Editorial: "No use for useless Native languages"

[azndndude]

Try telling that to the thousands of American GI's whose lives were saved by the Navajo code talkers in World War Two. The Japanese never broke their code.

http://indianz.com/News/2006/013395.asp

[Redstone]

1. Ignorant assholes. I thought Oregon was a blue state? Guess not.

Redstone

[MissB]

44. We vote overwhelmingly blue.

But unfortunately once you get out of the big cities and into the rural areas, you may as well be in Kansas.

Portland voters tend to tip the scales to the blue side of things, which pisses off much of the rest of the state.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. Darned right

Also the best way to destroy a culture is to kill their language, as was done with some Native American speakers. To destroy culture is to destroy a part of ourselves.

[oscar111]

4. culture doesnt depend on language.. Sapir-Whorf disproved way

back in the 'twenties by linguists. ie, Any idea can be expressed in full, in ANY language. No need for any but ONE world language. Culture is ideas, and they can be expressed in any language.

but for. lang. teachers still make the disproven claim that such teachers are needed.

the babble of tongues is a barrier to human progress. Wastes thousands of hours of talented folks.

causes many medical errors to foreign travellers... by now that equals the Navaho usage's savings of WWtwo lives, perhaps. Not to disparage Navaho efforts, they were fine.

true, speaking an ethnic lang. creates the feeling of being "other", but that is just an emotion, not the key to being in an ethnic world. Ideas, different ones, are the key to ethnic worldviews.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

5. There is a link between language and thinking

When I speak in German, my thought process changes, and so my way of looking at things is different. I know that when I pray in Aramaic, the feeling and the meaning of what I am doing is different than when I say the same prayer in English. Mystics will tell you that the sounds made by ancient languages have an impact upon the quality of practices; this is why mantram can be in Sanskrit or wazif in Arabic rather than the equivalent in, say, English.

[oscar111]

6. do you think ideas in german that cannot be thought using english?

that, esteemed correspondent, is the test. Can you give us some such ideas right here?

Linguists found that there are no ideas that cannot be expressed in every lang. known to man.

Mystics are interesting, so i keep an open mind. I just ask them for good evidence, and listen respectfully. Open mind, and such.

I do agree some languages can express some ideas in one word , that take a sentence in english.. which helps in some poems, but i still think every idea is translatable.. so no language is needed but one world language.

such poverty... we cannot afford the waste of time that five thousand languages impose on language classes, translators, ... when skilled folks could be inventing better farming methods, refregerators, trains, medicines, etc, for human progress and the end of suffering.

[The2ndWheel]

11. End suffering?

Funny.

Why not just one corporation then? It's easier with one language, if we had one corporation, we'd know exactly where to shop.

One government would be good too.

One color of skin.

One way of thinking.

One way of living.

That sure would speed up "progress".

I know that's where we're going though.

Civilization; crushing diversity all around the globe for thousands of years.

[H2O Man]

13. Let's all wear WalMart uniforms.

We can safely express ourselves then. And end suffering with a pleasant lobotomy. There is safety in numbers, more so if those numbers are all the same.

[Sal Minella]

29. And any tune can be played on a tin whistle, so we can stop wasting

money on symphony orchestras and marching bands, and put those people to work designing better "refregerators."

[SmokingJacket]

40. Great metaphor! nt

[Bridget Burke]

14. Do you propose abolishing every language but English?

I know people fluent in several languages--not translators--who manage to do good work in intellectually demanding fields. Their jobs do not suffer simply because they lack ignorance in all languages but one. Usually, they speak multiple languages at home. Their children are learning perfect English & also learning the to speak the family's "other" language like natives.

Those of us who have expanded our minds by studying other languages may not be able to explain "why" using English alone. Therefore, you couldn't understand us.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

45. Right, the typical American is monolingual and does not understand

what it is to be proficient in more than one language.

Speaking Japanese, I pick up on things about Japan that Americans who have lived there for decades in the English-speaking ghetto haven't a clue about. When I watch Japanese movies, I can catch nuances that the subtitles cannot convey. And yes, Japanese has words for things that English cannot say in one word. Example: ijikeru. That's a verb that means "to act as if you have a poor self-image." Then there's the adjective "oshii." It's used to describe something that you could have had but don't have because you let the opportunity slip away. And English has words that have no exact Japanese equivalent: "friendly" and "frustrated" being two often-cited examples.

