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Comment by PikachuEXE | Hacker News Reader

I wouldn't say every language is worth saving in "my view"

But "losing a language" (losing all the users except those studying it) could lead to some loss of the convey of certain unique culture (that can only be represented accurately in that language)

Having one language only is either (1) A group of people forcing every people in the world using it or (2) All people in the world are willing to give up using all other languages

For (1), it's not what myself and many people want as it means our freedom is taken away.

For (2), I think it's unlikely to happen as different languages have different specialties in representing some concepts. Having one language only probably means some concepts cannot be well communicated.

I can speak Cantonese (Hong Kong version), English and read some Japanese (enough for my games & comics). I would never give up any of them.

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With Cantonese being mentioned in particular it’s worth noting that China has always acted to eliminate other languages in the country to the point where Cantonese and other languages aren’t spoken anymore in the mainland.

This may seem more efficient to the OP but we’re not talking about a common official language being known by all, but a single language displacing all others for the purpose to homogenise a country that consists of many cultures into a single one.

So it’s important to say: language is not only a tool but a reflection of culture, identity, and your part of society. We can learn a lot about people by learning their languages, and the disappearance of a language is always significant.

I agree we can learn a lot about a people by learning their language and I agree that in some ways, but not all ways, language is a reflection of culture.

You can still have approximately the same root culture even with a completely different language as the daily driver. Jewish history is a good example of this.

If I could snap my fingers and eliminate all languages except for one, and have all cultures adjust/evolve to use that language instead, I'd do it. Not because we wouldn't be losing anything, but because the loss would be 1000x worthwhile.

> China has always acted to eliminate other languages in the country to the point where Cantonese and other languages aren’t spoken anymore in the mainland.

Not really. Cantonese and other languages not part of the fifty-odd official standard languages of China aren't taught in most schools, but that doesn't mean Mandarin has completely taken over. With the exception of big cities that have seen a lot of recent migration (e.g. the number of Shanghainese speakers has grown with the Chinese population boom, but the number of migrants has grown even more, so now it's a minority language in Shanghai itself) if you listen to a random conversation between locals, you'll be more likely to hear a non-Mandarin language than Mandarin.

It's also not that non-Mandarin languages are completely excluded from official use, they're just called "dialects" instead of languages. For example, schools in Xiamen started teaching the local Hokkien in 2010 (a few years after a similar policy change in Taiwan) and most small TV stations have programs in the local language (especially traditional plays and songs).

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xg8p7n/the-only-mongolian...

The protests are about the introduction of some Standard Mandarin classes in schools that were previously using Mongolian exclusively. (Albeit again a standardized form instead of the full spectrum of Mongolic languages and dialects spoken throughout China.)

Those changes are unlikely to lead to phasing out official use of Mongolian in China anytime soon. (E.g. on the Mongolian version of the website of the government of Inner Mongolia: http://mgl.nmg.gov.cn/U_index.html )

It takes some serious cognitive dissonance to think that the CCP isn’t slowly phasing out all non-Mandarin languages and cultures. This isn’t something unique to China, either: France eliminated most of its regional languages in the same fashion, although that was hundreds of years ago.

France has had hundreds of years to try and eliminate regional languages, and yet there still are people speaking many of those languages, even if they only form a small minority. Language death is a very slow process.

I think you're also missing that the Chinese government's language policy is not driven by a single aim. Making the populace predictable and controllable are reasons for the central government to prefer a single language and culture, but trade with Mongolia and tourism where visitors get to experience living in traditional Mongolian yurts, listening to traditional Mongolian songs and riding horses in the traditional Mongolian way are strong economic incentives for the government of Inner Mongolia to retain the Mongolian language and culture.

Please say "Chinese Communist Party" or "PRC" or similar when making claims that critically only apply to that part of China.

As you note, Cantonese is not being extinguished in all parts off mainland China.

> different languages have different specialties in representing some concepts

We make up new words and new grammar all the time. At some point we needed to encapsulate what a "boomer" is, and we didn't need to turn to another language that specializes in boomers.

When there's enough utility in encapsulating a multi-faceted concept into a single word or phrase, we get there.

If we needed to describe 50 different types of snow on a regular basis, we would.

It isn't as though there's any barrier in one language for coming up with new concepts compared to any other.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimo_words_for_snow

We also would need to invent new grammar as needed.

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