I am working assiduously on my Reepicheep essay!
It is probably pathetic that I'm taking this so seriously. I miss school. I miss writing papers. (Yes, I'm a geek.) But most of all, I love Reepicheep. He is one of my favorite characters of all time.
The Chronicles of Narnia had a huge impact on my childhood. I fell in love with the idea of talking animals: creatures who were as intelligent as humans while still being beasty. (Not beastly.) Pattertwig the squirrel is flighty and hyperactive, hides nuts, and chatters incessantly. The dogs are energetic and loyal and loud. The Beavers build a dam--and a house. (There is never a good explanation for the sewing machine, though. We never see such a high-tech item again.) All the animals' traits become more pronounced when they get excited.
Is it any wonder I have tried to re-create a new Narnia in my Papizan chair? Why else would a grown woman have over a hundred stuffed animals with fancy names, funny back-stories, and individual personalities? Why else would my animals "talk" while maintaining their own natures?
Shylock the Squirrel patters around my kitchen table, chattering and scouting for Captain Crunch cereal. Scheherezade ("Sheree") the tiger tells stories and threatens to bite your fingers off if you interrupt her. Or threaten her baby, Periazade. Or try to steal the pie she has claimed for herself. My lion Ozymandius ("Ozzie") ("The Great and Powerful Oz") is conceited, and arrogant, but in a lovable way. Charlene the cat eats tuna fish from my food storage.
They have formed their own nation in my living room. (They chose a Parliamentary system even though they're small enough for town-hall-style direct democracy. Primarily to drive Cheryl nuts, since she hates Parliamentary systems. Also because they love Question Time. Why hunt each other when you already have a blood sport? Way better for vicarious disembowlment than the Olympics. Especially since even the smallest animal may have the wittiest tongue, if not the longest legs.)
Indeed, nothing inspired my imagination better than Narnia. And of those characters, Reepicheep was the most wonderful. He was valiant, noble, funny, loyal, courteous, cheerful, thrifty, brave...
Well, probably not thrifty. (And certainly not obedient!) But he loved liberty. And he liberated my pretend play.
I think Lewis was demonstrating that even the smallest creatures can be brave through Christ! ("Are you a man or a mouse? Are you a mouse or a lion?" "I, sir, am a MOUSE!")
Granted, my perspective has changed since I read the books at seven. (And eight. And nine. And ten. And eleven...) But to see my childhood hero attacked with unfair and unfounded arguments...! Such libel! Such liberties with the facts!
Some of you may wonder: if Reepicheep is so quick to challenge mortal combat in defense of his honor (and dignity, and pride, and...), why is he not the one refuting this calumny, this character assassination? No doubt Reepicheep would have challenged these baseless assertions swiftly if he were here. (And, loathe to fight a lady, he would have asked my sisters to name champions.) He was, however, "translated" into Aslan's Country, where he is no longer concerned with our poor, ephemeral "shadow" copy of the world. Do you expect Robin Hood to write apologetics from Heaven? Of course not. What's that? Robin Hood isn't real? Well, neither is Reepicheep! (I'm just glad he isn't around to hear me say that.)
Do you expect C. S. Lewis to refute this from Heaven? (He has probably already drafted a reply, which we will all get to read once we, too, have passed beyond this mortal plane. I look forward to gloating when that esteemed author endorses my arguments. Not very Heavenly of me, but very human.)
Well, failing those two primary sources, you get me. I may come across as comic. I may seem silly. I may even prove pathetic. (I am certainly too competitive.) But...
"On this subject, I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. No!....I am in earnest -- I will not equivocate -- I will not excuse -- I will not retreat a single inch -- AND I WILL BE HEARD." -- William Lloyd Garrison, The Liberator
I have defended Reepicheep's sanity, honor, and dignity with Lady Liberty. I will further defend him with my pen! To the death!
The post should go up...um...any day now.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Friday, July 4, 2008
Liberty Bell
Here are Cheryl's pictures:
Very nice. She says her cake was well-received by her family. It probably tasted better than mine did!
Very nice. She says her cake was well-received by her family. It probably tasted better than mine did!
Lady Liberty
I spent a large part of the day working on my Combat Challenge Cake.
