Linguistics - Blog Posts
Learning another language is funny bc someone will say something like “sien” and you’re like what word is this. what secrets are you withholding from me. share with me your forbidden knowledge and they just misspelled sein
Yeah, they are pretty similar.
Another thing I didn't mention in the ask was thus:
Say a culture has a word for sand: Nate. ['natɛ]
If one Nate is one grain of sand, what are Multiple Nate (Natel).
What does Natel represent? Multiple grains of sand? A pile of sand? Would they have a new word for a pile of sand? Would it be derived from Nate? Should it be considered plural? It is referring to *a* pile, but it's referring to a *pile*, which has lots of sand grains!
This kind of thing keeps me up at night.
Again, sorry for ranting.
CW: Venting then asking for opinion
I stayed up last night thinking. About what? Sand.
But not sand itself. Nono. Counting with sand.
When you count sand, you count grains of sand. Then you say it's a pile of sand. Then a dune of sand. Then it's just... sand. But there is no clear distinction between any of those counting words.
When does "grains of sand" become "a pile of sand" become "a dune of sand?"
Sand doesn't even have a plural. Think about it. You cannot refer to multiples of sand without using another words. Sands? Nope. Types of sand.
You might say it's the same as with Bison and Sheep, but those can be counted. (1 Bison, 2 Bison, 1 sheep, 354 sheep) You can't count with sand. (1 sand? 2 sand? what?)
Opinions on the subject? Sorry for ranting
Yeah, it's certainly an interesting subject. I remember hearing about this thought experiment with snowflakes instead of sand. Like how many little flakes have to fall in one particular place before you notice you have a small pile of snow? And how many flakes would you have to take away for it to *cease* being a snow pile?
I guess snow and sand are similar things. Like sand has grains, and snow has flakes. But when you have enough flakes grouped together, it just becomes... snow.
I’m the opposite of a linguistic purist. I think we should all start saying more things wrong so language evolves faster. I’m bored
The limits of my language means the limits of my world.
-Ludwig Wittgenstein
One of the ballsiest things Tolkien ever did was write 473k words about some hobbits called frodo, sam, merry, and pippin and then write in the appendices that their names are actually maura, ban, kali, and razal.
these "transcends language" posts usually contain a lot of cognates! these are words with similar origins in the two languages, like:
"j'ai visité la université, les professeurs sont respectables!" - means what you think,
"j'ai voir l'école, les enseignants sont convenables!" - is the same; you can't read it!
post: el problema es el capitalismo
half of the people in the notes, predictably: good word!😱 it appears that, despite not being fluent in spanish, i have this strange intuition🧠 that “problema” means “problem” and “capitalismo” means “capitalism!”☝️ from there, i think🤔 i can put these words together to infer that this post says “the problem is capitalism!” 🤯🤯🤯 truly, this post transcends language!🙌
my favorite thing right now is how mad the official french language people are that parts of african languages are getting mixed into french
Read the notes 😘
je croix que nous devons arrêter de parler anglais et semplicemente ricominciare a usare la nostra prima lingua quia istud clarum dii signum est ita ut nos ne loquamur barbarorum linguam
Now you know — view on Instagram https://ift.tt/3AGm34f
Linguistics Jobs: Interview with a Metadata Specialist and Genealogist
As someone who has built language archives, and spent a lot of time poking around in archives built by other people, I appreciate the importance of well-structured meta-data. It’s good meta-data that tells you what is in the giant pile of data you’re working with, making the whole process much less of a needle-in-a-haystack scenario. Mallory Manley is doing the important work of managing data across multiple languages in the field of genealogy. I appreciate Mallory’s honesty about the challenges of stepping sideways out of linguistics, and sharing that experience with us in this interview. You can follow Mallory on Twitter (@ManleyMallory).
What did you study at university?
I studied a Master of Arts in Linguistics at the University of Essex. My favorite subject in linguistics is morphology, so I continue to study it on my own. What is your job?
