Philosophy by the river

Is language extinction a bad thing? (Venue: by the river)

Sun, Aug 9 · 11:00 AM BST

Near The Mill. On the grass by the river with our bovine friends, The Mill, 14 Mill Lane, Cambridge, al, GB

(Scroll down for topic intro)

THE VENUE: By the river

Summer weather continues so let's meet outside by the river. You'll find joining instructions below or at: https://rbphilo.com/riverside.html

Etiquette
Our discussions are friendly and open. We are a discussion group, not a for-and-against debating society. But it helps if we try to stay on topic. And we should not talk over others, interrupt them, or try to dominate the conversation.

WhatsApp groups
We have two WhatsApp groups. One is to notify events, including extra events such as meeting for a meal or a drink during the week which we don't normally put on the Meetup site. The other is for open discussion of whatever topics occur to people. If you would like to join either or both groups, please send a note of the phone number you would like to use to Richard Baron on: website.audible238@passmail.net. (This is an alias that can be discarded if it attracts spam, hence the odd words.)

THE TOPIC: Is language extinction a bad thing?

Thank you to Jack for this week's topic.

It is reported that over 3000 languages out of the roughly 7000 spoken on earth are endangered, with organisations such as UNESCO and some governments undertaking efforts to preserve or revive languages. Considering both the costs to these organisations and the effort expended by individuals learning and retaining them it’s worth asking, would the world be better off with fewer languages? One language?

While this idea might seem ridiculous on its face, languages are a tool and there are many cases where having multiple competing tools is worse than having one. Few would argue against the EU ruling that forced manufacturers to all use the same charging port, we can now charge most of our devices with one cable instead of a pile of different standards. Languages are primarily a tool of communication; would we have been better off if our wireless communication hadn’t settled on Bluetooth and we had instead prevented other competing standards from going extinct? If it hadn’t we would often end up with wireless devices which can’t talk to each other, much like the issues we run into with human language.

The tension of course comes from the fact that languages aren’t just a tool, they’re also cultural artefacts - artefacts which have also have a long history of being deliberately suppressed by dominant cultures. With how much of our way of life has changed, language can be one of the few things that is meaningfully similar to how our ancestors lived. Artistic works especially can show how much we share with those who came before, which impacts us all the more when it’s presented to us in our own daily language. The political satire of Gilbert and Sullivan is still relevant today; the iambic pentameter of Shakespeare is specific to English word stress and doesn’t translate; and while Dante’s Inferno is considered a masterpiece, in Italian it also rhymes.

While the idea that the language you speak directly influences the way you think is disputed in academia, the barriers different languages impose certainly do. In our age of frictionless worldwide communication language barriers could be seen as a “petri dish” of sorts, allowing different ideas to develop without being immediately outcompeted by the ideas dominant in other languages. From this lens it’s little surprise that some of the most popular artistic trends come from outside the language of its consumers.
While multilingualism might seem like the obvious answer to this tension it comes with its own problems. Historically a lingua franca does eventually emerge in each context, but this disadvantages those who don’t speak it natively and especially those who don’t have the means to learn it effectively. Even in the best case scenario of children being brought up multilingual, research has consistently found that these children have a diminished vocabulary in each language to compensate.

We look forward to welcoming you to this week's discussion. At a rough estimate, attendees at last week's meetup spoke over a dozen languages, although we seem to get more done when we stick to English.