I haven't received pictures of Cheryl's cake yet, but I will post them once she sends them. I must say, though, that whether hers is better or not, I am pleased with my efforts. I learned a lot! I enjoyed it! Lady liberty is imperfect--I can see lots of little flaws--but I'm still proud of my creation.
Best Mommy Moments: July 2008
I have no idea why this got posted twice. I've deleted this one. silly Gail.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Reepicheep's Honor: Challenge and Combat
[I quote, with permission, certain emails which passed between my sister Cheryl and myself this week past. They have been minimally edited. Cheryl said that adjudication would be a problem. I look to you, loyal readership, to arbitrate between us. In a completely impartial manner, of course.]
Cheryl:
Gail,
Cheryl:
Gail,
I have lost my library card and wonder it if could have fallen out of my bag at your house. If you see it, please let me know. Rachel has finished Dealing with Dragons and Doug has finished Artemis Fowl. We are almost done with The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and are already finished with The Magician's Nephew. I had forgotten that Reepicheep is completely insane. [Emphasis added] Soon I will have a little packet of your stuff to send back to you.
Cheryl
Gail:
To Our Most Noble Sister, Duchess Cheryl Homer Moody, greeting.
Reepicheep isn't crazy!....
[An impromptu essay defending this valiant mouse. In a few days, I will re-work it slightly and publish my persuasive arguments.]
...Thus, in accordance with the ancient rites of honor, I challenge you to a duel, to test upon my body whether I speak true or no. I send this epistle by the hand of my dragon, Eustace, and Njord, my henchdolphin, who shall also serve as my seconds. If you have such henchanimals who are willing -- though it would not startle me to discover your "friends" desert your cruel tyranny in your hour of direst need -- they may make arrangements for the time, place, weapons, and arbiter in consultation with my own representatives.
Trusting that you shall not prove craven, I shall have the pleasure of meeting you next upon the field of honor, whereupon I shall prove your libelous assertions false in the eyes of all the world.
My seconds are also authorized to negotiate press coverage and media rights in my behalf.
Defiantly yours,
Gail Homer Berry
Queen of Papizan, Defender of the Realm, Preserver of the Dignity of Our Subject Gentlebeings, &c.
Postscriptum: If, as I hope, our encounter shall prove fatal to your person, I shall, as a warrior of honor, forward any personal effects, such as library cards, to your heirs and estate.
--GHB
Cheryl:
Cheryl
Gail:
I accept your challenge! I can post pictures of my masterpieces of cake decorating from the last several years. (Poor Jon was hoping for a new cake out of this.) Our distance makes the taste-test impractical. I point out that buttercream frosting could result in death or maiming for
Dad.
May I post our emails on this topic on my blog? Along with my fair, unbiased commentary? [I later obtained verbal permission.]
I have not seen your library card. I merely meant that I would ship any and all personal effects to your heirs.
Cheryl:
My husband also believes this should be done with new cakes. He likens using pictures of past cakes to showing up at a duel with previously shot at paper targets. It occurs to me that next week is the 4th of July, may I suggest that we each prepare a patriotic cake? I think Reepicheep would approve of celebrating the Revolutionary ideal. Judging is a challenge, though.
Gail:
To Our Most Noble Sister, Duchess Cheryl Homer Moody, greeting.
Reepicheep isn't crazy!....
[An impromptu essay defending this valiant mouse. In a few days, I will re-work it slightly and publish my persuasive arguments.]
...Thus, in accordance with the ancient rites of honor, I challenge you to a duel, to test upon my body whether I speak true or no. I send this epistle by the hand of my dragon, Eustace, and Njord, my henchdolphin, who shall also serve as my seconds. If you have such henchanimals who are willing -- though it would not startle me to discover your "friends" desert your cruel tyranny in your hour of direst need -- they may make arrangements for the time, place, weapons, and arbiter in consultation with my own representatives.
Trusting that you shall not prove craven, I shall have the pleasure of meeting you next upon the field of honor, whereupon I shall prove your libelous assertions false in the eyes of all the world.
My seconds are also authorized to negotiate press coverage and media rights in my behalf.
Defiantly yours,
Gail Homer Berry
Queen of Papizan, Defender of the Realm, Preserver of the Dignity of Our Subject Gentlebeings, &c.