After spending several years in Asia, writer James Fallows wrote, in effect, that monolingual Americans tended to think of bilingualism as a form of adultery, like having a spouse and a lover. He said that actually, it's like having two children. Just because you have a second child doesn't mean that you love the first one any less, and you appreciate them for their individual differences.

[LouisianaLiberal]

23. Reading, say, Rilke in German

is much richer than reading it in English, which has its own subtleties and connotations. And it isn't just denotation that differs.

Do you think that Shakespeare's finely tuned language can be easily translated to, say, Esperanto?

As for "Linguists found that there are no ideas that cannot be expressed in every lang. known to man." read some Wittgenstein.

"such poverty... we cannot afford the waste of time that five thousand languages impose on language classes, translators, ... when skilled folks could be inventing better farming methods, refregerators, trains, medicines, etc, for human progress and the end of suffering."

I think you're throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Sounds like something Stalin might have said. Would you have art and music appreciation removed from classrooms because they don't improve our understanding of tractor manufacturing?

I would hate to live in the world you advocate. Even the neo-liberal types only advocate a one-world economic order, although I think if they could impose your ideas on the entire world and get away with it they would do so.

[Bridget Burke]

26. Shakespeare? Shouldn't his stuff be translated into Modern English?

(Yes, I realize that he WAS writing in "Modern English"--compared with Chaucer.)

I'm sure that many would prefer all those "hard words" be removed from Shakespeare. And why teach "whan that in Aprille..."? And why should scholars still learn Old English? (Well, Tolkien did pretty well with his studies of dead and/or obscure languages.)

These are not MY ideas! Shakespeare's language is the reason those plays still attract audiences--after all, he stole most of the plots. I haven't learned Old English, but I remember a lecture on Beowulf presented by a professor apparently far gone with emphysema. At the end, he roared out first few lines of Beowulf in Anglo-Saxon & my hair stood on end.

[LouisianaLiberal]

31. Sounds like a memorable moment.

You made me realize how much I miss some of my old professors and their wonderful idiosyncrasies.

When I was nineteen and trying to impress my future ex-wife, I practiced pronouncing the Prologue in Middle English and recited the first thirty lines or so one night. She was impressed, and we became engaged shortly thereafter. Seems a litte silly now, but it was one of the best nights of my young life, and I would do it again without a second thought if I were fortunate enough to find myself in that situation again.

Perhaps I should have adopted the poster's thinking, and read to her the industrial standards and federal codes for manufacturing radial tires.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

35. gemuetlichkeit

cannot really be translated, but I know what it means. There is a vibratory quality to words that do have an effect on people; this is why chants are done in ancient languages such as Sanskrit, Hebrew, Arabic, Native languages, etc, rather than in relatively modern languages such as English. I cannot speak other than about my own experience with these, but there is a difference in quality and effect.

[Canuckistanian]

48. I couldn't disagree more

Different languages are not merely "different ways of expressing the same thing".

There's a whole cultural tradition of thinking that goes WITH that language. And that applies to concepts as well. The Inuit here in Canada had to make up the words for "war" and "murder".

In a completely sterile, logical analysis, you're right. But we humans are much more complicated that a series of disembodied ideas.

Everything may be translatable, but the history, sentiment and application of a linguistic concept may take YEARS to fully understand for a non-native speaker.

[newspeak]

50. I don't care who disproved it!!!

language is linked to culture. There are some languages that don't separate male and female--if you do not think that language doesn't form perceptions, you are wrong!!! One culture in Asia had no word for "war". When Irish children were punished for speaking their language, it was a form of cultural genocide. Maybe, we should all get behind the "newspeak" language of the US--yes, that's it, let's all speak newspeak!!!

Final item--I am glad that Native American language, their heritage, their religion did not die out!!!

[WinkyDink]

51. Yes, because goodness knows humans exist only to work and not to

dream or create or express themselves artistically.
Who needs the arts, either? Too many instruments playing too many notes!

