When Languages Die: The Extinction of the World's Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge (review)
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While mainstream theoretical linguists following Chomsky continue to hunt for what is universal and innate in some of the world's 6,912 remaining languages, there are others who seek, as Harrison does, evidence of uncommon knowledge, divergent ways of organizing linguistically terms for species, time, space, number, kinds of talk, and other concepts. Interviewing last surviving speakers like the Tofa reindeer herders or the Tuvan nomads of South Siberia, the Wayampi hunter-gatherers in the rain forests of French Guiana, the few Karaim in the Lithuanian village of Trakai, the Ifugao rice farmers in the mountains of the Philippines, or the Ho-Munda tribals in Orissa State in India, he salvages shreds of a dying language and culture from elderly people who no longer have anyone to speak it with. Harrison's goal in this book (and in the stunning sixty-minute video "The Linguists" viewable at www.babelgum.com) is to show the urgency of recording or saving the 3,000 or so languages projected to disappear this century and the human knowledge they incorporate.
Bernard Spolsky is professor emeritus of linguistics in the Bar-Ilan University department of English. He is the author of Language Policy and Language Management, Educational Linguistics, and Conditions for Second Language Learning, which received prizes from the Modern Language Association of America and the British Association for Applied Linguistics. He is coauthor of The Languages of Jerusalem and The Languages of Israel and is currently preparing the Cambridge Handbook of Language Policy and the Blackwell Handbook of Educational Linguistics.
