Newsgroups: sci.lang
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!news.mathworks.com!udel!gatech!ncar!uchinews!internet.spss.com!markrose
From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Subject: Re: Language Extinction
Message-ID: <D51o80.8EM@spss.com>
Sender: news@spss.com
Organization: SPSS Inc
References: <3ih1ho$rne@fang.dsto.gov.au> <540276879wnr@shappski.demon.co.uk> <D4yFw8.7F9@midway.uchicago.edu>
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 1995 00:33:35 GMT
Lines: 78

In article <D4yFw8.7F9@midway.uchicago.edu>,
Daniel von Brighoff <deb5@midway.uchicago.edu> wrote:
>Andre Shapps <andre@shappski.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>You are quite right I think, but I don't know that life has much value 
>>when divorced from culture.
[...]
>More importantly, I have the leisure and the opportunity to learn
>Gaelic if I so choose, and this is what I find most objectionable
>about Mr. Shapps' post:  his insinuation (please forgive me if I
>have misunderstood you, sir) that it would be better for someone to
>live in indigence and ignorance but retain her culture than be
>well-fed and well-educated but lose it.  The notion of "progress" has
>received a mighty beating this century, but I still champion the
>cause.

You're erecting a straw man, I believe; these is not the alternatives that
marginalized peoples generally face.

>Similarly, it pains me to hear that native cultures are dying by
>the thousands as young people migrate to the cities and assimilate 
>to the dominant culture.  But if, on the other hand, it means that
>their lifespans are tripled and their infant mortality rate tenthed,
>I'll swallow my tears.  The real tragedy is when neither happens,
>when people lose their culture and end up no better off.  

And that's what is probably most likely to happen; although all this is
exceedingly simplistic.

Let's take some real examples.  Thousands of rural Peruvians have migrated
to Lima over the last forty years.  Did their lifespans triple, their 
infant mortality rates decline by 90%?  Hardly.  They may have a little
better access to health care; on the other hand, crowded into shantytowns,
they're in a good position to be devastated by cholera, venereal disease,
and alcoholism.

Do they have increased economic opportunity, to compensate them for the
loss of their Quechua culture, their land, and the communitarian ethos
of rural Peru?  In part, perhaps; though they're still subject to
unemployment and underemployment, racism on the part of criollos and 
mestizos alike, and a legal and social system completely unable to 
receive them.  (Housing, markets, and transportation are almost entirely
outside the law in Lima.)

Nor can we divorce this question from wider economic and political factors.
Why can't these people make it back in their villages?  In part because
US and European banks and governmental organizations force on the Peruvian
government, in the name of "progress", a program that focusses on urban
and industrial development at the expense of the countryside, and on
production for foreign exchange rather than for import substitution;
and because the countryside is devastated by a guerrilla war promoted
by those who want to impose a slightly different European notion of 
"progress" on people, at gunpoint.

Or take the Yanomamo of Brazil: their land is being taken from them by
illegal settlers intent on gold.  The likely result has been played out
many many times in this century in Brazil: the majority of the tribe will
not move to the city for those great tripled lifespans: the majority of
them will die, from violence or disease; a minority will end up in the 
shantytowns, useless to the modern world except perhaps as prostitutes.
(See _Tristes tropiques_ for some of the stunning depopulations visited
upon native peoples.)

>If governments and individuals are only willing 
>to make a limited amount of funds available to help these peoples, I'd 
>rather see it go somewhere else than linguistic preservation.  The 
>languages that survive the transition will be much better-equipped to 
>survive in the long-term.

Do you really think that the question is "linguistic preservation" vs.
"other forms of help"?  The funds allocated for Third World aid of any
kind are under attack-- in the US because the new Congress wants to spend
money on the military and on upper-class tax cuts instead; in Europe 
because the Europeans want to spend more money on Eastern Europe.

If one asked them (unthinkable, I know), the cultures involved would
probably want help to develop their own region, in the ways they saw fit.
This would address the issue of linguistic preservation as well; if the
culture remains viable where it is, so does its language.
