Daniel Everett, “Endangered Languages, Lost Knowledge and the Future”
March 23rd, 02009 by Stewart Brand
Language revolution
The Pirahã tribe in the heart of the Amazon numbers only 360, spread in small groups over 300 miles. An exceptionally cheerful people, they live with a focus on immediacy, empiricism, and physical rigor that has shaped their unique language, claims linguist Daniel Everett.
The Pirahã language has no numbers or concept of counting (only terms for “relatively small” and “relatively large”); no kinship terms beyond immediate children and parents; no “left” and “right” (only “upriver” and “downriver”); no named distinction of past and future (only near time and far time); no creation stories or myths; and—most important for linguists—no recursion…
Read the rest of Stewart Brand’s Summary
This entry was posted on Monday, March 23rd, 2009 at 9:41 am and is filed under Seminars. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Posted on March 23rd, 2009 at 12:09 pm
This language and its discovery are very interesting. I love the way it throws into doubt the kind of biological reductionism of Chomsky. Nevertheless, I find it ironic that a language that is incapable of carrying myths and folktales causes the writer of the post to go rhapsodic about preserving language for those reasons. I’ve read further articles about this language and Everett. It is clear that the version of “Jesus” that Everett was taking was one that needed “proving.” Just thought I should note that the Christian commenting here has managed to study linguistics and still believe in God. That is part of the “whole way of life, a whole set of solutions to problems, a whole classification system and body of knowledge about the natural world, a whole calendar system, a whole complex of myths, folktales, and songs,” that I also believe in preserving from my own language and culture. Thanks for posting this. I love the Long Now. Peace
Posted on March 23rd, 2009 at 1:59 pm
I do agree it is nice and laudable to preserve dying languages, but, please: no language has concepts or forces them on its users. Only people do and, occasionally, politicians. Even if, for example, “eskimos” were bon mot-compliant and had 300 words for snow (which they’re not and which they don’t), this would not mean they have more refined concepts or, forsooth, perceptions of crystalline precipitation. Who has never been in a position of being able to vividly cognize yet not being able to adequately verbalize and vice versa? And re. the Pirahã, those virtual Giant Pandas of the linguistic ethnologists’ lobby: yea, they do not recurse, count nor ride motorcycles. But does this mean they are somehow innately unable to? Poppycock!, I cry! Nay, any effort to preserve dying languages would be purely curatorial and, therefore, aesthetical and sentimental. On which, I might add, no shame resteth.
Posted on March 24th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
[...] Long Now: The Pirahã tribe in the heart of the Amazon numbers only 360, spread in small groups over 300 [...]
Posted on March 28th, 2009 at 1:48 am
The Tibetan language may not be on the immediate verge of extinction, but nevertheless there it’s habitat and future is definitely threatened. And related to that Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche and a group other lamas and translators are starting a grand project for translating a large part of the Tibetan kanon of the buddhist teachings.
The scale and time scale of the project gives associations to The Long Now foundation.
Dzongsar Khyents Rinpoche says:
“My main reason for convening this conference is that I believe it’s entirely possible that the survival of the Buddhadharma could depend on it being translated into other languages. I also believe that by translating and making available the Tibetan Buddhist texts to modern people, a vast swathe of Buddhist civilization and culture may be saved from global annihilation. It’s clear we need to act quickly, and I believe the only way we can accomplish this monumental endeavor is by working together—pooling our skills, resources, experience and energy and coming up with a plan for translating the Buddhadharma. We must decide where we want this process to be in 10 years, 25 years, 50 years and 100 years”
Posted on March 29th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Even though I share the concern for languages lost to history, I can’t help thinking about one aspect, that seems to get left out of this discussion time and again.
How did those languages came to be? They were obviously created by their speakers. So there must be long term processes that precipitate their formation. While everyone is asking: how many languages are being destroyed last decade, I am much more interested in the question, how many have been created?
