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Comment by romaaeterna | Hacker News Reader

"His dream is to revive dying languages..."

The content of modern culture is too much for dying or ancient languages, and what you actually get is English/modern thoughtspace expressed in the lexicon of an until-now separate culture. This flood of spam destroys what was unique and interesting about the culture, and "skin-suits" it.

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Maybe, unless some form of Sapir-Whorf is true, and the lexica—and grammar, and phonology, etc.—impose an inalielable umwelt, one inaccessible to hegemony.

They certainly do. But languages are also very elastic. If you speak modern German, for example, you'll find that it's very similar to modern American English in thought and expression. But this was not true of late 19th-century German and 19th-century English. There has unfortunately been substantial thought convergence due to mass communication. If all you speak is English, you may also find that the current dialectical forms are all much weaker and samey compared to the older forms.

Anyway, in resurrected ancient languages, this modern samey-ness is a problem. Go read Latin Wikipedia, for example. It's much more like reading modern English authors (though with Latin words and grammar) than it is like reading classical authors.

I add a natural language translation (from ChatGPT) of your statement for anyone who doesn't share your lexica:

> "Maybe, unless some version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is correct, and language—along with its grammar, sounds, and other aspects—creates an inescapable worldview that can't be dominated."

ChatGPT has misinterpreted me.

By "inalienable unwelt," I mean it in the sense of "inalienable rights" that cannot be removed by external circumstance.

By "inaccessible to hegemony," I mean an umwelt which cannot be perceived by speakers of the dominant language.

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