Regional and minority languages
sara abdulla
Wednesday, 13 August 2008 14:16 UTC
A recent Nature editorial called for the protection of regional and minority languages in France and elsewhere. A cautionary response on Nature’s Correspondence page, claiming that schools in a third of Spain teach only in minority languages, is itself prompting a bulging postbag of replies including, two of which subsequently appeared on Nature’s Correspondence page, here and here.
What’s your view on the role and effects of minority languages in science education, and about related science education policies?
Updated 05 September 2008 10:53 UTC
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I support strongly the preservation and use of multiple languages. The “submission” to foreign languages is a tool of imperialism / colonisation, whatever arguments are presented in favor of that. It has to be a change, a cultural influence, a miscegenation, not a submission.
In my days, a true intellectual would be a person who knew many languages. Today we have people eager to “drop” their native languages in favor of the languages spoken by richer people. This is just sad. The practitioners of science, knowledge and culture must strive for a plurality of languages.
What happened to “The language of science is math/logic”?…
I live daily with people who claim my native language (portuguese) is “poorer” than english, is “unfit” for science, and other atrocities. I hate this. I could bear a joke or another, but no, people are so lazy, and have such a hard time learning and using this foreign language, that they would prefer to switch all the way, and speak only a single language, than to actually learn to speak two languages in every possible occasion. Usually they just use English for science and Portuguese to buy bread at the bread-making-place (that doesn’t have a proper word in English). Then they suffer if they have to do anything different of that. Well, grow up, people!!…
It’s sad that people choose the language they need to work, instead of the language their parents taught them. It means simply people just care about making money, it’s all up to “the boss”, which language we will speak…
I hate the typical anlgo-saxon argument that keeping a single language would be “more practical” will be “more economical”. I, for me, think things have to be right before easy.
Vive la différence!
(OBS: I left intentionally some phrases with word ordering latin… It’s a classical rhetorical tool, to speak a language wrongly to show you don’t care much about it. It has also the effect of making it seem that the orator is ignorant, what is actually something central to this problem. Because people don’t want anybody to think they are ignorant, they would like not to have to learn multiple languages, so they could master well a single language, or at least they think they would so… If only people cared less about that other people think…)
Now here is a Portuguese translation. I had all the work of translating the text, yes, the work we refuse to do in our daily lives… I bet I would have won the Nobel prize if I had instead used the time to study more algebra!
___Eu apoio fortemente a presevação e uso de múltiplas linguagens. A “submissão” a linguagens estrangeiras é uma ferramenta de imperialismo / colonização, quaisquer sejam os argumentos apresentados a favor. Tem que ser uma troca, uma influência cultural, miscigenação, não uma submissão.
Nos meus tempos, um verdadeiro intelectual seria uma pessoa que saberia muitas linguagens. Hoje temos pessoas afoitas por “abandonar” suas linguagens nativas em favor de linguagens faladas por pessoas mais ricas. Isto é simplesmente triste. Praticantes da ciência, conhecimento e cultura devem lutar pela pluralidade de linguagens.
O que houve com “a linguagem da ciência é a matemática / lógica”?…
Eu vivo diariamente com pessoas que clamam que minha linguagem nativa (o bom português) seria “mais pobre” que o inglês, seria “inadequada” para a ciência, e outras atrocidades. Odeio isso. Eu poderia urso uma piada ou outra, mas não, as pessoas são simplesmente preguiçosas, e tem tanta dificuldade em aprender e usar uma linguagem estrangeira, que prefeririam mudar tudo de uma vez e falar apenas uma linguagem, ao invés de realmente aprender a falar as duas linguagens em quaisquer situações possíveis. Geralmente elas usam apenas inglês para a ciência e português pra comprar pão na padaria. Então elas sofrem se precisam fazer qualquer coisa diferente disso. Bem, cresçam, pessoas!!…
É triste que as pessoas acabem por escolher falar a linguagem que elas precisam para trabalhar, ao invés da linguagem que seus pais a ensinaram. Isto significa simplesmente que as pessoas só ligam para ganhar dinheiro, é “o chefe” que decide que linguagem falar…
E eu odeio o típico argumento anglo-saxão de que manter uma única linguagem seria “mais prático”, seria “mais econômico”. Eu, por mim, acho que as coisas tem que ser certas antes de fáceis.
