Re: [TIED] Re: Khoisanid

----- Original Message -----

From: John Croft

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Monday, July 10, 2000 8:31 AM

Subject: [TIED] Re: Khoisanid

 

John,

 

How much has been lost depends on the local traditions. Here in Central Europe some ecological literacy persists against all odds. My kids recognise hundreds of logos, but can also recognise and name about 50 varieties of edible wild fungi plus a number of inedible ones (Polish still has vernacular names for them, so we don't have to use Latin). They got that lore from their parents in the normal course of cultural transmission -- I learnt the same things from my parents, etc. But I once played a naming game with a group of scout and guide campers, and was shocked to learn that most of them -- far from being mushroom experts -- could not recognise a hazel bush and some didn't know the difference between a pine and a birch. They were children from a small provincial town (but from huge blocks of flats), and most of them lived within walking distance of a forest (but did they ever walk that far?).

 

As for multilingualism, it used to be the normal condition of human beings. Even now half of the global population is at least bilingual. In most postcolonial countries the "primitive" native people speak their local language, the regionally prestigious language, the colonial language, and not infrequently have one or two further languages to spare. BTW, multilingualsm leads to code-switching and occasionally to code-mixing, and thus facilitates areal diffusion.

 

Piotr

 

 

 

John wrote (in response to Hakan):

 

Talking of our Coca Colonisation of the planet, there is the worrying
report that the average 8 year old can recognise over 1,000 cprporate
logo's but could not name 1,000 varieties of native plants found in
their neighbourhood, nor tell you anything of their growing
conditions.  It appears as linguistic diversity disappears so does
the ecological literacy contained in these languages.  Many highland
Papua New Guineans I knew used to consider anyone who only spoke 1
language as being mentally defective 3-5 was the norm!  We used to
play a game there with children - find a plant or insect that did not
have a specific name (i.e. no word like "bug" or "insect" allowed.) 
Eight year olds in the highlands were amazingly proficient.

As the bumper sticker says "Monolingualism can be cured".  Let's hope
Terra Lingua's "Language Preservation Project" works, for all of our
sakes.