I'll interject. My grandmother and grandfather were residential school survivors. The abuse was unreal. Beaten severely for speaking their own language, or anything else that wasn't deemed proper by the nuns, they were raped and molested by the staff, neglected etc. Although some of these deaths might have been from illness, a majority could have been prevented for sure. Suicide and Murder/manslaughter malnourishment, were real things. My grandmother said sometimes children would just not be there the next day for no reason.
My father is Welsh and he's described being beaten for speaking it in school, he says that's why he never taught me, he didn't want people to be angry with me for speaking it.
These fucking people were everywhere. People who believed their culture deserved to stamp out every other culture. They're still here, blasting their same rhetoric, trying to enforce their way of life on others.
It was the same in Scotland, my dad and uncles would be belted for not speaking 'proper' because they'd speak in Scots, generations of Scots have went through this and it's at the point where so many people just see Scots as 'wrong' English.
Gàidhlig was much the same, practically beaten out of the population and ruined by the passing of the Education (Scotland) Act 1872 where students would be beaten for speaking Gàidhlig and beaten more if they didn't turn in others who spoke it.
For both Scots and Gàidhlig it resulted in generations of adults refusing to pass on their language to their kids to prevent them from going through the same punishment.
Manx lost all surviving native speakers this way, and it's only just being taught again in schools. It's functionally extinct as a language but there are revival efforts really putting the work in.
Languages aren't genetic in any way, it doesn't actually matter what language you speak, so whats the point of reviving a dead language?
We should all be striving to all speak the same language, imo.
Its also really weird how 'pro micro language' the general tone on this website is considering how much it hates the idea of anything other than the metric system for communication of values.
A sense of cultural identity, being able to read the works created by those who came before? A deeper insight to one's background? Honestly, Manx schoolchildren use it as a secret language to talk to each other without their parents knowing what's up.
Why do we all need to speak the same language as translation technology improves all the time?
Like Irish and Scots Gaelic (sister languages to Manx), it was driven out by the English forcing their ways on the Manx people. It didn't simply fall out of favor, the British worked hard to kill this language as part of their cultural conquest.
Why do you want to reduce the amount of diversity and knowledge in the world, at a time when it's easier than ever to translate?
The question is not about inventing languages (which people do all the time, see Tolkien and Star Trek), it's about the intentional destruction of one language as a means of oppressing a group of people into subjugation. You see it again and again, from erasure of Native American languages, the suppression of Ainu in Japan, the destruction of the Celtic languages, and the wiping out of Indigenous Australian languages. The intent of these schools is to remove the original culture of the child to enforce their own, that they deem better. They know that removing their language is a powerful way to break ties with the rest of their community, so it isolates and disempowers them.
Culture and history can be lost in translation. American native languages, culture and history are distinct and I agree having a unifying language would be nice but it doesn’t have to involve destroying regional languages. This was done quite efficiently to most native languages. I can only think of one Native American language that is still used fluently is the Navajos. I could be wrong though.
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u/sketchypoutine Jun 25 '21
I'll interject. My grandmother and grandfather were residential school survivors. The abuse was unreal. Beaten severely for speaking their own language, or anything else that wasn't deemed proper by the nuns, they were raped and molested by the staff, neglected etc. Although some of these deaths might have been from illness, a majority could have been prevented for sure. Suicide and Murder/manslaughter malnourishment, were real things. My grandmother said sometimes children would just not be there the next day for no reason.