1

I hear you but I am not certain I agree …

What little I know about linguistics (and it is very little, I assure you) says languages are living creations of groups of people. For instance, when I studied Arabic, words were constantly be made up by native speakers to keep up with the modern world. Israelis chose to try to solve the problem by creating exclusively Hebrew words to describe jets and other modern creations. I don’t know that it worked for a fact becasue people don’t care as much about how they say things as they do if their message is communicated. (I am making exceptions for the creations of niche groups like urban youth or exclusive clubs/gangs where the conveyance of the message is just as important as the message to maintain status).

Speaking of getting wordy …

Anywho, by your own admission Gaelic is a dying language. Is it right or appropriate to keep it alive beyond its use date? Should Aramaic or Classical Greek still be used in the modern world? I don’t know that I have the answer but I do believe we are often in danger of clinging to things which need to put to rest …

Even as I type, I think of rebuttals to my own arguements … not a simple subject!

2

(Disclaimer: this super-long response isn’t meant to sound accusatory - I’m just quite passionate about the subject! :-)

Irish is an *ailing* language, but I wouldn’t say it’s a dying one. It’s not spoken by large numbers of people, but people do still speak it as their mother tongue, it has a rich oral and literary tradition, it’s an inherent part of the cultural traditions of the west of Ireland in particular (not least through the medium of song), and language attitude surveys have shown that the majority of people throughout Ireland feel a strong attachment to the language as a symbol of Irish identity (even if they themselves aren’t native speakers). In light of this, I think it’s a bit premature to be "putting it to rest" (I do realize you’re not advocating that, however!).

Sure, languages have come and gone throughout human history. It’s natural for languages to change and evolve, and sometimes it’s natural for them to die. But more often than not, languages in the modern world do not simply "die" but are killed off - by political, economic and social pressures on the speakers of minority languages to give up their "old ways" and conform to the majority; through genocide; or simply through an arrogant disregard for small, unique cultures and an indifference to the fate of the people who live their lives through these cultures (and through their associated languages).

Irish was critically wounded by English in the 17th century, and it’s suffered blow after blow since then. The Famine killed off countless Irish speakers and forced millions of others to emigrate in the 19th century, and the economic woes of the 20th century led many people to associate the Irish tongue with poverty - hence causing Irish speakers to be ashamed of their own language and "voluntarily" give it up in favor of the more prestigious English. There’s nothing natural about that. Irish didn’t outlive its usefulness - it was unfairly battered into near-extinction, like all the other Celtic languages, like all the Native American languages, and like thousands of other languages around the globe.

I suppose the more I’ve studied linguistics, the more I’ve just come to realize how priceless and worthy of survival every single language is. As you said, "languages are living creations of groups of people" - but I think all too often the "people" are left out of the equation. For every living language (however ailing), there is a group of people (however small) for whom that language is precious - because it’s the language their mother sang lullabies in, or it’s the language their grandfather told stories in, or it’s the language they think in every day and dream in every night. And even if that language is doomed to disappear (maybe it only has 10 speakers and they’re all elderly, for instance), I don’t see how it can just be dismissed with a wave of the hand and a "Well, that’s the way it goes" attitude (I’m speaking generally here, Michael, I’m not accusing you of that attitude! :-). Not every language has global political, economic or social clout - but every language has a deep personal, and cultural significance to those who speak it, and that mustn’t be disregarded.

Sometimes, when I’m reading about all these dying and dead languages, I sit back and try to imagine seriously what it would feel like to be the last living English speaker on earth (assuming that English was an obscure, undocumented language that was about to slip out of existence). It’s pretty tough, considering how ubiquitous English is today, but when I put my mind to it, I can almost imagine it: the desperation of it; the futility of watching well-meaning linguists trying to record my last words and piece together the fragments of a language which is fully alive only to me, which has personal meaning only to me; the burden of being the sole keeper of part of what was once a vibrant culture; the crushing loneliness of it. It’s a terrible, terrible thought, but one which kind of puts things into perspective for me, anyway.

3

Hmmm, I’m probably going to make a fool of myself for adding to this, but… Where does evolution of a language fit into what you say?

I’m not speaking of Irish or gaelic right now. I’m speaking, for instance, of someone who could have decided to "protect" latin from other influences that might have seemed "harming", or had tried to preserve it at all costs. How would people have developed Italian, French or Spanish over the centuries, if someone had really "blocked" the language from mixing, transforming, and eventually, why not, "dying" as such? How do you know when you should "let go"? Isn’t any language a living thing of sorts, in the sense that it has a life span, and then it mutates into something else or it disappears?

I’m not attacking either, I’m just asking. :-)

4

If a language naturally evolves, that’s one thing. Latin evolved into French, Italian and Spanish because it was carried into the regions that are now France, Italy and Spain and it had the time and the space to develop naturally into those new languages. Latin itself wasn’t killed in the process - it continued to be used alongside the vernacular French and Italian dialects until it truly did outlive its usefulness and died a natural death. Latin ceased to be spoken as a "mother tongue" long before it ceased to be a living language altogether (and some hardcore people would argue that it’s still not dead…). I believe Latin gradually ossified into the written language of the elite while the more vibrant vernaculars took over in everyday life (but I’m not totally up on my history of Latin, so further research is probably advisable here!). In any case, it was a natural evolution, and I don’t have a problem with that.

