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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   33036 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 13, 2023

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While that certainly can be true for individuals, I'm not sure that this is the average case as for how it plays out in practice on a large scale. German language schools for the stateless Western Slavs that exited the Middle Ages under the rule of the German lords of Brandenburg and Saxony and generally kept their language as a distinct people all the way into the 20th century didn't result in a vibrant bi-lingual community, but in their slow motion death as a people. Foreign language schooling has been similarly destructive for regional dialects or distinct languages all over Europe, most notably in France. Picard and Occitan are basically gone, Breton is currently still in the process of being killed.

Large scale cooperation requires a common language, which is why continual death of minor languages is a part of the historical process.

The highest language density is found in places like Papua New Guinea, where a small mountain range may have the same language diversity as the entirety of Europe. I'm not making this up

Maybe this will reverse once I don't know, someone invents matter compilers and there's no need to ever talk to anyone else for purposes of trade.

Foreign language schooling has been similarly destructive for regional dialects or distinct languages all over Europe, most notably in France

Well, one can advance a claim that had Paris not created a French nation, they'd all be speaking German now, or maybe speaking their regional dialects while being lorded over by Germans.

Nationalism was about that, and once people got over it slightly, along came television and radio and finished the job.

This sounds plausible, but I can't imagine these sorts of arguments are doing much to dull the pain of a linguistic group that is forced to send its children into an alien education system aimed at least in part at eradicating its uniqueness. I agree that better cooperation can be to the benefit of a group and language certainly is good vehicle for that, but that presupposes that the people in question see themselves as part of the group that stands to benefit. My impression of Canada is that at least the Quebecois don't seem all that eager in that regard.

Well, one can advance a claim that had Paris not created a French nation, they'd all be speaking German now, or maybe speaking their regional dialects while being lorded over by Germans.

I think that a France that centralized to a much smaller degree than the real one is a timeline with so many possible changes from our own that I don't think one can get much insight from such a hypothetical. The only attempt by Germany that could plausibly be construed as taking over France in its entirety was WWII (and maybe WWI), but there's no telling if that would have even happened in a world where Normandy, Aquitaine and Occitania existed instead of France. Late Medieval/Renaissance Germany eventually let go of the Netherlands after they had drifted apart too much culturally and politically, so it's not like that sort of scenario is inevitable in our world.

I'd also add that the French kings maintained a somewhat centralized state and lorded over peasants with local languages/dialects just fine for centuries before the arrival of the great homogenizing that lead to the current situation. I'd say that your argument applies much better to the Germans, given that absolutist France was very successful in picking off small German speaking principalities along its eastern border. That Alsace speaks French instead of Alemannic is the result of France being able to keep its conquests into the age of modernity when it got to destroy the local language via mass culture and schooling (of course in the case of Alsace thanks due to a large helping of German idiocy and brutality).

but that presupposes that the people in question see themselves as part of the group that stands to benefit. My impression of Canada is that at least the Quebecois don't seem all that eager in that regard

I doubt that people who had nationalism imposed on them generally saw it that way, but that's where public schools and official ideology came in.

Over generations, the state prevailed.

Late Medieval/Renaissance Germany eventually let go of the Netherlands after they had drifted apart too much culturally and politically, so it's not like that sort of scenario is inevitable in our world.

It was more of an issue that they couldn't really hold onto it. I mean, the Dutch fought the Austrians for what seems like centuries to get rid of their influence. Germans at the time barely had any power due to disunity.

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