Monday Inspiration: Skinnyfish Music

Tags

aboriginal, audio, Australia, Australian, inspiration, music, songs

My spring semester is officially in the home stretch; just six more days and I’ll be able to sleep again!  While I’m spending my hours squeezing my brain for just one more paragraph on these final projects, I need some good music to lift my spirits and push me past the last hurdle.

The other day I was searching for an Australian Aboriginal band called Nabarlek and I discovered their record label, called Skinnyfish Music.  I am completely in love with Skinnyfish Music.  Their driving philosophy is “to work with and provide opportunities for Indigenous artists.”  Most of the artists are from the northern part of Australia (they’re based out of Darwin), but they have also signed an artist from Timor-Leste.

Thanks to the glory of the world-wide web, I can listen to Australian indigenous music while I’m writing a paper in Washington, DC.  Skinnyfish has a channel on the same website where I host my audio files, so you can listen to sample songs from all of their artists for free!  And not only are most of the songs in indigenous languages, which as you might guess is thrilling for me, but they’re also really good.  It is genuinely great music.  I have some particular favorites, including the single from Tom E Lewis, but I could listen to all of it all day long (and have been, recently.)

Here is the number one way to brighten my sleepy, stressed-out Monday: Waltzing Matilda.  In Australian Kriol.  With ukelele.

Thank you for making me ridiculously happy, Skinnyfish (and Ms. Mills).

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Friday’s Featured Language: German

Tags

audio, German, Germany, languages, poetry

Happy Friday!  If you would be so kind, could you please send me some extra brain power and a few gallons of coffee?  I could really use both right now…

Hurray for Friday’s Featured Language!

My guest today is Annie, who blogs over here in both German and English.  Annie grew up and still lives in Germany.  She says she started learning English in school in the 5th grade, and “also gained a lot of English by trying to figure out the meaning of some songs and by watching movies on DVD using the English language feature.” That sounds like a great language learning tip! (Another great tip would be to read a German blog if you’re learning German…hint-hint!)

Annie has selected a poem to share with us, to show us that “German isn’t a hard, uncomfy language one can’t bear to hear. Or speak.” She thinks German is a much more poetic language than we might realize!  She adds that she really likes this poem, and notes that it is “a bit funny and a bit sad. Both, fun and sadness, are topics of which German sounds great when talking about.”

The poem is by Theodor Fontane, who is a famous and important writer in Germany, and this poem is sometimes learned in school; Annie says, “I still remember the poem in my German book, on a double page, which a lovely pear tree on it.”

{Note: the text of the poem is a little long, so I’ve posted it here as an image with English translation side-by-side.  If you’d like to enlarge the text, just click on the image and a larger version will open in a new window.}

The source for this poem in German is here and its translation is available on this webpage that also includes a Hindi and an Afrikaans translation, if you’re interested 🙂  By the way, Annie says that we should compare the sounds of German with Dutch or Danish.  “You’ll be surprised!”

Thank you so much for sharing, Annie!

What’s in a name?

Tags

endangered languages, language death, languages, linguists

I remember when I was a kid we were taking a family road trip to New Mexico, and I was looking through a book about the history of Santa Fe, when it suddenly occurred to me that these Spanish names were equivalent to English names.  Suddenly it all made sense!  Juan is John.  Jorge is George.  Pedro is Peter.  Yes yes yes, it all makes sense.  Maria is Mary.  Diego is….

“Mom, what’s ‘Diego’?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean in English, what’s ‘Diego’?”

“Diego is just…Diego.”

I think that was the first time I began to understand that some things just don’t translate.  This was rather frustrating to me at the time.  I wanted everything to make sense, and something that didn’t have an English equivalent fell too far outside my concept of the world.

But of course, when a Spanish-speaking person calls his friend “Pedro,” he’s not really just saying “Peter.”  He’s saying his friend’s name, and a friend’s name is more than just a word, in any language.

