Reddit Reddit reviews When Languages Die: The Extinction of the World's Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge

We found 4 Reddit comments about When Languages Die: The Extinction of the World's Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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When Languages Die: The Extinction of the World's Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge
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4 Reddit comments about When Languages Die: The Extinction of the World's Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge:

u/CircleReversed · 9 pointsr/changemyview

There's a book you should read. It's called When Languages Die: The Extinction of the World's Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge.

Every language carries knowledge which is valuable to humanity for historical, anthropological, and even medical and environmental reasons. There are some languages spoken by a small number of indigenous people which carry information about medicinal herbs that the rest of the world is oblivious toward.

When languages are lost, all of the knowledge written down is lost, all of the history is lost. Look at Egypt; humans today only understand a fraction of the language of Ancient Egypt, which makes studying its history very difficult. Everything that happens in the world today is going to be valuable for future historians, and languages need to stay alive for history to stay alive.

And since people don't live forever, it's necessary for languages to be passed down to younger generations in order for the knowledge to remain accessible.

u/l33t_sas · 4 pointsr/linguistics

I think others here have made a decent case for the value language conservation provides to linguistic theory, but the replies have been scant on the value these languages have towards their communities. I recommend you check out When Languages Die by K. David Harrison (he's also made a documentary, The Linguists which is nice too). Also check out Dying Words by the aforementioned Nick Evans (I'm meeting him in a few weeks, so excited!). I also recommend joining the Resource Network For Linguistic Diversity on Facebook as well as the open-access online journal Language Documentation and Conservation.

u/bigbadathabaskanverb · 1 pointr/linguistics

My intro grad class read the following, so I think they're a good place to start:

The Green Book of Language Revitalization in Practice

https://www.amazon.com/Green-Book-Language-Revitalization-Practice/dp/9004254498

Saving Languages

https://www.amazon.com/Saving-Languages-Introduction-Language-Revitalization/dp/0521016525/ref=pd_sbs_14_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=DXKK7FQ77XYXCPQWPVM9

Reversing Language Shift

https://www.amazon.com/Reversing-Language-Shift-Theoretical-Multilingual/dp/1853591211/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1480605154&sr=1-1&keywords=reversing+language+shift

When Languages Die

https://www.amazon.com/When-Languages-Die-Extinction-Knowledge/dp/0195372069/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1480605172&sr=1-1&keywords=when+languages+die

In addition to many articles, but if it's articles you want, you can't go wrong with anything by Leanne Hinton.

If all you know right now is that you think you're interested in Endangered Languages, then read read read is really the best advice, so you can get an idea of what "the field" entails and start to find what interests you. What part of the world? What language family? What type of work - applied and/or academic? Are you interested more in documentation, description, or revitalization based work (most projects involve all three, but usually weighted a bit more toward one or the other)? And what subfield of linguistics do you want to specialize in? etc.

u/MuskratRambler · 1 pointr/linguistics

If you mean get into, as in you want to be interested but just can't find the motivation, what got me interested was reading about it. Learn from the best. Here are some good ones on documentation itself (I guess more on the eminence of languages dying and the need for documentation):

  • Linguistic Fieldwork—Claire Bowern

  • When Languages DieDavid Harrison

  • Vanishing Voices—Daniel Nettle & Suzanne Romaine

  • Endangered Languages—Sarah G. Thomason

    Fieldwork is often closely associated with typology, so here are some books that explain some of what's possible in the world's languages:

  • Describing Morphosyntax—Thomas Payne

  • Ergativity—R.M.W. Dixon

  • Changing Valency—R.M.W. Dixon & Alexandra Aikhenvald

    And then there are reference grammars, often the fruits of fieldwork. Here are some good ones I've gone through:

  • A Grammar of Tariana—Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald

  • A Grammar of Hup—Patience Epps

  • Basically any other one in the Mouton Grammar Library, plus here are some free ones from Language Science Press.

    Then again, if you mean get into it meaning what language should you pick and what part of the world, that's a harder question to answer. I feel like languages just sort of happen to people: they know someone who happens to come from a community of minority language speakers, or they have a friend who says they ran into an understudied language while abroad, or you yourself happened to live in that part of the world for whatever reason. It's hard to go study a language out of the blue because you need an "in" somehow, which is hard to purposely get, I think.