Somewhat fitting for heritage languages is February 21. That’s today.
“What’s so special about today?” you ask? Glad you asked. Today is UNESCO’s International Mother Language Day.
Which heritage languages will you use to celebrate the day?
Corporate buzz words
Today a friend sent me a link to entertaining piece at Karen’s Linguistics Issues. Most who have worked in corporate America will recognize a coworker in many of the phrases.
My all-time favorite, though, is Action Item™, Professional Superhero.
Linguistic excitement in the air
As my lack of recent posts indicates, my language learning has hit one of those rough patches again. Actually, I am not too surprised. I seem to latch on to learning for eight to twelve, even sixteen weeks, and then I seem to shut down for awhile. Almost like a period of sleep.
But I sense a new morning is about to break. There is linguistic excitement in the air.
First, I have connected with a couple gentlemen also on the Norskklassen Yahoo! group. OK, all three of us would admit to having a rough start, due to extreme time differences. But we are eagar to learn.
Second, my local Sons of Norway lodge is preparing to dig in to the cultural skills programs, including language. And I know there is at least one other person interested to learn.
Yes, there is linguistic excitement in the air again. I can feel it.
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Adoptive languages
What is an adoptive language? In short, an adoptive language is a language a person chooses to learn and use.
A few days ago I talked about my heritage languages. While some of those do fit the definition of adoptive languages, I will focus on languages not on the heritage list here.
First up is American Sign Language (ASL). As I write this post, this is the adoptive language in which I am most fluent. However, I am not as fluent as I would like to be. Part of that is self-motivation, and part is the difficulty that I have in finding regular, live, fluent conversation partners.
The rest are on the potential end of the spectrum, although I have studied aspects of each one to some degree. In general, those I am more inclined to learn are listed first.
I took a liking to Hebrew while trying to translate The Story of Babel into a conlang directly from Hebrew. One of my favorite Hebrew features is how most all words with the same base set of three consonants share the same nugget of meaning.
Greek interested me when I read that 80-90% of the New Testament is written with a Greek vocabulary of only 200-300 words. (Sorry, I don’t remember the exact statistics.) Granted, Greek has undergone some changes since New Testament times, but with only a few hundred words to learn for usable literacy, the goal sounds quite achievable.
Japanese caught my attention when I learned that it is a topic-comment language. One of my difficulties with ASL is using the topic-comment structure, so studying Japanese seemed like a good idea. After reading through a grammar book, I found that I liked other features of the language, such as omitting number in nouns and honorifics.
Spanish is very widespread in America. I could use it to order food at a couple of my favorite restaurants. I could enjoy it on TV and radio. I could read the rest of the text on most product packaging. I know people which whom I could practice conversation. My kids are likely to learn some of it in school. All in all, Spanish could have high practical value for me.
There is a somewhat sizeable Russian population where I live, and one of my coworkers is from Russia. I like the sound of the language, and Russian-accented English.
I am not exactly sure why I like Turkish, but I liked what I found in a book I ran across.
There are probably more languages I could add to the list, but these will suffice for the time being.
Posted in Miscellaneous
Tagged adoptive languages, american sign language, asl, greek, hebrew, japanese, russian, sign language, spanish, turkish
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Heritage languages
I had wanted to create this blog for quite some time. One impetus for finally plunging ahead was another blog post titled “Heritaged Languages.” Like ILuvEire, I am an American who only learned English growing up, and I would like to learn the languages of my forebears.
Recalling my family tree as I know it at this time, my list of heritage languages includes Norwegian, Czech, and French. Beyond these three there is ambiguity. Scots and Irish, or Scots-Irish? Which North American Indian language(s)?
With so few Scots speakers, finding sufficient material to learn Scots or Scots-Irish is going to be difficult. I have run across some recordings and textbooks for Irish, but before adding that I’d like more detail and verification from the family tree. As for which North American Indian language(s), that has the double challenge of genealogical verification and probable scarcity of learning materials.
As I learn more of my family’s history, I may discover another language or two to add to the list.
As you are likely aware, languages change over time. The form of the languages I will be learning may be significantly different than what was spoken and written 75 or more years ago. This is a function of time, of course, and also regional and dialectical differences.
Posted in Miscellaneous
Tagged czech, french, heritage languages, irish, north american indian, norwegian, scots, scots-irish
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Conlang re-re-revisited
It was probably the chat with my Czech grandmother the other day that gave me the itch to start learning Czech. Until I looked through the phoneme inventory. After that it seemed like a better idea to scratch the conlang itch instead.
I looked at my latest list of phonemes for my conlang. Now I’m debating reworking it. Add Norwegian and Czech sounds to reinforce their respective pronunciations? Or simplify to something more like what you might hear on a Pacific Island?
For now I will continue with Norwegian while I ponder.
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Translating between languages
Earlier today I visited Dictionary.com to look up a few words. One of the featured articles of the day was advertised as “Is the Bible different in English?” (The actual blog post title is “How many languages has the Bible been translated into? Why does it matter?”)
As a linguist, amateur or otherwise, it is hard not to find the topic of translation interesting and important. Clearly the article’s comments show many people find the topic interesting and important as well, even if many don’t understand what is involved in making an accurate translation of the Bible or any other document. I am not a professional translator, but I do know the process can be extremely challenging.
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Talking to living history
Yesterday I had a nice long chat with living history: my Czech grandmother. I don’t know why I hadn’t asked her about it before. Maybe I didn’t think she wanted to talk about some of the less pleasant parts of her life. But, I am glad she didn’t hold back.
Assuming I understand details correctly, Grandmother’s parents immigrated from what was known as Bohemia. Bohemia comprised was is now the western two-thirds of today’s Czech Republic. About the time she was born here in America, Bohemia was merged into what became Czechoslavakia.
I get the impression American Czechs of the early 1900s viewed their heritage as extremely important. When it came to language, as far as Grandmother’s father was concerned his children could (and I gather should) learn all the English they can at school. But at home, Czech was the official language.
This attitude toward language seems to have resonated with Grandmother. When she wrote to an aunt living in the old country, she took the time to write in Czech. Grandmother was not the most skilled with the language, but she obtained an English-Czech dictionary and made a list of particularly troublesome Czech words and phrases. Her aunt was so very, very happy to have received a letter in her own language. Partly that her niece made the effort to write in her language, but also that she did not have to wait the week or two to have someone translate the letter for her.
It seems to me Grandmother had an interest in language. Perhaps she is where I get my interest from. Very cool.
Pimsleur Norwegian redux
Tonight I started Pimsleur Norwegian all over again. It isn’t that I had forgotten the material. Instead, the material covered in the 10-unit version, that I had borrowed from the library, is not the same as the first ten units of the 30-unit version I recently purchased.
I don’t mind; the extra practice is good for me. I am still having problems getting the pronunciation and intonation patterns correct. However, I was surprised at how much easier that seemed to be compared to last week. Also, I caught myself understanding the basic dialog presented in the first unit in Norwegian, without having to interpret to English. Another step in the right direction!
Now on Twitter
Amateur Linguist is now on Twitter! #hurray!
And if I connected everything properly, this post will trigger a tweet. Sweet!
What kind of blows me away is that I created the new Twitter account @amateurlinguist, linked this blog to that account for auto-sharing, performed a few other housekeeping tasks, and finally wrote this post–all from my phone. (A Windows Phone, for those who want to know. The official WordPress app is awesome, BTW. The WordPress admin website for blogs works pretty well on the phone, too.) Not too long ago, the idea of doing all this on a phone would be insane.
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