Postscriptum: If, as I hope, our encounter shall prove fatal to your person, I shall, as a warrior of honor, forward any personal effects, such as library cards, to your heirs and estate.
--GHB
Cheryl:
I stand by my assertion. Reepicheep acknowledges no reason to avoid danger in any instance. In fact, he gloriously seeks danger under the guise of adventure and labels any who refuse to join him cowards, even if they are merely cautious and perhaps want to examine the situation prior to rushing to their likely deaths. He reminds me of those who step in front of semis saying "My god will save me." The fact that he keeps being saved only encourages him and he doesn't see that not every one is so blessed.
As for the duel, honor demands that I choose the weapons. I select buttercream frosting, which is unlikely to result in death or maiming. Merely an increase in glucose levels from the taste testing. Yes, a cake decorating contest. Splendid idea. The impartial jury will be comprised of missionaries who are about to ship home.
Does that mean you found my card, or not?
Gail:
I accept your challenge! I can post pictures of my masterpieces of cake decorating from the last several years. (Poor Jon was hoping for a new cake out of this.) Our distance makes the taste-test impractical. I point out that buttercream frosting could result in death or maiming for
Dad.
May I post our emails on this topic on my blog? Along with my fair, unbiased commentary? [I later obtained verbal permission.]
I have not seen your library card. I merely meant that I would ship any and all personal effects to your heirs.
Cheryl:
My husband also believes this should be done with new cakes. He likens using pictures of past cakes to showing up at a duel with previously shot at paper targets. It occurs to me that next week is the 4th of July, may I suggest that we each prepare a patriotic cake? I think Reepicheep would approve of celebrating the Revolutionary ideal. Judging is a challenge, though.
My Twenty-ninthety-twooth birthday!
Yesterday was my twenty-ninethey-twooth birthday!
Wait. If we follow Bilbo Baggin's method (eleventy-first), that makes it sound like I'm 292 years old.
Twenty-ninth-dash-two. Twenty-nine-dash-twooth? Twenty-ninth version 2.0? Twenty-nineth the Second. (29 II). Twenty-nine-d2. That makes it sound like I need to toss a coin 29 times. (Gaming reference. D2 would mean a two-sided die, which doesn't exist, see, so...never mind.)
Twenty-ninth-take-two. And, assuming I don't get it right, I'll try twenty-nine-take-three next year. But if it takes me 9 or 10 tries to get it right, that implies I'm pathetic.
I can say twenty-nine two-point-oh. I can write 29: 2.0
That sounds like a ratio.
My twenty-ninth birthday v. 2.0. That sounds like a Supreme Court case.
Twenty-ninth and two-tenths. Two tenths. Twenths?
My twenty-nine-twenth birthday!
I begin to see why women just fib and say, "twenty-nine."
Anyway, the question is not how to write the cardinal number, but rather how to write, and say, the ordinal number.
Suggestions?
(I could just say "thirtieth," but that's way too simple। And, speaking of court cases, it sets a very bad precedent!)
Wait. If we follow Bilbo Baggin's method (eleventy-first), that makes it sound like I'm 292 years old.
Twenty-ninth-dash-two. Twenty-nine-dash-twooth? Twenty-ninth version 2.0? Twenty-nineth the Second. (29 II). Twenty-nine-d2. That makes it sound like I need to toss a coin 29 times. (Gaming reference. D2 would mean a two-sided die, which doesn't exist, see, so...never mind.)
Twenty-ninth-take-two. And, assuming I don't get it right, I'll try twenty-nine-take-three next year. But if it takes me 9 or 10 tries to get it right, that implies I'm pathetic.
I can say twenty-nine two-point-oh. I can write 29: 2.0
That sounds like a ratio.
My twenty-ninth birthday v. 2.0. That sounds like a Supreme Court case.
Twenty-ninth and two-tenths. Two tenths. Twenths?
My twenty-nine-twenth birthday!
I begin to see why women just fib and say, "twenty-nine."
Anyway, the question is not how to write the cardinal number, but rather how to write, and say, the ordinal number.
Suggestions?
(I could just say "thirtieth," but that's way too simple। And, speaking of court cases, it sets a very bad precedent!)
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Map the Linguistic Genomes!
