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Ces mots qui meurent : les langues menacées et ce qu'elles ont à nous dire
Chaque langue est une bibliothèque unique, aux rayons chargés de grammaires, de dictionnaires, d'encyclopédies botaniques et zoologiques, de recueils de chants et de fables... Chacune raconte une histoire différente, offre une manière d'être au monde. Or plus de la moitié des six mille langues actuellement parlées pourraient disparaître d'ici la fin de ce siècle.
Dans Ces mots qui meurent, Nicholas Evans, homme de terrain à la passion contagieuse, évoque des langues toutes plus insolites les unes que les autres. Après avoir rappelé l'historique de la curiosité occidentale en la matière, il montre ce que les langues menacées peuvent nous apprendre sur l'histoire des migrations, des technologies, des religions, de la pensée... Il explique comment les linguistes procèdent, croisent leurs indices avec d'autres scientifiques, en quoi l'incroyable créativité linguistique engendre des modèles intellectuels différents - de Vanuatu aux Amériques, du Cameroun à l'Australie, du Népal à la Sibérie -, insiste sur l'importance des arts lyriques et vivants. Avant de s'intéresser aux locuteurs des « petites » langues, à leur avenir comme à celui de la diversité linguistique, bien commun à préserver.
Car si l'érosion n'a jamais été aussi rapide, l'intérêt pour les langues, comme les moyens pour les enregistrer sont inédits. Nicholas Evans propose ainsi des solutions pour protéger la « logosphère », dans un registre généreux, alliant érudition et chaleur humaine, qui parle aussi bien aux linguistes qu'à un public plus large, ouvert à l'autre.
Dans Ces mots qui meurent, Nicholas Evans, homme de terrain à la passion contagieuse, évoque des langues toutes plus insolites les unes que les autres. Après avoir rappelé l'historique de la curiosité occidentale en la matière, il montre ce que les langues menacées peuvent nous apprendre sur l'histoire des migrations, des technologies, des religions, de la pensée... Il explique comment les linguistes procèdent, croisent leurs indices avec d'autres scientifiques, en quoi l'incroyable créativité linguistique engendre des modèles intellectuels différents - de Vanuatu aux Amériques, du Cameroun à l'Australie, du Népal à la Sibérie -, insiste sur l'importance des arts lyriques et vivants. Avant de s'intéresser aux locuteurs des « petites » langues, à leur avenir comme à celui de la diversité linguistique, bien commun à préserver.
Car si l'érosion n'a jamais été aussi rapide, l'intérêt pour les langues, comme les moyens pour les enregistrer sont inédits. Nicholas Evans propose ainsi des solutions pour protéger la « logosphère », dans un registre généreux, alliant érudition et chaleur humaine, qui parle aussi bien aux linguistes qu'à un public plus large, ouvert à l'autre.
389 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 2010
17 people are currently reading
1163 people want to read
About the author
Nicholas D. Evans
7 books6 followersHolding a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the Australian National University, he is Head and Professor at the Department of Linguistics, Division of Society and Environment of the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies (RSPAS) at the Australian National University (ANU). Formerly, he was Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics at the University of Melbourne. b. 1956 (Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
February 5, 2012
DYING WORDS by Nicholas Evans makes a case that the rapid disappearance of languages around the world risks depriving the human race of vital knowledge. Over the past decade or so, a number of books have been published about language diversity in danger and why it matters, but DYING WORDS is perhaps the most theoretically detailed survey so far. In spite of suggestions in the introduction that Evans is writing for a fairly popular audience (for example, he describes phonetic transcription and glossing as if the reader doesn't know), it swiftly becomes clear that he is writing for a university audience that has at least basic training in linguistics.
If you don't have such formal training, you'll probably be over your head. Instead, try K. David Harrison's books The Last Speakers, written for the general public, or ASIN:0195372069 When Languages Die, more theoretical but accessible to dilettantes.
DYING WORDS is centered around four central reasons why the death of undocumented or insufficiently documented languages is a loss:
* Languages may contain data on the natural world that scientists have not yet discovered. This theme forms a large part of other books on the threat to language diversity, but Evans gives it the least attention. Still, he does cite several recent cases where botanists or zoologists were led to new discoveries after encountering speakers of indigenous languages.
* By looking at a wide array of languages, we can discern what ways of speaking can, through common use, become grammaticalized, that is, become obligatory in discourse.
