Category: Languages

I’ve got another collective brainpower request.

I continue to try to find ways to make teaching Latin easier on students than what most textbooks do, and I’ve got a draft of a lesson I’d like y’all’s thoughts on.

The teaching strategy the lesson uses is giving you a familiar (or somewhat familiar) text: Scripture. As you read, Latin words begin to be introduced into the text, with notes explaining the words, grammar, and pronunciation as you go. Over time, as the student learns, more and more of the text will be Latin, until eventually almost the whole text will be straight Neo-Vulgate. As the student encounters common words over and over again, the repetition will help fix them in his memory.

HERE’S THE LESSON.

I’d appreciate it if y’all (especially non-Latin speakers) would read it and tell me in the comments box whether you think this would be a productive teaching technique to use and whether you might be interested in using this technique yourself.

Suggestions for improvements are also welcome, though bear in mind that this is only a draft I banged out in a few minutes last night, so there are lots of quibbles that could be made with it (e.g., have I explained the pronunciation in the best way?, does it need a better font color or typeface?). Those are things that would be fixed in the tweaking/editing stage, but suggestions about tweaking the methodology itself would be most welcome.

For example, it would be possible to keep the basic method the same but rearrange the information in a more student-friendly format. E.g., having the English-Latin text across the top of a page (I’m thinking fo a printed page here) and having a single vocabulary list and set of grammar notes below it. Arranging the info that way might (or might not) be easier on the student–which is my primary concern.

FOR COMPARISON PURPOSES, HERE’S A MOCK-UP OF FORMATTING THE SAME DATA THE OTHER WAY.

Much obliged, folks!

Tech is giving us a whole bunch of new words that are becoming fixtures and entering dictionaries (major, dead-tree dictionaries, at that). One such word is “blog,” which did not exist before December 1997.

The last few days have seen the advent of a new word that has the potential to become a fixture: “pajamahadeen.”

It isn’t yet listed in any dictionaries. Not even Google has it indexed at the moment, though that will swiftly change. The term is spreading through the blogosphere.

“Whence cometh ‘pajamahadeen’?” you may be wondering if you haven’t been reading blogs following the unfolding CBS phony memo scandal.

It appears to have been coined by Jim Geraghty of Kerry Spot. Here’s why:

A few days ago on FOX News, former CBS News executive V.P. Jonathan Klein spoke dismissively of the bloggers who were absolutely slaying the credibility of CBS’s phony memo story. Specifically, he said:

You couldn’t have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of check and balances [at ’60 Minutes’] and a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing.

Indignant bloggers, very few of whom admit to wearing pajamas, had endless fun with this. In the end, they adopted pajamas as the official uniform of bloggers and images like this one started showing up on blogs:

So much for the “pajama” part of “pajamahadeen.” Whence the “-hadeen” part?

As you may surmise, it’s from the Arabic word “mujahedeen,” which is sometimes translated “fighters” or “strugglers.” Those translations, though, are whitewashes of what the term really means. “Mujahedeen” is the plural of “mujahed.” Arabic words (like Hebrew and Aramaic words) tend to be built around three consonants with various prefixes, suffixes, and vowels applied. The prefix “mu-” is often used to form words referring to a person who is or does something, and the three consonant root of “mujahed” is J-H-D.

Know what other Arabic word that has passed into English currency has the root J-H-D?

That’s right: “jihad.”

In the most literal sense, “jihad” means “struggle,” but because it has been used (since the time of Muhammad) to refer to the duty Muslims (note the “mu-” prefix; same deal) have to struggle for Islam–often by force of arms–it has come to have the principal meaning “holy war.”

Thus if we were to give a translation of “mujahedeen” that captures the resonance it has for the Muslim community, it would be “jihadists” or “holy warriors.”

So: “pajamahadeen” = “pajama” + “mujahedeen,” the pajama-clad holy warriors of the blogosphere.

This probably would be rendered less colorfully in a future dictionary entry. Perhaps: “Webloggers who aggressively analyze and attack their opponents’ arguments.”

If you want to see a picture of the pajamahadeen in action, check out this cartoon (click to enlarge):

The original source of this is IMAO.us, which also features a digitally enhanced “special edition” of the cartoon, a la George Lucas.

