The Linguists (2008)

The Linguists is a fairly fast-paced travel documentary that showcases how the sciences of linguistics and ethnography are applied in the field. David and Greg are can-do go-getters who speak 25 languages between the two of them. They are concerned that social and economic pressures in far-flung corners of the world are leading to the abandonment or death of one language per week. (Like undiscovered rain-forest plants, undocumented languages are not just unique and fascinating things to study but they may likely shed new light on humanity's challenges: Just as plants yield new pharmaceuticals, languages reveal the unique creative insights and problem-solving perspectives of which human beings are capable.) We travel with this Dialect Duo as they narrate their preparations and journeys to remote Siberia to document the Chulym tongue, provincial India to document Chemehuevi and Sora, and the backwaters of Bolivia to document Kallawaya. Their approach is structured yet flexible as they attempt to find native speakers of each dying language; Chulym had 9 speakers at the time of their visit but 4 have since died. Recording everything on audio and videotape, their first step with each interviewee is to conduct an elicitation, learning words for the parts of the face and body, followed by numbers and so on. Their encounters with elderly speakers and the folk of the earth are intriguing and personable. In fact, The Linguists almost does for languages what Throw Down Your Heart does for music across the borders. Our guys camp beside Lake Titicaca (very cold), risk getting killed by insurgents, join in village song and dance, and help document languages in print and video for their native speakers (even organizing one community's effort to produce the first hand-written and hand-drawn book in their native tongue). If you want to stretch the borders of your mind and heart to understand more about your fellow human beings on this our common planet, I highly recommend The Linguists. I will be happy to watch this movie again some other time esp. with anyone who is interested in foreign travel or languages. 4.5 stars.