"Personification gets angry if you do it wrong." – someone on the internet.
[daily log: walking, 7.5km]
Category: Language & Linguistics
Caveat: Амьдрал гэдэг там л байна
Mongolian hip-hop is a real thing.
What I'm listening to right now.
Дайн ба энх, "76." Although my Mongolian-language googling skills are quite poor, I even managed to find the lyrics.
Lyrics.
Зөөлөн суудлаасаа тэд *** өндийлгүй өдөржин хэлэлцэж
Зөв буруу хууль дүрэм баахан юм баталцгааж
Цөөхөн хэдэн ард бидэндээ зурагтаар л бараагаа харуулж
Хийж бүтээх нь багадсан
Хэлэх амлалт нь ихэдсэн 76-д зориуллаа
Тэд өөрсдөө Монгол хүн чи хүн би хүн бид адил хүмүүс
Эртнээс эхэлсэн энэ цус Монгол цус
Халуун биеэр минь халх цус
Эрэлхэг хүчирхэг Монгол түмний дуу хоолойг ойлгож сонс одоо цагт
Төрийн суудалд үхэн хатан мөнгө цацан хаян тэмцэхийг бодоход
Түүнээс илүү ашиг хонжоог хайж байна гэсэн үг биш үү
Үүнээс цаашгүй түүнээс цаашгүй
Хэрэлдэж уралдсан 76
Үнэндээ чанартай маньдаа хамаагүй хий дэмий амны зугаа
Ууж идэж хахаж цацаж бүгдийг авлаа болоо юм биш үү
Улсаа хөгжүүлэхийн төлөө та нар одоо юм хийх болсон юм биш үү
Хүний төлөө энэ нийгмийн бохирдлыг устгая
Улс орны сайхны төлөө санаа тавь тавь тавь
Тавьсан санаа хаана л байна л гэж л хэлмээр байна л
Ард л олон л тэр л амла мөр л хөтөлбөр л гэдэг үлгэр домог болдог
Тэр л том том дарга руу байгаа чиглүүлэв үгээр чичрүүлэв би
Дахилт:
тэнгэрт найдахаас Монголчууд аа
Тэдэнд найдаж болохгүй шүү молигодуулваа
Чааваас даа миний цөөхөн халх ардаа
Хаанаас даа ийм зүйл байж боломгүй юм даа
Тэд бол их л хуурдаг ардад бурдаг худлаа бурдаг
Нөхөд л гардаг хуралдаж хуралдаж хувьдаа ашигласан
Зүйлээ хуваалцаж байж л тардаг явдаг даа
Санаа нь амарч харьдаг даа 76 нь ийм юм бол Монгол улс мөхжээ
Монголд төрсөн хүн л мөн болдоо
Мангар тэнэг биш л байх боддоо өө
Улс орноо гэдэг бодол байдаг юмуу даа
Амьдрал ер нь тамуу даа сүйрэлд хүрэх замууд
Энэ л олон намууд аа тэд нийлээд чадах уу даа
Ээ хар малнуудаа рад түмэнлүүгээ эргэн нэг хараач
Тэр олон гахайд найдаад хэрэг байхгүй за байз яая даа
Хараал идэг чөтгөр аваг
Энэ муу новшийн нийгмийг хар хар
Хар дарсан зүүднээсээ тэр сэр сэр сэр
Ертөнц хорвоод баян ядуу баян ядуу
Мөнгөтэй төгрөгтэй мөнгөгүй төгрөггүй
Мэдэлтэй мэдэлгүй нь хосолсоор хосолсоор
Хэн нь сайтар хэн нь муутар амьдрах хүн бүрээс хамаарах болж
Энэ л үед ийм үед мөрөн дээрхээ тэр толгойгоо
Энэ нийгмийн толгойлогчдод буруу бий буруу бий
Хямралд оруулж байгаа хүмүүс эд нар мөн эд нар мөн
Дахилт:
Чи бол Монгол би бол Монгол хүн
Бидэнд бие биенээ харйлах сэтгэл зүрх байх л ёстой гэж л бодно
Миний бодсон нэг л худлаа бас л худлаа болоод байх шиг байдаг
Ер нь яадаг тэнэг нөхөд гэхээр улс төр л мөр л гэж явдаг байна л
Ард л олон яана л шал худлаа
Тэр л сайхан нам л байна
Амьдрал гэдэг там л байна
Тэр л 76- гаа л сандал суудал зулгаа л
Энэ л төрийн нүүр л царай л гэвэл энэ ээ
Нэг хоёр гурван жил 76 нам жим
Ингэсээр сүүлийн дөрвөн жил гэнэт гарч ирэн намайг дэмж
Энэ миний мөрийн хөтөлбөр энэ чиний сургалтын төлбөр
Энэ бүгдийг чиний төлө харин чи тууштай миний төлөө
Гэж хэлээд суудалд суухдаа тэр маш их мөнгө зарсан
Тэр гарсан зарсан мөнгөө хэд хэд нугалж олсон
Ард бид чинь та нарт итгэн суудалд суулган залсан
Ахисан даварсан тэд нар харин гарсан хойноо мартсан
[daily log: walking, 7km]
Caveat: Aangajaarnaqtuliuqtuqaqattalilauqsimanngittiammarirulungniqpalliilainnaujaqataunasu&&annaaqtummarialuuvalilauqsima&&apikkaluarmijungalitt
This satirical article at SpeculativeGrammarian explains why twitter is not a good idea for the fine residents of Nunavut. I actually have no idea if the Inuit phrases cited are authentic or instead just satirical inventions. The word/sentence “Aangajaarnaqtuliuqtuqaqattalilauqsimanngittiammarirulungniqpalliilainnaujaqataunasu&&annaaqtummarialuuvalilauqsima&&apikkaluarmijungalittauruuq” has 199 characters, and allegedly means, “At a younger age it is said that I had also been saying that I wished drugs were never made!” Which might very well be something some anti-drugs Nunavutian politician might want to send out on twitter. So, indeed, it seems a linguistic injustice on the part of the twitterverse.
Relatedly (perhaps), I recently learned that Greenland’s 18th largest city, Ittoqqortoormiit, has 452 residents. South Korea’s 18th largest city is Namyangju, in Gyeonggi province (not far from my own home in Goyang, which happens to be South Korea’s 10th largest city, although, really, both cities are just politically autonomous suburbs of Seoul). According to the wiki thing, Namyangju has 629,061 residents.
Here is a picture of Ittoqqortoormiit.
Possible spurious correlation of the day (?): The smaller the town, the longer the words.
[daily log: walking, 7km]
Caveat: How many cows?
"My uncle has 200 cows. He thought he had 199 until he rounded them up." – from specgram.tumblr.com.
[daily log: walking, 6.5km]
Caveat: Hwæt, Hrodulf readnosa hrandeor
More useful work is being done on the internet, just in time for Christmas! Someone has helpfully translated Rudolf The Red-Nosed Reindeer into Anglo-Saxon.