BTW, if you look around IMAO.us, be sure to bear in mind Rulz 6 and 7.

(Now if I could just convince fellow bloggers to use my coinage “popularity crash” for what happens when too much traffic comes to a web site and makes it inaccessible; e.g., due to a Drudge story linking it.)

Tech is giving us a whole bunch of new words that are becoming fixtures and entering dictionaries (major, dead-tree dictionaries, at that). One such word is “blog,” which did not exist before December 1997.

The last few days have seen the advent of a new word that has the potential to become a fixture: “pajamahadeen.”

It isn’t yet listed in any dictionaries. Not even Google has it indexed at the moment, though that will swiftly change. The term is spreading through the blogosphere.

“Whence cometh ‘pajamahadeen’?” you may be wondering if you haven’t been reading blogs following the unfolding CBS phony memo scandal.

It appears to have been coined by Jim Geraghty of Kerry Spot. Here’s why:

A few days ago on FOX News, former CBS News executive V.P. Jonathan Klein spoke dismissively of the bloggers who were absolutely slaying the credibility of CBS’s phony memo story. Specifically, he said:

You couldn’t have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of check and balances [at ’60 Minutes’] and a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing.

Indignant bloggers, very few of whom admit to wearing pajamas, had endless fun with this. In the end, they adopted pajamas as the official uniform of bloggers and images like this one started showing up on blogs:

So much for the “pajama” part of “pajamahadeen.” Whence the “-hadeen” part?

As you may surmise, it’s from the Arabic word “mujahedeen,” which is sometimes translated “fighters” or “strugglers.” Those translations, though, are whitewashes of what the term really means. “Mujahedeen” is the plural of “mujahed.” Arabic words (like Hebrew and Aramaic words) tend to be built around three consonants with various prefixes, suffixes, and vowels applied. The prefix “mu-” is often used to form words referring to a person who is or does something, and the three consonant root of “mujahed” is J-H-D.

Know what other Arabic word that has passed into English currency has the root J-H-D?

That’s right: “jihad.”

In the most literal sense, “jihad” means “struggle,” but because it has been used (since the time of Muhammad) to refer to the duty Muslims (note the “mu-” prefix; same deal) have to struggle for Islam–often by force of arms–it has come to have the principal meaning “holy war.”

Thus if we were to give a translation of “mujahedeen” that captures the resonance it has for the Muslim community, it would be “jihadists” or “holy warriors.”

So: “pajamahadeen” = “pajama” + “mujahedeen,” the pajama-clad holy warriors of the blogosphere.

This probably would be rendered less colorfully in a future dictionary entry. Perhaps: “Webloggers who aggressively analyze and attack their opponents’ arguments.”

If you want to see a picture of the pajamahadeen in action, check out this cartoon (click to enlarge):

The original source of this is IMAO.us, which also features a digitally enhanced “special edition” of the cartoon, a la George Lucas.

BTW, if you look around IMAO.us, be sure to bear in mind Rulz 6 and 7.

(Now if I could just convince fellow bloggers to use my coinage “popularity crash” for what happens when too much traffic comes to a web site and makes it inaccessible; e.g., due to a Drudge story linking it.)

Setve Ray has ntoiced an inertetsnig fcat aobut the hmuan mnid. (It’s alayws naet wehn one reliazes tihs!)

GET THE SOTRY!

Okay, this post has nothing at all to do with Star Trek. I just wanted to play off the title of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (arguably the best Star Trek movie thus far; it was the one where the Federation and Klingons had a warming as a sci-fi metaphor for the end of the Cold War).

This post has to do with a discussion I was having with Bill down yonder about Indonesian phonology (i.e., how Indonesians pronounce their words).

The weirdest thing I’ve noticed about Indonesian phonology so far is that K (of all letters) tends to be altered when it is word-final (i.e., at the end of a word). It isn’t simply dropped (like my Gs in “-ing”) but is replaced with a distinct glottal stop, so the word “bapak” (masculine “you”) is pronounced /bapa’/ and the word “tidak” (“no, not”) is pronounced /tida’/.

