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Tag Archives: inspiration

In memoriam – the last Navajo code talker

11 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by polyglossic in endangered languages, inspiration

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endangered languages, inspiration, language diversity, languages, Native American, Navajo, WWII

Last week, right around the time we were observing the 70th anniversary of D-Day, the last of the original Navajo code talkers passed away.  Chester Nez was 93 years old when he “walked on.”

You might know about the Navajo code talkers in World War II – Nez himself co-wrote a best-selling book about his experiences in the war, and they even made a movie with Nicolas Cage about them.  But I learned some new things when I got the chance to visit the Comanche National Museum and Cultural Center a couple of years ago.  Codetalkers were used as early as World War I, where Cherokee and Choctaw speakers helped the US and Britain evade detection in major battles on the Western Front.  The genius of these “codes” is that they’re not codes at all, but real full languages.  Not even sophisticated decryption machines could “crack” the languages, and not a lot of people outside Native American communities speak Cherokee or Choctaw, so the WWI operations were considered a remarkable success.

It was a success that got a lot of attention, actually, and as Adolf Hitler was building up to what would become WWII, he sent linguists and anthropologists all across the US to attempt to learn our indigenous languages – hoping to head the next crop of code talkers off at the pass, as it were.  But there are just too many languages here (we are so linguistically diverse!), and US forces were able to use code talkers from 33 tribes, including the Comanche, Seminole, and Navajo, to transmit messages in WWII.

The most famous and most numerous of these operations involved a group of 29 Navajo speakers, known as the “original 29” recruited by the Marine Corps in 1942 (eventually a few hundred more would join.)  Navajo has a reputation as an extraordinarily difficult language, and anthropologists estimated that fewer than 30 non-Navajos could speak the language with any fluency by the time WWII broke out.  The Navajo code talkers didn’t just speak to each other in their native tongue.  They developed a set of code words for military terms, and changed the Army/Navy Phonetic Alphabet (i.e. Alfa, Bravo, Charlie) into one based on animals and geographic features (i.e. Ant, Bear, Cat), which they then translated into Navajo (i.e. Wóláchííʼ, Shash, Mósí).

Chester Nez was the last of these original 29 Navajo codetalkers from WWII.  Here is a video of him discussing his experiences in the Marine Corps in the Pacific theater:

 

In November of last year the code talkers from the 33 tribes were all honored and presented with Congressional Gold Medals for their service.  At the ceremony, Senator Harry Reid said:

“In the late 1800s, the United States government forced Native American children to attend English only boarding schools. Native children were torn from their families, taken far from home in boxcars and buggies, given English names, forced to cut their hair short and teachers beat the children with leather straps when they spoke their Native languages. The government told them their language had no value, but the children held onto their language, culture and history at great personal risk.
In this nation’s hour of greatest need these same Native American languages proved to have great value in the early years of World War II…Why would Native Americans, who had been robbed of their land and their culture agree to use their precious language to protect the country that had neglected and abused them for centuries? As one Navajo Native American code talker by the name of Chester Nez put it, ‘Somebody has got to defend this country, somebody has to defend freedom.'”

Ahéhee’, to Chester Nez.

 

Copyright Allison Taylor-Adams.  See About for details.

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Monday round-up: Lakota language

12 Monday May 2014

Posted by polyglossic in endangered languages, Green Book

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endangered languages, inspiration, Lakota, language diversity, language learning, language revitalization, languages, Native American

Yesterday was Mother’s Day in the US, so I had a long phone call with my mom.  She told me that she and my dad are planning to take a vacation soon the the Black Hills of South Dakota, and we talked for a long time about that land, the people who live there, the language(s) they speak, and the head-scratching irony of naming a state park after General Custer (seriously…)

The Lakota language, like almost all Native American languages, is classified as “threatened,” and the speaking population continues to decrease as members of older generations pass on.  But organization like the Lakota Language Consortium are working hard to reach younger speakers and encourage the preservation and revitalization of their language.  And dedicated teachers in the elementary and secondary schools on reservations like Pine Ridge teach the language to their students.  Here is one such teacher, Roger White Eyes, speaking Lakota and talking about the importance of teaching the language:

I’ve blogged before about one of the projects the Lakota tribe is using – this delightful all-Lakota version of the Berenstein Bears.  I’ve also written about the difference between the terms Lak(h)ota, Nakota, and Dakota.