Incipit gestis Rudolphi rangifer tarandus
Hwæt, Hrodulf readnosa hrandeor –
Næfde þæt nieten unsciende næsðyrlas!
Glitenode and gladode godlice nosgrisele.
Ða hofberendas mid huscwordum hine gehefigodon;
Nolden þa geneatas Hrodulf næftig
To gomene hraniscum geador ætsomne.
Þa in Cristesmæsseæfne stormigum clommum,
Halga Claus þæt gemunde to him maðelode:
“Neahfreond nihteage nosubeorhtende!
Min hroden hrædwæn gelæd ðu, Hrodulf!”
Ða gelufodon hira laddeor þa lyftflogan –
Wæs glædnes and gliwdream; hornede sum gegieddode
“Hwæt, Hrodulf readnosa hrandeor,
Brad springð þin blæd: breme eart þu!”
… in modern English:
Here begins the deeds of Rudolph, Tundra-Wanderer
Lo, Hrodulf the red-nosed reindeer –
That beast didn’t have unshiny nostrils!
The goodly nose-cartilage glittered and glowed.
The hoof-bearers taunted him with proud words;
The comrades wouldn’t allow wretched Hrodulf
To join the reindeer games.
Then, on Christmas Eve bound in storms
Santa Claus remembered that, spoke formally to him:
“Dear night-sighted friend, nose-bright one!
You, Hrodulf, shall lead my adorned rapid-wagon!”
Then the sky-flyers praised their lead-deer –
There was gladness and music; one of the horned ones sang
“Lo, Hrodulf the red-nosed reindeer,
Your fame spreads broadly, you are renowned!”
This was posted at the All Things Linguistic blog.
[daily log: walking, 7km]
Caveat: the kingdom of takedowns of popularizing books on linguistics that get it wrong
I recently read a review of a book (The Kingdom of Speech, by Tom Wolfe) I was already uninterested in, based on other mentions of it on various linguistics-oriented blogs. The book has received a huge amount of attention in the mainstream media as one of those books on "linguistics for non-linguists," and apparently contains an attack on Chomsky's approach to linguistic universals, and challenges the importance of his contributions. It also, incidentally, attacks Darwin. So there's that.
I'm no huge fan of Chomsky, but it's not his theoretical work that has annoyed me so much over the years, but rather his "armchair anarchism," and the seeming hypocritical disconnect between his anti-authoritarian politics and his somewhat dogmatic (i.e. authoritarianish) and unquestionably totalizing approach to his field of specialization (syntax). How does a self-avowed anarchist not see the irony in dogmatically propagating a theory with the a Foucauldian title like "government and binding"?
Nevertheless, and setting aside his academic dogmatism, Chomsky's insights to the field of syntax were revolutionary, and even if they are increasingly being called into question by other linguists, he deserves his reputation. His work has been foundational.
Therefore the review is right on target. It rightly defends Chomsky's intellectual legacy, which regardless of the weaknesses of his forays outside of syntax, should be secure.
[daily log: walking, 6.5km]
Caveat: sod byeochayu gaejulaet eoyeoeuedng aepdg sod imkyo aeh
Here is an interesting decoding puzzle, of sorts.
Type something in English, using touch typing, e.g.
in the beginning
… but on a Korean keyboard setting. That gives a random string of Korean "jamo" (letters). e.g.
ㅑㅜ 솓 듀햐ㅜㅜㅑ후
This has no meaning in Korean – the syllables aren't even well-formed.
Now transliterate that nonsense into Roman letters.
yau sod dyuhyauuyahu
The code is easy to decode, but only if one is at least familiar with touch typing in both Korean and English, and familiar with the standard "Revised Romanization" rules which establish a mostly one-for-one equivalence between jamo and Latin letters and/or digraphs.
Puzzle question: What is the original English phrase?
sod byeochayu gaejulaet eoyeoeuedng aepdg sod imkyo aeh.
[daily log: walking, 6.5km]
Caveat: to out of up for
There is a "grammar peeve" that says sentences should not end in a preposition ("peeve" being a term-of-art among descriptivist linguists who want to complain about prescriptivists with an undue attachment to 19th century rules based on Latin).
Setting aside the fact that, linguistically, many of these so-called sentence-ending prepositions are actually, syntactically, something other than prepositions but rather what are sometimes called "converbs," English also freely allows actual prepositions to float to the ends of sentences – and has done so since Beowulf (preposition bolded):
ne gefeah hé þaére faéhðe ac hé hine feor forwræc
metod for þý máne mancynne fram·
Nevertheless, how many prepositions at the end become too many? I recently ran across this example, which to my introspection is grammatical, if awkward.
"What did you bring that book I do not want to be read to out of up for?"
Happy parsing!
[daily log: walking, 7km]
Caveat: 与工以口-尺口爪凡以—凡 仍巨十十巨尺 与亡尺工尸十 斤口尺 巨以也乙工与廿
This article, at a satirical linguistics website that I frequent, is pretty interesting – see if you can read it. It doesn’t require any knowledge of Chinese characters – it’s just a little visual “trick,” and after about 5 minutes, I was able to read it without problems. I reproduce it below, with a simple cut and paste.
