Is preserving languages a good thing?

[teo123]

So, what do you guys here think, is preserving languages a good thing? In other words, is it a good thing that there are so many different languages in the world today?
I've studied quite a bit of linguistics, and linguistics doesn't really seem to give us an answer to that question. And more I think about it, more it seems to me that it's not a good thing. The losses that different languages cause are obvious: a lot of resources and time is spent on translation, a lot of resources and time is spent on language learning, language barriers undoubtedly make it easier to implement censorship... And the benefits of keeping the languages are questionable.
Sure, for scientific reasons, it's a good thing to document languages before they disappear. But that's it, document the languages that are already there. Keeping the languages alive won't reveal us secrets of historical linguistics. Languages that could give us information to solve the mysteries of historical linguistics, such as, when it comes to Croatian toponyms, Illyrian or Pelasgian, those languages have been dead for millennia. Wasting resources to preserve modern languages won't bring them back.
In some ideal world in which there was some language, such as Esperanto, which everybody knew, preserving languages wouldn't be so wasteful, and maybe not even so pointless. But that's not what's going on. In some parts of Africa, people are forced to learn more than three languages just to be able to communicate on a job.
Do I really gain something by some relatively small language, such as Croatian, being my native language, instead of some big language such as English, Spanish, Chinese or Russian? I don't see it. As far as I can see, there is nothing useful available in Croatian that's not available in English. Sometimes, on the Internet, there is useful stuff (when it comes to programming, for example) available in Chinese or Russian but not in English, but I don't see that there is anything useful available in Croatian but not in English.
Even when it comes to Croatian history and current events, am I really more qualified to talk about those things just because I speak Croatian? Or does it, in fact, lead me astray? I thought I was more qualified to talk about Croatian history because I could search for ironic meanings in names and assert that an event is mythological, and people who don't speak Croatian can hardly search for ironic meanings in names. In this case, knowledge of Croatian has led me astray. And who knows about my alternative interpretation of the Croatian toponyms, has studying Croatian toponyms led me closer to the truth, or if I would be closer to the truth if I simply trusted the mainstream linguistics (most of which is available in English).

[Jebus]

No.

[teo123]

No.

"No" as in "Preserving languages is not a good thing." or as in "I disagree with you, it is a good thing."?

[brimstoneSalad]

I agree, preserving languages doesn't seem necessary and may even be harmful as you pointed out. We should just document them as you suggested and let them die so people can focus their efforts more on common languages. I think it's also worth noting that the harms of language preservation are usually concentrated on the marginalized people of developing countries, which probably magnifies them in terms of the effects of their lost opportunities.

It may be beneficial to have more than one common language based on speculative hypotheses about how language helps people think differently, but I think even if that hypothesis is true (I doubt it somewhat and think it's exaggerated/evidence is cherry picked) there would seem to be sharply diminishing returns after the first couple languages.

So I would agree that the cons of preserving language very likely overwhelm any speculative benefits to those languages continuing to be used.

Even when it comes to Croatian history and current events, am I really more qualified to talk about those things just because I speak Croatian? Or does it, in fact, lead me astray? I thought I was more qualified to talk about Croatian history because I could search for ironic meanings in names and assert that an event is mythological, and people who don't speak Croatian can hardly search for ironic meanings in names. In this case, knowledge of Croatian has led me astray.

I'm glad to hear that you've come around on that and recognized the error. I think you're right that could be another disadvantage of knowing these languages.

And who knows about my alternative interpretation of the Croatian toponyms, has studying Croatian toponyms led me closer to the truth, or if I would be closer to the truth if I simply trusted the mainstream linguistics (most of which is available in English).

I'm sorry that I can't answer that question, but in most cases the latter is the case so that would be where I'd put my money if forced to bet.

[teo123]

It may be beneficial to have more than one common language based on speculative hypotheses about how language helps people think differently, but I think even if that hypothesis is true (I doubt it somewhat and think it's exaggerated/evidence is cherry picked) there would seem to be sharply diminishing returns after the first couple languages.

I think that hypothesis about how languages help people think differently is completely wrong. Have you seen this video?
https://youtu.be/ttq0S4cuIHA
Long story short, the experiments show that languages without tenses or even words for "before" and "after" (such as the Mayan language), are as successful at telling time as our languages are. There is no actual "timelessness" in those languages (that Sapir-Worf hypothesis talks about), there are just different grammatical constructions.

[brimstoneSalad]

Long story short, the experiments show that languages without tenses or even words for "before" and "after" (such as the Mayan language), are as successful at telling time as our languages are. There is no actual "timelessness" in those languages (that Sapir-Worf hypothesis talks about), there are just different grammatical constructions.

I was thinking more along the lines of different concepts in the vocabulary, but of course that would probably argue more for taking those as loan words into the dominant language (which is what we already do), e.g. schadenfreude.

You're right that "timelessness" seems very silly, along the lines of the scifi pseudoscience in the movie Arrival where (spoiler) the protagonist gains magic time powers from learning the language and can see the future and past as one.

[teo123]

I have started this discussion on a forum about linguistics, if you are interested: http://linguistforum.com/linguist's-lou ... ood-thing/

[brimstoneSalad]

What do they think/say about it?

[teo123]

What do they think/say about it?

In my opinion, the responses I've got, apart from the Panini's response (Panini and Daniel appear to be the most educated members of that forum, at least about linguistics), are ridiculous.