2 Videos of Kenneth Hale Speaking at a Conference in Portuguese

[nooj]

So I spent my afternoon in my linguistics department library. The amount of linguistic material available is flustering, old thesis work, field notes, grammars...I could have spent all day there, if I hadn't been feeling so hungry.

However, I did manage to get some interesting details about Hale, whose works are featured prominently on the shelf, including his copies of his field notes (the originals are in AIATSIS, the archive where he submitted all of his linguistic material). I took some pictures from a Festschrift dedicated to him, which is well worth a read, it's called Forty Years On: Ken Hale and Australian languages. It's painful to read from photos, so I won't post too much.

Hale's work on endangered languages was as important to him as anything else. It took off in 1959 when he went to Australia on a US National Science Foundation grant administered through the University of Sydney. He stayed for two years and in these two years he documented at least the basic morphology and core vocabulary of around seventy languages, and made a more intensive study of many of these, notably varieties of Arrernte (Aranda), Warlpiri, Lardil (of Mornington Island, Gulf of Carpentaria), Ngarluma (at Roebourne), northern NT languages Kunwinyku, Mara, Garrwa, various Wik dialects and Linngithigh (on western Cape York Peninsula), and Djabugay (near Cairns). In March±April 1961 he teamed up with Geoff O'Grady from Sydney University and the pair documented some 26 languages in a two-month survey from Port Augusta around the coast to Broome; in the NT Gulf country he teamed up with La Mont (Monty) West, a fellow student from Indiana University. Hale visited Australia five times after the first two long visits, each time only for a few weeks.

The two long visits were: 1959-1961, then 1966-1967. He was extremely busy even within those dates, documenting dozens of languages across hundreds of kilometres, so it wasn't an immersive environment like someone being plopped into France where they only have one language to deal with over a period of years.

In 1970, Caleb and Ezra Hale are born. Hale raised them speaking Warlpiri. 1980 Hale served as an interpreter for Warlpiri speakers at a court case on Aboriginal Land rights.

Discounting the visits of several weeks (which were busy in their own right), adding up the time from his first two long stays in Australia, we could be very generous and say that he learned Warlpiri, a language that is completely genetically unrelated to his native one, in at least three years. Native Warlpiri speakers consistently stated that he spoke it excellently.

Despite there being next to no learning material (if any) for the language, as it was a language that at that stage was not written down.

There's interesting testimony from other witnesses.



So we know he was superbly proficient in not just Warlpiri, but at least half a dozen other languages spoken in this specific region by 1966-7. What I'm wondering is if he took 3 years to learn these ones as well. I suspect he was already extremely good at Warlpiri by the end of his first visit. But even taking the maximal case, 3 years is definitely not too shabby at all.

I've already posted the link to Hale's Warlpiri tapes, you can go check that out to hear what the language sounds like.

Here is something about Hale's Turkish. If we accept Hale's word that he only learned Turkish from the attendant, possibly over a period of years (?), presumably without the use of grammars and written material and TV shows and music, that fits into how he learned his other languages. In this particular instance he spent 10 minutes talking to the attendant. Maybe at other times he spent longer talking with him, but it cannot have been hours: the attendant has a job to do, so does Hale. Unless Hale met the attendant outside of his work??



There's a lengthy transcription of an interview of Ken Hale by fellow linguists, I took pictures of that as well if anyone is interested, which wanders quite a bit, but you can get glimpses into his mindset and philosophy as well as his keen mind.

Interestingly from the account given above by Professor Yengoyan, Hale was not at all intimidated by native speakers speaking 'complex' sentences to him. He welcomed it, as a way to test the boundaries of his understanding of the language: why can you say this, but not that? You get the impression that all of the language input he was getting was 'native', not dumbed down, not simplified even, as the native speakers warmed up to his personality.

Whereas I often find native speakers dumb themselves down for me (even unconsciously) in French or Spanish or Arabic !