I guess it all depends on what the meaning of "progress" is.

[Crunchy Frog]

55. Humanity is messy.

I think we should all be replaced by machines, personally.

[H2O Man]

12. Absolutely correct.

Differences in languages reflect very significant differences in viewing the reality of life on earth. That was, of course, one of the reasons that Onondaga children were assaulted by the faculty at boarding schools when they spoke in their own language.

[Sal Minella]

7. If your written language exemplifies your ideal

of universal written language, I think we should stick with the Standard Diversity Plan.

the Navaho usage's savings? wha?

[oscar111]

8. ho ho... and what is the SDP?

my spelling is ok.. Darwin spelled it Pasific to the end of his days. Spelling is trivial.

[Bridget Burke]

18. Perhaps you could look up the rules for Upper & Lower case?

I'm guilty of using incomplete sentences online. But I do use complete sentences occasionally.

Yeats also had trouble with spelling. But he could WRITE! So could Darwin.

[mac56]

22. I'm surprised you aren't responding in Esparanto!

:eyes:

[lastknowngood]

15. Bull crap! if you don't think different languages have an impact

on the spoken word, then you are a fool, pure and simple. Listen the catholic mass in english and then in Latin, if you can't discern a difference in impact you are extremely dense. Speech has it's most pure translation from the native tongue to the native listener. Some languages do not have a specific name for some things. Why should a New Guinea native have a word for Ice? You can't do a direct translation because none exists. By translating a poem from Aramaic to english you insult both the writer and the reader.

[TechBear_Seattle]

19. This is not a matter of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

Language is the medium by which culture is preserved, the glue that holds a cultural identity together. Destroy the language, and you essentially destroy the culture. This is a well documented phenomenon.

[SmokingJacket]

24. A language is not just a code, but a way of thinking.

What we would lose, if everyone spoke the same language, is more than just variety, but insight into the way the mind works.

I know when I began learning other languages, I began to discover things about English that I had taken for granted.

[Muddy Waters Guitar]

34. Precisely, language isn't the only part of a culture but it is central

A language carries an enormous amount of cultural information and history within it, stretching back millennia. It is sheer ignorance to disparage its importance to a cultural community.

[Richard Steele]

32. What a silly thing to say. nm

[Muddy Waters Guitar]

36. Yes, a large part of it does, and you're forgetting Native Am history

Oscar, recall that the racist settlers who went out to massacre the native Americans, also made numerous concerted attempts to crush the native American identity and to stop them from speaking their native tongues. It was very much a conscious attempt to split the surviving native Americans (the ones who weren't murdered offhand) from their cultural roots and thus weaken their very capacity to survive as a people. The native Americans' retention of their languages is in fact one major reason that they continue today. Recall, too, that e.g. the Welsh and the Irish (Irish Gaelic language) are very insistent at preserving their own languages, in part because they are central to their identity. If you attack their native languages, you are also attacking them as a culture and as a people.

"Any idea can be expressed in full, in ANY language. No need for any but ONE world language. Culture is ideas, and they can be expressed in any language."

Do you have any idea how incredibly ignorant this statement is? Languages can be translated between each other, but the basic structure of each language (and the *cultural history* that is intertwined with it) leads to very distinctive modes of thought among speakers of different tongues. That's one of the reasons that our world is so culturally rich and why there's such a productive exchange of fresh ideas. A world with too few languages also becomes inevitably poor in new ideas, stuck in ruts of rehashed thinking. New languages really do enhance your very ability to think and push your mind to contemplate old assumptions with a much more skeptical focus. I've heard this sort of ignorance before on Freep (and even there, there were a number of sensible objections to it)-- I never expected to encounter it on DU.

"the babble of tongues is a barrier to human progress. Wastes thousands of hours of talented folks."