Most of us can look up our names in a baby name book and get the etymology and the ‘meaning’ of the name.  I think Allison means something like “noble and truthful” in Old Germanic.  But when my friends or my husband or my brother or my boss says, “Hey, Allison,” they’re not literally saying “Oh, Noble and Truthful One.”  Names signify much more than can be translated.

Most words in a language are like that, actually.  One of my favorite examples comes from K. David Harrison, who has spent a lot of time with reindeer herders in central Siberia.  The Tofa people have a word: döngür.  It means “a male domesticated reindeer in its third year and first mating season, but not ready for mating.”[1]  Of course, that is the explicit information encoded in that word, but when a Tofa speaker says the word döngür, they’re not really saying all of that.  That word maps to a memory, an intuition, an understanding of their world that includes but is not limited to any dictionary definition.

The Tofa language is dying; perhaps only a dozen people remember it now.  When it goes away forever, we don’t just lose a few entries in a dictionary.  Words are never just words.  Döngür is “just” döngür, in the same way that Diego is “just” Diego.

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[1] Pg. 57.  Harrison, K.D. (2007).  When languages die: The extinction of the world’s languages and the erosion of human knowledge.  New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Pop quiz! English words from indigenous American languages

Tags

English, etymology, languages, Native American, vocabulary

If you know anything about the English language, you know that we borrow a whole lot of words from a whole lot of different languages.  The European discovery of the “New World” presented a really rich opportunity for some new word acquisition.  Imagine you’re a sailor, you land on a rocky shore, and when you wander inland you see this:

What on earth do you call that thing?

Of course, there were already people living here, and they already had words for all of these strange creatures and plants and phenonema.  Which is why we get so many words from indigenous American languages!

For today’s pop quiz, see if you can figure out which English word comes from which indigenous language family.  Clicking through on the family names will give you a map of the rough distribution of the family, which might help you out a little.

Your choices are:
a) Algonquian languages
b) Arawakan languages
c) Eskimo-Aleut languages
d) Nahuatl languages
e) Quechua languages

Which family did the following words come from?

1. Moccasin
2. Avocado
3. Iguana
4. Kayak
5. Hammock
6. Ocelot
7. Llama
8. Toboggan
9. Malamute
10. Quinoa

Extra credit: The name for this animal comes from the Guaraní word that translates to “master of the grasses.”  What do we call it in English?

 

Answers:
1. a) Algonquian, 2. d) Nahuatl, 3. b) Arawakan, 4. c) Eskimo-Aleut, 5. b) Arawakan, 6. d) Nahuatl, 7. e) Quechua, 8. a) Algonquian, 9. c) Eskimo-Aleut, 10. e) Quechua
Extra credit: Capybara!  Apparently its scientific name comes from the Greek for “water pig,” which doesn’t sound very nice.  This capybara prefers Master of the Grasses, thank you very much.

Wikipedia has a great compilation of words from indigenous American languages.  Did you ever wonder where we got words like “caribou,” “chocolate,” and “barbecue”? Have fun exploring!

Pronunciation varies

Tags

accents, English, Jamaica, Jamaican, sociolinguistics

I saw this video a while ago and I thought it was a pretty compelling demonstration of the fact that the way a person speaks can tell you much more about them than the way they look.

 

A lot of the comments on this video question whether or not the accent is fake.  To verify, I asked a friend from work, who was born in and spent most of his life in Ocho Rios.  He thought it was pretty funny that everyone was surprised there were white people born and raised in Jamaica (“of course there are white people, why wouldn’t there be?”), and this clip tickled him so much.  He laughed and applauded his answers, and said yes of course that’s a real Jamaican right there.  What’s interesting though is that it wasn’t the accent that confirmed it for him.  He pointed out that the answers the man was giving, about his favorite food, his favorite thing about Jamaica, etc., could only have come from a native Jamaican.  He also confirmed that Yellowman is objectively the correct answer to “who is your favorite reggae artist?”  🙂

He was also kind enough to translate for me.  Yes, this guy is speaking Jamaican English, and not a creole or patois that would be completely unintelligible, but I still needed a translator.  Accents are fascinating that way, don’t you think?

