Nowoo3 Hall and the politics of naming

Tags

Arapaho, Colorado, endangered languages, language, language policy, languages, Native American, sociolinguistics

This month’s issue of Harper’s Magazine included the publication of a letter sent to the Campus Planning Board at the University of Colorado-Boulder in November of last year.

The letter pertained to two dormitories on the campus that were due to be renamed.  The Board had proposed renaming the dorms after two prominent historic chiefs of the Arapaho nation, the original owners of the land on which the University sits.  The two chiefs in question are commonly referred to in the modern day as Niwot and Little Raven.  However, members of the faculty of the Native Studies program at CU argued that it was “culturally chauvinist” to use these names instead of the names given to the chiefs in their native Hinono’ei, or Arapaho language.  In the Arapaho language, “Niwot” would properly be spelled Nowoo3, and “Little Raven” is just a direct translation of the Arapaho name Houussoo. In the case of “Niwot,” the chair of the linguistics department (one of the authors of the letter) argued that we would never think to name something after a French leader and insist on transliterating it into English spelling just because the spelling makes it confusing to pronounce – it would be like writing Sharl duh Gahl on something, which he said would look pretty stupid.  Similarly translating Houussoo into English is not something we typically do with European languages, or else we’d have things in DC named after Stone the Child instead of Pierre l’Enfant, for example (goodness, doesn’t that give you a different sense?)  The letter argued that such a naming policy further serves to “primitivize” native languages and native peoples.

This plea caused some controversy, of course.  Amongst quite a lot of accusations of “PC Police” and comments ranging from vaguely to wildly racist, there were some cogent counterpoints.  One argument I thought was particularly on point is that the Arapaho language, unlike the French of Charles de Gaulle or Pierre l’Enfant, did not have an orthography in the 1800s when these two chiefs were in power – that is, Chief Nowoo3 or Niwot or Na-wath (roughly the correct pronunciation) never saw his own name written down, so it is hard to say that Niwot is really a “misspelling.”  While that is true, the Arapaho language has developed a written form since then, and strong efforts are being made to document the language (in its specific, non-English orthography) and to revitalize it (see here, for example.)  Deliberately ignoring these efforts, and more importantly deliberately ignoring the spelling conventions of thousands of currently living members of the Arapaho tribes, does indeed strike me as being thoughtless at the very least.

The translation of Houussoo to “Little Raven” seems even more difficult to defend.  It’s hard to understand any objections to this point.  And in case you thought there was no harm in translating native North American names into English, I’ll give you my favorite example: a prominent leader of the Oglala Lakota in the 19th century had the Lakota name Tȟašúŋke Kȟokípȟapi, and is almost always referred to in American history books as Young Man Afraid of His Horses.  “Young Man” is a rough translation of the first name, and “Afraid of His Horses” is pretty close to the last name, but the overall impression is of a puny Plains Indian so wimpy he’s scared of his own horses.  A more accurate translation of the name is something like They-Fear-Even-His-Horses.  Now that sounds more like a strong military and diplomatic leader.  But his name, his real given name, is Tȟašúŋke Kȟokípȟapi.

I would argue that the one underlying objection to “Nowoo3 Hall” is just laziness, plain and simple.  I’m not immune to it – before I did some reading I was left scratching my head as to how in the world you would pronounce that.  We Anglophones, especially we American Anglophones, can be pretty lazy and resistant when it comes to learning how to pronounce anything in any other language (let alone learning another language.)  But is laziness a good enough reason for cultural insensitivity?  The CU faculty point out that other universities have named buildings after native leaders in native orthographies – the Muwekma-tah-Ruk residential hall at Stanford, the Kanonhsesne residential community at UMass Amherst, and the very loveliest example I’ve ever seen, the Xwi7xwa Library at the University of British Columbia (I’m still pondering the pronunciation of that one.)

