I’m a near-daily reader of the Language Log blog. I’ve never felt the urge to place a comment, before, but a coincidence today has induced me to want to do so. Geoffrey K Pullum posted about a hapless Indiana teenager who was expelled from school for tweeting about the amazingly productive nature (in the syntactic sense of productive) of the English word “fuck.” I felt sad, but the student’s observation is hardly news to one with some background in linguistics.
Shortly after reading that Language Log article, however, I happened to see, on facebook, the posting of an acquaintance of mine. She’s a native Spanish speaker, who I believe I should allow to remain anonymous – I don’t know her very well, as she’s one of those encounters-in-passing who becomes a “facebook-only friend.”
Her post was fascinating seen so shortly after reading the Language Log post, because it shows that the amazing syntactic productivity of the word “fuck” is crossing linguistic boundaries pretty successfully. Here’s the relevant facebook text:
[transcribed: No voy a explicar más que ir a recitales me hace más feliz que cualquier otra fuckin cosa. FIN.]
There's a really interesting article from the NYT about the cognitive benefits of bilingualism. I've believed this at some weird intuitive level since I was a teenager, and I made this weird half-hearted vow to spend my life learning languages. I haven't actually done very well. I've learned tiny bits of a lot of languages – but althought I've studied at some academic level about 20 languages, for most I've only done a semester or even less. I've only reached actual fluency in one other language (Spanish). Then, in descending order, I might list French, Korean, Russian, Portuguese, Japanese… where I have some rudimentary survival ability. My desire for and interest in languages is obviously much stronger than my mental capacity and/or my actual deep-seated motivation to learn them. I nevertheless believe one of the greatest and most lasting gifts we can give children is 'another language.'
A student presented me with this picture a while back. I like when they give me gifts – even when they are inexplicable (or perhaps, especially when they are inexplicable).
I once studied Chinese for a few months. And, being a perennial if rather unsuccessful student of the Korean Language, I am also constantly exposed to the more than 60% of vocabulary in Korean that is of Chinese origin. I have not, however, ever really seriously been drawn to trying to learn Chinese the way that other languages have interested me.
Nevertheless, this is really interesting, from a “wacky language” standpoint. Below is a poem in Chinese. I can’t read it – though I recognize a few characters (while giving them Korean pronunciations).
Story of Shi Eating the Lions
A poet named Shi lived in a stone room,
fond of lions, he swore that he would eat ten lions.
He constantly went to the market to look for ten lions.
At ten o’clock, ten lions came to the market
and Shi went to the market.
Looking at the ten lions, he relied on his arrows
to cause the ten lions to pass away.
Shi picked up the corpses of the ten lions and took them to his stone room.
The stone room was damp. Shi ordered a servant to wipe the stone room.
As the stone den was being wiped, Shi began to try to eat the meat of the ten lions.
At the time of the meal, he began to realize that the ten lion corpses
were in fact were ten stone lions.
Try to explain this matter.
Strange poem, but nothing too weird, right?
But… now here’s the romanized transcription of the Chinese – the digits at the end of each syllable represent the 4 tones.
I tend to avoid thinking about Middle Eastern politics. It’s mostly depressing – the same way that I find Mexican politics so discouraging, maybe. But I was listening to some news reports, and then saw the video below and was feeling a twinge of optimism. Just because it makes things seem more “human,” maybe. Regardless, it set me to contemplating studying Arabic again – I studied اللغة العربية for a semester in 1996, during my time in graduate school. I’ve always thought it’s a beautiful language. Arabic was a major historical influence on Spanish, which is what I was majoring in for grad school – mabye on par with the influence of Norwegian on English, perhaps. I’ve forgotten most of it now. I can’t remember how to type it, for example – I cheated and used google translate to make that smattering of it in my title.
Anytime I contemplate studying some other language, though, I immediately realize the interest is largely being driven my feelings of despair vis-a-vis learning the Korean Language. So here I go, grumping about it again.
What I’m listening to right now.
West Elbalad (Egyptian group), “Voice of Freedom.” It’s a pretty good song, anyway.
There’s not much in the way of Dakota-Lakota language material on the internet. Dakota and Lakota are two closely-related dialects of the Sioux Native American language. Somewhat confusingly, the Lakota dialect is what is spoken in the Dakotas, while the Dakota dialect is spoken in Minnesota and Manitoba.
I studied the Dakota language while living in Minneapolis in the early 1990’s, during one of (one of ?) my “strange languages” phases. I really like the language. As an “active” speaker I can’t do much with, but I can still recognize verb conjugations and some basic vocabulary when I see it or hear it (not that that happens much). During my Lunar New Year time off I was surfing the internet looking for random things, and I took a moment to wonder if anyone, anywhere, had posted some Dakota Language poetry.
The below is the only thing I found in that vein. It was written by someone named John Hunt Peacock, Jr., a few years ago. He has been learning Dakota as a way to get in touch with his own cultural roots. Finding written materials in the language is hard – there are only a few thousand speakers in the world. He learned his language from the Dakota Bible and other Christian materials in the language, but he feels ambivalent about Christianity.
The poem is quite brutal in its assessment of the Christian legacy provided by the European Americans. He is both glad there is a Dakota language Bible, and bitter about the fact that that Bible was used to justify the mistreatment and dispossession of his people (“the cross of the Dakota culture’s crucifixion,” he writes). He asks how he could possibly be Christian.
TOKED CHRIST TAWOKEYE HEMACA OWAKIHI HWO?
Miye ca wowinape un wati, wowapi ska akan, Iyuieskapi topa dena — Dakota Wowapi Wakan Kin, Wocekiye Ikceka Wowapi Kin, Mahpiya Oicimani Yapi Kin, Sina Sapa Wowinwange — icipahyapi okatanpi wan Dakota wicohan yapi, Dakota iapi kin nipi, wotanin waste dena kapi. Wowapi woyakapi, toked wakiye sni, kais wawihingyapi sica, caje un econpi, Miye ca, wicoie ed otokahe ekta wicoie heca, Wan iye qa iyohi Dakota wicoie waste!
HOW COULD I BE A CHRISTIAN?
To me, living in exile on this white page, these four translations — the Dakota Bible, Book of Common prayer, “Pilgrim’s Progress”, and Catholic Catechism — once the cross of Dakota culture’s crucifixion, have become the gospel of the resurrected Dakota language. I don’t care what these books say or mean, or what atrocities are stll committed in their name. To me, in the beginning was the word, and the word, each and every Dakota word, was good!
I don’t know who this image should be attributed to – I found it here (a photographer’s blog, who in turn attributes it to this website). It’s pretty cool, though.
I’m not a conlanger (q.v.). If I were a conlanger, however, Ithkuil would be the sort of thing I would conlangify, perhaps. Which is probably why it’s good I’m not a conlanger – the last thing this world really actaully needs is more Ithkuils. There’s something nevertheless appealing about the idea of perceiving a language as an almost purely aesthetic object – I do tend to look at Korean that way, on the days when I’m feeling more positive about it.
I have managed to catch a cold. Again. Not really bad or debilitating, but annoying. I guess that’s what winter life is about when spending 6+ hours a day cooped up with groups of children. I slept a lot earlier today, instead of going to the bookstore as I’d well and truly planned to do. I guess I just need to accept that when I have one-day weekends, I’m not going to get anything “done.” Next weekend is 설날 (lunar new year) – and I have nothing planned. The city will be shut down, and the idea of travelling anywhere in the country is utterly inconceivable (because for the vast majority it becomes obligatory to travel on that holiday), but maybe I can at least do some “urban hiking” or something.
