Endangered languages and endangering the human knowledge base

Excellent talk above that I came across on dotsub.com... it raises a number of issues and ya man's well able to explain the points he wants to make and they're very good I think. I'd recommend ye have a sconce off it.

http://dotsub.com/view/d88e920e-9d6b-4862-a712-7259003bd00a

Gruesome Globalisation striking again!

I'm listening to this guy now and he's talking about language extinction. Some languages have in-built knowledge on local medicines and fish/ecosystem patterns but these languages are dying ... Just today I came across the word 'neap' tide which I'm sure the older people would have a better idea of than the younger. It meant nothing to me immediately anyway.

Maybe knowledge is dying out of english too ...

Yeah that was very good. It was about 20 minutes long maybe less.

He documents some guys in a mountain village in India who are two out of 2000 who speak the local language which is dying. They've decided to save it by incorporating it into rap - Des Bishop anyone ? This, says the lecturer, raises the prestige of the language in the eyes of those who will make the decisions on whether or not to carry the language on - i.e. the 6 and 7 year-olds in the village.

That's music for you.

I haven't had a look at the video yet, but I happen to know that a prominent linguist is coming to Maynooth soon to talk about this very subject. He'll be giving a presentation, not sure when exactly.

He has a page on Wiki: Michael Silverstein.

an mbeir ag freastal air, a 9h05?

Cathfidh mé dul ann. Tá na sonraí amach:

Weds 4 March, 6pm:
"A Trinity for the Enlightened: Society, Polity, and Language Community in Anthropological Perspective."

Abstract: This will develop the complexity of how social institutional agglomerations we call societies interact with levels of political groupness up to and including states and beyond, and where the special groupings of people oriented around denotational norms of language intersect in multiplex ways in the post-Enlightenment sociopolitical universe.

Thursday 5 March, 2pm:
"The elementary forms of culture in a post-'cultural' world: Signification--circulation--emanation"

Abstract: A lecture on how, given how interaction operates with significant emblems of identity, the interdiscursivity of semiotic emblems lies at the heart of the establishment and institutionalization of semiotic value, defined from centers of semiotic emanation.

Saturday 7 March, time TBA:
Workshop / roundtable (with special guests!)
Linguistic and cultural diversity in a deglobalising Europe

Chrisht, I haven't seen that many sentences which I hadn't a clue what they meant since sociology last year....

Are we experiencing a 'deglobalising Europe'? it'd be awfully swell if we were

I can only hope he's easier to listen to than to read.

BuachaillBeo wrote:

an mbeir ag freastal air, a 9h05?

Ní fhaca mé riamh séimhiú ar uimhir mar seo. Bhíos ag ceapadh gur clog 24 uair a bhí i gceist. Greannúr, a Bhuachaill. Is breá liom do phostanna(?) a léamh tuisc Gaeilge go galánta a bheith agat. Bhí an bua leat ó thaobh na prepositions de gan dabht!