与工以口-尺口爪凡以—凡 仍巨十十巨尺 与亡尺工尸十 斤口尺 巨以也乙工与廿
与巨以工口尺 巨刀工十口尺 片巨工十廿 与乙凡十巨尺
十廿巨 巨以也乙工与廿 与亡尺工尸十 工与 山凡丫 十口口 巨凡与丫 凡以刀 山凡丫 十口口 尸巨刀巨与十尺工凡以。 十口口 亡口爪爪口以。 凡以丫仍口刀丫 凡以刀 巨立巨尺丫仍口刀丫 凹与巨与 尺口爪凡以 与亡尺工尸十。
山巨 刀巨与巨尺立巨 仍巨十十巨尺。 山廿凡十 山巨 以巨巨刀 工与 与口爪巨十廿工以也 爪口尺巨 刀工与十工以亡十工立巨—与口爪巨十廿工以也 十廿凡十 与巨十与 巨以也乙工与廿 凡尸凡尺十 斤尺口爪 十廿巨 爪凡与与 口斤 巨凹尺口尸巨凡以 乙凡以也凹凡也巨与。
十廿巨尺巨斤口尺巨， 与尸巨亡凹乙凡十工立巨 也尺凡爪爪凡尺工凡以 工与 尸尺口凹刀 十口 尸尺巨与巨以十 与工以口-尺口爪凡以®©™—凡 以巨山 与亡尺工尸十 斤口尺 巨以也乙工与廿。
与工以口-尺口爪凡以 亡口爪仍工以巨与 十廿巨 仍巨与十 口斤 巨凡与十 凡以刀 山巨与十。 与凹工十凡仍乙巨 斤口尺 尺巨尸乙凡亡工以也 凡以丫 乙凡十工以-刀巨尺工立巨刀 与亡尺工尸十， 与工以口-尺口爪凡以 以巨立巨尺十廿巨乙巨与与 工爪尸尺口立巨与 凹尸口以 十廿巨 尸尺巨与巨以十， 仍尺工以也工以也 巨以也乙工与廿 工以十口 十廿巨 工以十巨尺以凡十工口以凡乙工之巨刀 斤凹十凹尺巨 十廿凡十 凡乙乙 乙凡以也凹凡也巨与 口以巨 刀凡丫 山工乙乙 与廿凡尺巨。
与工以口-尺口爪凡以 凹与巨与 口以乙丫 爪口刀巨尺以 与十凡以刀凡尺刀 亡廿工以巨与巨 亡廿凡尺凡亡十巨尺与， 巨凡亡廿 口斤 山廿工亡廿 尺巨与巨爪仍乙巨与 凡 十尺凡刀工十工口以凡乙 乙凡十工以 乙巨十十巨尺。
丫口凹 亡凡以 亡口爪尸凡尺巨 十廿巨 巨以十工尺巨 与巨十 工以 十廿工与 与凡爪尸乙巨 与巨以十巨以亡巨：
十廿巨 电凹工亡片 仍尺口山以 斤口乂 丁凹爪尸与 口立巨尺 十廿巨 乙凡之丫 刀口也。
巨乙巨也凡以十， 尺巨斤工以巨刀， 凡以刀 仍巨凡凹十工斤凹乙！
丁口工以 十廿巨 爪口立巨爪巨以十 十口刀凡丫。
凹与巨 与工以口-尺口爪凡以。
[daily log: walking]
Caveat: Kids These Days
Kids these days are always messing up English with inventive new slang and borrowings from other languages. Here, the author Bokenham wisely laments the condition of contemporary English and explains how the new styles of talking and new vocabulary represent the decay and corruption of culture and language.
And þis corrupcioun of Englysshe men yn þer modre-tounge, begunne as I seyde with famylyar commixtion of Danys firste and of Normannys aftir, toke grete augmentacioun and encrees aftir þe commying of William conquerour by two thyngis. The firste was: by decre and ordynaunce of þe seide William conqueror children in gramer-scolis ageyns þe consuetude and þe custom of all oþer nacyons, here owne modre-tonge lafte and forsakyn, lernyd here Donet on Frenssh and to construyn yn Frenssh and to maken here Latyns on þe same wyse. The secounde cause was þat by the same decre lordis sonys and all nobyll and worthy mennys children were fyrste set to lyrnyn and speken Frensshe, or þan þey cowde spekyn Ynglyssh and þat all wrytyngis and endentyngis and all maner plees and contravercyes in courtis of þe lawe, and all maner reknygnis and countis yn howsoolde schulle be doon yn the same. And þis seeyinge, þe rurales, þat þey myghte semyn þe more worschipfull and honorable and þe redliere comyn to þe famyliarite of þe worthy and þe grete, leftyn hure modre tounge and labouryd to kunne spekyn Frenssh: and thus by processe of tyme barbariʒid thei in bothyn and spokyn neythyr good Frenssh nor good Englyssh. — Bokenham, 1440 CE.
So sad!
Credit is due to the All Things Linguistic blog for this.
Have a nice Friday.
[daily log: walking, 2km]
Caveat: Talking Through Britain
I found these two videos rather fascinating – essentially, in both cases the presenters step through discussing various dialects of the British Isles while at the same time reproducing those accents quite well.
I have a difficult relationship with various English language dialects: on the one hand, I find them fascinating and I work hard to be able to tell them apart; on the other hand, I am utterly incapable of consistently reproducing them in a sustained manner, which is weird to me, because I'm actually somewhat able to do something similar with various Spanish dialects. Is it perhaps that my own mother-tongue – Northern California English – is too deeply embedded and thus I can't seem to override it, while with Spanish, since no single dialect is deeply embedded, I'm more able to shift around the dialect space? Or, more likely, perhaps I'm really not that good at doing it in Spanish either, but I'm sufficiently incompetent that I don't realize what I'm doing wrong.
[daily log: walking, 6.5km]
Caveat: The Personalities of Various Squares in Jeolla Dialect
I was working with a student the other day on trying to clarify that the pronunciation of the words "square" and "scare" are different. This is not, normally, something Koreans seem to have difficulty with, but for whatever reason, perhaps sheer obstinacy, Giha was unable to make the distinction.
Actually, there is, in fact, a possible, plausible cause for this. In some dialects of contemporary Korean – notably, the southwest (Jeolla), where I lived in 2010-11, and where Giha's family is apparently from – there is a strong tendency to merge [w]-onset diphthongs with their corresponding simple vowels. That is, [wa] and [a] are the same, [wɛ] and [ɛ] are the same, etc. In layman's terms, you might call it "w-dropping." I first noticed this in Yeonggwang, where I lived, because the locals seemed to inevitably pronounce the name of their town "Yeonggang" (i.e. dropping the [w]), and the regional capital's name, Gwangju, became "Gangju."
So if you think about the distinction, in English, between square and scare, the difference is simply the [w]-onset in the vowel of "square" which is missing in "scare": [skwɛɻ] vs [skɛɻ]. So, applying Gwangju dialectical phonotactics, you'd get the same pronunciation for both words.
I really wanted him to get the distinction, however. It was annoying me. For whatever reason, both words appeared in the same exercise we were doing.
So I invented a tongue twister, for which I drew an accompanying illustration. The illustration is lost – I did not capture its ephermeral moment on the whiteboard, so you will have to imagine it. However, the tongue twister is memorable:
That scary square scares that scared square scarily.
[daily log: walking, 6.5km]
Caveat: Lovely as a tree
Today is a holiday that, for whatever reason, I didn't realize was coming. Korean Memorial Day.
Sometimes those are the best kind of holiday, since there is no anticipation to get messed up – not that I ever anticipate much about holidays, anymore. But I am having a very relaxing day. I drew something, and read some things.
There is a blog called SpeculativeGrammarian, which is all about linguistic satire. I found this strange, short poem there. It made me laugh. I doubt it will make you laugh.
The poem's authorship is attributed to Bill Spruiell, who, like all the SpecGram writers, is fictional.
I think that I shall never see
A poem as lovely as a tree
That doesn’t represent a parse
Of this sentence.
[daily log: walking, around]
Caveat: Doubly Possessed
My student Sophia is probably the only student I have who actually thinks in English at least some of the time. And maybe it is only in the context of being able to effortlessly switch what language one is thinking in does it really become common to see dynamic lexeme-level code switching, in the linguistic sense.
I was handing her a vocabulary quiz booklet, and she handed it back to me, saying, offhandedly,
that's 동현의 것's
(i.e. that's Dong-hyeon-ui geot's)
"Dong-hyeon" is her classmate's name. Really it's not exactly code-switching, since it's a kind of "doubled-up possessive" – a Korean possessive (-의 것 [-ui-geot]) embedded in an English possessive – so more like "code layering." She was just covering her bases.