Both of the CU residence halls were due for a renaming ceremony in April, but I’ve been poking around and I can’t find any news about what was decided, and the CU website still lists the halls under their old names (Kittredge Central and Kittredge West.)  What do you think they board should decide?

Copyright Allison Taylor-Adams.  See About for details.

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What makes a language difficult?

Tags

applied linguistics, difficulty, French, Greek, language, language learning, languages

When I was researching for last week’s Pop Quiz, I came across this article from the Economist, subtitled “In Search of the World’s Hardest Language.”  The author examines different ways that languages can be difficult.  For instance, English spelling is pretty irregular, but French “gives it a run for it’s money” – no one who has ever studied French would argue for a one-to-one correspondence between spelling and pronunciation.  Latin and Greek get a nod for being much more highly inflected than English (remember that scene from Monty Python?)  Then there are difficult sounds, such as the Scottish “ch”, the German umlaut, or the “much more exotic vowels” of Chinese.  (I would like to point out here that he’s getting “vowels” and “tones” mixed up in his discussion – tones are of course difficult for nonnative speakers, but they’re linguistically a separate issue than vowels, strictly speaking – see the discussion here if you’re interested.)  The author also lists languages with difficult consonant inventories, such as Ubykh with its purported 78 distinct consonants, and of course my favorite, the languages with a glorious array of click consonants.  There are languages with complex morphology, for instance marking for not only gender, number, and case, but also noun class; there are agglutinating languages such as Turkish, where single words can contain dozens of syllables as the morphemes pile up.

I bring this up because I am curious as to what each of you would say makes a language “difficult,” in terms of learning them as non-native speakers.  I have a strong suspicion it depends on each person’s unique skills and personality.  Some people have a musical ear and can pick up pitch and tone much easier than others.  Some people are analytical and can sense, and then use, complex grammatical patterns, while the rest of us scratch our heads.  I also imagine it has a lot to do with your native language(s) and with your previous language learning experience.  The author of the Economist article notes that “Languages tend to get ‘harder’ the farther one moves from English and its relatives,” which seems like a fairly intuitive rule of thumb for monolingual Anglophones.  But if you grew up in a bilingual English/Tamil household, that could strongly affect what you find “difficult” about learning a third language.  And if you’ve already taken some courses in, say, Arabic, the intricacies of related languages like Hebrew are probably a lot less daunting.

The author of this article selected Tuyuca as the “hardest language,” mostly as a consequence of its detailed and complex system of marking verbs for evidentiality – in Tuyuca, you have to add a bit at the end of each verb to indicate how you came to know the information you are sharing in the sentence (did you see it yourself?  did someone tell you about it?)   That’s certainly a lot to deal with every time you utter a sentence, especially if you’ve never had to do it before.  But does that make it the hardest?

What qualities do you find the most difficult about a language?  What’s the most difficult language you’ve tried studying?  What features do you find aren’t so difficult for you, that might present problems for other people?

I’d like to write more about difficulty in language learning, but first I wanted to get your thoughts!

 

Copyright Allison Taylor-Adams.  See About for details.

Huh?

Tags

huh, language, languages, linguistics, research, speakers

In my last post I talked about some of the differences among the world’s languages that I find fascinating.  So now let’s mix things up and examine something that the world’s languages might have in common. An article in last month’s Smithsonian Magazine highlighted new research coming out of the Max Planck Institute for Pscyholinguistics.  The researchers’ findings?  The word “huh?”, with a bit of pronunciation variation, is common to a wide variety of languages from communities all across the world.

Here are the audio samples they gathered for the ten languages they studied in depth:

Pretty interesting, right?

The researchers have put together a website breaking down the main points of their research, as well as a very clear FAQs section (the original research report is here.)  They address questions about language contact (did speakers just pick up this sound from other languages?), language inheritance (maybe all of these languages are related and that’s why they have the same word?), sampling size, and whether or not the sound is really just a grunt, rather than a real word in a linguistics sense.  I think their answers and their research is pretty compelling, especially since the languages they investigated are so diverse, both genetically and geographically.  There must be some other explanation for the similarity.

