"Talking Hands"

A) In the first chapter of “Talking Hands,” we see how a team of four linguistics, two from the United States and two from Israel, embark on a journey to a remarkable place, which is an isolated Middle Eastern village. In this place, there many residents who “speak” sign language. Sign language is a language unlike any other in the world, witnessed by few outsiders and never before described. These four linguistics have been working in the village, documenting this astonishing language and, little by little, understanding it. What is being described in this document is based on the observations of the team and on the interviews with the members of this research team. One of the members of the team, explains that in order to gather this information, she first had to gain the villagers trust. She even had to change their names and locations in order to secure the villagers privacy.
B) After learning so much in class discussions and in my classmates oral presentations, I have learned many new things about dying languages. I believe this topic is very important in linguistics, but most importantly, I believe this issue connects to “Talking Hands.” The reason why is because thanks to the research of these linguistics, we now have research of the very important information of sign language. With this research and documentaries, we can keep close statistics to the many languages that die, day by day, month by month and year by year and also see how the language prospers and evolves from people to people.
C) The main question I have about this reading, would be if their has been any drastic change in the research, since the investigation?
D) Personally, I really enjoyed reading this document. The reason why is because as I mentioned above, we now have research of a certain language, that we can go into depth about and learn a lot of unique information about sign language and their “speakers.”

7- UP BINGO

1) 93= SLIDE # 73 = 93 in English means "nine groups of ten, three."
2) Anthropologists= SLIDE # 49 = Anthropologists use language as a source of information in their study of "culture."
3) Marking Individuals= SLIDE # 75= Marking individuals are defined as members of a group defined by social connection.
4) Whistle their Language = SLIDE # 56 = In Brazil, the Piraha, whistle their language and have such little sense of the past.
5) Many expressions for "coconut" =SLIDE # 64= In Tuvaluan, central Pacific, there are many expressions for the word coconut.
6) Mrs.= SLIDE # 77= In language, there are social categories and address terms, such as Mrs.
7) Differ culture by culture= SLIDE # 56= Concepts of time in language differ culture by culture

Listening to (and Saving) the World's languages

A) In the New York Times article, i saw that there were many different languages spoken in New York City. Aside, from this, i also read in the article that there are many languages that are disappearing. These disappearing languages are otherwised known as "dying languages." Also, from the reading, i saw that Professor Kaufman found out that "New York City is home to as many as 800 languages."
B) From the article, i learned many new things about language in New York City. For example one thing i found interesting was the fact that without knowning, "we're sitting in an endangerment hot spot where we are surrounded by languages that are not going to be around in about 20 or 30 years." I also learned from the article that in New Jersey, the Neo-Aramaic language(rooted in the language of Jesus and the Talmud) is still spoken and taught today.
C) One question i have after reading this article is whether or not the English language will ever become extinct? or will it continue "alive" from generation to generation?