Roger White Eyes says, “This language has a spirit.”  Maybe before their trip, my parents can visit the Lakota Language Forum to learn some greetings!  Getting a taste of the language is sure to help them understand the spirit of that part of the Great Plains.

Copyright Allison Taylor-Adams.  See About for details.

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Monday Inspiration: How to become a linguistics professor

14 Monday Apr 2014

Posted by polyglossic in inspiration, linguistics, linguists, video

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inspiration, linguistics, linguists, MIT, semantics, von Fintel

Recently I came across an interview conducted by the website How to become a professor with Professor Kai von Fintel of MIT.  The interview is called “How to Become a Linguistics Professor,” but I found it to be even much more than just instructions on getting a faculty position.  Professor von Fintel offers really sound, specific, and practical advice on how to be a scientist (of language, and in general), how to be a good researcher, how to publish, and how to stay current in your particular field.   I love what he says about the kinds of questions good scientists should ask, and about the nature of inquiry and discovery.

It really is worth twenty minutes of your time!  Watch the interview, and check out the original page which has some further thoughts and helpful links.

 

Copyright Allison Taylor-Adams.  See About for details.

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Pop quiz: Happy Polyglossic Birthday!

05 Tuesday Mar 2013

Posted by polyglossic in blog, inspiration, languages

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applied linguistics, blogiversary, endangered languages, inspiration, languages, linguistics, polyglossic

Dear blog readers,

Today Polyglossic officially turns one year old!  On March 5, 2012, I published my very first post.  This year we’ve explored endangered languages, applied linguistics, ancient tongues, writing systems, and even a mystery or two.  I’ve been excited to share featured speakers of ten different languages.  And during this year this blog has been visited by readers by 113 different countries.  (Isn’t the internet astonishing??)

Today, to celebrate, I have created a little pop quiz!  Here is how you say “Happy Birthday” in ten different languages; the multiple-choice options are countries I’ve had blog visitors from this year.  In which of the countries would you be most likely to hear the greeting?  (Please note: I have sneakily chosen transliterated text so you don’t have a different script as a hint)

  1. Yom Huledet Sameakh
    a. Maldives   b. Israel   c. Cyprus   d. Hungary
  2. ¡Feliz cumpleaños!
    a. Spain  b. El Salvador  c. Ecuador  d. Argentina
  3. S dniom roždenija!
    a. Croatia   b. Greece   c. Russia   d. Malaysia
  4. Til hamingju með afmælið
    a. Iceland   b. Finland   c. Lithuania   d. Latvia
  5. Selamat ulang tahun
    a. South Africa   b. Indonesia   c. Slovakia   d. Cambodia
  6. otanjōbi omedetō gozaimasu
    a. Japan   b. Hong Kong   c. Myanmar   d. Marshall Islands
  7. eid mīlad sa’aīd
    a. Libya   b. Lebanon   c. Morocco   d. Egypt
  8. Gëzuar Ditëlindjen
    a. Azerbaijan   b. Turkey   c. Ukraine   d. Albania
  9. Alles Gute zum Geburtstag
    a. Belgium   b. Austria   c. Germany   d. Switzerland
  10. Breithlá sona duit
    a. France   b. Poland   c. Ireland   d. Malta

All text here comes from the good people at Omniglot.  If you click through you’ll find audio files for most of them!

Map of visitors to Polyglossic!

Map of visitors to Polyglossic!

Answers:

  1. b. Israel (listen to some Hebrew here!)
  2. e. all of the above 🙂  Here is our featured speaker of Argentinian Spanish!
  3. c. Russia
  4. a. Iceland
  5. b. Indonesia (our first featured speaker shared an Indonesian poem here)
  6. a. Japan (and here is a poem in Japanese!)
  7. e. all of the above.  Another trick!  This is Modern Standard Arabic, so although all of the countries listed here would have their local equivalents, this version would be understood in all of them.
  8. d. Albania
  9. e. oh now I’m just not being fair at all.  This is the phrase in German, which is an official language in all four of these countries!  (Here is our featured speaker of German)
  10. c. Ireland (listen to some spoken Irish here!)

