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
5
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.
You know when you meet someone who loves what they do so much that when they talk about it they get so excited about it even though you have absolutely no idea what they are talking about but you are so taken in by their enthusiasm that it doesn’t matter. This is often how I feel when Kate talks about Linguistics. She gets so excited and her face lights up and it’s just so Kate that I want to know what she’s talking about and be just as excited as she is. John McWhorter is the same way. I can feel his excitement on the page as he talked about one language after another. I’ll admit that there were a few things I still don’t understand but I think I get the gist. It’s interesting on how languages evolve and change over centuries. Obviously I knew that the English we speak today is not the English that was spoken in Shakespeare’s day or even Chaucer’s but never really thought about it how we got to where we are now. Basically, adults needed to be able to communicate but were unable to grasp some on the complexities of the language so they simplified it and taught it to their kids and so forth and so on. It’s kind of amazing. I basically learned that the more people who speak a language over centuries, the less complicated it is. If you speak a language that only a few know and have all learned from childhood it’s going to be more complicated it because adults from the outside have little use to learning it to communicate it. I’m probably oversimplifying it but that’s fascinating. He makes arguments for what languages are categorized and how our own biases make us judge languages and what are real languages and what are not. Does it have to be written? Spoken by a certain number of people? Have it’s own grammar? Follow certain rules? All very interesting questions that I really can’t do justice answering but say read the book and get suck into his excitement and enthusiasm while you are at it.
It’s been a couple of years ago that Tahereh Mafi completed her Shatter Me trilogy but I guess she wasn’t finished with it because here we are with book 4. I feel like I should went back and read the original series because there were so many things I forgot about. The one thing I didn’t forget about is how the Mafi’s writing style changed as Juliette’s mind because more stable. As she becomes less isolated and understands her power the writing style because more fluid and less choppy. In this one, as things start to unravel for Juliette and Warner we start to see a return to the choppy phrasing from earlier books. I knew as soon as Juliette’s journal appear that things are not going to end well. Not to get too far ahead, let’s start at the beginning. Restore Me begins a little more than two weeks after the end of the last novel. Juliette has taken over as Supreme Commander of North American and soon discovers she is way over her head. Not only does she know very little about politics but the people she trust have been keeping things from her. Things start to spiral out of control when the kids of the other Supreme Commanders start showing up. Juliette learns that as much as she wants to run from her past she can’t because in truth she doesn’t even know her past and what she doesn’t know just might get everyone killed. I really enjoyed this and I’m glad Tahereh returned this world because clearly there is a lot to explore in Juliette’s story.
***Minor Spoilers***
A satisfying ending to a very good series. It starts just minutes after the end of King’s Cage, where Mare is reeling from being betrayed by Cal choosing the crown over her. I wasn’t really all that surprised by this because as much as he loves Mare and has been open to the red plight but he is a Silver Prince that was born to rule. He’s going to give that up? Anyway, Victoria does a great job of balancing her Game of Thronesque story lines. With so many families, groups and countries vying for the future of Norta the story could have been easily bogged down but it isn’t. Alliances are clear and who is going to betray who is clear. We all know who is on what team and when it comes down to it who is going to side with who when it comes to the end it didn’t disrupt the storyline. At the moment, Mare and Cal are reunited in the same objective of get Maven out of power but their alliance is shaky at best. We know that Cal has no intention of giving up his throne as he feels he is the best to reunite his fractured nation but the Scarlet Guard has no intention of putting him on the throne. Maven has the Nortan crown but little support. Iris, his wife from neighboring country the Lakelands, is already scheming to take the crown from Maven as soon as he depletes his army against Cal. The western nation of Montfort that is the only democracy in this new world that has silvers and reds working together has made their intentions known that they will not have another silver king either. So who wins? Well that would be too spoilery but I will say i like the ambiguous ending. Victoria has definitely left enough open that if she ever wanted to return to Norta, Monfort or the Lakelands she could but if she doesn’t then she has given her characters a good send off. Mare is broken and bruised but is working on healing. She has been many people throughout the four books. She’s been Mare from the sticks, a thief. She’s been Mareena, a lost Silver and the lightning girl a leader and inspiration for the rebellion but who is she really. Cal’s growth is quite as strong but then again I think Cal has already had a good sense of who he was. Maven is probably the most tragic. The abuse that he suffered from his mother is beyond cruel but that shouldn’t excuse his many crimes he committed throughout the series. My biggest complaint is that Cameron who was one of POV characters in the last book only makes an appearance in one chapter. Other than that, this was a satisfying ending to a very good series.
2 Women, So Many Books 