We Must Select 50 Languages That Will Survive Forever - Which Criteria Should We Use?

Great Debates
1

There are currently about 7,000 languages in the world. Imagine that for some reason (alien overlords, global dictatorship, whatever…) humanity has to choose the 50 most important ones. Those selected will not only be preserved, but actively used forever (the mechanisms that would make this possible are irrelevant). All the others will instantly disappear without a trace.

Which criteria should we use to determine the 50 languages that will make the cut ?

Demographics come to mind immediately, but this quickly runs into problems. While lists of the most-spoken languages are readily available, they do not seem to overlap perfectly, due to different methodological approaches. For instance, some mutually intelligible languages, such as Hindi-Urdu and Malay-Bahasa Indonesia, are sometimes counted as distinct, sometimes as one. Opting for the latter would allow a couple more languages to be saved, but would it be politically acceptable ?

An unexpected critieria would be the amount of translations done. According to David Bellos, about 50 languages account for almost all of the translations made worldwide. While I have not been able to find the list, I suspect it would more or less overlap with demographics, but there might be some big surprises. Which brings me to the next criteria.

Some languages hold considerable prestige for literary or religious reasons. It seems that there are almost no native speakers of Sanskrit, but I doubt that the people of the Indian subcontinent would be OK with it vanishing entirely. Should we take this into consideration ?

Besides, some languages are important from a scientific point of view. Depending on the methodology, Malagasy, with its 25 million speakers, falls either just above or just below the 50 languages cutoff point. Should the fact that it is the westernmost Austronesian language, with a unique Bantu substratum earn it a ticket for eternal preservation ? But then, should we consider Pirahã, a language famous for its highly unusual features, despite the fact that it is only spoken by at most 400 people ?

In my opinion, all of these criteria are valid and should be considered when coming up with final list. The real question is, how do we weigh each of them ?

2

The Martian dialect of Esperanto, Diné Bizaad, Proto-Celtic, and a grab bag of anything with fewer than 200 speakers today. What, you don’t like it? Who are you to question your alien overlords? Best keep your head down and hope tomorrow we don’t switch around the list of languages to be “actively used forever”.

3

Before one can answer one has to decide what is important to achieve with what gets preserved?

Ability to understand the extant corpus?

Diversity and its presumed benefit on future utility?

Usefulness in a predicted future?

Beauty? History?

Ease for current users?

4

This OP’s question is so outside my wheelhouse that I can’t offer a useful response. But anytime someone asks…

…all I can say is, Hell yes!

5

The number of people who speak a language would be a criteria. If it is simply dialect spoken in a particular region by a relatively small number of people, it goes. Languages like Chinese, Mandarin, Japanese, Russia, English, French, Spanish, etc, are in because they encompass a lot of people. Another important criteria for me would be historical value. I’d have to keep languages like ancient Greek and Latin because there is a lot of history in those languages and they had a tremendous influence in the development of more modern languages like English.

I have to say that you are being generous in awarding 50. We could get by with half that.

6

This would be largely a political question: what solution would be least likely to cause violent protests, but still keep the linguistic scientists happy? (Ignoring the societal upheaval introduced by the arrival of alien overlords.)

So there would a cut-off point based on number of first language speakers (maybe top 35, ending with Swahili at 16 million). The remaining 15 would be chosen by experts. There would still be bloody battles, but mostly confined to academic settings.

7

50 is more than generous. The top 40 most spoken languages in the world cover 98.69% of the total world population, so that still leaves 10 “academically interesting” languages to choose from.

8

Just as a data point: Wikipedia says there are over 1,000 “Indigenous languages of the Americas” still in use today. All of those likely would fall outside a list based on primary speakers.

At the top is Guarani with 6,500,000 speakers. Of the US/Canadian region languages, Navajo leads with about 170,000 speakers.

9

I’m going to make you very happy.

