DaveAgain wrote:That seems to be the key argument of the Persian documentary for the survival of the Persian language, a well known history of pre-Islamic Persia, poetry, etc.Xenops wrote:Wouldn't having a literary corpus also make a difference about a language's survival rate?
But didn't the Celts have their oral histories? Their songs? Their culture?
Well there's a difference between oral transmission and writing. Incidentally, Irish used the Latin script even while English was using the Futhark runic system, because the early Christianisation of Ireland meant that well-read people knew Latin. Also, there doesn't seem to be much evidence of extensive writing prior to Christianisation, as the older system of writing called ogham was typically used to make short messages on sticks (according to historical records) and has only been seen in Scotland and Ireland on things like gravestones, where there isn't more than a name inscribed.
But I digress...
The reason for language decline or survival is usefulness and status. People from ex-colonies in the UK and US historically didn't (as a rule) speak their languages to their children due to social concerns: English is the key to climbing the ladder, and all that! But at the same time, what if your status relies on being able to trade with commoners...? If you can't speak Farsi, you're not going to be a particularly good at negotiating the sales price of your wares!
Secondly, there has been a tendency to ignore the concept of multilingualism. Alfred the Great, a medieval king of very early almost-England, was described as being "illiterate until [I can't remember what age]" because he couldn't read or write Latin, but he was definitely capable of reading and writing Anglo-Saxon, which chroniclers didn't count. The switch of languages is often described as being quick because of the change of ruling lineage, but there's a complete failure to reflect on how quickly commoners picked up the new language. There's a theory that the change from Old English to Middle English was not because Middle English sprang into existence, but because Anglo-Saxon nobility ruled over commoners who failed to acquire Anglo-Saxon perfectly and spoke Middle English among themselves for centuries during the Old English/Anglo-Saxon period, and that the common tongue took over after the end of French as a language of English literature because the Anglo-Saxon ruling class didn't take over again -- instead the local population gained power.
But anyway (bloody hell, this head injury has led to fairly meandering thoughts!), Irish had the same problem as immigrant ex-colonials found in the 20th century -- English was the language of social advancement.
But more than that, the era of schooling had begun, and damn straight the English crown didn't want schools teaching in Ireland. Then there's also the question of technology. Irish had adopted the Uncial Latin script which the Romans had used for pen on paper, but the script used in England leant more on monumental Latin inscriptions carved into stone. This had become an even more pronounced split after the invention of the font-based printing press, so books in English not only had the advantage of economy of scale in terms of the number of copies of a book sold, but the printing equipment had a further economy of scale that an Irish fount typeset (source of the modern font) couldn't really be used for any other language.
20th century historians made the massive mistake of presuming that what they had experienced was normal and not considering how the causes of the effects they saw were in fact variable over time.
When was Persia invaded by Arabic speakers? I suspect it was long before childhood schooling became the norm (although I believe the middle-eastern Islamic cultures were ahead of Christian Europe on that, and it was definitely before the printing press. What reason was there for the masses to change their language? Was there a business-based economy that offered individuals with a career ladder that required a particular high status language?