[nooj]

While looking at Nahuatl and Otomi (two fascinating language families, of which I would love to learn a member language, if or when I ever move to Mexico), I found this anecdote of Ken Hale from a fellow linguist:

It would be so easy for each list member to contribute what
they know (even if splinter facts) about how they got into Nahuatl,
who was helpful in their formation, and what they know about other
branches on the tree.

Myself, I never took a course in Nahuatl. My professor,
Ken Hale, went to Tepoztlan during Easter vacation for few
days in 1962 and took a five inch tape back to the University
of Illinois. He totally assimilated it in a few days and then
entertained a group of us acting as our Nahuatl informant,
preparing for the summer field trip in Tepoztlan.
Ken got to Tepoztlan about three days ahead of me in the
summer and seemed to have there for a year -- his vocabulary
was incredibly large and his understanding of word formation
was... again, beyond belief.


For the last twenty+ years, I've done fieldwork on various
Nahuatl dialects.

And I'm still learning. OK, I never had a classroom professor
in Nahuatl (never took an exam), but I wouldn't be doing Nahuatl
now if it hadn't been for Ken Hale.

[nooj]

From the autobiography of the linguist Robert Dixon, about the strange coincidence of two languages, English and Mbabaram who share the same word for dog. Ken Hale figured it out.

When Ken Hale had sent the Jabugay tape, he’d urged me to find a speaker of Barbaram, the apparently aberrant language that Lizzie Simmons [“eighty years old, toothless, and cranky”–p. 54] had declined to speak to us. Certainly Dyirbal and Jabugay had very normal Australian grammar and vocabulary, not radically different from the Western Desert language, almost two thousand miles away. But from the few words that Norman Tindale had published of Barbaram, that language looked really different.
People at Mareeba had mentioned Albert Bennett, at Petford, and early one Sunday morning I set out to try to locate him… Albert was an oldish, square-framed man with curly grey hair. He was sitting stolidly on a bench just outside his open front door. I introduced myself, but he really wasn’t very interested. He didn’t remember any Barbaram language, but who’d want it anyway? What good was it?… Finally he volunteered a word.
“You know what we call ‘dog’?” he asked. I waited anxiously. “We call it dog.” My heart sank… [pp. 105-107]


Barbaram was still a major priority… I met the third and last living member of the Barbaram tribe, Jimmy Taylor, who had walked down from his barracks near the store… We had a good session, getting another seventy-five words and—even more important—bits of grammar… Most exciting of all, I could see a relationship between Barbaram and the other languages I’d studied. “Stomach” is bamba in Dyirbal but mba in Barbaram; “we two” is ngali in Dyirbal and Wagaman but li in Barbaram… Barbaram had simply dropped off the initial vowel and consonant… So Barbaram did seem to be a language of the Australian family, only it had undergone a quite regular change that had produced odd-looking words. Stress probably shifted from first syllable (as in Dyirbal) to second syllable—bámba to bambá. Then the first syllable was gradually dropped off in pronunciation, yielding modern mbá… [Dixon discovers at this point that the name of the language is actually Mbabaram and not Tindale’s “Barbaram.”]
Four years later, when I was spending a year at Harvard and first met Ken Hale, he pointed out that the e and o had developed in Mbabaram in the same sort of way as in some languages he had worked on from further up the Cape York Peninsula. An a in the second syllable of a word had become o if the word had originally begun with g. So from guwa “west”, Mbabaram had derived wo. We were sitting on a bench near Gloucester, Massachusetts one Sunday in September when Ken suddenly saw the etymology for dog “dog”. It came from an original gudaga, which is still the word for dog in Yidin (Dyirbal has shortened it to guda). The initial g would have raised the a in the second syllable to o, the initial gu dropped and so did the final a (another common change in the development of Mbabaram). Ergo, gudaga became dog—a one in a million accidental similarity of form and meaning in two unrelated languages. It was because this was such an interesting coincidence, that Albert Bennett had thought of it as the first word to give me. [pp. 125-129]

[nooj]

An edition of a magazine, Wani, dedicated to Nicaraguan languages, made by members of the community themselves.

