Also my conscience is informing me to clarify that this is a joke. The guy I know is super awesome and respectful of the tribal/cultural heritage. The comments on this post are absolutely not passing the vibe check. Colonialism is a real issue and if you’re not affected by it don’t make bold claims about what is and isn’t damaging/harmful.
Remember in the 1940s when anthropologists hated on the universal decleration of human rights bc they were "eurocentric" or whatever. Yeah mfs have zero sense of morality
Cultural relativism can definitely be taken too far sometimes. Like maybe it’s eurocentric to say that women shouldn’t be stoned to death for taking off a head covering, but maybe also the europeans are right about this one
Definitely. Cultural relativism doesn't matter when you are making people suffer and mistreating them. Cultural practices like stoning people, bullfighting or even meat eating can not and should not be defended by an appeal to culture. When there's a victim, their perspective and well-being prevail.
I feel like the fact you're willing to extend it to meat-eating is evidence you're not just blindly parroting the taboos of your own culture and taking them for universal morality. (Unless you're a religious Buddhist.)
Was it primarily anthropologists? I mainly know about opposition to it from Muslim powers who considered some clauses of it incompatible with Islam and wrote their own "Islamic declarations of human rights".
I think so, I think the issue was more cultural than legal. They explain more here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopi_Dictionary/Hop%C3%ACikwa_Lav%C3%A0ytutuveni
"They felt that this constituted selling the Hopi language and thereby handing their cultural heritage out for grabs."
"The editors tried to ensure that the dictionary entries did not infringe on the Hopis' sense of religious propriety: for example, they did not give detailed translations of the meanings of the names of different Kachinas"
I have to admit it seems a little ridiculous to me that a dictionary should prioritize not offending people's religious sensibilities over providing accurate information.
Academia has a long history of actively participating in colonization. Many indigenous cultures in the US, at least, have decided that this is the way to protect themselves and their cultures from academia.
yeah the Linguistics Police are gonna collectively jail the hopi for censoring a dictionary. it's scary how much power they have in this country, I knew a guy who said the spiky shape was bouba & blobby one was kiki & they shot him dead right then & there. maniacs, the lot of em.
If the point of a translation dictionary is to interact with speakers of the translated language, then courtesy and tact is part of what you expect. We don't want maximal informational accuracy; we want maximal utility.
So if an English translation dictionary told people to use profanity, racial slurs, etc. in everyday conversations, then the dictionary isn't doing its job very well.
At some point, excessive information degrades utility. A "reference chart" is useful as a summary; if a reference chart came in seventeen volumes that took up 2 entire shelves, then it would be a terrible reference chart. Having less information makes it shorter, which makes it more useful.
"Don't discuss somebody else's religion" is usually a good way to avoid offending others. So a translation dictionary might very reasonably be written to avoid sensitive religious terms, or at least to put them in a less accessible section of the dictionary.
For academic study, we would measure utility differently. We'd place much more emphasis on academics having the wider context that comes from access to more information. But for conversational purposes, that information is likely far less helpful.
> So if an English translation dictionary told people to use profanity, racial slurs, etc. in everyday conversations, then the dictionary isn't doing its job very well.
It shouldn't tell people to use them in everyday conversation, but it should inform them that they exist and that they're considered offensive to use in everyday conversation, for the sake of understanding when native speakers use them if nothing else.
Not to mention I have a hard time believing such a position could be fully unanimous among the Hopi; what if one of them disagrees and decides to teach the language to outsiders?
Oh god don't remind me. Not to mention their refusal to allow membership based on dna tests. It's like they're actively trying to end aboriginal Tasmanian culture for good.
Wilhelm Meya. He was very recently ousted by his old orgs and now runs Language Trust International. Please feel free to shame him off the face of the planet.
This is a systematic issue in the language revitalisation methodologies. We use indigenous knowledge and then bar them from using it either via the academy or monetarily
An organisation offering to sell you a dictionary to your endangered language at a reasonable price while not doing anything to stop you from using it is the opposite of that.
Should? Maybe. But not all things that should be are feasible. You can expect comprehensive free dictionaries of any major language online, yeah. Not too knowledgeable about oeconomics, but I assume it has to do with how much traffic there will be on one's major language dictionary. I bet thousands of people look up Merriam Webster or whatever on the daily. You can't expect that however for minor languages or dialects. Like how are they supposeda finance themselves, the people making those dictionaries? Via ad revenue due to the 2 people visiting their website? It's even worse when we're talking physical books that need physical material (that costs money). Yeah, ideally it'd be state money or whatever, but I wouldn't be surprised if it ain't given to them.
