> Ah, for the future of some real value work. Selma sent this to me and I > thought I would forward it to the list with this comment. David Bohm the > physicist was trying to invent a language that could admit the realities of > quantum physics. He called it Rheomode. Before he died he found an > extant language that did. It was the Algonquin of the Mic-Mac people and > he found it because of a Mic-Mac physicist who visited him in the hospital. > Do you think American physicists will study Algonquin? Dream on. > > I suspect this will be known as one of the darkest ages of history when the > knowledge of thousands of cultures was allowed to just disappear because of > the stupidity of the current civilization who just complains that their > children can't do a Latin version of grammar for the English language. > Only God knows what was contained in the language of the Etruscans. > > Oh well! > > Ray Evans Harrell
I was told by a friend, who would have known, that the very last Dorset Eskimo, a woman, died on Southampton Island in the 1920s. Only a single person in Alaska is said to speak one of the Eyak languages. Many small and isolated languages throughout the world have disappeared. Since language is the lens through which people see reality, many different ways of seeing reality have disappeared. Should we mourn? Perhaps we should look at language as a tool that suits particular conditions and circumstances but not others. As conditions change, new tools are required, and old ones are no longer useful. The language that served the horseman on the plain or the hunter in the bush is not very useful in an urban setting, in dealing with the bureaucracy, or in finding a place in the labour market. It's sad, but that's how it is. Ed