My sister, Carrie, who is studying abroad in Grenada this summer, asked a philosophical question about linguistic globalism. This set me off, I'm afraid. After I finished a very long-winded comment on her blog, I looked at it and realized that, really, I had written my own entry.
For Carrie's original post, click here. For my slightly-edited, preachy, pedantic pontification, which exhausts everything I remember from college linguistics, keep reading.
LANGUAGE AND CULTURE
It is vitally important to make and preserve records of dying languages. It is not, necessarily, important for large groups of people to speak them.
Language has an amazing amount of nuance. It influences thought, culture, causality, and a host of other seemingly-insignificant-yet-fascinating issues.
My amazing French teacher, Madame Selke, pointed out a few differences. First, the French hate using the passive voice. They don't say "My car was stolen;" they say "Someone stole my car!"
And, as a culture, the French are much more likely to blame something. Or someone. This isn't me being a bigot; this was Madame Selke's observation, and she was a native. (My friend Katie claims that a few months ago, Parisians held a huge march protesting Winter. That's right. They were sick of cold weather, so they staged a protest. See? They like to blame something.)
Some languages are more vague. In America, you can refer to "my cousin" without it being gender specific. In a romance language, you can't get away with that. It's either "cousin" (male) or "cousine" (female). This makes it harder to lie. Or obfuscate. Or be deliberately vague. Or pull off literary twists of surprise.
Ursula K. LeGuin, author of The Earthsea books, portrays a world in which wizard's literally cannot lie in the Old Tongue, but dragons--who are ancient, and thus still native speakers--can. Think about that for a moment.
If there were a special language designed by Aspies, it would be very precise. And if your only options were to say, "I'm sorry, I will be busy entertaining my male second-cousin once-removed on my father's side," or to say, "I will be busy. I refuse to elaborate," (assuming you are unwilling to lie outrageously), it would hardly mollify a prospective boyfriend. As opposed to "Oh, I'd love to, but my cousin's in town and I promised my Mom I'd be a good hostess."
I did a linguistic exercise once where I had to interpolate translations based upon an incomplete gloss. (A "gloss" is where you get a transliteration instead of a translation. Example: "But not friend (male) my did" vs. "But my friend didn't do it!") Anyway, I spent over an hour scratching my head over a seeming inconsistency. Again, over the word(s) "cousin" There were two different terms for male cousin, and two different terms for female cousin, and I could not figure out what differentiated them.
The teacher explained, at the next lecture, that this African language I had failed to decode differentiated kinship very specifically, primarily because of rules about what kinds of cousins people could, or could not, marry. I have dug through my notes from that class, and I can't find the worksheet. :( But I have done research online and I believe the exercise was in Sudanese, which has eight different words for "cousin." (Father's brother's son, father brother's daughter, father's sister son...etc.)
Many cultures allow marriages between cousins on the father's side but not the mothers. Or marriages between parallel cousins (children of same-gender siblings) but not cross-cousins (children of opposite-gender siblings). This may reflect their observation of birth defects (if the tribe suffers from a common y-chromosome disorder, for instance, it might affect taboos about inbreeding). Often these rules reflect tribal laws of inheritance. In a patriarchal society, two brothers have an interest in their children marrying and keeping all the property in the family. Anyway, the language reflects the anthropology.
LANGUAGE AND VOCABULARY
There are a variety of Eskimo languages, but they all tend to be very polysynthetic. That means, essentially, that they instead of adding a whole bunch of words together to make a sentence, they string a whole series of morphemes together to make a word. And that "word" frequently can function as an independent sentence.
I'm trying to think if I can invent an example. Something like "un-heav-y-snow-fall-now" ("It's snowing lightly")
It is also said that the Eskimos also have eight or twenty or fifty different words for snow. Again, there are different languages, and "word" is difficult to define here since in a highly polysynthetic langauge, the difference between a "word" and a "sentence" is difficult to delineate. They have lots of morphemes which can modify the idea of snow to convey specific meanings. "Light snow," "Heavy snow," "Hard snow," "Snow falling right now," "Snow on the ground," "Crusted snow that's safe to walk on," "Powdery snow that will take a long time to wade through," and so forth. All those ideas can be conveyed in English, although not as compactly. There are probably northern languages who subdivide snow further in categories we don't think about, though. I wouldn't pretend to be an expert on whether certain Eskimos have different words for "sleet" and "snow" or if they just modify "snow" with "stinging".