I just found it fascinating from a language-acquisition standpoint.
[daily log: walking, 6.5km]
Caveat: 空谷足音
I saw this four-character idiom online somewhere – I didn’t record from where.
空谷足音
공곡족음
gong.gok.jok.eum
empty-valley-excessive-sound
This idiom seems to be similar to: Vox clamantis in deserto! “A voice in the wilderness.”
1 Iɴɪᴛɪᴜᴍ Eᴠᴀɴɢᴇʟɪɪ Jᴇsᴜ Cʜʀɪsᴛɪ, Fɪʟɪɪ Dᴇɪ. 2 Sɪᴄᴜᴛ sᴄʀɪᴘᴛᴜᴍ ᴇsᴛ ɪɴ Isᴀɪᴀ ᴘʀᴏᴘʜᴇᴛᴀ: Eᴄᴄᴇ ᴇɢᴏ ᴍɪᴛᴛᴏ ᴀɴɢᴇʟᴜᴍ ᴍᴇᴜᴍ ᴀɴᴛᴇ ғᴀᴄɪᴇᴍ ᴛᴜᴀᴍ, ǫᴜɪ ᴘʀæᴘᴀʀᴀʙɪᴛ ᴠɪᴀᴍ ᴛᴜᴀᴍ ᴀɴᴛᴇ ᴛᴇ. 3 Vᴏx ᴄʟᴀᴍᴀɴᴛɪs ɪɴ ᴅᴇsᴇʀᴛᴏ: Pᴀʀᴀᴛᴇ ᴠɪᴀᴍ Dᴏᴍɪɴɪ, ʀᴇᴄᴛᴀs ғᴀᴄɪᴛᴇ sᴇᴍɪᴛᴀs ᴇᴊᴜs. (Vulgate)
1 The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God; 2 As it is written in the prophets, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee. 3 The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. (KJV)
But the Christian/Western allusion is to prophecy, while the Chinese seems to mean one of two things, neither of which is quite the same. First, it might mean a pointless exercise of proclaiming when no one is paying attention. Alternately, it might mean the way that deserted place becomes more welcoming when a sound is heard. Regardless, I don’t think it’s directly relatable to the notion of prophecy… I guess it comes down to one’s opinion regarding the efficacy of prophecy.
There is also the text by John Gower, a Latin-language poem written in the 14th century, bearing the title “Vox Clamantis.”
[daily log: walking, 1km]
Caveat: on parsing paraphrastic palindromes
There is a website dedicated to "satirical linguistics," called SpeculativeGrammarian. There is an article called "Nursery Rhymes from Linguistics Land," which is a collection of humorous, linguistics-themed re-writes of traditional nursery rhymes. Given my fondness for tongue twisters, combined with my interest in parsers (that was the subject matter, broadly speaking, of my undergraduate honor's thesis) and my fascination with palindromes, this particular rhyme was particularly impressive:
Peter’s Parser
Peter’s parser parsed a paragraph
Of paraphrastic palindromes;
A paragraph of paraphrastic palindromes
Peter’s parser parsed.
If Peter’s parser parsed a paragraph
Of paraphrastic palindromes,
Where’s the paragraph of paraphrastic palindromes
Peter’s parser parsed?
There are many others I liked, too.
[daily log, walking, 6.5km]
Caveat: a little south-east of Nome
"You couldn't find your /æs/ with both hands and a vowel chart" – linguist insults.
Unrelatedly, what I'm listening to right now. I don't know why I'm listening to it right now.
Johnny Horton, "North to Alaska." It's not very geographically accurate – I think the Yukon gold rush was not in the neighborhood of Nome. It was a tie-in to a John Wayne movie which I'd never heard of.
Lyrics.
Way up north, (North To Alaska.)
Way up north, (North To Alaska.)
North to Alaska,
They're goin' North, the rush is on.
North to Alaska,
They're goin' North, the rush is on.
Big Sam left Seattle in the year of '92,
With George Pratt, his partner, and brother, Billy, too.
They crossed the Yukon River and found the bonanza gold.
Below that old white mountain just a little south-east of Nome.
Sam crossed the majestic mountains to the valleys far below.
He talked to his team of huskies as he mushed on through the snow.
With the northern lights a-running wild in the land of the midnight sun,
Yes, Sam McCord was a mighty man in the year of nineteen-one.
Where the river is winding,
Big nuggets they're finding.
North to Alaska,
They're goin' North, the rush is on.
Way up north, (North To Alaska.)
Way up north, (North To Alaska.)
North to Alaska,
They're goin' North, the rush is on.
North to Alaska,
They're goin' North, the rush is on.
George turned to Sam with his gold in his hand,
Said: "Sam you're a-lookin'at a lonely, lonely man.
"I'd trade all the gold that's buried in this land,
"For one small band of gold to place on sweet little Ginnie's hand.
"'Cos a man needs a woman to love him all the time.
"Remember, Sam, a true love is so hard to find.
"I'd build for my Ginnie, a honeymoon home.
"Below that old white mountain just a little south-east of Nome."
Where the river is winding,
Big nuggets they're finding.
North to Alaska,
They're goin' North, the rush is on.
North to Alaska,
They're goin' North, the rush is on.
Way up north, (North To Alaska.)
Way up north, (North To Alaska.)
Way up north, (North To Alaska.)
[daily log: strolling, 1.5km]
Caveat: the ‘gator lost his mind
What I'm listening to right now.
Jimmy Driftwood, "The Battle of New Orleans." Driftwood was a history teacher who made this song in 1959 to get his students interested in history. I remember hearing the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band version in the mid 70's, and I admit, it got me interested in history. I'm not sure about the over all accuracy – especially the issue of how the American soldiers used the alligators. But anyway it's actually a pretty funny song, and from the start I was fascinated by the unusual language in it, as well – perhaps it also got me interested in dialectology.
Lyrics – I found them online, but the sung lyrics differed somewhat, so I have made some alterations based on what I hear, to match the actual non-standard language being used, e.g. the published lyrics have "they begun a running" but the singer clearly says "they beginned a-running."
Well, in 18 and 14, we took a little trip
Along with Colonel Jackson down the mighty Missisip
We took a little bacon and we took a little beans
And we met the bloody British in the town of New Orleans
Chorus:
We fired our guns and the British kept a comin'
There wasn't nigh as many as there was a while ago
We fired once more and they beginned a-runnin'
On down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico
Well, I seed Mars Jackson a-walkin' down the street
And a-talkin' to a pirate by the name of Jean Lafitte;
He gave Jean a drink that he brung from Tennessee,
And the pirate said he'd help us drive the British in the sea.
Well the French told Andrew, "You had better run
For Packenham's a-comin' with a bullet in his gun."
Old Hickory said he didn't give a damn
He's a-gonna whip the britches off of Colonel Packenham.
