[hello_im_angela]

It's an extremely difficult problem indeed. A lot of people on the team speak low-resource languages too (my native language as well!), so definitely resonate with what you're saying. My overall feeling is: yeah it's hard, and after decades we can't even do German translation perfectly. But if we don't work on it, it's not gonna happen. I really hope that people who are excited about technology for more languages can use what we've open sourced.

[azinman2]

> But if we don't work on it, it's not gonna happen.

That’s exactly right. There’s too much bias in society that if something isn’t perfect, then why bother? Nothing is perfect, so with that attitude there can be no progress. Thank you for doing important work!

[Gigachad]

Personally I'm hoping that globalisation prunes out as many languages as possible before we end up with brain implants automatically translating everything for us and no one can communicate without these chips.

[pegasus]

That's a silly thing to wish for: like wishing global warming kills off as many species of animals as possible, in order to simplify zoology.

[pmontra]

Becoming bilingual is one thing. Completely extinguishing a language is a totally different matter. It is usually associated with migrating away from the geographic area of the language and/or physically losing speakers (old age, wars, genocides, etc.)

You can check the list at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_time_of_e...

To make an example and be blunt: I do not expect any European country official language to get extinct anytime during our lifespan unless that country gets destroyed, which obviously won't be a good thing.

As for brain implants, I won't hold my breath.

[cyphar]

There are several reasons a language can go extinct, and while the reasons you mentioned are included there are several other reasons that you didn't consider. The most common way language death occurs is through contact with a prestige language, which results in social pressure that makes the non-prestige language become less and less commonly spoken[1]. A community becoming bilingual is part of this process -- it doesn't always result in language death, but it is an early stage of that form of language death.

As for a European country official language (strange line to draw), Icelandic is already in a state where younger Icelandic natives speak to each other in English because smartphones do not support their native language. It is entirely possible that Icelandic will be in danger of extinction this century[2].

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3qbYFvOHwk [2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/22/world/europe/iceland-icel...

[raverbashing]

Icelandic won't disappear soon. (it's a bit of a mistake to say latin disappeared but I digress)

It might take some work (and more media being produced in it, surely) but I don't think it's at risk

> because smartphones do not support their native language

Nowhere in the article says that. And most smartphones do even have support (including the Icelandic keyboard)

what is not supported is voice activated devices:

> "“Not being able to speak Icelandic to voice-activated fridges, interactive robots and similar devices would be yet another lost field,"

[cyphar]

(I guess we've skipped over the discussion about whether language death can occur without genocide.)

> it's a bit of a mistake to say latin disappeared but I digress

Latin is a dead language. It's not extinct (because it's used for ceremonial reasons by the Catholic Church) but it has no native speakers. This is not a remotely controversial statement. Old Church Slavonic has a similar role in Slavic Orthodox Churches and is also a dead language for the same reason.

> Nowhere in the article says that. And most smartphones do even have support (including the Icelandic keyboard).

In my defense, I can't read the article -- I linked it because this Tom Scott video[1] uses that article as a reference for the Icelandic example he gave where he explicitly says that Icelandic is not supported by modern smartphones. My phone does have Icelandic support now so I guess the statement was only true at the time he said it?

[1]: https://youtu.be/qYlmFfsyLMo?t=137

[yakak]

By your criteria no language that has survived to now will disappear without a major global calamity. Effectively, latin is a not a language for a native speaker that wants to go through their life and leave future native speakers.

Regarding Icelandic, I know little about it except that it has a lot of non-ANSI if written properly. I already know many latin language dialect speakers that developed their behavior when the limits of SMS unicode were significantly smaller than ANSI, with long term repercussions. I'm not sure why facts like that would need to be in the article to discuss here?

[mellavora]

So, Ukrainian?

[eCa]

> prunes out as many languages as possible

Would you feel the same way if that includes all languages you know, including all versions of English?

[Gigachad]

Yes, I’d be happy to learn a new language if it was the step to one unified language. Of course there is no way to back that up since it will never happen but I at least assume I’d do it if that was the case.

[cyphar]

Would you not feel even slightly unhappy that your children (or grandchildren) would not be able to read the original versions of Shakespeare, Dickens, or Austen or that they wouldn't be able to watch the original versions of movies and shows you've enjoyed? They would only be able to watch and read translations, and all of the linguistic artistry would be lost to them.

It's not just about becoming bilingual, a population becoming bilingual in a "prestige language" is the first stage of language death (though of course it doesn't /always/ lead to language death).

[Gigachad]

No not really. English has shifted so far that those works are hardly as understandable now as a modern translated work.

[MrPatan]

How would you feel about being the one that has to teach your children a language that will hinder their prospects instead of one that will help them succeed, just so that the speakers of the bigger language feel good about themselves that they are good people or something?

[cyphar]

I could not think of a more obvious way of telling everyone that you are monolingual than implying that knowing another language is a burden. Children are not burdened by being multilingual.

It is true that social pressures kill off local languages, but it's usually not because parents don't want to teach their children their mother tongue, it's that people stop using the language to communicate because of the influence of the "prestige language". My parents (and all of the parents in the immigrant community I live in) went through great pains to teach their children their native language.

[MrPatan]

English is, of course, my second language, maybe that's why you didn't quite grasp what I was saying.

The burden is not in knowing another language, the burden is in making the "less useful" language your main one.

Your parents and all of the parents in the immigrant community you live in are very happy that English is now your main language which you acquired through school, friends, tv etc. Or maybe they put you in your-language-only schools, made sure you socialized with your-language-only friends and watched your-language-only media?

[eCa]

I don’t think I my prospects in any way is hindered by being a native speaker of a fairly small language. If anything, I prefer having English as a second language.

How would you feel if your kids only learned Chinese[1], and not a word of English?

[1] I’m assuming you’re not Chinese

[adrianN]

I'm still a bit disappointed that Esperanto isn't the official language of the EU.