A few days ago, I overheard the phrase 깐죽 at work, in the context of the English word “smart ass.” Ever since, I’ve been trying to puzzle out if there’s something equivalent, there, but the more I try to figure it out, the more I don’t think they’re really the same thing. You can imagine, though, why having a Korean phrase for “smart ass” might be useful to a teacher of elementary age Koreans with limited English ability.
There is nothing in the online Korean-English dictionaries for 깐죽 or its verbal derivatives (as reported to me by coworkers: 깐죽거리다, 깐죽대다). The Korean-Korean dictionaries didn’t seem very useful (or maybe I didn’t understand them well enough). Naver.com, for example, says, “쓸데없는 소리를 밉살스럽고 짓궂게 들러붙어 계속 지껄이다.” This is, in itself, hard to take apart, and it took some time pooking around google translate (plus the dictionary and some grammatical knowledge, because google translate is, by itself, useless for Korean-to-English) to even get the gist of it, which is something like, “To chatter on uselessly and harassingly in a vulgar manner.”
While I can see why someone would draw the link between a phrase meaning that, and the English “smart ass,” they’re still not really the same, as it neglects the “smart” part of it – the fact that a smart-ass doesn’t just chatter uselessly, but that the smart-ass has an aspect of “too smart for his/her own good.”
One translation I found encouraging was in the lyric of a song called 청춘고백 by Outsider (image, right), translated here. The translation offered for 깐죽거리던 is “snarky” – which is closer to “smart-ass,” definitely.
Conclusions? None, really.
“깐죽” seems to be related to the idea of talking too much, and/or out of turn, and/or vulgarly, but I don’t see much to suggest it implies speaking in “smart-ass” way specifically. So it only means smart-ass in the more broad meaning of the latter term.
What I’m listening to right now – the song I mentioned.
Tvfaci mapu mew mogeley wagvben
Tvfaci kajfv wenu mew vlkantuley
ta ko pu rakiduwam
Doy fvta ka mapu tañi mvlen ta komv
xipalu ko mew ka pvjv mew
pewmakeiñmu tayiñ pu fvcakece yem
Apon kvyeh fey tañi am -pigekey
Ni hegvmkvleci piwke fewvla ñvkvfvy.
– Elicura Chihuailaf N. (poeta Mapuche de Chile)
El idioma es Mapudungun. La ortografía no es la que aprendí cuando estudiaba el idioma en 1994 en la UACh – no es una ortografía muy transparente, en mi opinión. Nótese que la “v” representa una vocal parecida a la rusa “ы” o la polaca “y” o también el sonido que se escribe en galés “u”. En la ortografía que yo aprendía, se la escribe “ü”. También nótese que la “x” arriba representa un sonido casi exactamente el del inglés, “tr” en una palabra como “truck”, y que la “c” es el del “ch” español o inglés. Debajo, una traducción en español. No soy capaz de entenderlo muy bien sin la traducción – nunca lo aprendí muy bien y me he olvidado de casi todo. Pero me encanta el idioma.
En este suelo habitan las estrellas
En este cielo canta el agua
de la imaginación
Más allá de las nubes que surgen
de estas aguas y estos suelos
nos sueñan los antepasados
Su espíritu -dicen- es la luna llena
El silencio su corazón que late.
(Imagen: ciudad de Castro en la isla de Chiloé, región históricamente Mapuche en la Patagonia chilena.)
As an update to my previous post, I followed up with a co-worker regarding my confusion as to how "If there are a lot of boatmen, the boat goes up the mountain," can mean the same thing as "too many cooks spoil the broth."
I had been visualizing a group of men working together to get a boat up a mountain, which would, naturally, be a difficult thing, and therefore a positive accomplishment, unlike spoiling broth. Hence my confusion. But, in fact, it turns out taking a boat up a mountain isn't perceived as useful.
I'm going to offer a slightly altered translation that, I think, makes this more negative connotation more clear in English: "If there are a lot of boatmen, the boat ends up far from water."
This removes the seemingly positive implicatures of getting the boat "up" a mountain, which apparently aren't present in the Korean – that's because the "going up" thing is inherently viewed as positive in English, but there's no "upness" involved in the Korean – it's that "lative" case ending I was preoccupied with, in fact: it means "into the mountain" meaning nothing more than "inland" (since all of the "inland" in Korea is mountain, this makes sense.
boatman+SUBJ many+IF boat+SUBJ mountain+LAT goes-up If there are many boatmen the boat goes up the mountain. I spent a long time trying to figure out what to call the -으로 [-euro = +LAT] ending. By my abbreviation, you can see that I’ve decided to call it a “Lative” case marker (q.v.), which I’ve never seen in any grammar of Korean. I’m just being an obstreperous and idiosyncratic avocational linguist, right? The ending indicates “direction toward” or “direction through” but also “manner” or “means,” and, as far as I can figure out, in colloquial usage it can be a “destination.” It is very common. This wasn’t that hard to figure out, as far as semantics. But when I saw what the proverb was supposed to be equivalent to, I became puzzled. It’s said to be equivalent to: “Too many cooks spoil the broth.” Frankly, that seems to be exactly the opposite of its meaning, which is to say, with enough people (boatmen), anything is possible (getting a boat up a mountain). I’m going to have to ponder this. I wonder if the important idea is that of the “boatman” in opposition to, maybe passengers (who aren’t as useful in getting the boat anywhere?). Personally, I have no idea how to get from A (If there are many boatmen the boat goes up the mountain) to B (Too many cooks spoil the broth). Perhaps I need more boatmen? Actually, I started thinking about Fitzcarraldo. Seriously – it’s exactly the same.
Not of interest to most, but it’s the sort of thing I spend way too much time on.
I asked myself, “I wonder which syntactical word-order is most common in human language?” Specifically, I was thinking about the “split” verb phrases implicit in e.g. VSO (verb-subject-object) in languages like Welsh, Irish, and various Mayan dialects (among many others of course). Was that order less common?
After only a little bit of googling, I found my answer, and much more. This map is a screenshot of a zoomable map-app that I found.
It’s very cool if you’re into that kind of thing. It seems to imply (to me, anyway) that SOV is a kind of substratum, which is interesting. I found an article (actually I think the article led me to the map, but I don’t remember) that discusses this very idea, although it gets somewhat skeptical.
I'm not going to to say this is an endorsement. Some people will be offended at the idea, while others will think I'm engaging in a sort of national or cultural favoritism by even mentioning it.
I've long had a sort of gut feeling that writing came to Japan via Korea. But you don't see scholars on either side (meaning in Japan or Korea) – at least not those writing for Westerners – who would suggest this. Both sides prefer to downplay whatever cultural linkages might exist. But there are many.
