NPR's "native" = (partly?) ancestral

[Jonathan Lighter]

Didn't catch the whole story, but NPR reported about half an hour ago on a Navaho scientist in the Southwest who "knows just enough of her native language to introduce herself" (cue sound bite).

  The rest of the time she spoke typical Southwestern American English. Her "second language," no doubt.

  I'd ignore this as mere lazy thinking except that it so clearly ties into the whole PC idea of "real" identity being genetically determined. And minority ethnicity is always somehow "realer." Past attempts to promote this assumption have been uniformly less well-intended.

  JL


---------------------------------
Be a better Globetrotter. Get better travel answers from someone who knows.
Yahoo! Answers - Check it out.

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org