nooj wrote:The only consolation I have is that by living in Europe I will have access to speakers of languages that I have trouble finding here, namely immigrants from Africa. The fear of 'missing out' on something is really making me anxious with regard to language learning and making it just not enjoyable.
And of course you can likely find Vietnamese and Bengali speakers depending on where you end up! I fully trust that as you've been able to find native speakers of Basque, Moroccan Arabic, Sicilian, and so many other languages in Australia, you'll be able to find Vietnamese and Bengali speakers in Europe.
Also, better to have your realisation about being a linguist now rather than four years into a doctorate, right?
Thank you for the kind words. I just need to take a chill pill, enjoy my last few weeks here in Australia and get excited about Europe.
Meanwhile, here is something I learned today about Basque.
The word for sneeze is doministiku egin, where egin is the word for to do, and doministiku comes from the Latin expression, dominus tecum, the Lord be with you. So the word for sneeze is literally to do the blessing.
I like finding in the real world, constructions that I have read or studied about. In this case, this comment on FB:
Edonola ere, euskal morfologia eta etimologia ikerkuntza eremu liluragarriak dira eta nahikotxo dago oraindik ikertzeke In any case, Basque morphology and etymology are fascinating fields of study and there is still quite a lot left to study.
The last word is the one I'm interested in, it comes from the verbal noun ikertze 'research, to study' and the suffix -ke 'without'. This is only used in western dialects of Basque, elsewhere you would use the past participle and the postposition gabe, so the last sentence would be nahikotxo dago oraindik ikertu gabe.
This structure is something that no resource that teaches standard Basque will teach students. But I happened to read about it in a Basque grammar, just an hour ago. I asked myself, 'when am I going to use this in real life?', but what do you know, I got to see it right away. I enjoy using social media to learn Basque. Even though I am physically thousands of kilometres away, I can 'hear' someone speak in their unique, local way.
Here is a poster, also written in a western dialect, namely from the Biscay region.
It says nire gorputzak eztau bir zure iritzirik: my body doesn't need your opinion
In standard dialect, it would be nire gorputzak ez du behar zure iritzirik.
Here is a song that Huntza made with the groups Tremenda Jauría (Madrid) and Mafalda (Valencia). I will translate the Basque lyrics, the Spanish is easy to figure out. The videoclip was filmed in the massive feminist demonstrations that swept across Spain earlier this year.
I highlighted something out of the Spanish lyrics, which is the use of andaron. In the standard Spanish language, this should be anduvieron, but regularisation of the verb stems makes it so that it is fairly frequent and ordinary for people to say andé instead of anduve, andaron instead of anduvieron etc. I've heard it many times from native speakers and I say it as well. Even so, it is a stigmatised form and I would not suggest you write it in essays or publications.
The use of the word 'manada', reappropriated, may be meant as a jab at an outrageous sexual assault case, perpetrated by a group of young men who called themselves La Manada, the 'pack'.
Tradizioak traizionatzean, Ileak puntan jartzean, Erratzak utzi ta mikrofonoak hartzean, Hegan egitean… ez digute esango!
Zer egin, nola esan, nola egin (e)ta zer izan. Zer egin, nola esan, nola egin, zer izan…
Betraying traditions Making hairs stand up Leaving the brooms and picking up the microphones Taking flight...no longer will they tell us
What to do, how to speak, how to act and what to be What to do, how to speak, how to act and what to be
Nacimos preparadas, Más fuertes en manada. Se acabó tu juego: Ya no tenemos miedo!
Entre hechizos y runas Organizadas verás a las hijas del agua. Entre sombras y lunas, su poder.
Zer egin, nola esan, nola egin (e)ta zer izan. Zer egin, nola esan, nola egin (e)ta zer izan…
Tremenda Jauría, Huntza, Mafalda; País Valencià, Madrid, Euskal Herria…
Como una enredadera que te atrapa aunque no quieras, Cumbia, reggaeton, auto-tune y carretera. Como una enredadera que te atrapa aunque no quieras, Seguimos salvajes, rompiendo barreras!
Siguiendo los pasos que otras andaron, Codo con codo, micrófono en mano; Abriendo caminos, tejiendo alegrías, Aquí estamos, sí, Con fuerza, con power, lo tenemos claro.
Siguiendo los pasos que otras andaron, Codo con codo, micrófono en mano; Abriendo caminos, tejiendo alegrías, Aquí estamos, sí, Con fuerza, con power, con todo el descaro! Zer egin, nola esan, nola egin (e)ta zer izan. Zer egin, nola esan, nola egin (e)ta zer izan…
Last edited by nooj on Sat Dec 15, 2018 1:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
The masculine set of cardinal numbers for Tashelhit. Tashelhit uses a vigesimal number system, like Basque. Some numbers have been borrowed from Arabic, such as εšrin (20) and miyya (100).
yan 1 sin 2 kraḍ 3 kkuẓ 4 smmus 5 sḍis 6 sa 7 ttam 8 ttẓa 9 mraw 10 yan d-mraw 11 (d = and, with. Another form which you will see shortly is id) sin d-mraw 12 εšrin 20 εšrin d-yan 21 εšrin d-mraw 30 (20 + 10) sin id εšrin 40 (2 x 20) sin id εšrin d-mraw 50 (2 x 20 + 10) sin id εšrin d-smmus d-mraw 55 (2 x 20 + 15) kraḍ id εšrin 60 (3 x 20) kkuẓ idaw εšrin 80 (4 x 20) kkuẓ idaw εšrin d-mraw 90 (4 x 20 + 10) miyya 100
I was reading the thread of someone who was asking for internet resources on how to learn Tarifit, in order to talk with their grandparents, and the responses were basically zilch. It makes me really sad. Languages like Tarifit, even though spoken by millions of people, have very little resources for learning, even in comparison to Moroccan Arabic, let alone in comparison with European languages of a similar size.
