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[Helgoland]

By the way, it's damn irritating to be on the same side of the argument that you're on for once, scriver

[Jervill]

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.

Looking at the wiki page, it looks as if all three of the largest parties in Poland are centre-right to right wing.  The one with the rockstar is apparently an agrarian party as well.

The link has a helpful map on the bottom of the page (Parliament, not President, but same parties), and it looks more like an East/West split between the parties rather than a left/right one using prior election results.

[scriver]

By the way, it's damn irritating to be on the same side of the argument that you're on for once, scriver

I don't think we are. I, for example, would definitely say that language is at the of culture, and the greatest expression of the culture-thought-mind and a cornerstone in any cultural identity. There is a reason the nationalist policies of the 18th and 19th century European states targeted dissenting culture's languages so heavily, after all.

[wobbly]

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.

Simplifying it to "language determines how you think" might be bull, but saying "language effects how you think isn't". Try modelling time differently in English without breaking the grammatical structure. Try translating yogic terms from Sanskrit into English without fudging the meanings. Prana for example is energy, breathe, air. If you translate it as energy you lose the air bit if you translate it as air you lose the energy bit.

Edit: Heck, try translating maths in to any other language without distorting the meanings.

[scriver]

I am become death, destroyer of worlds!

Also the less famous quote Oppenheimer followed it up with: "Montaron, you are so AGGRAVATING! 'Tis disturbing to my demeanyah!"

[mainiac]

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.

If everyone speaks the same language cultures will just grow differently then if they spoke different ones.  And the edges of cultures rub against each other and produce something new more easily when people speak the same language.

[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.

If everyone speaks the same language cultures will just grow differently then if they spoke different ones.  And the edges of cultures rub against each other and produce something new more easily when people speak the same language.

A lot of people here are getting mixed up, talking about "cultures" when they really mean "speech communities". When two speech communities rub against each other their language tends to change and if given enough time they will produce their own language or their own accent, dialect etc. Things tend to naturally diverge and split, it's how languages were created, so even if we all speak the same language it will start dividing rather quickly unless something like the internet or television has something to do with it.

I think Helgoland is getting confused too. Nobody talks about "language preservation", they talk about "language revitalisation" which involves trying to find ways to make the language relevant/in use as a community language again. It's got nothing to do with trying to preserve it exactly as it is - many language revitalisation efforts involve standardisation and simplification for the sake of survival. Also, if you try to develop new speech communities for a language that needs revitalisation, the language will usually change quite radically. Scottish Gaelic now has very recognisable dialects developing in cities like Glasgow and Edinburgh because the learners are all from those cities, so they have very strong accents that are completely different to the usual native speakers.

[scrdest]

With his party (who besides a total criminal names their party the Law and Justice party?)

The party founders (including that Polish president who died in a plane crash a couple years ago) named it that as one of them (can't remember which one for the life of me, they are/were twins) was a Minister of Justice at the time.

Looking at the wiki page, it looks as if all three of the largest parties in Poland are centre-right to right wing.  The one with the rockstar is apparently an agrarian party as well.

The link has a helpful map on the bottom of the page (Parliament, not President, but same parties), and it looks more like an East/West split between the parties rather than a left/right one using prior election results.

History. For obvious reasons, the first country to successfully leave the Soviet Bloc isn't terribly fond of far left, and with the left wing ruling the country for a long while before the rough outline of status quo of today was reached leaving on a bad note and some other factors they managed to alienate most of the demographics.

Couple that with a strong attachment to national and Catholic values among many voters, the fiscally left-leaning voters just ended up voting for said winning candidate's party who were playing to those ideals, and conversely social left voted either for the party of the incumbent, who put up a liberal and EU-friendly image, or some oddball parties (we have a party with libertarian monarchists. Only In Polan (TM)).

E: Turnover is 48%

[Sergarr]

even if we all speak the same language it will start dividing rather quickly unless something like the internet or television has something to do with it.

wut

Internet is like the FASTEST medium for language dividing

like every single different place on the Internet has it's own specific dialect formed and and own specific words created within only YEARS of its existence

0_0

[Il Palazzo]

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

That was half a century ago. The recent approach is much less deterministic. Google 'Lera Boroditsky', she appears to be the main/most outspoken of the researchers in the field.

[Helgoland]

I think Helgoland is getting confused too. Nobody talks about "language preservation", they talk about "language revitalisation" which involves trying to find ways to make the language relevant/in use as a community language again. It's got nothing to do with trying to preserve it exactly as it is - many language revitalisation efforts involve standardisation and simplification for the sake of survival. Also, if you try to develop new speech communities for a language that needs revitalisation, the language will usually change quite radically. Scottish Gaelic now has very recognisable dialects developing in cities like Glasgow and Edinburgh because the learners are all from those cities, so they have very strong accents that are completely different to the usual native speakers.

Ah, alright - that sounds much more sensible. Going off of Descan's original post though, one could argue that the simplification destroys valuable stuff too...

[penguinofhonor]

Simplifying it to "language determines how you think" might be bull, but saying "language effects how you think isn't". Try modelling time differently in English without breaking the grammatical structure.

Why would we need different models of time? Does physics work differently in different languages? I'm aware other cultures have had different perspectives of time, but it seems more like a misunderstanding of how time works than an important part of culture.

Try translating yogic terms from Sanskrit into English without fudging the meanings. Prana for example is energy, breathe, air. If you translate it as energy you lose the air bit if you translate it as air you lose the energy bit.

Not that I'm in favor of a monolanguage, but I don't think this is actually a huge problem for English. We can just say Prana is a word that means energy, breathe, and air. Just like how English doesn't have a word for deja vu so we just use the French one. I believe this is why English is taking over other languages so effectively.

Edit: Heck, try translating maths in to any other language without distorting the meanings.

edit: Also, considering math is the language that we will try to use to communicate with aliens, does language really affect it that much? It seems like scientists think math is our best shot at communicating with beings that could be incredibly different than us, so I don't see it changing a ton from language to language within a species. Forgive me if any of this seems dismissive, I don't know a ton about linguistics.

[Descan]

Aye. One thing that occurs to me with simplification is that the main things that would lead to different modes of thought/mindsets, that being speech structures that may/may not be complicated to learn, but that are unique to the language, would be one of the first things to go in a language simplification process, in an attempt to make it easier to learn/grok for the expected first language (in Gaelic, that'd be English) of future learners. Which would be basically the same thing as the language going extinct for my purposes, if a bit less final.

PoH: If we knew *why* something may or may not be important to have, such as different ways of thinking about time may or may not be important, then we wouldn't actually need them, and could instead use that reason to make something more direct, such as a differently-function time-piece that functions in that important way. As it is, a lot of these thought processes could just be fluff that doesn't matter, or it could be extremely important to be able to think that way at some point. As Helgo pointed out, we're not even entirely sure this is actually a thing, though personally I feel it's... at least plausible. I'll know more later, probably.

Though I will grant you that this is the same thought process behind hoarding.

[Il Palazzo]

Why would we need different models of time? Does physics work differently in different languages? I'm aware other cultures have had different perspectives of time, but it seems more like a misunderstanding of how time works than an important part of culture.

Have you ever wondered why there are more tenses in English than three? Does it mean English speakers have a misunderstanding of how time works?

[penguinofhonor]

Yeah, I clearly don't understand how time/tense work in language.