[P.S. if you click through to that description of Jamaican English it points out that speakers tend to have an Irish-like intonation, which you really can hear in this clip!  I thought that was pretty interesting too.]

Calling all speakers!

Tags

language, languages

Dear blog readers!

Are you or someone you love or someone with whom you have a passing acquaintance a native speaker of a language I haven’t featured yet?  Would you/they be interested in sharing the language with us in a short audio clip and text?  I love this feature, and I love hearing new languages!  And the procedure is really quite simple, and I can help you with any technical questions.

Interested?  Please comment here with contact information, or send me an e-mail directly!  polyglossic [at] gmail.com

Thank you!

People called Romans they go the house

Tags

grammar, language, language learning, Latin, Monty Python, video

I’m afraid I really am getting a reputation for being a “paradigmist“…oy.

I’m not sure if this Monday post qualifies as “inspiration” so much as catharsis.  This is a clip from Monty Python’s Life of Brian; the first time I saw this movie these three minutes made me laugh harder than anything ever.  For one thing, it’s hilarious.  For another thing, it’s hilarious in a special way to anyone who’s ever endured serious paradigm-heavy language classes.  It’s like a little reward for anyone who’s muscled through the really tough stuff!

 

On the one hand, I think most of us can empathize with the feeling of reciting declension rules with a knife against your throat.  On the other hand, this clip does demonstrate why it’s important to remember your paradigms so you can get your meaning across… 😉

Friday’s Featured Language: Chinese

Tags

Beijing, China, Chinese, Li Po, Mandarin, poetry, speakers

Happy (?) Friday.  I put that question mark in there because I’m at the point in the semester when weekends aren’t actually breaks from working, and all my days are starting to blur together…but anyway, it is Friday.  And I should remember to always be thankful for Fridays!

My guest today is Xiaofei, a speaker of Mandarin Chinese.  Xiaofei grew up in Beijing.  She studied Spanish for several years as a young teenager, and began learning English in college at Beijing University, but says “I did not get to seriously learn English until after I came to the US in 1990.” She now lives in Falls Church, Virginia, where English is the dominant language, but Mandarin Chinese is still the primary language in her home.

She says we might be surprised to know that Chinese has no verb tenses!  She also says she has “no idea how others would react to spoken Chinese,” and hopes that listeners can recognize the rhythm of the text she has selected.
*For those of you who might not know this, Chinese is a tonal language, so what you will hear in this clip is both tone, which is part of the language, and rhythm, which is part of the poem.

Xiaofei’s sample is a famous poem by Li Po, one of the greatest poets in Chinese history, and “is about the beauty of being alone and the melancholic joy of solitude.”

月下独酌

花间一壶酒,
独酌无相亲。
举杯邀明月,
对影成三人.
月既不解饮,
影徒随我身,
暂伴月将影;
行乐须及春.

我歌月徘徊;
我舞影凌乱.
醒时同交欢;
醉后各分散.
永结无情游,
相期邈云汉.

English translation:
Drinking Alone in the Moonlight

Beneath the blossoms with a pot of wine
No friends at hand, so poured wine
I raised my cup to invite the moon
Turned to my shadow, and we became three
Now the moon had never learned about my drinking
And my shadow had merely followed my form
But I quickly made friends with the moon and my shadow
To find pleasure in life, make the most of the spring

Wherever I sang, the moon swayed with me
Whenever I danced, my shadow went wild
Drinking, we shared our enjoyment together
Drunk, then each went off on his own
But forever agreed on dispassionate revels
We promised to meet in the far Milky Way

[The translation is by Elling Eide in Victor Mair, ed., The Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), p. 203.]

Mandarin Chinese is the world’s most widely spoken language, with 840 million speakers; for comparison, English only has about 330 million native speakers.  Even so, I’ve never had the pleasure of listening to poetry in spoken Chinese!  Thank you very much Xiaofei, for sharing with us!

