rapidly in the last five hundred years (Ubkyh, Manx, Catwaba Sioux). Even 100 years can be the difference between a thriving language, and a dead one. page 2
Languages begin to die once younger generations do not speak it at home in lieu of another dominant tongue. In the case of Esenc, his sons did not speak his, but Turkish. Irish was a stable language, with the third greatest collection of literature after latin and greek in west europe, but lack of home usage has brought uncertainty to the language's future. page 4
point 1 : The terms of language death. do languages die naturally ? should we characterize these extinctions as murders ? linguicide? (language suicide also noted, but that places the onus on the community, where most times, it is the devouring from another language that wipes out a community // self correct: natural disasters / disease can also contribute). death is not random nor sudden page 5 & page 7
el salvador in 1932, stopped speaking native tongues to not be identified as indigenous, but that contributed to a loss of heritage (page 5)
point 2 : linguistic diversity = cultural diversity, conversely, linguistic homogenity is cultural homogenity page 7
Paraguay only south american country with indigenous language retained by most of population, guaranĆ (page 8)
diversity in language study gives us more information about the linguistic and cultural experiences that humans have had worldwide page 11
smaller languages lend themselves to more grammatical complexity, especially when retained with in group communication (no need for 'simplification' for the masses?, can be more detailed with ideas) .. likened to jargon in subject circles to be more accurate (page 12)
point 3: do plants / animals hold more weight over languages when it comes to preservation ? are languages not seen as sacred? (page 15)
usefulness of language = west economic value (page 16)
the privilege of monolingualism, and the unsurprising and violent emergence of english as the world's lingua franca (page 18) // unity in tongue is not unity in thought
Rupert Murdoch responsible for spread of Hindi through asian tv channel Star (page 19)
politics are involved in eventual language death, stemming from linguistic persecution through laws (page 22)
point 4: page 23 : to preserve ourselves, our language, our heritage, is a selfish goal ... challenging that ... why is it selfish to preserve ourselves ? who are we if we are not ourselves ? if we do not care for ourselves ? how can we tend to others if we do not also tend to our own needs? there must be a boundary for caring for oneself vs indulging oneself ALWAYS before someone else // this seems like a privileged stance, especially when there are so many peoples fighting for their languages to be left alone, fighting for validity, fighting for the chance to raise their children in their own tongues.
where is the public perception of the importance of preventing language extinction, allowing those on the brink to be saved, and ending the persecution of languages that are not the Big 3?