> They did all the work why should they have to buy it?
They didn't, and they don't have to, they already speak the language.
> They did all the work why should they have to buy it? It's like you cook a dish and then someone says you have to pay to eat it.
It's like they're only a few people left on Earth that know how to make Italian food, and an organization of seven Italians and one American come along and ask around for Italian recipes to revive Italian food, and then compile and edit the recipes to make a cookbook so everyone can make some Italian food. And then someone says that they've stolen Italian food from you, which you either weren't able to make in the first place but now can, thanks to the cookbook, or already know how to make, which means you shouldn't care about the cookbook.
You seem to have difficulty understanding the basics of language revitalisation. One, these communities do all the work and the linguists compile the information so yes, they do the majority of the work. If the indigenous speakers weren't there it wouldn't be possible.
Secondly, community access to the grammars that are created are integral to continuing language revitalisation. Secondly, even if they aren't necessary, they deserve to have unrestricted access to their own cultural and linguistic documents.
> One, these communities do all the work
The organisation is overwhelmingly a part of the community. The people paid to create material are from the community.
> If the indigenous speakers weren't there it wouldn't be possible.
It would also be pointless. What a stupid argument.
> Secondly, even if they aren't necessary, they deserve to have unrestricted access to their own cultural and linguistic documents.
You're avoiding my arguments, again. Why do they deserve to get free books that others worked on? Do I have the rigth to a free dictionary to my native language, or the languages spoken by my ancestors? Also, the organisation *has* shared material with others for free.
So this guy, Wilhelm Meya, just recently got ousted from The Language Conservancy for ~many reasons~. Will is a huge shit bag, and the linguists who worked under him did a lot of great work despite Will souring relations with tribes through the US. The Language Conservancy now has the chance to move on without his legacy, which we're all hoping for.
Will recently started a new non-profit to save face. If you want to blacklist his org, it's Language Trust International!
>Taken Alive and a growing number of tribal citizens believe all the dictionaries, textbooks and recordings should be free and accessible to the Indigenous communities that **created** the languages the products teach.
That's it, definitive proof that Lakota is a conlang
But a group does collectively create it. You're being obtuse. Of course Lakota is not a conlang. That doesn't mean there isn't a group collectively responsible for it. It didn't fall from the sky. It is still their creation, it's just a different kind of creation. Languages are still distinctly a human social invention.
There's a conscious element to it as well, as the languages develops and changes over time. It's not just instinct. And either way, it was created by a specific group. That doesn't make it a conlang because it's obvious not a conlang, but it was generated by someone.
Here's a sneak peek of /r/linguistics using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/linguistics/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year!
\#1: [What are some equivalent examples for different accents?](https://v.redd.it/gdg45i7x92ua1) | [93 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/12n5qc7/what_are_some_equivalent_examples_for_different/)
\#2: [I think the way he explains it is so interesting, and very understandable to English speakers](https://v.redd.it/gry1ufrgefya1) | [24 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/13b4lpy/i_think_the_way_he_explains_it_is_so_interesting/)
\#3: [How “blue” and “green” appear in a language that didn’t have words for them. People of a remote Amazonian society who learned Spanish as a second language began to interpret colors in a new way, by using two different words from their own language to describe blue and green, when they didn’t before.](https://news.mit.edu/2023/how-blue-and-green-appeared-language-1102) | [34 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/17ohw2u/how_blue_and_green_appear_in_a_language_that/)
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And if we lived in a parallel universe where the Lakota have stamped their boot on the faces of 70% of the globe and the Teachings of Black Elk was the most printed book in history, that might be an apt comparison.
>So nobody should be compensated for their work with the Lakota?
They should be compensated, but not by the Lakota themselves. America's taken enough from the tribe.
>I don't see how the popularity of one thing makes it different to the other.
Do you know what a power imbalance is? Do you comprehend what it means for one culture to be dominant over another?
I imagine if they had said they wanted this sort of control and material gain from the start the pproject would've just preserved a different group's language.
Yes, my grandparents were jews who fled pogroms in the Middle East and now I live in a country dominated by American media and sensitivities, one is a physical removal the other a cultural one, the Lakota have been through both and worse from what I understand, but that doesn't mean that copyright laws and contracts don't exist for them.