For folks who aren’t familiar with the term, a glottal stop is when, as you speak, you interrupt the airflow by closing the glottis, or the hole between your vocal chords. You can hear a glottal stop very distinctly when it’s substituted for the Ts in the Cockney pronounciation of “a little bottle” as “a li’le bo’le.”

We use glottal stops all the time in English (even those of us who aren’t Cockneys), we just don’t recognize it because we don’t have a letter for it in our alphabet. (The Arabic alphabet does have a letter for the glottal stop, however. It’s called a hamza.)

You yourself use a glottal stop whenever you pronounce distinctly a word that begins with a vowel. For example, if you aren’t talking and then say the word “apple,” you’ll have a glottal stop before the A because your vocal cords are tensed up.

You also say it in the middle of every time you say “Uh-oh!”

Betcha didn’t know that there’s a consonant in English that we all use but that is completely unnoticed by most of us!

Well, the postman finally decided to deliver the mail that accumulated while I was on vacation. One of the items I was waiting for (in fact, the main item I was waiting for) was my Pimsleur Indonesian CDs.

As y’all may recall, I’ve been wanting to improve my Indonesian skills in anticipation of this year’s Catholic Answers cruise. On the Holland America line, a lot of the staff (particularly the waiters and room stewards) tend to be from Indonesia, and on past cruises I’ve entertained these folks by speaking a little of their native language and asking their help in learning more. This year I wanted to do even more, so I ordered the Pimsleur Indonesian set. Unfortunately, this set is only 10 lessons instead of the usual 30, but at least it’ll give me a good start.

This means I’ll have to put my Japanese studies on hold until I work through the set, but with only ten lessons, that won’t take too long.

I’ve already been using the set, and am quite pleased so far. I already knew parts of the initial conversation that they use at the beginning of every Pimsleur set, which was nice.

I do have one question for Beng or any other readers who speak Indonesian: One of the sounds in the language is a trilled R. Am I right in assuming that these trilled Rs are produced with the tip of the tongue in the front of the mouth (like the Spanish trilled R) or are they produced in the back of the mouth (like the Semitic GH)? Thanks for any help!

Or even the accent of a junior linguist, such as myself.

You may find out more than you want to know.

A reader writes:

Dear Jimmy,

You are driving me crazy!! I know that you are a very literate person and pronounce other languages correctly, so why do you refuse to pronounce your “ing’s” at the end of your words instead of you just saying “in”!?

You’re drivin me crazy!!

The phenomenon you’re referring to is commonly referred to as “g-dropping” or “dropping your g’s”, though this is actually a misnomer. There is no /g/ sound in the suffix “-ing.” What we actually do when making the distinct “-ing” sound is say /in/ except we touch the back of our tongue to our velum (the soft flap of skin at the backs of our mouths) instead of touching the tip of the tongue to the ridge behind our teeth.

The thing is, “g-dropping” is an extremely common feature of the speech of English-speakers. Everybody does it to some degree, and it’s more common in some accents (pronunciation schemes) than others. One of these is the English country aristocracy’s accent. It’s also common the American Southern group of accents, which can be quite distinct: Someone from the Tidewater area of Virginia will sound very different from a Cajun, who will in turn sound different than an Appalachian.

My own accent tends to be Texan (more East Texan than West Texan), with admixtures of Ozark hill accent elements, and I do drop my g’s.

Sorry, that’s just the way I talk.

I take pride in it.

When I’m speaking someone else’s language, I make every effort to adopt their phonology, even if it means I have to practice really hard to learn to make sounds that English doesn’t use (like the Hebrew /r/, which is made at the back of the mouth, or the Arabic /gh/, which is a kind of throaty noise that sounds like a trilled /r/.)

But when I speak my own language, I use my own accent.

People make fun of my accent at their peril. (Remember that when using the comments box, below.)

Here’s a page that has a really interesting section on “g-dropping.”

You may also notice something else I tend to drop other word-final sounds when I talk. For example–like my relatives and co-regionalists–I tend to say kep’ instead of kept and an’ instead of and.

There’s actually a rule for what sounds get dropped, and I recently found out what it is: In simplified terms, a word-final stop tends to get dropped if it is preceded by a consonant with the same voicing.

