Science writer Ned Rozell opened a recent column with the rather bold claim that Yup'ik lacks a word for "magpie." The article described the increasing range of the magpie (Pica pica) in Alaska, and the claim about Yup'ik seemed to offer a kind of ethnolinguistic support for this ecological change. That kind of merging of cultural and biological knowledge is popular these days. So popular that the column was picked up by the Alaska Dispatch, the Anchorage Daily News, and the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. The only problem is that the dictionary lists the word qalqerayak. It's right there on page 308 of the Yup'ik Eskimo Dictionary (Alaska Native Language Language Center, 1984)
Asking for biological names can be misleading in any language. Bird names are an area of specialist vocabulary, and I'd guess that many English speakers (including myself) would be hard-pressed to come up with the name 'magpie' when someone pointed at the bird. Asking the name of a bird is not the same as asking the name for basic vocabulary items, such as 'head' or 'house' or 'lake'. The unnamed elder in this story may not know the Yup'ik word for 'magpie', but that doesn't mean that Yup'ik doesn't have a name for the bird. Yup'ik is a large language spoken over a vast territory. And while not every speaker may know the name qalqerayak, the dictionary records that at least some speakers do.
An additional problem is that languages routinely have names for animals not encountered natively in their home territory. Tanacross Athabascan has the word tełaan for 'whale', even though Tanacross territory is located 300 miles or more from the coast. The correlation between ecology and language is imperfect, and while language has much to tell us about the environment, we must listen carefully to hear the message. Fortunately, for many Alaska Native languages we have excellent dictionaries to help us understand this correlation. Unfortunately, too few people make use of these resources.
No comments:
Post a Comment