Pirahã

Today someone called my attention to this article.
The Pirahã language is one of those examples in which, despite a very little amount of speakers, the language is not endangered., as as language use is vigorous and the Pirahã community is monolingual.
Pirahã language has a set of interesting features. For example, the pronunciation of several phonemes depends on the speaker's gender. And it has one of the smallest phoneme inventories of any known language. And also their counting system is limited to one, two and many (read a little more here and here).
Read Living without numbers or time. there's even an online dictionary.

Poor language

I am always complaining about how Mexican media use Spanish. Poor usage of language, deliverately misusing words or twisting grammar. Many years ago, I would have expected that someone who stands infront of a TV cammera, someone who talks on a microphone or someone who writes for a news papers should have at least some knowledge.
Don't blame immigrants for bad use of English.
But it is a problem when even teachers can't use grammar. How to solve this? Would this approach work?
The problem clearly goes beyond chat speak. I don't like it. But I can't avoid using "lol" and the like. They are already part of the way I type, even when I do it in Spanish. Is it true that youngsters who use their worst English on internet can be taken by someone educated when they write essays?
What if we'd get fined for misusing our language? I am not sure if this is a desirable condition...

Thanks to Colm and Danial.

Rewards

It is always nice when you get recognized for your effort at learning a language.

Kudos to Gary Petengell for his Personality of the Year award! Learning Lithuanian might have not been easy.

Briti politseinik sai Leedu rahvuskangelaseks.

I should study harder!! :p

Politically-correctness times

I know this is a very controversian topic. But this:

The American people believe English should be the official language of the
government. ... We should replace bilingual education with immersion in English
so people learn the common language of the country and they learn the language
of prosperity, not the language of living in a ghetto.

Who said that? Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the United States House of Representatives and possible contender for the White House.
His reply to all critiscism he got was:


Yeah, right...
Just out of curiosity...

The name ghetto refers to an area where people from a given ethnic
background or united in a given culture or religion live as a group, voluntarily
or involuntarily, in milder or stricter seclusion. The word historically
referred to restricted housing zones for Jews; however, it now commonly labels
any poverty-stricken urban area.

Freedom of Expression awards

I just thought I had to call atention into this:
Activists honoured at Freedom of Expression awards
Awards for free speech defenders

Index on Censorship is a magazine founded in 1972 by a group of writers, journalists and artists, who were inspired by the British poet Stephen Spender to take to the page in defence of the basic human right of freedom of expression.

Index Freedom of Expression Awards 2007.

Official language

An official language is a language that is given a unique legal status in the countries, states, and other territories. It is typically the language used in a nation's legislative bodies, though the law in many nations requires that government documents be produced in other languages as well.

A few states have no official language, although in most such cases there is a single de facto main language. The acceptance of de facto national languages is sometimes used as a means of remaining unprejudiced or unbiased. In the United States, the federal government has not declared a national language. English is accepted as the de facto national language. To partially cope with this situation, the federal government has given states the right to declare their official language. This right is exercised, with New Mexico having recognized both English and Spanish for official purposes ever since gaining statehood. Also, Louisiana uses French and English as official languages, and Hawaii uses Hawaiian and English as official languages.
Similarly, in the former Soviet Union, Russian was not legally the official language, but de facto. Likewise in the UK, English is the dominant language but no official language has ever been declared. Sweden is another case of a country with no de jure language.

A national language is a language (or language variant, i.e. dialect) which represents the national identity of a nation or country. A national language is used for political and legal discourse and so designated by a country's government. Some countries have more than one national language, such as Canada which uses both French and English. A national language is not to be confused with the predominant language, which is spoken by the majority of people from within a country's borders.

A regional language is a language spoken in a part of a country. It may be a small area, a federal state or province, or a wider area. It is often mistaken for a dialect.
For the purposes of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages:

"regional or minority languages" means languages that are:

1. traditionally used within a given territory of a State by nationals of that State who form a group numerically smaller than the rest of the State's population; and
2. different from the official language(s) of that State

Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway have signed a resolution to recognise sign languages as official languages. And New Zealand schools will offer it.

Will Irish be an official language in Northern Ireland? We are waiting for the 12-week consultation period to end.

How to forget your mother tongue and remember your national language?

