My pop culture assignment from Kate is to delve into her world as a linguist. Linguistics has been referred to as a social science. What does that mean exactly? The first book, What Language is by John McWhorter was more of the scientific side of the linguistics, explaining what they look for when they study languages. How languages are built and how they became to be and continue to develop. The Last Speakers is the social side of linguistics by discussing why the study of languages are important to understanding who we are and the world around us. Both aspects are important to discover how we communicate to each other. K. David Harrison set out to study endangered languages because the knowledge of the natural world they contain that we have lost by no longer speaking them. He learns from indigenous people words that describes the world around us. How they can speak or sing to animals to get them do what they need them to do. Plant life that are now extinct. Medicinal methods that have vanished in the wake of modern medicine. If we lose these last speakers we lose more than just a language being spoken. We lose a great deal of our own knowledge of our world that we will never get back. The book reads like a travel memoir as he details his work around the globe but it’s also a plea to the world to not abandon these languages. He and his team document these languages and do everything then can to keep these languages alive long after the last speakers pass away but also bring to light new or remembered words of our past. I like that he isn’t to be the white savior. He goes to observe and document and help where he can. He defers to the people in how they want to documented. Not all people want their languages to be shared with outsiders and he understands their reasoning without judgment. It’s their language and culture and they should have the final say on who gets to know it and learn it. It was an interesting book, with some great stories and I’m fully support more documentation of last speakers from all over the world. We have so much more to learn.
Review: The Last Speakers by K. David Harrison
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I’m not sure where to begin because there is so much here and hard to explain. The assignment is examine how Ursula K. Le Guin uses language to tell her story. The language is very lush and full of descriptions of the strange world of Winter. A harsh world that is like living on the Artic in our world. The people of this world are gender neutral and assexual for most of the life except for when they are in “kemmer” where partner with another person in “kemmer” and could be female or male depending on things went. They could be the a father to one child and mother to another. Le Guin uses the “he” pronoun for all the Getheren even though they are not male or female. I believe it was used more simplistic reasons then insinuated that they are more male most of the time then female. It was hard as the reader to understand that, that when “he” was being used it wasn’t that the character was a male but a Genthen.
2 Women, So Many Books 