One fun fact that didn't make it into the video: The inhabitants of La Gomera in the Canary Islands use a form of communication based on whistles to bridge long distances of several kilometers across valleys and ravines, called El Silbo.
More than 60% of the world’s population can be categorized into the top ten most spoken languages. Trying to imagine another 6,990 languages being spoken among the remaining 30-40% is mind numbing.
What are the top 5 languages? I would guess Chinese, Spanish, Arabic and English but Portuguese, French and Russian are all very common lengua franca across different regions also.
Many people from around the world can speak more than one language, so even if the statistics that you are using are correct it doesn't truly reflect the actual condition. India for example has over 500 languages but the constitution recognises 22 of the major languages, these 22 languages can be understood by almost all the people. Most people know at least 2 different languages and can understand more than that even without any formal education.
@@blueseanewt2138 Lingua* Franca, and there will only ever be one, French, because that's literally what Lingua Franca means, "Language of the Franks."
Can we document all existing languages so that even if language goes extinct we know about them in future. Extinction of languages, cultures is inevitable in my opinion we should document everything while we can.
True, but whatever is recorded is only a small fraction of the culture associated with the language. The only way to keep a language/culture truly alive is parent-child transmission, but globalization makes this harder and harder, as people tend to switch toward more widely spoken languages abandoning their original culture.
hello, linguistics student here :) That's exactly what some of us are doing! Linguistic fieldwork is relatively new, but people are hard at work writing grammars of smaller languages. This is especially the case in Western Africa and Papua New-Guinea, where a lot of languages are yet undescribed. When a language dies, so does all the knowledge within it. Providing accurate grammars of languages doesn't of course make it invulnerable, but it allows it to be institutionalized and makes it so people can learn it. Hebrew, for example, was completely extinct at one point, but it's been revived thanks to the preserved knowledge about the language, and Latin (while often described as "dead") is very well-taught, which allows us to read old texts by the likes of Ovid and Livy. If you're interested in what a grammar looks like, you could take a look at N. J. Enfield's "A grammar of Lao", and if you're more curious about ones that cover cultural aspects as well (and the significance of the language within it) I heartily recommend "The Meaning and Use of Ideophones in Siwu" by M. Dingemanse. Both are free to look at :)
IIRC WALS is a project that kind of does that, it's a descriptive reference of known languages in the world and each entry references books and papers written on those languages.
You don’t have to limit it to Occitan lol. Wherever there is another language spoken somewhere in France, be it Basque or Corsican, they’re trying to replace it with French.
The reason for that extinction is practicality. I live in Indonesia, very close to my place now, we at least have 4 languages. But mostly used 1 major native language that everyone knows. Because it would be hard to talk to a neighboring village if everyone uses their own languages, so we pick either the easiest or biggest city language. And also the only language book available and teaches to students is Bahasa Indonesia and 1 other major native language in the area. Other small/local languages usually have not been made into books yet. And with ease of internet access and parents use Bahasa Indonesia with their kids, young people usually can't use their local language.
You can't see them on Pulau Jawa since they only have 4 languages with so many people living there that use them. Go to east Indonesia and the problem became much apparent.
No programming "language" is a proper living language. To be considered "living", it needs native speakers who grew up with it. It's already _dead._ _Sorry kid, the game was rigged from the start._
Before I started learning Scottish Gaelic, I always wondered why so many of our mountain names here in Scotland start with “Ben”. I eventually learned it comes from Gaelic “beinn”, meaning mountain, and I thought it was really interesting how even anglicised names can tell you a lot about different locations. I imagine it’s similar in the Americas, where a lot of place names have Indigenous origins. I think endangered languages should be preserved for the cultural aspect alone, but there are practical reasons to learn an endangered language.
I love Scottish accent and I have a genuinely interesting question for you native Celtics, did you all really born with that accent? or first language you learn is Gaelic and then English,and its creates accent?
@@redacted7060 I’m not sure about that tbh. But in the case of the mountains I mentioned, the etymology is Gaelic. It would be kind of strange if all our mountains were named after some guy named Benjamin
Languages are constantly and rapidly changing. Modern English speakers can't even understand English from more than 800 years ago, so in a sense, even old dialects of English have gone extinct.
I find it impressive how much you can understand of older English. Take for example this "makerouns" recipe from the 1300s recipe book The Forme of Cury: "Take and make a thynne foyle of dowh. and kerve it on pieces, and cast hem on boiling water & seeþ it well. take cheese and grate it and butter cast bynethen and above as losyns. and serue forth." It is regarded as the oldest recipe for mac and cheese and it's relatively understandable to this day. It gets harder when you look at English before the Norman invasion 1066 since it changed the English language quite a lot. Even there you will recognize a lot of words though, especially if you speak another Germanic language.
You can understand Old English. It just might give you a slight headache while doing so (it did to me lol). The real kicker is how all those rules change DRASTICALLY from Old English to Middle English which pissed me off.
@@c.lstrife2829A modern English speaker absolutely cannot understand Old English without any aids. What writings in Old English have you supposedly been able to understand?
I think it is inevitable that the languages will die till we only have a few and some dialects. We should archive and preserve all the languages we can, along with recordings of said language.
Yeah part of the diversification is due to isolation and lack of education. Even the dominant languages are evolving less due to education and instant communication between far off regions. Just look at the latin based languages, those countries were part of the Roman empire and yet they still diverged. Preservation of documentation would be good if only for history.
Of all the things on our planet that are dying - species, habitats, rainforests, glaciers, aquatic life - the LAST thing I'm worried about is losing some unused languages.
@@Supremax67 Those issues arise from cultures not leaving each other alone. But maybe putting everyone into one large monoculture will turn out better since we're all the same at the end of the day
I know bits of several languages and just thinking of the roots, conjugation and structures of different languages definitely influences your way of thinking, communicating style, emotions and perspective. My husband and I both speak English and French. We have friends who speak Spanish and I know a bit of conversational Spanish. My husband says my emotions and expressiveness automatically changes when I speak Spanish. Our friends say so as well. There's something about working a different part of your brain and exploring a culture through language that I feel can't be replaced. Words, tones and concepts that can't even be expressed in the English language. I feel that's what we will miss out on when we lose languages.