* There are still undeciphered writing systems, but if descendants of the language inscribed in them still survive today, they can provide vital clues for decipherment.
* Lesser-known languages have provided key data for exploring the relationship between language and cognition, such as the infamous Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Here Evans draws heavily on recent descriptions of Australian Aboriginal languages that require the speaker to always keep his geographical bearings (as spatial expressions require reference to compass points)
* Languages are inseparate from their poetic traditions, and evidence from smaller languages reveals mankind's capacity for poetic techniques features that may not be attested in cultures documented to date.
DYING WORDS will aid budding linguists to understand the importance of language diversity so that they can then make their case to the public. However, it has its flaws. One issue, as I mentioned before, is that Evans is clearly writing for an audience trained in linguistics, but he still laboriously explains concepts that such readers would have already learnt very early on (such as IPA and the comparative method).
There are other points where the book could have used more attention from the editor. Early in the book Evans claims that the name "Roma" for the Gypsies is taken from their residence in the Byzantine (or Eastern Roman) Empire, but in a later chapter he notes that the name Roma was brought from India and related communities in the Middle East also have variations of the name. At one point he says Coptic may have survived until the 19th century in some places, and later he calls it "extinct in everyday life for a thousand years".
Still, for readers who want to see a case for language diversity made especially on the basis of the study of typology and universals, there is some valuable material here. And if you enjoyed Guy Deutscher's THROUGH THE LANGUAGE GLASS, Evans examines some of the same unusual languages.
If you don't have such formal training, you'll probably be over your head. Instead, try K. David Harrison's books The Last Speakers, written for the general public, or ASIN:0195372069 When Languages Die, more theoretical but accessible to dilettantes.
DYING WORDS is centered around four central reasons why the death of undocumented or insufficiently documented languages is a loss:
* Languages may contain data on the natural world that scientists have not yet discovered. This theme forms a large part of other books on the threat to language diversity, but Evans gives it the least attention. Still, he does cite several recent cases where botanists or zoologists were led to new discoveries after encountering speakers of indigenous languages.
* By looking at a wide array of languages, we can discern what ways of speaking can, through common use, become grammaticalized, that is, become obligatory in discourse.
* There are still undeciphered writing systems, but if descendants of the language inscribed in them still survive today, they can provide vital clues for decipherment.
* Lesser-known languages have provided key data for exploring the relationship between language and cognition, such as the infamous Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Here Evans draws heavily on recent descriptions of Australian Aboriginal languages that require the speaker to always keep his geographical bearings (as spatial expressions require reference to compass points)
* Languages are inseparate from their poetic traditions, and evidence from smaller languages reveals mankind's capacity for poetic techniques features that may not be attested in cultures documented to date.
DYING WORDS will aid budding linguists to understand the importance of language diversity so that they can then make their case to the public. However, it has its flaws. One issue, as I mentioned before, is that Evans is clearly writing for an audience trained in linguistics, but he still laboriously explains concepts that such readers would have already learnt very early on (such as IPA and the comparative method).
There are other points where the book could have used more attention from the editor. Early in the book Evans claims that the name "Roma" for the Gypsies is taken from their residence in the Byzantine (or Eastern Roman) Empire, but in a later chapter he notes that the name Roma was brought from India and related communities in the Middle East also have variations of the name. At one point he says Coptic may have survived until the 19th century in some places, and later he calls it "extinct in everyday life for a thousand years".
Still, for readers who want to see a case for language diversity made especially on the basis of the study of typology and universals, there is some valuable material here. And if you enjoyed Guy Deutscher's THROUGH THE LANGUAGE GLASS, Evans examines some of the same unusual languages.
December 11, 2012
I often wanted Evans to expand on something fascinating (the connection between decreased language diversity and state formation; the specificity of words relating to the natural environment in Aboriginal languages and the impact of that linguistic data on land rights claims; social pressures engendering the widespread use of sign languages by hearing people in a number of cultures), but he'd usually move on. in that sense the book could've benefited from a clearer structure, maybe. but that flightiness was also what made it so great, especially for someone with little formal training in linguistics: it was kind of a buffet experience. I had so many "what? wow!" moments.
