What is Digg?157 Comments
- cadmiumpaint, on 08/28/2008, -4/+62text messaging and the internet have made english an endangered language.
- vinceislegend, on 08/28/2008, -1/+49Klingon.
- jlpete9, on 08/27/2008, -28/+66Is that really such a bad thing?
- ADIDAS247, on 08/27/2008, -16/+53Why should I care? I was educated in the US which means I can barely speak English.
- Harabeck, on 08/28/2008, -4/+29Latin is a dead language but we can still translate it, I dont see your point.
- Coercion, on 08/28/2008, -1/+22Proper English didn't make the list? zing!
- DeathJux, on 08/28/2008, -0/+20It doesn't bother me very much if people stop speaking a language, and it "dies" that way, but I really hope we're documenting and preserving as many as possible that way.
- bemaniac, on 08/28/2008, -0/+18I took a Linguistics class last year from a professor who is friends with the last living Southeast Pomo speaker. With one living speaker, it is clearly more endangered than any of the languages on that list.
- failedpimp, on 08/28/2008, -0/+15Soon we will all speak Basic.
- darkmist, on 08/28/2008, -0/+15Except, English isn't one of these endangered languages. Also, even though languages such as Latin have fallen out of usage, there are enough people around that still understand it that the contributions it has made will never die away. I imagine it would be much the same for most any mainstream language. If it was used enough to be important, it would survive this "extinction". These ten languages may as well not exist.
- Shiftgood, on 08/28/2008, -2/+17Did You Know?:
English is the worlds largest and most expressive language on earth. It has TWICE as many words as the second largest.
Cool huh? - greenroom628, on 08/28/2008, -2/+16it is important in the sense that it allows us to trace our evolution. in the course of human socio-evolution, language has always been a great marker of progress. two thousand years ago, latin was the great language, now english is more prevalently used, but we still recognize latin as one of the root languages of english. that's why its still recognized to this day (and somewhat used to this day; in science, law, medicine). its still important to recognize these languages, even if in a categorical sense, to understand the evolution of human language.
- Eisim, on 08/27/2008, -2/+16[citation needed]
- Skurt, on 08/28/2008, -0/+13@bemaniac
Who does he speak to? - random12345, on 11/16/2008, -0/+11O-zone layer, whales, polar bears, rain forests....
Not sure if I have enough room in my "things to save" left for obscure languages. - EpicSelekta, on 08/28/2008, -2/+13English is also the most confusing language on earth, with rules that don't apply to all words and words that obey no rules. It's like the Bush administration, except with words.
- schrutefan, on 08/28/2008, -1/+12"Ket is the only Siberian language with a tone system where the pitch of the voice can give what sound like identical words quite different meanings. (Much like Chinese or Yoruba)"
False. Chinese is not a spoken language. - inactive, on 08/28/2008, -2/+12like Latin....all it did was make my high school GPA go down and now i'm in a ***** college
- Ymeg, on 08/28/2008, -1/+10But it is not as servere as that.
Your example is outlandish and will not happen like that. Using such impossibilites to support your position only diminishes your position.
If English were to die out, the knowledge generate under it would be translated to other languages. Death is not going to happen over night.
The languages that are dying now do not have much behind them. - vinceislegend, on 08/28/2008, -3/+12What about English? IT'S no great suprise that when YOU'RE trying to speak it, people don't understand what YOU'RE saying. IT'S TOO bad, really. English is losing ITS ability to communicate.
Corrections in caps. I didn't bother to correct your grammar, which is about as lacking. - ashwinmudigonda, on 08/28/2008, -1/+10I think this means more people understand the hieroglyphics on the pyramids than certain languages spoken by humans alive today. Sad. Languages are important as they divulge a host of clues about humans. It also gives an idea about the pace of evolution, especially of the human society.
- Bviper, on 08/28/2008, -9/+18Death is an essential part of progress, the sooner we have a unified language the sooner we have a unified world.
- ap1983, on 08/27/2008, -3/+11great article!
- twoifbysee, on 08/28/2008, -0/+8one of the most interesting articles I've read in a long time, thank you
- mvest20, on 08/28/2008, -0/+7That is a really good question...
- TheDreadDiggerD, on 08/28/2008, -1/+8Don't blame Latin for your ineptitude.
