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Post by Elizabeth on Jul 9, 2018 6:16:03 GMT
Any one know?
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Post by Διαμονδ on Jul 9, 2018 6:28:51 GMT
They stay on paper...like Latin or Sanskrit or old Slavic!
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jul 9, 2018 6:38:43 GMT
Languages don't get extinct, but get modified, whenever a new ruling class impose itself on another group of people. The ruling classes bring their language, add the element on the natives, and a modified language become the languages of administration.
Generally, the administrative languages are used by ruling classes for bureaucracy, tax collection, and to educate the common folks.
When the administration of this ruling class gets over, then, no one uses the administrative language, and it is infact, hated by the common folks, because, they don't associate themselves with it, but they have no other options but to use it, despite the language being foreign to them.
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Clovis Merovingian
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Post by Clovis Merovingian on Jul 9, 2018 6:45:31 GMT
There are many reasons that a language could go extinct. Sometimes languages evolve such as with Latin into the Romance languages. Sometimes a conquering force comes in and culturally converts another population such as what the Romans did with the Gauls or Germanic tribes did to the Celts in Southern Germany which includes changing their language. Really I think that these are the two most common reasons, linguistic evolution and cultural (and literal) imperialism.
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Post by Lone Wanderer on Jul 9, 2018 8:22:58 GMT
They lost their role and nobody use them anymore. Or they evolve into new languages and variants. Sometimes cultural assimilation and language shift happen and new languages replace them. Also minorities have a small chance for preserving their language and culture unless gov helps them.
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Post by Elizabeth on Jul 9, 2018 19:36:16 GMT
They should still be preserved I think. I'm not a big fan of losing languages Shrug
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justplainsimplenick
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Post by justplainsimplenick on Jul 16, 2018 5:53:29 GMT
I have always considered something dead once it is beyond rejuvenation. As to how languages die, a mixture of economic, cultural and population growth/size as the key determine factors. Before I expand on these, it is useful to note that is something truly dead if it gives birth to something new or affected another thing. Classic Latin may be the language of the few now, but it has shaped the Romance languages and introduced changed to other language families. The Roman languages must have had some butterfly effect on the early Chinese dialects and thus it loves on though the ripples it has made.
The economic reason I find can easily be dated to the Sumerian civilization as language rose to meet the needs of "I owe you" and "five oxen for ten grain". You could even apply this to early Egyptian civilization if a Harris cultural materialism approach is used. The use of language to record religious tomes in ancient Egypt is a systematic part of their entire social structure. People gave offerings to these gods and to gain more offerings the spreading of religion would be required. It is at a time that a collapse occurred that the original Egyptian language would become less useful where younger and more prosperous people fill the void. I would argue that language and currency are a positive feedback system with each other.(More dollar value means more spreading of English and vice versa)
Cultural is always going to be that fuzzy area but none the less important to evaluate. Anything for generation to generation cultural change to even a simple shift in leadership has massive implications as to how language is perceived. A great example of this is the concept of the word "gay". In a modern since of the word it could be referencing somebody of homosexual grouping, a fill in word for something being described as stupid, or even derogatory towards those to social isolate members of a group in a lower tier.
Population for me is always a hard place to give influential value. Numbers of a group are good but at the same time how does one categorize the group structure? For example, by saying American that could mean anything. To keep on topic of language, the classic you all, Y`all and you-all. In this grouping the term American population is split. By saying English speakers is doing an injustice to the imminence diversity in how English is pronounced. By using a population as a determining of language extinction, detail and strict definition is key.
So to recap, I do not support the idea that languages completely die, it is a multifaceted question of the process that does happen, and a Greenberg classifaction would be a good basis of analyzing these things. As a final note, by saying a language does not completely die does not mean that they are being replaced at a fast rate, just that local variations will adapt both and hybridize it.
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Post by karl on Jan 13, 2019 23:12:17 GMT
My only experience with a dead langauge comes from translating transliterated Sumerian texts. And what I can tell from that is that its grammatical structure is vastly inferior to that of any modern language I know. Even though every language evolves over time, it could be that different languages have different potential in that respect, and that Sumerian proved to be a dead end.
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Post by Elizabeth on Jan 13, 2019 23:17:21 GMT
My only experience with a dead langauge comes from translating transliterated Sumerian texts. And what I can tell from that is that its grammatical structure is vastly inferior to that of any modern language I know. Even though every language evolves over time, it could be that different languages have different potential in that respect, and that Sumerian proved to be a dead end. Wow! How long have you been translating Sumerian? That's impressive.
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Post by karl on Jan 13, 2019 23:21:52 GMT
Thank you. Since 2014. Just to give one example of the inadequate grammatical structure of Sumerian. It has two inflections; Sumerian perfective and Sumerian imperfective. Sumerian perfective can be present, past, and future. Sumerian imperfective can be present, past, and future. If you, for example, wanted ot write: "I am building a house.", it would be written exactly the same way as if you were to write: "I am going to build a house." It made me appreciate the inflections of modern languages.