So, I spend a lot of time reading Language Log – a blog on specifically linguistic topics. Today there was an entry about a Japanese "kanji of the year" that included – in a sort of parenthetical digression – the following claim (attributed to someone named Bob Ramsey):
You may know this, but in the Three Kingdoms period people on the Korean peninsula also used this unwieldy device [i.e. the way that Japanese uses kanji to represent native, multisyllabic words, which in "three kingdom" times was also done in Korea but later passed out of favor], called hun by them, to write native words. But then, Chinese character readings were completely standardized by the powerful monarch King Kyongdok in the Unified Silla period, and kun (or hun) readings largely disappeared from use thereafter. Not to put too fine a point on it, but it seems pretty clear that the early Japanese learned this and most other ways of writing from people from the Korean peninsula, Paekcheans probably, but Sillans might also have played a role in the transmission of scribal methods. [emphasis added]
Why am I mentioning this? Because I've thought this for a long time, but this is the first scholarly article [err.. vaguely scholarly, anyway] that I've run across that supports this idea. So I'm annotating it here for my own future reference, I guess.
Nezahualcóyotl era poeta y príncipe del estado azteca, de etnia Acolhua, del siglo 15 – murió antes de la invasión cortesiana, pero le conocemos por su poesía y las memorias de sus descendientes. Su pensamiento parece bastante espiritual.
Moyocoyatzin es un nombre (más bien un epiteto) de un “diós” o poder espiritual, que significa “el que se crea a sí mismo.”
Nezahualcóyotl
Romance de los Señores de la Nueva España
Zan nik kaki itopyo ipetlacayo
X. Ah in tepilwan: ma tiyoke timikini ti mazewaltin nawi nawi in timochi tonyazke timochi tonalkizke Owaya Owaya in tlaltikpak. XI. Ayak chalchiwitl ayak teokuitlatl mokuepaz in tlaltikpak tlatielo timochiotonyazke in canin ye yuhkan: ayak mokawaz zan zen tlapupuliwiz ti yawi ye yuhkan […] ichan Owaya Owaya. XII. Zan yahki tlakuilolli Aya ah tonpupuliwi Zan yuhki xochitl Aya in zan tonkuetlawi ya in tlaltikpak Owaya ya ketzalli ya zakuan xiuhkecholli itlakechwan tonpupuliwi tiyawi in […] ichan Owaya Owaya. XIII. Oaziko ye nikan ye ololo Ayyawe a in tlaokol Aya ye in itek on nemi ma men chkililo in kuauta ozelotl Owaya nikan zan tipopuliwizke ayak mokawaz Iyyo. XIV. Xik yokoyakan in antepilwan kuauht amozelo ma nel chalchiwitl ma nel teokuitlatl no ye ompa yazke onkan on Ximowa yewaya zan tipupuliwizke ayak mokawaz Iyyo.
X. Percibo su secreto, oh vosotros, príncipes: De igual modo somos, somos mortales, los hombres, cuatro a cuatro, […] todos nos iremos, todos moriremos en la tierra. XI. Nadie esmeralda nadie oro se volverá ni será en la tierra algo que se guarda: todos nos iremos hacia allá igualmente: nadie quedará, todos han de desaparecer: de modo igual iremos a su casa. XII. Como una pintura nos iremos borrando. Como flor hemos de secarnos sobre la tierra. Cual ropaje de plumas del quetzal, del zacuan, del azulejo, iremos pereciendo. Iremos a su casa. XIII. Llegó hasta acá, anda ondulando la tristeza de los que viven ya en el interior de ella… No se les llore en vano a águilas y tigres… ¡Aquí iremos desapareciendo: nadie ha de quedar! XIV. Príncipes, pensadlo, oh águilas y tigres: pudiera ser jade, pudiera ser oro también allá irán donde están los descorporizados. Iremos desapareciendo: nadie ha de quedar!
Me interesa mucho el idioma y cultura nahuatl, desde hace mucho. Ya que me he visto frustrado tanto en mis esfuerzos para aprender el coreano, he estado pasando tiempo estudiando otros idiomas (de forma no muy enfocada).
I have become a compulsive reader of a blogsite called Language Log. Recently a linguist there named Geoffrey Pullum was lamenting his failure to realize the transparent etymology of the name of the Italian dessert tiramisu (tira-mi-su = pull-me-up). Who knew? I didn’t, either – I didn’t even realize the accent was supposed to fall on the last syllable.
Then he talked about other things that linguists (and/or regular people) notice (or don’t notice) about the language(s) they use, and then he shared a list. Although only mildly interested in the case of the tiramisu, I found the list utterly fascinating. It’s a list of “missing terms” among derivationally related words.
candor
candify
candific
candid
fervor
fervify
fervific
fervid
horror
horrify
horrific
horrid
liquor
liquefy
liquific
liquid
livor
livify
livific
livid
lucor
lucify
lucific
lucid
pallor
pallify
pallific
pallid
rigor
rigify
rigific
rigid
stupor
stupefy
stupific
stupid
terror
terrify
terrific
terrid
torpor
torpify
torpific
torpid
vigor
vigify
vigific
vigid
tepor
tepify
tepific
tepid
My immediate thought was, “oh, but we could use those missing words.” So I’m going to keep this list handy, and try to use each of the struck-out terms at some point in this here handy blog thingy. So watch out!
Partly, I just really like saying the term Whorfian. It makes me think of Klingons, because of the inestimable Mr Worf from The Next Generation. And Klingons, of course, because of their language, are inextricably tied to first-order high nerdery (see, for example, the opera ‘u’).
But I’m not intending to write about Klingons. Rather, I have been meaning to discuss a rather long comment that my bestfriend Bob left on one of my blog posts from the start of the month. Bob’s comment presented the following anecdote (I’ll just cut-n-paste it here):
Apropos Korean language and culture, I heard a fascinating story yesterday from my Korean colleague here in the Music Department. Did you know that Korean Airlines pilots (and co-pilots, etc.) are only allowed to speak English in the cockpit? According to my colleague, this is because the myriad levels of formal discourse in the Korean language can make communication murky between subordinates and superiors (e.g., co-pilots and pilots). Analysis of black box tapes showed this after a Korean Airlines plane crashed several decades ago. The co-pilot tried to challenge a decision the pilot had made, but because of the circumlocution the co-pilot used, the pilot didn’t get what his colleague was trying to say. And the plane crashed, killing everyone on board. So now Korean pilots bypass the issues of formality and politeness altogether by speaking English. This sounded a bit far-fetched to me, but it came from a reputable source—an ex-pat Korean. Do you know if this is true? If so, it should give your linguistic/cultural interests something to chew on. Or perhaps you already wrote about this in a previous post at some point during the past 4 years?
I have heard this anecdote before. And I believe the fact that KAL pilots are only allowed English in the cockpit is probably true – this is true in many commercial airline companies around the world. But I always assumed the story behind the English-only rule to be a sort of urban myth. So I’m going to explain why I think that.
First of all, there are less baroque and more plausible reasons for a non-English-speaking country’s major airline instituting the English-only rule. Most significantly, since English is required by international aviation rules when communicating with ground control regardless of country (there’s that English is the international language thing, for you, if you ever doubted it), many countries require their carriers to use English in the cockpit for a simple reason – to keep people in practice because during a potential emergency, its use will thus be more reflexive. In countries such as Korea, with such atrocious English-language education (such as I proudly represent!), it serves also simply to provide the crew members with lots of practice.
So, that’s what you might call the constructive rebuttal – the counterveiling evidence. But I’m more interested in the claim made in the anecdote regarding the fact that Korean makes straightforward cockpit communication more difficult. And on that idea, without any concrete support pro or con with respect to the actual anecdote, my gut feeling is to call bullshit.
