Fact or Fiction? Truth or Reality? Language blurs distinction

Economical with the truth?

Apr 18th 2011, 14:38 by R.L.G. | NEW YORK

GREG MORTENSON claims to have tried and failed to climb K2 (the world's second-highest mountain), stumbled into a village alone after being separated from his party on the way down, and been nursed back to health by kind villagers. He also claims to have been kidnapped, years later, by the Taliban in Waziristan. He wrote a book, "Three Cups of Tea", which has become something of a manual for understanding Central Asia, even being given to American troops serving there. And he has started an organisation called the Central Asia Institute that builds schools and offers other services in the region.

Now Mr Mortenson is being accused by CBS News of fabricating some of his stirring tales. (He is also accused of potential financial improprieties regarding CAI money, not the subject of this post.) CBS spoke to two porters who left K2 with Mr Mortenson, contradicting his claim to have stumbled alone into the village of Korphe.

Mr Mortenson's  written response blames the confusion on the Balti language of the people of Korphe:

Even the Balti language — an archaic dialect of Tibetan — has only a vague concept of tenses and time. For example, "now" can mean immediately or sometime over the course of a whole long season. The concept of past and future is rarely of concern.

Calling Balti an "archaic dialect" is odd; it is a full-blown language according to Ethnologue, and no language is any more archaic than any other. But this seems as though it might be an attempt to set up a linguistic defence: Balti, being archaic and a mere dialect and all, doesn't have concepts of time that would allow the villagers to be reliable in contradicting Mr Mortenson.

People should know by now that this kind of thing can be checked. Just because Korphe may not have a broadband connection doesn't mean that Mr Mortenson is the only person who has learned about its language. Mark Liberman found a book on tense and aspect in Tibetan languages, which includes a discussion of Balti:

Balti and Ladakhi, spoken under Pakistan and India regime, are not mere Tibetan dialects, but have, in contrast to Central Tibetan, generalized the past marker suffix -s for controlled action verbs, have introduced a general Past Marker and thus have fully grammaticalized the concept of TENSE-A, …

And so on. Balti's alleged lack of care for time is not getting Mr Mortenson off the hook here.
In fact, English can allow a lot of vagueness in describing a sequence of events in time. Could Mr Mortenson be taking advantage of our archaic dialect's ambiguity? CBS asked him point-blank in writing:

Did you really stumble into Korphe after failing to summit K2? 

Mr Mortenson's words his response rather oddly for a man who claims to have wandered into the village near death:

Yes, I first visited Korphe village, Braldu valley, Baltistan, Pakistan after failing to summit K2 in 1993.

"Visited" is a strange word in this context, if Mr Mortenson indeed staggered in by chance. And "after failing to summit K2 in 1993" leaves him rather a lot of temporal wiggle-room. The "1993" bit can refer to the failed K2 attempt, not the visit, so "I first visited Korphe after failing to summit K2 in 1993" can mean "I first visited Korphe in 1994."  It doesn't have to mean that, but it certainly can.
A final bit of linguistic interest concerns Mr Mortenson's story of being kidnapped by the Taliban. CBS asked:

Were you kidnapped for eight days by the Taliban in Waziristan in 1996? Three of the men in the photo you published in Stones into Schools deny that they kidnapped you and say they are not Taliban.

Mr Mortenson reiterates clearly that he was detained for eight days against his will. But were they Taliban?

A "Talib" means student in Arabic, and yes there were Taliban in the region.

Nobody is claiming that there were no Taliban in the region. And indeed talib does mean "student" in Arabic. But this doesn't make any old student a member of the Taliban any more than a brother who is a Muslim is ipso facto a member of the  Muslim Brotherhood. And Arabic is not the language of this region; Pushtu is, and according to this dictionary, "student" in Pushtu is either zkadawunkay, shalgerd, mota'lem, mohasel or maktabi.  Some of these words are Arabic borrowings (like mota'lem), but talib isn't among them. So I'm surmising that Taliban among Pashto-speakers refers specifically to the Islamist militia, not any group of students. If Mr Mortensen was indeed held hostage by students, the explanation that talib means "student" in Arabic will not mean that he was taken by the Taliban as we know it.

Source: http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2011/04/honesty_and_language