"A Hunter-Gatherer Language of Northern Indochina by Jørgen Rischel": A Review

Abstract

REVIEW: Among the endangered languages of the world, few are more endangered than those spoken by small groups of hunter-gatherers, eking out a precarious existence in the rainforests of Southeast Asia. In the face of the ever-decreasing resources of their preferred habitat, and the need to interact with agriculturalists to supplement their meager diets with cultivated foods and to provide spouses for their children, they are of necessity gradually abandoning their native tongues for those of their settled neighbors with whom they must interact. Although the very existence of some of these groups is doubted by some members of the scientific community, exist they do. Rischel' s book documents the language of one such group, the Minor Mlabri living in the mountains of northeastern Thailand, whose language and culture are now close to extinction, with fewer than a dozen people (eight adults and three children) still able to speak the language