Was my comment deleted?

?

maybe something happened when i found a better video that was more on the topic i wanted to sift?

Thanks Lavoll, this is really cool stuff.

doremifa

your comment was in the past and was infact invalid in Piraha language, and thus removed

Westy's sentence is recursive.

By the way... for a present ONLY language.. did you catch the subtitles used..
"Afterwards, he fell down"

I'm no grammar expert, but it appears there is a time based narrative in their language.

Retrowife tells me my language is repulsive. She's trying to call this guy now to see if the tribe does short-term adoptions.

"By the way... for a present ONLY language.. did you catch the subtitles used..
"Afterwards, he fell down""


yes, i spotted that as well... but maybe thats just translated that way to make us understand it better? i also see that that "feature" isnt mentioned in the wikipedia entry (any longer) but it is desribed in the science magazine where i first read about it.

maybe i should switch it out with a different factoid? like for example that the women use one sound less in their language compared to the men

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/16/070416fa_fact_colapinto?currentPage=all

The New Yorker article is infinitely more facinating than this brief clip.

Amazing language. Boring video.

>> ^messenger:
Amazing language. Boring video.


i agree, even though i posted it. the other video i found was a slide show set to a bbc radio report... but it is such an exciting topic!! i am hoping something better visually will be produced.

Keep us in the loop, lavoll. This is pretty cool.

The video is hard to conclude much about the language... as for Piraha, I have a hard time beliving any language cannot count past 2. Even before language, pounding sticks and rock to denote numbers was used. Numbers exhisted before people knew what numbers were.

What I had typed was that I had read about this very recently from the New Yorker article in "he Best American Science and Nature Writing 2008 (highly recommended reading).

This is a question: Do you think the Piraha culture is ignorant?

>> ^messenger:
Amazing language. Boring video.


How is it amazing? Seems like a pretty crappy language to me.

SaNdMaN

something can be amazing and shit ore impractical at the same time like say that frog that when pissed off brakes its leg bone inorder to have a claw.

i dont think the word amazing is ethor posative ore negaive its merly anoher way of describing wonderment ore something that is abnormaly intresting compared to other things of intrest.

it's still a boring language. teh video is well edited.

the language doesn't improve the racional quality of communication to those who speak it, which is the purpose of a language (unlike the claw that all frogs so desperately want to mutate on their legs, forcing nature to "give" them one lol). the tribe well... will be a tribe as long as it keeps with this kind of highly flawed grammaire. ignorants yes; stupid? there's no such thing, only social failure.

About the existence of a past tense, numbers, etc. in this language, it's possible that the past, memories, "history", myths, etc. have intricate ways to be addressed to.

does this mean there is a universal grammaire? maybe, just as much as pandas mean that mammals are a doomed, failing branch of life.

anyWay, somE people write way worSe Than our "unYversal" grammaire permits...

I agree i dont think its probably the most eficent way of comunicating ore the most clear way but that still dosenot make it amazing, i find it amazing that people still belive in christeanity and i think thats compleaty obseurd,

the intrest from this comes from the fact that its a culture that has sucsedded for a length of time without the use of language structures that you would exspect. and as a result may help exsplain other facets of comunicatoin and how we might think anchent man may of comunicated, ore what actualy is required in comunicatoin. ( as well as how limited comunicatoin can be) to be able to do daily activitys and live fairly well.

wonder what chomsky would think of this, a lot of his theories include how the way our languages work are innate

*promote

Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Saturday, December 20th, 2008 7:26pm PST - promote requested by schmawy.