[HN Gopher] Manx is experiencing a revival on the Isle of Man
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Manx is experiencing a revival on the Isle of Man
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 39 points
Date : 2022-11-26 13:35 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| What is the value of preserving languages like this?
|
| Answering my own question, I suppose the benefit of the
| language's survival primarily accrues to the speakers. They get
| to feel part of a culture and community.
| kaesar14 wrote:
| It's not necessarily the case that language preservation offers
| something of strict "value" (however one defines value and I do
| think that's a big open question) outside of comprehension of
| historical documentation, but yes, it is the case that language
| is a method of continuing the culture and lifestyle passed onto
| us by our ancestors. If the Mannish people feel like reviving
| the language reclaims something that has been lost by English
| oppression, more power to them!
| striking wrote:
| A language isn't just a collection of vocabulary words and
| grammar rules. A language, beyond being a cultural artifact in
| and of itself, forms part of the system by which a community
| processes, discusses, reacts to each other and the world around
| them. Some folks might be familiar with Spanish's gendering of
| inanimate objects, but even things like counting on linear
| counting scales are in play here!
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2610411/
|
| The value isn't just "the culture": language is indelible from
| the way one sees and understands the world. That's what's worth
| preserving.
| petesergeant wrote:
| I'd thought that Sapir-Whorf was largely discredited, but I
| was wrong:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
|
| I wonder how this applies to languages that have been
| revived? Do modern-day Hebrew (also a revived language[0])
| speakers relate to it and Jewish culture the way that Judean
| Jews did? Presumably the corpus of existing literature is a
| significant factor.
|
| 0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revival_of_the_Hebrew_lang
| ua...
| [deleted]
| tgv wrote:
| Sapir-Whorf is discredited AFAIK, although some nearly
| trivial influence of language probably exists. There's
| almost no support, and the support I've seen suffers from
| the usual pitfalls (not excluding other causes, bad
| inferential statistics, etc.).
|
| I'm appalled that Wikipedia cites a text book as the proof.
| Tagbert wrote:
| Sapir-Whorf is, at best, a minor effect among many in how
| we perceive the world.
| mikelevins wrote:
| I'd say it's roughly equivalent to the value of preserving any
| cultural artifact--a language, a musical tradition, holidays,
| folklore, religions, ancient martial traditions, and so on.
|
| Languages are cultural artifacts that contain within them other
| ancient cultural artifacts. When we lose a language, we lose
| those artifacts.
|
| Everyone doesn't care about old cultural artifacts, but,
| luckily for those of us who do, there are enough of us to keep
| many of them alive.
| cogburnd02 wrote:
| But they left out the star marking the only location I want to
| know on any map of the Isle of Man: BigClive's house.
| xg15 wrote:
| OT: Is there any information where the name "isle of man" is
| originating from? It always sounded overly dramatic to me like
| "dawn of mankind". But apparently "man" neither stands for "male"
| nor "mankind" but instead is some weird term without further
| meaning? Is there some story behind it?
| mwest wrote:
| I had the same question some time ago. The Wikipedia page is,
| as always, quite interesting. Although I think the tl;dr is
| "the name's so old, no one really knows". But the theory is:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isle_of_Man#Name
|
| "The name is probably cognate with the Welsh name of the island
| of Anglesey, Ynys Mon, usually derived from a Celtic word for
| 'mountain' (reflected in Welsh mynydd, Breton menez, and
| Scottish Gaelic monadh), from a Proto-Celtic *moniyos."
| xg15 wrote:
| That's interesting indeed, thanks a lot for the pointer. So
| the ancient meaning might have been something like "island of
| the mountain".
|
| As a retro gamer, I also appreciate that at some point the
| name appears to have been "isle of mana".
| thomond wrote:
| It's disputed, it's also allegedly named after the
| Gaelic/Celtic god of the sea, Manannan.
| beefman wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manx_language
| bookofjoe wrote:
| https://archive.ph/Z0ivW
| [deleted]
| BuckyBeaver wrote:
| But is it any good for server-side deployment?
| dylan604 wrote:
| When I'm out to eat, I don't concern myself with what language
| the server uses on their side as long as my order comes out as
| expected.
| manxman wrote:
| snapcaster wrote:
| i don't really understand what you're talking about, can you
| include some more links or context?
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(page generated 2022-11-26 23:01 UTC)