Seeing this in real time with a dialect I speak. My dad didn't pick it up from my grandma, but I did due to her babysitting me often. It has led to me often using words not only people from across the country, not understanding me, but also to local people not understanding me.
It's quite fascinating how languages with very little native speakers get documented. Is it that one of the speakers happened to be a linguist? Or are linguists just that good at learning other languages?
I did an internship in Papua New Guinea with a lignuist. They way it was done there is that the linguist learns the language or a common language we'll enough to train locals. A group of locals, chosen because of interest and willingness to learn scientific methods then do most of the documzentations work, with the external linguist acting as a consultant. There is software for creating orthography and writing dictionaries, often accompanied by audio recordings. The linguist ends up being more of a project manager. That's just one example though, I can't say whether that's the norm.
You don't have to learn a language to document it. Generally linguists will collect word lists and ask native speakers to translate a bunch of sentences so they can work out the grammar.
I think that even if they don’t become well spoken languages, they should be well documented so we can understand them even if in the future they’re extinct
When I thought about it, really it’s more than just losing words. Sayings, description of feelings, a whole different way of making sentences and pretty much so many things. If you thought about it for a while you get the idea, I have a lot of things in my mind that goes well with this example but it’s 4 am in the morning and I’m too tired and I’m so mesmerized by the thing, I actually stopped my scrolling section and came here to write this down. Write this paragraph. Because it really made me think about it.
And vice versa. Untranslatability is a fascinating thing for anyone who speaks more than one language reasonably fluently, because you can have thoughts that are much easier to express in one language than in another, and if the language a thought is easier to express in is one that your conversation partner doesn’t speak, you have to try to translate.
People can also use them as a sort of “secret language” between friend groups Edit: I mostly got the idea from a video I saw speculating on if people developed a universal language. Eventually old languages were brought back, with this being one of the methods how
This is a huge problem being faced by indigenous peoples of North America in general but also in my community specifically. The Elders and leaders in our community struggle to keep the Cree and Dene languages alive.
As a Choctaw, I can relate. We have between 200-300 first speakers and their median age is in the 70s. We've made strides in training new speakers, but it may be too little, too late.
Honestly losing only .1% of languages a year is better than I thought! That gives us more time to write down languages. I wonder if anyone has started some sort of language mega doc? If not that needs to start asap.
There are two major organisation/website which preserve languages. Glottolog is one, they have citations which most of the time link to language documentation. The other is Omniglot, which preserves grammar, orthography, phonology and basic vocabulary or more. Glottolog contains almost all of the languages including dialects, while Omniglot only has a few hundred languages and if I remember correctly, no dialects. In addition, Wikipedia has pages that document languages, including sample text and IPA transliteration. However, this isn't for most languages, sometimes some language's page barely has any information.
To the comments above me: stfu, it shouldn't. Death of some unused language in India or other Indonesia isn't anything to be worried about. It's normal
@@5fr4ewq well either way your ignorance _is_ something to be worried about. Languages are worth preserving simply for the sake of unique ways to put concepts into words each provides - among other reasons. The extinction of some is inevitable but a species which calls itself intelligent should at least _try_ to preserve what information it can. Nie popadajmy w zbyt przyziemne myślenie~
@@tg9521 Cool. I can't wait for you to try and learn some obscure language from Indonesia with like, 4 speakers with literally no value. I would understand if for example Latin was going extinct or some other important language, but y'all are overreacting. Preserving everything just for the sake of preserving is an illness
Nah. Whenever someone sees a meme in a language they don't know, they'll be all like "Imma learn that tongue real quick," so the whole thing will be preserved. I'm probably not being way too optimistic.
To everyone in the comment saying that language death is a good thing because it reduces communication barriers: people can know more than one language. All around the world, there are people who speak one local language in some contexts as well as a more widespread language in others. Internationalization does not necessarily preclude preservation.
People can know more than one but it gets significantly more difficult past a certain point. Nation states eventually struggle to deal with language diversity overload
@@dylanswift5185 And that's a problem; a government shouldn't have a say on what languages are spoken upon the land it claims. Stuff like this happened until very recently in countries like France; it's honestly disturbing that an over-centralized government can get rid of a land's cultural heritage because they want to.
Relatable because I am a German and I've heard many times that kids these days are putting a bit of English in German, creating Denglish (Denglish because German in German is Deutsch). If you were around with English by alot, you would forget some words, you know what they mean in English but you barely know these words from your own language, like you forgot their translation entirely
@@dr.markus-level3researcher i see your optimism but... Making people stop using a language, that language that has shaped their life, reflect their culture, and is part of their identity... Its a bit insensitive to think people should give up that for convenience. Especially since we don't need to unite people under one identifier for us all to understand we are equal. Us actually taking steps to stop suffering of those around up is better. Also picking or making up what this one Language that we all should speak will simply move into wars and racism. The reason as to why a lot of native languages in America are erased is because of American colonist seeing their language as lesser and inconvenient, so they forced them to speak English and simulate into amercan culture. Now I'm not saying your an American colonists lmao, im obviously not. Im just pointing the flaws in this type of train in thought, even if it was just theoretical, it important that we understand why we don't do thoses things when we look for ways to make this word have more equality and equity. :) (sorry for yapping)
Easter egg of this video! (Only I found to here): 0:00 Boo (Super Mario franchise) 0:49 SpongeBob (SpongeBob franchise) 0:54 Montgomery Burns (The Simpsons) 0:56 Buzz Lightyear
Languages are so fascinating. To hear so many different ways of communicating simal things but they sound so different from one another and unique, its incredible
Breton's comeback was crazy there were less than a couple hundred speakers maximum when the region decided to recognize it as their second official language
@@breathychestclips That's because of colonialism. It's not that English is more useful, it's that English has been forced to native speakers and because of that, people think it's more better and more superior than other languages, like you.
@@breathychestclips It's useful if you wanna work in a foreign country, however people tend to stay in their native place rather than work somewhere else.
Banyak bahasa yang punah di Indonesia karena bahasa tersebut dianggap sudah tidak relevan lagi oleh generasi muda, generasi muda lebih suka menggunakan bahasa nasional dan internasional daripada menggunakan bahasa ibu mereka
As a person, whose biggest unobtainable dream is recording every story in a big library and learning every language in the world, this hurts my soul so much.
