[Foundation-l] Umberto Eco on small languages/dialects Wikipedias (Aristotle article)

[Marcus Buck]

  An'n 19.09.2010 11:32, hett Mark Williamson schreven:
> We have heard this type of criticism before, that lower-prestige
> varieties or languages that are not "official" or "national" languages
> are somehow intrinsically incapable or unsuited to encyclopedic
> writing. Article quality on a Wiki is not high or low due to some
> intrinsic characteristic or trait of the language variety used, it is
> a result of the content not being well-developed. Also, many languages
> in a relatively small territory does not mean living in a ghetto; on
> the contrary, count how many national languages there are in Europe,
> then count how many across all of Latin America, then take a look at
> economic indicators and you'll see that there is no necessary
> correlation between linguistic diversity and poverty.
>
> -m.
I agree with the points you make but I don't agree that that is what Eco 
said (although I don't speak Italian and automatic translation is rather 
poor). Eco is a very intelligent man and he wouldn't say things that are 
so stupid. He actually values "dialect" Wikipedias (I'd object to 
calling them dialect Wikipedias, that term is derogatory in the first 
place, but as the term was used I quote it) for their ability to support 
awareness of regional culture. He then counters this positive argument 
with the negative argument that "turning local tongues into the sole 
means of communication" decreases the role of the national standard 
language and would therefore lead to a situation where people are 
captured in the very limited frame of their local tongue. And here's 
where the intellectual mind of Eco lapses. He's thinking with the mind 
of a 19th century humanist who's living in a world where 90% of the 
population are illiterate peasants who have little understanding of the 
world (at least those aspects of the world that are relevant to a 
humanist's mind. The peasants were not dumb and had outstanding 
knowledge of the world directly surrounding them and relevant to their 
daily lifes). On one side these 19th century humanists deeply cared 
about the "improvement" of the peasants but on the other side they were 
highly arrogant about their own level of intellect. And so they were 
arrogant about their language. At the universities they learned Latin 
and the national standards. Every educated person spoke standard 
languages and all the uneducated people spoke non-standard languages. 
The correlation was clear to them. But of course there was one fatal 
fallacy: the correlation was not a product of the superiority of some 
languages over others but it was their own admission policy that created 
the correlaton: "you won't get any education if you don't learn the 
standard language in the first place". The system solely depends on its 
own positive feedback. Once you break the feedback chain (by 
establishing education in a non-standard language) the argument 
collapses. So Eco's idea is fallacious.

Estonian is a nice example. There are only 1.25 million speakers of 
Estonian. That's a rather low number. Less than the speaker numbers of 
most of the Italian tongues Eco is talking about (Piedmontese has 2 
million, Sicilian even 8 million). But the Estonian-speaking society is 
in no way inferior to other societies. If Siclian or Piedmontese were 
not suppressed by the Italian standard language and were allowed to 
establish their own education systems there would be no problem. There 
would be no "ghettoization".

Marcus Buck
User:Slomox