The foreword is dedicated to Ken Hale, who worked with the Nicaraguan indigenous communities.

El lingüista Ken Hale fue ciudadano de todas las naciones. Nosotros
quisiéramos hacer explícito, en ocasión de este número de Wani que
le estamos dedicando, tres años después de su muerte, que para no-
sotros Ken Hale es un hermano. Ken Hale es un miembro de nuestra
comunidad nacional, porque se ganó ese lugar con su trabajo valio-
so y constante sobre nuestros idiomas indígenas a lo largo de casi
veinte años. El colaboró con nosotros desde nuestra perspectiva, en
función de nuestros intereses, obedeciendo a nuestros pedidos, y ex-
tendiendo su apoyo, más allá de los estudios lingüísticos, a proyec-
tos como el hermanamiento de Waspam y la ciudad de Lexington
donde vivía.

A Ken Hale, que quería siempre fundirse entre los más humildes,
sumergirse en el anonimato de los pueblos marginados, nosotros lo
acogemos en nuestra historia con amor. Porque quiérase o no, el
trabajo de Ken Hale, y el de sus alumnos y colaboradores, sobre los
idiomas de Nicaragua es una referencia que habrá de perdurar. Le
debemos, entre otras muchas cosas, estudios detallados sobre la gra-
mática de los idiomas misumalpa: miskito, ulwa y las diversas va-
riantes del mayangna; el impulso inicial para la investigación de las
particularidades del léxico y la gramática del idioma ulwa desarro-
llado posteriormente –con el apoyo de su alumno Tom Green– por
los miembros del comité del idioma ulwa (CODIUL) en Karawala;
la formación de lingüistas mayangnas a través de programas de es-
tudio desarrollados por la Universidad URACCAN con el apoyo de
otros lingüistas como el nicaragüense Danilo Salamanca y la espa-
ñola Elena Benedicto. La influencia directa e indirecta de la impor-
tante labor que realizó como investigador, como mentor y como ami-
go es inmensa.

Como atestiguan los diferentes artículos de este número de la revis-
ta, Ken Hale está con nosotros para quedarse, porque no vamos a
poder evitar evocar su nombre y su trabajo cuando hablemos de los
idiomas de Nicaragua. Quisiéramos decir aquí que podemos evo-
carlo con la veneración que reservamos a nuestros héroes cultura-
les, porque lo reconocemos como uno de nosotros

Linguist Ken Hale was a world citizen. We would like to make explicit, on the occasion of this edition of Wani that we are dedicating to him, three years after his death, that for us, Ken Hale is a brother. Ken Hale is a member of our national community, because he earned this place with his valuable and tireless work on our indigenous languages over nearly 20 years. He worked with us from our perspective, according to our interests, listening to our requests, and extending his support beyond linguistic studies to projects like that of the twinning of the cities of Waspam and Lexington, where he lived.

We welcome Ken Hale, he who always wanted to dissolve amongst the most humble of people and immerse himself in the anonymity of marginalised peoples, into our history with love. Because whether we wish it or not, the work of Ken Hale and that of his students and colleagues on the languages of Nicaragua is a reference that must endure. We owe him, among many other things, detailed studies on the grammar of the Misumalpa languages: Miskita, Ulwa and the different varieties of Mayangna; as well as the initial push for the investigation of the specificities of the lexicon and the grammar of the Ulwa language that was carried out afterwards - with the help of his student Tom Green - by members of the Committee of the Ulwa Language (CODIUL) in Karawala; or the training of Mayangna linguists by way of study programs developed by the URACCAN university, with the support of other linguists like the Nicaraguan Danila Salamanca and the Spaniard Elena Benedicto. The direct and indirect influence of the important labor that he carried out as researcher, mentor and as friend is immense.

As the different articles of this edition of the magazine testify, Ken Hale is with us for good, because we will not be able to not evoke his name and his work whenever we speak of the languages of Nicaragua. We would like to say here that we can evoke his name with the veneration that we reserve for our own cultural heroes, because we see him as one of us.