It’s probably true that sometimes Koreans have trouble communicating with those around them in what we in the west consider a straightforward manner. There are all these deferences and, yes, circumlocutions and oblique references that get in the way. This is cultural, however, not linguistic. There’s an important difference. It’s undeniable that language is the medium of this culture, but it’s one thing to say that culture comes embedded in language and another to say that language shapes culture. This latter view is called the Whorfian hypothesis, after the linguist Benjamin Whorf, who hypothesized it.
The fact is, Koreans are also perfectly capable of communicating straightforwardly with each other in the Korean Language, if they feel like it. If they’re in some kind of social context that allows them to relax the cultural rules, so to speak. A few minutes on a Korean elementary playground will bring my point home quite quickly, I think. Or just give some Koreans some soju and wait half an hour. Koreans have a term for this “low speaking”: 반말 [banmal – literally, “half speech”]. If KAL had wanted to ensure clear communication in the cockpit, they could have just as easily made a rule requiring 반말 as they could have made the rule requiring English.
But this brings me to a tangential point, which is fascinating in its own right. There is a strong belief in Korea that English, as a language, not only doesn’t require deference or politeness, but that it isn’t capable of it. This belief is further reinforced by the tribes of badly-educated, poorly-behaved, and ill-informed foreign English native-speaking teachers that sojourn in the republic. It makes for a bit of a depressing battle, sometimes, with Koreans, when I’m forced to explain, over and over, that phrases like “fuck you” or “shut up” are not always appropriate in English.
“Really?” my surprised interlocutors sometimes react. “But you see it in the movies…” I point out that you can see all kinds of low and banmal Korean Language use in Korean movies, too – but that doesn’t mean you should use it with your teacher or your boss or even your friends. “Oh, wow, I suppose that’s true,” they asnwer, reflectively, new understanding dawning on their faces.
Koreans are perhaps encouraged in their belief that English is a “low-only” language by the lack of complex, grammaticalized forms of humility and deference that my friend mentions above. And to that extent, perhaps there’s something Whorfian going on – they’re letting the shape of their language guide preconceptions about how deference and humility should work in other languages and cultures.
But finally, I reject what we might call the stronger Whorfian hypothesis (with respect to this particular anecdote) not just because of the existence of banmal, but also because there are Koreans who have perfectly good English who are nevertheless utterly incapable of communicating directly or straightfowardly in English, either (cue typical Korean English teacher trying to communicate with his or her English native-speaking coworker). It’s the culture shaping the language, clearly, and not the other way around.
As far as the anecdote above, it’s easy to imagine the guys in the cockpit, forced to speak English, and still failing to communicate – they’ll just end up being circumlocutious with less vocabulary and more limited grammatical resources to convey humility or deference. And, contrariwise, if a Korean co-pilot manages to say to his superior, “shut up, you’re making a fucking mistake, don’t be an asshole,” it’s more likely because he believes English requires him to communicate this way, than because Korean prevents him from doing so (cue Korean playground squabble or typical drunken bar confrontation). The anecdote, circulating in the culture, reinforces that belief, and so, to that extent, perhaps the English-only rule does serve to clarify things in the cockpit.
I found a website (named “Project Implicit,” by something called IAT Corp, hosted at Harvard) that makes some claim to evaluate the kind of unconscious mental associations between categories like race, gender, sexual orientation, etc., and other semantic fields (like good vs. bad, American vs. not-American, etc.).
You do these rapid response categorization tests and then the test tells you how you tend to lean in your alleged “automatic preferences.” I harbor all kinds of skepticism about this sort of test, on multiple counts. I might discuss some of these skepticisms later, but for now, I’ll present my personal results on two of the tests (in the spirit of disclosure and for those curious).
The first test I took was with regard to the African-American category (Black) vis-a-vis the European-American category (White). Impressionistically, the alternation between labeling as Black vs. African-American on the one hand and White vs. European-American on the other hand struck me as inconsistent or random, although I can’t say for sure that wasn’t a designed inconsistency (e.g. something intentionally random as a built-in part of the test’s brain-probe, so to speak).
Below is the interpretation of your IAT performance, followed by questions about what you think it means. The next page explains the task and has more information such as a summary of what most people show on this IAT.
Your Result
Your data suggest a slight automatic preference for African American compared to European American.
The interpretation is described as ‘automatic preference for European American’ if you responded faster when European American faces and Good words were classified with the same key than when African American faces and Good words were classified with the same key. Depending on the magnitude of your result, your automatic preference may be described as ‘slight’, ‘moderate’, ‘strong’, or ‘little to no preference’. Alternatively, you may have received feedback that ‘there were too many errors to determine a result’.
I quickly felt that I was aware of “how” the test worked – it’s hard to explain so I suggest you just try it for yourself. I admit that from the start, I felt wary (on guard, so to speak) with regard to my own possible prejudice, and once I felt I understood how the test worked, I perhaps attempted to compensate. Assuming that the underlying prejudice I presumed myself to be battling (as a White American raised in a 90%+ white community) was one of preference toward European-Americans, it appears (and I can only say “appears” as I hardly know what all was operating, both in the test and in my own brain) I compensated successfully.
I found the first test unpleasant. The business of matching Whites with “Good” words and Blacks with “Bad” words (and then subsequently vice-versa) left a bad taste in my mouth. It was like the underlying message was: “everyone’s a racist, we just want to see what kind you are.” It was an exercise in reinforcing stereotypes, whether positive ones or bad ones.
The second test wasn’t really unpleasant so much as downright ridiculous. It was supposed to look at the European-American/Native-American contrast vis-a-vis the American/un-American (Foreign) contrast. The visual images drew on stereotypes even worse than the first test (see screenshot below). Of course, stereotypes are the point, and therefore it’s utterly conceivable that they’re intentional. Still, it’s awkward for someone who tries to be analytical about these things.
The whole business of what words were “American” vs. “Foreign” struck me as silly – they were all place names – essentially, European place names versus American place-names of Native American etymology. What is this contrast supposed to show? That Americans know the names of American cities? What about the allegedly atrocious geographical knowledge of average Americans? Is this test trying to link bad geographical knowledge with some type of racial (or racist) stereotype or another? Or is it assuming good geographical knowledge? They’re aware that Miami is in Latin America, right? And that Seattle is in Canada? And Moscow is “Foreign” – but what about the guy sitting in Moscow, Idaho, taking the test? I’ve been there. It’s near the Nez Perce Reservation. Did they take that into account?
What does this test really mean? What is it looking at? What does it have to do with nativism, white-supremacism, pro- vs. anti-immigration stances, etc.? It’s obviously complex, but I felt immediately that the test designers had at least as much ideological baggage as I personally brought to the table, and they didn’t even do much work to conceal it. I certainly doubt they had made much effort to evaluate their own prejudices, in the design of the test (especially in light of the apparent socio-linguistic naivety on display in the onomastics).
I felt a strong impulse to try my best to “game” the test. I have no idea whether my effort to game the test worked, but it appears to have, since I got the result I intended: I got myself to show up as a nativist, roughly. But of course, the test designers could argue that I was merely “aiming for” the “automatic preference” I was already ideologically inclined toward. Here is my result.
Below is the interpretation of your IAT performance, followed by questions about what you think it means. The next page explains the task and has more information such as a summary of what most people show on this IAT.
Your Result
Your data suggest a moderate association of White Am. with Foreign and Native Am. with American compared to Native Am. with Foreign and White Am. with American.
