Dying Languages--McWhorter
Reader comment on: Dying Languages

Submitted by Crosby Boyd, Dec 28, 2006 22:23

As cruel as it may seem, keeping ancient languages alive serves no real purpose other than maintaining a sense of nostalgia and historical context. To encourage peoples to live in a linguistic straight jacket, incapable of expressing modern mathematical or scientific thought is to doom them to perpetual ignorance. Is there an Einstein among the Karen tribe of Thailand or Myanmar? Can the theory of relativity or Euler's theorem be communicated to them in their native tongue? It's doubtful.

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Other reader comments on this article

Title	By	Date
McWhorter speaks common sense [62 words]	Jack Rail	Jan 1, 2007 01:09
Revisionism in Language as Culture [125 words]	Mike King	Dec 29, 2006 01:44
Confusing a common language with communication [77 words]	Arthur Dieli	Dec 28, 2006 23:27
Casual Racism Has Its Day in the Sun [181 words]	gary drevitch	Dec 28, 2006 23:16
↔ What are you talking about? [w/response by The New York Sun Editors] [24 words]	Chris B. Behrens	Jan 4, 2007 16:14
↔ alcoholic natives [42 words]	pombero	Jan 9, 2007 12:36
↔ talking about ignorance [11 words]	charles rogers	Feb 14, 2007 17:07
↔ so much for free speech at Manhattan Institute [57 words]	charles rogers	Feb 14, 2007 17:12
⇒ Dying Languages--McWhorter [79 words]	Crosby Boyd	Dec 28, 2006 22:23
I am glad my Irish ancestors learned English [111 words]	Michael Gilleran	Dec 28, 2006 17:38
English--YES! [99 words]	Nancy Joyce Jancourtz	Dec 28, 2006 10:24
↔ I have to read the Culture Cult [40 words]	Arthur Mwangi	Jan 1, 2007 13:48
↔ learn chinese [44 words]	pombero	Jan 9, 2007 12:38

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