LL-L "Language varieties" 2010.03.30 (05) [EN]

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*L O W L A N D S - L - 30 March 2010 - Volume 05*
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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at fleimin.demon.co.uk>
 Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2010.03.28 (01) [EN]



I wrote:

> In the future I think people will say that we destroyed many languages
> because we didn't have the necessary scientific understanding of
> language change and psychological attitudes to language, or how to
> snapshot a language, or what the consequences were of losing a
> language,
> and other such technology and understanding.


I wonder if I could just rephrase these as questions for discussion?

1. How do you preserve language information for posterity? How do you
deep-freeze it so that when the descendants of the speakers who let go
of it start to pine for it again? Obviously there are dictionaries and
grammars but attempts by non-speakers to learn a language from these
alone always produces an imitation that native speakers feel terrible
about. Does that matter if all native speakers are long gone? Is a large
body of literature and recordings enough or could a statistical approach
produce essentially the same results with much less work?

2. What are the consequences of losing a minor language or dialect?

3. How could we go about doing better science so that activists have
more agreement amongst themselves instead of wasting resources on
internecine war?



Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/

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