[nooj]

An interesting quote from an interview featured in that same magazine:

(AR) ¿Qué satisfacción le queda o qué motivo impulsa a Ken a meterse en comunidades tan lejanas, en busca de lenguas tan remotas?

(KH) No sé, me gusta, no sé exactamente, pero me gusta. Es una cosa de mi personalidad. Siempre me han gustado los idiomas de poblaciones pequeñas, porquecuando me crié en el sur de Arizona vivía cerca de una reserva de indígenas pápagos. Iba a la escuela con ellos y tenía compañeros de escuelas que hablaban el pápago y aprendí un poco cuando era joven y era muy interesante para mí. Siempre he buscado idiomas hablados porpoblaciones pequeñas, pero no sé exactamente por qué... Bueno, una cosa es que esos idiomas, para mí son un poco más interesantes que los otros idiomas que tienen millones de hablantes. Desde un punto de vista son más complicados, porque, en comunidades pequeñas, el enfrentamiento de los niños que aprenden el idioma y los adultos es más o menos igual, y por eso, las normas de los adultos pueden sobrevivir y las complicaciones que han introducido durante los años en la gramática pueden sobrevivir en una situación de este tipo, pero cuando hay millones de hablantes, lo que pasa es que se simplifican las dificultades o las complicaciones morfológicas y todo eso se plancha, se pierde.

Alvaro Rivas Gómez (journalist): What satisfaction does Ken Hale get, or what reason moves him to introduce himself into communities so far away, in search for languages so remote?

Ken Hale: I don't know, I like it, I don't know exactly, but I like it all the same. It's something about my personality. I've always liked the languages of small peoples, because when I grew up in the south of Arizona, I lived close to a reserve of Tohono O'odham. I used to go to school with them and I had schoolmates who spoke O'odham and I learned a little of it when I was young and it was very interesting for me. I've always looked for languages spoken by small peoples, but I don't exactly know why...well, one thing is that these languages, are for me a little more interesting than other languages that have millions of speakers. From one point of view, they're more complicated because in small communities, the confrontation between kids who learn the language and the adults is more or less the same, and because of this, the ways the adults says things, can survive and the complexities that they have introduced over the years into the grammar can survive in a situation like this, but when there are millions of speakers, what happens is that the morphological complexities or difficulties get simplified and all that gets flattened, it's lost.

In small communities, innovation can spread extremely quickly and at the same time, complexity can be preserved for much longer. Linguists have often noted that small languages often seem to be more 'complex', with complexity being a hazy term that is relative. Ubykh for example had an extremely large phonological inventory, and I guess that could be called 'complex'. Salishan languages are famous examples of polysynthetic languages with a dizzying number of morphological forms, I guess that could also be called 'complex'.

[crush]

Thanks for sharing all these articles and tidbits about Ken Hale, you just ruined my productivity at work for the day but it was really inspiring, i think many of us have here have that same affinity for smaller, more local languages. I've also seen that sentiment expressed a few times by other linguists and polyglots as well, like Alan R. King (which he discussed in a speech at the 2016 Polyglot Conference called "Size isn't everything: Studying tiny languages") and as the years have gone by i find myself more interested in smaller regional languages, though the languages i've studied have still always had thousands if not hundreds of thousands of native speakers. I really wish there were more written on how Ken Hale set about analyzing and deconstructing a language.

[Axon]

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/413d/0 ... cf77b3.pdf

About learning languages, you know that you are
some sort of a legend, when it comes to learning
languages — the number of languages you know,
the speed with which you learn new ones. Can
you give us some tips as to how to go about
learning a new language?

A legend! It’s a complete myth! Let me take this
opportunity to dispell that myth! I am going to
tell you the truth. Don’t delete this part!

Promise.

The truth is, I only know three languages and
one of them is English. So all I really learned
was two languages: Walpiri and Spanish. Those
are the only two that I feel like I know.