Humans are hardly the blind beings who take up any language that is imposed on them and forget about everything else, never to do anything new in the future.
When Rome conquered Europe and the Mediterranean, it wiped out a lot of languages and established Latin as the new language. Yet, Latin has vanished, with the exception of some rather anachronistic remnants. But it gave rise to Portugese, Catalan, Galego, Castillian, French, Basque, Italian, Raeto-Roman, Romanian (and whatever languages I forgot) and influenced a plethora of other languages, including the one I’m writing in.
So, where are the linguists monitoring the creation of languages? Warning against normative regulations that may mean that more useful, richer or easier to learn languages may never come into being? Isn’t ensuring improvement and creation of languages something that long term thinking should be more concerned about than the unavoidable extinction of old ones?
Posted on March 29th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
[...] Daniel Everett, “Endangered Languages, Lost Knowledge and the Future” – Via Long Now Blog - The Pirahã tribe in the heart of the Amazon numbers only 360, spread in [...]
Posted on March 31st, 2009 at 7:21 pm
[...] had went to Daniel Everett’s talk at a Longnow talk where he mentioned that there is no universal or fundamental component of [...]
Posted on April 24th, 2009 at 2:49 am
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Posted on April 25th, 2009 at 10:26 am
I am curious whether the Piraha people can be taught the concept of numbers and whether they can be taught other languages which do use recursion. Is it that they are incapable of using these concepts or do they just not need them in their environment?
Posted on May 2nd, 2009 at 9:48 am
Language is a tool we shape and use the same way we shaped and used flint to create axes, spears and knives. It begins with the discovery that our mouths, lungs, tongue and teeth can be used to create sounds that will convey information. A particular language lives in the mouths and minds of a particular group and will only live as long as the people who use it live. When one dies, the other dies. Just as the hammer has become more useful to our society than the rock for driving nails or smashing open shell fish, a language that loses its usefulness due to a better tool being available will be replaced by the new tool and the use of the old tool will die out. As newer and better tools become available to a society the old tools will die from lack of usage and what will kill them will be the plethora of new tools that do a better job in a better way than the old ones. This is a process that will only stop when there is no one left who knows how to make and use the old tool.
American Indian languages are disappearing because it has become less and less useful. You can’t get a job, describe the world you live in or improve your position in society unless you speak English. Thus, the Indian language gets used less and less and must be preserved by artificial means like a specimen in a museum or a zoo. We are losing our languages for the same reason we are losing our tigers and zebras and all the other flora and fauna that are of no immediate use to us. It’s a process that can’t be stopped nor protected because language evolves to interact with an environment. When that environment is gone, so will the language be.
Posted on May 24th, 2009 at 4:50 am
[...] just finished listening to a podcast of a seminar put on by the Long Now Foundation, on endangered languages. It was fascinating for many reasons, but just one was the concept put forward that a language is a [...]
Posted on June 4th, 2009 at 11:57 am
[...] March Daniel Everett spoke about endangered languages at a Long Now seminar (audio, summary). In 1977 Everett, then a Christian missionary, went to work with the Pirahã tribe in the center [...]
Posted on June 17th, 2009 at 5:19 am
[...] No Comments Daniel Everett’s recent Long Now talk about endangered languages (writeup, mp3) includes this gem reported by Stewart Brand: Among other things, the wide variety of verb [...]
Posted on June 17th, 2009 at 5:53 am
[...] Everett’s recent Long Now talk about endangered languages (writeup, mp3) includes this gem reported by Stewart Brand: Among other things, the wide variety of verb [...]
Posted on June 21st, 2009 at 7:55 am
[...] Everett’s recent Long Now talk about endangered languages (writeup, mp3) includes this gem reported by Stewart Brand: Among other things, the wide variety of verb [...]
Posted on July 18th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
[...] of Daniel Everett, who recounted his experience living with the Amazonian community at one of our seminars in March. Schoeller’s portraits appeared in the The New Yorker and later in [...]