This is an easy read about the likeable members of a tribe in Papua, New Guinea. First of all, I have to give the author props for having the gumption to head into the darkest of rainforests (the only way to reach the village of Gapun is to traverse rivers and thick forests for hours) multiple times.

At first, the author’s statement that all Papuans not-so-secretly want to be white people was a bit off-putting. As I read further, I understood what he meant – they wanted to be successful, not necessarily turning their back on their race.

I also marveled at the author’s dedication to learning, then transcribing Tayap, the difficult language of Gapun. There are gender-related endings to words, which confused him in the beginning, but then he was able to create a large body of work describing the grammar and vocabulary of the Gapuners. Their language is slowly being replaced by one called Tok Pisin, which is a pidgin version of English. The lamentable reason for this loss of language is that the younger generations don’t wish to learn to speak Tayap – they feel that is for old people and choose to speak Tok Pisin instead. Once the elders of the tribe pass away, so will Tayap, preserved only in the author’s memory and his comprehensive body of work. That seems poignant to me; working so hard to preserve something that is vanishing before your very eyes. The fact that this language was confined to less than 500 humans at the time of writing is mind -boggling. Another poignant thought is that while these villagers were sharing their language with the author, they were also sharing the memories of their lives. As Kulick puts it: “Today, those recordings are all that remains of their stories, songs, and explanations”.

The author relates stories of his time in Gapun, complete with self-deprecating humor and details that will make you cringe (imagine eating grubs or maggots?) or make you smile ( an intrepid youngster dubs himself the “security” guarding the author and subsequently stays by his side zealously).

DEATH OF A LANGUAGE is a wonderfully written book that will make you think about many things -the loss of this language, the circle of life, and the strength of this anthropologist who devoted so much of his life to these villagers. ( )

Interesting. ( )

I found the information well written and interesting, although parts of it were not enjoyable. I'm glad I read it and learned how people in that part of the world live and what they believe (& why). I can say I would not have done what he did, partaking of disease-ridden water & the foods they offered. ( )

Moving account of a linguist’s many trips to a tribe in remote Papua New Guinea and his search to understand why their unique language was dying out. In the end I found it to be incredibly sad, the villagers’ hard often brutalised lives and their attempts to achieve positive change in their lives which usually made things worse. However, perhaps I should also be inspired by Don Kulick’s exhortation to learn from the villagers and their culture. ( )

The author set out to document a dying language that had never been documented. He learns the pidgin English of Papua New Guinea and with that as a verbal Rosetta Stone he goes to a remote village where the last two hundred people (or much less since the young do not care to learn or even pass on the language to their progeny) speak their own unique language. He interviews the most elderly - they have already forgotten their word for rainbow- and desperately tries to capture the vocabulary, grammar, idioms, etc for posterity before its too late. All the while he tries-and succeeds- to hold his nose and avoid passing judgement on the abject ignorance and gullibility of his subjects’, e. g., the natives think white people are the spirits of dead natives and have arrived in New Guinea via an extension of the New York subway. He gets in quite a few zingers consistently through the course of the book without offending anyone. At the end he recounts a letter given to him to take back home to a person he knows he cannot find; its essentially a wish list from a child to Santa Claus. But after repeatedly lambasting the villagers for succumbing to con artists the author does so himself. This is one of those books that is a snapshot of a culture that will soon be lost. ( )