And I am certainly not arguing that languages need to be protected from change. I think it’s very, very important to draw a distinction between natural language change and unnatural language shift/death. In fact, equating language change with language death is probably a pretty good way to ensure that your language stagnates and dies (someone should tell the Academie Francaise…). I think one of the problems that Irish has had, actually, is that a lot of the efforts to support the language over the decades have focused on the perfect preservation of a particular form of "traditional" Irish in the west of Ireland without giving credence to new forms of Irish that are developing in urban areas - forms that are heavily influenced by English, to the point of almost being English/Irish creoles. I personally think these new forms are awesome, because it shows that Irish *is* still alive - it’s being taken and used, changed, adapted, played with. Maybe it’s not the Irish spoken 100 years ago in some village in Connemara, but who cares? Languages aren’t museum pieces, or they shouldn’t be.

But again, I have to point out that there’s a difference between natural evolution and forced change or extinction. Humans have naturally evolved from homo erectus into homo sapiens. The dodo did not naturally evolve from being a funny little flightless bird into being extinct. In the first instance, nature was allowed to take its course and turn monkeys into men (I’m paraphrasing Darwin here :-). In the second instance, human intervention disrupted natural evolution and killed off the dodo before it had "outlived its usefulness" and either naturally evolved into something else or naturally faded out of existence.

Now, I suppose you could argue that if the dodo wasn’t strong enough to protect itself from extinction, then it deserved what it got - and the same goes for endangered languages as well. I don’t take that view, however. If the stronger don’t have a duty to protect the weaker, then they at least have the duty to leave well enough alone and not go throwing their weight around, killing dodos here, destroying languages there…

So for all the reasons I mentioned above and a whole lot more, I think languages do need to be protected *from death* *if their very existence is being threatened by external sources*. How do you know when you should let go? Well, it’s actually up to the speakers of an endangered language to decide when and if to "let go". As long as there are speakers alive willing to fight to hold on to their native language, then that language should not be allowed to die.

5

Now here’s an intersting discussion, and we’re not dallying with details or small ethical matters, we’re right down to questions of life and death (not quite unlike the Academie Francaise -:))I don’t think the evolutionary analogy really works here, because language is a system used by people, and used for a purpose: communication. (This simple statement does probably not fully apply to questions of language acquisition, the language "instinct" in babies etc., but these are questions that are pretty independent of individual languages anyway, I think.) I totally aggree with your description of some of the processes that have led to the disappearance of certain languages, and I see all of them as social, cultural and political processes. If we stick to the example of Irish, you can’t look at the famine without seeing it in the context of English domination and imperial politics in Ireland. The potato bug or whatever it’s called only tells a tiny percentage of the story. But the same applies for the reverse process: the ‘preservationist’ movement for Irish and the development of Irish since the 20th century cannot be viewed independently of cultural, social and political ideas and acts to do with Irish emancipation, statehood and nationalism, of which the new EU directive is the latest prominent and complex example. (Here’s to all the lucky Irish translators and interpreters who are now shopping for office furniture in Brussels. I hope they’ll enjoy the benefits of proper employment, great beer and chocolate and relaxed non-smoking regulations. They’ll also find the local language skirmishes interesting and will probably not be so surprised that a lot of it has to do with issues of class and racism.) So basically what I’m getting at is that I don’t think language deaths should be seen as either ‘natural’ or ‘unnatural’. Rather, we should ask why a language is dying out or has done so, and then ask ourselves why we dislike this - just as Jessica did in her article. And when we join the supporters of an ‘ailing’ language, we should examine all their props and tools very closely and see what else is on their agenda and how we like that - again just like Jessica did. I just think that by mixing evolution with ethics, we don’t really get to the heart of the matter. (Do I sound like an ‘Intelligent Designer’ now? That would be both funny and sad.) Oh, and post scriptum on the subject of Latin: During the whole Papa Ratzi craze a few months ago, I saw a fascinating little report on German telly about the Vatican’s Resident Latinist, who translates everything the Vatican publishes into Latin, and who was showing the crew around the Vatican. He’s an American, but he only ever spoke Latin (with a fairly strong American accent) during the entire bit, which was especially interesting when he showed the crew the cash mashine outside the Vatican’s bank. I forget the Latin term, but it made me think three things: 1. It’s great how Latin always sounded so Swabian during my bit of classical education, and now it sounds so American. 2. Latin is alive and kicking and spoken by a small, slightly overweighed American, whose local cash mashine will probably have enough cash to dispense to those who bank with the Vatican until Catholicism becomes a case for perservationists. And 3. Languages without a word for cash mashine are probably in a lot more trouble than Latin is.