1.Is There a Backward Language

2.Culture is the sum total of all the traditions, customs, beliefs,

3.and ways of life of a given group of human beings.

4.In this sense, every group has a culture,

5.however savage, underdeveloped, or uncivilized it may seem to us.

6.To the professional anthropologist,

7.there is no intrinsic superiority of one culture over another,

8.just as to the professional linguist

9.there is no intrinsic rank among languages.

10.People once thought of the languages of backward groups as savage,

11.underdeveloped forms of speech,

12.consisting largely of grunts and groans.

13.While it is possible that language in general began

14.as a series of grunts and groans,

15.it is a fact established,

16.by the study of “backward” languages

17.that no spoken tongue answers that description today.

18.Most languages of uncivilized groups are,

19.by our most severe standards, extremely complex, delicate,

20.and ingenious pieces of machinery for the transfer of ideas.

21.They fall behind our Western languages not in their sound patterns

22.or grammatical structures,

23.which usually are fully adequate for all language needs,

24.but only in their vocabularies,

25.which reflect the objects and activities known to their speakers.

26.Even in this department,

27.however, two things are to be noted:

28.1. All languages seem to possess the machinery for vocabulary expansion

29.either by putting together words already in existence

30.or by borrowing them from other languages and adapting them to their own system.

31.2. The objects and activities requiring names

32.and distinctions in “backward” languages,

33.while different from ours, are often surprisingly numerous and complicated.

34.A Western language is distinguishes merely between two degrees of remoteness

35.(“this” and “that”);

36.some languages of the American Indians distinguish between what is close to the speaker,

37.or to the person addressed, or removed from both,

38.or out of sight, or in the past, or in the future.

39.This study of language, in turn,

40.casts a new light upon the claim of the anthropologists

41.that all cultures are to be viewed independently,

42.and without ideas of rank.