There could be some benefits to having less languages this would allow apps and games to actually be available to everyone and it would be possible to know every language. It’ll make communication easier and save money by not having to hire translators
For people saying there's nothing bad in languages dying out, you're wrong. Language isn't just a mean of communication - it's also a way of thinking. Because of cultural differences, some languages have words for concepts unheard of elsewhere. For example, a polish word "kombinować". You may think it's just "combine", but it isn't. It is a form of scheming how to achieve something rather fast and cheaply (both in cost and required effort) by thinking outside the box, often in unexpected circumstances.
Nah. All those languages dying every year are just some dialects of bigger languages or some insignificant languages with really small vocabulary from uncivilized african/indonesian/brazilian villages.
@@StarterX4 It's still a people's languages. It's their culture. Would you say the same if your language was dying? If yes then it's sad you don't care about your own language at all...
@@achilles7607 I don't care about my culture and language. I need the language that brings me the food on my table, and the one that allows me to function, contribute to society and benefit from it. It is sad. So many inside jokes will disappear. But I don't see an objective benefit. It might make the world more monotone, or less culturally diverse, but in the long run, is it really important to be culturally diverse, or is it just for the aesthetics or beauty. But I think the major flaw in my logic is to think that anything whose value is subjective rather than objective can be ditched. Same logic would mean that family and love should be ditched.
@@Srae17Even on your first sentence is very problematic. You wouldn't hear that line to a Indonesian, to a Muslim or to person whose society is too much ingrained with their culture or faith. Tell me you're a monolingual American without telling me you're one. 🙃 Because You wouldn't understand.
@ITO_junji_Fan-zi9ss Lmao, pero naririnig mo to sa isang Pilipino. In fact, maraming Pilipino ang ayaw sa kanilang sariling kultura at bansa. Too bad I am a Filipino, not an Indonesian. Our political culture is also shit, "basura", and our voters are idiots, consisting mostly of "mga uto-uto sa votebuying". We have lots of "marites", basically rumor spreaders. Inisip mo kaagad na American ako lol
I went to visit Tibet and the tour guide speaks 3 fluent languages. He told me that I should keep speaking my native language or else I’d forget a ton of culture and identity. He inspired me to start learning my family’s Fuzhou dialect.
i love how people are viewing languages are just words while Kurzgesat literally said languages hold more than words. Y'all are just ignorant istg. Languages holds cultures. If a language dies, a culture dies with it. Unified language mean everyone being the same...
Just because I as a german talked to my dutch girlfriend in english doesn't mean they were empty words. It'd be much easier to identify with and literally understand each other if everyone had one mothertongue. I was in that partnership for 5 years and not being born with one and the same language made for some really frustrating experiences while it lasted
@@siruoro6718 then date the one from your mother tongue if you cant stand culture clash...? Its not my issue that you dont have the brain capacity to handle different cultures and languages 💀
I've been relearning Welsh through Doulingo recently as i haven't spoken the language fluently since my Welsh Primary school. Now i hear that the government is making more mandatory. Not sure how they'll do that tho.
There are languages that last for centuries, such as Arabic, which people have been speaking for 1,400+ years, and English, which people have been speaking for 2,000 years or more.
The Kurzgesagt team _UNIRONICALLY_ thinks that we will be able to preserve critically endangered languages with memes, that's hilarious. The point still stands though, something needs to be done to preserve languages, as humanity is already on quite a cultural decline thanks to globalization.
Yep, memes are a terrible way of preserving languages. Sinhala is known as the "among us language" because of the character ඞ. It does promote the language, however I don't think no native speaker would want their language be called the name of a dead game.
AI can actually help in this case, we can train LLMs and use the model as an archive for languages, similar to the Svalbard Seed Vault for plant seeds. We'd just need someone to finance it...
Until AI can form a coherent thought, actually draw hands and make images with text that can actually be read, I'm just going to stick with documentation.
@@vpansf A seed vault can't and will never be able to grow crops, its only purpose is to archive seeds. So what has drawing hands to do with archiving language patterns, which AI is capable of for years now? Documentaries are nice to have but they don't archive systematically, hence alter and lose information. Very problematic...
We should all forget most language and standardized few to make things more efficient, Like Arabic English Chinese Hindi Bangla, Spanish like top 10 language
We better start learning them everywhere, before it all just defaults to some boring language that probably going to be called "The common" or some other variation of it.
I have no country, no language, I have no face, but I haven't lost my skull. So I told myself... The pain and effort that keep me alive will never know relief, never bear fruit, never be repaid. I know that, but I told myself to focus on some hope, a nonexistent hope to guide me through this burning world.
If you went with sheer numbers of people speaking a language we r more likely to end up speaking Mandarin. But I'd bet we will speak a mix of English, Mandarin, and Spanish in a few centuries.
@@Kryder401 Almost no one outside of China speaks Mandarin. Several countries speak English and several more have English as a secondary language. If you think we're gonna be speaking Mandarin because of China's massive population, why don't you think we'd also be speaking Hindi or other languages from India?
@@pointyorb enough for you to hate English? Yeah there are some pretty archaic and esoteric words in the language but that’s true for all languages. Pretty much no one uses 99% of those words that you see in spelling bees. that’s not really a good reason
Dying languages represents people not needing to speak them. The only argument for preserving them involves treating them like pretty little trinkets for us all to admire. That's dehumanising in it's own way.
Italian is already being pushed out. In Italy they are teaching English in schools. But if you live in a small town, they won’t teach it to you. And it is hard to get the job you want in Italy if you don’t speak English.
To be fair, language was always a tool of convenience. Although it is a tiny bit sad knowing a lot of them will die off over time, they’ve served their purpose. We can still appreciate their history though.
Languages are like social media platforms, people are using them because everyone else is. Government initiatives cannot be limited to just promoting languages l, but also making it socially acceptable to speak in native languages
tbh me as an Indonesian kid these day.. me and all of my friends really not use our own language in daily life, we just use the main one "indonesian language" it is because the school and most activities needs more formal language
I have mixed feelings about this, yes, languages are beautiful and historically and culturally important, but language is also about communicating. If no one speaks the language enough that you can only talk to a few people with it, what's the point of keeping it around? Teaching it at schools will only do so much, there needs to be a practical need to keep the language alive. It's why so many people who study languages at school never really become fluent in them.
