[lit-ideas] No word for robin?
- From: "Andreas Ramos" <andreas@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Lit-Ideas" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2004 20:42:22 -0800
Global warming is increasingly rendering Inuit and other Arctic peoples at a
loss for words.
They simply do not have names in their languages for the temperate species
flocking up from
the south.
They have plenty of ways of describing their own wildlife - some have more than
1,000 words
for reindeer - but none for, say, the robin, which is only now venturing north
of the
treeline. The Inuit are reduced to describing it as "the bird with the red
breast" in their
language, Inuktiut, said Sheila Watt-Cloutier, chairwoman of the Inuit
Circumpolar
Conference, the top elected representative of the people worldwide. Nor, she
said, are there
words for salmon, hornets and barn owls, all of which are appearing in the
Arctic for the
first time. "We can't even describe what we are seeing," she added.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=587568
yrs,
andreas
www.andreas.com
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