What the researchers themselves suggest is that this is evidence of “convergent cultural evolution” – we all independently evolved this nice little word because we all needed a word to fulfill the function of a quick request for clarification, and “huh?” is a simple and convenient choice for many reasons (the Smithsonian article does a great job summarizing these reasons).

A couple of interesting things to note:

• first of all, the researchers did NOT claim that huh? is “the universal word” as many writers have suggested.  They are careful to note that they did not, of course, gather samples of this word from all 7,000+ spoken languages in the world, and the title of their article is specifically in the form of a question (“Is ‘Huh?’ a universal word?”)  Making absolute claims like “In fact, they’ve found, huh? is a “universal word,” the first studied by modern linguists“, as the author of the Smithsonian article does, is something the researchers were careful to avoid (though they do think their hypothesis is very strong.)
• secondly, the research is talking about a specific usage of the word “huh.”  English uses this sound/word in a lot of different contexts, such as:
  -an exclamation of surprise or interest (“That word is the same in 31 different languages? Huh!”)
  -a request for confirmation or solidarity (“This research is pretty interesting, huh?”)
  What this research focuses on is the function of “initiating repair” – you misheard something your interlocutor said, or misunderstood something, and immediately respond “huh?” in an attempt to repair the communication error.  That is the function that is common across all the languages studied.

Check out the research and the article, it’s really interesting to read about the possible implications of the findings!

(Incidentally, the magazine article’s author is Arika Okrent, who wrote a delightful book called In the Land of Invented Languages.  I loved that book so much I based one of my pop quizzes on it!)

 

Copyright Allison Taylor-Adams.  See About for details.

Pop Quiz! The things languages can do

Tags

aboriginal, English, language, language diversity, languages, linguistics

I had an interesting conversation a few weeks ago with a linguist I really admire.  We were in a group discussion about a theory of syntax, which involved talk not only of grammar but also of neurology, cognition, the evolution of language, and the evolution of humans as a species.  She said to me that one of the things she loves the most about language is that at the very basic level, we’re all doing the exact same thing.  Languages have surface differences but when you get right down to it, the differences are precisely superficial, not fundamental.  She loves that language is what we humans all share.

What was interesting about that conversation is that it was clear that she takes as much delight from language similarity as I do from language difference.  I don’t disagree that much of the difference is on the surface, but to me, those “superficial” differences are what create the rich texture and contour that characterizes the world as we live in it.

I was thinking of that this week because I picked up and started reading R.M.W. Dixon’s Basic Linguistic Theory (Volume 1: Methodology).  I have long admired Dixon’s extensive and trailblazing fieldwork and documentation, especially with underdescribed Australian languages.  And I know that Dixon himself staunchly insists that no society is “primitive” (he fiercely defends the sophistication of Australian Aboriginal society).  So I’m sure he would agree that at some important level, we are all similar.  But as a lifelong describer of languages, he is obviously also fascinated by the differences, and he uses a wealth of them in this book.

I think maybe you all would find the differences pretty fascinating too.  I am always amazed at the things that languages can do.  And since it’s the middle of the week, how about a POP QUIZ!

True or False – Somewhere in the world right now, there are people speaking a language that:

1. has fifteen grammatical cases, including specific ways of saying “towards the inside of,” and “towards the outside of”
2. has six different verb tenses
3. has different 2nd person pronouns for singular, dual (“you two”), paucal (“you few”), and plural (as we would say in Oklahoma, “all y’all”)
4. has only one 2nd person pronoun
5. doesn’t have any pronouns at all
6. has eight different forms of the imperative, including “do at a future time,” “make sure that something which should be done is being done,” and “do what a third person has ordered you to do.”
7. has 43 different click consonants
8. does not have any nasal consonants (sounds like ‘n’ and ‘m’)
9. has different forms of suffixes for nouns that are downriver, upriver, uphill, downhill, across the river, or a long way off
10. does not have any verbs

N.B. Almost all of these examples are taken directly from Dixon (2010) Chapter 1.

