Linguist Nicholas Ostler

[Code_Red]

Re: Linguist Nicholas Ostler

Very interesting article :k:

One of the best things about looking at language-history is the relief from having to live purely in the moment. English, for example, is a very young language, only 1500 years old, with only half the recorded history, say of Greek or even Latin. It has had a love-hate relationship with classics from the Mediterranean, with revivals of Latin learning (and to a lesser extent, Greek) in the 9th century and the 16th. There is absolutely no reason to look on modern trends as in some way ultimate, or the last word.

Can language be viewed in the way that a biologist might look at biodiversity? Has anyone ever theorized that the continued loss of many of the world’s languages may have implications for our survival as a species?

Yes. A direct example is seen in traditional knowledge of the medicinal value of plants, built up over millennia, which tends to be linked to language traditions; when a traditional language is abandoned, it is very rare, if not impossible, for a people to keep the full range of their traditional learning. Globalization, ironically, has the potential to make such detailed corners of human knowledge more widely available; but language loss has the converse potential to snuff out respect for such knowledge, and so discontinue its transmission

Apparently, we are in an era where birth of new languages has stopped. and remaining languages are facing threat of losing their identity rapidly