*   *   *

Thank you everyone who has visited, read, shared, and commented.  It’s been a wonderful year and it has been a joy to get to share my love of languages with this little part of the internet.  Like I say in my “About” page, Polyglossic describes a world that is rich, vibrant, and robust in linguistic diversity.  I’m looking forward to another year of encouraging and celebrating that world.

Happy birthday, blog!

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“It’s all so precious.”

08 Monday Oct 2012

Posted by polyglossic in endangered languages, inspiration, languages

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Columbus Day, endangered languages, inspiration, language diversity, language revitalization, languages, Native American

Today is a federal holiday in the US, known as Columbus Day.  Anyone with a passing familiarity with the history of Christopher Columbus and everything he represents to the indigenous peoples of the Americas probably won’t be surprised that there are quite a few protests associated with this holiday.

I’m going take a cue from many activists (as well as the South Dakota state government) and use today to recognize the linguistic heritage of indigenous Americans.  Instead of celebrating the man who “discovered” America (ha), I invite you all to join me in celebrating the incredible richness and diversity of the languages of the people who were here for quite a few years before the Santa María rolled in.  Read a little bit about the indigenous languages of the Americas on wikipedia.  Explore the interactive map of the Americas at Google’s Endangered Languages website.  Discover the features at the fabulous and inspirational project called Our Mother Tongues (and send your friends an e-postcard!)  And watch this video of an incredible woman who is almost single-handedly reviving that which was lost:

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Happy European Day of Languages!

26 Wednesday Sep 2012

Posted by polyglossic in languages, speakers

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Tags

Europe, Indo-European, inspiration, languages, linguistic diversity, speakers

The Council of Europe has designated September 26 as European Day of Languages, and this year marks the 11th time that educators and policymakers across the continent have marked the occasion.  There is an eye-popping array of activities and events organized by school groups, language institutes, and community organizations.  There are competitions and tournaments, community fairs, language panels, book launches…all sorts of exciting and creative ways of celebrating languages in Europe.

The central website for the day itself is rich and informative and entertaining; you really should take a look!  There are facts and trivia and way too many fun language-themed games.  Plus you can self-assess your language skills using the European framework or take a quiz to test your knowledge of the languages of Europe.  I especially love that the website takes into account ALL of the languages currently spoken on the continent, not just the big Indo-European ones we all probably studied in high school (French-German-Spanish); immigrant languages like Arabic and Urdu and smaller indigenous languages like Basque and Irish are also represented.

 

(By the way, if you’d like to hear more of some of these languages, please check out the featured speakers who shared Danish, German, Irish, and Italian with us on this blog!)

The Council of Europe identified three goals for this Day:

  1. Alerting the public to the importance of language learning and diversifying the range of languages learnt in order to increase plurilingualism and intercultural understanding;
  2. Promoting the rich linguistic and cultural diversity of Europe, which must be preserved and fostered;
  3. Encouraging lifelong language learning in and out of school, whether for study purposes, for professional needs, for purposes of mobility or for pleasure and exchanges.

Plurilingualism, linguistic diversity, and lifelong language learning.  Now those are great reasons to throw a party!

***
P.S. I am so inspired by the enthusiasm and mass participation that this day gets.  I think we need one of these for every continent.  It’s high time we celebrate North American Languages Day!  Who’s with me?

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100th post!

25 Tuesday Sep 2012

Posted by polyglossic in blog, quotes

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Tags

blog, inspiration, language, languages, quote

Dear readers,

This is my 100th polyglossic blog post!  To celebrate, I would like to share a quote I came across recently:

Many things in life yield up their mysteries and lose their fascination after a little bit of examination and analysis.  Language is not like that.

I couldn’t agree more.  Here’s to even more examination and analysis.  Here’s to the mysteries and fascination of language!

 

[quote is from O’Grady, W. (2005). How Children Learn Language (Cambridge Approaches to Linguistics), p. 197]

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Monday inspiration: Jean Berko Gleason

11 Tuesday Sep 2012

Posted by polyglossic in inspiration, linguistics, linguists, video

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inspiration, Jean Berko Gleason, language, linguistics, linguists, psycholinguistics

The fact that this Monday inspiration did not appear until Tuesday should give you an idea of the Monday I was having.  First day of classes, and everything that could have gone wrong technology-wise did go wrong.

