From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Sat Mar 31 2001 - 01:50:31 MST
At 11:33 PM 3/30/01 -0900, Alicia wrote:
>Using gender-nuetral pronouns furthur brings to mind the differences between
>AIs and humans, and therefore helps to avoid applying anthropomorphic
ideas to
>them. Perhaps someone could sing a song of our differences and we could take
>pride in our effort to accept one another. We do this in INupiaq Eskimo
>culture and it helps. In the exploration of differences, we see how alike we
>really are to each other.
Fascinating! I see at http://www.nnlm.nlm.nih.gov/pnr/ethnomed/inupiaq.html
that:
=============
The Inupiaq language consists of Inuit-Inupiaq families of polysynthetic
languages spoken from Siberia [Yup'ik] to
Greenland [Inupiaq]. For Inupiaq People language is very important to
Inupiaq culture and traditions. The languages of
the Inuit peoples constitute a subfamily of the Eskimo Aleut language
family. A major linguistic division occurs in
Alaska, according to whether the speakers call themselves Inuit (singular,
Inuk, as in Inupiaq) or Yuit (singular, Yuk, as
in Yup'ik). The eastern branch of the subfamily generally called Inupiaq in
Alaska but also Inuktitut (meaning "like an
inuk") in Canada and Kalaallisut (Kaladtlisut, meaning "like an kalaaliq")
in Greenland stretches from eastern Alaska
across Canada and through northern into southern Greenland. It consists of
many dialects, each understandable to
speakers of neighboring dialects, including speaker of distant dialects
found in Greenland [Inupiaq] or Russia [Yup'ik].
[1] R. Craig, [16]
http://www.campus.bt.com/CampusWorld/pub/Ultimate_Challenge/
"Because these languages are among the most complex and difficult in the
world, few explorers or traders ever learned
them; instead, they relied on a jargon composed of Danish, Spanish,
Hawaiian, and Inupiaq or Yup'ik words. The
Inupiaq and Yup'ik languages themselves have a rich oral literature, and a
number of Greenland authors have written in
Greenland Inupiaq." [16]
http://www.campus.bt.com/CampusWorld/pub/Ultimate_Challenge/
Like too many Indigenous Peoples, the Inupiaq were literally forced to
learn English. If the BIA teachers heard Inupiaq
being spoken, the transgressor(s) was swiftly punished, Alaska Natives did
not escape this tragedy.
==============
A `polysynthetic language' might well be the patois shared by hu and ai.
Damien Broderick
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jul 17 2013 - 04:00:36 MDT