Lemme ‘splain:

Certain consonants are called “stops,” because they stop the flow of air coming through your mouth. /t/ and /d/ are two examples of stops, and you’ll notice I tend to drop those a lot when they are word-final (i.e., at the end of a word).

They get dropped when immediately before them there is a consonant that has the same voicing they do.

“Voicing” refers to whether you have your vocal cords turned on or off. Some consonants we make with our vocal cords turned off (like /p/ and /t/) and other consonants we make with our vocal cords turned on (like /n/ and /d/). To see what I mean, put your hand on your throat and say those four sounds. You’ll feel vibration with /n/ and /d/ that you won’t feel with /p/ and /t/. That vibration is produced by you turning your vocal cords on as you say the sound.

Thing is, people with my accent will tend to drop a stop consonant at the end of a word if it is preceded by a consonant with the same vocal cord status.

For example, since /p/ and /t/ are both “unvoiced” (i.e., vocal cords off), I will tend to drop /t/ at the end of a word when it is preceded by /p/. That’s why I say kep’ instead of kept.

Simialrly, since /n/ and /d/ are both “voiced” (i.e., vocal cords on), I will tend to drop /d/ at the end of a word when it is preceded by /n/. That’s why I say an’ instead of and.

Similar rules (and even much more complex ones) govern every accent, and people internalize them without even realizing it. It takes the professional activity of linguists to tally up the data and figure out the unconscious rules that govern the pronunciation schemes we call accents.

Ain’t phonology a hoot?

Or even the accent of a junior linguist, such as myself.

You may find out more than you want to know.

A reader writes:

Dear Jimmy,

You are driving me crazy!! I know that you are a very literate person and pronounce other languages correctly, so why do you refuse to pronounce your “ing’s” at the end of your words instead of you just saying “in”!?

You’re drivin me crazy!!

The phenomenon you’re referring to is commonly referred to as “g-dropping” or “dropping your g’s”, though this is actually a misnomer. There is no /g/ sound in the suffix “-ing.” What we actually do when making the distinct “-ing” sound is say /in/ except we touch the back of our tongue to our velum (the soft flap of skin at the backs of our mouths) instead of touching the tip of the tongue to the ridge behind our teeth.

The thing is, “g-dropping” is an extremely common feature of the speech of English-speakers. Everybody does it to some degree, and it’s more common in some accents (pronunciation schemes) than others. One of these is the English country aristocracy’s accent. It’s also common the American Southern group of accents, which can be quite distinct: Someone from the Tidewater area of Virginia will sound very different from a Cajun, who will in turn sound different than an Appalachian.

My own accent tends to be Texan (more East Texan than West Texan), with admixtures of Ozark hill accent elements, and I do drop my g’s.

Sorry, that’s just the way I talk.

I take pride in it.

When I’m speaking someone else’s language, I make every effort to adopt their phonology, even if it means I have to practice really hard to learn to make sounds that English doesn’t use (like the Hebrew /r/, which is made at the back of the mouth, or the Arabic /gh/, which is a kind of throaty noise that sounds like a trilled /r/.)

But when I speak my own language, I use my own accent.

People make fun of my accent at their peril. (Remember that when using the comments box, below.)

Here’s a page that has a really interesting section on “g-dropping.”

You may also notice something else I tend to drop other word-final sounds when I talk. For example–like my relatives and co-regionalists–I tend to say kep’ instead of kept and an’ instead of and.

There’s actually a rule for what sounds get dropped, and I recently found out what it is: In simplified terms, a word-final stop tends to get dropped if it is preceded by a consonant with the same voicing.

Lemme ‘splain:

Certain consonants are called “stops,” because they stop the flow of air coming through your mouth. /t/ and /d/ are two examples of stops, and you’ll notice I tend to drop those a lot when they are word-final (i.e., at the end of a word).

They get dropped when immediately before them there is a consonant that has the same voicing they do.

“Voicing” refers to whether you have your vocal cords turned on or off. Some consonants we make with our vocal cords turned off (like /p/ and /t/) and other consonants we make with our vocal cords turned on (like /n/ and /d/). To see what I mean, put your hand on your throat and say those four sounds. You’ll feel vibration with /n/ and /d/ that you won’t feel with /p/ and /t/. That vibration is produced by you turning your vocal cords on as you say the sound.

