{"id":477,"date":"2004-11-14T02:13:27","date_gmt":"2004-11-14T07:13:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/hoanga\/2004\/11\/14\/some-thoughts-on-dying-languages\/"},"modified":"2004-11-14T02:13:27","modified_gmt":"2004-11-14T07:13:27","slug":"some-thoughts-on-dying-languages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hoanga\/2004\/11\/14\/some-thoughts-on-dying-languages\/","title":{"rendered":"Some thoughts on Dying languages"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a439'><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n Another kudos to <a href=\"http:\/\/no-sword.sieve..net\">No Sword<\/a> for a great<br \/>\n post on dying human languages of today.  If I ever meet up with you, I should<br \/>\n buy you a beer and see what else is lurking in your head.  Here&#8217;s<br \/>\n some tidbits:\n <\/p>\n<p>\n <em><br \/>\n Learning a language isn&#8217;t like checking tuna cans for the smiling dolphin<br \/>\n symbol. It takes time and effort to get anywhere, and by that I mean hours<br \/>\n and hours every week &#8212; ideally every day &#8212; for years. Unless you are<br \/>\n already part of a dying language community, your ability to make a<br \/>\n positive contribution to it is next to nil.<br \/>\n <br \/>\n &#8230;<br \/>\n <br \/>\n So, in summary, the conditions required for so many different languages to<br \/>\n thrive are long gone, and thus the languages are dying. It&#8217;s natural.<br \/>\n It&#8217;s what you would expect based on human psychology and the current situation.<br \/>\n Still, that doesn&#8217;t mean it&#8217;s good for humanity. It&#8217;s natural for us to<br \/>\n get small pox, bear half a dozen children, and then die at 40, but most of<br \/>\n us don&#8217;t stand for that any more, either. So although language extinction<br \/>\n today is generally a natural process, we should and can still fight it.<br \/>\n <\/em>\n <\/p>\n<p>\n Good observation.  I have to say I agree completely with this<br \/>\n observation.   Unless you&#8217;re someone as talented as Kenneth Hale<br \/>\n the amount of work once can do is rather limited.  But it doesn&#8217;t<br \/>\n mean you should roll over and take it lying down.\n <\/p>\n<p>\n <a href=\"http:\/\/no-sword.sieve.net\/2004\/01\/another-day-another-article-about.html\">Read it yourself<\/a>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Another kudos to No Sword for a great post on dying human languages of today. If I ever meet up with you, I should buy you a beer and see what else is lurking in your head. Here&#8217;s some tidbits: Learning a language isn&#8217;t like checking tuna cans for the smiling dolphin symbol. It takes [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":704,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1212],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tagme"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hoanga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hoanga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hoanga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hoanga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/704"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hoanga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hoanga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hoanga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hoanga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hoanga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}