The mysterious Yale Burma embarrassment
Ben Zimmer just sent an update to a thread that started with a series of posts on the mobilization of American linguists during WWII:
"A tale of two societies", 3/1/2007
"Linguistics in 1940", 3/11/2007
"The Intensive Language Program", 3/20/2007
"The Chinese episode", 3/21/2007
"The Burmese Story", 3/22/2007
J. Milton Cowan's account of the Burmese Story (from American Linguistics in Peace and at War) ends with the following passage:
Things went well for about a month then one day Franklin Edgerton turned up in our office looking very embarrassed. He said that Alamon had not been entirely frank about his sources of income, and although he rather enjoyed the atmosphere at Yale and Spotty was happy and well-adjusted, he was losing money on the deal. It seems he had been running a little numbers racket in lower Manhattan. Our work was so far along and the problem of getting a replacement so great that we finally settled for doubling his salary. The unwritten history of Burmese linguistics is loaded. Alamon's successor, the other Burmese-sounding name on the Roster, gave rise to an embarrassment of the Yale linguists and the University which was as funny to outsiders as it was painful for those involved. But enough for Burmese.
Read the rest of this entry »