Thing is, people with my accent will tend to drop a stop consonant at the end of a word if it is preceded by a consonant with the same vocal cord status.

For example, since /p/ and /t/ are both “unvoiced” (i.e., vocal cords off), I will tend to drop /t/ at the end of a word when it is preceded by /p/. That’s why I say kep’ instead of kept.

Simialrly, since /n/ and /d/ are both “voiced” (i.e., vocal cords on), I will tend to drop /d/ at the end of a word when it is preceded by /n/. That’s why I say an’ instead of and.

Similar rules (and even much more complex ones) govern every accent, and people internalize them without even realizing it. It takes the professional activity of linguists to tally up the data and figure out the unconscious rules that govern the pronunciation schemes we call accents.

Ain’t phonology a hoot?

No, it has nothing to do with technobabble on Star Trek.

Sapir and Whorf were a pair of linguists, and their hypothesis is that language plays a strong role not just in expressing thought but in shaping and controlling thought.

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis undoubtedly has an element of truth in it. We do a lot of our thinking in words, and the words that we have at our disposal will make it easier for us to think certain thoughts and harder to think and express others.

Unfortunatley, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis seems to be too strong as it is commonly interpreted. Thinking is not as strongly determined by language as many suppose. This is clear from a variety of facts, including that we also do a lot of our thinking visually (using images rather than words) and we can make up new words and expressions for things and distinctions we can recognize even though they are not expressible using current language. We’ve also all had the experience of having an insight and then been unable (at least momentarily) to find the words to express it.

The strong versions of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and its knockoffs (including some that originated before Sapir and Whorf) have also had bad consequences. For example, if you’ve ever read the novel 1984, you know about Newspeak–a revision of the English language designed to eliminate the words and thus the concepts needed to express ideas at variance with the totalitarian system IngSoc (English Socialism). Its purpose was to make politically undesirable concepts literally unthinkable.

Here’s a copy of George Orwell’s essay on The Principles of Newspeak. It’s fascinating reading, particular when–after enunciating the principles of Newspeak–Orwell gives a Newspeak translation of the beginning of the Declaration of Independence. Check it out.

The thing is, though, Newspeak wasn’t simply something Orwell came up with out of whole cloth. 1984 is a cautionary tale warning about the dehumanizing effects of Communism, and Newspeak is based on Soviet language revision as a form of propaganda.

The same impulse is behind the politically correct and gender-revisionist movements in American English: By re-engineering how people are allowed to express themselves, it is thought that the thoughts they think will be re-engineered as well.

Some new research is testing the limits of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. This research involves going to cultures whose languages have severely restricted vocabularies in some areas and see if they can conceptualize things that don’t fit their language.

For example, there is the Dani people of Indonesia (ever meet any of them, Beng?) who have only two color terms: black and white. Turns out, though, that they can distinguish other colors, even though they don’t have words for them. I don’t know, but I suspect that they may have circumlocuations for other colors (e.g., “The American dollar is the same color as grass”) even though they don’t have unique words for them.

Another group is the Piraha people of Brazil, who have only three number terms: one, two, and many (which might be more accurately translated “one,” “a few,” and “many”). Turns out the Piraha display the ability to conceptualize more numbers than their counting system has terms for, though with certain numerical tasks they show marked limitations.

There’s an article from The Economist which reports on the Piraha number research. It’s not quite as well done as I’d like (e.g., it concedes more reality to the hypothesis than I think is justifiable), but it’s still fascinating stuff.

There’s also this excellent Wikipedia article which gives some of the other side of the story.

Whorf himself thought that Hopi Indians didn’t have a way to express temporal relationships the way we do and that they perceived things in a kind of non-linear, timeless way (that would radically change their understanding of physics, for example).

Needless to say, this got relativists all excited for a while.

Also needless to say, it’s complete hog slop.

The Hopi do have the concept of linear time and they can express temporal relationships in their language. Whorf simply didn’t gather enough data and pay enough attention to the data he had to realize this. In fact, it’s really embarrassing to look at later studies of this question and note that Whorf’s own data contains counterexamples to his claims about the Hopi conceptualization of time.