December 7, 2012
The book was marred a little by not having a totally clear argument other than "marginal languages are important", but on that level it gives the reader, especially one unfamiliar with linguistics, a great overview of linguistic diversity. I thought that at times it focussed too heavily on the boons to Science with a capital S, rather than the immediate benefits to speakers of those languanges. Evans does make some effort to encourage the reader to value endangered languages (and multilingualism) as an end in itself, but most of the time that value becomes instrumentalised - languages are good because of how they can help scientific progress. That said, in order to be able to talk about these languages at all, linguists like Evans have had to dedicate their lives to tiny communities of speakers, accomplishing monumental descriptive work against the overwhelming tide of language death, and this work has itself been considerably effective in keeping those languages alive. So the praxis behind the book is commendable, and the last chapter argues well for new approaches to field linguistics that put the communities of speakers first, making linguistics less about empowering Western Science and more about giving new strength to dispossessed people.
I recommend this to anyone who thinks that language is not a political issue, or that it doesn't really matter what language we speak as long as we all understand each other, or - and most importantly - who thinks that the choice of what language to speak is an either/or problem ("are you going to speak Arabic or English? Choose!").
I recommend this to anyone who thinks that language is not a political issue, or that it doesn't really matter what language we speak as long as we all understand each other, or - and most importantly - who thinks that the choice of what language to speak is an either/or problem ("are you going to speak Arabic or English? Choose!").
September 18, 2017
Dying Words has the unfortunate honor of being a fascinating book about an often sad subject: the rapid loss of human language diversity happening now. As Nicolas Evans convincingly writes, it's only by studying a large number of very different languages that we can begin to understand just how language came about and what linguistic universals, if any, exist in our cognitive capacity.
Much of the book recapitulates my linguistics studies - which is not a bad thing! - covering the essential ground of historical linguistics and how to use language difference to reconstruct change. Evans elegantly explains many examples of how rare and endangered languages provide crucial keystones to particular theories of language relatedness and thus human migration, and sometimes give us examples of language structure and usage we didn't even think was possible until linguists in the field had seen it. The rise of a few dominant world languages has biased and narrowed our possible ways of expression, and we are the poorer for losing these minority tongues.
Dying Words also focuses largely on the world of Australian aboriginal languages, which we all should know more about. Evans gives fascinating examples of deliberate language differentiation between groups to mark in-group identity, and the unbelievable case of Damin, a ceremonial language/register of the Lardil people which has a completely different sound system from Lardil and the only use of click consonants outside Africa.
Language loss is going to happen in our continually globalizing world, but what can we do to stem the tide of extinction? Evans advocates for giving language communities (especially those comprising indigenous people) more self-determination, which goes a long way towards preserving languages for future generations. I would additionally suggest multilingualism; any second language can help you understand why the idioms of different languages and cultures are important to preserve.
Much of the book recapitulates my linguistics studies - which is not a bad thing! - covering the essential ground of historical linguistics and how to use language difference to reconstruct change. Evans elegantly explains many examples of how rare and endangered languages provide crucial keystones to particular theories of language relatedness and thus human migration, and sometimes give us examples of language structure and usage we didn't even think was possible until linguists in the field had seen it. The rise of a few dominant world languages has biased and narrowed our possible ways of expression, and we are the poorer for losing these minority tongues.
Dying Words also focuses largely on the world of Australian aboriginal languages, which we all should know more about. Evans gives fascinating examples of deliberate language differentiation between groups to mark in-group identity, and the unbelievable case of Damin, a ceremonial language/register of the Lardil people which has a completely different sound system from Lardil and the only use of click consonants outside Africa.
Language loss is going to happen in our continually globalizing world, but what can we do to stem the tide of extinction? Evans advocates for giving language communities (especially those comprising indigenous people) more self-determination, which goes a long way towards preserving languages for future generations. I would additionally suggest multilingualism; any second language can help you understand why the idioms of different languages and cultures are important to preserve.
October 13, 2010
I think this book would be good as a textbook in an introductory linguistics course. The author is passionate about linguistics in general and the extremely obscure, dying-out languages in particular, and he has convinced me of the importance of both. I had no idea that languages could be so different, or say so much about a culture's history and mindset. This is the kind of book that might cause a young undergraduate student to seek a career in the linguistics field. I found it fascinating.
March 4, 2013
Très intéressant! C'est un peu complexe par moment, alors idéalement le lecteur devrait avoir une base en linguistique pour bien suivre.
