Word: linguistic
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...purist and patriot, Linguist Etiemble has declared war against Franglais, the pidgin French-English that has flooded la belle langue with U.S. neologisms. French newspapers speak of call-girls, cliff-dwellers, containment, fairways, missile-gaps, uppercuts. French sociologists analyze le melting-pot, out-groups, ego-involvement. French business roils with words like boom, le boss, fifty-fifty, soft-approach and supermarket...
...lucky, a field worker will find at least one member of the tribe with a smattering of Spanish or Portuguese. The institute man then points to a hut, tree, rabbit, or other familiar object and asks the Indian the word for it. As he learns the Indian dialect, the linguist records the sounds on tape. Then, using basic phonetic symbols, he constructs an alphabet for the language. The process can be exasperating. One tribe of suspicious Bolivian Indians refused to cooperate, convinced that the whole thing was a plot to steal their language. When linguists tackled the Cocama tribe...
Once words are learned and written down, linguists can prepare a bilingual dictionary and primers and teach the Indians how to read. Then the real rewards begin. The teachers cite cases of illiterate Indian boys and girls, taught by the institute, who are now successful surgeons, scholars and teachers. "When they first learn how paper talks," says an institute linguist, "it is a thrilling experience for the Indians...
...Telelectures" were pioneered at the University of Omaha, where Linguist Michel Beilis was saddled with the problem of luring big time lecturers to a distant and none-too-rich campus. Author Harry Golden, for example, set his price as "$1,500 just to lecture, $1,700 if I have to answer questions, $2,000 if I have to have cookies with the ladies." But by phone Beilis got the Golden word from North Carolina for a cutrate $214-$64 for the call and $150 for Harry. Omaha has since staged telelectures with eminences all over, from Anthropologist Margaret Mead...
...Kitten & Linguist. But Hollywood could never make her into one of its once numerous mannikins, because she has too much of a head start. She is a bright, fast-moving girl with a mind of her own. Being a star does not impress her. "I want to be a good actress," she says. "The word star is flexible." Beyond German, she speaks Spanish, Italian, French and English, and is an established star in the French, German and Italian cinema. In the parts that have built her fame, she has almost invariably been a sex kitten ever ready to sleep with...