Src: Screen Capture from thelinguists.com
Did you know that half the languages in the world are dying? Two linguists have set about documenting the same in film, for the Sundance film festival. Being a linguist myself (MA in Applied Linguistics, from HCU Hyderabad), I was very fascinated by the premise and the slick trailer of the film.
The last TV celebrity who is a linguist, for me was Jamie Hyneman . So I couldnt but give out a “yeah” when we encounter more linguists as an integral part of our society!
Basically, two friends, one is a linguist doing his doctoral thesis in linguistics, travel around the world trying to hear and record as many of the known dying languages as they can. There are some languages with only one or two people who still speak them. So armed with their camera and some sturdy boots they set out to find remote villages and towns in foreign countries to find these last speakers of dying languages. Some language are so endangered that they will die before the end of this generation.
»from the language blogCatch the behind-the-scenes podcast interview via Spout Blog
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HI Lakshmi: Interesting topic, given your background! Here is a sad news item on this issue. The last person who knows the Dura language in Nepal is dying… she is 82.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/battle-to-save-the-last-of-nepals-dura-speakers-770648.html?r=RSS
Lakshmi!
I was reading somewhere, that a language is conditioned as much by the local knowledge and conditions as much as by human need to express emotions/ideas with words.. This means that with languages lost, we might still be able to express the emotions that we experience, but would have lost the forces/environment and state of human condition that created the language to begin with. This would perhaps not be the first time we lose knowledge albeit subjective, irrevocably, but this would also render loss of beauty in the “changing” world that we live in.