Re: Hardest to learn between Russian and Irish

From: Peter T. Daniels (grammatim_at_worldnet.att.net)
Date: 01/16/05 

Date: Sun, 16 Jan 2005 13:35:26 GMT

Jacques Guy wrote:

> The Tolomako and Sakao speakers of Port-Olry
> would criticize my command of the language _by proxy_
> as it were. Yes, by proxy. They did not blame me,
> they blamed my informants: "So-and-so has not taught
> him properly" (when I was the one who had stuffed up).
>
> As I have already told the story here, one day
> Frère Hilaire Chalet (who despite his name was
> not French, but Malekulan) congratulated me on
> having "cracked" the Sakao language: "Maintenant, les
> gens, au village, ils disent que tu parles comme
> les vieux dans le temps." (The villagers now say
> that you speak like the old men of long ago).
> Coming from New-Hebrideans (the country was called
> New Hebrides then) that is the greatest compliment.
> My vocabulary was very limited, of course (I
> don't think I ever knew more than 2000 words).
>
> But my Tolomako informant kept getting sharp
> criticisms: "he speaks like a baby". Sure,
> but he was the only one to volunteer.
> Nevertheless, I suspected that they were
> right, because I could not believe that
> Tolomako made do with so little. It was
> unbelievably simple. I had never come across
> such a language. So I managed to coax an
> old man who was unanimously acknowledged as
> an excellent speaker to tell me a few
> legends. I expected to find some new
> features in his speech, perhaps holophrastic
> constructions as Sakao had. Nothing. Nothing
> at all. If anything, his speech was _simpler_
> than my informant's. I now suspect that
> what the Tolomako-speaking villagers meant
> by "he speaks like a baby" referred to
> poor story-telling. Rhetorics, not grammar
> or syntax.

The anecdotes would be credible if the resulting published grammars of
Sakao and Tolomako turned out to fit coherently with the grammars of
closely related languages -- if, for example, as happened with Hockett's
Potawotami, the languages could be shown to have descended from a
proto-language reconstructed on the basis of previously studied
languages. 

-- 
Peter T. Daniels                       grammatim@att.net

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