NPR: Saving Dying Languages In ‘The Linguists’
An odd definition of saving seems to be being used here, but “A new documentary called The Linguists, airing Today on PBS, follows ethnographers David Harrison and Greg Anderson as they race to document endangered languages in some of the most remote corners of the world.”
“There are more than 7,000 languages in the world, and if statistics hold, two weeks from now, there will be one less. That’s the rate at which languages disappear. And each time a language disappears, a part of history — a subtle way of thinking — vanishes too.”
This documentary will be available on the website later today. We can hope the plan s to do a lot more than merely document the languages, to actually save them, and the work of the ethnographers is being misrepresented here. but don’t hold too much hope, it has been placed in the Arts and Entertainment section…. here.