Heh, heh...they said "whore"

David Harrison and Greg Anderson spoke with Scott Simon about their work with endangered languages. Or at least I'm sure that's what they expected.

I think I can understand what Simon means when he says that with each language death "a subtle way of thinking vanishes too." It isn't ridiculous to accept a weak or soft Sapir-Whorfian view that language and thought interact. So as long as subtle means really really subtle, then we're cool. But it gets into the realm of obvious claims. Every day for all sorts of reasons, a subtle way of thinking ends. Meh.

Harrison does give a nice explanation of what that can mean:

Well all the languages we've studied are— the local people that we work with— they're experts in their environment that they live in. So whether we're in the middle of Siberia or in the— the Bolivian Andes, those people know more about their local environment—the ecosystem the plants and animals—than science typically knows about it.

And it's not just a list of things they know. But it's a hierarchy of knowledge. So they might understand how animals fit together into a hierarchy or a—a taxonomy. So the way that that knowledge is packaged in the language is also unique. And it doesn't usually survive the translation into other languages.

Note it well that he said the packaging doesn't survive translation. Where people often spin out of control is in thinking that extralinguistic knowledge can't survive translation.

Eric Baković reports that he was a bit disappointed with the interview. And yeah. It falls flat. The questions lead into gimmicky topics that insist on looking at language as a parlor trick. And Simon's way too tickled with the phrase bilabial fricative. It's not nearly as funny or dirty sounding as he seems to think it is. I expect the documentary (playing on PBS this Thursday) to benefit greatly from Simon's absence.