The interpretation is described as ‘automatic association between White Am. and American’ if you responded faster when White Am. images and American were classified with the same key than when White Am. images and Foreign were classified with the same key. Depending on the magnitude of your result, your automatic association may be described as ‘slight’, ‘moderate’, ‘strong’, or ‘little to no preference’. Alternatively, you may have received feedback that ‘there were too many errors to determine a result’.
So what does it all mean? I’m not sure. I might take some more tests and report back – they’re nothing if not interesting.
Yesterday when I landed on the google homepage, I was interested in the googledoodle (“google doodle,” the customized, constantly changing logo-artwork around the word “google”), because it was obscure and artistic in a style that caught my attention. So I went to hover the cursor over the googledoodle, which will give a short explanation of what it’s about.
Lo, to my dismay, the googledoodle hovertext was hangeulized. It was a han-googledoodle. This struck me as annoying, but fortunately, I can read a little bit of Korean. It said: “호르헤 루이스 보르헤스 탄생 112주년” – [horeuhe ruiseu boreuheseu tansaeng 112 junyeon = Jorge Luis Borges’ 112th birtday]. Charming. A nice bit of googledoodling, to be sure (see picture). And… I love JLB, of course – how could I not, given my literarophilosophical predilictions? So, that’s a given.
But I felt a sensation of annoyed, impending rantiness about the issue of the hovertext, itself. I have been annoyed, before, because of a website’s laziness (that’s my perception of the site programmers affect, I mean) with respect to what I would call “language detection issues.”
Yes, it’s true that I’m in Korea. And my IP address says so. But there’s plenty of evidence available to the browser’s page-rendering software that can tell the webpage in question that I would prefer presentation of information in English – after all, that’s my computer’s OS installation language, and that’s my browser’s default language. Both pieces of information are in no way concealed from the browser, as far as I know. Most notably, I have visited plenty of sites that recognize my language (even before I log on – and I never save cookies so that’s not what’s going on, either) – inlcuding, lo and behold, gmail, which presumably shares programming expertise with googledoodlers, coxisting together in the same giant chocolate-factory-by-the-bay, as they do.
So when I see things like that – let’s call it “IP-address-driven language defaulting behavior” – it just pisses me off. It’s not that I don’t like the Korean – I even welcomed the brief puzzle that the hovertext presented. But it’s the fact that it seems to represent a parochial, lazy approach to solving a much more elegantly solvable web programming problem – that’s what annoys me.
Hence my desire to make this little rant, here.
</rant>
And, P.S., Happy Birthday to that benevolent bonaerense, blind prophet of postmodernism!
Koreans often make hyperbolic statements extolling the virtues of one or another of Korea’s historical accomplishments, and, like nationalist narratives anywhere, they are often rather implausible, or at the least, fudge the truth.
But one thing that I completely agree with (and speaking as a linguist) is that their writing system, hangeul (or hangul or “Hangle” as my student spelled it in an essay the other day) is utterly remarkable – by far the most logical writing system in general use by any people on planet Earth. Arguably, it was the first time a writing system was made “scientifically” – by a committee of scholars put together by King Sejong the Great in the 15th century, after getting fed up with the difficulty of promoting literacy in a language written using ideographs borrowed from an unrelated language (i.e. Chinese characters – which is, for example, how the Japanese still write their language, today).
If I were tasked with developing a writing system for some newly discovered human language from scratch, I would almost undoubtedly start with hangeul as a base, and then develop whatever new jamo were needed to cover whatever sounds that might exist in that new language but that don’t exist in Korean, and build from there.
Hangeul uniquely captures at least two aspects of human phonation that most writing systems fail at (including, most notably, the IPA (the International Phonetic Alphabet) which is supposed to be the be-all and end-all of scientific writing systems): 1) hangeul is at least partially featural (there are progressive graphic relationships between related sounds); 2) it transparently indicates syllabicity.
I particularly fantasize that this last element of hangeul could be incorporated into the English writing system. Despite the fact that the syllable (or, alternately, the mora, depending on the language – there are some technical differences in the two concepts) is central to the way spoken languages work, no other writing system so transparently shows syllable divisions. So while American schoolchildren struggle with the concept of syllable (and syllabification) well into high school, explaining the idea of “syllable” to a literate Korean first-grader is trivial.
Even the supposed inconsistencies of hangeul, from a phonetic standpoint, end up reflecting morpho-phonological characteristics of the Korean language when viewed from higher up the “generative” chain, so to speak.
So, while there are many points on which I would challenge the Korea-centric narratives put forth in the media here, or in public education, I have no quibbles with the notion that “when Sejong made Hangle” was one of the greatest moments in world cultural history.
Korean terms for family members seem quite overwhelming to those of us trying to learn the language. First of all, there are so many of them. But second of all, Koreans use many of those terms quite freely with people they aren't related to: in particular, because of the social prohbition, under most circumstances, against addressing one's elders by their names, many of the various terms for relatives are used for directly addressing (i.e. talking to, calling out to) older friends and acquaintances. These many "terms of direct address" take the place of the word "you," too, since the various Korean words for "you" seem mostly reserved for advertising copy (e.g. 당신) and talking with children (e.g. 너).
I finally found a blog page that summarizes many of the vocabulary items for relatives and family relations pretty well. I recommend it, but even that summary seems to miss a lot of useful and important information.
For example, during a recent unit on English-language family terms with a fairly low-level 3rd/4th/5th grade class, I realized that they were using the term I had learned meant nephew/niece (조카 [joka]) to mean what we would call "first cousin once removed" (a horrible term – more colloquially we always just said "cousin" in the family reuinion type settings when I was growing up). Which to say, in the term 조카 there is embedded a sort of generational concept.
In researching that word 조카 at an online dictionary, I found some additional complications on it that aren't covered on the above-referenced web page:
I'm sure that for almost all of the terms on that webpage, a little research would dig up similar elaborations.
Also, there's a whole other set of terms of direct address that seem to apply to schoolmates and coworkers, only a few of which I can recognize. Many of these are generic job titles, in the vein of 실장님 [siljangnim = "office manager," roughly], which is, for example, the term I should be using for the front-desk-lady at work.
But others aren't really titles at all, but bear on the generational separation between the two individuals: I've recently been becoming aware of 선배 [seonbae] a lot in the Korean drama I'm currently watching – the word means schoolmate or workmate who is "ahead" of one, in seniority terms (it's not clear to me if this is relative seniority or actually years of age – for example, if I'm older but start at a given company later, is someone ahead of me in the seniority chain but younger than me in age a 선배?). It's translated as "senior" but that utterly fails to capture its actual usage.
One thing I've never seen is a truly satisfying list, in one place, of ALL the terms of direct address that Koreans use: mostly when you see someone discussing Korean terms of direct address you get a few examples and then some annoying comment to the effect of: Koreans have hundreds if not thousands of terms of direct address, including names for relatives and titles of coworkers and schoolmates, etc. So my request is: how about a list? I guess it will have to be another little project of mine. Maybe someday.
I'm not sure how I'm feeling about work. On the one hand, it's mostly pretty unstressful. On the other hand, I'm not having as much interaction with kids as I did at Hongnong nor even at LBridge: because Karma combines "test prep" with regular English curriculum, during this midterms cycle the kids get pulled out for special test prep courses, which is great if the stress of giving classes gets to me, but it is annoying if hanging out with kids in class is the highlight of my work day. At least at Hongnong, although I often had no classes to teach, I still got to interact with kids around the school and at lunch, etc. There's no deskwarming at Karma, though. Mostly I'm filling my time with curriculum development work – I'm writing a textbook, supposedly (which is really hard, actually), and doing iBT (TOEFL) prep tutoring with a really smart 9th grader.