One fun fact that didn't make it into the video:
The inhabitants of La Gomera in the Canary Islands use a form of communication based on whistles to bridge long distances of several kilometers across valleys and ravines, called El Silbo.
1st
20h before the video uploaded??? 😮
Yes
Interesting
Schools in La Gomera included El Silbo as part of the curriculum to make sure this tradition is kept.
Duolingo needs to step up its game
My parents said if I hit 90k they'd buy me a professional camera for recording, begging you guys please!! 💪🏻 (so close)
Mucholingo!
instead of killing 9 languages a year, Duolingo kills 9 people a week
They can start adding more useful phrases than "the crab drinks before the spider"
Or add ALMOST EVERY SLAVIC LANGUAGE
More than 60% of the world’s population can be categorized into the top ten most spoken languages. Trying to imagine another 6,990 languages being spoken among the remaining 30-40% is mind numbing.
To be fair many of the 6,990 other languages are spoken by people that are at least bilingual, often also speaking one of the bigger languages
You haven't heard of one person speaking multiple languages?
What are the top 5 languages? I would guess Chinese, Spanish, Arabic and English but Portuguese, French and Russian are all very common lengua franca across different regions also.
Many people from around the world can speak more than one language, so even if the statistics that you are using are correct it doesn't truly reflect the actual condition.
India for example has over 500 languages but the constitution recognises 22 of the major languages, these 22 languages can be understood by almost all the people. Most people know at least 2 different languages and can understand more than that even without any formal education.
@@blueseanewt2138 Lingua* Franca, and there will only ever be one, French, because that's literally what Lingua Franca means, "Language of the Franks."
Can we document all existing languages so that even if language goes extinct we know about them in future. Extinction of languages, cultures is inevitable in my opinion we should document everything while we can.
True, but whatever is recorded is only a small fraction of the culture associated with the language. The only way to keep a language/culture truly alive is parent-child transmission, but globalization makes this harder and harder, as people tend to switch toward more widely spoken languages abandoning their original culture.
hello, linguistics student here :)
That's exactly what some of us are doing! Linguistic fieldwork is relatively new, but people are hard at work writing grammars of smaller languages. This is especially the case in Western Africa and Papua New-Guinea, where a lot of languages are yet undescribed.
When a language dies, so does all the knowledge within it. Providing accurate grammars of languages doesn't of course make it invulnerable, but it allows it to be institutionalized and makes it so people can learn it. Hebrew, for example, was completely extinct at one point, but it's been revived thanks to the preserved knowledge about the language, and Latin (while often described as "dead") is very well-taught, which allows us to read old texts by the likes of Ovid and Livy.
If you're interested in what a grammar looks like, you could take a look at N. J. Enfield's "A grammar of Lao", and if you're more curious about ones that cover cultural aspects as well (and the significance of the language within it) I heartily recommend "The Meaning and Use of Ideophones in Siwu" by M. Dingemanse. Both are free to look at :)
Ofc we can, we know tocharian language which was on top 3 oldest indoeuropean languages, nowadays its wouldn't be a problem
IIRC WALS is a project that kind of does that, it's a descriptive reference of known languages in the world and each entry references books and papers written on those languages.
Probably not, because some are tribal languages that no one understands except them
Fun fact!
France is still activly working towrds the total destruction of the occitan language, after having already done so with it's culture.
That explains the mentality of alot of people in the comments
You don’t have to limit it to Occitan lol. Wherever there is another language spoken somewhere in France, be it Basque or Corsican, they’re trying to replace it with French.
Womp womp
Don’t forget bretonic
The French Revolution and its consequences have been a catastrophe unto the Human Race
The fact that we can save languages from being forgotten through MEMES of all things
We must post more funny
@@Birdegyptما باید خنده متولد کنیم
Memes save lives
Sadly, Memes die more often rather than language.
ℸ⍑ᔑℸᓭ' ℸ∷⚍ᒷ._.
The reason for that extinction is practicality.
I live in Indonesia, very close to my place now, we at least have 4 languages. But mostly used 1 major native language that everyone knows. Because it would be hard to talk to a neighboring village if everyone uses their own languages, so we pick either the easiest or biggest city language.
And also the only language book available and teaches to students is Bahasa Indonesia and 1 other major native language in the area. Other small/local languages usually have not been made into books yet.
And with ease of internet access and parents use Bahasa Indonesia with their kids, young people usually can't use their local language.
"one other major language in the area"
Javanese, or Sundanese? I know Javanese but not Sundanese
Yeah me too, I live in Java island, and here literally EVERYONE speaks Javanese.
You can't see them on Pulau Jawa since they only have 4 languages with so many people living there that use them. Go to east Indonesia and the problem became much apparent.
@@ririfiri3243 especially Papua, so many ethnicities and languages...
Yes, it is more practical to have fewer languages. If they die without interference we should not stop it.
As long as Python and C# don't fall off, I'm ok
C# is at the verse of dying
@@Lester_da_Molester said no one ever
As much as we'd like to some programming languages just refuse to die.
@@SoDamnMetal Guess what, c+ and c+++ are ded already (yes those are real programming languages)
No programming "language" is a proper living language. To be considered "living", it needs native speakers who grew up with it. It's already _dead._
_Sorry kid, the game was rigged from the start._
Before I started learning Scottish Gaelic, I always wondered why so many of our mountain names here in Scotland start with “Ben”. I eventually learned it comes from Gaelic “beinn”, meaning mountain, and I thought it was really interesting how even anglicised names can tell you a lot about different locations. I imagine it’s similar in the Americas, where a lot of place names have Indigenous origins.
I think endangered languages should be preserved for the cultural aspect alone, but there are practical reasons to learn an endangered language.
*no practical reasons
Isn't Ben just a shortened version of "Benjamin"?
I love Scottish accent and I have a genuinely interesting question for you native Celtics, did you all really born with that accent? or first language you learn is Gaelic and then English,and its creates accent?
