This Is What They Say

Francois Mandeville was a master storyteller born at Fort Resolution in the Northwest Territories in 1878. Fifty years later, at Fort Chipewyan, Alberta, he dictated a book of stories to a young and very talented Chinese linguist, Li Fang-kuei, who wrote them down in the Chipewyan language. Ron Scollon , former professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, first translated these stories in the 1970s after studying with Li, and returns to them here after a lifetime of work and serious play among the mysteries of human language.