K. David Harrison receently explained to The Economist was is lost when we lose languages.
This week he visited our school. What interesting TOK connections did K. David Harrison make?
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8 years ago
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Carlyle Reid
ReplyDeleteWhen I saw David Harris, he presented about language in my literature class. What I found interesting is the amount of languages he knew, and how he connected langauges with inventions.
He talked about a group of Bolivians that are medics living in the mountains, looking at herbal remedies. Before I went to see him, I thought that there was no real need for languages, but after he told me that they had found a vaccine for polio 100 years before the rest of the West did, I realized that languages were important to things such as the sciences.
He also talked about history and persecution language. Talking about people in Siberia, and how they were forbidden to speak their language and became ashamed because they could not speak like everyone else, it reminded me of the early 1900's and emperialism.
-Carlyle
I had considered the implications of losses of languages before, but I'd never come across concrete examples such like the ones David Harris presented.
ReplyDeleteI found it intriguing how one small indigenous tribe in a forgotten part of Bolivia, could have so much knowledge of medicinal herbs and how those same herbs could easily have the cure for what we consider 'lost causes' in modern medicine.
I do agree with a lot of the ideas David Harris presented, and I do believe that language can be the key to knowledge and its communication to the surrounding world.
And it got me thinking, what if we lost all those languages except for those 83 that already occupy 80% of our worlds population? What kind of a world would we live in then?
-Saskia
Honestly my first impressions of K. David Harrison's statements and thoughts about the loss of languages were a bit dodgy. Sooner or later he came upon a good example of a tribe who was educated in medicinal plants not through school but rather through experience. He claimed when this tribe looses its language, the knowledge of these medicinal plants dies aswell. This arguement was the only one I thought was valid because its actual knowledge which is needed. On the other hand, he started talking about groups or tribes who had a single word which summed up for example a sheep with gray stripes. Basically these tribes could say 1 word to describe a sheep with long horns and a short tail. He claimed when words like these are lost we loose knowledge. Im not sure I agree with this statement because we havent lost any knowledge. The only thing we have lost was the "shortcut word" to that specific type of sheep. We as the Human race haven't lost the knowledge on how to describe a sheep who has long horns and a short tail. That is my point of view of his statement and I am sure other people might agree or disagree with his claims.
ReplyDeleteI think all of the ideas that David Harrison proposed were interesting and his lecture was quite eye-opening. In terms of TOK I thought it was thought-provoking when he mentioned how knowledge is inherent in language. For example, in the Tuva language the knowledge of the river and what direction it is flowing and where you stand in relation to it is all part of a single form of the word “go”. Such vast topographical awareness is intricately intertwined into their language because as nomads their knowledge of their location is vital for their survival. We hardly ever think about the landscape around us and such a language proposes a unique way of looking at the world. When we become aware of such a way of thinking, in terms of relating to our surroundings, we can learn something new and maybe even change our own perspective. Therefore, if a language such as Tuva is lost, a whole different way of looking at our environment is also gone. Although it may seem insignificant to us now because such knowledge is not significant to our survival like it is for theirs, we never know what we might need in the future. Isn’t it better to have too much knowledge rather than too little?
ReplyDelete-Nicole
Prior to Professor Harrison's visit, I had belonged to the group of people who failed to understand the gravity of the extinction of endangered languages. The reason for my near indifferent approach to the matter was that I thought that if certain languages were to go extinct, we could still communicate the ideas that were expressed through the now dead language with our own, larger language. Furthermore, I reasoned that with fewer languages in the world, it would become easier to communicate with others, as the language barriers currently separating people would be broken down one by one.
ReplyDeleteHowever, after having listened to Professor Harrison's lecture, I finally grasped his point of view and why it is that languages are so important to the preservation of existing knowledge and the creation of new knowledge.
The points he made were often intricately connected to our ToK studies, and gave the students food for thought on the topic of linguistics.
For example, in his lecture, he challenged our notion of the capacity of the human mind and body to communicate. He argued that only through the preservation of small and unknown languages, can we understand the true potential of our bodies as tools for communication. In his presentation, Professor Harrison showed us a video of a woman speaking in a language in which the words she was speaking were accompanied by an array of clicks and other oral sounds. Before I had seen this video, I had no idea that the human body was capable of communicating in such a manner as the woman in the video was doing. Not only was she making these sounds, but she was talking using words in her language simultaneously. Immediately, everyone attempted to recreate this oral feat in English, but no one was able to come close to what we had just witnessed. As we can see, by ignoring the extinction of languages around the world, we could be passing up on the opportunity to acquaint ourselves with such an interesting language, and understand what we as humans are capable of.
Furthermore, Professor Harrison managed to expel the idea from our (or at least my) head[s], that losing a language is only a small tragedy, as we can still express all the ideas extinct languages did with our own language. With a few examples, he showed us how language and knowledge were closely related, and that when we lose a certain language, we lose a culture's perspective on life and the ability to understand them as a people. Many such examples have been alluded to in the posts above, and so I will not reiterate them unnecessarily.