Having a "single" world language would cause far more damage to our global cultural richness and the font of new ideas that actually lead to social advances. A lot of the most creative thinking in the world takes place at the intersection of different cultures with different languages and different ways of doing things (which is strongly linked with the language itself). Besides, what single world language would you pick? Mandarin Chinese is by far the most spoken and just as importantly, the various Chinese-speaking countries (despite the oppression that's definitely still present on the mainland) haven't been going around invading weak countries and pissing off 90% of the world's people lately. I've been around the block recently and I can tell you that there has been a drop-off in popularity of English as a second language that is directly tied in with our policies, with other choices on the menu (Spanish, French, Portuguese, German, Japanese and Chinese) garnering more interest. Obviously English is still popular for economic reasons, but the sort of emotional, moral underpinnings that really sustain a language's spread through thick and thin, are now gone for good-- Bush has managed to pretty much get the entire Anglosphere shot down with his stupid foreign policies.

"causes many medical errors to foreign travellers..."

WTF are you babbling about here? Any competent hospital has translators on hand for major languages-- here in the US in fact, practically any respectable hospital, law firm, big accounting institute or whatever will have an army of interpreters for the many different peoples within the USA. As far as the general irritation of traveling and not speaking the language, the answer is to just not be lazy and either learn the language there if you're staying a while, or carry a phrasebook around to at least get basic statements down. In the major tourist areas in particular, there are almost always people who speak fluent English, French, German or Spanish and often Japanese, so they'll be happy to address you in your own native tongue if you respect theirs first.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

46. I forgot to add that I'm a translator by profession, and it's a job that

not just anybody can do well.

You need to have professional competence in the source language (i.e. you have to know it well enough that you could hold down a job in it), and you have to be a good writer in English.

Translators' Internet mailing lists are full of discussions in which translators from around the world brainstorm about the best ways to translate various troublesome expressions or try to figure out the exact nuance of a new slang term.

[Book Lover]

38. Ah, so I've been wasting my time learning the ancient languages

and here I thought I was learning about ancient Egypt and Babylonia straight from the source. I'm so sorry to now know that the hours of delight I've had from untangling the puzzles of cuneiform and hieroglyphs have been wasted. All that Dante and Cicero and Plato in their native tongues - what the hell was I thinking?

On edit: I just can't let this one sit - if you think foreign language teachers (or their textbook publishers for that matter) are behind some kind of push to keep their well-paying jobs... :rofl:

[manic expression]

43. And to think

how easier it would have been for you if you just stuck to Esperanto.

:sarcasm:

[manic expression]

41. language is a facet of culture

The world would lose an infinite amount of culture and diversity if everyone spoke one language. The myriad of languages contributes to the richness of human interaction and the wealth that comes with that.

[pschoeb]

60. Actually only "Strong or Extreme" Sapir Worf hypothesis possibly disproved

This would be stated that thought is completely constrained by language, or "linguistic determinism". But all linguists usually agree that the opposite extreme is also false, that language does not influence thought at all, ergo your position that having one language would be good is wrong. In fact weak Sapir-Whorf hypothesis or "linguistic relativism" is fairly well accepted. It's also interesting to look at programming language in this respect. Even though the Church-Turing thesis implies that any programming language that can simulate a Turing machine can implement any theoretically possible algorithm, we have an abundance of high level languages, because they facilitate thinking in different ways. So a multitude of programming languages, though they don't extend the total number of theoretically possible algorithms, they do extend the number of algorithms that can be easily thought of. You'll be hard pressed to find a computer scientist advocating doing away with all but one high level language, that everyone uses, or advocating that no one develop new languages.

[cynatnite]

3. I guess the guy forgot how white america tried to kill indian languages n/

[baby_mouse]

9. "Use?"

Errrrr...

why is this person using the voice mode normally reserved for machinery to refer to language?

Languages are not machines and serve no purpose at all other than communication, therefore to suppose that one is more "useful" than another one would have to assume that the "useless" language's ability to impart *information*, note (*information* not particular *kinds* of information but *information itself*) is somehow inferior to whatever language one is using as a basis for comparison.

How exactly would one test this?

One MIGHT suppose that one language or another is more or less useful for one or other particular task, but it's stupid to say that an entire language is useless.

Presumably the people who *use* it find it useful?

[DBoon]

10. languages are clues to human history and migration

Navajo languages are part of the Ne-Dene group, very different from other native languages, and have similarities to east Asian languages such as Chinese. These languages point to a possible wave of migration from Asia many thousands of years ago, later than other migrations that populated much of the Americas.