I feel the same when I read people asking for resources to learn Abruzzese or Igbo. I at least as a heritage learner can have access to Korean material. How are these people going to learn their language, beyond the simple and in my opinion, insufficient advice of 'talk to your grandparents'? And what happens when they die?
Across the bench from me in the park where I am writing this, there was a grandmother who was speaking to her granddaughter in Russian. I thanked her for speaking in Russian. Although it is the most natural thing in the world, given that the grandmother herself said to me that she doesn't speak English.
I've never heard of someone who was glad to not speak the language of their parents or grandparents, but I've heard many stories of people who are emotionally devastated that they do not.
I am reading David Shulman's (a Sanskritist, but not only, who I admire a lot) biography of the Tamil language, and naturally he uses Tamil poetry throughout. Here is one I liked, from the Kuṟuntokai, a collection of poetry created in the early Middle Ages. Translated again by the great poet-scholar, AK Ramanujan.
Reading this poem of Marina Tsvetaeva's, I was struck by the resemblance with the last stanza of a poem of Catullus that I read long ago, number 11. I translate the Latin:
Latin has allowed me to access some very beautiful things. Now, back in the day, I was big into reading theology and philosophy, and happily enough for me, in the West, most of that was done in Latin, before a certain time period when vernacular languages started taking over. In the East, there was a bit more variety, centred around Greek but also Syriac and other languages. I have also kept some beautiful Greek passages from Eastern theologians as well.
I think it is clear from my previous posts that one of the big reasons why I learn languages is in order to enjoy poetry and literature. By no means does this literature or poetry have to be written. In fact, I think the oral literature created and transmitted by the indigenous peoples of my country are the greatest literature that Australia has produced or ever will produce (if you are interested in this, read the book Singing Saltwater Country by the linguist John Bradley, one of the best books I've read in my life), and that was created without writing. I feel like we privilege the technology of writing too much, a technology that was only independently created a handful of times in the world, and something that many civilisations had no need of.
Qui vult intellegere virtutem huius civitatis, intellegat vim caritatis. Ipsa est virtus quam nemo vincit. Huius ignem nulli fluctus saeculi, nulla flumina tentationis exstinguunt. De hac dictum est: Valida est sicut mors dilectio. Quomodo enim mors quando venit, resisti ei non potest, quibuslibet artibus, quibuslibet medicamentis occurras; violentiam mortis vitare non potest, qui mortalis natus est: sic contra violentiam caritatis mundus nil potest.
He who wants to understand the power of the city [of God], let him understand the force of love. Love is the power that no one can overcome. No wave of the world, no flood of temptation can extinguish its fire. It is said of love that Love is as strong as Death. In the sense that when death comes, there is no resisting it, no matter the means or medicines that one resorts to. Born mortal, one cannot escape the violence of death. Just so, against the violence of love, the world has no power.
I love that imagery, 'the violence of love'. And yet, love can certainly be violent. Here is another passage, this time taken from his Confessions:
Ligatus non ferro alieno sed mea ferrea voluntate. Velle meum tenebat inimicus et inde mihi catenam fecerat et constrinxerat me. Quippe ex voluntate peruersa facta est libido, et dum seruitur libidini, facta est consuetudo, et dum consuetudini non resistitur, facta est necessitas. Quibus quasi ansulis sibimet innexis (unde catenam appellavi) tenebat me obstrictum dura seruitus. Voluntas autem noua quae mihi esse coeperat, ut te gratis colerem fruique te vellem, Deus, sola certa iucunditas, nondum erat idonea ad superandam priorem uetustate roboratam. Ita duae voluntates meae, una uetus, alia noua, illa carnalis, illa spiritalis, confligebant inter se atque discordando dissipabant animam meam.
I was bound not by the iron chain of another, but by the iron of my own will. An enemy was holding on to my will, and out of the will, he made a chain for me and then he strangled me with it.
Indeed desire is formed from a will gone astray, and so long as desire is given into, a habit is formed, and if a habit is not resisted, it becomes a necessity. With such little links as it were, which is why I call it a chain, a harsh slaver kept me in fetters.
But a new will began to exist in me, to worship you gratefully and so that I might wish to enjoy you, God, who is our only sure delight. It wasn’t yet ready to overcome that prior will made strong by its former usage. So two wills, one old, the other new, one belonging to the flesh, the other of the spirit, began to war in me, and in their discord, they ripped my soul apart.
I am packing up my necessary things, giving everything else away, trying to reduce my life into two bags.
Giving away my books in particular, feels like tearing off my own arm, but I have to do it.
It reminds me of what my friend who is Dutch once said to me, about stuff that one happens to accumulate in life, she calls it leefgruis, life-grit. She said it would attract more of itself, until one day it would create little leefgruis planet of its own.
