The Linguists

This PBS-aired documentary, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, travels to remote villages in Bolivia, India, Siberia, and Arizona with two determined and adventurous ethnologists who are attempting to capture and preserve endangered examples from among the world's 7,000 languages (every year a dozen or so languages are lost following the deaths of their last speakers). David Harrison, director of the Living Tongues Institute, and Greg Anderson, an associate professor at Swarthmore College, are among those racing against time to make recordings of what would otherwise be gone forever. “What can we learn from these languages before they vanish?” they ask. “We worry that some way of seeing the world will be lost.” In Bolivia, for example, there are fewer than 100 speakers of Kallawaya, which is not learned from birth but rather passed down from adult male to teenage boys in order to transmit essential knowledge about rituals and herbal medicine. In Arizona, one of the few who still know Chemehuevi tells the researchers: “I speak it to myself because there's nobody else to talk to.” Directed by Seth Kramer, Daniel A. Miller, and Jeremy Newberger, The Linguists offers a charming, poignant, and sometimes funny glimpse into little-known surviving remnants of disparate cultures around the globe. DVD extras include a featurette profiling efforts to archive and revive endangered languages in South Africa, Taiwan, and other places. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (F. Zoretich)