I work for a genealogy company as a cataloguer. I receive digital copies of historical records and I organize them by place, record type (birth certificates, census records, etc), and year to prepare them to be published online. I am responsible for records coming from Scandinavia and South Eastern Europe. How does your linguistics training help you in your job?
When I applied for this job, I had no working knowledge of the Scandinavian languages or the languages of Eastern Europe, except for Russian. I definitely oversold my abilities by stating in my cover letter that I could learn any language. But knowing how to analyse language has helped me learn these languages. And being able to identify patterns in language helps me read those documents when I get stuck on words I don’t know or simply can’t decipher. Learning the orthographies of each of these languages has also proved to be a challenge, partly because orthographies change over time, and partly because many of these languages didn’t have a standardized orthography at all until relatively recently. So even though I don’t use my linguistics training as much as I hoped I would in a career, it has helped me succeed in this role. Do you have any advice do you wish someone had given to you about linguistics/careers/university?
I think when we’re young and planning for our future, we get specific ideas about how our career path will look, and it becomes the only path we envision. I had to learn to be flexible and accept changes. My first year of college, I wanted to be a lexicographer (which I still think would be an awesome job). I ended up instead building a career in genealogy, and though it’s not where I expected or planned to be, it has been fulfilling and joyful.
Related interviews:
Interview with a Data Scientist
Interview with a Data Analyst
Recent interviews:
Interview with a Developer Advocate
Interview with an ESL teacher, coach and podcaster
Interview with a Juris Doctor (Master of Laws) student
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Check out the full Linguist Jobs Interview List and the Linguist Jobs tag for even more interviews
100 Verbs in Korean
묻다 - To ask
물어보다 - To ask
도착하다 - To arrive
대답하다 - To answer
끓이다 - To boil
빌리다 - To borrow, lend
사다 - To buy
태어나다 - To be born
죄송하다 - To be sorry
축하하다 - To congratulate
청소하다 - To clean
울다 - To cry
오다 - To come
요리하다 - To cook
썰다 - To chop, slice
닫다 - To close
고백하다 - To confess
걸다 - To call, dial
꿈꾸다 - To dream
마시다 - To drink
운전하다 - To drive
죽다 - To die
출발하다 - To depart
춤추다 - To dance
튀기다 - To deep fry
하다 - To do
운동하다 - To exercise
먹다 - To eat
들어오다 - To enter
나가다 - To exit
끝나다 - To finish
볶다 - To fry
사랑에 빠지다 - To fall in love
싸우다 - To fight
찾다 - To find,To look for
주다 - To give
일어나다 - To get up
가다 - To go
가지다 - To have
갖다 - To have
도와주다 - To help
듣다 - To hear
서두르다 - To hurry, rush
싫어하다 - To hate, dislike
있다 -To have
소개하다 - To introduce
알다 -To know
거짓말하다 - To lie
배우다 - To learn
사랑하다 - To love
살다 - To live
웃다 - To laugh
좋아하다 - To like
지다 - To lose, be defeated
재다 - To measure, weigh
섞다 - To mix, blend
만들다 - To make
만나다 - To meet
결혼하다 - To marry
모르다 - To not know
없다 - To not have
필요하다 - To need
주문하다 - To order
열다 - To open
내다 - To pay
약속하다 - To promise
연습하다 - To practice
준비하다 - To prepare
굽다 - To roast, grill, bake
읽다 - To read
기억하다 - To remember
쉬다 - To rest
타다 - To ride
휘젓다 - To stir
팔다 - To sell
찌다 - To steam
자다 - To sleep
앉다 - To sit
시작하다 - To start
보다 - To see
보내다 - To send
공부하다 - To study
가르치다 - To teach
생각하다 - To think
말하다 - To talk, speak
이야기하다 - To talk, chat
전화하다 - To telephone ( call)
찍다 - To take (picture)
사용하다 - To use
벗다 - To undress, take off clothes
입다 - To wear
일하다 - To work
이기다 - To win, defeat
씻다 - To wash
쓰다 - To wear (hat, eyewear
쓰다 - To write
신다 - To wear (shoes, socks, footwear)
기다리다 - To wait
걷다 - To walk
걱정하다 -To worry
Hello! I’m the Little Language Fox...
