A bit o' sad news - end of an era.

[Tobus]

Chas, you raise a very good point. And I suppose we must make a distinction between the idea of preserving a language for the purpose of knowing how it was spoken in the past, versus preserving it for the purpose of actually using it. In this modern era, I can understand why there is no interest in speaking an antiquated, rare language. Such an exercise would be merely for academics, not for 'real world' use. I can't even think of how these languages would survive in modern usage, except to pick a community where the children will be taught that language as their primary tongue, which automatically puts them at a disadvantage in society. No one would want to do that to their children just for the sake of keeping a language alive. It would have to be the result of a real community effort to preserve their heritage and culture.

[Chas]

I suppose the real death-knell came not when Bobby Hogg died, but in effect when the speaker before him died. Once there is no one to converse with, the language or dialect is doomed.

We have many communities here in the UK which speak their own language/dialect at home, indoors, with family or friends, but speak English in school or at their place of work. The funny thing is that their standard of English and accent is often far better than others, because, for them English is not their mother tongue and they have had to learn it as a kind of foreign language.

The Welsh are particularly good at this. They have Welsh language, all age debating and choral societies.

Regards

Chas

[Laird_M]

Personally I feel very sad when something like this happens, but the world in general doesn't really seem to care. "oh how sad! What's on the telly?".
I always rejoice when I see threads about schools in the highlands and islands adding their local gaelic back into the corriculum.

In agreement with Chas, it does seem that those who learn English as a 'foreign language' have better grammar and use the language far better than those of us born to it.