NP Re: Losing Languages--Sorta P-related

[davemarc]

Not to belittle the issue of endangered languages, but over at the American
Dialect Society it's been noticed that this kind of article on the subject
seems to be somewhat mandatory at many periodicals these days.

One of the more amusing comments from Shorris is this one:  "English, as it
is generally spoken, seems to be losing more words than it gains....You need
only look at the thin thesaurus that came with your word-processing program
to see how the English language is losing its internal diversity."

What kind of a standard is that?  I suppose the implication is that "we"
English-users will all rely on our word-processing thesauri, and that the
limitations of those so-far limited resources will consequently limit our
vocabularies.  There may be a little *something* to that, but I doubt that
since the development of English dictionaries and thesauri there has been an
attendant decrease in spoken words. In Shorris's world, wouldn't the early,
less-inclusive dictionaries have frozen the language's growth on the spot?

What may be encouraging about modern technology is that people are
better-equipped than ever to preserve languages.  There are some cases of
peoples being able to revive old languages based on linguistic
documentation.  Perhaps that will be more likely the more that recording
equipment improves.

d.