Sublime

Why couldn’t even the strong, brainy, cold-proof Neanderthals survive our onslaught? The debate continues to rage. The most likely answer is the very thing that makes the debate possible: Homo sapiens conquered the world thanks above all to its unique language.

Au xiiie siècle, un empereur du nom de Frédéric II souhaitant découvrir l’origine des langues empêcha des nourrissons d’entendre la moindre parole. La légende veut qu’ils soient tous morts sans avoir prononcé un mot. Une équipe de l’université du Wisconsin s’est penchée sur la question et a conclu que, privé d’échanges, le nourrisson souffre très t

He asks me why the strongest family units exist in the least developed societies. Not to know is a weapon of survival, he says. Magic and superstition become entrenched as the powerful orthodoxy of the clan.

2. The Rediscovery of Language

It’s frustrating to think of the difference that language would make. The millennia crawl by pretty bloody slowly while natural selection sifts its way obliviously through generation after generation, favouring the odd aberrant kakapo that’s a little twitchier than its contemporaries till the species as a whole finally gets the idea. It would all b

What is historically humbling about Sumerian writing and pedagogy is not their understanding of morphological principles, but their realization that the teaching of reading must begin with explicit attention to the principal characteristics of oral language. This is exactly what takes place today in the supposedly “cutting-edge” curricula in our ow

“They beat the language out of us in school,” remembered one elderly Alaska Native. “Whenever I speak Tlingit, I can still taste the soap,” another confirmed (his language now has fewer than a thousand speakers). On Guam, the naval government prohibited the use of Chamoru on school grounds, in courts, and in governmental offices. Children caught sp

Humans tend to be tribal and have a huge propensity for kindness – but within their identified community