1. Language “Hotspots” (Places where languages are going extinct.)

2. Freezing Eskimos Have 47 Words for "This Sucks" (Um-waka-waka, Canada) -A group of Harvard linguists studying the Eskimos of northern Canada have discovered that in addition to 34 words for snow, the arctic culture has over 47 words meaning "this sucks." Dr. Trisha Dean, who led the team said, "Language, like other social constructs, is environmentally influenced. For instance, there are ten Russian words for 'starving' and twelve for 'mono-brow'. Naturally, the vocabulary of the Inuits reflects that living on frigid, barren glaciers and eating only fish heads for generations after generation really, well, sucks." She maintains that the many words allow the Inuits to convey rich nuances of suckiness that go unnoticed by English-speakers. Said Dean, "If an American woke up smelling like rotten tuna, he would say 'this sucks', the same thing he would say if he smelled like rotten herring instead. However, an Eskimo would say massak about a tuna-stench, while the latter would require the harsher aput." Dr. Dean supplied this list of common Eskimo words for suck and their English translations: Tingenek This sucks. Massalerauvok Long ago, my son, it did not suck, but that's not really true at this time. Mauja For many moons, it has sucked. Now it is no different. Akkilokipok It is as if the great-snow tiger of suckiness has raped my sister.

3. Language and Perception
● Russian speakers, who have more words for light and dark blues, are better able to visually discriminate shades of blue. ● Some indigenous tribes say north, south, east and west, rather than left and right, and as a consequence have great spatial orientation. ● The Piraha, whose language eschews number words in favor of terms like few and many, are not able to keep track of exact quantities. ● In one study, Spanish and Japanese speakers couldn't remember the agents of accidental events as adeptly as English speakers could. Why? In Spanish and Japanese, the agent of causality is dropped: "The vase broke itself," rather than "John broke the vase."

4. Language and Perception - Eskimo Words for Snow
Inuit - 10 Words for snow
'ice' sikko
'bare ice' tingenek
'snow (in general)' aput
'snow (like salt)’ pukak
'soft deep snow' mauja
'snowdrift' tipvigut
'soft snow' massak
'watery snow' mangokpok
'snow filled with water' massalerauvok
'soft snow' akkilokipok

6. Language and Culture Videos: Takeaways
Language REFLECTS culture: where it has been (history), what it values, even how people in that culture think about the world around them (African languages: no word for god, Asian languages: no tenses, Eskimo: snow words etc.)
Language is the primary means by which culture (its history, art, music, religion, etc) is TRANSMITTED over TIME (History) and SPACE.
A shared language is the GLUE that holds together a people’s cultural identity and makes those people VISIBLE TO EACH OTHER AND THE OUTSIDE WORLD. (attempts to preserve language: French, Celtic, etc; use of language as cultural weapon)

7. Language, Identity, and Acculturation “No one was allowed to speak the language – the Dena’ina language. They [the American government] didn’t allow it in the schools, and a lot of the women had married non-native men, and the men said, ‘You’re American now so you can’t speak the language.’ So, we became invisible in the community. Invisible to each other. And, then, because we couldn’t speak the language – what happens when you can’t speak your own language is you have to think with someone else’s words, and that is a dreadful kind of isolation.” - Clare Swan, elder, Kenaitze band, Dena’ina