- bsl4doc, on 08/28/2008, -0/+6Expressive =/= expensive.
- chilidbz, on 08/28/2008, -0/+6He's just making ***** up. I'm actually the last person to speak Ancient Duck.
- Atsumori, on 08/28/2008, -0/+6I'm with you, it's sad if it goes dead, but forgotten is worse. The least we can do is recognize it.
- Shiftgood, on 08/28/2008, -0/+6read it again.
- schoffie7, on 08/28/2008, -1/+6It's a shame that some of these ancient languages are dying out. Different dialects are so interesting to listen to and the fact that they are slowly fading away is sad. Communication is such a huge part our existance and so losing these languages is like losing a piece of these people's culture. Even if hardly anybody speaks the language, isn't it worth trying to document this piece of history before it's gone forever?
- inactive, on 08/28/2008, -1/+6Visual Basic. And good riddance.
- noumuon, on 08/28/2008, -0/+5since china has an official language, i would say it is. or let me guess... you only speak cantonese.. ;p
- inyearstocome, on 08/28/2008, -2/+7As long as we can amass the knowledge of those cultures into spoken languages, this is a good thing. A unified language would be amazing.
We can start by getting rid of all the spanish on US Legal documents and Bank Deposit Slips, or at LEAST make it in smaller text than the English. ;-) - mogebier, on 08/28/2008, -2/+7So?
It's called "Evolution". Or "That's the way the world works" - natterca, on 08/28/2008, -0/+4Your statement is doubleplusgood.
- SRSco, on 08/28/2008, -3/+7@ Harabeck: Latin is written and spoke and understood. It isn't really dead per se (see? I just wrote something in Latin and you understood it--you can also attend mass in Latin).
These languages won't be written and translated and reused like Latin. This is kind of a bad/sad thing (to people like me who care.) - mweflen, on 08/28/2008, -2/+6I guess in addition to English, the ability to detect irony is also endangered...
- DiseasedRodent, on 08/28/2008, -0/+4"2. N|u (also called Khomani)"
Spoken by 10 elderly people. Who is the one that calls it Khomani?Somebody slap that guy around, it's N|u darnit! - videodroner, on 08/28/2008, -0/+4"...it doesn't seem like THEY'RE very...*
- TheDreadDiggerD, on 08/28/2008, -0/+4Je ne comprends pas!
- Taiyoryu, on 08/28/2008, -0/+3Extinction is an integral part of the process of evolution whether it be living things or language. However it's important to preserve and archive a sample if not the entire language before its lost for the simple purpose of recording where we come from.
- byrdgang, on 08/28/2008, -0/+3It is very unfortunate to see so many uninformed comments here on Digg, but I knew to expect it with something academic in nature as this article.
Without knowing a single thing about linguistics, some are already talking about how useless these languages are.
Some on Digg are classifying French or English as endangered languages. How little do you have to know about linguistics to make such an unqualified statement? These statements are outrageously inaccurate.
Digg is not a place to give people a primer on linguistics, so I won't bother, but I will emphasize that this article is of limited use to individuals without at least elementary knowledge of linguistics. This ignorance will spew only baseless opinions without any supporting facts.
By the way, I have written on language death (a "branch" of linguistics). - keyforce, on 08/28/2008, -0/+3And e-bonics.
- 0260, on 08/28/2008, -0/+3no C#?
- NathanielJ, on 08/28/2008, -1/+4I think (hope?) he was being ironic.
- nexus6ca, on 08/28/2008, -0/+3Wow more people speak Klingon then alot of those languages
- EpicSelekta, on 08/28/2008, -2/+5A language that dies isn't really going to be a language that has exclusive information. Latin died, but when it died, people who knew early Arabic and German had already translated pretty much everything that mattered in Latin. Even dead languages that no one speaks can be interpreted: the ancient Maya left behind nothing except words carved into rock and a language the ancestrally was a cousin of Mayan language. There was no word key, yet linguistics experts still managed to find out what was said. Cultural identity remains even after people stop identifying with it.
- diggimator, on 08/28/2008, -0/+3Quick searches. Ainu recognized as a minority in a Wikipedia Japan article, 2003 http://ja.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=アイヌ&oldi ...
Ainu recognized as a minority in an official Japanese document, 1988
http://www.sangiin.go.jp/japanese/joho1/syuisyo/11 ... -
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