uhoh

Hi everybody, this will be my temporary blog for as long as it takes to reconquer my email address. It was hacked into last Thursday, and since Blogger is linked to Gmail, I've lost control of the old blog.

Anyway, today's entry will deal with language extinction.

http://www.thejakartapost.com/detaileditorial.asp?fileid=20071027.E02&irec=1

(interestingly, the jakarta post shows up disproportionately on my news alert. anyone else?) In Indonesia, over 700 languages exist, and I guess they mean "languages" in a stronger way than dialects. Skipping most of the details, the article goes on to say that a couple regions are densely populated with languages, but with speaker counts as low as 10 people. The minimum threshold for language preservation is 100,000 people, so these languages are headed for extinction. The main forces contributing to extinction involve "linguicide" which basically is an effect of oppression or genocide, the dominant language taking over, and socio-political forces (of assimilation?).

So after this, the article makes, in my opinion, the huge logical leap of positing a solution to the problem (this isn't the leap) and then declaring that the Indonesian government has a moral responsibility to implement the solution. I'm still left scratching my head, wondering why this is a problem, and how this article decided that it's important for " endangered indigenous languages -- a nation's precious cultural heritage -- be maintained and conserved in this globalized world." There are lots of concrete advantages to having a dominant language that unites a country, but how much cultural heritage and identity can you need within your own country? Because, I agree that language is central to culture, so the individual trademarks of some Indonesian island will disappear after you take away their little language, but who cares? From the standpoint of prosperity, they'll be better able to integrate with the rest of the country and horizons will open up. Now, let's assume for a second that it is important for Indonesian culture to survive in a "globalized world." Is an Indonesian culture that consists of the dominant language and traditions any worse of an identity than Indonesia composed of many different subcultures (and languages)? The advantages of diverse-er culture would probably be very indirect, and I'd like to find out what they are - I do not however agree with the commonly thrown-around statement that culture is intrinsically good simply because it's rich or beautiful or any of those other empty adjectives.