Are Amerindian languages simpler and more primitive than European languages?
No. Actually, no human language is ‘simpler’ than another–linguistic analysis consistently shows identical semantic content being carried by the same amount of morphosyntactic structure cross-linguistically. Besides, if one Amerindian language has a feature which someone claims is ‘simpler’ than English, you can bet the farm that one of the other 800 has the same feature more ‘complex’ than English. I saw one site claiming that Algonquian languages have ‘childlike’ noun syntax. (Algonquian languages do tend to be verb-based.) Whoever has taken this as evidence of English superiority over the Algonquins had better be prepared to submit humbly to the Inuit, though, since Inuktitut has about four times the noun phrase complexity of English. Q: Is it true that Amerindian languages have no word for time, love, honesty, etcetera? A: No. I do not know of any Amerindian language lacking words for time, love, or honesty. This statement is usually made by people who are trying to dehumanize Ind