The idea, of course, is that these subtleties of nuance are fascinating, and endless. Language means you can express new and novel ideas. Shakespeare invented hundreds of new words, and yet everyone immediately knew what he meant.
When the earth loses a language, it forever loses the unique ideas and perspectives and thought patterns of that language. It would be sad, indeed, if it never occurred to anyone to question authority because there was a single word for "authority" which carried, always, a positive connotation.
Madame Selke also said, "Language control is thought control. Period." She was referring to L'Academie Francaise's efforts to censor English words from the French language, but she also mentioned, eerily, "1984".
The French intelligentsia go to huge efforts to ensure that Official Documents, or TV programs, or Authorized Dictionaries say "l'ordinateur" (numberer) instead of "le computeur" (an obvious import). So far they are managing to keep their fingers in the dikes' holes. But the sea is, nonetheless, spilling over the top. If the majority of the population start using words like "le t-shirt," what can they do? (Or, for that matter, if the majority of English speakers stop using the word "whom," what can middle-school English teachers do about it?) Popular linguistic sovereignty!
The general rule of thumb is that if a language encounters a new noun (thing or idea), and it already has a word which can easily be adapted, it will adapt. But if not, it will import. If a primitive tribe in the South American rain forest encounter a truck for the first time, they are more likely to borrow the Spanish word for "truck" than to invent their own, since said truck is so alien.
But not always. The French Linguistic Police are trying, in their own way, to invent French-sounding substitutes rather than let their pure language be diluted with obnoxious Anglicisms. But, according to Jon, the Laotians just started naming car parts after animal anatomy.
Wouldn't it be sad if we lived in a world where no one, ever, thought of calling a car's rear-view mirrors "ears"?
LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION
A basic lesson from history is that people will find ways to communicate. If a bigger civilization conquers a smaller, the smaller tends to learn a new language. Remember my favorite quote: "Language is the dialect with the biggest army"?
If two different cultures try to establish trade, they are more likely to create a pidgin, or blended language. Swahili is an example of this.
Modern English began as a pidgin of Anglo-Saxon Old English and Norman French. Another example of culture: a more passive people might simply have shrugged and started speaking French. The Anglo-Saxons were dragged, kicking and screaming, into incorporating French vocabulary. (This is particularly ironic because, now, English loves to "borrow" words. We import like crazy and create even more. Another favorite quote: "English doesn't "borrow" words. English stalks other languages in dark alleys, beats them up, and then rifles through their pockets for loose vocabulary.")
In The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman said that globalization is like the sun: more good than bad, and inevitable. "It will happen whether you like it or not," he argued, "So you might as well begin adapting." The same might be said of a universal language.
In general, a "lingua franca" is beneficial. (Yes, that term, which means a commonly spoken language, derives from the time when French was the dominant language of diplomacy.) It facilitates communication and trade. But should we stop teaching college Latin classes just because nobody speaks it anymore?
LANGUAGE AND GRAMMAR
Each language is amazing, rich, unique, and vibrant. I remember studying ASL and thinking, "It never occurred to me that you could organize a sentence this way! What a fascinating grammatical structure!" (In ASL, you make a picture and present the biggest ideas first. So, spatially you would show "room-table-chairs-sofa (in the corner)"
ASL doesn't have the verb "to be." It's implied. ASL also doesn't have a passive voice, because it is all action. Now, if you had never heard of ASL, would it even have occurred to you that it was possible to have a language without the verb "to be"?
(I really wonder how an ASL interpreter would handle Hamlet's soliloquy. "Live or die?")
It was a huge revelation when, in my first semester of German, I realized that in German (and, Mom explained, Latin and other languages), it doesn't matter what order you put words in, because you change the word endings instead of the word order to create cases.
LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY
Spoken Mandarin would have little value to a deaf person, since it relies upon tone. (Does this mean that the Deaf in China rarely bother trying to speak or lip read, the way many in the U.S. do? I can't imagine anything more frustrating than a Deaf individual trying to voice Mandarin.)