Answers:

1. True.  Finnish noun cases also distinguish between “with” and “together with,” among other fine distinctions.
2. True.  Dixon cites a report from Bani and Klokeid (1971) that says that the West Torres language actually utilizes five different past tenses, bringing the total of possible verb tenses up to eight.
3. True.  Dixon cites Hill (1992) in his description of Longgu pronouns.
4. True!  Unless, like me, you believe “y’all” and “all y’all” are acceptable second-person forms 🙂
5. False.  One of the few accepted linguistic universals is that all languages have pronouns.  Unless you want to argue that pronouns aren’t really a distinct grammatical category…but that’s a longer discussion.
6. True.  Dixon cites Barnes (1979, 1984).
7. True.  Oh, how I love click consonants!
8. True.  If you want to get really technical, you can say that they do make nasal sounds but they are not phonemically distinct, which is what counts in terms of language sounds.
9. True.  Dixon himself has done extensive work on the fascinating Dyirbal language for decades.
10. False.  This is a pretty uncontroversial linguistic universal – all languages have verbs.  It’s hard to conceive of communicating without verbs.  Then again, it can be hard to conceive of fifteen distinct noun cases!

***

How did you do on the quiz?  Which is more interesting to you – the way that language is common to all humans, or the almost endless ways that human languages are different?

Copyright Allison Taylor-Adams.  See About for details.

The Great Language Game

Tags

language, language diversity, languages, phonology, speakers

Somebody wonderful has created the greatest thing ever.  It’s called The Great Language Game.

The game consists of 20-second audio clips from news programs on SBS Australia; you select from the multiple choice which language you think it is.  Having the choices narrowed down to a few languages is easier than guessing from the 7,000 in the whole world, but some choices are easier than others.  Most people might be able to tell the difference between spoken Korean and spoken Norwegian.  It starts getting trickier when the languages are rarer (have you ever heard Dinka spoken before?), or when the choices are closely related.  Slavophile that I am, I found it surprisingly difficult to decide if a clip was in Slovene or Bulgarian.  And when the choices started including both Gujarati and Punjabi, or Kannada and Malayalam, I was just guessing wildly.

One of the most interesting things to me is trying to figure out how I know what I know when I recognize a language.  With languages I’ve studied, it’s just simple recognition of a familiar friend.  With others I can be fairly scientific – I know Aramaic is a Semitic language, and there are a lot of Arabic-sounding pharyngeals and glottal stops in that clip, so that must be it.  Other times I’m not sure I can put my finger on my reasoning – I think that clip is Japanese because…the rhythm sounds Japanese-like to me.

I love phonology and phonetics – the study of the sounds of a language, how we make them, and what they do.  So I’m pretty addicted to this game.  I also love what the creators of this game have to say about the diversity of the sound clips: “These audio samples…reflect Australia’s rich migrant culture. Since people often migrate out of hardship, many of these languages should be common to international cities throughout the world. They might be spoken in a neighbourhood near you.”  It’s a celebration of the phonic diversity of the multilingual communities of the world!

So…play it!  I want to know how you do, which languages were easy and which choices were difficult, and how you figured out the ones that you did.

 

Copyright Allison Taylor-Adams.  See About for details.

Fragrance acquisition

Tags

applied linguistics, fragrance, language, language learning, languages, linguistics, perfume

Since finishing my degree two months ago, I’ve been a very flirtatious bibliophile, briefly skimming anything I can get my hands on in almost any subject.  I’ve tried to commit to some serious textbooks on subfields of linguistics, or to a hefty classic like Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things, but it seems my brain needs a summer vacation.