Chorus
Well, we looked down the river and we seed the British come
And there must have been a hundred of them beating on the drum
They stepped so high and they made their bugles ring
While we stood behind our cotton bales and didn't say a thing
Old Hick'ry said we could take em by surprise
If we didn't fire a musket till we looked em in the eyes
We held our fire till we seed their face well
Then we opened up our squirrel guns and really gave 'em hell.
Chorus
Well they ran through the briars and they ran through the brambles
And they ran through the bushes where a rabbit couldn't go
They ran so fast the hounds couldn't catch 'em
On down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico
Well we fired our cannons till the barrels melted down
So we grabbed an alligator and we fought another round
We filled his head with minie balls and powdered his behind
And when we touched the powder off, the 'gator lost his mind
They lost their pants and their pretty shiny coats
And their tails was all a-showin' like a bunch of billy goats.
They ran down the river with their tongues a-hangin' out
And they said they got a lickin', which there wasn't any doubt.
Chorus
Well we marched back to town in our dirty ragged pants
And we danced all night with the pretty girls from France;
We couldn't understand 'em, but they had the sweetest charms
And we understood 'em better when we got 'em in our arms.
Chorus
Well, the guide who brung the British from the sea
Come a-limpin' into camp just as sick as he could be,
He said the dying words of Colonel Packenham
Was, "You better quit your foolin' with your cousin Uncle Sam."
Chorus
Well, we'll march back home, but we'll never be content
Till we make Old Hick'ry the people's president.
And every time we think about the bacon and the beans
We'll think about the fun we had way down in New Orleans.
Chorus
[daily log: walking, 7.5km]
Caveat: zam arr arh bagbagh bang bang manz
In the deepest depths of the world of conlang geekery, someone (or several someones) has invented a language for fictional zombies called Zamgrh. It has an actual grammar and is not just a cypher for English, as some naive conlangs tend to be. A linguistics website called EvoLang mentioned it, which is how I found out about it. What I found most entertaining was that some fans of this invented language have been translating texts into the zombie language. For example, you can read the first chapter of Beowulf in the Zamgrh.
It begins:
Rh!zzan :
Gaa haz arr rh!zzan ah zah Znag raz harmanz Raz harmanz
ahn zah arr rahnah an haah
zam arr arh bagbagh bang bang manz.
Zh!rgman, zah zan ah Zhahman,
grab mannah an bar harmanz azzbag,
zzzzargh mannah hra bang bang man,
ahgr h b hng an rzg babah,
H barg nabah na ann zah zg!
ng!r harmanz abarannah
rh!zzanb hhan h gab,
H b hra nabah raz harman !
The original Old English:
HWÆT, WE GAR-DEna in geardagum,
þeodcyninga þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon!
oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum,
monegum mægþum meodosetla ofteah,
egsode eorlas, syððanærest wearð
feasceaft funden; he þæs frofre gebad,
weox under wolcnum weorðmyndum þah,
oð þæt him æghwylc ymbsittendra
ofer hronrade hyran scolde,
gomban gyldan; þæt wæs god cyning!
This can only be surpassed by that guy supposedly translating the Bible into Klingon.
[daily log: walking, 6km]
Caveat: Riannon, uerch Heueyd Hen, wyf i, a’m rodi y wr o’m hanwod yd ydys.
At the University of Minnesota, in 1988, I took a class on the Medieval Welsh language. I don't know why. I think I had this idea of trying to connect with my alleged Welsh heritage (the family name "Way" is Welsh in origin, cognate with "Vaughn" and "Waugh," and bears no relation to the English word "way" meaning means or road).
It was one of the most difficult classes I ever took. Yet I remember it quite fondly.
Most of the other students had some background that would be appropriate – either knowledge of Modern Welsh, or work with some other cognate language, like Irish or Scots Gaelic. All I had was some linguistics and Latin. The first day, the professor handed us this text.
Pwyll Pendeuic Dyuet a oed yn arglwyd ar seith cantref Dyuet. A threigylgweith yd oed yn Arberth, prif lys idaw, a dyuot yn y uryt ac yn y uedwl uynet y hela. Sef kyueir o'y gyuoeth a uynnei y hela, Glynn Cuch. Ac ef a gychwynnwys y nos honno o Arberth, ac a doeth hyt ym Penn Llwyn Diarwya, ac yno y bu y nos honno. A thrannoeth yn ieuengtit y dyd kyuodi a oruc, a dyuot y Lynn Cuch i ellwng e gwn dan y coet. A chanu y gorn a dechreu dygyuor yr hela, a cherdet yn ol y cwn, ac ymgolli a'y gydymdeithon. Ac ual y byd yn ymwarandaw a llef yr erchwys, ef a glywei llef erchwys arall, ac nit oedynt unllef, a hynny yn dyuot yn erbyn y erchwys ef. Ac ef a welei lannerch yn y coet o uaes guastat; ac ual yd oed y erchwys ef yn ymgael ac ystlys y llannerch, ef a welei carw o ulaen yr erchwys arall. A pharth a pherued y llannerch, llyma yr erchwys a oed yn y ol yn ymordiwes ac ef, ac yn y uwrw y'r llawr.
We also had a "reference grammar". I had already acquired a (modern) Welsh dictionary.
We had to translate the text, which was the introductory passage from Pwyll Pendeuic Dyuet – a bit of Welsh mythology from the Mabinogion (Red Book of Hergest). I actually managed it. It was very hard. Eventually, we translated the entire story, along with some Welsh poetry and other medieval snippets.
This intensive experience has led to the story of Pwyll and Rhiannon (a Welsh horse godess) being one of the most vivid stories resident in my imagination.
Here is the part where Rhiannon first appears, in the story.
Yna y dywot Pwyll. "A uorwyn," heb ef, " yr mwyn y gwr mwyhaf a gery, arho ui." "Arhoaf yn llawen," heb hi, "ac oed llessach y'r march, pei ass archut yr meityn." Sewyll, ac arhos a oruc y uorwyn, a gwaret y rann a dylyei uot am y hwyneb o wisc y phenn, ac attal y golwc arnaw, a dechreu ymdidan ac ef. "Arglwydes," heb ef, " pan doy di, a pha gerdet yssyd arnat ti?" "Kerdet wrth uy negesseu," heb hi, "a da yw gennyf dy welet ti." "Crassaw wrthyt y gennyf i," heb ef. Ac yna medylyaw a wnaeth, bot yn diuwyn ganthaw pryt a welsei o uorwyn eiroet, a gwreic, y wrth y ffryt hi. "Arglwydes," heb ef, "a dywedy di ymi dim o'th negesseu?" "Dywedaf, y rof a Duw," heb hi. "Pennaf neges uu ymi, keissaw dy welet ti." "Llyna," heb y Pwyll, " y neges oreu gennyf i dy dyuot ti idi. Ac a dywedy di ymi pwy wyt?" "Dywedaf, Arglwyd," heb hi. "Riannon, uerch Heueyd Hen, wyf i, a'm rodi y wr o'm hanwod yd ydys. Ac ny mynneis innheu un gwr, a hynny o'th garyat ti. Ac nys mynnaf etwa, onyt ti a'm gwrthyt. Ac e wybot dy attep di am hynny e deuthum i." "Rof i a Duw," heb ynteu Pwyll, "llyna uy attep i iti, pei caffwn dewis ar holl wraged a morynnyon y byt, y mae ti a dewisswn." "Ie," heb hitheu, "os hynny a uynny, kyn uy rodi y wr arall, gwna oed a mi." "Goreu yw gennyf i," heb y Pwyll, "bo kyntaf; ac yn y lle y mynnych ti, gwna yr oet." "Gwnaf, Arglwyd," heb hi, "blwydyn y heno, yn llys Heueyd, mi a baraf bot gwled darparedic yn barawt erbyn dy dyuot." "Yn llawen," heb ynteu, "a mi a uydaf yn yr oet hwnnw." "Arglwyd," heb hi, "tric yn iach, a choffa gywiraw dy edewit, ac e ymdeith yd af i.