However, through Professor Harrison's examples I came up with an example of my own of how knowledge is connected to language. As I am fluent in both German and English, I have often had discussions about the word "Schadenfreude" (pronounced Sha-Den-Freuy-De), which is loosely translated into English as "malicious joy". However, there is no single word that directly corresponds to the idea that is conveyed through the word "Schadenfreude" in English. Not only does this speak volumes about Germans and their culture, but it also helps us understand that if there is a word in one large language that we cannot translate into another, then surely there must be countless examples of this phenomenon taking place in smaller exotic languages, which make up 80% of all languages in the world. Hence, we can see that by giving up and letting small, seemingly unimportant languages, go extinct, we gamble with the possibility of losing words and phrases that encapsulate an entirely different thought process and outlook on life than our own.
In conclusion, I can confidently say that after having listened to Professor Harrison’s presentation, and taken note of his numerous connections to our Theory of Knowledge studies, I now have a new perspective on the issue of the extinction of languages and their importance to the preservation of human knowledge.
- Simon
Prior to David Harrison's presentation he gave last week, I had not given much thought to the issues he raised, for this reason I found the presentation both intriguing and thought provoking.
ReplyDeleteThe way he has plunged himself into the cultures and languages he has studied is inspiring and he had some valid arguments.
However, I still stand with the view that these languages are unsynchronized with our own that their gradual disappearance bears little impact on our own lives.
Furthermore Mr. Harrison claimed that the younger generations of these small societies are slacking in terms of learning the dying languages of their ancestors which is leading to the deaths of these languages. He also claimed that these societies may possess important medicinal knowledge and the death of the language would take the knowledge with it, yet i struggle to see how this knowledge will be lost as a result of the loss of a language. The knowledge would be passed on to the younger generation regardless of the language it is communicated in due to the fact that it is so intricately woven into the culture. In fact it would essentially become more accessible knowledge to the world because the younger generation who possess this local knowledge would be able to communicate it with the world around them with the aid of a more common world language.
Nonetheless I found the presentation very inspiring with the exception of these claims which i believe to be flawed.
Before David Harrison came to our school to give a lecture, I wasn't sure about my individual perspective on endagered languages in reference to how much knowledge is in an actual language. I thought alot about how language changes perception of different situations and changes the way we express ourselves, therefor I disagree that the recording of a language is as useful as preserving it, as one student during the assembly mentioned. I was quite impressed by how many languages David Harrisson speaks especially of the endagered languages.
ReplyDeleteI agree with a previous comment that the providing of examples of the cultures in Bolivia and other places made David Harrisons points much stronger.
Furthermore, I wonder if the extinction of languages like the extinction of many animals is the course of nature. Obviously we as humans and through globalization have sped up this process, nevertheless would it be enough to just learn the language and record all of the information of the language?
-Anya Maurus
One thing that I still don't understand is why exactly Oklahoma is one of the hotspots of language development.
Language simply is a medium of communication , a way to convey an experience, a thought or an idea to another human being. This is at least how dictionaries and people you ask define it. I love how humans have this obsessive need to put a label on every piece of information they learn. Language allows us to package concepts and experiences into neat bundles of nothing more than a few sounds, but is that enough? I think language to some extent limits how well we can describe experiences or share them with others. It is also,however, vital as it not only gives the speaker of the language an identity, but also a knowledge base other language speakers do not have as I learned from Dr. Harrison.
ReplyDeleteDr. Harrison said that every single time a language "dies" knowledge is lost. I had not thought about this before, but I do agree. A language adapts according to where a speaking group lives, how they live or what they do daily. For example, the 30 people group of Reindeer herders in Sibera have the word Chanry, which describes a four year old uncastrated yet domesticated male reindeer. This is a unit of knowledge labeled as a result of language. I, for example, would have no need for such a word as I do not herd reindeer. Languages, as a result, exist within a cultural matrix.
If I were to lose my Turkish, the language I speak at home,today, then we would speak english. Since language is a part of culture, my cultural identity, it provides a sense of belonging. I light up every single time I visit Turkey or hear someone speak Turkish so it is hard to imagine being the last speaker of a language. If I lost my Turkish and went back to Turkey, I would feel no sense of belonging. I would be on the outside looking in, because everything that would be said would be lost in translation. Even now translating words from Turkish to English is impossible at time, as some do not have an identical match in meaning. Words are always lost in translation.