Bible translations

Contrary to popular belief, the Gutenberg Bible (or Mazarin Bible) is not the first book printed by Gutenberg's new movable type system. But it is his major work. It is a version of the Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible. Its printing started on February 23rd, 1455, and it had 1282 pages.
More than five centuries after that first printing, how many languages have a version of the Bible?
Ethnologue has a catalogue of 6912 living languages. According to the 2006 Scripture Language Report (just released in late January), there are 2426 languages in which at least one book of the Bible has been completely translated. Among those, 260 have complete translation. You might think that 4 % of human languages is not much if we are talking about the book that has been the most read through history. But it is deffinetely a big number!
Why don't they just add translation then? It is not an easy task.

Do you know where Ranonga is? Take a look at the map. It is a tiny island in the Western province of the Solomon Islands.
In that little island, there are some 2800 Lungga speakers. One of them, Alpheaus Zobule, went to the United States to study linguistics and theology. With this backgroud, he wanted to translate the Bible into his mother tongue. The main problem was that Lungga was an oral language. He started translating the New Testament in 1981. And it was not until three years ago when the first 2500 copies of this translation were published.
He had to face many desicions. One was to translate the Hebrew word "amen" (אמן) to the Lungga word agua, which means "that's it" or "I agree". He felt it was important to end the prayer with an indigenous word.

According to the world's largest Bible translator Wycliffe International, oral languages make up the majority of the roughly 2000 Bible translation projects underway around the world.

In Zobule's words:

"In school, we'd be punished for speaking our own language. We had to speak English. It builds a thought in us that our languages were not good; it affected our identity. When people got this translation, they said: 'You mean our language is important? You mean we are important?' "

Read more of this story in the articles Found through translation, God’s Word is ‘the most important canoe’ for islanders, and United Bibles Society's Latest news #301.

Personal pronouns

In the place I live, it is common to mock politicians. There is not such a thing as a king, but you can see on TV sketches about the president and presidents of other countries. But be careful to say something like that about King Bhumibol Adulyadej (ภูมิพลอดุลยเดช) if you are visiting Thailand. This could happen to you! [As a side comment, the BBC deleted the original note they had when I decided to write about this! Now they only have the one I am linking to and this other one. Wierd!]
Cultural differences can be seen in the use of personal pronouns.
Personal pronouns are pronouns often used as substitutes for proper or common nouns.
English has seven personal pronouns: I, we , you, he, she, it and they. And each of these can take different forms:

• a subjective case form (I, we, etc.), used when it's the subject of a finite verb

• an objective case form (me, us, etc.), used when it's the object of verb or of a preposition

• two possessive case forms (my, our, etc. and mine, ours, etc.), used when it's the possessor of another noun (one that's used as a determiner, and one that's used as a pronoun or a predicate adjective)

• a reflexive form (myself, ourselves, etc.), which replaces the objective-case form in referring to the same entity as the subject

You can see the table with all English pronouns here.
But many other languages, Thai among them, are not as simple as that. Not, at least in what it has to do about personal pronouns.
I, in Thai, could be either ฉัน, ผม, ดิฉัน, ข้าพเจ้า or ก, depending on what you mean and who uses it. ฉัน is used by both males and females when speaking to intimates, servants or children. ผม has the same meaning as ฉัน, but is a more “polite” word and is generally used when talking with equals or superiors but it can only be used by males. ดิฉัน is the feminine counterpart of ผม. ข้าพเจ้า is very formal and may be used by either males or females but is seldom met with except in writing (mostly come across it in official documents). ก is used to a really intimate friend as a very informal and friendly word, but in any other situation, it is an insulting word. But there are more! พี่ literally means older brother / sister, this is quite a common word that can be used for I when you are speaking to someone younger than you. น้อง is the opposite of พ, younger brother / sister. กระผม is another word used only by men, and it's used to show respect when talking to people perceived to be of 'higher status' than you. เรา, confusingly, is the normal word for we/us but it is also used by both men and women as an informal word for I/me. หนู litterally means mouse, this is used by women when speaking to people much older. อั้ว is used only by Chinese Thais. ใต้เท้า literally meaning under your feet, this is a respectful word similar to กระผม. And ข้าพพระพุทธเจ้า is a Royal Thai word, and is only used by those in conversation with the Thai King or another member of the Royal family (it's not a word you're likely to hear often, except at the cinema where it's the first word of the royal anthem played before every film. Literally translated, it means The servant of the Lord Buddha).