@@redacted7060 I’m not sure about that tbh. But in the case of the mountains I mentioned, the etymology is Gaelic. It would be kind of strange if all our mountains were named after some guy named Benjamin
@@coleashraf9621 true
add a meme word to every language - for example, “antibabypillen”
Languages are constantly and rapidly changing. Modern English speakers can't even understand English from more than 800 years ago, so in a sense, even old dialects of English have gone extinct.
I find it impressive how much you can understand of older English. Take for example this "makerouns" recipe from the 1300s recipe book The Forme of Cury:
"Take and make a thynne foyle of dowh. and kerve it on pieces, and cast hem on boiling water & seeþ it well. take cheese and grate it and butter cast bynethen and above as losyns. and serue forth."
It is regarded as the oldest recipe for mac and cheese and it's relatively understandable to this day. It gets harder when you look at English before the Norman invasion 1066 since it changed the English language quite a lot. Even there you will recognize a lot of words though, especially if you speak another Germanic language.
Don't maketh soundeth liketh thee can't speak ol' native English
OK l can't
You can understand Old English. It just might give you a slight headache while doing so (it did to me lol). The real kicker is how all those rules change DRASTICALLY from Old English to Middle English which pissed me off.
@@sleeper6548that is so horribly wrong
@@c.lstrife2829A modern English speaker absolutely cannot understand Old English without any aids. What writings in Old English have you supposedly been able to understand?
I think it is inevitable that the languages will die till we only have a few and some dialects. We should archive and preserve all the languages we can, along with recordings of said language.
Yeah part of the diversification is due to isolation and lack of education. Even the dominant languages are evolving less due to education and instant communication between far off regions. Just look at the latin based languages, those countries were part of the Roman empire and yet they still diverged. Preservation of documentation would be good if only for history.
Having more languages is not the answer. Look at all the issue that arises from a simple language barrier.
Of all the things on our planet that are dying - species, habitats, rainforests, glaciers, aquatic life - the LAST thing I'm worried about is losing some unused languages.
@@Supremax67 Those issues arise from cultures not leaving each other alone. But maybe putting everyone into one large monoculture will turn out better since we're all the same at the end of the day
I know bits of several languages and just thinking of the roots, conjugation and structures of different languages definitely influences your way of thinking, communicating style, emotions and perspective.
My husband and I both speak English and French. We have friends who speak Spanish and I know a bit of conversational Spanish. My husband says my emotions and expressiveness automatically changes when I speak Spanish. Our friends say so as well. There's something about working a different part of your brain and exploring a culture through language that I feel can't be replaced. Words, tones and concepts that can't even be expressed in the English language. I feel that's what we will miss out on when we lose languages.
“Ad infinitum et ultra!”: Buzz Lightyear after Duolingo lessons…
ghey
@@EEEEEEEEE
Would "ultra" be replaced by "meta" if it was greek?
@@Rudxain This is Latin
Seeing this in real time with a dialect I speak. My dad didn't pick it up from my grandma, but I did due to her babysitting me often. It has led to me often using words not only people from across the country, not understanding me, but also to local people not understanding me.
Man, I'd love it if Kurzgesagt made more linguistics videos
I love how Kurzgesagt always puts memes in their videos
Edit: wow guys thanks for the likes❤
They don’t scream in your face too. They are there to give a chuckle and move on.
@@turtlepaladin4750why u mentioned that?
@@turtlepaladin4750when did they say that tho
They are less "memes" and more just pop-culture references.
@@SalamiSlim a bit of both
It's quite fascinating how languages with very little native speakers get documented.
Is it that one of the speakers happened to be a linguist? Or are linguists just that good at learning other languages?
You don't need to become fluent in a language to document it.
I did an internship in Papua New Guinea with a lignuist. They way it was done there is that the linguist learns the language or a common language we'll enough to train locals. A group of locals, chosen because of interest and willingness to learn scientific methods then do most of the documzentations work, with the external linguist acting as a consultant. There is software for creating orthography and writing dictionaries, often accompanied by audio recordings. The linguist ends up being more of a project manager. That's just one example though, I can't say whether that's the norm.
You don't have to learn a language to document it. Generally linguists will collect word lists and ask native speakers to translate a bunch of sentences so they can work out the grammar.
wan jan toki li pali e toki pona :3
@@rea6268that sounds like a good system, so I wouldn't be surprised if it's the typical way of doing it:)
The Urban mono-culture is a massive reason why so many of these languages die out.
I think that even if they don’t become well spoken languages, they should be well documented so we can understand them even if in the future they’re extinct
Before : Hello there!
After :
class Greet{
public static void main (String, args[]){
println("Hello there!)
}
}
Now speak in cobol
@@MGharriy Nah i'd speak in INTERCAL
let me speak in dreamberd
When I thought about it, really it’s more than just losing words. Sayings, description of feelings, a whole different way of making sentences and pretty much so many things. If you thought about it for a while you get the idea, I have a lot of things in my mind that goes well with this example but it’s 4 am in the morning and I’m too tired and I’m
so mesmerized by the thing, I actually stopped my scrolling section and came here to write this down. Write this paragraph. Because it really made me think about it.
I always found it incredible, that some languages have one word to describe an entire paragraph in English.
Yeah, like " the day after the day after tomorrow "
Which is " răspoimâine " in Romanian
@@X_DarkSide_X in Spanish: pasadopasadomaña. Easy
@@X_DarkSide_X We also have these in Hindi. 'Narso;'
And vice versa. Untranslatability is a fascinating thing for anyone who speaks more than one language reasonably fluently, because you can have thoughts that are much easier to express in one language than in another, and if the language a thought is easier to express in is one that your conversation partner doesn’t speak, you have to try to translate.
Turkish moment
People can also use them as a sort of “secret language” between friend groups
Edit: I mostly got the idea from a video I saw speculating on if people developed a universal language. Eventually old languages were brought back, with this being one of the methods how
Unless they’re renowned criminals, I see no reason for any friend group to learn a whole new ancient language for secrecy
@@garg4531 turns out, that's actually happened. A Native American language called Navajo had been used for coded transmissions in World War 2.
@@leonaise7546 gossip
@@cod3builder701 Cool!
@@cod3builder701And they were a pretty big deal for that, I hear.
