CONCEPTS
Name of the hypothesis that language shapes what we can express and perceive
Term to refer to the practice of writing in a nonnative language
Anthropologist known for saving “dying” languages
K. David Harrison
Language being revived in New England
Wôpanâak
Japanese logographic system inherited from Chinese
Kanji
Term for Indigenous people’s cognizance of their environment, acquired over a long history of their relationship to nature
Traditional ecological knowledge
Country whose founders had “a policy not to have a [language] policy”
United States
Theorist of the public sphere
Michael Warner
Language being learned by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Potawatomi
Alphabet that originated in Bulgaria
Cyrillic
The camera obscura metaphor was famously used to explain this concept
ideology
Attitudes that people hold about languages and dialects, linking them to social and political values
language ideologies
Scholar of language learning who argues against treating the “native speaker” as an ideal
Claire Kramsch
Indigenous language of Senegal
Wolof
Japanese syllabary reserved for loanwords
Katakana
Term used by Kimmerer to describe the ways languages distribute agency, and by Tawada to describe her fiction
animacy
the act of adjusting one's language to fit into different social, professional, or cultural contexts
Early American printer who advocated teaching vocabulary through use, rather than memorizing rules
Noah Webster
Indigenous language spoken by some of Javier Zamora’s family
Nawat
Three of the four languages of Switzerland
German, French, Italian, Romansh
Name for the use of a language in high and low registers depending on social context
diglossia
A language community developed by marginalized groups to challenge the discourse of the dominant culture
Name of the philosopher who argued the concept of the self is an artifact of grammar
Friedrich Nietzsche
Siberian language whose youngest speaker was in his 50s when he was recorded
Chulym
Colloquial name for Salvadoran Spanish
Caliche