3 ms·
One thing that wasn't clear to me from the article: Do the Mashco (the isolated tribe) speak the same language as the Yine (the more assimilated tribal people)
by curtis 10y ago
One thing that wasn't clear to me from the article:
Do the Mashco (the isolated tribe) speak the same language as the Yine (the more assimilated tribal people)? And if so, do the people on the contact team (at least some of them) speak the Yine language and can consequently speak directly to the Mashco using essentially the same language?
This kind of contact situation can't help but be difficult and dangerous, but if the contact team and the contactee tribe have a mutually intelligible language that they can use, it seems like it would make things a lot easier, relatively speaking.
- codezero 10y agoIn the article, one of the Yine people who the team works with had a father who was half Mascho, but was abducted as a child and used as a translator, she learned the language from him.
- twic 10y agoAs the article explains: "At the department’s outpost, Torres had left a small team of local Yine people, who spoke the same language as the Mashco."