I agree; keeping endangered languages alive is nowhere near the top 1000 possible Effective Altruist causes.
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It definitely sucks to be one of the remaining monolingual speakers of a dying language. It is tempting to say that they made a very stupid choice, but maybe it wasn’t really their choice. Perhaps they grew up in a small village isolated from the rest of the world. Maybe everyone around was hostile to them for ethnic or religious reasons, so there wasn’t much opportunity and incentive to communicate. Or maybe they are just not smart enough to learn a second language. Life is not fair.
But these people are relatively few, otherwise the language wouldn’t be getting extinct.
For the remaining bilingual speakers of a dying language, I think the loss is mostly cultural. Their situation could be compared to those expats whose children decide that learning the native language of their parents is too much work. The parents may feel very sad about not being able to share their culture with their children.
This kind of suffering is not comparable to a typical Effective Altruist cause.
For everyone else, there is a cultural loss of all the knowledge that existed in given language and hasn’t been translated. When the language is gone, that knowledge is probably irreversibly gone, too. I think the lost knowledge will mostly be of historical and cultural nature; but sometimes there could be e.g. useful medical advice.
Again, there is real value lost, but not comparable to a typical EA cause. (Even the useful medical advice is probably about some rare local illness. Otherwise, I suppose, the useful information probably would have already spread beyond the small community.)
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Some people will feel about this topic strongly, even if it is not an EA-level cause.
The ones who care about the cultural loss for humanity, they should document as much as possible. Take a camera, interview all the remaining speakers about all possible topics; upload to YouTube. Record people when they sing, and when they work. Record as much as possible, even if it is low quality; more data is better (you can still throw it away later, but you won’t be able to record it later). Let the bilingual speakers tell the entire story in their native language first, and only afterwards ask them to translate.
I suggest recording over writing, because it is easier for the interviewed person (unless they have some tribal taboo against recording), so you can get much more data that way; and as a side effect you also document the accent, gesticulation, etc. Recording people while they work, as they comment what they are doing, helps to establish the meaning of their words.
If you record enough data, the future generations can sort it out, probably with the help of an AI.
Other people will be more concerned about the personal fate of the remaining speakers of the language.
I think the best thing you could do for the speakers personally would be to provide good language education for the young, and translation services for the old. (Yes, this does not oppose the extinction of the language; maybe even encourages it.) Be very sensitive about it! The goal should be to make the speakers fluently bilingual rather than to reeducate them. Let the language die (or maybe survive) naturally when its time comes.
And for some people (they will probably be over-represented online) this entire situation will be just a convenient metaphor for their favorite political topic. They will propose solutions that seem like a metaphorical way of hurting their political enemies, and oppose the solutions that seem like a metaphorical victory for the enemies. This is sad but probably inevitable; don’t get involved in that, don’t let your friends get involved in that.
I agree; keeping endangered languages alive is nowhere near the top 1000 possible Effective Altruist causes.
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It definitely sucks to be one of the remaining monolingual speakers of a dying language. It is tempting to say that they made a very stupid choice, but maybe it wasn’t really their choice. Perhaps they grew up in a small village isolated from the rest of the world. Maybe everyone around was hostile to them for ethnic or religious reasons, so there wasn’t much opportunity and incentive to communicate. Or maybe they are just not smart enough to learn a second language. Life is not fair.
But these people are relatively few, otherwise the language wouldn’t be getting extinct.
For the remaining bilingual speakers of a dying language, I think the loss is mostly cultural. Their situation could be compared to those expats whose children decide that learning the native language of their parents is too much work. The parents may feel very sad about not being able to share their culture with their children.
This kind of suffering is not comparable to a typical Effective Altruist cause.
For everyone else, there is a cultural loss of all the knowledge that existed in given language and hasn’t been translated. When the language is gone, that knowledge is probably irreversibly gone, too. I think the lost knowledge will mostly be of historical and cultural nature; but sometimes there could be e.g. useful medical advice.
Again, there is real value lost, but not comparable to a typical EA cause. (Even the useful medical advice is probably about some rare local illness. Otherwise, I suppose, the useful information probably would have already spread beyond the small community.)
*
Some people will feel about this topic strongly, even if it is not an EA-level cause.
The ones who care about the cultural loss for humanity, they should document as much as possible. Take a camera, interview all the remaining speakers about all possible topics; upload to YouTube. Record people when they sing, and when they work. Record as much as possible, even if it is low quality; more data is better (you can still throw it away later, but you won’t be able to record it later). Let the bilingual speakers tell the entire story in their native language first, and only afterwards ask them to translate.
I suggest recording over writing, because it is easier for the interviewed person (unless they have some tribal taboo against recording), so you can get much more data that way; and as a side effect you also document the accent, gesticulation, etc. Recording people while they work, as they comment what they are doing, helps to establish the meaning of their words.
If you record enough data, the future generations can sort it out, probably with the help of an AI.
Other people will be more concerned about the personal fate of the remaining speakers of the language.
I think the best thing you could do for the speakers personally would be to provide good language education for the young, and translation services for the old. (Yes, this does not oppose the extinction of the language; maybe even encourages it.) Be very sensitive about it! The goal should be to make the speakers fluently bilingual rather than to reeducate them. Let the language die (or maybe survive) naturally when its time comes.
And for some people (they will probably be over-represented online) this entire situation will be just a convenient metaphor for their favorite political topic. They will propose solutions that seem like a metaphorical way of hurting their political enemies, and oppose the solutions that seem like a metaphorical victory for the enemies. This is sad but probably inevitable; don’t get involved in that, don’t let your friends get involved in that.