active 4 unit 10 chap 2

Life with Tarahumaras

In a remote zone of the Sierra madre in northe Mexica, an indigenous group of people live that called Tarahumaras live in total isolation. Aside from owning some cooking utensils and farming equipment, the tarahumaras exist much as they did before Spanish arrived in 1600s. they live in caves or huts which made of stone and wood, and they eat what they grow on dry, in rugged land. The linguist James Copeland entered to the world of tarahumaras with the aim of study their culture and language. He visited them three or four times a year, but sometimes spending as much as a month with them. Part of his mission is to embarked on this lifetime project to study the tarahumara language. Leaing tarahumara is not an easy task to do. He says there is no language police. Their children are seldom corrected with their parents and they lea their language by observation of speech in context and by imitation, because their language hasn’t been written yet, they have to do this job. Copeland acquired the language via his frequent exposure to it by analyzing the grammar. His linguistics skills mastery of German, Spanish, French, plus partial knowledge of 20 different language, also helped. He wrote the book of tarahumara in English and Spanish.