[Air-l] Language on the Internet (was AoIR in Latin-America)

[Alex Kuskis]

Joshua,
This is not my major interest, so I cannot cite specific research
off the top of my head. However I know that David Crystal is
the authority here. He's written on both "Language Death" (2000) -
see http://faculty.ed.umuc.edu/~jmatthew/articles/crystal.html- as
well as "Language & the Internet" (2001): see
http://dannyreviews.com/h/Language_Internet.html .

I don't think I suggested that language endangerment necessarily derives
from an absence on the Internet per se. I think that has more to do with
cultural assimilation. However, intuitively I think that cultures are
assimilated and their languages are lost when they're unable to participate
in major media channels. I think that media in major languages are
agents of assimilation, unless remote people can avoid contact with the
outside world at all. In "Language & the Internet", Crystal writes about
finding about 1,000 languages on the Net, at which point he stopped
looking; the vast majority of "more frequently used languages" are
represented, as are many minority ones. However, "Until a critical
mass of Internet penetration in a country builds up, and a corresponding
mass of content exists in the local language, the motivation to switch
from English language sites will be limited..." (p. 220). And when
there's no indigenous language presence on the Net at all, local
users will only be able to access information in English or another
language. This can only hasten the decline of indigenous languages.

But, as far as local languages are concerned, Internet presence is
a 2-edged sword. Aboriginal people, in developed countries at least,
are increasingly gaining Net access. See for example the case
of the First Nations of Northwestern Ontario in Canada:
http://www.ci-journal.net/viewarticle.php?id=19&layout=html
To the extent that they can produce their own content, which
can be in video and sound form, since they have broadband
access, the Internet will be boon for maintaining their languages.
To the extent that they have to use the English or French of their
host nation, there's potential for their ownlanguages to decline.
It's a complicated topic without easy answers.....Alex Kuskis

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "joshua raclaw" <Joshua.Raclaw at colorado.edu>
To: <air-l at listserv.aoir.org>
Sent: Saturday, March 25, 2006 6:25 PM
Subject: Re: [Air-l] Language on the Internet (was AoIR in Latin-America)


Alex,

Are you suggesting that a spoken minority language might actually become
endangered because it doesn't have an online presence?  A vast majority of
these minority languages don't even have a writing system.

I'd be interested in any studies you've come across that specifically 
mention
internet use as a factor in language loss (and I'm not sure that UNESCO 
article
has anything to do with this idea).

Joshua
Joshua Raclaw - PhD student
Department of Linguistics
University of Colorado at Boulder

Quoting Alex Kuskis <alex.kuskis at netscape.ca>:

* Nils,
* "You can never understand one language until you understand at least
* two." -Ronald Searle (1920- )
*
* That quotation might be debatable. What is not is that the major 
languages,
* especially English, dispersed world wide via the Internet, are putting
* pressure on minority languages far more than previous electronic media 
such
* as TV (see below). So, it's not just a matter of language adaptation, but
* rather of survival. German will adapt and survive, as will other major
* languages like French and Spanish. They will be interesting case studies.
* But aboriginal languages worldwide are threatened, as are many in Africa 
and
* South America, which is a loss of cultural diversity (as suggested by the
* Safir quote someone posted). Yes, for better or worse, English has become
* the lingua franca, more so than Latin or French ever were.........Alex
* Kuskis
*
* Minority languages at risk: UNESCO
* Last Updated Tue, 21 Feb 2006 15:54:11 EST
* CBC Arts