Translations of the Mabinogion abound online - I'll not attempt to replicate my undergraduate feat of translation. At right, is a painting of Rhiannon, by Alan Lee, in his illustration of the Mabinogion.
What I'm listening to right now.
Fleetwood Mac, "Rhiannon."
Lyrics.
Rhiannon rings like a bell through the night
And wouldn't you love to love her?
Takes through the sky like a bird in flight
And who will be her lover?
All your life you've never seen a woman
Taken by the wind
Would you stay if she promised you Heaven?
Will you ever win?
She is like a cat in the dark
And then she is the darkness
She rules her life like a fine skylark
And when the sky is starless
All your life you've never seen a woman
Taken by the wind
Would you stay if she promised you Heaven?
Will you ever win? Will you ever win?
[| From: https://www.elyrics.net/read/f/fleetwo… |]
Rhiannon
Rhiannon
Rhiannon
Rhiannon
She rings like a bell through the night
And wouldn't you love to love her?
She was alive like a bird in flight
And who will be her lover?
All your life you've never seen a woman
Taken by the wind
Would you stay if she promised you Heaven?
Will you ever win? Will you ever win?
Rhiannon
Rhiannon
Rhiannon
Taken by, taken by the sky
Taken by, taken by the sky
Taken by, taken by the sky
Dreams unwind
Love's a state of mind
Dreams unwind
Love's a state of mind
[daily log: walking, 6.5km]
Caveat: Ghetto Pizza and Happy Virus
Strange things happen to English when it gets deracinated, adopted/adapted in a new country and culture. I frequently run across examples that are puzzling or simply amusing.
Clever marketing of a pizzeria? Or just too many American crime-drama re-runs seen on TV?
And what is a Happy Virus?
[daily log: walking, 6km]
Caveat: Le soleil est éteint par la pluie
RELATIVITE DU PRINTEMPS
On ne peut rien faire contre les soirs de Mai
Quelquefois la nuit dans les mains se défait
Et je sais que tes yeux sont le fond de la nuit
A huit heures du matin toutes les feuilles sont nées
Au lieu de tant d'étoiles nous en aurons des fruits
Quand on s'en va on ferme le paysage
Et personne n'a soigné les moutons de la plage
Le Printemps est relatif comme l'arc-en-ciel
Il pourrait aussi bien être une ombrelle
Une ombrelle sur un soipir à midi
Le soleil est éteint par la pluie
Ombrelle de la montagne ou peut être des îles
Printemps relatif arc de triomphe sur mes cils
Tout est calme à droite et dans notre chemin
La colombe est tiède comme un coussin
Le printemps maritime
L'océan tout vert au mois de Mai
L'océan est toujours notre jardin intime
Et les vagues poussent comme des fougeraies
Je veux cette vague de l'horizon
Seul laurier pour mon front
Au fond de mon miroir l'univers se défait
On ne peut rien faire contre le soir qui naît
– Vicente Huidobro (poète chilien, 1893-1948)
Huidobro no sólo escribió en español sino también en francés. De todos modos, es uno de los poetas que más me gustan.
[daily log: walking, 6km]
Caveat: el ingenio del odio
It's a snowy Sunday afternoon on the Korean Peninsula.
My friend Bob asked me to help translate a song he's using (he is a music professor).
What I'm listening to right now.
Victor Heredia, "Todavía cantamos." This song commemorates September 11th (the other one).
Letra.
Todavía cantamos, todavía pedimos,
todavía soñamos, todavía esperamos,
a pesar de los golpes
que asestó en nuestras vidas
el ingenio del odio
desterrando al olvido
a nuestros seres queridos.
Todavía cantamos, todavía pedimos,
todavía soñamos, todavía esperamos,
que nos digan adónde
han escondido las flores
que aromaron las calles
persiguiendo un destino
¿Dónde, dónde se han ido?
Todavía cantamos, todavía pedimos,
todavía soñamos, todavía esperamos,
que nos den la esperanza
de saber que es posible
que el jardín se ilumine
con las risas y el canto
de los que amamos tanto.
Todavía cantamos, todavía pedimos,
todavía soñamos, todavía esperamos,
por un día distinto
sin apremios ni ayuno
sin temor y sin llanto,
porque vuelvan al nido
nuestros seres queridos.
Todavía cantamos, todavía pedimos,
Todavía soñamos, todavía esperamos…
My translation (I found a translation online but it was quite poor – perhaps merely an exhalation of the googletranslate).
We still sing, we still ask
We still dream, we still hope
Despite the blows
That were dealt in our lives
By the shrewdness of hate
That exiled to oblivion
Our loved ones.
We still sing, we still ask
We still dream, we still hope
That they to tell us where
They have hidden the flowers
That scented the streets
Where we sought our destiny
Where, where have they gone?
We still sing, we still ask
We still dream, we still hope
That they give us hope
To know that it is possible
To brighten the garden
With the laughter and singing
Of those we love so much.
We still sing, we still ask
We still dream, we still hope
For a different day
Without coercion or hunger
Without fear or crying
When they return home,
Our loved ones.
We still sing, we still ask
We still dream, we still hope…
[daily log: walking, 1km]
Caveat: The Gangnam Yangachi Army
I was joking around with my HS3M cohort on Wednesday night. I try so hard to get along with those boys, but it remains a difficult class.
They were trying to teach me the Korean slang term 양아치 [yang.a.chi]. It's hard to translate. The official dictionary translation is useless, as it says "ragpicker." I told my students that that might have meant something to my great-grandparents' generation, but it means nothing to me.
During class, I got the idea it might mean something like "slacker," but in researching it online (in various Korean-English slang dictionaries that people post on their blogs), I've decided it might be more faithfully reflected by something like "punk" or "thug." But as such, it's a "poser punk" or "poser thug" – not the real thing. These are the "wannabe bad-boy" clique in school, maybe.
