No Tears For Dead Tongues (fwd link)

[Jordan Lachler]

Phil, thanks for forwarding McWhorter's piece from Forbes.  He wrote nearly
the same article back in December of 2006 for the New York Sun:

http://www.nysun.com/article/45847

I guess if he gets to reword and republish that same basic article every
time another language dies, he's set for life!

I'm really glad that he's figured out for us that Native Americans will
never learn their ancestral languages... after all, he tried teaching some
of them once, and they didn't learn to be fluent, so clearly it's a hopeless
cause. Guess we can all stop wasting our time now. Thanks, Dr. M!

Jordan

On Fri, Feb 22, 2008 at 9:11 AM, phil cash cash <cashcash at email.arizona.edu>
wrote:

> Language
> No Tears For Dead Tongues
>
> John McWhorter 02.21.08, 6:00 PM ET
>
> No one will again use the word demexch, which refers to a soft spot in the
> ice
> good for fishing. Never again will anyone hear the word for an evergreen
> branch, which, when pronounced correctly, includes a sound like the wind
> whistling through a branch. And no child will ever learn that the squirrel
> scampering around gathering acorns is called something as fun to say as ,
> where
> the final k' is pronounced with a crisp pop.
>
> Full article link below:
>
> http://www.forbes.com/2008/02/21/language-death-english-tech-cx_jm_language_sp08_0221death.html?feed=rss_news
>



-- 
Jordan
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