How about Navajo?

I know a lot about Navajo, but I can’t converse
in Navajo.

That is not true.

It is true. I can’t converse in Navajo. I can say a
lot of things that make people think I can
converse, but when somebody talks back, I can’t
respond to them in an adequate way. Saying
things is totally different from conversing. I can
say many things in different languages, but
conversing is a different thing. Talking a
language is really different from knowing
something about a language. You ask me how to
say something in Navajo and I can tell you how
to say it. But I can’t talk Navajo. That’s a totally
separate issue.

You probably just don’t have a huge vocabulary.

I have a reasonably huge vocabulary in Navajo,
but I can’t pull it out quickly. The same is true
of Papago. Papago is a language I could speak
when I was younger. But I forgot it. What I said
about Navajo applies here too: I can say all
kinds of things in Papago, complicated things,
using complex sentences. But I can’t speak
Papago. Not anymore. Talking a language is
different from saying things in a language.

You just have a higher standard than most of us.

Oh, no.

No? How about German?

No. You see, I don’t know those languages. Take
French, I can talk in French, but I can’t talk
French.

You told us earlier that recently you gave a talk
in French, and now you are telling us that you
don’t speak French.

Giving a talk in French! That’s not speaking
French! Giving a talk in a language is not
speaking a language. Speaking a language
involves so much more because it involves
formulas for talking back, for responding. I often
don’t even know how to say yes, for example. In
some languages it’s difficult to know how to say
yes. I can describe how you’re supposed to say
yes, but I can’t do it. Like Irish, I can never
respond properly in a conversation in Irish. Just
saying yes in Irish, in a conversation, it’s very
complicated. Or Ulwa. I studied some Ulwa. If I
need to, I can write a speech in Ulwa and I can
give the speech. But I can’t really talk it. I can
talk in Ulwa, but I can’t talk it. Also, things are
easier with languages like Miskitu and Ulwa
because there aren’t many conventions. You see,
as soon as there are conventions, that’s where I
fall down.

The reason why I can speak Walpiri is
because I had to speak it over a long period of
time. That’s the key to learning how to really
speak a language. In most cases I haven’t been
able to do that.

Could you tell us how you go about learning a
new language anyway?

Let me tell you something about the process of
learning a language really from scratch. That’s
the method that I like the best. It’s very simple.
You get a person who speaks the language. They
don’t have to be a linguist or anything, just a
speaker of the language and smart enough to
know how quickly to answer questions. That is
what I did with the languages that I had never
seen written, like Ulwa, Lardil or Walpiri. The
initial step is to get to a point where you have
enough control over the sound system, to be able
to write things down quickly. I just do that by
going through the names for the body parts. And
after I’ve exhausted the body parts, I go to
animals and plants and trees and things around
in the environment and people and so forth and
so on. And then after you get about 50 words,
you usually feel confident enough about the
sound system. Provided that it’s not phonetically
very complicated. For instance, if it’s a tone
system, you have to work more because you have
to compare things and so forth. But even with a
language with tones, you can usually find out
what the tone system basically is pretty quickly.
When you get to that point or even before you
get to that point, before you have full confidence
with the sound system, you start putting it into
sentences. You start with a noun because they’re
easy to elicit, verbs are not easy to elicit. You
don’t elicit verbs in isolation, you have to elicit
them in sentences. So you start putting them
into sentences. And then you build a noun
phrase up, you’ll get the determiner system.
Just build it up. For me, this is the best method.
With languages, like Modern Greek, about
which there are plenty of books. I learn ten
times more by just doing what I just told you,
because then I can hear it. I have to hear it. I
can’t just look at it. I’ve got to hear what it
sounds like.
There are some more tricks. One of these
tricks is: learn how to do complex sentences
early, not late. The reason is that complex
sentences are the truly most regular part of any
grammar because it is using just syntax. And it
sounds impressive! You can sound like you know
more than you really do! But actually it’s the
simplest trick.