Malagasy is the westernmost Austronesian language, with a unique Bantu substratum and an extremely rare VOS word order.

It depends on what the objectives are indeed, but bear in mind that this represents 0.07% of all the languages in the world. Hardly generous.

I like this. Pick a certain number of “big” languages and leave a few seats for those that are of scientific interest.

However, one of the issues with using demographics as a criteria, is the thorny issue of native / second- or third-language speakers. For example, Marathi has about 100 million speakers, but only 16% have it has their first language. Which of the two figures should we base ourselves on and why ?

10

I would keep the 10 that would give the highest number a language they were reasonably fluent in, given only 10 languages; and then for the other 40 the ones that are least like each other (and also least like any of the 10).

Most of the 40 would probably currently have only a few speakers. But keeping diversity is more important than keeping numbers.

11

That’s first languages, probably?

I wonder what minimum number of languages are required such that everyone speaks at least one language fluently?

12

Actually its a combination of spoken as a first (L1) and second (L2) language. many of the top 40 have many more ppl who speak it as a 2nd language than as a first, English being the best example. See List of languages by total number of speakers - Wikipedia

13

Probably all (or nearly all) the current number of extant languages, I suspect, since a significant number of people are monolingual. I would guess this is especially so for the rarest languages. If you live on a remote island and only communicate with other islanders, with very little contact with the outside world, why learn another language? Or indeed, how?

I like the idea of preserving languages with unique or rare features. I forget which language it was, but I recently heard of one that refers to the past as being in front of you (because you can see what’s in front of you) and the future as being behind you (because you can’t see it). Clearly this is the opposite of the English idiom, but I don’t know if it’s unique or even sufficiently rare.

ETA: I also like the ones that don’t bother to have words for numbers of more than a few items. It’s like, who cares? Why worry? Which reminds me - presumably we also need to consider invented and fictional languages, such as the rabbit language in Watership Down (which is an example of this) and Klingon.

14

What happens to people who don’t speak any of the 50 languages? Do they become incapable of speech, or do they instantly learn another language?

15

Let’s say they have to learn one of the 50 remaining languages.

16

I’m asking because of the effects on isolated people. If the residents on North Sentinel Island wake up without a language tomorrow morning, it seems like it could result in mass death: they don’t have easy access to learn any of the top 50 languages. Is it worth making their language one of the 50, to prevent their deaths?

If they wake up suddenly knowing how to speak Spanish or Mandarin, that’s not an issue.

17

It’s not just confined to isolated peoples. If 1.3 percent of the global population (going by the numbers cited up thread) suddenly loses the ability to communicate, we’re looking at a whole lot of serious issues. That’s over a hundred million people who can’t talk to doctors, emergency services, parents, etc.

In a situation like that, the only moral choice is to choose the 50 languages that cover the widest spread of functional speakers and forget about academics altogether.

18

If people who don’t speak the languages automatically learn one, then I say pick 50 dead languages and watch the chaos.

19

Right, that’s what I’m thinking about. Of those 1.3%, how many only speak an “excluded” language? How many live close enough to communities with “included” languages that they could get assistance?

For example, there are about 161,000 people in Wales who don’t speak English. I’m gonna assume that they don’t speak any other included language either. But 98% of folks in Wales speak English well, and I suspect they could care for the remaining 2% until the terror passed and the 2% could learn English.

The North Sentinelese? Well, I guess they could be forcibly un-isolated; but I’m not sure how well that’d work.

And then there may be entire countries in which few people speak one of the top 50 languages. How many people in Nepal speak one of the top 50 languages? Is it worth including one Nepali dialect or language in order to keep Nepalis alive?

The more I think about it, the more I think the scenario becomes apocalyptic, if people are left with no language. I’m not sure that’s the intent of the question, though.

20

I wasn’t interested in the mechanisms involved, but since several of you seem to care about precisely that, let’s say they all magically become fluent in one of the 50 saved languages literally overnight.