In Lithuania we have 6 languages that are mainly dialects, we had half of our baltic tribe dialects destroyed
Labas😊
Labas
This is a huge problem being faced by indigenous peoples of North America in general but also in my community specifically. The Elders and leaders in our community struggle to keep the Cree and Dene languages alive.
As a Choctaw, I can relate. We have between 200-300 first speakers and their median age is in the 70s. We've made strides in training new speakers, but it may be too little, too late.
@@SarajevoKyoto my heart goes out to you all. Keep fighting. The Language only does with the last speaker.
@@brennonbrunet6330 Yakoke fehna!
Do you have a Code Talker.
Meanwhile holywood create new language for avatar movie
We the ÜberGoths are bringing back Latin, one black metal song and ancient Latin texts tattoo at a time.
Goths don't play Black Metal. It's in the name.
They did try to preserve Rome.
@@cfltheman
Visigoths? 👎.
Linguigoths? 👍.
I just like how at the end there was a phrase "ad infinitum et ultra", which means: to the infitiny And higher
Latin is a living language, its just called "italian" now
Fascynujący film dotyczący interesującego tematu. Oby tak dalej Kurzgesagt!
Uwielbiam Wasz kanał!
Honestly losing only .1% of languages a year is better than I thought! That gives us more time to write down languages. I wonder if anyone has started some sort of language mega doc? If not that needs to start asap.
There are two major organisation/website which preserve languages. Glottolog is one, they have citations which most of the time link to language documentation. The other is Omniglot, which preserves grammar, orthography, phonology and basic vocabulary or more. Glottolog contains almost all of the languages including dialects, while Omniglot only has a few hundred languages and if I remember correctly, no dialects. In addition, Wikipedia has pages that document languages, including sample text and IPA transliteration. However, this isn't for most languages, sometimes some language's page barely has any information.
no one:
kids in 2100: skibidi toilet? sigma rizzler yes?
More about languages pleases ❤❤❤
Finally a kurzgesagt video that doesn't scare the crap out of me💀
It should
It should though
To the comments above me: stfu, it shouldn't. Death of some unused language in India or other Indonesia isn't anything to be worried about. It's normal
@@5fr4ewq well either way your ignorance _is_ something to be worried about. Languages are worth preserving simply for the sake of unique ways to put concepts into words each provides - among other reasons. The extinction of some is inevitable but a species which calls itself intelligent should at least _try_ to preserve what information it can. Nie popadajmy w zbyt przyziemne myślenie~
@@tg9521 Cool. I can't wait for you to try and learn some obscure language from Indonesia with like, 4 speakers with literally no value.
I would understand if for example Latin was going extinct or some other important language, but y'all are overreacting. Preserving everything just for the sake of preserving is an illness
Why would people make podcasts if only a few people speak them
Because some people care about their language and are willing to do something for other than money.
@@Lumors they won't be able to get many guests
The idea is to help popularize the language
@@Chill_Gates Not every podcast is based on guests
@@Chill_Gates you dont just broadcast, you document and preserve
I hereby predict that memes will preserve no more than 6 words/phrases from any language that is "saved" by them
Nah. Whenever someone sees a meme in a language they don't know, they'll be all like "Imma learn that tongue real quick," so the whole thing will be preserved. I'm probably not being way too optimistic.
You are being way too optimistic@@Tekyng_of_Baregan
@@5fr4ewq hey! Don't ruin my blissful ignorance:(
@@Tekyng_of_BareganYou're being an _itty bit_ too optimistic but either way: that's the spirit!
We should all speak the same language. This would bring the people together.
yes, i very much agree
@@boblol1465no, that would lead to cultural genocide. Besides we already kind of do with English as a Lingua Franca.
@@Sphinxgamingworld9942 yes, but everyone should know english
@@boblol1465why english specifically? because it’s your first and probably only language?
edit: oh wait i haven’t seen the “yes” nvm
To everyone in the comment saying that language death is a good thing because it reduces communication barriers: people can know more than one language. All around the world, there are people who speak one local language in some contexts as well as a more widespread language in others. Internationalization does not necessarily preclude preservation.
People can know more than one but it gets significantly more difficult past a certain point. Nation states eventually struggle to deal with language diversity overload
@@dylanswift5185 And that's a problem; a government shouldn't have a say on what languages are spoken upon the land it claims. Stuff like this happened until very recently in countries like France; it's honestly disturbing that an over-centralized government can get rid of a land's cultural heritage because they want to.
@@faux-identifiant That may be fine, but they also don't need to be responsible for maintaining languages which are dying.
Relatable because I am a German and I've heard many times that kids these days are putting a bit of English in German, creating Denglish (Denglish because German in German is Deutsch). If you were around with English by alot, you would forget some words, you know what they mean in English but you barely know these words from your own language, like you forgot their translation entirely
Yeah my regional languages is nearly extinct.
Script was extinct in 1890 but the language vocally is still here spoken in villages.
Which language(s)?
Which language(s)?
Kaithi script
Magadhi language
Why are you speaking English then?
@@omgman5745 it's my third language
Well of course we can stop language extinction….when there are only a few left
Not if everyone dies first
Damn... you two😂
Jaegerist moment
I only want one language tbh it would make life so much easier if everyone spoke the same language. I think we'd be more united and equal too
@@dr.markus-level3researcher i see your optimism but... Making people stop using a language, that language that has shaped their life, reflect their culture, and is part of their identity... Its a bit insensitive to think people should give up that for convenience. Especially since we don't need to unite people under one identifier for us all to understand we are equal. Us actually taking steps to stop suffering of those around up is better.
Also picking or making up what this one Language that we all should speak will simply move into wars and racism. The reason as to why a lot of native languages in America are erased is because of American colonist seeing their language as lesser and inconvenient, so they forced them to speak English and simulate into amercan culture.
