I wonder if this would be true for Native languages

[Rudolph C Troike/LingFacultyRetired/UA]

Rolland's rant is right on the mark -- don't apologize! The 70's were a great
period of optimism and hope, once the Viet Nam war was over, but brought to
an end by the Reagan Revolution. Certainly great things seemed possible, and
were, but the possibilities were rarely realized, or at least sustained.

Germane to Rolland's point that language loss is just a symptom, some of you
may have seen the program "The Corporation" on LinkTV -- it you haven't you
should try to find it on LinkTV.org. In the early part, the narrator tells
of her experience living with an isolated group high in the Himalayas, who
carried on a millenia-old self-sufficient and self-satisfying culture, until
the government built a road into the area so that the 'benefits' of commerce
and 'civilization' could be brought to the people. The result has been a loss
of self-sufficiency, dependence on imported foods and drinks, division of the
egalitarian society into better-off and poor, development of crime, etc., etc.
And of course, a decline in the language, as the national language and English
(for tourists) intrudes and marginalizes the language along with the culture.

As the program shows, the massive international financial and commercial
forces act as a juggernaut which overwhelms local traditional cultures (even
long-established cultures like the Chinese -- most young Chinese have lost
a huge amount of everyday traditional Chinese culture, so it is not just
small traditional societies which are caught up in this gigantic process).

How to resist -- to fight back? Rolland and Richard and others on this list
have been there, and bravely done that, but it takes more than one, though
the perseverance of one person can change the world. We can't stop techno-
logical change or urbanization, both alienating forces vis-a-vis traditional
technology and culture, which also erode language vitality when the language
is seen as no longer functional. If one said that English should only be used
for talking about pre-Industrial Revolution topics, and vocabulary should be
limited to that in use in 1500, the language would quickly become moribund,
retained only be antiquarians and used only in religious services and for
Shakespearean plays. If a Native language is actively made functional to use
for currently relevant purposes, young people can see it as meaningful and
worth learning.

The history of English itself shows that openness to borrowing vocabulary
does not pose a threat to the language itself. Native English words are
still dominant for use around the house and for family matters, but in any
advanced text, 80% or more of the vocabulary is borrowed. In Bolivia and
Peru, Quechua (and Aymara) still enjoys functionality -- despite threats
from Spanish -- in part because many vocabulary items have been incorporated
over the centuries from Spanish. Functionality -- and the perception of
functionality -- is a key factor.

I like Cathy's experience of learning how to prepare fish for smoking from
a YouTube demonstration -- that's embracing and utilizing technology in a
functional way, not just relegating the culture and language to a dusty
museum. The ILAT list, thanks to Phil Cash Cash, is THE place to share ideas
and even come up with new ones.

  Rudy