And how wonderful it is when people go out of their way to preserve their native language, however small it might be. Think Upper and Lower Sorbian (Upper and Lower Luzhizki) with respectively 20000 and 7200 speakers.
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Yup - “Lužički Srbi” still speak it just like Rezian Slovenes still speak their own not even a bit understandable Slovene. We, Slovenians can hardly understand it or we might not understand it at all and there surely is really handful of these people.
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I’ve felt great admiration for Rezian Slovene people ever since you mentioned them.
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Agreed. I think people that speak predominantly English (or another dominant language, I would hazard a guess, but my experience is with English speakers), tend to have a rather arrogant attitude towards minority languages. It’s as though just because it isn’t spoken by hundreds of millions of people, it’s worthless. What they forget is that many people tie a lot of their identity to the language they speak. I try to turn it back on them, when I’m faced with that kind of attitude. People don’t particularly appreciate it when they’re asked: ‘well, how would you like it if you were told you weren’t allowed to speak English anymore?’
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I would think that most languages would be impacted, probably to a significant degree, by diaspora of peoples from other regions or countries and are melds of a once dominant way of speaking and a wave of new influences. - equally that would stand for English and the Celtic languages as well as Yiddish. So from that perspective they all have merit.
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I tend to pity native English speakers, really - a lot of them would really like to learn some other language, but English is very widespread and really easy to learn (in spite of its pronunciation, which obviously was invented to humiliate me personally). And so they don’t really have the communicative motivation to learn other languages - everyone else speaks English. Would be very frustrating for me.
Anyway, I’ve never really met any native English speaker who would show arrogance towards minor languages, especially not towards the Celtic ones. Maybe I’ve been lucky.
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Have to disagree with you there. There is a fine body of Yiddish literature, I believe, for one thing.
As far as I know, the new state of Israel officially discouraged Yiddish, as it was a reminder of the bad times in Europe, and it wanted to promote modern Hebrew (which it did, very successfully).
Whether Yiddish was a cross or not (and what is English if it isn’t a cross), it had and has its own culture which is as valuable as any other.
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Fab thread - so many languages, so little time!
I am wondering if/why some people pick up languages more easily than others? I would love to learn more but am struggling with even just cymraeg
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I didn’t struggle once upon a time - now I do, not just with Cymraeg but it seams with every language even those I already know … My brains are going down obviously what concerns memory skills.
Da iawn to all who can learn so many languages not even considdering how taugh they might be to learn, speak and cope with.
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Unfortunately, it’s an attitude I’ve come across quite often here. I get asked a lot why I’m wasting my time learning a ‘useless’ language when ‘everyone speaks English anyway.’
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It’s not useless, you can even send a visa application to the UK embassy in it! Which I’m going to do one day:)
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I’ve never understood that attitude myself. If it’s still a living language, then clearly someone uses it. And even if it’s not, how is it a waste of time to study a lost element of culture? 
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The Italians would agree, in high schools with a classic profile all the children have to study Latin and Ancient Greek. It was rather fun, really:)
Anyway I’m sorry that you have to come across such an attitude. Here, Celtic languages, especially Irish, have been quite popular recently, as part of the popularization of the “Celtic culture”. Not many people actually tried to learn them, though, which led to some curious cases. I remember one guy who was aking for a translation of some very serious Irish song about “the freedom of Ireland”. When he posted the text of the song, though, we saw that it was actually a well-known Breton song about drinking and pretty girls.
So, knowing rare languages is useful at least to save yourself from embarrasment:)
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I laughed quite a bit at that!
I think it’s wonderful that there’s such a strong interest in minority languages around the world. And I wish they had’ve taught Latin and Ancient Greek at my school - that sounds like fun!
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It is:) My Italian professor used to say that we ought to read Ancient Greek literature, because there’s everything in it - all the thoughts, ideas and genres that will appear later are already there.
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I am in full grovel mode and am genuinely sorry!! I was totally influenced by what I’d heard from friends at college in the early 60’s. One of them whisked his wife off to Israel and instantly gave up being ultra-orthodox and ate non-kosher… His reasoning being that they’d only obeyed those rules ‘to remember’ and now they were really ‘home’ they didn’t need that! He saw yiddish as something that grew out of ‘not being home’ I am not sure what he thinks now, as he got fed up with Israel and went to the USA!!!
I once had to translate a paper in Russian for a friend. It transpired the only bit relevant to her work was a refernce to the Journal of the American Chemical Society!!
My dad was raised, once his Mam died, to see Cymraeg as a waste of time and only spoken by … well people not of ‘our class’ (I suppose that was his step-mother’s, as his dad was a joiner by trade)!!
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I find that very sad. Unfortunately, it seems to be a pretty common attitude in Australia (at least in my experience) in relation to people holding onto their mother tongue. My grandfather was an Italian immigrant in the 50’s, and like in most parts of the West, the Mediterraneans weren’t particularly welcome here. He ended up losing his accent and most of his language because of that, and refused to speak it to my mum or I because he said it was useless.
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Oh, that must have been frustrating!
You know, immigrants are a very special case. Having had some immigrant experience myself, with all the pleasures of being made fun of because of my accent, I wouldn’t find the courage to judge any person who would try to assimilate as much as they can. Unfortunately:(
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I wouldn’t either - I just find it terribly sad. I think language should be celebrated in all its diversity, and people should be encouraged to continue to speak their native language, not to lose it.
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I so very much agree:) And minority languages should be made as fascionable as they can be, to attract young people.
(Though if I were a Welsh or Irish child, I’d certainly learn the language, just so that I could speak with my friends and know that a lot of adults won’t understand me!)
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