this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2024
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I am genuinely worried about the future of languages. As you may know, parallel to the mass exctinction of species, we are living in a mass extinction of languages. The reasons of this are varied, and have a lot to do with indigenous rights.
But I think people here lean too hard on "people have always been worried about change". It's true that Plato was also complaining about the kids, but he was doing so in writing, a new technology.
Writing has only existed for what, 6000 years? And now we have a global empire and mass communication across the world. Sure, after the Roman Empire retreated Latin developed into the many Romance languages. But the vast majority of people were illiterate, and the Roman Empire only really included the Mediterranean!
Writing, and especially the proliferation of video and audio, could stabilize aspects of language across generations. And English is now a high priority business skill across the world. Worldwide pop culture increasingly favors English more and more. Although Japan and Korea are doing serious work right now.
I don't know what will happen to language. I don't know whether it's good or bad. But things are going to change a lot. I wouldn't predict a single worldwide language with all others being relegated to historical studies...but it's not impossible. Or we could end up with several standardized world languages and few speakers of anything else.
I actually think we've just passed the high water mark of English. As a multipolar world emerges from underneath American hegemony, people will rediscover their own cultures and languages. You can see this in China when even 10 years ago the biggest blockbusters were all American movies but for the last couple of years American films have struggled to break the top 10.
Similarly, with China investing heavily in Africa, many Africans are choosing to learn Chinese for educational and business opportunities. Then you have places like the Middle East, where Saudi Arabia has introduced mandatory Chinese lessons im school.
Geopolitics also plays a huge role, for example in Russia where sanctions have caused people to turn away from Western culture en masse to look Eastwards and inwards.
That's what I mean by several standardized world languages. It's not impossible to foresee a world where 90+% of people natively speak English, Spanish, Russian, Mandarin, Hindi, or Arabic. Is that bad, is that good? Idk, but it's definitely something new.
Interesting to compare languages by native speakers vs total speakers.
at least language is something we made up to communicate and two people not being able to is a failure, there's no analogy to species extinction in that regard.
Language and culture arguably can't be seperated. Language extinction is the loss of human cultural legacies. It's the assimilation of indigenous peoples. There's a reason language rights are often such a fraught political issue.
feel like there's a difference between what was deliberately done to indigenous people and a more gradual "common second language" thing going on.
I think it's a continuum. It's less stick and more carrot now, but also the last speakers of languages are dying. Kids don't necessarily understand the importance of learning their ancestral language when anglophonic pop culture seems more vibrant.