I really meant to enroll in a Korean language course for the mornings, but I've been unable to summon the gumption. It's not the idea of 12 hours a week of language class that's putting me off (that's what most of the courses I've looked at offer), it's the additional 12 hours a week of commuting time that it would entail – none of the courses are closer than Hongdae or Jongno, both of which would involve more-than-an-hour-each-way commutes. I hate commuting.
I've been looking into trying to find a tutor who I could pay for one-on-one classes, out here in Ilsan. But I'm kind of picky about who I'm willing to pay as a tutor – most Koreans don't know squat about their own language, from a linguistics standpoint, and I find it very frustrating trying to learn from them. Unpaid hanging-out style efforts at conversation is fine – I can approach it like a field linguist doing research. That's what many of my Korean friends are for.
But if I'm going to pay someone, I want them to know their language's phonological inventory (and know how it differs from that of English, for example), and I'd appreciate if they could recognize the difference between an auxialiary verb and an example of verb seriality, etc., and have them subsequently be able to try to explain these things to me – you know, like actually teach me.
I suppose my complaint about the people I've paid to teach me Korean, in the past, is the flipside of the same, utterly legitimate complaint lodged against so many of the English speakers hired to teach English in Korea – the fact that they can't tell a modal verb or English prosodic vowel reduction from a hole in their posterior means that Korean students aren't really getting much bang for their won, in teaching terms.
What I'm listening to right now.
I jogged my 5km route last night, dodging drizzle and rain drops. I listened to this track on my mp3. I'm becoming incredibly annoyed with the fact that I've gotten back to a 4 or 5 night-a-week jogging habit, and I'm still not losing weight.
This morning, I'm listening to it again. It's raining hard against my windows, and the sky is the thick gray that makes it feel like the sun didn't quite finish rising.
It's been raining a lot – yesterday there was a respite, but aside from that it's been raining almost continuously for approaching a week now. Yey summer in Korea.
The lyrics.
Pour Me Another (Another Poor Me) From the album "You Can't Imagine How Much Fun We're Having"
V:1 And all she wanted was a little bit of solid, Feels like love, it doesnt matter what you call it, Heal those cuts, or hide em underneath the polish, Break another promise, And take me as a hostage, Hold your job down, And let the zombies crowd around, Thankin mommys god, but its a cops town, Keep it safe for me, While I chase a fantasy, Swerving through the galaxy, Searching for a family, Happily surrounded by planets and stars, She was stuck uptown, you was landed on mars, Its all fucked up now, caught your hand in the jar, Another small step back, for that man at the bar, Spill a little bit of blood on the street, For love that goes to those who know, That they drink too much, And hold your own glass, Up to the heavens, Take the little time to try and count the seconds, It goes
[Pour me another, So I can forget you now, Pour me another, So I can come let you down, Pour me another, So I can remember how, True that I am to this addiction of you,] x2
V:2 Drink it all away, numb it down to the none, Stay awake tonight and wait for the sun, You say you hate your life, you aint the only one, Let your frustration out the gate and watch the pony run, One double for the hunger and the struggle, Two for the fool tryna pull apart the puzzle, Three now I smile while I wait for your rebuttal, By the forth shot, Im just another child in a bubble, Tryna play with the passion and the placement, Just to see what these people let him get away with, Still tryna climb a mountain for you, Hammer in my hand, still pounding on a screw, She no listen, so he dont speak no more, Nobodys winning, cause neither is keeping score, Dont wanna think no more, just let me drink some more, Pour me another, cause I can still see the floor,
[Pour me another, So I can forget you now, Pour me another, So I can come let you down, Pour me another, So I can remember how, True that I am to this addiction of you,] x2
V:3 Live life tipsy, stiff if it dont fit right with me, Kiss my whiskey; lift my lips press to my angel, Swallow it and leave her empty bottle on the table, Let the past fall, Making faces at that clock on the back wall, Countdown to last call, Ask all of these people that make sounds, How long does it take for the pace to break down? Another lonely little trophy, If only I can walk a straight line, Id make it home free, And everybody in this bar thinks that they know me, And my story, Like poor me, I could count the days till you come back, Or I could follow them sunrays down to the train tracks, I can stumble drunk, over hope and love, Or I can just keep drinking till I sober up
[Pour me another, So I can forget you now, Pour me another, So I can come let you down, Pour me another, So I can remember how, True that I am to this addiction of you,] x2
Bottles, pints, shots, cans, Couches, and floors, and drunk best friends, Models, and whores, and tattooed hands, Cities, and secrets, and cats, and vans, Good times, laughter, bad decisions, Strippers, and actors, and average musicians, Mornings after, and walks of shame, This bartender knows me by my real name
Kalafina, “Oblivious.” [UPDATE 2021-12-08: link-rot noticed and repaired with new youtube embed, above]
This is undoubtedly the only song that is part of my mp3 rotation due to my having read the title over the shoulder of a stranger on their cell-phone screen while riding the subway (see relevant blog-entry from 2008). In point of fact, that’s a really weird way to acquire a song. But it suits my postmodern affectations well, I confess, that I did so.
Don’t get the weird idea I understand the Japanese. I can barely identify some of the vocabulary. And what few kanji I can identify below, I tend to pronounce in my head by their Korean hanja readings, not their Japanese ones, which I don’ t know. But in any event, I’ve always had a weakness for JPop, especially associated with anime. So here are the lyrics – just for the sake of completeness, and if I ever decide to study Japanese again.
本当は空を飛べると知っていたから
羽ばたくときが怖くて風を忘れた
oblivious
何処へ行くの
遠くに見えるあの蜃気楼
いつか怯えながら
二人の未来を映して
よるべない心二つ寄り添う頃に
本当の悲しみがほら翼広げて
oblivious
夜の中で
真昼の影を夢見るように
きっと堕ちて行こう
光へ
いつか 君と 二人
夜を 朝を 昼を 星を 幻想を
夏を 冬を 時を 風を
水を 土を 空を
we go further in the destiny・・・
oblivious
側にいてね
静かな恋がほら始まるよ
いつか震えながら
二人の未来へ
oblivious
何処へ行くの
遠くへ逃げてゆく水の中
何て綺麗な声で
二人の未来を
歌って
Everyone knows I have a weirdly immoderate love for reference books. I am the one who reads dictionaries and encyclopedias recreationally, and who compulsively visits wikipedia online the way normal people visit facebook.
On Saturday, I shelled out something over a 100,000 won (a hundred bucks) for a reference book. It’s one I’ve fantasized owning for at least two years. The actual value I will derive from it is highly dubious – I’m not sufficiently advanced to get most of what it has to say. It’s A Reference Grammar of Korean, a sort of exhaustive synchronic and diachronic study of the Korean language, by a trained linguist, and written in English, which makes it at least a little bit accessible.
It has one major drawback. It’s such a huge drawback that I kept telling myself I shouldn’t buy it. It’s a drawback that has me seething with frustration every time I open it. The problem is that Mr Martin, the book’s author, opted not to use the Korean writing system in his massive tome (over 1000 pages). Instead of hangeul, he uses our own charming Roman alphabet.