But you can call me Lisa. I’m in my final year at my University. I currently study literature + Spanish (my majors), as well as French + lingustics (my minors).
Also, I am currently self-studying Korean (I am a beginner!).
I thought about making this blog for a long time. I’ve had a Tumblr since 2010 (oh my god I’m old) but I recently deleted my previous account to start fresh!
I really want to track my progress and stay motivated to keep up my languages!
See you around!
-August 2018- What I’ve read so far this month! Nothing like some French, German and linguistic literature to bulk up my personal statement :)
Tip for non Hispanic ppl writing Spanglish
*I initially wrote this at 1 am so like, keep that in mind as you decipher this lol
*context is key when speaking Spanglish, if your character is in a professional setting they probably won’t speak Spanglish unless it’s to a fellow co worker who also speaks Spanglish. It’s more of a casual way a speaking yk?
Also parents, I avoid Spanglish with my parents unless we’re switching from just speaking Spanish to just speaking English. But that’s depends from family to family.
It’s typically like switching sentences and not dropping in random words.
Example “ es Que fui a la tienda, and they were out of milk”
Example “ te ves cansada, did you sleep last night?”
“La neta” is and extremely common Mexican slang term, typically means, honestly. It can also be used to mean ‘really?’
Honestly example:
“La neta, Im tired”
Or “La neta, estoy cansada. Im going to bed”
In the case it means “really?”:
ex.) “Neta?! They said that?!”
I personally say “ de que” which is basically saying “like”, it’s a filled term, before saying a sentence in either English or Spanish
example “ de que idk it won’t work”
I’m Mexican so I use “ósea” a lot in both languages. Another substitute for words like:
“I mean,” “it'd be,” ”like,” “so,” “that is,” “therefore,” and “or.”
Ex. “ ósea, it looks weird idk”
The famous “ pero like” I personally don’t use a lot but an example of how it’s used in Spanglish is “ pero like, how did it happen?”
Sometimes I Just say “ fuck” but like in my Mexican accent or in a sentence.
“ fuck, perdí mi pulsera”
When I get startled I cuss in both English and Spanish but a Spanglish example would be
*insert random startling noise
“ ala verga! That scared me” or “ hijo de tu puta madre!” when something REALLY scared the shit out of me lol
“Chingada madre, where did that come from”
Rlly insert any cuss word in there and it probably works in Spanglish.
Edit bc I thought of this the morning after
In Mexican Spanish for whatever reason the word “madre” can be used like kinda like a cuss word lol.
Example “ Me vale madres”
Which in English would translate to “I don’t value mothers” but in practice means “I don’t give a shit” or “I don’t care”.
Another Mexican deep cut is the word “pedo” which yes, means fart but we’ve really given the word so many alternative meanings like
“ no es mi pedo “ = “not my problem”
“Estoy bien pedo” = “in rlly drunk”
“Vas a la peda?” = “ are you going to the party/kickback”
There’s more but that’s like the basics lol.
Also another Mexican term is “Aguas”… which literally translates to “waters” but it’s used as a warning.
“Aguas, there’s car coming”
The most famous of Mexican slang has to be “wey” or “guey” depends on how you spell it. But it just means dude. Another term that goes in hand is, “no mames” which basically means “are you kidding me”.
*men for whatever reason hate when the girl they’re dating or are into calls them wey. I think it’s because it’s seen as either improper or as like friend zoning.
“Wey, you’re not gonna believe this”
“No mames wey, look at this”
Another term is “equis” which basically means whatever
“How was the party?”
“Estuvo equis”
Another example
“ now was she dressed?”