Sapir-Whorf has even reared its head in biblical studies. A number of years ago there were a lot of people all worked up about the way the biblical languages allegedly affected the thought of the sacred authors. Hebrew was held to result in “concrete” thought, while Greek was held to result in “abstract” thought, making the former suited to the parochial Old Testament and the latter suited to the cosmopolitan New Testament.

The kindest thing that can be said about these kinds of claims is that they are highly problematic.

Today most biblical scholars (or at least the good ones) will roll their eyes when such claims are introduced. Except for technical vocabulary, all human languages have approximately equal expressive power, and technical vocabulary is the easiest thing to add to a language when you need it. It is extremely difficult to make a whole lot out of the character of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek and attribute specific theological thought to the genius of these languages. That doesn’t stop one from hearing a lot of such claims from certain quarters, though.

While we’re on the subject of technical vocabulary, let me mention one particular idea you hear sometime: that Eskimos have a huge number of words for snow that express subtle distinctions lost on us English-speakers.

It’s not true.

Total myth.

Long discredited.

Every professional linguist knows this.

Contradict the claim when you hear other people make it.

It is true, however, that the Ferengi language has 178 words for rain.

Wonder what Lt. Cmdr. Worf would make of that?

This Saturday at Mass they had seven (Count them! Seven!) babies baptized. As part of this process, the usual baptismal questions got asked (e.g., “Do you want this child baptized in the faith of the Church?”) and the seventh dad said something unusual in response . . .

SEVENTH DAD: Yes.

What was unusual about this is that the dad didn’t say what all the other parents said . . .

OTHER PARENTS: I[/We] Do.

Faced with the jarring “yes,” something occurred to me that hadn’t occurred before. I suddenly realized why we never hear this response in liturgical ceremonies. The reason is actually very simple.

Latin doesn’t have a word for “yes.”

Yes, I know. Amazing as it might seem, many languages don’t have a word for “yes.” Latin is one of them. So is Chinese. So is Irish. Other languages, like Spanish (“si”), German (“ja”), Hebrew (“ken”), Arabic (“na’am”), Aramaic (“aeh”), or Japanese (“hai”) do have a word for “yes.” Even the language of the reprobate French has such a word (“oui”).

“Yes” is a word that has a function but not a meaning. Its function (or at least its principal function) is to affirm whatever we just have been asked. The meaning of “yes” depends on what question has just been put to us. For example, if we want to give an affirmative answer to “Do you want to go to the party tonight?” we could say “yes” or “I do.” If we want to give an affirmative answer to “Are you taking calculus this semester?” we could say “yes” or “I am.” The word “yes,” not having its own meaning, thus picks up its meaning from the context in which it is used.

As a result, it’s entirely possible to live without the word. What happens in the languages that don’t have a “yes” is when speakers want to give an affirmative answer, they grab the main verb of the question and use it in a first person form. Thus “Do you?” questions get the answer “I do,” “Are you?” questions get the answer “I am,” and so forth.

That’s the way it is in Latin, so when people are asked in the liturgy whether they want to do certain things or have certain things done (“Do you take this woman?”, “Do you want which child baptized?”) the Latin original of the liturgy has the answer “I do,” and when this gets translated into English, that’s what comes across. Not even ICEL has has the khutspah to translate these with a colloquial “yes.”

This isn’t the only time when this kind of thing happens. A while ago I was reading a quotation from a British author (either Chesterton or Waugh, I forget which) in which he noted that Irishmen tend to say “I do,” “I am,” etc., where Englishmen would say “yes.” The reason, he noted, was that Irish lacks a word for “yes,” and the verb-grabbing affirmative method native to Irish has passed over into the English-language speech of Irishmen. Thinking about Irishmen I’ve known or heard, I realized he was right. They do have a greater tendency to do this in preference to using “yes.”

What I want to know is: What happens at the end of the Beatles movie Yellow Submarine in these languages? In the English version the Blue Meanies are converted from saying “No” to “Yes,” with “Yes” spelled REALLY BIG on the screen.

What do they do with that in Chinese, Irish . . . or Latin?