Vive la différence!
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BTW, Catalan is hardly a “minority language”, having more speakers than Finnish, Norwegian or also Georgian.
Whenever we say that this or that language is “minority”, we are already entering th realm of politics. This should be avoided.
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I totally agree with Nicolau Werneck’s last comment: the very word “minority” is a political statement which we should be well aware of!
My comment takes umbrage at the cautionary response to your sensible editorial about France’s language policy, a response written by Jose M. Rojo, a molecular and cell physiopathologist based in Madrid, and for all I know a world-famous scientist in his field.
His response, however, is fraught with errors and misconceptions with regard to the multilingual nature of Spain, that are unfortunately all too frequent in the Madrid media. Not only that, but it reveals a Spanish linguistic ideology which is just one step away from the policy of the Franco regime, particularly in its later years: Catalan is seen as a kind of ‘virus’ that Spaniards need to be protected against: bring out the mothballs…
There are many in Spain who have given up hope of a respectful coexistence between the various nations that have made it up for the past few centuries: many in Castilian Spain seem not to have given up the long-standing will to erase linguistic diversity.
Fortunately there are those who expose this for what it is: for instance, the recent book by Juan Carlos Moreno-Cabrera, El nacionalismo lingüístico.
May I end by suggesting that Nature be more discerning in its choice of respondents.
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When there is interaction between speakers of different languages it is much easier and more attractive for them to learn the languages of each other, and even to start mixing them into a chimerical language. People should just try to be more friends of each other, and make that extra effort towards tolerance and kindness. Friendship builds the conditions for people learning each other languages, it’s not the other way around; people deciding an “official” language first so then can finally start conversations and become friends.
People should also give less importance to the spoken word. They sit all day listening crap on the television, talking trivialities on the telephone and writing nonsense on the Internet. When you work with things such as music, practice a sport, do artistic or technical drawings, cook, have sex or whatever, you grok that the universe is much more than words can grasp. When people actually communicate, all these questions regarding “official languages” become silliness.
Perhaps Spain et alliae should go zen, before Valencia, Provence and Piemonte “go Portugal”.
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But surely there has to be a common language to enable people of all languages to communicate effectively across national borders (or across “language borders”)? There are so many languages in the world that one could not learn them all.
The word “minority” is, in my view, an accurate description of a language that is not the “main” language of a country, or of one that is used by only a relatively small number of people (eg Welsh). -
Based on historical and statistical records I think that merging languages is unavoidable also supporting by modern communication tools(internet, Hollywood,..) which making people many “things” in common more than ever.
For me as Farsi/Persian language speaker there is a rule of simplicity on using the language.Farsi accepted many words by their qualification/power to express user’s ideas during its long time history(it has accepted many words from Arabic,Turkish,English,…).Although many Iranian/Persian can read a text belongs to 700 years ago,(even the 700 years before people can read today’s text and get the main idea) but the language changed seriously .the only things that has not changed yet is tending to simplicity in choosing words for expressing opinion/idea as accurate as it required.
Also considering the Zipf’s Law which covering meaningfully English(as a language with most number of words) and using wide in many studies I can stand more strong on simplicity idea.
If we assume there is no political border in human mind specially in linguistic area,human brain tends to choose by its physiological rules that observed by “simplicity” rather that “Rightness”.
People/governments/corporations can change many things but current changes are leading faster than ever to merging cultures and languages.I have a sad feeling about disappearing my born language even if it done by people used to talk with it.