Now I'm not saying your an American colonists lmao, im obviously not. Im just pointing the flaws in this type of train in thought, even if it was just theoretical, it important that we understand why we don't do thoses things when we look for ways to make this word have more equality and equity. :) (sorry for yapping)
Your video is the first “English” video I’ve seen to include my language. Thank you!❤
Easter egg of this video! (Only I found to here):
0:00 Boo (Super Mario franchise)
0:49 SpongeBob (SpongeBob franchise) 0:54 Montgomery Burns (The Simpsons)
0:56 Buzz Lightyear
Languages are so fascinating. To hear so many different ways of communicating simal things but they sound so different from one another and unique, its incredible
An example of endangered languages being taught is Irish Gaelic, where it's basically everywhere now, like in airports, billboards, etc.
sad that Scottish Gaelic can't do the same. Only 2% speakers makes me sad.
Breton's comeback was crazy there were less than a couple hundred speakers maximum when the region decided to recognize it as their second official language
Yet still almost noone speaks Irish Gaelic fluently. Welsh has been far more successful.
still not working
Languages die, and new ones born, don't take it personal, it's just a matter of usefulness
No language is more useful than the other. It's colonialism that made you brainwashed into thinking that.
@@vpansfIt is objectively more useful to speak English or French or Mandarin than fukin Igbo or something
@@breathychestclips That's because of colonialism. It's not that English is more useful, it's that English has been forced to native speakers and because of that, people think it's more better and more superior than other languages, like you.
@@vpansf I.e. English is spoken by way more people and is therefore more useful to know.
@@breathychestclips It's useful if you wanna work in a foreign country, however people tend to stay in their native place rather than work somewhere else.
To be fair, that memes and podcasts idea is actually genius
From the terrible wording and spelling mistakes online, I think a lot of people need to learn their native language first.
People speaking java must be like:
Hungry = True
if Hungry == true:
Print("give me food!")
Edit: i knew it was python i was just joking
Bro it's python 🙂🙂 and it's not "Print" but "print"
Ye i know it is i was just saying it for the memes@@anshswaroop6849
@@anshswaroop6849 nevermind.
this is so wrong 😂😂
I thought you wrote Hungary lol
Banyak bahasa yang punah di Indonesia karena bahasa tersebut dianggap sudah tidak relevan lagi oleh generasi muda, generasi muda lebih suka menggunakan bahasa nasional dan internasional daripada menggunakan bahasa ibu mereka
ada indonesia cuy
Oh my godness I watched it as it was uploadedd wonderful quality as usual!!
Portuguese is dying in Brazil. They're killing it. No semantics being messed, orthography is being forgotten... thanks public schools. lol
I can’t stop watching this when I see the Vietnamese word: “Chào”. Because I’m a Vietnamese.
Man I hope Toby develops deltarune quick so wingdings don’t die out.
I didn't expect this comment
Thank you kurz gesagt for putting my country language here!
As a person, whose biggest unobtainable dream is recording every story in a big library and learning every language in the world, this hurts my soul so much.
Same. It sucks that the world is becoming less and less linguistically diverse all the time, and that some people are cheering it on.
There could be some benefits to having less languages this would allow apps and games to actually be available to everyone and it would be possible to know every language. It’ll make communication easier and save money by not having to hire translators
There only really needs to be one, but the world is too big, they can't just decide on one collective language for the whole earth.
@@toyo8460 Maybe they could merge every language to create one?
and thats why he can call me non smart in those 7k languages ☠️💀😵
Coming from non-English speaking countries, it's hard to get money.
It's inevitable because those languages cannot bring money.
It’s true that losing these languages loses their culture, but think of how efficient a single-language species would be.
I think most people don't have "species efficiency" on their reasons-to-live list.
Despite international fluency of English, conflicts never stop
@@MichaelStarr-py3qf me when i dont speak any other language than English and have no idea how a language carries history and culture:
Everyone speaking the same language could be extremely useful.
Yet, probably a bit boring 😅
What does "efficiency" even mean in this context?
For people saying there's nothing bad in languages dying out, you're wrong.
Language isn't just a mean of communication - it's also a way of thinking. Because of cultural differences, some languages have words for concepts unheard of elsewhere.
For example, a polish word "kombinować". You may think it's just "combine", but it isn't.
It is a form of scheming how to achieve something rather fast and cheaply (both in cost and required effort) by thinking outside the box, often in unexpected circumstances.
Nah. All those languages dying every year are just some dialects of bigger languages or some insignificant languages with really small vocabulary from uncivilized african/indonesian/brazilian villages.
@@StarterX4
It's still a people's languages.
It's their culture.
Would you say the same if your language was dying? If yes then it's sad you don't care about your own language at all...
@@achilles7607 I don't care about my culture and language. I need the language that brings me the food on my table, and the one that allows me to function, contribute to society and benefit from it. It is sad. So many inside jokes will disappear. But I don't see an objective benefit. It might make the world more monotone, or less culturally diverse, but in the long run, is it really important to be culturally diverse, or is it just for the aesthetics or beauty.
But I think the major flaw in my logic is to think that anything whose value is subjective rather than objective can be ditched. Same logic would mean that family and love should be ditched.
@@Srae17Even on your first sentence is very problematic. You wouldn't hear that line to a Indonesian, to a Muslim or to person whose society is too much ingrained with their culture or faith.
Tell me you're a monolingual American without telling me you're one. 🙃 Because You wouldn't understand.
@ITO_junji_Fan-zi9ss Lmao, pero naririnig mo to sa isang Pilipino. In fact, maraming Pilipino ang ayaw sa kanilang sariling kultura at bansa.
Too bad I am a Filipino, not an Indonesian. Our political culture is also shit, "basura", and our voters are idiots, consisting mostly of "mga uto-uto sa votebuying". We have lots of "marites", basically rumor spreaders.
Inisip mo kaagad na American ako lol
I went to visit Tibet and the tour guide speaks 3 fluent languages. He told me that I should keep speaking my native language or else I’d forget a ton of culture and identity. He inspired me to start learning my family’s Fuzhou dialect.
As an Indonesian, I am happy we were mentioned!
All the multilingual mothers bouta be devastated if there’s only 1 language left to gossip in. 💀
There's absolutely no way you can call Latin an extinct language. It's still everywhere.
i love how people are viewing languages are just words while Kurzgesat literally said languages hold more than words. Y'all are just ignorant istg. Languages holds cultures. If a language dies, a culture dies with it. Unified language mean everyone being the same...
Just because I as a german talked to my dutch girlfriend in english doesn't mean they were empty words. It'd be much easier to identify with and literally understand each other if everyone had one mothertongue.
