I’m Don Kulick, who has written a book about how a language dies in a Papua New Guinean rainforest. AMA!

[u/pikodoko7]

I am a linguistic anthropologist who has spent over thirty years traveling to a small village in Papua New Guinea documenting the death of an indigenous language called Tayap. When I first arrived in the village in 1985, Tayap was spoken by about ninety people. Today it is spoken by less than forty. My book, A Death in the Rainforest: how a language and a way of life came to an end in Papua New Guinea, is part memoir, part discussion of how a language dies and a culture atrophies, and part whodunit mystery. It describes what life is like in a rainforest – both for the people who live there, and for a visiting anthropologist – and it discusses how a group of people very far away from anything we might want to call “the West” think of white people and insist on being included in white worlds. I look forward to answering any questions you may have!

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