Recently, while daydreaming about interesting jobs I could pursue if academia never pans out, I picked up a book called Perfumery: Practice and Principles (I’m sure I’d make an excellent master perfumer…)  by Robert R. Calkin and J. Stephan Jellinek.  There was much more organic chemistry in the book than I’ve ever been able to tolerate, but it was also oddly fascinating.  It’s a useful introductory textbook for aspiring young perfumers, and while the appendix is full of scientific diagrams of chemical reactions, much of the text is devoted to the theory of fragrance and the training of perfumery students.

In the chapter on how novices should begin their studies, one passage immediately caught my attention:

As in learning a foreign language, the first stage in learning the materials – the vocabulary of perfumery – necessitates repeated smelling and testing.  This task can be made simpler, and in the long term more effective, if it is approached in a systematic way, namely one based on an understanding of how human memory works.[1]

If you swap the operative phrases in that first sentence, this passage could show up in the first chapter of any applied linguistics textbook.  I was intrigued.

Getting to know the raw materials is not a training of the nose or the olfactory receptors (it is doubtful that the receptors can be trained at all), it is the training of the thought processes that provide the link between the perception of an odor and one’s ability to recognize it and give it a name.  These processes, as all mental processes, are based on a complex network of associations.  Each new odor learned, like each new word in our vocabulary, is integrated into an existing framework of meanings and olfactory associations.  Fortunately, the more a student knows, the easier it becomes to add new materials to the existing memory bank.[2]

Now I’m riveted.  What the authors are describing here sounds remarkably similar to some of the major models for second language acquisition – those that tend to be called the “Associationist” or “Connectionist” models.  Replace the word “olfactory” with the word “linguistic” and you have an almost perfect definition.

To be sure, not all SLA researchers agree with the theory of memory and learning proposed by Associationism/Connectionism; what the authors of this book are doing is using a very specific model for cognition and applying it to perfumery.  So not all linguists will like this analogy very much.  Innatists (think Chomsky and Pinker) argue that the language learning faculty is separate and different from the rest of human learning, so they probably wouldn’t like any analogy at all.

But as a language learner, I find the analogy to have at least intuitive appeal.  Language learners, like perfumery students, are confronted with an enormous amount of “raw materials” and must find a way that works for them to organize these materials mentally.   Calkin and Jellinek say, “We may be said to know a material absolutely when our recognition of it becomes immediate without our having to think of a description.  We recognize the odor like an old and familiar friend.  We recognize benzoin simply because it smells of benzoin.” [3] This echoes what many SLA researchers (Brian MacWhinney comes to mind) have argued and what many language learners have noticed intuitively – you don’t really know a word until you can recognize it just as it is, rather than as a translation of a word in your native language.  The master perfumers add,

Finally, we learn to know a material actively.  To continue with our analogy, being able to recognize someone instantly on the street is not the same as really knowing him or her.  You know a person only if you have observed that person’s behavior in different situations.  The same is true of perfumery materials.  One really comes to know a material only by actively working with it.[4]

I probably don’t need to explain how well that analogy works for language learning too.

So if these authors make interesting observations about language acquisition by analogy, maybe they could offer some interesting tips for language learning as well.  Here is another passage:

[In the beginning] the student should be encouraged to write down some descriptive remarks about these odors, using whatever associations come to mind.  These odors may conjure up memories from the past, such as the smell of grandmother’s cupboards, hot potato pancakes, or freshly dug-up roots of old trees. …In this way the student consciously builds up a network of associations to assist in remembering the odors.[5]

I love those images.  (I also love that they add, “At this stage such descriptions reflect the individual associations of the student, and neither the teacher nor fellow students can judge them as being objectively right or wrong.”[6])  In some ways I think perfumery students have an advantage over language students.  They say that smell is the sense most strongly associated with memory, and how exactly can we associate the Greek word for “to carry” or the Russian word for “agree” with grandmother’s cupboards or hot potato pancakes?  And, of course, the raw materials of any language are nearly infinite, whereas the training manual for perfumers only lists 162 individual items to be initially memorized.