Everything finally seems to be working now, and this morning I found a video that my professor had posted for our first Pscyholinguistics class.  I had heard of the “Wug test” before, but never knew anything about its creator, a psycholinguist by the name of Jean Berko Gleason.

 

My goodness, if I study hard, do I get to be friends with this lady??  Talk about inspirational!

 

Isn’t it amazing the difference a person makes? Much in the same way that Neil DeGrasse Tyson makes me, a very non-hard-science-y person, fascinated with astronomy, Professor Gleason is getting me fired up for a subject I never really thought too much about.  She needs her own TV show.  She could be the Bill Nye the Science Guy of psycholinguistics.

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“Fear and negativity are foreign to our vocabulary.”

10 Friday Aug 2012

Posted by polyglossic in languages, music

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

diversity, inspiration, language diversity, languages, Punjabi, religion, Sikh, Sikhism

Today, friends and family members will hold a collective funeral at the Sikh gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin.  I’m sure most of you have heard by now of the shooting at this temple that killed six people.  It is a crime that is shocking and horrifying, even more so because it seems clear now that it was motivated by ignorance, intolerance, and blind hatred.

There is some hope that something good might come out of this irredeemable tragedy.  Suddenly this week, most Americans have started to think about and learn about their neighbors who identify as Sikhs, and have started to learn something about the Sikh religion and Sikh culture.  So perhaps this can dissipate some of the benign ignorance we all live with.

Even more importantly, perhaps this can dissipate some of the malign mistrust and hatred of “different” people we might feel.  Initial news reports about the shootings repeatedly pointed out that Sikhs are not Muslims, which disturbingly implies that shooting several innocent Muslim worshippers might be more understandable.  But everyone I know reacted strongly and immediately against that idea.  The point is not that they’re the wrong kind of different.  And as people are learning more about what Sikhism is all about, and about the hardships that Sikhs have had to endure in recent years, I hope very much that we are all learning to think more carefully about the ways that both Sikhs and Muslims are unfairly mistreated, judged, and, occasionally, viciously attacked.  As the Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America said, “It is my hope that this is more than a time to express personal sorrows.”

I realize that this post doesn’t seem to have much to do with language, but I hope you’ll forgive me.  And it’s not exactly unrelated – language is yet another way we notice and mark difference between communities.  It is far too easy, sometimes, for difference to take on negative connotations; those-not-like-us are easy targets for frustrations and malice.  But it is my firm belief that diversity – cultural, religious, and of course linguistic – is what gives color and contour to our experience of being human.  As Wade Davis says, it makes the world polychromatic.

So, here is my small attempt at solidarity with my unknown brothers and sisters in the Sikh community.  Maybe we can honor the memory of the victims by reading a little bit about Punjabi, the language in which the Sikh scriptures were written.  Or by watching this video, sung in Punjabi, demonstrating some of the Sikh ritual practices.

 

And please take a moment to read this short but beautiful piece titled “As a Sikh-American I Refuse to Live in Fear and Negativity.”  It’s in English, but I’ll blog more about languages some other day.

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Monday Inspiration: Lost Words documentary

06 Monday Aug 2012

Posted by polyglossic in endangered languages, inspiration, languages, video

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

endangered languages, inspiration, language death, language revitalization, languages, Lost Words, Native American

Filmmaker Brian McDermott is currently putting the finishing touches on a documentary called Lost Words.

 

<goosebumps>

The filmmaker is still seeking small donations to complete the production, so please check out the film’s website and consider supporting this very worthy project!

P.S. I also wrote about the role of boarding schools and Native American language extinction in my guest post for the Living Tongues Institute.  Please check it out, and then keep your eyes peeled for this full-length documentary which will cover the topic in much more depth!

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Recent Posts

  • “I’m proud to be a linguist.” – CoLang 2014
  • CoLang 2014
  • Quick update: Welcome me to Twitter!
  • In memoriam – the last Navajo code talker
  • The language of summer
  • Monday Inspiration: A linguist reads the menu
  • Nowoo3 Hall and the politics of naming

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© Allison Taylor-Adams and Polyglossic, 2012-2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Allison Taylor-Adams and Polyglossic with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Copyright notice

© Allison Taylor-Adams and Polyglossic, 2012-2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Allison Taylor-Adams and Polyglossic with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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