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Post by karl on Jan 13, 2019 23:23:33 GMT
My only experience with a dead langauge comes from translating transliterated Sumerian texts. And what I can tell from that is that its grammatical structure is vastly inferior to that of any modern language I know. Even though every language evolves over time, it could be that different languages have different potential in that respect, and that Sumerian proved to be a dead end. Wow! How long have you been translating Sumerian? That's impressive.
Thank you. Since 2014. Just to give one example of the inadequate grammatical structure of Sumerian. It has two inflections; Sumerian perfective and Sumerian imperfective. Sumerian perfective can be present, past, and future. Sumerian imperfective can be present, past, and future. If you, for example, wanted ot write: "I am building a house.", it would be written exactly the same way as if you were to write: "I am going to build a house." It made me appreciate the inflections of modern languages.
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Post by Elizabeth on Jan 13, 2019 23:28:59 GMT
Wow! How long have you been translating Sumerian? That's impressive. Thank you. Since 2014. Just to give one example of the inadequate grammatical structure of Sumerian. It has two inflections; Sumerian perfective and Sumerian imperfective. Sumerian perfective can be present, past, and future. Sumerian imperfective can be present, past, and future. If you, for example, wanted ot write: "I am building a house.", it would be written exactly the same way as if you were to write: "I am going to build a house." It made me appreciate the inflections of modern languages. How did you learn Sumerian if you don't mind me asking? And so I'm guessing modern languages are much easier to use than Sumerian to get specific details across because modern languages have more ways to say something more clearly where Sumerian doesn't have possibility?
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Post by karl on Jan 13, 2019 23:46:49 GMT
Thank you. Since 2014. Just to give one example of the inadequate grammatical structure of Sumerian. It has two inflections; Sumerian perfective and Sumerian imperfective. Sumerian perfective can be present, past, and future. Sumerian imperfective can be present, past, and future. If you, for example, wanted ot write: "I am building a house.", it would be written exactly the same way as if you were to write: "I am going to build a house." It made me appreciate the inflections of modern languages. How did you learn Sumerian if you don't mind me asking? And so I'm guessing modern languages are much easier to use than Sumerian to get specific details across because modern languages have more ways to say something more clearly where Sumerian doesn't have possibility? My main source was a 750 page PHD thesis about Sumerian grammar, by the Sumerologist Bram Jagersma. It can be downloaded from his website.
Yes. Lack of clarity is my main problem when trying to translate Sumerian sentences. In modern languages it's much easier to specify exactly what you mean. I'm sure the Sumerians would have regarded their language as being much clearer than I do, but what I think they heavily relied on was context. So when you translate a sentence, you must try to understand it within the context of what comes before and after. It's a bit like how in some languages there is a way to distinguish singular "you" from plural "you", while in English there isn't. So in English, you rely on context to make clear which one it is. Or, you could, for example, write "you people". Similarly. There are also many words in Sumerian with multiple meanings. The word "ta" can mean "after", "in addition to", "with", "from", or point to an instrument with which something is made happen.
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Post by Eugene 2.0 on Mar 3, 2020 21:05:00 GMT
First of all, any language is constantly changing. It is one of the basic laws of philology.
Hillary Putnam said that work conditions required people to prefer one group of words to another (considering there's a set of words in the vault of the language). Often usage of certain words gets possible for some new rules and mechanism to appear. (It's also not necessary, because if the chosen group is weaker, than the former group, that is greater chance to come to traditional usage.)
When new language is appear (whichever the history conditions), then processes of assimilation and dissimilation is start to grow faster. Then if new language is more powerful and new generations usually chooses the latter variants, then it's more likely for some new language to get a privilage.
I think that this answer is tied with a question why English is lingue franka today? What exactly makes it be lingua franka?
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Post by thesageofmainstreet on Mar 3, 2020 23:21:33 GMT
My only experience with a dead langauge comes from translating transliterated Sumerian texts. And what I can tell from that is that its grammatical structure is vastly inferior to that of any modern language I know. Even though every language evolves over time, it could be that different languages have different potential in that respect, and that Sumerian proved to be a dead end. By Design, Ignorant and Unstructured Speech Leads to Ignorant and Unstructured ThoughtThen English is dying too. The Anti-Grammar Nazis' contempt for structured usage has struck our speech like a virus. What's worse, it's not even being considered as "dumbed-down education,"even though it is the most widespread and mind-numbing part of that scheme. Using "they" with a singular antecedent fractures a critical mental ability. (As in, "If a lawyer does that, they should be disbarred") The enemies of intelligent thought purposely put the antecedent in the singular when, if they weren't covert agents of mind control, they would have used "lawyers" in that antecedent.
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