But language students have other unique advantages.  We can experiment with our raw materials in countless situations; we can use language in all five of our senses; we can actively and passively recall what we have learned (as the perfumers lament, “Can we really recall the smell of a rose in the same way that we can recall a color or a melody?”).  In the end, we too get to create something beautiful and interesting and probably idiosyncratic.  And maybe we’ll hear a song one day, or read a story, that reminds us of the smell of freshly dug-up roots of old trees.

---

[1] Calkin, R. R. & Jellinek, J. S.  (1994).  Perfumery: Practice and principles.  New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons.  P. 24
[2] P. 24-5
[3] P. 28
[4] Ibid.
[5] P. 26
[6] Ibid.

Copyright Allison Taylor-Adams.  See About for details.

Sharing words

Tags

endangered languages, language, language revitalization, languages, Papua New Guinea, speakers, talking dictionaries

There’s something about hearing the sounds of a language.

I am a devoted lover of the written word, and I believe in writing’s place in the study of linguistics even though that’s not an easy position to defend.  As I wrote in my last post, I believe every child should have printed books in their very own languages, and I think that authentic texts are easily one of the most powerful tools for second language acquisition.

But!  There is something special about the human voice, isn’t there?

One of my very favorite things I get to do on this blog is my Featured Speaker project.  Whenever I get the recordings from native speakers I get a little thrill, and I set aside time to put on my best headphones, close my eyes, and listen.  I usually get goosebumps.  It’s not just the language, though obviously languages are my very favorite things.  I can read about different languages, and read texts in different languages (or at least look at them), and I have to admit I do get a thrill from seeing different writing systems.  But there’s something about having a human voice coming through the wire.  Two of my Featured Speakers are actually classmates from my Master’s program, which is conducted entirely online; for months I’ve read their words, had “conversations” with them, got to know them.  But when I heard them speaking their words, that’s when I really felt like we got to be friends.

Linguists who document languages in the field make audio recordings as well as written notes, but these recordings are usually pretty technical, inaccessible to the average listener both in terms of technology and in terms of content.  In recent years, however, some innovative linguists have developed a tool called the “talking dictionary,” which is…exactly what it sounds like!  The Living Tongues Institute in particular, with the support of the National Geographic Society, has hosted workshops around the world where speakers of endangered languages learn the techniques to not only record their languages, but to format them in ways that are accessible to anyone interested in hearing the words.  It makes the difference between reading that gay-yuu mvtlh-wvsh means “baby basket laces” in the Siletz language, and actually clicking on this link and hearing someone say the words to you.

Living Tongues hosts robust talking dictionaries of several different languages, and just this week they unveiled an entirely new database of languages from Latin America.  It is an amazing resource and learning tool, and it represents a vibrant and ongoing collaboration between professional linguists, language activists, and native speakers.  I think it’s really exciting!

They are planning to continue their work by holding their next workshop in Papua New Guinea, the country with the single highest number of languages found anywhere in the world.  There are an estimated 836 different languages spoken in Papua New Guinea; if you’re keeping track, that’s something like 12% of all of the languages in the world.  The organizers of this particular workshop are expecting participants representing 50 different local languages.

This work requires some gutgut matan (listen here!).  If you are as excited about supporting this kind of work as I am, please head over to the Indiegogo fundraising page and consider chipping in.  A little goes a long way to helping build an online world where human voices can reach us through our headphones.

What’s Language Got to Do with It?

Tags

graduate school, language, languages, PhD comics, research, Sherpa, sociolinguistics

If any of you are currently suffering through graduate school, I hope you have at one point or another come across the delightful PhD Comics.  It’s good to be able to laugh at the things that are currently making all your hair fall out, and to know that there are plenty of smart, sleep-deprived people trudging on right along with you.