Anyway, after they'd tried to teach me the meaning, they said there were a lot of Yangachi in Gangnam (a kind of high-status area of Seoul). Jinu said there was a whole Gangnam Yangachi Army. I said that sounded alarming, but added that it would be a good name for a rock band. The boys rather liked this idea, and riffed on it for a while.
I'm going back to work today after my post-op rest yesterday. The pain is pretty bad, but I guess trying to function normally is the best distraction.
[daily log: walking, 6km]
Caveat: Hypothetical vowel shifts, just because…
It’s hard for me not to think about linguistics, sometimes.
As I was walking to work the other day, I had this strange thought: I wondered if, historically, the Korean language ever under went a major vowel shift – of the same sort that is somewhat well-known with respect to English. I think I was set off on this train of thought by noticing that, although Korean is for the most part rather punctillious about its many vowels and their correct articulation, there is definitely a degree of movement taking place in the Seoul dialect, which is noticeable in, for example, my students’ “playful” spellings of phrases like 안녕 [annyeong = “hi”] as 안뇽 [annyong] in their notes or text messages to me. The sound 어 /ə/ is definitely moving backward in casual speech, toward 오/o/.
Further evidence lies in the fact that although the consonantal system of the hangeul writing system is quite reliably systematic, the vowel system has always struck me is a bit “off” – it doesn’t seem quite as systematic as it could have been (i.e. why are some vowels written under and some vowels written to the right, and where’s the original logic behind the design, given there is consensus that it was designed?). Of course, it is well known that the “offness” of English spelling is, itself, a consequence of that famous vowel shift. So maybe the cause of the “offness” in the Korean vowel system lies in the same sort of phenomenon.
So when I got to work, I typed “vowel shift korean” into my google search-o-matic, and sure enough, my thought wasn’t a novel one. Indeed, there is a still not entirely settled but well-defended hypothesis that Korean underwent a major vowel shift, roughly during the same historical period as the English one. Mentions of it in English can be found online (mostly in googlebooks, rather than on blogs or webpages).
Thus, it is mentioned (and supported) in Samual Martin’s (he of the giant Korean Reference grammar with its despised Yale-ification) book, Consonant Lenition in Korean and the Macro-Altaic Question, somewhat browseable on googlebooks. The best explanation of the idea that I found, with some charts of the actual shift, is in a PDF by Oh Sang-suk. Meanwhile, I found a refutation of it in a PDF by Young-Key Kim-Renaud.
Personally, I find the idea appealing, and the arguments in favor of it that I ran across struck me as compelling. I am not an expert, however – so who knows?
[daily log: walking, 6km]
Caveat: EKS
I have been slowly working my way into a very dry and dense textbook called Task-Based Language Teaching, by David Nunan. When the intensity of work goes up, I tend to spend even my free time thinking about more work-related things. I'm not sure why this is – it strikes me as counter-intuitive.
Actually, I think it's about trying to assuage the feelings of insecurity about my teaching abilities that tend to arise during periods of work stress.
I think that the idea of "task-based language teaching" is mostly irrelevant, in the Korean EFL context – at least as conceptualized by the author and by other practitioners in the field. That can be best explained by examining this short aside that I found in the introduction to the book:
It [i.e. the just given definition of a "target task"] describes the sorts of things that the person in the street would say if asked what they were doing. (In the same way as learners, if asked why they are attending a Spanish course, are more likely to say, 'So I can make hotel reservations and buy food when I'm in Mexico,' than 'So I can master the subjunctive.') – page 2
In fact, most Korean learners will say something similar to the latter, if asked why they are studying English (i.e. not specifically that they want to master the subjunctive, but some other similarly abstruse grammatical concept). The reason is that most Korean students study English because they want to do well on certain standardized tests (e.g. 수능 [Korean SAT]). Those standardized tests are far from having been in the remotest way touched by concepts like "task-based language learning" or communicative language teaching strategies.
Farther along in the book, the author mentions the field called "English for Special Purposes" (such as English for Business, or English for Engineering) as being an outgrowth of the task-based language teaching movement.
In that vein, I'd like to propose a new "English for a Special Purpose": namely, English for Korean Students (hereby written 'EKS'). This particular special-purpose English is characterized by a slavish focus on the ancient "grammar-translation" style of language learning, and targets a profoundly non-communicative, decontextualized use of language. Just like any other special-purpose English, EKS is a real necessity for the millions of Korean students who need it. This being the case, we could have a sincerely task-based language instruction curriculum, true to the methodological philosophy, that focuses on grammar-translation and on preparing to take these tests. This is because "passing the tests" is the real-world "task" in question.
It leads to a bit of a methodological paradox… If our goal is a progressive desire to give students real-world utility from their language instruction, we should teach them using the grammar-translation style from 100 years ago, because that's what's useful to them – much more useful than teaching them how to speak communicative English as tourists or travelers or workers at large, international companies.
[daily log: walking, 6km]
Caveat: to grammaticalize from the preposition “to” to the infinitive particle “to”
Recently I had a "special" class that I taught to 7th graders for a few weeks, in the context of the test-prep period. It was supposed to be a grammer-focused writing class, and because most of the students were fairly low level (although it was a mixed group and there were some high level students too), I decided to basically focus on a single grammer object: the "to" infinitive forms of English, since they are used in a lot of ways and in a lot of different expressions.
As part of this, I found myself wondering about the etymology of the "to" particle, which is most definitely not the same as the homonymous preposition by modern linguistic descriptions, but which seems to bear some weird traces of what one might call "prepositionality." Was the origin of the "to" particle related to the preposition "to" or was it a coincidence (a linguistic merger)?
It was actually a bit difficult to research, but finally I found some text that confirmed that the infinitive "to" is, in fact, derived from the preposition "to." That is interesting to me, and because it was so hard to find out, I decided to blog about it, so if I want to go back and look it up again in the future, it's in my aide-memoire blog thingy.
Here is the authoritative quote I found:
The English so-called 'infinitive marker' (or 'infinitive prefix', 'infinitive particle') to derives from the dative-governing preposition used with an inflected infinitive to express purpose. In this sense, it can be considered to represent the universally well-known grammaticalization path 'purpose > infinitive' (Haspelmath 1989; Heine & Kuteva: 247-248), whereby the preposition is desemanticized and acquires distributional properties not found with, or not typical of, noun-governing prepositions. - from John Ole Askedal, in Grammatical Change and Linguistic Theory: The Rosendal Papers, page 63.
[daily log: walking, 1km]
Caveat: NASA휴먼어드벤처展
The other day I saw this banner hanging from a pedestrian bridge (picture at right). It was linguistically interesting to me because it does something I have almost never seen in Korea – it combines “konglish” and “hanja” in a single phrase. Both “konglish” (English vocabulary adopted into Korean and written in the Korean alphabet) and “hanja” (Chinese vocabulary adopted into Korean but still written using Chinese characters) are quite common in Korean, which is a voracious borrower of words. It’s one of the things that fascinates me about the language.