I realize that it is quite important to preserve all languages as they not only contain valuable information,but also that if a language dies off so does a culture. We need more people like Dr. Harrison who help preserve such languages. The main reason that languages are dying off, as he said, is because children are unwilling to learn them. There are no publications about or knowledge of some language and sometimes so few people speak it that the children see it as pointless to learn this language. As a result, Dr. Harrison claimed that the language slowly dies off. If a language is written, it can be preserved and recorded. Books can be written and passed down through generations to children. Writing a language encourages others to learn it, so Dr. Harrison sometimes helps speakers of languages that are on the verge of extinction to "write" in their tongue. I used to believe that in order for something to be language, it had to be written and spoken, but Dr. Harrison said that writing is almost a bran new invention and tha tmost languages are just spoken. I found this surprising as this meant that swiss german was a language! This shows how technology affects language. The technology or invention of writing seems so normal to us, but in some areas, it is brand new and enables the cultures to live on. In order to remember different information, the cultures, which had no way of writing their languages, had specific people who were experts in the community on specific subjects. If one wanted to know something, he/she would have to contact the expert as every piece of knowledge would have to be kept within the limitations that the mind provides rather than recording it. To me, this seems hard and almost impossible. Technology aids the development of language, allowing it to thrive.
Dr. Harrison completely evolved my perception on language. I now agree that language is more than a tool of communication and that it needs to be preserved. A language dies, a culture dies and knowledge is lost.
- Mina Gokcen
Before David Harrison came to school had no stand point on endangered language nor was I aware of how many languages were going extinct. Then when David Harrison came and started talking about how every 14 days a language "dies".
ReplyDeleteWhen he started talking about if a language was lost we lose vital information, which raises the question "If we lose a language and did not know the information that was lost, is the information really that vital?” For example, the Tuvan language has different ways of saying go depending on the flow of the river and position of the river. In modern day society, no one needs to know the position of the river and the rivers current to know which go to tell a person. Though it would be a loss culturally if we lose a language, if the information from the lost language was so vital then larger languages would have adopted those sayings.
Also when he mentioned that it is the next generation’s job to continue the language. Though it would be a shame to lose the language and the information may be important, shouldn’t the world try and “revolutionize” and try to create one language were all counties know, and new international language. Not to say that we should forget the smaller languages, but if it is not possible to save the language then rather lose the language and the information it has translate it to another language so the information can be preserved.
Another point he mentioned that I found interesting was that some of these cultures wanted their language put onto the internet because they think that their language is insignificant compared to the other languages and having it online brings it to the same levels as other languages.
The entire language extinction raised a thought, like animals are important in balancing the ecosystem; if one animal becomes extinct the rest to the ecosystem tries to balance out the disruption. On the other hand in some cases if an animal becomes extinct it has a huge impact on some cultures. Though if one animal dies and it does not affect our daily lives we do not notice. Which raised my question of if a language dies does the world unknowingly balance it out or does it make a huge change in our culture and we were too ignorant to notice?
Before David Harrison came to the school, I never really thought about all the languages that may have been lost. I wasn't entirely convinced that language lost = information lost. I believe that if a group of people have a knowledge about anything, any other group can still discover it, even if a little later. For example, his specific example of the people who knew a lot about herbs and medicine. Just because their exact names for the herbs stops existing, doesn't mean the herb itself stops existing.
ReplyDeleteSo I do not believe that losing language means losing knowledge, also because oral communication is not the only means of communication. I disagree with his claim that knowledge is inherent in language, because knowledge is and can be made universal.
In any event I think that all people should speak at least two languages, should one disappear.
Another example he used is the word for the "four-year-old-reindeer....". If the people whose use for such a word go "extinct", there is no use for such a word for anyone else.
Some very preceptive comments here. Ludwig Wittgentsein once famously wrote "The limits of my language are the limits of my world", which would seem to imply that if you destroy a language you will destroy a world.
ReplyDeleteMany states forbid the use of a langauage. For instance, during the 19th century Britain introduced compulsory primary schooling in Ireland, but the teaching of Irish remained forbidden until 1871. Why do you think they did this?
From Moritz
ReplyDeletePublishing my TOK comment on your blog did not work so I'm just sending you the comment as a mail:
I heard Mr. Harrison give to speeches on wednesday and I have to say that both of them were extremely interesting. Both were very though provoking speeches as he made us think about a world without these small languages,that are only spoken by very few people but which represent more than 80% of all languages in the world.
Although I thought that some of his answers were pretty vague, such as the one about why we should fight against the extinction of those languages that basically no one speaks. According to Mr. Harrison, reasons to save those languages are that there could be knowledge that would be lost in case the language dies out. But this is only an assumption. No one knows if those languages actually contain extra knowledge that our society could gain. His other argument was that, the more languages we speak, the smarter we are, which is certainly true. But it is almost certain that none of us will ever speak one of those langauges that are barely spoken, as there exist more than 80 languages that are considered as big. If you are no linguist, you have almost no incetive to learn the small languages as you can never use them.
Overall I thought Mr. Harrison gave two very interesting speeches that really made us aware of those smaller languages that almost nobody knows of, but could be important for our society as a whole.
Moritz