This has deep limitations. The most widely used “popular” Romanizations are unworkable for such an academic study as his, since they are not, strictly speaking, “reversible” – that is, there is not a one-for-one correspondence between their letters and the letters of hangeul. Reversibility is crucial in an academically reputable linguistic oeuvre of this caliber, because you have to be able to reconstruct what the heck he’s talking about in any given example. So he opts for a modified version of the infamous Yale Romanization.
I despise the Yale Romanization, despite my deep sympathies for the issue of reversibility just mentioned. Mostly because it is nastily counter-intuitive to English speakers. The letters are just “wrong.” Consider a common phrase like “In South Jeolla Province”: 전라남도에서. The ROK government’s Romanization, which I’m meticulously loyal to in this blog, would be “jeollanam-do-eseo”. The Yale is “cenlanam-to-eyse”. How can you come close to pronouncing that correctly, with a spelling like that? It’s a bit like Pinyin, in this respect. If you have no idea what I’m ranting on about, don’t worry about it.
One might ask, why did the author choose to do this? It seems almost disrespectful of the Korean language, at some level. But actually, as a linguist, I understand perfectly. You see, people like me – people trying to learn Korean – are not, in fact, his target audience. Nor, obviously, are any actual Korean speakers – actual Korean speakers can, of course, read the reference grammars written in Korean, which abound. No, Mr Martin’s target audience is linguists. And linguists, despite being linguists, have a low toleration for being asked to learn new writing systems just in order to absorb a few charming points of abstract syntax for some given language. Personally, I find this… strange. It strikes me as lazy, a little bit – and disrespectful of whatever language is being looked at. At the least, it strikes me as vaguely unprofessional of them. But it’s a true fact about linguists, I cannot deny.
I’ve decided to tolerate it, though. The book is too useful and downright fascinating. Maybe someday my Korean will be good enough that I can actually derive usefulness from a Korean grammar written in Korean. That would be very exciting. But until then, I guess I will put up with Martin’s idiosyncratic Yale. And maybe, meanwhile, Mr Martin will make a future edition that puts the effort into putting hangeul in brackets, or something, alongside all his transcriptions. Putting the original spelling in Korean alongside that nifty reversible transliteration in that abhorrent Yale system (for all the lazy linguists out there)… well, that would be both highly professional and deeply respectful.
In keeping with my apparent theme for the week: random languages that I studied long in the past. Above – the opening of the most interesting of the four Gospels (in my opinion), John. As found in my mother’s old Greek New Testament, which I acquired in January when visiting her, when she showed me a box of books she was getting rid of.
My ability to read Greek is very poor (maybe slightly better than my ability to read, say, Welsh – see previous blog post – mostly due to the more accessible plethora of cognates). I did take a semester (or two? I don’t remember) of Ancient Greek in college. But the translation of this phrase is nevertheless quite easy because it’s such a commonly known phrase: “In the beginning was the word…” – see? You can complete it yourself.
Shall I attempt to read this book? Probably not. But Greek (and especially ἡ κοινὴ διάλεκτος, “the common dialect” [koine] such as found in the New Testament) is pretty high on the list of languages that interest me. The Bible makes a great text to revisit when learning a language, because it is so meticulously translated into each language. I saw a trilingual edition in a bookstore a while back: Greek, English, Korean. I should have bought it. Then I could mess with koine guiltlessly, having the Korean staring me en face.
I’ve been in a weird state of mind, lately. I keep revisiting random poetry and random languages I studied in times long past. I guess I’m trying to live up to the “unrepentant language-geek” part of my blog’s header (see above [UPDATE: Obsolete information – no longer in header. Still true, though.]).
So… I was mucking around at wikisource.org (a place where public domain texts can often be found). I began browsing Medieval Welsh poetry. I took a course on Medieval Welsh in 1988. I loved it – despite (or because of) it being one of the most intense academic undertakings I’ve ever tried. I remember struggling to translate bardic love poetry, as well as, most memorably, the legend of Pwyll and Rhiannon from the Red Book of Hergest. I remember Pwyll blindly chasing Rhiannon down into Annwn (the Otherworld) vividly.
When I found a four-line poem by Dafydd ap Gwilym, I decided to “figure it out.” I won’t go so far as to say I “translated” it – I got the gist of it by using google translate, but also had to surf to some Old Welsh dictionaries, because google translate is based on the modern Welsh language, and the program doesn’t know what to do with the obsolete vocabulary and grammatical forms of 15th century Welsh. I have no idea how accurate my little translation might be – I was unable to find any “official” translation online.
Goddaith a roir mewn eithin,
Gwanwyn cras, mewn gwynnon crin,
Anodd fydd ei ddiffoddi
Ac un dyn a’i hennyn hi.
There’s a wildfire among the gorse,
Parched by Spring, withered kindling,
It will be difficult to put out
and [to think] a lone man caused it.
[Picture at right: Welsh Summer Landscape Painting]
I actually find the tone of the poem strikingly “modern” in its sensibility – but perhaps that’s a reader’s projection.
The negative aspect of this “mucking about” with other languages: I’m still trying to reignite my former passion for learning Korean. My heart hasn’t been in it. I’m plateaued.
A parting thought:
“I did not learn any Welsh till I was an undergraduate, and found in it an abiding linguistic-aesthetic satisfaction.” – J.R.R. Tolkien said this. But it’s precisely true for me, too – I could have said exactly the same. But I didn’t quite end up so creatively productive as Mr Tolkien.
I like to pick up those free community newspapers when I see them lying around, like in the lobby of my apartment building. I will scan through, looking for examples of Korean that I might actually understand.
Opening at random, I found an advertorial alongside an ad for an English hagwon that was actually quite intriguing – a discussion of that question that utterly fascinates Koreans: “why is English so freaking difficult?”
The answer, according to this particular hagwon owner, is that it’s all about grammar and sentence structure. This is a commonplace, and hardly controversial, although it’s a rather one-dimensional argument. English and Korean essentially have maximally divergent sentence structure, on the spectrum of all the world’s languages. In syntactical terms, one might generalize that Korean mostly builds its (chomskyan) parse trees right-to-left, while English builds its parse trees left-to-right, or maybe center-out (English is more complicated in that it has trees growing in either direction, in this matter, but it shares this trait with all of its Indo-European siblings).
What intrigued me were a pair of graphics, which showed mappings of Korean phrases to various other languages. The first graphic shows how all the phrases had to shift position in the movement from Korean to English, but how those phrases and grammatical elements essentially “stay in position” in the mappings between various European languages. The second graphic shows how the phrases and grammatical elements “stay in position” between Korean and Japanese. The take-away is that, for Korean speakers, European languages, including English, are therefore more difficult, while Japanese is easy. This is an observable phenomenon, but I’m genuinely impressed with how clearly these simple graphics illustrate what is a difficult concept to explain.
Here is a picture I took of the article – you can click it to see a larger image and hopefully make out the two graphics I’m talking about.
I mean, if you’re interested. I’m kind of weird.
And since I was unloading my camera, here’s a random picture of some springtime blooming trees in a parklike area not far from here.
The phrase "Híŋhaŋni wašté!" means "good morning!" in the Dakota language, one of the Siouan dialects spoken historically by the Native American people who live in western and southern Minnesota.
Back in 1992~93, I studied the Dakota Language. There's an actual community of speakers in Minneapolis (a city that has a Native "name" that's different from it's modern name: Bdeota – a term etymologically connected with the name "Minnesota," believe it or not).
