Bing-o !!!!

1. External Reality: slide 53

People acquire a set of words to speak about things that exist around them, which can vary depending on the language spoken.

2. Career Man: slide 80

Career man relates to the slide on language and gender because "career man" doesn't exist in English whereas career woman does. In our society men are expected to have a career and/or work so there is no need to have a word to specify that.

3. Piraha in Brazil: slide 56

The Piraha of Brazil are a tribe that has a very limited sense of the past.

4. Social gender: slide 78

We use social gender when we use words to classify individuals according to their gender roles in society.

5. money slide: 64

Contemporary English has many words for "money" because it is very important to our culture.

6. remember "borrowing?": slide 66

Borrowing is an example of language change.

response to "Talking Hands"

This chapter was about a group of four linguists that are studying a language deep in the deserts of the Middle East. The language they are studying is a sign language that developed all on its own and which surprisingly is spoken by all the inhabitants of the remote village. The sign language is of immense interest to them because it developed in isolation and they believe that by studying it new information will be revealed regarding the relationship between language and humans.

Throughout this course, I have learned that language and culture are intricately woven together and that one cannot exist without the other. Language can function as the "keeper" of culture, so to speak, and many people would go to extreme measures to protect both. That is why the linguists had to go to extreme measures to establish trust with the inhabitants of the village. After establishing trust they proceeded with discretion and in the writing of the book Talking Hands the author had to change names and even the exact geographic location of the village. By doing this, the linguists are ensuring that the inhabitants will not be bombarded by outsiders who might change the insular and remote life that allowed the language to thrive in the first place.

It amazes me, that even now, in the era of globalization, that people are still living in almost virtual isolation. The language of the Bedouins discussed in the chapter could have lived and died and no outsider would have ever known about it. Luckily, the linguists were able to stumble across it and will most likely devote their whole lives in documenting it. In our never-ending search for answers, their research will bring humanity one step closer in understanding how language works.

City of Dying Languages

It's funny that we tend to look in all the wrong places and then are surprised when we find that the thing we were looking for was right in our backyard. Something similar has happened to linguists when trying to document dying languages. The NY Times article Listening to (and Saving) the World’s Languages, describes NYC as a modern Babel, where rare and dying languages have found refuge. Now instead of traveling to geographically remote regions to find dying languages that more than likely will have died by the time of their arrival, linguists are on a search to document the rare languages that add to the linguistic diversity that is New York City's heritage.
I've lived in Queens all my life and I never knew that Bukhari is an endangered language. There must be countless other languages that city residents take for granted that are barely surviving on a global scale. Being able to conduct research right here in NYC must be exciting. The mere fact that minority languages have been able to thrive in NYC neighborhoods is remarkable and will offer invaluable access to linguists to be able to study and document them.

The Linguists

The Linguists is a documentary that follows two linguists in their search to document dying languages. They travel to remote areas of the world that have been subject to colonization or linguistic suppression by a "killer" language, to search for native speakers. What drives the linguists to conduct their study is the hope to not lose a way of seeing the world by letting languages become extinct.

What I liked the most about the documentary was that the linguists know the importance of "living" a language. They immersed themselves in the target language's culture and shared in rituals and festivities.

One question that I have is why has it taken so long for people to appreciate linguistic diversity? And what will it take to remove the stigma surrounding minority languages?