Recently the folks behind the comic started posting a series of videos to their youtube channel called “Two Minute Thesis.”  Their most recent one features a linguist from the University of Melbourne discussing her work with Sherpa children!  If you’ve ever wondered what linguists do “in the field,” what kinds of things sociolinguists research, or how language and culture relate to each other, here’s a nice introduction in a few short minutes:

Happy New Long Count!

Tags

2012, endangered languages, language, languages, Long Count, Mayan, Mesoamerican, Native American

I spent the last few weeks buried under piles of books, articles, reports, bibliographies, papers, flashcards, study sessions, and exams, gasping for air and trying to remember where I left my brain.  Somehow I survived!  I am in the mood to stretch my legs, shake off the past semester, and start a new season.

Speaking of new season, I’m sure that by now you are aware that the “world” is going to “end” today according to the “Mayans.”  Hopefully you are also aware that the Mayans never actually said the world was going to end today.  Instead, what is ending today is a full cycle of the so-called Long Count, a period in the incredibly complex Mesoamerican calendar system that works out to roughly 400 years in the current Western system.  The idea that the Mayans prophesied the world would end at the end of Long Count 12 is sort of like believing the publishers of my desk calendar have foreseen the end of the world coming in June 2013.  Previous Long Counts have ended in recorded history (the most recent being in 1618), and we have Mayan texts which foresee events occurring in future Long Counts as well.  A combination of limited historical understanding, broad stereotyping of ancient civilizations, and sensationalism means that everyone is talking about the Mayan “Doomsday,” cracking jokes about the fact that they couldn’t even foresee their own destruction (which I imagine is pretty painful for the living Mayan communities), and most likely tomorrow, when the world continues to exist, the Mayans and their “prophecy” will be held up to ridicule.

All of this is really unfortunate.  Instead of hyperventilating about doomsday, we could all be treating this like the event it actually is – the end of a very long cycle and the beginning of a brand new one.  I love that this day falls exactly on the Winter Solstice.  The world won’t be over tomorrow; the world will begin fresh tomorrow.  A brand new Long Count, a little more sunlight every day.  I think I’m lucky to see the transition between Long Counts. It doesn’t come around very often (!) and it has given me the opportunity to learn more about a very complex and sophisticated calendar system.  And of course, behind that calendar system is the language in which it was recorded.

Al Jazeera had a special on the Maya of Guatemala as part of their Living the Language series.  Perhaps we should all watch that instead of more Doomsdaypocalypse 2012 coverage.

(You can see an indigenous educator discussing the Maya numbering system and showing off the tools used to teach the calendar system to young Maya students at 16:40 – 17:25)

We celebrate our New Year’s Day as a day to start fresh.  I think that’s what today is, according the Mayan calendar, only an order of magnitude more significant.  Happy New Long Count, everyone!

Monday Inspiration: Russell Means

Tags

endangered languages, Lakota, language, language diversity, language revitalization, languages, Native American, Russell Means

I’ve just learned that Russell Means passed away this morning.  I was going to call this post “Rest in peace, Russell Means,” but that phrase seemed out of place for a man who made fire and passion the mission of his life.  Mr. Means was certainly a controversial figure, but no one can deny his role in changing the conversation we have about indigenous people here in the US.  Lakota people, American Indians, and Americans in general lost a powerful voice today.

I read on a comment board that Mr. Means’ name, in the Lakota language, was Oyate Wachyapin, which means “helper of his people.”  Another commenter left this message:  Waŋná wanáǧiyata níŋ na uŋ líla ičháŋteuŋšičapi, oíyokšiče ló. Éyaš óhiŋniyaŋ čhíksuya uŋk’úŋpi kte ló.

Now you are making the journey to the spirit world and we are sad. But we will always remember you.

I’d like to add that although I just said he “passed away,” that is not how his family phrased it: they say that he “now walks among the ancestors.”  In every part of life, from small interactions to large events of joy and grief, we can choose different words to express ourselves.  In honor of the life and work of Mr. Means, I’d like to think about a world where families can celebrate and mourn in Lakota or English or any other language that is dear to them.