The University of Minnesota had (still has?) a department of Native American Languages that teaches not just Dakota but also Ojibwe as living foreign languages. As a habitual language geek, how could I resist? So I took Dakota as a night class, for a semester. Dakota is a rich and complex and, in my opinion, beautiful language, and I have often thought that someday I would like to return to studying it.
Yesterday, I spent part of Buddha's Birthday online, researching Dakota pronunciation – as I sat on a rainy holiday Tuesday in my apartment in South Korea. Why was I doing this? The story is a bit complicated.
My best friend, Brother Bob, is a music teacher and choral conductor in Wisconsin. Sometimes, he sends me these "Ask A Linguist" styled emails, where he tries to get my insights on things that will relate to a piece of music he's working with. Over the weekend, he sent me an email about a choral music piece that included some bits in the Dakota Language.
The unfortunate thing about Dakota is that is part of a broad spectrum of Siouan dialects, which are very different among themselves. Further, much extant Dakota and Sioux literature was written down by non-experts. The consequence of these two factors is that spelling is quite non-standard, if not downright obscure (somewhat like English spelling, right?).
So Bob was asking me about how to pronounce the snippet of Dakota he had. Here's the original text he sent me. It includes a close translation by the transcriptist.
Sioux Ghost Dance Song, transcribed by Louis Ballard
When Ballard gives the translation, he omits the diacriticals and prints the text in lower case. “Vocables” refer to non-sense syllables that are common in Native American songs.
ah-teh (father) hey-eh-oo-you (vocables) mah-koh-che-wu- (the earth) w’sh’te (good) che’ch’oo (p) be-cha (which I gave you) yah-neh beekt’eh oo-you (you’re going to live again) an-teh (father) hey-eh-oo-you (vocables).
Bob followed up with a different version/spelling of the same song, yesterday morning. Here's what he sent me. I've "activated" his link.
I found a reference to a recording of a song that may be the one used by Louis Ballard:
Now I'm trying to find the actual recording. Chances are it's available online somewhere, or at a library near me, but I haven't located it yet. Anyway, on p. 11 of these lp liner notes (which is what's available from loc.gov online), the song is transcribed thus:
Ate heyelo, Ate heyelo
Makoce wan waste ni cu
pi ca yamipika
meaning
Father said, Father said,
A Country that is good is given to you
So that you will live.
Let me know if this jogs your memory of Dakota phonetics further!
So the question is, how are these things pronounced? Neither of the above matched my recollections of canonical contemporary Dakota orthography such as it was taught to me during my study of the language at the University of Minnesota. So I wasn't very helpful. I remembered, vaguely, some things about difficult consonant clusters and de-voiced (whispery) vowels.
Bob finally sent me the phrase "Híŋhaŋni wašté!" which means "good morning," along with the link to its pronunciation that he'd found. I remember this phrase from my Dakota class, vividly. You can hear the de-voiced vowels clearly, at that link – it sounds like Japanese, a little bit, which makes sense, since that's another language with prominent de-voiced vowels (think of the final -/u/ in a phrase like 元気です [genki desu = "I'm fine"]).
I sent him some of my observations, which I've repeated above. I wish I was in Wisconsin – I want to hear how this piece sounds when he performs it.
That's the story up to this point. And this is the strange way I spend some of my free time. Habitual language geek, indeed.
Thanks, Bob. Love ya. Good luck with that piece of music.
Clusivity, in linguistics, refers to a semantic atttribute of the plural first-person. Some languages divide the plural first-person into two "sub"-persons: an inclusive and exclusive. Hence the term clusivity. The inclusive plural first-person is a "we" that includes the listener. The exclusive plural first-person is a "we" that excludes the listener.
The Korean language has several terms for "we," and they're normally presented as differing in usage related mostly to levels of deference and formality. 우리 [uri] is a sort of familiar or friendly "we," while 저희 [jeohui] is more of a formal, deferential "we."
Last month, talking with my co-teacher at Hongnong, however, I had a sort of insight, as I was trying to sort out why the one I was using was "wrong": maybe there's a difference in the dimension of clusivity? Specifically, 우리 [uri] seems to be inclusive, while 저희 [jeohui] is exclusive. This could easily semantically transform, over time, into a perception of greater semantic deference for the exclusive version of the pronoun.
I tried to google references to clusivity in Korean and couldn't find any. So if this has any linguistic validity, it hasn't been discussed in academic settings as far as I can tell.
It was several years ago, now, that my Korean friend Curt told me: “You have no jeong.” Many Koreans have an exceptionalist view of this emotion that is described by the word jeong [정 (情)] – they will explain that it is a uniquely Korean emotion, or that Koreans uniquely tend toward it in contrast to members of other cultures.
The dictionary tells us that jeong means something like: love, affection, attachment, sentiment, strong feeling, concern, matter-of-the-heart.
I found a fascinating academic write up on the word online, which I unfortunately cannot recommend to non-linguists because of its utterly obtuse non-standard romanization of Korean, which renders 정 as [ceng] – I believe this is called the “Yale” romanization, and while as a linguist I understand the motivations behind it, I dislike it intensely because it is very remote from being accessible to non-specialists, leading to inevitable mutilations of pronunciation.
Here is a more typical exceptionalist presentation of the concept from a “study English” website (i.e. it’s an essay talking about jeong as unique to Korean culture, written in English to provide a chance to study aspects of English – this kind of thing is everywhere in Korean English educaction at all levels).
At the time that Curt made his assertion, I was skeptical, on two counts. I discounted the exceptionalist view that there could exist a basic “emotion” that was unique to one culture, and I also rejected the idea that I lacked it. I suppose, in part, my feelings were hurt. And when it comes to notions of language and culture, I tend toward universalism – I assume that basic human emotions, for example, are the same for all humans.
So I attributed his statement regarding my lack of jeong as a simple issue of there being a language barrier – surely a truly bilingual person could identify the proper English equivalent, both in linguistic and cultural terms.
But now, several years later, I have begun to genuinely harbor reservations about my prior rejection. I find the workings of Korean jeong mysterious and impenetrable. It seems to be a hybrid of irrational loyalty and intense platonic love, with a strong seasoning of smarmy sentimentality. And I’ve come to accept that, as a Westerner, I probably “lack” it – in that I have no reductive mental category that encompasses these sorts feelings in simple conjuct.
When Mr Choi throws his arm around me at the staff volleyball game, that’s jeong. And when the staff take up a collection of cash to help my fellow teacher pay his outrageous electricity bill, that’s somehow also jeong. When a teacher admonishes a student to study harder, that might be jeong, too.
I drove to Taumata-whakatangihanga-koauau-o-tamatea-turi-pukakapiki-maunga-horo-nuku-pokai-whenua-kitanatahu. It was very beautiful. Onomastics aside, New Zealand is a lot like California or western Oregon.
Here are some other pictures. I saw a chicken at dawn (at roadside rest area where I slept a few hours).
I saw some redwood trees (they’re not native to NZ, but they do quite well here – another reason why it reminds me of California).
I saw some lakes.
I saw the Hawkes Bay region, which reminds me of Monterey or San Luis Obisbo Counties, and the town of Hastings, which might as well be a funny-talking Salinas. The hills were golden.
I saw the beach, on the east coast. It was very, very, very, very, very, very windy. I waved across the vast Pacific to Validivia, Chile, where I lived in 1994 – same latitude. I watched the Antarctic clouds glowering.
