> As an admirer of John Koontz's postings on NAT-LANG (clear, erudite, and
> presumably factual) ...
Well, thanks!
> What some people do believe can be changed is the steady loss of native
> languages. Lingua francas, even English, don't always replace mother
> tongues: a great deal depends on people's attitude towards the languages
> they speak, and towards multilingualism.
Well, I am certainly in favor or preserving the native (or indigenous, let's
say) languages of the Americas and elsewhere. Please don't take anything
I've said to be opposed to that!
Nor do I assert that lingua francas always replace the languages they
supplement! It is VERY dangerous to speak one in the home in lieu of your
native language, if you want your children to grow up knowing their native
language. This is particularly likely to occur, of course, when the parents
have only the lingua franca in common, but it has been done deliberately,
too, when the lingua franca was also a dominant regional language that the
parents felt the children would be advantaged to know. Or, sadly, when the
parents felt that the children would be disadvantaged by knowing the native
language.
> The single greatest threat to native languages in Canada is the fact that
> many parents have absorbed English Canada's belief that one language is
> better than two - and it's obvious which one that is! If that belief can
> be changed - since it actually runs counter to the evidence on
> bilingualism - then, many believe, it will be possible to establish and
> maintain stable bilingualism in the communities where the language hasn't
> yet faded beyond recall.
I also agree that multilingualism is fine and no handicap, even an
advantage, and that English-dominant states (actually any state run on
nationalist principles) tend to militate against this. However, I'd like to
caution that I believe that no amount of positive attitudes toward
multilingualism will counter a home environment in which only one language
is spoken.
> John's comments suggest that he doesn't understand why people might want
> to maintain a language with no "survival or economic advantage", but I
> find it hard to believe that any responsible Aboriginal linguist would
> miss the essential point: that languages are also important for identity,
> for preserving and transmitting knowledge and values, and for spirituality
> (perhaps an unfashionable concept among academic linguists?).
Here I have been definitely misunderstood, and the fault is my own. What I
meant in the context was that it is unlikely that one would be able to get
the participants in a governing body to learn a new lingua franca for use in
meetings, purely on moral grounds, particularly if they already knew one
that seemed to work. They might agree that it was a good idea, but, in the
pinch they would weasel out. How many tribal governments conduct business
in English because some or all of the members fall into the age bracket
where knowledge of the native language is not adequate for active use?
However, this resistance to learning new languages is not restricted to
learning lingua francas or other languages for use in governing bodies.
Adults (or maybe anyone above about 9 or 10?) seem to hate, by and large,
to learn new languages. And many of them who undertake it voluntarily or
involuntarily aren't very good at it anyway. I don't know if this is
because only young children are really capable of learning a language in a
normal way, as some theorists hold, or because learning a language is such
an enormous amount of disagreeable work that most people would rather poke
themselves in the eye occasionally than do it, as some other theorists
believe.
Anyway, because of this I do think that in practice it is difficult to get
members of native communities who have grown up ignorant of their community
language to learn that language as an effective second language. Make no
mistake; this bothers me a lot, whereas I'm not so concerned about the
lingua francas as such! These non-speakers may well want to become speakers
for reasons of identity or spirituality - moral reasons, let us say, as
opposed to materialist ones - but in practice they don't develop the urge to
spend their hours in study and practice, or, if they do, they don't have the
hours to spend. They may manage to memorize some formulas, even long ones
like prayers, but they don't usually become really fluent.
I know there are exceptions, because I know some - mostly Europeans who have
learned other European or even non-European languages, of course, for
statistical reasons. I've always regretted the fact that I have never
managed to get more than a linguistic knowledge of the other languages to
which I've been exposed, except possibily Spanish, and that's debatable.
Incidentally, while linguistics is not concerned per se with the morality of
language use, it is concerned with the social context of language - I think
this, some don't - and most linguists, including myself, have at least some
moral views on language. We try to keep it out of the science, but science
isn't life. You can't work with a language without working with the people
who speak it and the culture that it carries, and only an insensitive clod
would fail to be affected sympathetically by such an experience.
> Which brings us to Esperanto.
And that, with apologies, is where I get off. I have nothing against
Eperanto or Lojban or whatever per se. It's the arguments for their
cultural and linguistic utility that I deplore. I used to love inventing
languages myself, but I never tried to get anyone else to speak one of them.
This is what I like about Klingon. It was invented as an amusement and put
to use in a well-defined, harmless way, without any pretensions. Everybody
involved knows it's just a game. Still, if you want to spend time learning
a language, I recommend a real one. A real Salish language, for example, is
more improbably wonderful and entertaining than any work of linguistic
engineering!
John Koontz koontz@bldr.nist.gov
The opinions above, express or implied, are my own, and do not reflect the
theory or practice of my employers.