Still, written Chinese could have enormous benefit for the Deaf. Mrs. Robarge says she knows someone who wants to create a written version of ASL. If he succeeds, he would probably have to study all the glyphic and pictographic written systems in the world. Even if every extant language on the planet used an alphabetic system for writing, don't you think this linguistics professor would be happy to find grammars on Egyptian hieroglyphics, or Babylonian cuneiform, or Chinese pictograms at the library?
This leads me back to the original premise: it may be impractical for smaller languages to survive. It may be relatively unimportant for smaller languages to survive. (Survival of the fittest.) But it is vitally important to preserve records.
A few decades ago, scientists embarked on a huge project to freeze samples of every plant variety they could find, to preserve genetic diversity. Nowadays they are trying to map the genomes of different plant species. We may never need a particular variety of barley again. But it's nice to have a sample around--just in case.
It's the same principle with languages. I'm not talking about charts showing which languages descended from Latin. I'm talking about recording oral tribal traditions, especially where there is no written language. Create dictionaries. Analyze syntax. Make sound recordings of native pronunciation. And then store everything in a huge granite vault somewhere.
Map the linguistic genomes!
P.S. I also agree with Mom; it would be marvelous for everyone to be bilingual, speaking both Adamic and another language. Or two. Or three.
P.P.S. Also, having a written record of languages can help with historical research. If you can map where languages influenced each other, you can map where different groups of people overlapped.
P.P.P.S. Um, sorry about my super-long rant. It's not my fault! I studied linguistics in college! Something about your blog entry set me off! I couldn't help it!...
P.P.P.P.S. Someday I'll get around to writing my "Anti-imperialistic linguistic terrorism" novel. Wahahaha.
P.P.P.P.P..S. Esperanto is great for Romance-based languages. If you already speak French, Spanish, or, especially, Portuguese, it would be marvelous. It would not be particularly helpful for native Africans, Arabs, Asians, Slavs, etc. A really good international language would rely on the International Phonetic Alphabet. And would only incorporate sounds common to 85% of all languages. Like /m/, for instance.
P.P.P.P.P.P.S. Alas, even the best artifical language is unlikely to take off. But I'd settle for reforming English spelling.
P.P.P.P.P.P.P.S. I have now flushed my buffer. 90% of everything I know about linguistics is written above. (And no longer in memory.) Therefore, comment. Please! Ask questions! Just don't expect me to know the answers!
For Carrie's original post, click here. For my slightly-edited, preachy, pedantic pontification, which exhausts everything I remember from college linguistics, keep reading.
LANGUAGE AND CULTURE
It is vitally important to make and preserve records of dying languages. It is not, necessarily, important for large groups of people to speak them.
Language has an amazing amount of nuance. It influences thought, culture, causality, and a host of other seemingly-insignificant-yet-fascinating issues.
My amazing French teacher, Madame Selke, pointed out a few differences. First, the French hate using the passive voice. They don't say "My car was stolen;" they say "Someone stole my car!"
And, as a culture, the French are much more likely to blame something. Or someone. This isn't me being a bigot; this was Madame Selke's observation, and she was a native. (My friend Katie claims that a few months ago, Parisians held a huge march protesting Winter. That's right. They were sick of cold weather, so they staged a protest. See? They like to blame something.)
Some languages are more vague. In America, you can refer to "my cousin" without it being gender specific. In a romance language, you can't get away with that. It's either "cousin" (male) or "cousine" (female). This makes it harder to lie. Or obfuscate. Or be deliberately vague. Or pull off literary twists of surprise.
Ursula K. LeGuin, author of The Earthsea books, portrays a world in which wizard's literally cannot lie in the Old Tongue, but dragons--who are ancient, and thus still native speakers--can. Think about that for a moment.
If there were a special language designed by Aspies, it would be very precise. And if your only options were to say, "I'm sorry, I will be busy entertaining my male second-cousin once-removed on my father's side," or to say, "I will be busy. I refuse to elaborate," (assuming you are unwilling to lie outrageously), it would hardly mollify a prospective boyfriend. As opposed to "Oh, I'd love to, but my cousin's in town and I promised my Mom I'd be a good hostess."
I did a linguistic exercise once where I had to interpolate translations based upon an incomplete gloss. (A "gloss" is where you get a transliteration instead of a translation. Example: "But not friend (male) my did" vs. "But my friend didn't do it!") Anyway, I spent over an hour scratching my head over a seeming inconsistency. Again, over the word(s) "cousin" There were two different terms for male cousin, and two different terms for female cousin, and I could not figure out what differentiated them.
