Thursday, October 02, 2008

The Linguists

Babble On, Say Researchers In 'Linguists' Documentary

The Washington Post has an article today about this indie movie. If you're in the DC area you can see it tonight. Its description in the article:

Called "The Linguists," it is basically a home movie with better than average production values -- which, come to think of it, may be a useful definition of indie movies -- that could have been subtitled "Dave and Greg's Excellent Language Adventures."

These guys travel to parts of Siberia, Bolivia and India so truly godforsaken that the film of Arizona Indian country looks cosmopolitan. All in the service of warning us that half the world's 7,000 languages are going extinct.

Have we linguists become almost mainstream?

2 comments:

Mr. Verb said...

Mainstream? Good lord, I hope NOT.

Unknown said...

A palindrome is a word, phrase, number or other sequence of units that can be read the same way in either direction (the adjustment of punctuation and spaces between words is generally permitted). Composing literature in palindromes is an example of constrained writing. The word "palindrome" was coined from Greek roots palin (πάλιν; "back") and dromos (δρóμος; "way, direction") by English writer Ben Jonson in the 1600s. The actual Greek phrase to describe the phenomenon is karkinikê epigrafê (καρκινική επιγραφή; crab inscription), or simply karkiniêoi (καρκινιήοι; crabs), alluding to the backward movement of crabs, like an inscription which can be read backwards.