Weird off-hand remarks about language

Here's another one for the files. It's from a review of what sounds like a very interesting book.

With that facility for languages that tribal peoples often have, he learned French, German, Danish (Greenland was a Danish colony at the time), and Eskimo.

So now we are not only to believe the strangest things about "tribal" languages--they have a million words for snow, they have no word for sex, etc. But something about those tribal people, they also are great talkers! They sure are good at learning languages. Must be because they speak such primative languages.

JamesDig points out elsewhere that the author, John Derbyshire, also has some interesting views on homosexuality.

"Even those penetrations consented to and not forced lower the status of the person so penetrated ... The penetrator is engaging in an act of domination, desecration and humiliation of another ..."
- John Derbyshire, April 25, 2001

"Women expect a certain amount of penetration as coming with the territory of femaleness ... "
- John Derbyshire, April 25, 2001