September 3, 2023
Nicholas Evans - Dying Words Endangered Languages and What They Have to Tell Us (Language Library) (2009, Wiley-Blackwell)
for certain riddles of humanity, just one language holds the key.
you only hear what you listen for, and you only listen for what you are wondering about.
A major cause of language loss is the belief that everything wise and important can be, and has been, said in English.
we can see strong correlations between linguistic and biological diversity. Arizona linguistic anthropologist Doug Harmon first looked at this correlation in an important 1996 study, and since then his findings have been replicated worldwide on a country by country basis,
They established a printing press in Mexico in 1534, and within 40 years had published grammars of Tarascan, Nahuatl, and the Quechua language of Peru. By 1700, 21 grammars of Amerindian languages had been published, compared to 23 for all European languages by the same date. Four of these Amerindian grammars predated any comparable work on English.
The priests actually organized theological debates, in Nahuatl, with Aztec priests, the better to understand the belief system they wanted to replace. These fascinating debates were written down in majestic verse.
we know that over 10 percent of speech sounds are in fact “heard” with our eyes. Experiments by psychologists have revealed phenomena like the McGurk Effect, where subjects watch film in which the sound track makes one sound (e.g. ba) while the screen shows a speaker producing another (e.g. ga). Watching one of these (you can do this on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFPtc8...) you will have the eerie experience of suddenly moving from hearing ba (if you shut your eyes) to hearing the audiovisually fused compromise sound da (when you open them and look at the speaker), then hearing ba again if you shut your eyes and screen out the visual cues.
It is a peculiar fact about linguistics that practically none of the astonishing typological features eventually discovered empirically have been anticipated through prior deduction. This is in marked contrast to the physical sciences where, for example, mathematicians had anticipated the possible existence of the Einsteinian universe by playing speculatively with non-Euclidean geometry,
Linguistics is much more like the life sciences where the discovery of strange and unimagined new species constantly makes us revise our ideas of what is biologically possible.
If we take “universals” in their strongest sense, as designating properties that all languages must have, the haul of clear and empirically impeccable universals after decades of searching is pitiful. Consider “parts of speech” – the sets of similarly profiled words that determine what can be combined with what, and that are the fundament for all grammatical rules. The jury is still out on whether all languages at least distinguish nouns and verbs, but there are certainly languages without prepositions, adjectives, articles, or adverbs.
unusual languages kill two scientific birds with one stone:
they don’t just show what is learnable and usable, but they also show what human institutions can evolve as an unplanned outcome of use.
Language learners of any age face a triple mapping problem.2 First, they need to map the continuous flux of possible human sounds (or signs, in a sign language) into a structured set of discrete elements – phonemes, or language-specific contrasting signals. Second, they need to find the world’s joints and carve them into the concepts named by words and morphemes
– the smallest bits of meaning paired to form. And, third, they need to work out the system
of mediating structures – the grammar – that expresses complex meanings through assemblages of spoken forms, and deciphers heard forms back into meaning.
the Yélî-Dnye language.
There are well over 1,500 possible speech sounds, all of which can be learned perfectly by any human child. Yet no language selects more than 10 percent of them for use in its phoneme inventory.
a well-developed evidential system, Aymara in Bolivia, found that a great deal of effort by children’s caregivers goes into teaching them the exact conditions under which it is valid to use the different evidential forms, so as to ensure they are scrupulous and accurate reporters of information.
There are many more things in the languages of this earth than have yet been dreamed of in our philosophy.
No one tells their children to keep saying “arse” so as to maintain that precious information about links to our long-lost Hittite relatives. Our unconsciousness of the historical evidence that languages offer is in fact an advantage to science, since attempts to rewrite history for ideological purposes generally leave this part of the record alone:
the common ancestor of Sanskrit, ancient Greek, and Latin (among others) is called proto-Indo-European, because the territory its descendants occupied extends from India to Europe
One of the impulses driving the brothers Grimm to collect German dialect material along with their folktales was to have a good database of modern Germanic varieties to help them reconstruct proto-Germanic.
The Indo-European root wir or wcr (“man”), as in Latin vir and its derivative virclis (“virile”), is now barely hanging in there, preserved in aspic as the were in the compound “werewolf,” which originally meant “man-wolf.”
