Does language constrain our thinking? I think it does. I don't want a world where people are limited in their thinking because there are only so many languages available to them.
On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 5:23 PM, geni <[email protected]> wrote: > On 18 February 2013 22:27, Kevin Behrens <[email protected]> wrote: > > Language is identity! Would you like to tell those People that it is not > bad when they lose their language. As I mentioned, I am a >member of a > linguistic minority, too, and I would feel like my human rights where taken > if someone tells me I should learn another >language because mine is not so > much worth. Language is culture and is human right, everybody has the right > for his language. > > > > That doesn't mean that such languages should be actively be supported. > > > What is your mother tongue? If it is English it is easy for you to tell > the world to give up their languages in favor of English. > > And besides, supporting minor languages mostly always supports bi- or > trilinguism because you speak the majority and minorty >language(s). > Multilinguism is very beneficial for children. They can learn much easier > new languages when they have two mother >tongues. And in a world where > multilinguism is getting more important this might be a real useful side > effect. > > > > Questionable. You don't have to go back that far and I'd need latin > and probably German to get by in chemistry. > > > And what do you mean by “have so little information stored in them”? > Just because they are not as far developped as the main >languages doesn’t > mean they carry zero information. > > There is a difference between zero and little. Still if we compare the > number of scientific papers written in say russian last year to the > total amount of information in the Fayu language its pretty one sided. > > > In America there are Indian languages that have more names for the > flowers in their environment and whether they are toxic or not >than the > biologist can’t give latin names for them. > > Given that we currently have 1.2 million species currently catalogued > that seems unlikely. > > >As language minorities mostly live in rural areas they are perfectly > adapted to their environment and in their linguistic world/lexicon >there > are more concepts and ideas than people from the cities have. > > English can deal with concepts ranging from the Australian outback to > the housing projects of Detroit to CERN. Minority languages can only > be compared logarithmically (assuming they have the concept of > logarithms). > > > > It’s big culture goods we can’t risk to lose. > > What are you proposing will happen if it does? > -- > geni > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list > [email protected] > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l > -- *Victor Grigas* Storyteller <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Knv6D6Thi0> Wikimedia Foundation [email protected] +1 (415) 839-6885 x 6773 149 New Montgomery Street 6th floor San Francisco, CA 94105 https://donate.wikimedia.org/ _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