The teacher explained, at the next lecture, that this African language I had failed to decode differentiated kinship very specifically, primarily because of rules about what kinds of cousins people could, or could not, marry. I have dug through my notes from that class, and I can't find the worksheet. :( But I have done research online and I believe the exercise was in Sudanese, which has eight different words for "cousin." (Father's brother's son, father brother's daughter, father's sister son...etc.)
Many cultures allow marriages between cousins on the father's side but not the mothers. Or marriages between parallel cousins (children of same-gender siblings) but not cross-cousins (children of opposite-gender siblings). This may reflect their observation of birth defects (if the tribe suffers from a common y-chromosome disorder, for instance, it might affect taboos about inbreeding). Often these rules reflect tribal laws of inheritance. In a patriarchal society, two brothers have an interest in their children marrying and keeping all the property in the family. Anyway, the language reflects the anthropology.
LANGUAGE AND VOCABULARY
There are a variety of Eskimo languages, but they all tend to be very polysynthetic. That means, essentially, that they instead of adding a whole bunch of words together to make a sentence, they string a whole series of morphemes together to make a word. And that "word" frequently can function as an independent sentence.
I'm trying to think if I can invent an example. Something like "un-heav-y-snow-fall-now" ("It's snowing lightly")
It is also said that the Eskimos also have eight or twenty or fifty different words for snow. Again, there are different languages, and "word" is difficult to define here since in a highly polysynthetic langauge, the difference between a "word" and a "sentence" is difficult to delineate. They have lots of morphemes which can modify the idea of snow to convey specific meanings. "Light snow," "Heavy snow," "Hard snow," "Snow falling right now," "Snow on the ground," "Crusted snow that's safe to walk on," "Powdery snow that will take a long time to wade through," and so forth. All those ideas can be conveyed in English, although not as compactly. There are probably northern languages who subdivide snow further in categories we don't think about, though. I wouldn't pretend to be an expert on whether certain Eskimos have different words for "sleet" and "snow" or if they just modify "snow" with "stinging".
The idea, of course, is that these subtleties of nuance are fascinating, and endless. Language means you can express new and novel ideas. Shakespeare invented hundreds of new words, and yet everyone immediately knew what he meant.
When the earth loses a language, it forever loses the unique ideas and perspectives and thought patterns of that language. It would be sad, indeed, if it never occurred to anyone to question authority because there was a single word for "authority" which carried, always, a positive connotation.
Madame Selke also said, "Language control is thought control. Period." She was referring to L'Academie Francaise's efforts to censor English words from the French language, but she also mentioned, eerily, "1984".
The French intelligentsia go to huge efforts to ensure that Official Documents, or TV programs, or Authorized Dictionaries say "l'ordinateur" (numberer) instead of "le computeur" (an obvious import). So far they are managing to keep their fingers in the dikes' holes. But the sea is, nonetheless, spilling over the top. If the majority of the population start using words like "le t-shirt," what can they do? (Or, for that matter, if the majority of English speakers stop using the word "whom," what can middle-school English teachers do about it?) Popular linguistic sovereignty!
The general rule of thumb is that if a language encounters a new noun (thing or idea), and it already has a word which can easily be adapted, it will adapt. But if not, it will import. If a primitive tribe in the South American rain forest encounter a truck for the first time, they are more likely to borrow the Spanish word for "truck" than to invent their own, since said truck is so alien.
But not always. The French Linguistic Police are trying, in their own way, to invent French-sounding substitutes rather than let their pure language be diluted with obnoxious Anglicisms. But, according to Jon, the Laotians just started naming car parts after animal anatomy.
Wouldn't it be sad if we lived in a world where no one, ever, thought of calling a car's rear-view mirrors "ears"?
LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION
A basic lesson from history is that people will find ways to communicate. If a bigger civilization conquers a smaller, the smaller tends to learn a new language. Remember my favorite quote: "Language is the dialect with the biggest army"?
If two different cultures try to establish trade, they are more likely to create a pidgin, or blended language. Swahili is an example of this.
