cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/cool/p/1517755/game-designed-to-save-dying-aboriginal-language-wins-global-awards
With only eight fluent Nyiyaparli speakers remaining, an Aboriginal group is racing against time to save its 41,000-year-old language.
Wish them luck, but I honestly feel like this should be more about preserving a dying language over saving it. From the numbers provided in the article I would highly doubt this can save it. It can definitely draw attention and allow it to be preserved a lot easier though, which will help it be recognized easier in the future.
What is the distinction between saving and preserving a language?
I’m just guessing what they meant but I took it as the difference between:
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saving = getting enough people to keep speaking it that it remains a living language
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preserving = documenting it for posterity so that it is not utterly forgotten for all time
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This might not be totally the right definition, but I think it is:
Latin is dead, but we still understand it. There’s no one left who speaks it really, but we know how to use it.
Isn’t the ‘dead’ part more that nobody speaks it as a mother tongue any more, so it doesn’t really evolve like a living language would even though it’s still spoken in specific contexts? I think it contrasts with an extinct language which nobody speaks for any reason.
I downloaded and its fun. Definitely check it out. Yankurri!
Languages are like tools, if people don’t see utility in them, they won’t use them. The only people who would go out of their way to learn and use a specific tool are experts and enthusiasts, and there aren’t enough of those around to keep a language alive. If much bigger languages like Yiddish, Romani, Bavarian, Assyrian, etc are classified as critically endangered and struggling to survive then these smaller languages simply have no future. I think efforts like this are good for preserving the language, and there’s definitely value in that, but I ultimately think that this is a doomed language.
I mean if you wanna look at it like that all languages are doomed languages
All languages evolve, and in the age or globalisation also becoming more homogenised. I don’t think there will ever be one global language as people like their local dialects and are influenced by local culture, but i wouldn’t be surprised if in a handful of hundred years I could read a bit of French.