The power and glory of click consonants

Tags

click consonants, consonants, music, phonology, South Africa, Xhosa

One of the answers for yesterday’s quiz was Xhosa.  Xhosa is spoken by almost 8 million people and is one of the official languages of South Africa; among language-loving folks, it’s probably most famous for its fabulous repertoire of click consonants.  Xhosa isn’t the only language with clicks, and its twenty-one (twenty-one!) different clicks aren’t even the most found in one language.  A small language in Botswana has eighty-three.  That language is alternatively spelled Taa or !Xoon or ǃXóõ, and no, there is no way you or I or anyone else can pronounce that correctly.

I’m really interested in phonology, so I’ve always been fascinated by click consonants.  They’re so rare, and represent a potential for sound-making that most people would never have even imagined.  For me, things like click consonants show that human languages can do almost anything.  They’re also incredibly difficult for non-native speakers to get right, and to the untrained ear it’s hard to imagine how those clicks might encode meaning like the sounds we’re used to.

Recently I’ve also discovered the unique power click consonants have for songwriters.  Lyricists who speak languages with clicks can manipulate those percussive sounds, so that their words not only carry meaning but also participate in the music-making of the song.

Here is an example from a lady named Miriam Makeba, a legendary Xhosa speaker, singer, and human rights activist.  The video quality isn’t the best, but this is the best introduction to clicks you’ll ever find, and it’s a great song too.

Pop Quiz! Language siblings

Tags

comparative linguistics, language families, languages

Historical and comparative linguists use a lot of relationship terms to describe how languages are connected.  Languages are said to exist in “families,” to be “related to” one another.  Languages that can be shown to be descended from older ones are called “daughter languages.”  (English is a daughter language of an old form of Germanic, for example.)

Sometimes languages are related to the their nearest neighbors, the way that Spanish, Italian, and Portugese are very closely related.  However, as you might guess, this isn’t always the case.  The way languages descend from and relate to each other can tell us a lot about the history of their speakers and how they migrated, settled, and interacted with one another.

So here is today’s pop quiz!  For each of these languages, which of the multiple choices is its nearest language “sibling”?

1. Afrikaans
a) Dutch, b) Zulu, c) French, d) Swahili

2. Finnish
a) Norwegian, b) Swedish, c) Estonian, d) Russian

3. Hindi
a) Tamil, b) Sanskrit, c) Telugu, d) Pashto

4. Arabic
a) Berber, b) Farsi, c) Turkish, d) Hebrew

5. Czech
a) German, b) Polish, c) Greek, d) Romanian

6. Irish
a) Welsh, b) English, c) French, d) Icelandic

7. Tibetan
a) Burmese, b) Chinese, c) Vietnamese, d) Sanskrit

8. Turkish
a) Arabic, b) Farsi, c) Armenian, d) Azerbaijani

9. Swahili
a) Egyptian, b) Arabic, c) Xhosa, d) Somali

10. Romanian
a) Bulgarian, b) Albanian, c) Italian, d) Serbian

Extra credit: Basque is a language spoken by the Basque people who inhabit a semi-autonomous region in the Pyrenees, including parts of Spain and southwestern France.  What language is Basque most closely related to?

Location of Basque Country

Answers:
1. a) Dutch, 2. c) Estonian, 3. b) Sanskrit, 4. d) Hebrew, 5. b) Polish, 6. a) Welsh, 7. a) Burmese, 8. d) Azerbaijani, 9. c) Xhosa, 10. c) Italian
Extra credit: Trick question!  Basque is a language isolate.  Linguists have never been able to prove a relationship between Basque and any other language, anywhere in the world; no one has any idea where it came from or how it got there.  Isn’t that fascinating??  🙂

I’ve posted this map with a pop quiz before, but it is so full of information and it is just so interesting that I thought it was worthwhile to post again.  This comes from wikipedia; if you click on the image, it will open a full-size map with clickable links to all the language families.  Enjoy!