I was in that partnership for 5 years and not being born with one and the same language made for some really frustrating experiences while it lasted
@@siruoro6718 then date the one from your mother tongue if you cant stand culture clash...? Its not my issue that you dont have the brain capacity to handle different cultures and languages 💀
@@siruoro6718when your realize that Germans lost both world wars ☠️
I've been relearning Welsh through Doulingo recently as i haven't spoken the language fluently since my Welsh Primary school.
Now i hear that the government is making more mandatory. Not sure how they'll do that tho.
Learning languages should be from babies not as adults, so parents should make their kids watch shows etc in specific languages for that
As a person who HATES learning languages. Im happy but not too much
Ignorant
Monolingual English Speakers here defending the death of cultures, well I guess their cultura was already taken away
oh my god ikr!? they say unified language is good 💀
@@yetset9432 and they are not aware that 99% of times a language dies it's because it was forced by some country or organization
@@fueyo2229yeah it’s sad how often that happens
Yeah, they forgot their own culture so they want/expect others to do the same
They should be archived. But i think the world would be a better place if everyone could understand everyone
That idea is extremely unrealistic
@@faux-identifiant no shit. Many good ideas are unrealistic
There are languages that last for centuries, such as Arabic, which people have been speaking for 1,400+ years, and English, which people have been speaking for 2,000 years or more.
THE "KUMUSTA" BEING IN THE VID!! 🇵🇭
The Kurzgesagt team _UNIRONICALLY_ thinks that we will be able to preserve critically endangered languages with memes, that's hilarious.
The point still stands though, something needs to be done to preserve languages, as humanity is already on quite a cultural decline thanks to globalization.
Yep, memes are a terrible way of preserving languages. Sinhala is known as the "among us language" because of the character ඞ. It does promote the language, however I don't think no native speaker would want their language be called the name of a dead game.
As a Filipino living in Australia, I can confirm I lost most of my culture and ability to speak Filipino (I speak way more english).
I love how he breaks down complicated stuff into easier stuff ❤
AI can actually help in this case, we can train LLMs and use the model as an archive for languages, similar to the Svalbard Seed Vault for plant seeds. We'd just need someone to finance it...
Until AI can form a coherent thought, actually draw hands and make images with text that can actually be read, I'm just going to stick with documentation.
@@vpansf A seed vault can't and will never be able to grow crops, its only purpose is to archive seeds. So what has drawing hands to do with archiving language patterns, which AI is capable of for years now? Documentaries are nice to have but they don't archive systematically, hence alter and lose information. Very problematic...
“9 languages die every year.” *sad Duolingo noises*
CABBAGE MAN
I saw kumusta, and I was like, "Oh hey, Tagalog!" Then immediately saw DRACARYS!
Will you make a long form video on this topic please?
We should all forget most language and standardized few to make things more efficient,
Like Arabic English Chinese Hindi Bangla, Spanish like top 10 language
Inggris:Battery
Indonesia:Baterai
Java:🪨(rock in Indonesia language)
batu batai
We better start learning them everywhere, before it all just defaults to some boring language that probably going to be called "The common" or some other variation of it.
"choose a language" and its just "default" or some shit
we already have it, it's called english, isn't it convenient that you can expect pretty much any educated person to be able to speak it
I have no country, no language, I have no face, but I haven't lost my skull. So I told myself... The pain and effort that keep me alive will never know relief, never bear fruit, never be repaid. I know that, but I told myself to focus on some hope, a nonexistent hope to guide me through this burning world.
Get some vitamin D
Are there bots and ai writing the comments?
Guys we have to save the internet
The internet is doomed with the lack of anyone or any web ceo to stop this
Thanks for showing Bengali language in India because many Europeans have a wrong idea that it's a predominantly bangladeshi muslim language.
Guys, we need memes in unknown lenguages. I want them so badly.
'Let the past die, kill it if you have to' -Kylo Ren
I don't want english to take over
If you went with sheer numbers of people speaking a language we r more likely to end up speaking Mandarin.
But I'd bet we will speak a mix of English, Mandarin, and Spanish in a few centuries.
@@Kryder401 Almost no one outside of China speaks Mandarin. Several countries speak English and several more have English as a secondary language. If you think we're gonna be speaking Mandarin because of China's massive population, why don't you think we'd also be speaking Hindi or other languages from India?
Lol why the hate against English its a pretty big language so its more than likely.
@@ZEPHYRZHANG-mg8zi The fact that spelling bees exist is enough for me
@@pointyorb enough for you to hate English? Yeah there are some pretty archaic and esoteric words in the language but that’s true for all languages. Pretty much no one uses 99% of those words that you see in spelling bees. that’s not really a good reason
Dying languages represents people not needing to speak them. The only argument for preserving them involves treating them like pretty little trinkets for us all to admire. That's dehumanising in it's own way.
No, it's not, that analogy doesn't even make sense because languages aren't people
Did nobody else notice Mr. Burns in the podcast part.
Italian is already being pushed out. In Italy they are teaching English in schools. But if you live in a small town, they won’t teach it to you. And it is hard to get the job you want in Italy if you don’t speak English.
I hope that Aragonese does not become extinct
To be fair, language was always a tool of convenience. Although it is a tiny bit sad knowing a lot of them will die off over time, they’ve served their purpose. We can still appreciate their history though.
To infinity and beyond is the last one
Memes could help the Languages💀.
Cool.
Because of internet we’re losing much less information now, but yes, governments should help us on it
I did not think of seeing Mr. Burns on this channel 💀
Languages are like social media platforms, people are using them because everyone else is. Government initiatives cannot be limited to just promoting languages l, but also making it socially acceptable to speak in native languages
I knew a lot of languages existed but I didn't think that many existed
tbh me as an Indonesian kid these day.. me and all of my friends really not use our own language in daily life, we just use the main one "indonesian language" it is because the school and most activities needs more formal language
I have mixed feelings about this, yes, languages are beautiful and historically and culturally important, but language is also about communicating. If no one speaks the language enough that you can only talk to a few people with it, what's the point of keeping it around? Teaching it at schools will only do so much, there needs to be a practical need to keep the language alive. It's why so many people who study languages at school never really become fluent in them.