The other trick is: learn how to make
relative clauses right away. Then you can say a
lot, without needing too many words, if you don’t
know the term, you can describe things with
relative clauses. That is also a very important
trick.

So we start with complex sentences and relative
clauses.

So that you can make huge and impressive
sentences. But it may happen that you can build
huge sentences and still don’t know how to
converse, because you still don’t know how to
say yes!

[Chung]

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/413d/094915a532793bfd9f04d97dcdf425cf77b3.pdf

About learning languages, you know that you are
some sort of a legend, when it comes to learning
languages — the number of languages you know,
the speed with which you learn new ones. Can
you give us some tips as to how to go about
learning a new language?

A legend! It’s a complete myth! Let me take this
opportunity to dispell that myth! I am going to
tell you the truth. Don’t delete this part!

Promise.

The truth is, I only know three languages and
one of them is English. So all I really learned
was two languages: Walpiri and Spanish. Those
are the only two that I feel like I know.

How about Navajo?

I know a lot about Navajo, but I can’t converse
in Navajo.

That is not true.

It is true. I can’t converse in Navajo. I can say a
lot of things that make people think I can
converse, but when somebody talks back, I can’t
respond to them in an adequate way. Saying
things is totally different from conversing. I can
say many things in different languages, but
conversing is a different thing. Talking a
language is really different from knowing
something about a language. You ask me how to
say something in Navajo and I can tell you how
to say it. But I can’t talk Navajo. That’s a totally
separate issue.

You probably just don’t have a huge vocabulary.

I have a reasonably huge vocabulary in Navajo,
but I can’t pull it out quickly. The same is true
of Papago. Papago is a language I could speak
when I was younger. But I forgot it. What I said
about Navajo applies here too: I can say all
kinds of things in Papago, complicated things,
using complex sentences. But I can’t speak
Papago. Not anymore. Talking a language is
different from saying things in a language.

You just have a higher standard than most of us.

Oh, no.

No? How about German?

No. You see, I don’t know those languages. Take
French, I can talk in French, but I can’t talk
French.

You told us earlier that recently you gave a talk
in French, and now you are telling us that you
don’t speak French.

Giving a talk in French! That’s not speaking
French! Giving a talk in a language is not
speaking a language. Speaking a language
involves so much more because it involves
formulas for talking back, for responding. I often
don’t even know how to say yes, for example. In
some languages it’s difficult to know how to say
yes. I can describe how you’re supposed to say
yes, but I can’t do it. Like Irish, I can never
respond properly in a conversation in Irish. Just
saying yes in Irish, in a conversation, it’s very
complicated. Or Ulwa. I studied some Ulwa. If I
need to, I can write a speech in Ulwa and I can
give the speech. But I can’t really talk it. I can
talk in Ulwa, but I can’t talk it. Also, things are
easier with languages like Miskitu and Ulwa
because there aren’t many conventions. You see,
as soon as there are conventions, that’s where I
fall down.

The reason why I can speak Walpiri is
because I had to speak it over a long period of
time. That’s the key to learning how to really
speak a language. In most cases I haven’t been
able to do that.

Could you tell us how you go about learning a
new language anyway?

Let me tell you something about the process of
learning a language really from scratch. That’s
the method that I like the best. It’s very simple.
You get a person who speaks the language. They
don’t have to be a linguist or anything, just a
speaker of the language and smart enough to
know how quickly to answer questions. That is
what I did with the languages that I had never
seen written, like Ulwa, Lardil or Walpiri. The
initial step is to get to a point where you have
enough control over the sound system, to be able
to write things down quickly. I just do that by
going through the names for the body parts. And
after I’ve exhausted the body parts, I go to
animals and plants and trees and things around
in the environment and people and so forth and
so on. And then after you get about 50 words,
you usually feel confident enough about the
sound system. Provided that it’s not phonetically
very complicated. For instance, if it’s a tone
system, you have to work more because you have
to compare things and so forth. But even with a
language with tones, you can usually find out
what the tone system basically is pretty quickly.
When you get to that point or even before you
get to that point, before you have full confidence
with the sound system, you start putting it into
sentences. You start with a noun because they’re
easy to elicit, verbs are not easy to elicit. You
don’t elicit verbs in isolation, you have to elicit
them in sentences. So you start putting them
into sentences. And then you build a noun
phrase up, you’ll get the determiner system.
Just build it up. For me, this is the best method.
With languages, like Modern Greek, about
which there are plenty of books. I learn ten
times more by just doing what I just told you,
because then I can hear it. I have to hear it. I
can’t just look at it. I’ve got to hear what it
sounds like.
There are some more tricks. One of these
tricks is: learn how to do complex sentences
early, not late. The reason is that complex
sentences are the truly most regular part of any
grammar because it is using just syntax. And it
sounds impressive! You can sound like you know
more than you really do! But actually it’s the
simplest trick.

