Fifty Percent of World's Languages Have Been Lost in Last Six Years

re: Fifty Percent of World's Languages Have Been Lost in Last Six Years

corgi — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 23:58:38 GMT

As we regress in our miserable humanity and modern ignorance it appears that more of the same is inevitable. Todays youth disdain education and language skills as 'unkool' and a fabrication of a society that they do not want to be a part of. Our schools teach nothing except social liberalization ane how to suck money out of the government. The media glorify street babble and foul hateful language. The young only wnat sex, drugs and hiphop/rap and to be members of gangs to avoid responsibility and as a way to make money. English in the USA wil be replaced by a hybrid bastardization of language made up of spanglish-rap slang. Dont believe it. Listen to what our kids call music. Listen to the kids talk (?). amongst themselves and listen to the glorification of sexual inuindo and uncensored cursing and gutter language in our media. In 50 years no one in the USA will be able to write a short paragraph with 3 properly spelled words and a decipherable meaning.

re: Fifty Percent of World's Languages Have Been Lost in Last Six Years

tyciol — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 15:42:34 GMT

Err... we're not losing the 'origins of our world'. Ethniticities and spiritualities perhaps, but who says they have any valid insight? We're losing culture and art. We can preserve that in books and videos if need be I guess, let's encourage them to do that. Surely historians can provide some sort of material compensation for donating this.

Many languages and cultures have been lost, just like many species of animal. We try to preserve them for what they can potentially teach us, but if we miss a few we shouldn't lament like it's the end of the world. The most important cultures are very well known, because they made the biggest impacts.

Things like science are a lot more valuable than culture, really, I'm much more worried about losing that, or seeing its progress halted. That's where true art, beauty and truth lie.

re: Fifty Percent of World's Languages Have Been Lost in Last Six Years

Lukane — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 03:42:14 GMT

Going too far. It is hilarious what types of preposterous propositions pampered academic aborigine-groupies can from hanging out with miserable backward recluses. Certainly, no culture or language should be forcibly exterminated as in the middle ages, but some deserve a natural demise. Of course, they should be studied; if not for what “accidental” knowledge they possess then as a lesson, as to how humanity can degenerate. The short- live diseased natives the good professor studied would have gladly traded places and gone home to his Volvo, Jacuzzi and plasma TV and get de-liced. They know nothing about harmaline based dopamine antagonists and are likely not responsible for the production and discovery of these species. Does he think the cultures that mastered complex astronomical and engineering math, built Stonehenge’s and Mayan marvels just for a place to sacrifice virgins? Their eerily familiar mythology exists likely because one of their ancestors was brought by missionaries to see the “Wizard of OZ.” Academics of this sort only detract from our solving the mysteries of who was responsible for these marvels and how we can avoid disappearing like them. I for one don’t feel the solution to saving the earth from corporate ignorance and greed is by locking our children in dark caves until they are 18. The solution to reckless deforestation is not to stop all cutting down of trees, thus eliminating textbooks, and flying off to party with cannibal gods. It is better to count stamens that to bang around in a dark dangerous jungle, “hearing” the smells of plants due to alkaloid-induced synthesia. The last thing we need is the big drug ogres getting an academic blessing to turn their employees into mindless zombies using brain destroying voodoo techniques. Given a choice and an education these wise shaman would more likely be flying off into space in saucers than being spaced out in the jungle like the new age anthropologists.

re: Fifty Percent of World's Languages Have Been Lost in Last Six Years

Zed — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 00:59:12 GMT

Those interested in preserving the vanishing languages of the world MUST MUST MUST read a fascinatng article by Indigenous scholar and Arapaho Indian, Professor Stephen Neyooxet Greymorning, who is currently at Southern Cross University, Lismore, NSW, Australia, sharing an astonishing accellerated language aquisition technique.
Read the article at http://www.scu.edu.au/news/media.php?item_id=865&action=show_item or the www.scu.edu.au home page, and follow the link on the RHS to media releases. You will be amazed! Someone should support him in his work!
Professor Greymorning has developed a way of teaching languages so that a total novice can be speaking and understanding a foreign language with conversational ease after as little as 18 hours’ tuition.

He has been successfully using the technique, which he developed after extensively studying how children learn language, with Indigenous Americans.

re: Fifty Percent of World's Languages Have Been Lost in Last Six Years

An Observer of Life — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 23:32:18 GMT

I believe it is important to speak the universal language of love, hope and spirituality and not exploit language barriers unless you are prepared to learn the whole package. Just by simply learning a language can contribute to having power over a culture and how it is represented.

re: Fifty Percent of World's Languages Have Been Lost in Last Six Years

Auntie LinLin — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 08:31:25 GMT

Wow! Lots of valuable stuff packed into 22 minutes. I want a script of this lecture to give to my friends and students who can't understand English very well. Any possibility of that?

re: Fifty Percent of World's Languages Have Been Lost in Last Six Years

mmc88121 — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 22:26:55 GMT

You can not understand another language without some understanding of the culture. And you can not understand a culture without understanding the language. Having been encouraged to learn languages when I was younger I found it helps me learn more if you know where certain words came from and know something about the culture.
Mary

re: Fifty Percent of World's Languages Have Been Lost in Last Six Years

Russ Bianchi — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 15:44:56 GMT

Along with botanicals that are essential to life (somewhere in the neighborhood of 80+% of all medical preventative and reactive model treatments are based of these) being lost forever, daily, by slash and burn short sightedness, this video is very illuminating as the racing geometric progression in LOSS to diversity in our cultures, be it language, and our strength as a species.

We know what occurs when from a DNA standpoint when there is not diversity; it results in a weaker and less resistent disease base.

COLLAPSE by Jared Diamond is worth a read on this subject, or set of subjects also.

re: Fifty Percent of World's Languages Have Been Lost in Last Six Years

Josh Rubin — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 15:27:45 GMT

This is because of society's shift into external gratification through cars, houses, toys and clothes. Kids are taught this today more than ever. We have lost the internal awareness of conciousness that can be gained through love of self, discovery of self and just having fun in life. Life today of more like work to most people. As OSHO said, life should not be live, it should be celebrated.

re: Fifty Percent of World's Languages Have Been Lost in Last Six Years

Lloyd Fielder D.C. — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 14:58:47 GMT

Powerful stuff!

re: Fifty Percent of World's Languages Have Been Lost in Last Six Years

Pat Ormsby — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 13:54:04 GMT

A language is a culture; a culture is an entire world. When you learn a new language, you understand this on a very deep level. Reach out to other, very different people wherever you can!