Nevertheless, it’s very rare to see konglish and hanja in the same sentence – in this case, in a single compound noun. NASA, of course, is NASA. 휴먼어드벤처 [hu.meon.eo.deu.ben.cheo] is “human adventure.” And then the trailing hanja is 展 [전=jeon], and means “exhibition.” So the entire title is: NASA Human Adventure Exhibition. But it uses 3 different writing systems. It’s for a show at the local giant convention center, Kintex.
[daily log: walking, 6.5km]
Caveat: Ideophones for Hangul Day
Today is “Hangul Day” – a Korean holiday that was recently invented (or rather, “restored” as apparently it existed before, but its current incarnation became a legal holiday last year). I think South Korea was feeling self-conscious about how few holidays they have, relative to other OECD countries, so they’ve been inventing new ones. To celebrate Hangul Day, it seems logical to study Korean.
In that domain, here is something I’ve been working on recently.
I have posted about Korean language phonomimes, phenomimes and psychomimes 3 times before (here, here and here).
I have decided to just put together a consolidated page listing them, which I will update when I feel like, because such a resource for non-Korean speakers does not seem to exist online.
[daily log: 걷기]
Caveat: Made
This was interesting, especially the way the story kept "branching" out from the original effort to explain the Zipf phenomenon. This is the the kind of thing I like to think about, "for fun."
I liked the Emerson quote near the end, but, I am unsure if it is truly his. Wikiquote says it's "unsourced," whatever that means.
"I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me." – Ralph Waldo Emerson.
[daily log: stairs, 18 flights]
Caveat: A Joke With Legs
I ran across this joke, unattributed, posted at speculativegrammarian blog under the feature "Non-Gricean Humor":
"What has 34 legs in the morning, 69 at midday and 136 in the evening? A man who collects legs."
I have no idea why I found it so funny. If you know why I found it so funny, let me know – it may provide deep insight into my dysfunctions.
Actually, on further reflection, I think the fact that it was under the specific heading that it was under influenced my reaction – which it to say, the heading "Non-Gricean" primed my mind for the subsequent punchline, which would not have had the same "punch" if it had not been primed by the heading. Of course, that means finding the joke funny relies in part on knowing something about Grice's work in linguistic pragmatics.
Relatedly, but at a deeper level, I recently was granted an insight into the nature of humor while reading a kind of throwaway article at The Register (an IT-based humor-plus-news website) by Tim Worstall (who deserves credit). He was writing about some kind of google-translate-related disaster at a Moravian tourism website. But he said, in an aside, "I might even advance a theory of linguistics where our delight in such puns is in itself a reinforcement mechanism to make us think about those multiple meanings possible."
I liked this idea, finding it much more entertaining than the problems Moravians have been having with automated translation algorithms, and would reformulate and extend it as follows:
Our delight in puns and jokes is an evolutionary adaptation which is rooted in a feedback-based reinforcement of the cognitive mechanisms that allow us to cope with polysemy, which in turn is at the basis of abstract thought, metaphor and hypothesizing.
[daily log: walking, 6 km]
Caveat: 阿異 亥理te 李ding
I had a really horrible day yesterday. Some of my students rebelled, because they felt my homework expectations were too hard and unjust. Yet I think I’m easier than the other teachers – but they see me as low priority (it is sometimes clear that this perception is possibly encouraged by the other teachers, too). Anyway, it didn’t really go well. But it passed.
This morning, I had a better set of classes.
One student sent me his essay with the subject header, “阿異 亥理te 李ding”.
Sometimes (frequently) I get subject headers from students that are pure nonsense, and normally I could have read this as an example of that. But I’m certain that in this case it was a kind of multilingual rebus – because I happened to have briefly discussed the principle of rebus with this student not that long ago.
If you read the Chinese characters (hanja) with their Korean pronunciations, you get “아이 해리(이)te 리ding.” If you transliterate the Korean spelling, you get “a-i hae-i-te ri-ding”, which, phonetically, is clearly “I hate reading.” This is a sentiment frenquently expressed by the student in question.
Have a nice weekend. I want to rest.
[daily log: walking, 6 km]
Caveat: 용화꼰데 녜이보 쥬도 몰라소 미효니꼴로 보냬욤
My student sent me this message as the subject line when emailing an essay last week.
용화꼰데 녜이보 쥬도 몰라소 미효니꼴로 보냬욤
This is profoundly badly-spelled Korean. It is so bad, that it’s systematically bad. It took me about 25 minutes of work to figure out what she meant. Thus I theorize that it represents a kind of Korean version of “eye dialect“.
One thing I realized is that it systematically moves vowels around. Where standard Korean spells “어” she spells “오”
Thus 네이버 -> 녜이보 and the verb ending -서 -> -소
This change applies to her name and her friends’ name too:
영화 -> 용화 and 미현-> 미효니
Note in the latter she also doesn’t obey the morphophonological rules for dividing stem from suffix, but sticks to a strictly phonological division.
I don’t quite know what the -꼬- suffix is about, semantically. Something “cute” I suspect.
There is also a certain degree of systematic palatalization:
네 -> 녜 and 내->냬 … I never pronounce these distinctions quite right anyway, they are quite fine, but Korean ears perceive differences in palatalization to a degree I can’t even hear with my English-trained ears.
My ultimate question is why did she do it? In a paranoid moment, I could just imagine it’s a kind of mocking of a “foreign accent” – several of the transformations, like the vowels and the palatalization, represent issues I have with my Korean pronunciation. But in fact I very much doubt it. Basically I think it must be a kind of “eye-spelling,” I’m almost certain, which emphasizes certain trends in Korean as spoken by teenagers – I have definitely heard 어->오 in slangy talk, especially girls. Kind of like the very common addition of the ending -ㅇ/ŋ/ to open syllables in clause final position, of which this text doesn’t have an example – but I frequently hear e.g. “안녕하세용” for “안녕하세요,” even by teachers.
That being the case, however, it’s puzzling that she would select me as a target for this strange spelling – the message was meaningful and specific to communicating the content of her email to me – it relied on me understanding it’s meaning, because what it says is: “Yeonghwa forgot her login password so Mihyeon is sending you her essay.” Thus the only way Yeonghwa gets credit for the attached essay is if I understand the subject line – otherwise Mihyeon gets credit for the essay, as except for the “sent by” field, it’s the only place any names occur.
Did she just “forget” that I wasn’t a native speaker? That’s probable. Or did she do it intentionally as a way to challenge me or be deliberately opaque? That’s possible too. Did she think I’d spend half an hour figuring it out, and then write a linguistic analysis about it on my blog? I doubt it. I tend to write about these things because there is very little on the internet, in English, about non-standard Korean – it’s extremely hard to find.
[daily log: walking, 6 km]