Originally Posted by
neloon
A hypothetical story.
Suppose someone, obviously from their name not of US descent, living in Chicago let's say, claimed to have recovered a moribund dialect of Western Apache on the basis of a single(!) contact. We cannot tell how idiosyncratic this contact may be but our hero recognises his speech as one of 200 such dialects that he somehow knows once existed. He has no recognised linguistic credentials or contact with academic or other agencies involved in Native American language preservation and indeed despises the main such agencies (possibly because they commented adversely on his theories). A Scottish film company is conned into choosing him as language coach for a "cowboys 'n Indians" series they are producing.
Maybe you have to live in Scotland to see the funny side of this. Since the storyline is part fantasy, maybe it all makes sense.
Alan
A bit like those who claim to speak Cornish?
"We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give"
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill
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