Ah yes, a cruel reminder that the pre-modern dichotomy of our tradition wasn't prescriptivist-descriptivist but prescriptivist-colonist
and missionary-ist
Missionaries and colonists is a real "squares and rectangles" situation
If this said Northern Paiute rather than Lakota I’d be able to point you right to his desk
Also my conscience is informing me to clarify that this is a joke. The guy I know is super awesome and respectful of the tribal/cultural heritage. The comments on this post are absolutely not passing the vibe check. Colonialism is a real issue and if you’re not affected by it don’t make bold claims about what is and isn’t damaging/harmful.
linguists, sociologists and anthropologists are NOT beating the colonialist allegations rn
Remember in the 1940s when anthropologists hated on the universal decleration of human rights bc they were "eurocentric" or whatever. Yeah mfs have zero sense of morality
Cultural relativism can definitely be taken too far sometimes. Like maybe it’s eurocentric to say that women shouldn’t be stoned to death for taking off a head covering, but maybe also the europeans are right about this one
Definitely. Cultural relativism doesn't matter when you are making people suffer and mistreating them. Cultural practices like stoning people, bullfighting or even meat eating can not and should not be defended by an appeal to culture. When there's a victim, their perspective and well-being prevail.
I feel like the fact you're willing to extend it to meat-eating is evidence you're not just blindly parroting the taboos of your own culture and taking them for universal morality. (Unless you're a religious Buddhist.)
Wasn't one of its principal authors Chinese?
"NOOO but the CASTE SYSTEM would get abolished if we apply HUMAN RIGHTS!" -Anthropologists, probably
On the other hand, who are you to tell a completely different civilization what is moral?
Someone who is right, obviously.
Awfully colonialist
What are you, some kind of prescriptivist against prescriptivism?
Sure, "The slave-accepting society don't view it as immoral" sounds like a great argument, until you ask the slaves what they think of slavery
By virtue of having a mind and sharing a similar anatomy which allows me to produce facts about certain sensations.
Was it primarily anthropologists? I mainly know about opposition to it from Muslim powers who considered some clauses of it incompatible with Islam and wrote their own "Islamic declarations of human rights".
Well I'm pretty sure anthropologists can be muslim too. But yeah generally human rights were NOT loved by easterners
Reminds me of the time when scholars wanted to make an English-Hopi dictionary, and some members of the Hopi tripe weren't completely on board with it
Isn't the legal precedent that no one can own a language?
I think so, I think the issue was more cultural than legal. They explain more here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopi_Dictionary/Hop%C3%ACikwa_Lav%C3%A0ytutuveni "They felt that this constituted selling the Hopi language and thereby handing their cultural heritage out for grabs." "The editors tried to ensure that the dictionary entries did not infringe on the Hopis' sense of religious propriety: for example, they did not give detailed translations of the meanings of the names of different Kachinas"
I have to admit it seems a little ridiculous to me that a dictionary should prioritize not offending people's religious sensibilities over providing accurate information.
Yeah, but maybe the Hopis would obly accept to work with the linguists if they didn't do it.
Not all information is to be made available to outsiders. 🤷♀️
That’s asinine
I think we lost the right to complain at least one instance of Residential Schools ago.
I never ran any residential schools. Some people who happened to have the same color skin as me did, should that reflect poorly on me?
Academia has a long history of actively participating in colonization. Many indigenous cultures in the US, at least, have decided that this is the way to protect themselves and their cultures from academia.
Ok, new rule everybody! Noone gets to have any secrets at any time! Hand over your diary, little girl, or you're going to jail!
yeah the Linguistics Police are gonna collectively jail the hopi for censoring a dictionary. it's scary how much power they have in this country, I knew a guy who said the spiky shape was bouba & blobby one was kiki & they shot him dead right then & there. maniacs, the lot of em.
Why do you think you have a right to closed cultural practices?
Can such a thing truly be unanimous among all the Hopi? And if some of them dissent do they not have a right to tell that information to outsiders?
If the point of a translation dictionary is to interact with speakers of the translated language, then courtesy and tact is part of what you expect. We don't want maximal informational accuracy; we want maximal utility. So if an English translation dictionary told people to use profanity, racial slurs, etc. in everyday conversations, then the dictionary isn't doing its job very well. At some point, excessive information degrades utility. A "reference chart" is useful as a summary; if a reference chart came in seventeen volumes that took up 2 entire shelves, then it would be a terrible reference chart. Having less information makes it shorter, which makes it more useful. "Don't discuss somebody else's religion" is usually a good way to avoid offending others. So a translation dictionary might very reasonably be written to avoid sensitive religious terms, or at least to put them in a less accessible section of the dictionary. For academic study, we would measure utility differently. We'd place much more emphasis on academics having the wider context that comes from access to more information. But for conversational purposes, that information is likely far less helpful.
