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Showing posts from May, 2008

mela ola munanga linggwismob

Over at Transient Languages and Cultures , there was a bit of discussion in the comments about doing language work in communities. Jane Simpson gave this excellent summation that I thought I'd share (thanks Jane): "It's a balancing act. Scientific researchers are nosy parkers - sometimes that can be good and cause good things to happen with documentation that would not otherwise have happened. Sometimes it can be bad and reduce the quality of the material that might otherwise have been collected. Community researchers almost always have a much better understanding of attitudes and relationships and uses of language, as well as of what their friends and family are hoping for from language work. They may have native speaker intuitions about languages. And it is they who will be working with their communities to keep talking the languages. A damaging situation that can arise is when an outsider linguist comes to be seen as the main source of knowledge about the language. Tha

Nonsense

Today one of my staff came into my office and asked a question that made me laugh. It was funny because the question on the surface makes no sense, but to us two, and a handful of others, it makes perfect sense. Can you figure out what it means? Q: "Wägilak and Rembarrnga... I mean Ritharrŋu... are blue?" A: "Yes." Tee hee.