FOSS: A Role In Preserving Language And Culture?

tim h: why do people want to keep alive languages that will be dead soon?? It would be easier for everyone just to use english or german or something… mor elanguages complicates everything.

In many ways this is very true. More languages do complicate things. We can see this with computer software (for those who have trouble grasping the concept), let’s say we used (somehow) IPX, AppleTalk, and TCP/IP on the internet. The internet would be a lot more complicated and not everyone would be able to access the same things. It would be a serious pain.

Standards help public communication a lot.

However… Sometimes it’s easier to handle certain concepts in one language than it is to do in another. Sometimes it’s also useful to speak in a different language, for example perhaps you want privacy and none is available. If you and whoever you wish to talk to speak an uncommon language, you can simply switch to that language. And the uses go on and on…

There is no better language we should all speak, all languages are equally respectable, in any case, even if they are spoken by very few people.

Thats not entirely true english is the most flexible language around especially when it comes to making up new words(ever seen the german word for partioning a hard drive) Hence the reason that english is the prefered business language in alot of european companies.

Language serves to tie people together more closely than other things. I know it drives some seperation between peoples, but it makes us interesting. After all, do we really all want to use english uni-windows, eat at uni-mcdonalds, and shop at uni-walmart… Too much sameness is a bad thing… [i’m reminded of the Fairly Oddparents episode where he wished everybody was the same.. so everybody was made into formless, grey blobs!!! You couldn’t recognize anybody.] people tend to get into trouble.. after all, if we’re all exactly the same there’d be nothing out there to see new or explore or meet new people!!!

“Dying” languages is a great example for why we need OSS.. OSS gives people the freedom to have their own language if they want to do the work. What happens when you have to rely on Walmart or Microsoft for ALL your needs and they lock you out of the very languages you speak because it’s not “profitable” isn’t that really a pretty sad, bleek existance?

An an american, english speaker, i’ve noticed in the last 30 years or so, the increase of “made up” languages in fiction.. look at dune, or LOTR, Star Trek, Star Wars.. heck even teen fashion make up it’s own lingo. it seems collectivelly as a culture we’re so worn out on plain english we’re making stuff up just to get some intellectual stimulation!!! While at the same time we’re killing off REAL languages spoken for hundreds of years because we’re too busy to care about them.

It would be English. I come from an English speaking country and it is a pain in the ass. It is not flexible in the way you see. It is kinda like a tattered garment that people keep tacking new pieces onto. People who can’t speak or write English have a terrible time learning it. The rules of English grammar are inconsitant and stupid. The spelling is not phonetic. It is considered one of the hardest languages in the world to learn.

The reason English is so often used in the buisness world has nothing to do with flexibility and all to do with cultural Imperalism.

Frankly we English speaking people would be better off with speaking French or German.

As for keeping dead languages alive. Often one culture tries to kill another culture off by force. This often involves things such as changeing the language, forbidding cultural practices. This is basic oppression of people. Keeping some dying languages alive is a way to stop that oppression.

“we don’t live in village times anymore and more and more kids will want to learn what most people speak.”

I don’t think that kids want to learn ‘what most people speak’. I mean most people speak Chinese! I really didn’t want to learn English in school but I had to. I also learnt (or was it learned?) German and Swedish in school. So I can speak three foreign languages and Finnish, my mother tongue. Without my English skills it would be real hard to say just to find information in the internet. More languages make things more complicated but saying that we should all speak English is dumb. How about you, have you ever learned any foreign languages aside from programming languages . I can say that learning a different language like English is hard and time consuming. English just doesn’t make any sense, German and Swedish are a lot easier languages to learn in my opinion.

I usually avoid to get into rants specially here at OSNews but, frankly, I have to say it: those who thinks that everybody else should just dump his/her mother language and starts to speaks English are COMPLETELY AND CLUELESS IDIOTS.

Like most reasonable posters already pointed out, languages have more to do with identity and culture than anything else. You can’t just ignore everything that your siblings have been building for ages just to fit in a “global community”.

And also, someone already mentioned it, the most spoken language in the world is Mandarin alongside some other variation of Chinese, NOT English! What would you think if a Chinese told you to just forget English and start to talk Chinese?

Am I supposed to forget Brazilian Portuguese and start to improve my (limited) English skills in order to “simplificate” things a little bit in the world? Please, don’t take it as some sort of nationalistic pride speech or something like that, because honestly I’m not one of those people.

But seriously… If you agree with the assertion that I and the rest of the non-English speakers in the world should speak English, then I still think that you are a MORON, CLUELESS IDIOT and I can’t help it.

You learn more about your native language while you learn a foreign one. If you never learned a foreign language you simply cannot judge about your own simply because you cannot behold it from a distance. While you learn a foreign language you’ll discover a lot of funny sounding words and figures of speech and you’ll be motivated to think how these are expressed in your own one. Every language have it’s own logic and represents different way of thinking. It is definitely a good thing to be able to look from different angles at the things around you.

As someone have said once: what know about english those who speek only english?

Microsoft not allowing Icelanders to translate Windows 98 is absolutely atrocious! Here is the third part which is on available on the link you posted

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/soc.culture.nordic/browse_threa…

Someone made the point that many languages can convey things that others cannot.

In the north, the Innuit have over 100 words for ‘snow’. This could be really helpful when you are travelling across icepacks, hunting in an area where you can see nothing but white for days.

Thankfully, the northerners are still isolated enough to not have been forcibly assimilated by the European Imperialists who stole their land. Others have not fared so well, despite making valiant efforts to save their culture.

Having governments keep you without the vote (1972 in Canada), in tiny (even compared to use, 300 acre per person, as opposed to 10 acres in Canada) reservations, where you lost your “status” as an individual with a specific culture (even worst, being robbed of the right to declare your own “status), is exactly the sort of colonial crap that leads to the eventual genocide of people’s across the globe.

http://www.ucalgary.ca/~kmuldrew/cryo_course/snow_words.html is a cool link showing the different ways to say snow.

However, the flip side is where the Nation as a whole spends ridiculous amounts of money “saving” the French language, and forcing it on every school child (since the 70’s) where it was not required; The french language in Quebec and other regions was surviving just fine on it’s own.

Instead, people have lost a basic Human right (freedom of expression) to language police in Quebec, where they are fined insane amounts of money for things like having an apostrophe in their business signage.

Somewhere inbetween are people who would really love to learn French, or Innu, or whatever language, just for the sake of expanding their minds and learning new cultures. But of course, it all gets politicized, and then peopel start to begrudge those that force it on others (20% of Canada forcing French on the other 80%. Just try to get a gov’t job if you don’t speak french. good luck.)

Now I know this will spark some flamage, but hey, sometimes the truth does that. All I’m saying is if people in Wales want to keep learning Welsh, go for it. But could you imagine if they forced Welsh on people in London in order to work for the Crown? Sheesh!