----- Original Message ----- From: "Ed Weick" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Ray Evans Harrell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "futurework" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, November 18, 2002 2:52 PM Subject: Re: NYTimes.com Article: Indian Languages: Tending the Flame
Ed Wieck wrote: > 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 Language necessarily narrows and channels our perception of reality. Other languages allow us access to perceptions of reality that we could not have otherwise; when those languages are lost, we lose access to insights about the possibilities of the human condition that are simply not available in any other way. If we are not able to get out the box that our language puts us in we becomes unable to solve many of the problems that are generated by the way in which our language limits us and causes those problems. Wittgenstein had a great deal to say about getting out of that box. Selma
