Language is a powerful tool. While some use it to inspire and connect, others weaponize it to deceive and manipulate. Learning languages is empowering and provides a passport to the world at large. This is particularly true of hyperpolyglots, people who speak ten or more languages. But none of the above matters. Unless we can use language to make the world a better place.
Globalism is bad but good at the same time. Without globalism, it would’ve been impossible for Albanians to connect with their “long lost” Arberesh brothers and vice versa. I found this very informative and enjoyed it tremendously.
Almost 600 years later still being spoken all around the world. I was born here in Montreal of Italian parents from Molise. We spoke it at home growing up and I still speak it with family elders. Sad but great history.
Thank you for sharing !! I remember that as a child my grandfather used to speak Haketia! he was born in Essaouira, Morocco and fled to Israel during the 50s. Greetings from Jerusalem!
I totally get what you mean and I always thought about that, but the fact of not using any flag still has its bad part, in my view. Basically using flags is like using the emoji associated with that language, and it conveys the same meaning in a faster and more colourful way than just the word of the language. Besides, if there two languages which you don't know the alphabet of, it will be very hsrd for you to distinguish them... Hard problem. It'd be great if we had specific flags for representing languages, unrelated to the countries or regions 😊
Yes, flags are faster to recognise and more colourful, but my point is that they do not convey the same meaning at all (neither denotation nor connotation). Otherwise, they would and should stand for languages But they don’t.
Thanks for this video! This has much relevance for my first language: Frisian. In #fryslân we have never been a minority language because speakers of the Frisian language have always been a majority. But this frame of 'minoritized' clears things up en reveals the power dynamic in play.
Thank you for such an interesting video! I love omniglot - I used to go on it basically every day! 😅 On the question of communities that in general don't push for writing, i would say (as a learner who has heard opinions from speakers on this question) that sign languages' communities tend not to push for writing, and don't see it as hugely useful or needed (as so signwriting is mostly an accademic tool).
Thank you for this thoughtful reflection on the LinguaSnapp resource. It is indeed necessary to take a critical approach to the setup and issues of ownership and control of the data collected through crowd sourcing and so I very welcome this initiative and look forward to further discussions. I would just like to add a clarification on a couple of points: First, the app version released in 2021 enables users to keep a copy of the image on their phone. But even in the first version nothing prevented users from taking a twin image and keeping it, or from keeping a record of any descriptors that they may have added. So in effect, even the original copyright transfer pertained to use of the app to transmit data but not to the data itself. Next, there was never a 'committee of academics' vetting material. There was a very small number of individual editors, most of them junior research staff and student assistants, who checked the material for accuracy. To my knowledge, during the time I was involved with LinguaSnapp, from its launch until late 2021, there were only two cases (out of thousands of images) where material was sent via the app but was deemed inappropriate to release to the public. And finally, I should emphasise that LinguaSnapp did not work with any technology company and did not forward any data to any commercial company, as far as I am aware. [Yaron Matras]
My mind was convinced that Latin is not a dead language, when a Welsh Poppy changed from Meconopsis cambrica to Papaver cambricum. If a language can change it is alive.
He is very wrong. I think in my native language. I converse with my soul, with God. I immagine conversation with other people and almost every time in my native language.
There are no native languages, but we will leave that for another day. You might want to watch the full video before jumping to conclusions on this one: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Obpl28CkBTs.html
You don't know what I'm talking about. That's fine, because it's just a short. The full explanation is here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Obpl28CkBTs.html Watch it and you will understand why your intuition is wrong on this one.
No, you don't know. You think you know. Here's why you don't think in your dominant language, whether English or any other one: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Obpl28CkBTs.html
I'm wondering how much the chatbot's responses are affected by the input it receives (is it similar to how input affects people?) Responses may be affected by the way you're asking the questions? Perhaps, say, if you were to provide more context within the prompt? The chatbot will produce responses in correlation with the quality/robustness of the input it receives, methinks... 🤔 I'm not sure if any of that makes sense; I'm just thinking of chatbot as having that kind of dependence for some reason...
Yes, indeed. Curating our prompts is crucial, and changing that prompt even slightly might result in wildly different answers. How different in the case at hand? Feel free to experiment and report back! :)
Most people in the "language learning community" are hobbyists. Thus, they tend to avoid (or even condemn) any form of intense learning which requiers effort & suffering. This hobbyist approach leads to the widespread covert laziness we see in gamification and magic-bullet pedagogies.
Re: your ultimate conclusion _(circa_ 12:14) you will find -as you get older and have more face-to-face experience with these things- that (1) the vast majority of people are too stupid to engage in this kind of "philosophical critique of the impact of word choice within a language" (even in their own first language), whereas (2) there's a tiny minority of people who are so intelligent that _they cannot stop themselves_ from engaging in this kind of philosophical critique -they're constantly burdened with an awareness of the implications of word choice (etc.). There is a kind of tragedy entailed by this fact -especially for those of us who try to practice (and not merely preach) democracy in this socio-linguistic context.
That's very insightful and I agree re: the tragedy. I would say 1/3 are/will not be ready to engage in this, 1/3 are already on board and the other 1/3 are on the fence. It is to the last group that these videos are directed. Maybe there are less than 1/3 but still worth reaching to in my book.
I've never met anyone who was "learning a language to make a difference" _other than myself_ in all these years, online or offline: neither at famous universities where the students are predominantly wealthy (Oxford, Cambridge, etc.) nor at tiny universities helping the poor and oppressed (e.g., F.N.U., Saskatchewan) did I meet _anyone_ with an ethical or political motivation to learn _any language_ -ancient or modern. Just a bunch of mammals trying to satisfy the basest of mammalian impulses: that's all I've seen on every continent, in every walk of life. Even in Buddhist monasteries, TBH.
I’m currently working on a dictionary of Turkish dialect of Romanes and I need more sources for comparison. If there’s any document you can share, please do so, guys. Romanes is vanishing. There must be detailed written records for this amazing language.
