LL-L "Language politics" 2011.07.15 (02) [EN]

[Lowlands-L List]

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 L O W L A N D S - L - 15 July 2011 - Volume 02
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 From: Pat Barrett pbarrett at cox.net
Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2011.07.14 (01) [EN]

It's difficult to grasp sometimes why, with all the introductory textbooks
on linguistics, that people still think language can be controlled through
"language policies". What possible incentive does a Gaelic or a Navaho
speaker have for maintaining his language? For those of us who love
languages, it is very sad, but it's just the way languages have always
worked. It's like fighting against language change, of which language death
is simply a natural extension.
Let's record these languages, incl all the variants of the Lowlands
languages, before they are swallowed up by bigger languages. I'll bet you
can find a dialect of one language that was swallowed up by another dialect
of the same language group which is itself considered an endangered minority
language.
Pat Barrett

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