Modern English began as a pidgin of Anglo-Saxon Old English and Norman French. Another example of culture: a more passive people might simply have shrugged and started speaking French. The Anglo-Saxons were dragged, kicking and screaming, into incorporating French vocabulary. (This is particularly ironic because, now, English loves to "borrow" words. We import like crazy and create even more. Another favorite quote: "English doesn't "borrow" words. English stalks other languages in dark alleys, beats them up, and then rifles through their pockets for loose vocabulary.")
In The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman said that globalization is like the sun: more good than bad, and inevitable. "It will happen whether you like it or not," he argued, "So you might as well begin adapting." The same might be said of a universal language.
In general, a "lingua franca" is beneficial. (Yes, that term, which means a commonly spoken language, derives from the time when French was the dominant language of diplomacy.) It facilitates communication and trade. But should we stop teaching college Latin classes just because nobody speaks it anymore?
LANGUAGE AND GRAMMAR
Each language is amazing, rich, unique, and vibrant. I remember studying ASL and thinking, "It never occurred to me that you could organize a sentence this way! What a fascinating grammatical structure!" (In ASL, you make a picture and present the biggest ideas first. So, spatially you would show "room-table-chairs-sofa (in the corner)"
ASL doesn't have the verb "to be." It's implied. ASL also doesn't have a passive voice, because it is all action. Now, if you had never heard of ASL, would it even have occurred to you that it was possible to have a language without the verb "to be"?
(I really wonder how an ASL interpreter would handle Hamlet's soliloquy. "Live or die?")
It was a huge revelation when, in my first semester of German, I realized that in German (and, Mom explained, Latin and other languages), it doesn't matter what order you put words in, because you change the word endings instead of the word order to create cases.
LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY
Spoken Mandarin would have little value to a deaf person, since it relies upon tone. (Does this mean that the Deaf in China rarely bother trying to speak or lip read, the way many in the U.S. do? I can't imagine anything more frustrating than a Deaf individual trying to voice Mandarin.)
Still, written Chinese could have enormous benefit for the Deaf. Mrs. Robarge says she knows someone who wants to create a written version of ASL. If he succeeds, he would probably have to study all the glyphic and pictographic written systems in the world. Even if every extant language on the planet used an alphabetic system for writing, don't you think this linguistics professor would be happy to find grammars on Egyptian hieroglyphics, or Babylonian cuneiform, or Chinese pictograms at the library?
This leads me back to the original premise: it may be impractical for smaller languages to survive. It may be relatively unimportant for smaller languages to survive. (Survival of the fittest.) But it is vitally important to preserve records.
A few decades ago, scientists embarked on a huge project to freeze samples of every plant variety they could find, to preserve genetic diversity. Nowadays they are trying to map the genomes of different plant species. We may never need a particular variety of barley again. But it's nice to have a sample around--just in case.
It's the same principle with languages. I'm not talking about charts showing which languages descended from Latin. I'm talking about recording oral tribal traditions, especially where there is no written language. Create dictionaries. Analyze syntax. Make sound recordings of native pronunciation. And then store everything in a huge granite vault somewhere.
Map the linguistic genomes!
P.S. I also agree with Mom; it would be marvelous for everyone to be bilingual, speaking both Adamic and another language. Or two. Or three.
P.P.S. Also, having a written record of languages can help with historical research. If you can map where languages influenced each other, you can map where different groups of people overlapped.
P.P.P.S. Um, sorry about my super-long rant. It's not my fault! I studied linguistics in college! Something about your blog entry set me off! I couldn't help it!...
P.P.P.P.S. Someday I'll get around to writing my "Anti-imperialistic linguistic terrorism" novel. Wahahaha.
P.P.P.P.P..S. Esperanto is great for Romance-based languages. If you already speak French, Spanish, or, especially, Portuguese, it would be marvelous. It would not be particularly helpful for native Africans, Arabs, Asians, Slavs, etc. A really good international language would rely on the International Phonetic Alphabet. And would only incorporate sounds common to 85% of all languages. Like /m/, for instance.
P.P.P.P.P.P.S. Alas, even the best artifical language is unlikely to take off. But I'd settle for reforming English spelling.
P.P.P.P.P.P.P.S. I have now flushed my buffer. 90% of everything I know about linguistics is written above. (And no longer in memory.) Therefore, comment. Please! Ask questions! Just don't expect me to know the answers!
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