I would think that it might be much easier to get a used PC laptop for cheap in a developing nation than an esoteric machine like this. Plus, people there are often more concerned with survival and sustenance, so they more interested in a computer that can be actually used to generate some form of revenue (and software compatibility is a big factor here). Not to mention that previous initiatives like OLPC have failed to achieve any noteworthy success. And Raspberry Pi's are used by hobbyists and tinkerers mostly in the West, hardly in developing countries. So I kind of doubt this particular angle makes much sense.

Looking at the Balthazar project webpage it seems like one of the envisioned usage scenarios is the classroom... but from the rhetorics and promises it kind of sounds to me like it is done by a bunch of people stuck inside a certain ideology bubble. Very few people are interested in that kind of stuff and GNU apostles are unfortunately known for being rather out of touch with reality.

Yeah, the render looks a little bit like a parody on "designed by GNU" :D

It will be also slow, bulky and generally useless except to a few tinkerers.

There are some claims that sounds in languages adapt to the environmental conditions (like development of sounds that cary over long distances in rural areas or the paper on tones and humidity mentioned in another post), but I personally remain unconvinced. In my opinion, these results are obtained with too much statistical hand-waving and little actual substance. I've spent quite some time discussing this back and forth with the authors of the climate and tonal languages paper, but hey, science is all about difference of opinions :)

It’s interesting, isn’t it? We humans like to classify things and give them clean, well defined labels. And we often have a good reason to, since there is obviously something going on. It’s not like these labels are entirely arbitrary. But pinning down the nature of the label is often exceedingly difficult. I suppose that’s the difference between ideals and reality. I mean, we all know the difference between a bowl and a vase, but where does one start and where does one end?

This is a common theme in any discipline that studies complex systems. Especially linguistics. It’s a bit of a tragedy of language science as many linguists confidently operate in notions that have very weak theoretical foundation. There is a lot of unspoken assumption, driven by tradition, in the linguistic theory, and not enough people question the tradition IMO. I mean, starting with such basic things like “meaning” or “word”.

Quite possible. Deictic reference (words that refer to people or places related to some universal viewpoint, usually the speaker) is central, very commonly used function of the human language. It would make sense that the language started with the desire to express these kind of relations.

Of course, there is no way to prove it as we have no way of knowing what the earliest languages looked like. I’m sure however it had a word that sounded something like “ma” or “pa” and referred to a close person or group of people.

Learning Hebrew ;)

I was lucky to have had an opportunity to study Old Testament Hebrew in school. It was in part what got me interested in theoretical linguistics.

Neither “dialect” nor “language” are strictly defined concepts in linguistics. The classical criterion of recognizing dialects is mutual intelligibility (the varieties are clearly different but people can understand each other), but it’s not entirely unproblematic. “Language” is usually recognized on the basis of some political, cultural or historical significance.

The current approach in linguistics is to leave these things somewhat ambiguous and just note different varieties and their relationship between each other (approach that glottolog takes). Some have been advocating for “doculects” - identifying a variety on the basis of the publication or data that describes it. In the end, one can come up with multiple different measures for what’s a dialect and what’s a language, many of them useful in own way. ,

It's a stupid graphics made by someone who has no clue. I mean, midlife crisis at 35? marriage at 20? What is this, 19th century?

Also, that Zuckerberg mention is so cringy and dumb.