Other things being equal, the area of greatest genealogical diversity is assumed to be the homeland, as each migrating population only takes with it a subset of the home-grown variants, and as diversification takes time wherever it is found.
Just think of where the most variability is found with English dialects: Britain, the homeland of English, has far more than North America, which in turn has far more than recently anglophone Australasia.
The longer they are in contact – and the larger or more influential the number of bilingual speakers – the more languages tend to converge in sound, grammar, and semantic categories, as bilingual brains economize on storage and processing by maximizing the information that can be shared between languages. Evidence of structural convergence can thus point to sustained and intimate connections between speech communities at some earlier period.
The deepest-level branchings of the Austronesian family tree clearly identify Taiwan (Formosa) as the homeland, since nine out of ten primary branches of the tree are only found there,12 and even the tenth branch (Malayo-Polynesian) is represented by Yami on islands off the Taiwanese coast that are presumed to be the jumping-off point for
9780631233053_4_006.qxd 09/02/2009 11:30 Page 117
Hooking Ancient Words onto Ancient Worlds
117
subsequent expansion.
affective” devices, though compared to the Nootka ones they are tender rather than mean: -rurlur- (“poor dear one”), -ksaga(r)- (“darned”), -rrlugar-
(“funky”), -llerar- (“shabby old”). They can go either on nouns (e.g. cavilquksagaat, “darned strips of metal”) or on verbs, in which case they apply to the subject of the action: maqicurlagciteksagarciqaakut-ll’-am (“the darned (one) might ruin our bath”).
Woodbury hypothesized that, because these suffixes stand out less than independent words do, they could be used more often without diminishing the aesthetic effect by sounding overdone. In English we do not like to reuse whole words too frequently – “the poor dear girl went outside and then poor dear she started shivering” sounds repetitive.
But repeated grammatical affixes do not bother us: we do not even notice if we repeat the verb inflection -s in “she come s outside and then start s shivering.” Thanks to this effect, repeated uses of a suffix like -lurlur- should be able to slip under the radar, building up a resonant coloring effect without sounding clunky.
This is epitomized by the metaphor they use for grammatical particles and deictic words anchoring meanings to context: tisakisü enkgutoho, roughly “made for our words to beach safely.”
for certain riddles of humanity, just one language holds the key.
you only hear what you listen for, and you only listen for what you are wondering about.
A major cause of language loss is the belief that everything wise and important can be, and has been, said in English.
we can see strong correlations between linguistic and biological diversity. Arizona linguistic anthropologist Doug Harmon first looked at this correlation in an important 1996 study, and since then his findings have been replicated worldwide on a country by country basis,
They established a printing press in Mexico in 1534, and within 40 years had published grammars of Tarascan, Nahuatl, and the Quechua language of Peru. By 1700, 21 grammars of Amerindian languages had been published, compared to 23 for all European languages by the same date. Four of these Amerindian grammars predated any comparable work on English.
The priests actually organized theological debates, in Nahuatl, with Aztec priests, the better to understand the belief system they wanted to replace. These fascinating debates were written down in majestic verse.
we know that over 10 percent of speech sounds are in fact “heard” with our eyes. Experiments by psychologists have revealed phenomena like the McGurk Effect, where subjects watch film in which the sound track makes one sound (e.g. ba) while the screen shows a speaker producing another (e.g. ga). Watching one of these (you can do this on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFPtc8...) you will have the eerie experience of suddenly moving from hearing ba (if you shut your eyes) to hearing the audiovisually fused compromise sound da (when you open them and look at the speaker), then hearing ba again if you shut your eyes and screen out the visual cues.
It is a peculiar fact about linguistics that practically none of the astonishing typological features eventually discovered empirically have been anticipated through prior deduction. This is in marked contrast to the physical sciences where, for example, mathematicians had anticipated the possible existence of the Einsteinian universe by playing speculatively with non-Euclidean geometry,
Linguistics is much more like the life sciences where the discovery of strange and unimagined new species constantly makes us revise our ideas of what is biologically possible.
If we take “universals” in their strongest sense, as designating properties that all languages must have, the haul of clear and empirically impeccable universals after decades of searching is pitiful. Consider “parts of speech” – the sets of similarly profiled words that determine what can be combined with what, and that are the fundament for all grammatical rules. The jury is still out on whether all languages at least distinguish nouns and verbs, but there are certainly languages without prepositions, adjectives, articles, or adverbs.
unusual languages kill two scientific birds with one stone:
they don’t just show what is learnable and usable, but they also show what human institutions can evolve as an unplanned outcome of use.
