A small town in Sweden fights to preserve Elfdalian, a dying forest language

Re:A small town in Sweden fights to preserve Elfdalian, a dy... by cdev_gl on Friday July 09, 2021 @07:44PM (#27789719)

Just like in programming, different spoken languages have different capabilities-- certain ideas are easier to express in one language versus another. Some concepts don't even have words across languages. And there's beauty and rhythm, the way words rhyme, so even if you can express the same concepts, the network of how those concepts play off each other is different.

Having shared languages is awesome, allowing people to communicate together. But having only one language would be a great tragedy. It'd be like saying all paintings can only use one color.

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Re:A small town in Sweden fights to preserve Elfdalian, a dy... by thegrimmest on Friday July 09, 2021 @08:15PM (#27789894)

I don't think the painting analogy applies. You can add words and meanings to languages. If we all spoke the same language, we'd iterate on it until it could express all the ideas that we have. We may lose some rhyming along the way, but it seems a small price to pay for universal, clear communication.

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Re:A small town in Sweden fights to preserve Elfdalian, a dy... by tored on Saturday July 10, 2021 @06:48AM (#27792512)

Eventually new languages would be created. Why? Because everyone wouldn't iterate at the speed or even the same direction.

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Re:A small town in Sweden fights to preserve Elfdalian, a dy... by thegrimmest on Saturday July 10, 2021 @01:21PM (#27794953)

Right, but if we standardize the language, we can keep track of and de-duplicate all the iterations, much like we do with web standards.

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