The other trick is: learn how to make
relative clauses right away. Then you can say a
lot, without needing too many words, if you don’t
know the term, you can describe things with
relative clauses. That is also a very important
trick.

So we start with complex sentences and relative
clauses.

So that you can make huge and impressive
sentences. But it may happen that you can build
huge sentences and still don’t know how to
converse, because you still don’t know how to
say yes!

It's funny that you bring this up. I just read Michael Erard's article about Pete Buttigieg (who was the subject of this locked thread) which touches on the external mythologizing of multilingualism and even uses Hale as another example of this very phenomenon down to his own mentioning that he speaks only three languages contrary to the feats of polyglottery ascribed to him. Outsiders can be easily impressed unfortunately by something that in a certain way is a party trick ("Wow, you can speak 5 languages! You gotta be a genius!"). Somehow quantity (of languages spoken) is more important than quality for these observers. It gets even worse when they start to get carried away enough to the point that they're failing to see that multilingual abilities are tangential or just a sideshow to that person's job/aspiration. In Hale's case, I'd like to think that his contributions to non-configurationality or even his fieldwork with several languages are more important (and a better contribution to linguistics) than his being able to speak at least three languages.

[Axon]

It's funny that you bring this up. I just read Michael Erard's article about Pete Buttigieg (who was the subject of this locked thread) which touches on the external mythologizing of multilingualism and even uses Hale as another example of this very phenomenon down to his own mentioning that he speaks only three languages contrary to the feats of polyglottery ascribed to him. Outsiders can be easily impressed unfortunately by something that in a certain way is a party trick ("Wow, you can speak 5 languages! You gotta be a genius!"). Somehow quantity (of languages spoken) is more important than quality for these observers. It gets even worse when they start to get carried away enough to the point that they're failing to see that multilingual abilities are tangential or just a sideshow to that person's job/aspiration. In Hale's case, I'd like to think that his contributions to non-configurationality or even his fieldwork with several languages are more important (and a better contribution to linguistics) than his being able to speak at least three languages.

Yes, that is where I got the article!

I agree with you generally, but I still think Hale deserves the recognition that he gets for his ability to actively use the languages he studied and later taught courses about. That shows a certain scholarly dedication that stands out among other field linguists. Besides, his ability to do this also gives him the fairly unique insight about the difference between being able to easily manipulate advanced grammar and vocabulary vs deeply knowing and communicating with a particular language community.

[nooj]

Talking a
language is really different from knowing
something about a language.

I fully believe Hale when he said he could only speak three languages, but he was clearly able to use his other languages serviceably, even if he himself didn't think he could talk them. It wasn't a party trick giving a university lecture in Dutch for example or chatting with a service attendant in Turkish...that he couldn't really talk them isn't important. I would love to use even 5 languages serviceably (for example, talk to natives in a country as a tourist) even if I never reached the ability to speak them.

And even learning Warlpiri from the ground up with the help of a small community and then getting to the point where he felt he could really speak it, would be enough to earn him lasting appreciation anyway. I don't know anyone really who has gotten to fluency, starting as an adult, in a genetically unrelated language that has no written tradition.