Casual Racism Has Its Day in the Sun
Reader comment on: Dying Languages

Submitted by gary drevitch, Dec 28, 2006 23:16

McWhorter claims that it's not really so bad that native languages are dying out at a faster rate than at any time in human history, though he concedes that "[e]ach extinction means that a fascinating way of putting words together is no longer alive. In, for example, Inuktitut Eskimo. . . 'I should try not to become an alcoholic' is one word: Iminngernaveersaartunngortussaavunga."

Oh, really? Of all the languages in the world, and all the possible phrases that could be chosen as examples of those languages, McWhorter could only think of how a Native American might say, "I should try not to become an alcoholic"? And the Sun's editors had no problem with this? What if McWhorter had chosen to use as his example the German phrase for "I should try not to become a genocidal dictator," or the Animere phrase for "I should try not to be shiftless"?

It's profoundly disappointing that the editors of the Sun fell down on the job and allowed this column, with its casual racism, to run as written. You should know better.

Gary Drevitch

Note: Comments are screened, and in some cases edited, before posting. We reserve the right to reject anything we find objectionable.