“Equis, nothing crazy nothing wow”
*I recommend for Mexican characters looking into the words, or you can just ask me I just don’t wanna make this longer than I already have lol, “mamar”/“mamo”/“mamon”, each you would think is the same but no, no they are not and using one in the wrong context could be catastrophic lol. They are vital words to our vocab
If you’re writing to a character from a specific country, take the time to learn some slang. Sometimes slang crosses over, sometimes even we use slang we learn from each others dialects. Personally I love “joder”/“no jodas” because of the shows from Spain.
But take the time because if you write a Colombian character using most of the slang I’ve used above, you’d get a lot of hate from Colombians lol.
Some bad Spanglish examples would be
“ why didnt you eat your comida?”
Like no. Just no. Inserting a random Spanish word doesn’t equate to Spanglish, at least not in most Latin peoples lives
“ you look cansada” also just no.
*Edit I saw someone post abt this and I felt like adding it in
If you do insert a random Spanish word or vice versa it’s because you forgot the word but that involves a lot of blanking and being annoyed you can’t dig the simplest word out of you sub conscience lol
Example: “ you look, FUCK what’s the word! You know when you’re cansada…TIRED. You look tired”
Another commenter addition I’ll be adding is using “eh” as a filler instead of “um”. I use both but even in English I default to using “eh” or “ehmmmm”
The worst is when you don’t remember the word, only to have it appear in your subconscious hours later lol
Another fav filler word is “deste” which equates to another more Central American term “vaina” but a less refined way of saying it. Essentially they mean “thing” but that thing can be anything. It’s kinda a word when you’re to lazy to say the actual word.
“Pásame el deste”
*passes them x ítem
“No I meant the remote”
*trying not to kill the person because they could’ve said remote the whole time but chose not to
Sometimes we use bad Spanglish on purpose just to be funny
“Que sad” “Que cute”
* i personally love inserting the word cute into my vocab in Spanish just cuz so to each their own
Something I do is like say something in English and immediately say the exact same thing in Spanish. Or like I’ll say an exclamation in one language then end in the other.
“ GO GO GO, VÁMONOS APÚRATE”
“Que asco, gross”
“WOW, que bueno”
Also if you’re writing like couples tbh nicknames in Spanish would be reserved for when you’re speaking in Spanish and same for English, but each couple is different so if you rlly want to leave a nickname in Spanish in go for it. If you rlly want the endearment to be “ mi amor” please remember that after like the first or second time the Spanish speaker would probably just refer to their S/O as “ amor” or switch between the two.
Which brings me to the terms “mami/mamita” and “papi/papito”. Now, while they Can and are by some used in a sexual manner, they can also be used as general terms of endearment. My mom will sometimes call me mamita or my brother papito.
Amongst couples though it’s just kinda said, I saw someone describe it was you just give motherly energy so “mami” is said lol which I get oddly enough.
Once a couple is well established or just comfortable the woman can refer to her S/O as “ viejo” which is old man lol, but it’s like cute. On the flip side idk it’s typically seen as offensive when a man calls his S/O “vieja” but that depends on culture to culture.
Again mami and papi don’t have to be sexual but can be.
Another simple thing you can do is look up nicknames for certain names.
Examples:
“Mike” pronounced “Mique” for Miguel. Some people like to use “Mickey”, that gained popularity from an old Mexican singer lol.
“Ponchó” For Alfonso
“Ale” Can be used for Alejandro/Alexandra/Alejandra
Another thing I thought of is amongst siblings when referring to our parents we will say like
“Haz visto a mi mamá”
Which means have you seen “my mom” even though she’s both our mom… idk it’s weird but a nice little touch you could add to your writing lol
I get rlly annoyed reading bad Spanglish, sometimes it’s just painfully cringe and just obvious a non Spanish speaker wrote it, and I realize it’s bc most of y’all didnt grow up with it so like this is just what is typical Spanglish most Hispanic ppl grow up speaking, obviously not everyone speaks like this but figured I’d give tips from someone who actually speaks English and Spanish and switches between.
