Sublime

We need to challenge the idea that English is the sole marker of intelligence or modernity. This belief traces back to Rizal’s time and persists even in media, like in the Maria Clara at Ibarra Netflix series. The shock when a woman speaks fluent English reflects a deeper social bias, that English equals higher status.

This bias runs deep. English... See more

Gordon surmised that the Pirahã provided support for a controversial hypothesis advanced early in the last century by Benjamin Lee Whorf, a student of Sapir’s. Whorf argued that the words in our vocabulary determine how we think. Since the Pirahã do not have words for numbers above two, Gordon wrote, they have a limited ability to work with... See more

Has a remote Amazonian tribe upended our understanding of language?

Language fluency is activism. This is not about reclaiming purity, but embracing pluralism and contradiction. We reject colonial amnesia through language learning, even informally.