Basque is a very ancient language, with no strong similarities to any others (maybe a very distant one to some languages spoken in the Caucasus). The paleolithic cave painters may have spoken an ancestor to Basque. Something like Basque may have been the original European tongue.

We lose a language, we lose part of what makes us human

[loyalsister]

47. Human memory is coded in language

Thus, culture is coded in language.
You are absolutely correct, language IS what makes us human.
It is what has provided us with the ability to cooperate, and therefore survive most effectively.
Our differences also help us survive.
Culture is passed down through generations from memory. We would be horribly negligent to ignore the memories of predecessors of varying cultures.

[MuseRider]

16. Language is like music to me.

I speak only one, sort of understand bits of another but I do know that I would consider life a little bit lesser than it is if there were not different languages.

Like the arts I suppose. So many people see such little use for them and they are usually the first things to go when budgets are slashed. Like a beautiful Symphony I love listening to other languages.

I realize this has little to do with the points above but it did make me sad to read the editorial and I just felt that in this climate when we are losing so many precious things it is just one more thing to make our lives less wonderful.

[Swamp Rat]

20. Music IS language.

:D :hi:

Waiting to read silly comments from monolinguals... :popcorn:

[MuseRider]

27. How right you are!

I have been told that my entire career but I did not apply it here. I never thought of myself as bilingual because of it though, thanks for that!

My brain is just not configured for other spoken languages, I suffer while trying to learn them but that does not mean I do not appreciate every dialect for it's own musical qualities. Even accents. Language is such a beautiful thing as well as each culture they belong to. :hi:

[Sal Minella]

30. I was thinking more along lines of "Language is Music," but

we can probably locate a middle ground here if we look real hard.....

(a silly comment from a monolingual, since you were waiting.....:D)

[Swamp Rat]

49. Re Me Do Do-1 Sol

:D

[Sal Minella]

54. Ah!!! I can HEAR the photo!!! Wonderful visual to accompany

the sound of music that is language that is music. Thanks for posting the pic.

[Ladyhawk]

57. Yeah, it is, Swamp Rat! Thanks for cheering me up.

I just came into GD to discover Chimpy owned up to the CIA leak and is too incoherent to even explain why he did it and that our next target is Iran. I knew it was all heating up, but it sounds bad.

Thanks for reminding me that music still exists. :)

[Bridget Burke]

21. Before I could understand Spanish as well as I can now...

I attended an "artist's talk" at a fine Houston gallery specializing in Latin American Art. The speakers used various "versions" of Spanish. (Argentines sound very different from Cubans.) And the artistic topics had NOT been covered in my textbooks.

The words going back & forth seemed like brightly plumed birds flying across the room.

[LouisianaLiberal]

25. I knew you liked Wallace Stevens!

I think the poster wants to reduce language to its most basic elements. Very Orwellian. Very objectivist. Its much easier to control populations when language can't express refined or subtle thought.

I don't think that's what he had in mind, but that is the end result of what he proposes.

[MuseRider]

28. I like that.

Bightly plumed birds, that fits so well.

[MrMonk]

17. OregonMag.com

Various threads have been started to complain about the articles at this site, as if the articles had been published in some consequential source. Even a cursory inspection of the site will reveal that it is nothing more than the vanity project of some jaded old man ("LL").

OregonMag? Piss on it.

[Paulie]

33. I'm a guilty monolingual

Trying to learn Polish when 30 something is not easy. Maybe I should switch to Esperanto for a bit first.... hhhmmmm

And the "map" of language does change thinking. I know with my spouse, she thinks different when speaking Polish. More so than her sister who came to the U.S. at a much younger age.

For fun:

There is this: http://www.lojban.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Lojban+Introductory+Brochure&bl#intro

Or better yet, this: www.kli.org Since Hamlet has already been translated into tlhIngan Hol....

[Muddy Waters Guitar]

37. Hey Paulie, kudos to you for making the effort

Don't be daunted-- people used to believe that adults had a tougher time learning languages than kids, but actually the differences in abilities are relatively small. You simply have more things on your platter to deal with as an adult than as a 3-year-old!

