Imminent language death of Icelandic

[Travis B.]

Yeah, expansion of a language that has been decreasing in speech arenas is very difficult. Maintenance, though, may not be. In many parts of the world, multilingualism is normal and stable. For communities of endangered or threatened languages, finding a stable multilingualism is probably the best case scenario, but it’s also a quite reachable scenario in many cases, though certainly not all. Over-simplistically, finding domains favorable to the minority language and then promoting its use therein seems like a solid playbook (with the obvious caveat that I don’t have a background in language planning).

I'm more pessimistic about these prospects than I used to be. So many basic conditions of life have changed so radically so quickly recently that it makes it very hard to project much into the future based the current situation. Earlier forms of "stable bilingualism" were often not so stable (e.g. there was actually a steady ongoing erosion of the smaller language community) or not so universal (i.e. there was always a significant minority who did not learn the leading L2(s)). Now I'm inclined to believe arguments that if it's not possible for at least some individuals to live monolingually within a language community, that community is probably doomed in the long run.

Switzerland, for instance, is often touted as an example of successful stable multilingualism. But, practically speaking, most Francophones live their lives entirely in French and most German-speakers predominately speak dialect. Francophones regularly complain that the Swiss Standard German spoken by Swiss Germans is so dialect-influenced that they can't understand it based on the German they learn in school; it's not uncommon for Swiss from different language communities to resort to English to converse with each other. So it's less an example of "normal, stable bilingualism" than normal, stable monolingualism with a veneer of bilingualism thrown over it.

German-speaking Switzerland (but notably not Romance-speaking Switzerland) is a better example of survival of dialects which are not fully crossintelligible with a standard language than of "normal, stable multilingualism".

[Linguoboy]

German-speaking Switzerland (but notably not Romance-speaking Switzerland) is a better example of survival of dialects which are not fully crossintelligible with a standard language than of "normal, stable multilingualism".

That's a form of multilingualism though.

Anglophone Switzerland in 2100?

That's a complete misinterpretation. The point is that--for the most part--they don't need to speak to people from other language communities, which is why they can fall back on an international auxiliary language like English. If there were more daily interaction then more Swiss Germans would learn French and more Francophones would learn dialect (or there'd be a convergence on a Standard German koïné). There are a significant number of Swiss who work for international firms in Switzerland and the lingua franca for these firms is often English, but the majority of their day is not spent at work and most of them still conduct the rest of their lives predominately in the prestige variety of their local community.

[Travis B.]

Switzerland, for instance, is often touted as an example of successful stable multilingualism. But, practically speaking, most Francophones live their lives entirely in French and most German-speakers predominately speak dialect. Francophones regularly complain that the Swiss Standard German spoken by Swiss Germans is so dialect-influenced that they can't understand it based on the German they learn in school; it's not uncommon for Swiss from different language communities to resort to English to converse with each other. So it's less an example of "normal, stable bilingualism" than normal, stable monolingualism with a veneer of bilingualism thrown over it.

Anglophone Switzerland in 2100?

For some reason I highly doubt it - there seems to be no wish on the part of German or French-speaking Swiss people to replace German or French with English overall.

Anyways, you seem to have an obsession with replacing the world's languages with English or English-based creoles...

Also, vgr argues that languages lacking an high culture or online base, and with strong mutual unintelligibility between high prestige and low prestige dialects will become extinct by becoming only a language for "stupid people with stupid thoughts"

Venkatesh Rao wrote:
Prediction: tailwinds of digitization, auto-translation, robust street use, and demographics notwithstanding, most 2nd tier languages are going to die of stupidification because they are below critical mass of creatives working in high culture and keeping it close to low culture

Thing is, just because people use a different language, e.g. English, for talking to people in the outside world, does not mean that they will use that language in their everyday lives.

Within English, the dialect here in the form I commonly speak is not entirely intelligible to non-native speakers, as they commonly don't learn when it's okay to drop or assimilate consonants. Yet I have never felt the need to change how I speak, e.g. to generic General American, just to make it more "universal" - even if I find myself occasionally having repeat myself.

[Nachtswalbe]

Anyways, you seem to have an obsession with replacing the world's languages with English or English-based creoles...

I just believe most "second tier" languages will go extinct e.g Polish, Swahili in several centuries as nations inevitably become less important and state support for these languages follows, and that in certain places "first-tier" languages will replace other first-tier languages e.g English replacing Arabic in the UAE

[Travis B.]

Anyways, you seem to have an obsession with replacing the world's languages with English or English-based creoles...

I just believe most "second tier" languages will go extinct e.g Polish, Swahili in several centuries as nations inevitably become less important and state support for these languages follows, and that in certain places "first-tier" languages will replace other first-tier languages e.g English replacing Arabic in the UAE

There is a thin line between predicting something and desiring it for starters...

Anyways, I would expect, that of all languages other than English, Mandarin, Spanish, Arabic, German, French, Russian, etc., that languages like Polish and Swahili would be most likely to survive, as the trend we have seen within, say, English is for regional varieties to expand at the expense of local varieties, whereas what you are positing is for regional varieties to contract.

[Linguoboy]

I just believe most "second tier" languages will go extinct e.g Polish, Swahili in several centuries as nations inevitably become less important and state support for these languages follows, and that in certain places "first-tier" languages will replace other first-tier languages e.g English replacing Arabic in the UAE

I think it's a strange contention that loss of state support for language instruction will inevitably make "first tier" languages more important when it's in part due to state support for language instruction that those "first tier' languages have the reach and prestige they do.

[Nachtswalbe]

I just believe most "second tier" languages will go extinct e.g Polish, Swahili in several centuries as nations inevitably become less important and state support for these languages follows, and that in certain places "first-tier" languages will replace other first-tier languages e.g English replacing Arabic in the UAE

I think it's a strange contention that loss of state support for language instruction will inevitably make "first tier" languages more important when it's in part due to state support for language instruction that those "first tier' languages have the reach and prestige they do.

I walk back this particular contention