In ancient times, hundreds of years before the dawn of history, an ancient race of people... the Druids. No one knows who they were or what they were doing...
Ping.
If she was the last speaker of the language, to whom did she speak?
Where’s the Rosetta Project when you need it?
There was one and now none but that government bureaucracy to deal with them will live on for decades.
Ymay ondolencescay.
Her tribe is related by DNA to Tibetans and Ainu.
Biological and Cultural history from a non middle eastern source. Too bad they didn’t write their history down.
I should point out that since the guy was the only one who understood his own dialect, it actually fell into disuse when the other person who spoke it died.
I should also point out that language evolves. Like all human behavior, it changes over time. It adapts to fit the needs of the people who use it. Spelling, grammar, and syntax change as cultures shift their priorities from one ideal to another. The form of letters changes. If you fancy yourself a constitutional scholar, you know what ‘regulated’ meant in 1787 and what it means now. A ‘regulator’ is now a thing that controls voltage or pressure. It meant something entirely different in the West in 1875.
It’s funny that academics hoot and holler about evolution every time someone threatens to open a Bible, but when they are confronted with the actual process, they soil themselves in resistance.
I wonder how he wants to go about it. Should those poor tribesmen forced to study the language against their will? In modern, connected world there is no reason to speak the "native" language, especially if there isn't a ton of literary works in it (I suspect there aren't.) A child today would be much better off studying and speaking one of major languages, instead of learning the language that only a handful of people understand.
Local languages arose because of isolation of tribes. Once the Internet comes into every hut, fluency in other languages becomes essential, and old languages are set aside. If linguists are so upset about such a natural thing, they should learn and speak those dead languages themselves, instead of foisting this task onto others.
One of the Romance languages became extinct in 1898, when the last person who knew the Dalmatian language died. Some of the Romance dialects spoken in Switzerland are spoken by small numbers and could die out in a few more generations because German and Italian are much more useful for modern-day life.
Uh,....tape recorders? CD’s, DVD’s, video recorders,......etc.
In ancient times, hundreds of years before the dawn of history, an ancient race of people... the Druids. No one knows who they were or what they were doing...
Heghlu’meH QaQ jajvam!
Many languages have come and gone. Language changes with the culture. It is essential that in order to know a particular culture you need to know the language. You can learn much about a culture from its vocabulary and syntax. It gives you a insight to how they envision their world. Language is essential for thought. If I were interested in studying a culture that spoke BO, then knowing the language would be important, otherwise, it serves no purpose.
We have lots of languages in the US that are going extinct because frankly, no one speaks them and they never adapted. For instance my mother spent years of her childhood in Wichita, there are very few speakers of it.
On one level it is sad but people who are interested need to preserve what they can for their history. There is a lot to learn from ancient language- many facts can be gleaned from them. But otherwise, it’s silly to want to preserve what very few want to use.
I’ve always been interested in accents, which are also rapidly dying - with mass communication, we are all learning to speak “television anchor”. My family grew up speaking “Brooklynese”, its always been reviled and slowly passing.
Ever hear old tapes of FDR and Elinor? They had an accent that wealthy people used to cultivate. It’s pretty much gone now.
Hoonch apesiiw,
iykuych apesiiw,
amat nyasaam,
amat hechkyalp.
Puy sinvech, pataly heqwik,
amat nyasaam, qwhilk we tuyaaw.
Emay, ahaa, hemaah,
Emay, ahaa, hemaah.
(Silent Night in Sycuan, once spoken in the San Diego area by the local native Americans. Before the last native speaker died in the 1970s, a professor from San Diego State learned it and gave it a written form. The children’s choir were taught some hymns in Sycuan, using his records, a few years later. I learned it from them, but I think I have forgotten much of the spelling.)
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Thanks rdl6989 for the topic and shibumi for the ping. |
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