The Linguists

This article was about a team of linguists who studied a rare sign language in a remote village in The Middle East. The coverage of the study was highly regulated because it was difficult to earn the people's trust as it was. An agreement was made that only certain aspects of this culture could be disclosed. The village is so remote that it would be essentially impossible for someone who is not from there to find it. Perhaps that is why they wish to keep many of their customs a secret.

So far in this semester, I have learned a variety of terms, rules and structural fundamentals of la nguage. These things make a good foundation for the study of liguistics, but here are some of the things I have learned that will change the way I see my language and others forever. Before I enrolled in this course, I had no idea there were people who had such an interest and passion for the study of languages, nor did I realize the connection between language and culture. I always understood language to be simply a biproduct of culture, but as it turns out, a language or a combination of different languages can have a major influence on a culture. It can also affect the way people see the world.

During the course of the semester, I was fortunate enough to study with people from many different parts of the world. When we all shared our language stories with each other, I realized that no two stories were even close to being the same. I feel that this really confirms the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Everyone has a language story which influences the way we see the world.

Someday I want to spend some time in a place where I can't understand what people are saying. Until I do this, I will never really be able to understand the barriers that are formed by language. Another thing I want to know more about is the prescriptivits vs. descriptivists angle. I want to know which direction we are heading in American language.