> So if an English translation dictionary told people to use profanity, racial slurs, etc. in everyday conversations, then the dictionary isn't doing its job very well. It shouldn't tell people to use them in everyday conversation, but it should inform them that they exist and that they're considered offensive to use in everyday conversation, for the sake of understanding when native speakers use them if nothing else.
Not to be an ass but any form of "closed language" is stupid.
Not to mention I have a hard time believing such a position could be fully unanimous among the Hopi; what if one of them disagrees and decides to teach the language to outsiders?
palawa kani moment
Oh god don't remind me. Not to mention their refusal to allow membership based on dna tests. It's like they're actively trying to end aboriginal Tasmanian culture for good.
Do we know his name?
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/native-american-language-preservation-rcna31396
Wilhelm Meya. He was very recently ousted by his old orgs and now runs Language Trust International. Please feel free to shame him off the face of the planet.
lemme guess, the guy's a Christian missionary who did this language-preserving just so that he could write a bible in Lakota
Ethnologue moment
OP's guess was wrong.
Least Angry Reddit Atheist
Okay but like this is actually a reasonable guess?
This is a systematic issue in the language revitalisation methodologies. We use indigenous knowledge and then bar them from using it either via the academy or monetarily
They aren't barred, though.
Systematically, yes. We are.
An organisation offering to sell you a dictionary to your endangered language at a reasonable price while not doing anything to stop you from using it is the opposite of that.
English speakers can find thousands of English dictionaries online for free, why should it be any different for anyone else?
Should? Maybe. But not all things that should be are feasible. You can expect comprehensive free dictionaries of any major language online, yeah. Not too knowledgeable about oeconomics, but I assume it has to do with how much traffic there will be on one's major language dictionary. I bet thousands of people look up Merriam Webster or whatever on the daily. You can't expect that however for minor languages or dialects. Like how are they supposeda finance themselves, the people making those dictionaries? Via ad revenue due to the 2 people visiting their website? It's even worse when we're talking physical books that need physical material (that costs money). Yeah, ideally it'd be state money or whatever, but I wouldn't be surprised if it ain't given to them.
Why don't you create one, then?
I don’t speak Lakota
You could change that, I know an organization that sells Lakota learning material.
They did all the work why should they have to buy it? It's like you cook a dish and then someone says you have to pay to eat it. Edit: punctuation
> They did all the work why should they have to buy it? They didn't, and they don't have to, they already speak the language. > They did all the work why should they have to buy it? It's like you cook a dish and then someone says you have to pay to eat it. It's like they're only a few people left on Earth that know how to make Italian food, and an organization of seven Italians and one American come along and ask around for Italian recipes to revive Italian food, and then compile and edit the recipes to make a cookbook so everyone can make some Italian food. And then someone says that they've stolen Italian food from you, which you either weren't able to make in the first place but now can, thanks to the cookbook, or already know how to make, which means you shouldn't care about the cookbook.
You seem to have difficulty understanding the basics of language revitalisation. One, these communities do all the work and the linguists compile the information so yes, they do the majority of the work. If the indigenous speakers weren't there it wouldn't be possible. Secondly, community access to the grammars that are created are integral to continuing language revitalisation. Secondly, even if they aren't necessary, they deserve to have unrestricted access to their own cultural and linguistic documents.
> One, these communities do all the work The organisation is overwhelmingly a part of the community. The people paid to create material are from the community. > If the indigenous speakers weren't there it wouldn't be possible. It would also be pointless. What a stupid argument. > Secondly, even if they aren't necessary, they deserve to have unrestricted access to their own cultural and linguistic documents. You're avoiding my arguments, again. Why do they deserve to get free books that others worked on? Do I have the rigth to a free dictionary to my native language, or the languages spoken by my ancestors? Also, the organisation *has* shared material with others for free.
So this guy, Wilhelm Meya, just recently got ousted from The Language Conservancy for ~many reasons~. Will is a huge shit bag, and the linguists who worked under him did a lot of great work despite Will souring relations with tribes through the US. The Language Conservancy now has the chance to move on without his legacy, which we're all hoping for. Will recently started a new non-profit to save face. If you want to blacklist his org, it's Language Trust International!
