Bottled Water Bad, French Lessons Good
Amy Walker's 21 accents in 2 minutes. (Note: English is not an endangered language.)
by Sara Tucker
Normally, it is not the Aggregator's style to lecture and harangue, but these are not normal times. First item: Katie Couric's observation, all but buried in the onslaught of bad news this past week, that too many of us are still drinking bottled water. The Aggregator had noticed the very same thing even before Katie pointed it out on Wednesday and was planning to say something about it, but while we were dithering around Katie scooped us.
To those of you still engaging in this mindless practice: Stop. Today. Please.
Next item: The Aggregator has thus far refrained from commenting on the backlash against then-presidential candidate Barack Obama for daring to express the opinion, back in July, that Americans should be encouraging our children to study a foreign language. Any foreign language. The Aggregator will now address said backlash.
For the record, Mr. Obama did NOT say that Americans should be forced to learn Spanish. Nor did he say that we should all become vegans or that the high-five should become the official salute of the U.S. military. What he said was this: "It's embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English, they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe and all we can say is merci beaucoup, right?" Right.
Fun fact: English is growing at the rate of roughly 20,000 words a year. Here's a new one: linguicide. Meanwhile, the world is losing languages at the rate of one every two weeks. "The number of languages is plummeting, imploding downward in an altogether unprecedented rate, just as human population is shooting straight upward," said University of Alaska linguist Michael Krauss in an LA Times interview. Linguists estimate that half of the world's 6,000-plus languages will disappear by 2050, 90 percent by the end of the century. The hotspots of linguicide today are Australia and the USA.
In other words, English is NOT an endangered language. Wichita is.
On the other hand, refusing to speak anything BUT English entails certain well-documented risks.
"Monolingual speakers of any variety of English--American or British--will experience increasing difficulty in employment and political life, and are likely to become bewildered by many aspects of society and culture around them," says language researcher David Graddol. Read the rest of his report here.
There is also "astonishing evidence that the lifelong use of two languages can help delay the onset of dementia." Details here.
With less than a month to go before 2008 becomes history, the Aggregator would like to take this moment to urge all monolingual, bottled-water-drinking Americans to turn over a new leaf. Leaves. Whatever. The world is changing.
Aggregator will now end this rant with an inspirational passage from The Straight Dope's Cecil Adams, who was plumbing the mysteries of language before the Aggregator was even born:
"In my spare time I've been attempting to construct an Eskimo sentence in my basement, such as will be suitable for the season. I haven't got it perfected yet, but it's coming along pretty well, and with a little work it might pass for the genuine article. So far I have: kaniktshaq moritlkatsio atsuniartoq. When completed, this sentence will proclaim: 'Look at all this freaking snow.' At present it means: 'Observe the snow. It fornicates.' " --excerpted from "What are the nine Eskimo words for snow?" February 16, 1979.
Further reading:
* Saving rare and dying languages: Doris Jean Lamar McLemore, age 80, talks about what it feels like to be the last living speaker of the Wichita language.
* Stuff White People Like: See #76, "Bottles of Water" and No. 115, "Promising to Learn a New Language"
* David de Rothschild is sailing from San Francisco to Australia in a 60-foot sailboat made of post-consumer plastic bottles (Men's Vogue)
* Ten most difficult words to translate (The Alta blog)
* Can you guess where my accent is from? (Video Quiz) Much harder than it sounds
* The Omniglot blog: Can you guess which language this is?
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