My Own Thoughts

Mark Twain proposed in jest that the English word pronounced /fIS/ ought to be spelled rather than , with pronounced /f/ as in rough, pronounced /I/ as in women, and pronounced /S/ as in nation. (8, 10) fromLinguistics for Students of Asian and African Languages.

Writing may have been invented at least three times in history: 1. Sumerian writing in Mesopotamia around 3200 BC 2. Chinese writing along the Yellow River before 1200 BC 3. Mesoamerican writing in Guatemala and Southern Mexico a little after 500 BC (ch. 8, p. 14) All quotes from (Linguistics for Students of Asian and [...]

Soldier’s Mom posted an incredible Christmas story that I hadn’t read anywhere else. It was about a very special train (and the ride and the destination) for some incredibly special people. It’s a great story. I know I cry over anything patriotic, but go read it. See if you don’t cry, too.

In fact Korean has not less than six politeness levels, that are realized inter alia in the pronoun system amd in verbal inflections. Sohn (1999) defines the politeness levels as follows (some details are left out): • The plain level, which is the lowest level, is used, in general, by any speaker to any child, [...]

In the traditional European rank society people generally spoke the dialect of their home area, and there was only minor variation between the ranks. On the basis of a person’s language variety you could easily locate her or him geographically, but not at all to the same degree socially. In the end of the 18 [...]

In code switching, there is no such integration. Both languages are “on” at the same time. Code switching, therefore, presupposes a much higher degree of bilingualism than borrowing does. A speaker of Swahili can use English loanwords like soka ‘soccer; football’ without knowing any English himself, because these words have already been integrated into Swahili. [...]

I am reading right now in (Linguistics for Students of Asian and African Languages about cultural versus core borrowings. Cultural are those which existed in the other culture, but not in the borrowing culture previously. Core borrowings are borrowings of words which existed in the borrowing language. Cultural borrowings are more common than core borrowings. [...]

The Bible translation group Summer Institute of Linguistics has a database of languages, including Language Families. Quechuan has 46 sub-groups, apparently. But English wasn’t on the list.

Less than five percent of the world’s languages belong to one of the three remaining possible types: VOS, OVS and OSV. In other words, the subject precedes the object in more than 95 percent of all languages. (Linguistics for Students of Asian and African Languages chapter 4 page 10) But I remember hearing about a [...]

Could it be number related? Eleven is English. The same number in Japanese is ten-one. Twelve is English. The same number in Japanese is ten-two. Twenty-one is English. The same number in Japanese is two-ten-one. Maybe this explains their superiority. Is the systematic transparency of East Asian numerals one of the reasons why they perform [...]

The Fula language of West Africa has an incredible number of words for cattle. One small dictionary lists no less than 82 words, including guddiri ‘bull without a tail’, wudde ‘cow without a tail’, jaabuye ‘cow with a large navel’, lelwaaye ‘cattle with eyes like a gazelle’, gerlaaye ‘cattle that is like a bush-fowl’, happuye [...]

How many words does Eskimo (is that Inupiat or Yupik?) have for snow? Geoffrey Pullum called the bluff in an article called “The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax”. In fact, Pullum tentatively concludes, Eskimo seems to have only two distinct word roots for ‘snow’. Even if it were true that Eskimo had so many words for [...]

If you want to give your characters a “foreign” feel to their language usage, here’s a schedule to explain how they would talk. SOV (Japanese, Tamil, Turkish etc.) SVO (Fula, Chinese, English etc.) VSO (Arabic, Tongan, Welsh etc.) (chapter 4 page 1) So Uncle Toban wouldn’t speak in a different word order than I would, [...]

Or if I did I didn’t remember. The book is slightly repetitive, covering the same topics in different ways. Here we have a different discussion of consonant clusters in the coda. In both syllable-initial and syllable-final position, consonant clusters, the juxtaposition of two or more consonants within the same syllable, are quite uncommon. Neither Swahili, [...]

from language to language, but the progression of the colors does not. When comparing focal colours across languages, it turns out that although the variety in colour terms is huge, the variation follows a systematic pattern. A language with only two colour terms has a word for ‘black’ and a word for ‘white’, a language [...]

In LInguistics for Students of Asian and African Languages the first chapter is a very easy read and is fascinating. The second chapter is much less quick to read, besides being longer, it is also a fairly comprehensive description of grammar. And it doesn’t include many interesting reliefs, in terms of experiments or fascinating facts. [...]

What do dwarves and the Chinese have in common? Well, according to the book referenced in the last post, Linguistics for Students of Asian and African Languages, they both have very descriptive words for what, in English, would be long familial terms. ” Chinese has eight different terms for ’cousin’ based on gender (male vs. [...]

in other languages besides Korean. Here’s a discussion of an experiment on speakers and color chips. In contrast to English, the Mexican Indian language Tarahumara does not have one term for ‘green’ and one for ‘blue’, but instead has a single term, siyóname, that covers both. In other words, where English has two concepts, ‘green’ [...]

Grunt Doc alerts :Three cases of measles in Houston. One patient visited five different hospitals/doctors before measles was diagnosed. I wonder if the MMR needs to be updated often. This post purports to answer your questions, but it didn’t tell me if the boys would need a booster. It only mentions college kids possibly getting [...]

I spent twelve hours or so on our trip and at my in-law’s house editing my first novel to be sent out again. I told everyone in my Christmas letter, which will soon become a new year letter, that I’d send it out again by Jan. 14. So I need to get back to editing. [...]