At 20:34 21/08/2003 -0700, Pete Vincent wrote:
On Thu, 21 Aug, Ed Weick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Languages differ enormously in their links to what might be termed >"global culture". English and other major European and Asiatic languages >have very strong links and millions upon millions of users. They are the >languages of power, commerce and science. To participate in global >culture, one has to use one of them, and increasingly English. The >languages spoken by the many tribes of New Guinea would simply not get >you anywhere. You'd remain stuck in the jungle.
Pete Vincent replied:
The persistence of New Guinean languages is simply explained by observing the language distribution in precolumbian americas. BC had a profusion of widely differing languages, like PNG, while much of the rest of the continent was under sway of large homogeneous blocks. The point in common is the rugged mountain geography, combined with absense of any means of transportation beyond feet. The resulting extreme limitation to travel results in preservation of language pockets among a largely local population. Where the land opens up, nomadic or even simply widely ranging populations establish large unilingual regions.
Yes, I'd agree with this. However, I suggest that in Papua New Guinea the fact that there are many languages is not just a case of a degree of separation due to topography, important though this is in their generally rugged mountainous terrain. What's also important is that the hunter-gatherer way of life found in hundreds of different tribes (each with their own language) in PNG, even though almost identical in all cases, requires a distinct territory which each can, and does, protect with vigour. If one tribe subjugates or extinguishes a neighbouring one and then imposes its own language, the nature of their way of life -- the logistics of trying to protect the extended territory -- means that the enlarged tribe will inevitably collapse and divide in two and begin to separate themselves again, each taking the common language in different directions and thus re-establishing two languages.
(PW)
The thesis of the article remains valid:
But surely, Prof Daniel Abrams' thesis is *not* valid. He is trying to maintain that minority languages can be protected. I originally wrote that this is not possible. PW, EW and I have each been saying that once a new way of life becomes communicable, tradable and geographically possible, then minority languages disappear. Prof Abrams would do better to spend his time and research money in recording as many minority languages as possible for future study and analysis, than trying to save them in the here and now while our present type of economic system is still sweeping the world.
(PW)
there are no cultures to my knowledge one can point to where more than one language was sustained for any length of time simultaneously by a single homogeneous population. Generally what rapidly happens is either a hybrid emerges, or one becomes dominant (which of these occurs is a function of demographics and power relations). People have no interest in maintaining the complication of multiplicities.
Very true. Here in England, some of our chattering classes on the radio or TV chastise themselves -- and the English generally -- for being so poor at languages. "Look at Europe." they say. "People over there can speak two, three or even four languages. But here in England, we're not interested." But, of course, we're not very interested because we don't *need* to know more than one language because we're an island and don't have contiguous boundaries with other cultures. And, on top of that, English happens to be spreading around the world anyway.
It has been fashionable (until very recently) to say that the human brain is capable of almost any intellectual achievement. This is nonsense. Most of the brain consists of inhibitory neurons whose job it is to *reduce* the informational traffic entering from the perceptual organs. It is vitally necessary for the brain to use as little energy as possible -- goodness knows, it is already a considerable user of the body's energy (about 25%) -- and to this extent it is "lazy". The main part of our cortex (the rear parts) has no interest in learning more than one language for work or recreational use if it doesn't need to. (The frontal parts of the cortex -- the novelty-seeking, curiosity part -- can become dedicated to motivating the learning of more than one language in the case of some individuals, just as other individuals decide to use the frontal lobes to specialise in other aspects of novelty-seeking, such as scientific endeavour.) The point is that most of our brain is a finite processing machine and has limited capabilities.
(PW)
Most of what initially appear to be counterexamples are in reality boundary regions (either social or geographical) between neighbouring monolinguistic groups, where two languages are regularly required by the boundary population for communication with the two outgroups.
Yes, this is the main reason why most Europeans (urban Europeans, anyway) usually speak two languages.
I think it's inevitable that there will be one world language and *all* others will atrophy. There might be a mighty battle between English and Mandarin in a decade or two, but I think there's probably already so much scientific and business literature in English that it will have more momentum. (There are scores of thousands of young Chinese coming to England and America to learn English every year -- and almost no westerners going to China to learn Mandarin or Cantonese.) This is not an attractive scenario but, unfortunately, I think this will prove to be so. If, in the much longer term future, we develop highly decentralised types of energy and production systems, then we might see the re-emergence of local communities and of local languages.
KSH
Keith Hudson, 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath, England
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