All this might look crazy! But that's the way it is. And, of course, for the second person, there is a similar amount of words. คุณ is a very common one. And you guessed right, there is one used only when adressing the Thai king or queen: ใต้ฝ่าละอองธุลีพระบาท.
No wonder why some say you see the world through the language you speak!

You can read more about all these pronouns in the blog entry And you thought 'thee' and 'thou' was hard, in learningthai.com and the most complete one is into-asia.com. You might want to check all the other words for you there.

Mobile ASL

Who doesn't have a cell phone in this crazy society? But how many Deaf use a phone? I guess the number increased since we now have text messaging. But I am sure signing would be more comfortable for them. There is a project at the University of Washington in order to make wireless cell phone communication through sign language a reality.
The main problem now is the low-bandwith wireless cellphone network, so they are working on a new compresion scheme. The software uses skin detection algorithms to zoom in on those specific areas in the video that contain essential movements used to communicate via ASL, typically, hand, face and arm movements. You can read the BBC article about it.
There is also another project to help people who have lost hearing abilities.

And more about this topic. What to do if your son is born deaf? You should learn how to sign. This family is having problems with it. Read a little more.

Cornish

Myttin da! That's good morning in Cornish. And I am interested in how this language is in the process of being revived. Nowadays there are about 300 effective speakers with up to 3000 people able to have simple conversations.
There is no concentrated area of Cornish speakers. They live spread through Cornwall. Since Cornish has been revived and the language is not bound to certain concentrated areas, Modern Cornish does not have distinct dialects. Variety in vocabulary and pronunciation does occur, depending on where and with which teacher students have learned the language. But this variety is minimal.

The Cornish language does not have an official status in the United Kingdom. There are no laws referring to the position of the Cornish language. The UK Government signed the European Charter on Regional and Minority Languages in March 2000 and ratified it later that year but excluded Cornish. Moreover, the national government has decided that the Cornish are not a national minority for the purposes of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National minorities. The exclusion from both documents has probably occurred because Cornish is considered an artificial language as defined in the UNESCO Redbook of Endangered Languages. This source considers Cornish to be extinct and calls the Cornish language artificial. The absence of government recognition means that the government has made no provisions for the Cornish language.

The Cornish language (Kernowek, Kernewek, Curnoack, in Cornish) is one of the Brythonic group of Celtic languages. It shares about 80 % basic vocabulary with Breton, 75 % with Irish, and 35 % with Scottish Gaelic.

It is being already taught to kids at schools and road signs are now in English and Cornish. Read a report about current situation, some FAQs about the language, a report about Cornish in education in the UK and find places where you can learn Cornish in Cornwall.
You can take a look at 12 Cornish lessons, read the explanation about Cornish sounds, consult a dictionary (here, another one) or a short lexicon or check Wikipedia in Cornish.

Spoken Chinese

I've heard many say that in the future, learning Chinese will be as common as learning English is today. But most who say that, know nothing about Chinese culture. The Chinese term 方言 litteraly means "regional speach" and in English it is commonly translated into dialect. Although the Chinese share the same writen language (文), the pronunciation of identical characters (the spoken language, 语/語) differs from region to region and variations are such that they are generally mutually unintellegible.
Can we talk about a Chinese language? Read here.
But maybe those saying about Chinese being almost compulsory in the future, are refering only to 普通话 (Pǔtōnghuà), or Standard Mandarin, as we'd called it.
But today, I found this article. China has certainly a huge task ahead.
And for those saying that learning Chinese is the future, there are some who are already there. Read a BBC article.

No child left behind

Do those words sound to something familiar to you? Probably you thought of "Leave no man behind", the motto of the United States Army Rangers. Any relation to it? Maybe, if you consider the military has access to teens data thanks to this Act.
This is a controversial Act from 2001. I found this article about it. Certainly, being able of using your mother tongue is not only important, but absolutely necessary to succeed in the other subjects. No child left behing? How good are we doing it? And here, I am not asking about the U. S. How good are our kids doing? Not about grades, but about knowledge. I am pretty disappointed.
If you have a whole life to read, here you'll find the complete Act. But I assume that's too much reading for someone like me, so I''ll also point at the Wikipedia article about the Act.