Fwd: National Geographic World Talk interview on endangered languages

[Andre Cramblit]

National Geographic World Talk host Patty Kim interviews Dr. K. David
Harrison, discussing language extinction, global language diversity, and
why we should care. In the interview, Dr. Harrison talks about his  
work on
documenting languages of Siberia. He addresses the famous "Inuit snow"
example, explaining that to simply debunk it by saying that English also
has many words for snow is to miss an important point about how  
knowledge
is packaged in languages and how traditional cultural knowledge  
represents
the accumulation over many centuries of human observations of nature. As
languages die, the human knowledge base erodes.

The podcast may be listened to at:
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/podcasts/worldtalk.html