Language learners of any age face a triple mapping problem.2 First, they need to map the continuous flux of possible human sounds (or signs, in a sign language) into a structured set of discrete elements – phonemes, or language-specific contrasting signals. Second, they need to find the world’s joints and carve them into the concepts named by words and morphemes
– the smallest bits of meaning paired to form. And, third, they need to work out the system
of mediating structures – the grammar – that expresses complex meanings through assemblages of spoken forms, and deciphers heard forms back into meaning.
the Yélî-Dnye language.
There are well over 1,500 possible speech sounds, all of which can be learned perfectly by any human child. Yet no language selects more than 10 percent of them for use in its phoneme inventory.
a well-developed evidential system, Aymara in Bolivia, found that a great deal of effort by children’s caregivers goes into teaching them the exact conditions under which it is valid to use the different evidential forms, so as to ensure they are scrupulous and accurate reporters of information.
There are many more things in the languages of this earth than have yet been dreamed of in our philosophy.
No one tells their children to keep saying “arse” so as to maintain that precious information about links to our long-lost Hittite relatives. Our unconsciousness of the historical evidence that languages offer is in fact an advantage to science, since attempts to rewrite history for ideological purposes generally leave this part of the record alone:
the common ancestor of Sanskrit, ancient Greek, and Latin (among others) is called proto-Indo-European, because the territory its descendants occupied extends from India to Europe
One of the impulses driving the brothers Grimm to collect German dialect material along with their folktales was to have a good database of modern Germanic varieties to help them reconstruct proto-Germanic.
The Indo-European root wir or wcr (“man”), as in Latin vir and its derivative virclis (“virile”), is now barely hanging in there, preserved in aspic as the were in the compound “werewolf,” which originally meant “man-wolf.”
Other things being equal, the area of greatest genealogical diversity is assumed to be the homeland, as each migrating population only takes with it a subset of the home-grown variants, and as diversification takes time wherever it is found.
Just think of where the most variability is found with English dialects: Britain, the homeland of English, has far more than North America, which in turn has far more than recently anglophone Australasia.
The longer they are in contact – and the larger or more influential the number of bilingual speakers – the more languages tend to converge in sound, grammar, and semantic categories, as bilingual brains economize on storage and processing by maximizing the information that can be shared between languages. Evidence of structural convergence can thus point to sustained and intimate connections between speech communities at some earlier period.
The deepest-level branchings of the Austronesian family tree clearly identify Taiwan (Formosa) as the homeland, since nine out of ten primary branches of the tree are only found there,12 and even the tenth branch (Malayo-Polynesian) is represented by Yami on islands off the Taiwanese coast that are presumed to be the jumping-off point for
9780631233053_4_006.qxd 09/02/2009 11:30 Page 117
Hooking Ancient Words onto Ancient Worlds
117
subsequent expansion.
affective” devices, though compared to the Nootka ones they are tender rather than mean: -rurlur- (“poor dear one”), -ksaga(r)- (“darned”), -rrlugar-
(“funky”), -llerar- (“shabby old”). They can go either on nouns (e.g. cavilquksagaat, “darned strips of metal”) or on verbs, in which case they apply to the subject of the action: maqicurlagciteksagarciqaakut-ll’-am (“the darned (one) might ruin our bath”).
Woodbury hypothesized that, because these suffixes stand out less than independent words do, they could be used more often without diminishing the aesthetic effect by sounding overdone. In English we do not like to reuse whole words too frequently – “the poor dear girl went outside and then poor dear she started shivering” sounds repetitive.
But repeated grammatical affixes do not bother us: we do not even notice if we repeat the verb inflection -s in “she come s outside and then start s shivering.” Thanks to this effect, repeated uses of a suffix like -lurlur- should be able to slip under the radar, building up a resonant coloring effect without sounding clunky.
This is epitomized by the metaphor they use for grammatical particles and deictic words anchoring meanings to context: tisakisü enkgutoho, roughly “made for our words to beach safely.”
February 3, 2015
A very passionate book - to its credit. It starts like it is going to be a detailed examination of the linguists belly button by using various aboriginal languages. After that it becomes a very informative book delving into numerous topics reflecting deep experience. Often the book is slightly politically incorrect, which is refreshing. However, the author frequently goes off into the humiliations suffered by minority languages and their speakers.
