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[Helgoland]

BlindKitty, there's some evidence that cognition and mindsets are, in some way, influenced by the language you speak. The way your language prioritizes certain words or phrases, noun-verb or verb-noun is another example, and so forth.

So by losing languages, we are perhaps losing forever certain ways of thinking about the world that may only come from that language or group of languages. So... Not really a fan of that idea, myself. :v

Sapir-Whorf? That one's of... doubtful merit, unless I've been missing something important here.

[Owlbread]

I think Helgoland would be a completely different person if the first language of his brain wasn't German. He simply wouldn't be the Helgoland we know.

[miljan]

Macedonia is going in similar direction as kosovo, but if albanians dont get a direct support from NATO I dont think they can do the same thing as they did with serbia. This is third incident (the biggest one) so far in last several years, and very similar how it started on kosovo. The funny thing is the leader of the group is a well known terrorist from kosovo that fought in kosovo war and has direct connection with a lot of albanian/kosovo politicians.

General plan of these terrorists is to try and make big albania, taking kosovo, part of macedonia and maybe small part of greece and montenegro.

Oh man, so many wars are waiting to happen all over balkan area.

[Helgoland]

I think Helgoland would be a completely different person if the first language of his brain wasn't German. He simply wouldn't be the Helgoland we know.

Well duuuh, but that's mostly because then I wouldn't have been brought up in the German culture either. These two go hand in hand most of the time, of course, but simplifying to 'Language determines how you think' is bull. The focus should be on preserving cultures - living cultures, not dusty traditions! -, not preserving languages that are slowly atrophying anyway.

That's part of the reason why I support the Church, by the way - it carries a huge chunk of regional tradition that's in danger of dying out.

[Owlbread]

Helgoland, different languages (that includes accents and dialects) are essential to ensuring the preservation of cultures. When everyone speaks the same language in the same way culture invariably erodes, withers and dies.

The other thing that makes the survival of languages important is art/literature/music. The only way to truly appreciate wordcraft in a foreign language is to learn the language. Translation is never the same.

[Sergarr]

When everyone speaks the same language in the same way culture invariably erodes, withers and dies.

Well then, the culture is not going to die out any time soon, because nobody speaks the same language at all.

[SirQuiamus]

a) I think it is a good thing (less foreign languages to learn, and still more than enough to study for a lifetime),
b) None of them are actually wide-spread in any sense of the word, as far as I know, and if I'm mistaken in that, please provide examples.

a) You cannot destroy a language without destroying a culture, and that's always a bad thing for the people of that ethnic group.

b) Isn't the Irish language a rather compelling counterexample?

It is believed that Irish remained the majority tongue as late as 1800 but became a minority language during the 19th century.

If you need more examples, take a look at these articles and see how many of those languages were once viable and widespread. And that's just our tiny corner of the world. 

[Owlbread]

I speak Scottish Gaelic which was once a majority language for around 30% of the Scottish population, as well as the majority language of communities across Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand and possibly Argentina. You don't have to look back much further than 100-200 years before you'll find Welsh was the majority language in Wales and Breton in Brittany, Manx in Man and Cornish in Cornwall and so on and so forth. Welsh was once spread across Wales, the USA and Chubut in Argentina.

[Helgoland]

Helgoland, different languages (that includes accents and dialects) are essential to ensuring the preservation of cultures. When everyone speaks the same language in the same way culture invariably erodes, withers and dies.

The other thing that makes the survival of languages important is art/literature/music. The only way to truly appreciate wordcraft in a foreign language is to learn the language. Translation is never the same.

The first part is patently false: People all over Germany speak the same language, but there's a great amount of local traditions, rituals, etc etc that haven't been impeded by the lack of a language barrier at all. Though of course you've moved the goalposts and now want to include dialects... Consider the various parts of the US, then: The differences between the local spoken languages are rather small, but still the cultural differences are vast - so vast that some consider it a historical anomaly that the US is a single nation-state.

I'm not arguing against language preservation, by the way - it hurts me greatly that my mum's childhood language/dialect, a certain form of Low German more closely related to Dutch than to High German - is dying out. But there's no point in putting all those withering languages in formaldehyde, turning them into Latin's rural cousins - language preservation is only sensible when the living (!) culture it is embedded in and a community that uses the language in question in day-to-day life can be preserved along with it. Putting it on life support is linguistic cruelty: It's better to let it die a natural death.
And let's not forget that living languages evolve, too! It seems to me that the whole concept of 'saving' a language is misguided. 'Saving' a language can be just another way of burying it, if understood the wrong way.

[Sergarr]

What we need is not "language saving" but instead a "language diversification". The lesser effort put into keeping the "purity of language" (one of the most stupid concepts I've ever seen) and more - into diversification of language, the more languages/dialects will appear over time.

And for that, you would need actual practically applicable theories on how you can diversify a language, without it feeling unnatural.

[lijacote]

First place: Andrzej Duda, our major counter-candidate. About 35 - 40 %.

With his party (who besides a total criminal names their party the Law and Justice party?) having a nature as described by Wikipedia here, I would hesitate to call him a counter-candidate. Wouldn't this guy be more of the same if not worse?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Would a global language be good? Perhaps it'd enable international struggle of the lower classes, but I'd be wary of shifts in power. Could any one or couple of institutions control this language to a degree where they could hamstring this reconstruction of Babel?*

*Ignoring the problems of trying to reduce languages to just one.

[Sergarr]

Hey, global language already exists. We're talking in it right now

And it's hella incontrollable. Just look at frikking 4chan to see how out of control International English is.

[penguinofhonor]

I agree that people should stop fighting against diversification of language, but I don't think effort should be actively put into it. It happens a enough naturally. I can hardly understand whatever English accent chavs have. To me, they might as well be speaking Spanish.

[Dutchling]

When everyone speaks the same language in the same way culture invariably erodes, withers and dies.

Culture eroding and/or dying seems like a fair trade-off to having everyone speak the same language in the same way. That's would be pretty sweet.

[scriver]

I completely disagree.