Comment by dntbnmpls | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dntbnmpls | Hacker News Reader

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> - adding one more obstacles for different cultures to be able to understand each other

Even if it was true, why would this matter? Just because you share an alphabet doesn't mean you can understand each others culture.

> It's also why we have such a terrible ability to speak english, which create way more problems than it solves.

Such as?

> Mongolia is a very peculiar culture

What's peculiar about it? It's no more peculiar than any other culture. But I'm guessing you meant it's a unique culture. But even then, it's not. It's part of the greater nomadic central asian culture.

> Language preservation is overrated.

If that was true, we'd all be speaking latin. Thank god for language preservation, otherwise, we wouldn't have shakespeare, mark twain and the world's most productive language. Think about all the art, history, culture, value that would have been lost had people like you succeeded in the past.

> Every time a language dies, like latin or summerian did, we gain uniformity.

Simply not true. The "death" of latin brought linguistic/cultural/etc diversity. When european nations started teaching in their own national languages and when they started worshipping in their national languages rather than latin, it created more diversity.

> We tend to react in a very emotional way when it's about culture, and I'm not sure it benefits our specie.

Why doesn't it benefit our species? You act like if we all used the same alphabet and spoke the same language, we'd have some kind of utopia. You act like people who speak the same language don't have wars with each other, don't brutalize each other and have cultural differences.

It seems like you've bought into the globalist monoculture nonsense. Where we all think alike, talk alike, eat in the same fast food joints and live alike in cities that all look alike. For our species sakes, I hope not.

> What's peculiar about it? It's no more peculiar than any other culture. But I'm guessing you meant it's a unique culture. But even then, it's not. It's part of the greater nomadic central asian culture.

Mongolia’s elites adopted Buddhism and their intelligentsia has historically looked to Tibet. That has greatly set Mongolian culture apart from the peoples of Central Asia, who adopted Islam. Also, Mongolic is a completely different language family from Turkic.

>If that was true, we'd all be speaking latin. Thank god for language preservation, otherwise, we wouldn't have shakespeare, mark twain and the world's most productive language.

I'm not sure this is a compelling argument.

We have contemporary musicians who have written and performed songs in different languages, not just their own. Indeed, we have many examples of non-native English speakers doing very well in US charts that have album sales in the millions. Therefore I am pretty confident that Shakespeare and Mark Twain would have been fine if they had to write in Latin.

Even if not these two specifically, who would have the temerity to assert that we would not have had different but equally talented people writing in Latin in their place?

It's not a matter of talent. It's a matter of language. Shakespeare and Twain couldn't write their books in latin because their writings are tied with the language itself not to mention the culture with the language helped to define.

So they might have written great latin literature, but we'd still lose out on great english language literature.

It's stilly to say we should get rid of spanish, german, russian, etc literature since we'd still have great english literature. Nobody in their right mind would say that. Just because if everyone spoke latin and we'd have great latin literature doesn't mean that we don't lose anything. We'd lose english literature.

On the other hand, when I am reading a book in Classical Greek with accompanying translation to English, I more often than I would like to catch myself reading the translation - not because I do not understand the Greek text but because the translation is so delicious!

What "other hand"?

Your comment essentially backed my point. Isn't it great to have both ancient greek and english rather than only ancient greek? Ain't diversity great?

The only reason we can even have this important debate is because the whole thread can communicate in english.

I can communicate in English even if it isn't my native language. That's true for many others.

If anything, I see an argument for being bilingual, not for English as the only language.

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