To-Do & Fun Facts

1. Languages I'd be interested to learn:

Ojibwe
Frisian
Tamil
Michif
Mednyj-Aleut
Fula
Fly Taal
Cocoliche
Makah
Ngan'gityemerri
Cayuga
Gros Ventre
Ugong
Central Pomo

2. Fun Facts from John McWhorter's The Power of Babel:

"...a mere one percent of the words in English today are not borrowed from other languages."

The word hussy derives from housewife.

"...America is rather exceptionally bland in regard to dialect divergence...."

"Despite the guilty intuition one might have that 'primitive' hunter-gatherers would speak 'simpler' languages, in fact, it is among such groups that languages are likely to be the most elaborated."

"...generation after generation are taught that the 'real' language is that variety enshrined on the page and that the changes taking place in their speech are 'mistakes' rather than natural developments of the very sort that turned Latin into French...."

"By one reasonable estimate, ninety percent of the world's languages will be dead by 2100...."