A
Anonymous
Guest
I have selected this from The Economist's obituary (Nov 3, 2001):
"... Sometimes Kenneth Hale was asked how long it would take him to learn a new language. He thought ten or 15 minutes would be enough to pick up the essentials if he were listening to a native speaker. After that he could probably converse; obviously not fluently, but enough to make himself understood. To those whose education, however admirabel in other respects, had provided only rudimentary language skills, Mr Hale seemed a marvel.
And so he was. He had a gift. But he was also an academic, a teacher of linguistics at the Massachusetts Insititute of Technology (MIT). He was aware that many otherwise clever people are dunces at learning a second language. He sought to find laws and structures that could be applied to all languages. As well as studying the common languages, French, Spanish and so on, the search took him into many linguistic byways, to the languages of native Americans and Australian aborigines and the Celtic fringes of Europe. (...)
Kenneth Hale's childhood was on a ranch in Arizona and he started his education in a one-roomed school in the desert. Many years later, lecturing at MIT, he still felt most comfortable in cowboy boots. On his belt was a buckle he had won at a rodeo by riding bulls, and he had the slightly bowed legs of a horseman. His students were impressed that he could light a match with his thumbnail.
Mr Hale had discovered his talent for language when playing with Indian friends who taught him Hopi and Navajo. Learning languages bacame an obsession. Wherever he travelled he picked up a new tongue. In Spain he learnt Basque; in Ireland he spoke Gaelic so convincingly that an immigration officer asked if he knew English. He apologised to the Dutch for taking a whole week to master their somewhat complex language. He picked up the rudiments of Japanese after watching a Japanese film with subtitles. He sought to rescue languages that were dying out. One Indian language at its last gasp was spoken by the Wopanaak, the tribe that greeted the Pilgrim Fathers in 1620. It is now spoken again by several thousand people around Cape Cod. A Wopanaak who studied under Mr Hale is preparing a dictionary of her language. 'Ken was a voice for the voiceless,' said Noam Chomsky.
Mr Hale could converse in about 50 languages, perhaps a world record, although he was too modest to claim one. (...) "
"... Sometimes Kenneth Hale was asked how long it would take him to learn a new language. He thought ten or 15 minutes would be enough to pick up the essentials if he were listening to a native speaker. After that he could probably converse; obviously not fluently, but enough to make himself understood. To those whose education, however admirabel in other respects, had provided only rudimentary language skills, Mr Hale seemed a marvel.
And so he was. He had a gift. But he was also an academic, a teacher of linguistics at the Massachusetts Insititute of Technology (MIT). He was aware that many otherwise clever people are dunces at learning a second language. He sought to find laws and structures that could be applied to all languages. As well as studying the common languages, French, Spanish and so on, the search took him into many linguistic byways, to the languages of native Americans and Australian aborigines and the Celtic fringes of Europe. (...)
Kenneth Hale's childhood was on a ranch in Arizona and he started his education in a one-roomed school in the desert. Many years later, lecturing at MIT, he still felt most comfortable in cowboy boots. On his belt was a buckle he had won at a rodeo by riding bulls, and he had the slightly bowed legs of a horseman. His students were impressed that he could light a match with his thumbnail.
Mr Hale had discovered his talent for language when playing with Indian friends who taught him Hopi and Navajo. Learning languages bacame an obsession. Wherever he travelled he picked up a new tongue. In Spain he learnt Basque; in Ireland he spoke Gaelic so convincingly that an immigration officer asked if he knew English. He apologised to the Dutch for taking a whole week to master their somewhat complex language. He picked up the rudiments of Japanese after watching a Japanese film with subtitles. He sought to rescue languages that were dying out. One Indian language at its last gasp was spoken by the Wopanaak, the tribe that greeted the Pilgrim Fathers in 1620. It is now spoken again by several thousand people around Cape Cod. A Wopanaak who studied under Mr Hale is preparing a dictionary of her language. 'Ken was a voice for the voiceless,' said Noam Chomsky.
Mr Hale could converse in about 50 languages, perhaps a world record, although he was too modest to claim one. (...) "