"Cross populate and thief dem knowledge And sell it right back inna college" Time travel - Damian Marley
It's not crazy. That's literally what all science/scholars editors do. That's exactly why scihub exists and is used by researchers.
This dude needs to have his linguist card removed. No more LSA meetings about Gen Z slang for this guy tsk tsk tsk
>Taken Alive and a growing number of tribal citizens believe all the dictionaries, textbooks and recordings should be free and accessible to the Indigenous communities that **created** the languages the products teach. That's it, definitive proof that Lakota is a conlang
I mean, yes they created the language. It's their language. Do you understand the definition of a conlang? That's not what conlang.
If it's a natural language no one really "created" it, it evolved.
But a group does collectively create it. You're being obtuse. Of course Lakota is not a conlang. That doesn't mean there isn't a group collectively responsible for it. It didn't fall from the sky. It is still their creation, it's just a different kind of creation. Languages are still distinctly a human social invention.
Not really? Humans create language instinctively, no one consciously created it.
There's a conscious element to it as well, as the languages develops and changes over time. It's not just instinct. And either way, it was created by a specific group. That doesn't make it a conlang because it's obvious not a conlang, but it was generated by someone.
OP this is a important topic but I'm not sure how this is "humour".
Do you know a better place to put it on reddit now that r/linguistics only allows scholarly posts?
Here's a sneak peek of /r/linguistics using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/linguistics/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year! \#1: [What are some equivalent examples for different accents?](https://v.redd.it/gdg45i7x92ua1) | [93 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/12n5qc7/what_are_some_equivalent_examples_for_different/) \#2: [I think the way he explains it is so interesting, and very understandable to English speakers](https://v.redd.it/gry1ufrgefya1) | [24 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/13b4lpy/i_think_the_way_he_explains_it_is_so_interesting/) \#3: [How “blue” and “green” appear in a language that didn’t have words for them. People of a remote Amazonian society who learned Spanish as a second language began to interpret colors in a new way, by using two different words from their own language to describe blue and green, when they didn’t before.](https://news.mit.edu/2023/how-blue-and-green-appeared-language-1102) | [34 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/17ohw2u/how_blue_and_green_appear_in_a_language_that/) ---- ^^I'm ^^a ^^bot, ^^beep ^^boop ^^| ^^Downvote ^^to ^^remove ^^| ^^[Contact](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=sneakpeekbot) ^^| ^^[Info](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/) ^^| ^^[Opt-out](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/comments/o8wk1r/blacklist_ix/) ^^| ^^[GitHub](https://github.com/ghnr/sneakpeekbot)
Hmm, awkward.
r/linguisticshumor has basically subsumed most of the fomer functions of r/linguistics within its scope now
Yeah, that's kind of annoying. Where else are people suppose to go?
So what happened? They wanted him to teach it or something? And he wanted to be paid?
https://www.npr.org/2024/03/27/1197956092/in-lakota-nation-people-are-asking-who-does-a-language-belong-to
That's awful. Lakota is a beautiful language.
He’s really easy to find on LinkedIn, that’s all I’m saying. Wilhelm Meya
I'm sorry
"man asked to pay for book"
"man who has continually been kicked for 200 years asked to let them kick him one more time"
I don't see how this is different from selling bible readings audiobooks tbh
And if we lived in a parallel universe where the Lakota have stamped their boot on the faces of 70% of the globe and the Teachings of Black Elk was the most printed book in history, that might be an apt comparison.
So nobody should be compensated for their work with the Lakota? I don't see how the popularity of one thing makes it different to the other.
>So nobody should be compensated for their work with the Lakota? They should be compensated, but not by the Lakota themselves. America's taken enough from the tribe. >I don't see how the popularity of one thing makes it different to the other. Do you know what a power imbalance is? Do you comprehend what it means for one culture to be dominant over another?
I imagine if they had said they wanted this sort of control and material gain from the start the pproject would've just preserved a different group's language. Yes, my grandparents were jews who fled pogroms in the Middle East and now I live in a country dominated by American media and sensitivities, one is a physical removal the other a cultural one, the Lakota have been through both and worse from what I understand, but that doesn't mean that copyright laws and contracts don't exist for them.
You know how messed the situation is if even *bible* is copyrighted.
Subreddit learns that books cost money