March 11, 2016
Wonderful combination of information on the development, variation and potentially dying of language, and portraits of specific dying languages and its last speakers. The scientific parts are solid and easy to follow, with a great diversity in languages and studies examples are derived from. The human parts, the portraits and the mentions of the author's friendships with the last speakers, are very warm and engaging. Good stuff.
June 20, 2017
For those linguistic bent, this is an absolutely rewarding read. In no way is this book dry or academic. To me, this book made me aware of all the hidden treasures locked in languages around the world. I can't help now but to wonder what there is to know, but that which we cannot know because of a language we don't speak.
August 27, 2010
Great book. Many facts and many thoughts. A must-read for a linguaphile.
July 22, 2017
Anfangs sehr, sehr interessant, allerdings fehlten mir die Beispiele für die verschiedenen sprachlichen Besonderheiten. Gegen Ende hin wurde es immer theoretischer.
Insgesamt 3 Sterne
Insgesamt 3 Sterne
January 10, 2021
There are very few books about languages that I would feel confident recommanding to linguists and non-linguists alike. Evans' Dying Words is definitely one of them. Unlike its title, it seems to breathe life into every language it touches upon and the words bring the human perspective into various situations and speakers.
Whether you are curious about the width of possibilities that languages of the world hold or you are fascinated by the long words of polysynthetic languages, this book will leave you with something to chew - and hopefully talk about.
Just like works on global warming and the ecological crisis, "language death" as it is sometimes called, often makes for direly sad read. While the sense of urgency is present, it does not leave such a pessimistic aftertaste and maybe this is because through its many examples, Dying Words shows the beautifully creative powers of languages.
I finally have a book to recommend about languages!
Whether you are curious about the width of possibilities that languages of the world hold or you are fascinated by the long words of polysynthetic languages, this book will leave you with something to chew - and hopefully talk about.
Just like works on global warming and the ecological crisis, "language death" as it is sometimes called, often makes for direly sad read. While the sense of urgency is present, it does not leave such a pessimistic aftertaste and maybe this is because through its many examples, Dying Words shows the beautifully creative powers of languages.
I finally have a book to recommend about languages!
March 20, 2022
This is an exceptional read!
It's an eloquent, fascinating, thorough dissection of how language, environment, cultural, and biology all interact to create and propagate linguistic concepts. And it's a dramatic insight into how direly critical preserving the variation of language is to generating a true understanding of cultural heritage.
I would've liked a touch more expansion on some of the topics brushed on, but at the same time, even a light brush made some parts of this feel a bit meandering, so I think the judicious call was made accurately in pruning back some of the potential investigative avenues. Evans brought them up enough to make me formulate questions, and then moved on so as not to bog things down while having implicit confidence in my agency in looking up answers to my questions without having to include them himself.
I read parts of this for 2 separate classes, and I honestly anticipate revisiting it for several more!
It's an eloquent, fascinating, thorough dissection of how language, environment, cultural, and biology all interact to create and propagate linguistic concepts. And it's a dramatic insight into how direly critical preserving the variation of language is to generating a true understanding of cultural heritage.
I would've liked a touch more expansion on some of the topics brushed on, but at the same time, even a light brush made some parts of this feel a bit meandering, so I think the judicious call was made accurately in pruning back some of the potential investigative avenues. Evans brought them up enough to make me formulate questions, and then moved on so as not to bog things down while having implicit confidence in my agency in looking up answers to my questions without having to include them himself.
I read parts of this for 2 separate classes, and I honestly anticipate revisiting it for several more!
December 25, 2025
Must-Read für Studierende der Allgemeinen Sprachwissenschaft. Sehr zugänglicher, faszinierender thematischer Rundumschlag und gleichzeitig ein Aufruf, tätig zu werden, um den Schatz, den sprachliche Vielfalt darstellt, zu erhalten. Einfach die perfekte Einführung ins Fach. Absolute Schande, dass ich es erst nach meinen Studium gelesen habe.
January 20, 2023
I would characterize this primarily as a textbook but I found it surprisingly readable, nonetheless. A fascinating overview of linguistics and a compelling argument for the benefits of preserving dying languages. Left me with lots to think about and discuss.
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