Polish sounds fascinating-- I haven't met too many people learning it, so that sounds like quite a unique and fantastic move on your part. In my neck of the woods, practically everyone is sweating hard to learn Spanish and speak it fluently for purely survival reasons-- you can't get even entry-level jobs in one field after another these days, without being solid in Spanish. (French and German are still important too.) But I wish I could encounter more people learning languages like Polish or Ukrainian, adds some flavor to the linguistic world.

[Paulie]

62. Polish is a level 4 language

Right up there with Japanese, English and Russian.

What's really hard is there are sounds in Polish that do not exist in English. I actually found Cantonese easier to speak than Polish. Plus, the double letter sounds, like sh, ch, sz, cz, z with a dot above, z with a squiggle below, 35 letters in the alphabet... gggrrrr :)

And then there is gender and declension, so 6 endings. At least it's regular, words are pronounced like they are spelled, but some of the sounds change, e.g. SH is a hard sssshhhh, except at the end of a word when you speak it, then it's a long ssssssshhhhhh. Then there are like 12 words that don't follow the rules, so you just memorize them, which of course I have forgotten already. LOL

[Lydia Leftcoast]

39. "Oregon Magazine" is a snarky right-wing rag

And the writer of the editorial is most likely a typical monolingual American, who is threatened by the thought of someone having the audacity to speak something other than English.

For example, he makes a snide remark about the non-standard English spoken by the advocate for Native American languages. Actually, the phenomenon of some Native Americans being monolingual in non-standard English is directly attributable to the long-held policy of suppressing Native languages.

Native children were sent to multi-tribal boarding schools at an early age, punished for speaking their tribal language, and forced to pick up English out of thin air with a peer group of children from other tribes who were doing the same thing. The only models for standard English are the teachers. The children's other exposure to English is their peers, who are also struggling to figure out English by osmosis. That is a RECIPE for creating ungrammatical English. (It's the process by which Hawaiian pidgin grew up, for example.)

In any case, children in any community tend to imitate their peers, not adults. That's why American-born children of immigrants usually don't have a foreign accent.

Now imagine a child being raised by two graduates of such a school. They may be from different tribes, but even if they're from the same tribe, they have forgotten their tribal language. So they raise their children in the imperfect English that they picked up in boarding school.

It would have been better to keep the children at home, start them off in their tribal language, and then explicitly teach English as a second language. Then they would have had a genuine home language and an introduction to standard English.

[manic expression]

42. Disgusting bigotry

anyone who would so callously exterminate an integral part of any culture is beyond base. Those who would label a language as "useless" simply because their ignorance blinds their view of its worth is more than insipid.

A hearty "FUCK YOU" to whomever wrote that revolting pile of fascist filth.

[oblivious]

52. Such ignorance and intolerance! Scary.

[eppur_se_muova]

53. All knowledge is useless, if you just don't care. The OM author doesn't.

"The limits of my language are the limits of my world." -- Schiller

[H2O Man]

56. I think Indians

need to get their Berings Strait if they want to come to our country. They need to learn English. Jesus spoke English, a fact well-documented by the King James Bible. It goes hand-in-hand with democracy. Iraqi leader Chalabi speaks English. So doesn't Jack Abramoff. It's not that I don't like people who are different from me, but they sure do scare me, especially if they speak with an accent.

[Swamp Rat]

58. I hear dat!

Way'at brah! :hi:

You should hear us down in N'awlins. :D

[Sal Minella]

59. You got me thinking now, if it's good enough for Chalabi and Jesus,

it should be good enough for brown people, yes. In fact if the Indians had been halfway polite, they could have taken the trouble to learn English before we got here. Would have improved neighborhood relations and saved themselves a few headaches, probably. And would have made things a lot easier for us.

[H2O Man]

61. We shouldn't have

let them Indians into our country until they learned English. Send them back. We were here first. It's our Manifest destiny to spread the language from sea to shining sea. If President Bush has been able to lear enough English to at least communicate in a crude manner, anyone can.

[Lilith Velkor]

63. Velkor: "No use for ignorant racist Editorials"