Piraha

[Jonathan Lighter]

This time it seems real. Or "real_er_."  Observe that I cannily stated that their "language counts only to two."  Maybe they do trigonometry unconsciously but can express the results in deeds only rather than in words.  Their language does seem to go "one - or a minimal amount," "two - or a greater than minimal amount," and "many - or much."

  Apparently the few Piraha~ who have learned Portuguese can use it to count a little higher, but fail as they close in on ten.

  Regardless, it's a great article for an intro class because it raises so many basic issues and shows that there's plenty we don't know.  My students frequently seemed surprised at that idea.

  JL

Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Wilson Gray
Subject: Re: Piraha
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Isn't "They can count only to two" an antiquated fallacy, based on a
misunderstaning of the way that the culture uses number, that was
first applied to the languages of Australia a century ago? I seem to
remember a discussion of this claim as a fallacy in Pei's book, The
Story of Language. Of course, I am more than aware that no "real"
linguist takes anything that ol' Mario has to say seriously. I first
heard his ideas shat upon by barracks-mates at the old Army Language
School back in 1960.

And yes, I have read Colapinto's article.

-Wilson

On 4/18/07, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Jonathan Lighter
> Subject: Piraha
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Cause your linguistics students to read John Colapinto's "The Interpreter" in the current _New Yorker_ (Apr. 16).
>
> It's about the Amazonian people whose language only counts to two. Many other odd linguistic and sociolinguistic elements are described also.
>
> JL
>
>
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-----
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---------------------------------
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 Check outnew cars at Yahoo! Autos.

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