In the last few years I’ve begun work on several different language projects ranging from Quechua to Kyrgyz to most recently Japanese, with some having come almost naturally, some put on hold for a while, and others that didn’t work out and were more or less tossed aside. Looking back on these projects – successful…
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Endangered and minority languages around the globe are facing extinction at an increasing rate – currently at around one every fourteen days. It is believed by many linguists that by the end of the 21st century more than half of the world’s ~7000 languages will die out entirely and be forgotten in the wake of…
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Just kidding, it doesn’t. Unfortunately a lot of people seem to think that a foreign accent makes you sound elitist or pompous. For what ever reason there is a certain stereotype surrounding the speaking of foreign languages – particularly the French language- that causes monolinguals (I use that term to represent the population that is…
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We’ve all been there. Your monolingual friends or coworkers find out that you speak or are learning another language and the first thing they want you to do is “say anything!” They don’t care what you say, they just want to hear your language, either out of legitimate curiosity or to call you out for…
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Some time ago someone at The Living Tongues Institute turned me on to a fantastic book about the value of endangered languages and the importance of revitalization efforts that I was shocked to have not yet read. K. David Harrison’s The Last Speakers is a must read for anyone – linguist or otherwise – interested in endangered…
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Would you ever decide to study a language that was spoken by only 50,000 people? What about 5,000 people? 500 people? 5? Many of us make decisions about which language(s) to study based on a perception of their global worth. That is to say that we’re usually most interested in languages that can confer upon…
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