OxBlog

Monday, March 01, 2004

# Posted 3:25 AM by Patrick Belton  

DEAD LANGUAGES IN THE NYT: Jack Hitt shows there can be good writing, even in the New York Times:
Languages die the way many people do -- at home, in silence, attended by loved ones straining to make idle conversation.

''A lot of rain,'' announces Juan Carlos. The fire crackles and hisses. The rain continues, staccato.

''Rain,'' Gabriela adds.

I sit quietly, smoking my way through their Samuel Beckett dialogue.
...

When I asked Emelinda what could be done to keep Yaghan alive, she said she was already doing it, as if a formal program were under way.

''I talk to myself in Yaghan,'' Emelinda explained in Spanish. ''When I hang up my clothes outside, I say the words in Yaghan. Inside the house, I talk in Yaghan all day long.''

I asked her if she ever had a conversation with the only other person in the world who could easily understand her, Cristina Calderón, the official ''last speaker'' of Yaghan.

''No,'' Emelinda said impatiently, as if I'd brought up a sore topic. ''The two of us don't talk.''
Even accounting for Hitt's occasional adolescent slips ("Does anything say Western dominance quite like the flush of a private john?"), the magazine should be congratulated for the highly unusual and innovative step of bringing good writing to the profit-making press.
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