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0 pointscyphar3y ago0 comments

There are several reasons a language can go extinct, and while the reasons you mentioned are included there are several other reasons that you didn't consider. The most common way language death occurs is through contact with a prestige language, which results in social pressure that makes the non-prestige language become less and less commonly spoken[1]. A community becoming bilingual is part of this process -- it doesn't always result in language death, but it is an early stage of that form of language death.

As for a European country official language (strange line to draw), Icelandic is already in a state where younger Icelandic natives speak to each other in English because smartphones do not support their native language. It is entirely possible that Icelandic will be in danger of extinction this century[2].

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3qbYFvOHwk [2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/22/world/europe/iceland-icel...

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raverbashing3y ago

Icelandic won't disappear soon. (it's a bit of a mistake to say latin disappeared but I digress)

It might take some work (and more media being produced in it, surely) but I don't think it's at risk

> because smartphones do not support their native language

Nowhere in the article says that. And most smartphones do even have support (including the Icelandic keyboard)

what is not supported is voice activated devices:

> "“Not being able to speak Icelandic to voice-activated fridges, interactive robots and similar devices would be yet another lost field,"

cypharOP3y ago

(I guess we've skipped over the discussion about whether language death can occur without genocide.)

> it's a bit of a mistake to say latin disappeared but I digress

Latin is a dead language. It's not extinct (because it's used for ceremonial reasons by the Catholic Church) but it has no native speakers. This is not a remotely controversial statement. Old Church Slavonic has a similar role in Slavic Orthodox Churches and is also a dead language for the same reason.

> Nowhere in the article says that. And most smartphones do even have support (including the Icelandic keyboard).

In my defense, I can't read the article -- I linked it because this Tom Scott video[1] uses that article as a reference for the Icelandic example he gave where he explicitly says that Icelandic is not supported by modern smartphones. My phone does have Icelandic support now so I guess the statement was only true at the time he said it?

[1]: https://youtu.be/qYlmFfsyLMo?t=137

raverbashing3y ago

Thanks for clarifying

You're of course right about "Latin is dead" (for practical purposes). But there's lots of nuances that get lost in this statement

Latin is dead in the same way as Middle English is dead. The Latin that died is the one around the late Roman Empire time that was "photographed" and frozen in time as Ecclesiastical Latin (oversimplification, of course)

And of course the modern romance languages derived from it, but there's no exact time where those "flipped the switch" and became modern French, Spanish, Catala, Portuguese, etc. So in a way it could be argued that they're Latin 3.0 w/ DLCs (which I'll totally give that it's a big stretch)

yakak3y ago

By your criteria no language that has survived to now will disappear without a major global calamity. Effectively, latin is a not a language for a native speaker that wants to go through their life and leave future native speakers.

Regarding Icelandic, I know little about it except that it has a lot of non-ANSI if written properly. I already know many latin language dialect speakers that developed their behavior when the limits of SMS unicode were significantly smaller than ANSI, with long term repercussions. I'm not sure why facts like that would need to be in the article to discuss here?

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0 pointscyphar3y ago0 comments

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3qbYFvOHwk [2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/22/world/europe/iceland-icel...

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raverbashing3y ago

Icelandic won't disappear soon. (it's a bit of a mistake to say latin disappeared but I digress)

It might take some work (and more media being produced in it, surely) but I don't think it's at risk

> because smartphones do not support their native language

Nowhere in the article says that. And most smartphones do even have support (including the Icelandic keyboard)

what is not supported is voice activated devices:

> "“Not being able to speak Icelandic to voice-activated fridges, interactive robots and similar devices would be yet another lost field,"

cypharOP3y ago

(I guess we've skipped over the discussion about whether language death can occur without genocide.)

> it's a bit of a mistake to say latin disappeared but I digress

> Nowhere in the article says that. And most smartphones do even have support (including the Icelandic keyboard).

[1]: https://youtu.be/qYlmFfsyLMo?t=137

raverbashing3y ago

Thanks for clarifying

You're of course right about "Latin is dead" (for practical purposes). But there's lots of nuances that get lost in this statement

yakak3y ago

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