Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Hollywood does a service to science

Lingustics, to be more precise. Movie brings lost language to life: Linguist recruited to help new Pocahantas movie be realistic by Bryn Nelson Newsday (n.d.; 01/25/06?):

When the Native Americans of southeastern Virginia's Powhatan Confederacy first encountered John Smith and the English settlers at Jamestown, the basis for director Terrence Malick's new movie, "The New World," hundreds of languages existed in North America.

Most have since died out, but months of painstaking research by University of North Carolina at Charlotte linguist Blair Rudes may allow the reconstructed Virginia Algonquian tongue to persist long after the movie's end credits roll.