The Linguists was a film that centered around the work of David Harrison and Gregory Anderson. Their journey takes them to rural areas around the world in search of the remaining speakers of endangered languages. The Earth has more than 7,000 languages, but this number is falling by 1 or 2 every week or so. Through many of their projects, they seek to protect and document these languages in danger.
It is interesting to learn that these two individuals reconfirm many of the ideas and issues we have explored in class. They realize that it is in areas of colonization that native languages seem to struggle. Colonizers impose their will, government, and languages onto the native people. The people are then forced to feel that their language is obsolete and shameful. These social and economical pressures help to supress languages.
But does their method of protecting and documenting languages help? This was the question that ran through my mind the entire time the video ran. Based off what was shown, the researchers stay during research lasts a few days or weeks. How can someone truly wish to document something as big and complex as a language in such a short time?
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I really enjoyed this film and I agree with your point about whether their method really helps. Our guest lecturer said that their method is known as survey linguistics. There's no way that they can document the entire language in a matter of a few days. It takes years to do that kind of documentation. Granted, they are documenting the basics of the language - colors, numbers, body parts, etc. - but is that going to preserve the language and perpetuate it to a new generation?
ReplyDeleteI agree, that the method of documentation for endangered languages in this movie may not actually help. It is one thing, to have a record of structures and words within the language, but its another thing to actually aid in its preservation in the natural world. Anyone can have a book of information on a language, but if the language is no longer used by anyone in the culture, then whats the point? the language has become extinct. A good example of this is Latin. Latin is known as the dead language, it is no longer used in everyday life by anyone except people trying to study the origin of english words. So we have a record of this language, that still hasnt done anything to preserve its use in the social world. This is why i would also question whether or not the preservation method used in this movie works.
ReplyDeleteYou bring up an interesting question. And no, a few days or weeks is not enough to truly understand what a language is really about. But then again, how much of a true understand can one really have by just documenting. In order to keep a language alive, it should be spoken. It's not enough to just study a language. Although it is easy to think that language is just about vocabulary and grammatical structure, language is much more than that. It portrays a group's culture and values.
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