2006-06-07 23:12:24 · 8 answers · asked by Anonymous in Society & Culture ➔ Languages
there is a difference between a language being 'alive' and it being 'viable'.
most linguists would agree that a language is still 'alive' as long as it has at least two speakers - one to talk and one to listen. with two speakers a language can be used as a means of communication, so it most certainly still functions as a language.
but languages which are spoken by fewer than a few thousand (precise numbers vary according to linguistic context, and even who is doing the estimating) are clearly at risk since more and more of their speakers will turn to other languages as their best hope of being understood by those around them.
a language which is in decline need not be lost though. cornish hit a severe problem in the late middle ages and died when dolly pentreath did in. whether cornish has been revived is something scholars discuss without ever reaching a conclusion.
welsh had similar problems by the middle of the nineteenth century, but after a radio broadcast by the welsh politician and poet saunders lewis ('tynged yr iaith' : 1962) the decline in number of welsh speakers first plateaued, and more recently has even begun to rise again (as engllish-speaking parents send their children to welsh-speaking schools).
this leads into the deeper consideration of whether for a language to be truly 'alive' it needs to be seen as having some kind of purpose by the people who speak it.
2006-06-08 02:33:48 · answer #1 · answered by synopsis 7 · 11⤊ 3⤋
right here in South Texas, there's a dialect coined TexMex , we talk English yet throw in Spanish info in our each and daily conversations, that is hard to describe yet exciting ...once I heard myself speaking on a similar time as vacationing ny. My pals and that i caught out! We additionally do say Y'ALL and Y'all's. (Ex. Y'all's order is waiting) in assessment to up North East the place they say 'yous adult adult males' or 'youses' ...additionally Ain't ,Naw and double negatives are person-friendly. ( Double negatives are person-friendly because of the fact in Spanish that's the properly suited way, and various human beings right here had English as their 2d language) particularly of 'for' we are saying 'fer' and a similar for 'or' and 'er'. we are saying this er that. We variety and textual content textile everyday English of path, yet we talk in any different case. The word To is 'tuh'. Like elephant tusks, tuh . And The is 'thuh' We additionally call any soda coke. Ex. desire a soda? Yeah. What variety? Dr Pepper. Haha kinda stupid yet that is how that is. i'm hoping this facilitates, I promise you we are no longer hill billys haha!
2016-09-28 04:44:39 · answer #2 · answered by huenke 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Good question. Is Cornish alive or not, as everyone who speaks it has it as a second language and speaks English?
2006-06-08 00:51:32 · answer #3 · answered by claude 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
A nation, or an ethnic group. Not just a few people chatting jibberish!
2006-06-07 23:16:37 · answer #4 · answered by smart_babe 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I would say a country, it heps if it one of the g8 richest nations
2006-06-07 23:35:04 · answer #5 · answered by kida_w 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
at least a thousand
2006-06-07 23:15:42 · answer #6 · answered by THE ONE 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Don't know.
Good question.
2006-06-07 23:14:33 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
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2006-06-07 23:17:38 · answer #8 · answered by Zorrow 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