I am thinking about ways to protect my language in many ways,but in scientific writing/reading I have least to do based on wide internationally cooperative dynamic of the professional scientific work. -
I think Maxine has it right, it’s better to use a common language for scientific purposes. Although its possible to translate documents to every language, some aspects always get lost in translation; its common to find words or phrases that have a completely different meaning when translated to another language.
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And the language should be… English! Yes, why not? After all, you are all English speakers, right?
Well, I agree that people must learn other languages. Second, third and fourth languages, as many as possible. It’s important to mellow up. And of course in international activities it is good to have a certain lingua franca, helping to centralize everything, because it is in fact difficult to make translations all the time…
But when we are talking about schools being forbidden to use the language of the local people, then we have a problem. That is the issue here.
We are talking about people who believe that making science in their native languages is “wrong” is “more difficult”… In Brazil’s (my) case it’s not Nature’s or IEEE’s or anybody’s fault, the fault is from the population being lazy and not having a strong identity, or something like it. But when we are talking about regions of the country where people speak specific languages, different from other parts of the same country, being required to switch their language, we are talking about explicit oppression of culture here. Let’s not mix these subjects, and justify oppression of local “minorities” with giving less work to library employees.
It’s all part of a big illusion that one country should have one law and one language and one religion, etc… If we didn’t have this “border” concept, the discussion would be much more interesting…
As for the phrases that have a completely different meaning when “translated”, I hope you agree with me that two phrases that have completely different meaning cannot be the translation of each other. There can’t be, as per definition, a translation from a phrase that has a completely different meaning from the original, since a translation is a phrase that has in fact the same meaning of the original. So, what exactly did you mean??…
Translating is healthy for science, and for other human activities in general. Literature may have a problem with that, but it just makes us see how each language can be so interesting by itself, and should be preserved and appreciated.
In science, translation often gives us a nice opportunity to skip off from the literary part of scientific articles (when that is desired of course). Translating helps us actually test theories in different conditions… With different researchers, from more different cultures, in more different settings. Isn’t that an important part of the scientific method?
I do not think that there should be no prevalent language in science or other international activity. A “prevalent language”, or a “lingua franca”, come up naturally, form necessity. It’s unavoidable (in fact, this even has to do with my own research concerns). But this must be treated that way, always as something that came up naturally, from bottom up, because people wanted to talk to each other. Nobody should require no one to speak this or that language, people should just feel by themselves the need to learn that or that other foreign language… And always keep their first ones.
Yes, let’s teach English to kids in school, specially in technically inclined schools, so they can read international books and articles, and travel. But let’s not “forget” our own languages. Let’s not treat our mother languages, our local languages as something “vulgar”, as imperfect “dialects”, as “minor language unfit for formal and serious activities”. That is what I’ve been seeing happen, and I don’t like that view.
But anyway, if someone, or some group of people, decide to switch to the language of the Queen of England, or the languages of Madrid and Paris, why should I oppose them? Maybe I am just too lucky to be able to handle multiple languages, and other people can’t do that as easily… I don’t want to see people getting poor and hungry because I said they shouldn’t use English in their classes.
But in the end what matters is whether the bridge will fall or not, regardless of the language you will curse the engineer if it breaks to pieces with your children over it.
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As a bilingual, native English speaker, I see both sides. It is definitely advantageous to learn English for engineers and scientists, which has become one of the major languages for scientific communication. And I have no quibble with it replacing French in that way. ;-)
However, I have very little idea what is going on in Chinese-language journals, and they exist. I have had to look for Russian-language articles on a few occasions. I’ve published in French-language journals, knowing my audience was restricted. But aren’t our audiences already restricted when we publish in one of the 22,000-odd scholarly journals out there? It’s not a problem.
I also plead for better instruction in non-dominant languages – whatever tickles a kid’s fancy. I count reading and performing music as a possible “language”. Alternative methods of communication encourage creative thought.
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So we need more translators?
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