If I missed anything feel free to add on or if you disagree add examples
I'm always confused by y in pronunciation guides, and questions like this, as I recall being taught it can make any of the other vowel sounds. If it's an official format, I can go look it up, but this sort of splitting gets odd. I'm not entirely sure I pronounce the y in day at all. The two syllable da-ee does sound the most logical way to add it back in, but...
Art n’ Words: Me
_____
“Showing vulnerability
Beyond just skin & bone deep
The darkness behind the wall of teeth
& flesh that make a smile
~
The ever calling calligraphy
Of your tongue shaping against those teeth
& sounding out the decencies
I would hear out for all time”
_____
Okay, so, today on deeply nerdy things I'm working on (and also looking for advice on; vote at the end of the post!)...
So I've been working on coloring Worm's page from the quarantine coloring book (this is what I have so far), and I decided that I needed to put a name on the side of the boat. Because this stream was the first thing I watched with Gerard and Worm, I decided that “Daydream Believer” would be a good name for the boat (fair warning, it’s a pretty violent game they’re playing in that stream, but to summarize, the part I’m referencing is from Gerard’s turn as the murderer when he starts playing Daydream Believer by the Monkees to creep out Worm and the other dude they’re playing with, which is the moment I linked to.)
But then I thought, this is an alien creature’s magical space-boat. I can’t just title it Daydream Believer in English. So I whipped out my D&D player’s handbook (5e) and went to the Elvish alphabet.
But then I thought, I can’t just write Daydream Believer in English with Elvish letters. I need to translate it into proper Elvish first. Which, of course, the only correct Elvish languages to use are Tolkien’s--Sindarin and Quenya. (In any case, I don’t believe that there is a complete D&D Elvish language.)
So, I brought up a few Sindarin and Quenya online dictionaries and translators, and I came up with a few different translations for “Daydream Believer”, and I wrote them out and transcribed my favorites to try and see which ones looked best in the D&D Elvish alphabet (I know Tengwar is technically the correct Tolkien-based Elvish script to be writing in, but I was already rolling with the D&D Elvish transcriptions, and I think I like the look of them for an alien space boat better, so I stuck with the D&D Elvish). But now I’m kind of stuck between three, and I thought, why not ask tumblr?
The two on the left with the blue highlights are Sindarin translations, and the one on the right with the green highlight is Quenya; I know there are differences in use between the two languages but I figured there’s no particular reason an alien couldn’t speak either of them. The first of the two Sindarin translations is “celain ely thenid pen”. ‘Celain’ means daylight, ‘ely’ means dream, and since I couldn’t find the word ‘believe’ in Sindarin anywhere I looked, I used ‘thenid’ which means ‘faithful’ and ‘pen’ as a pronoun meaning ‘one’. So, the first translation is really “daylightdream faithfulone”, which is fairly close. But I chose that translation mostly for aesthetics, and I worried I had strayed from the truest translation of the words, so I did another.
The second Sindarin translation I did was “eraid ely esteliad pen”. ‘Eraid’ is just ‘day’ instead of ‘daylight’, and ‘esteliad’ is ‘trusting’, which seemed closer to the meaning of a daydream believer as one who is trusting in their daydreams rather than one who is faithful to their daydreams, although that could lead to a whole debate on the meaning of the original song, which--let’s be honest I’m way overthinking this already. I’m just trying to find pretty letters to write on the side of this boat, lol :) But nerdy linguistic overanalysis for a random obscure reference that pretty much no one is going to get is what I’m here for, haha.
So, the third and final of my top three translations is the Quenya one, “árë maur savindo”. Quenya actually seemed to translate the phrase more easily, if only because there’s a word for “believer”. ‘Árë’ is day, ‘maur’ is dream or vision (which, I like the idea that the daydream believer’s daydreams are visions of a sort--oh no I’m analyzing the song again, I said I wouldn’t do that, I’ll stop, haha. I actually have thought about the meaning of the song quite a lot), and ‘savindo’ is believer. The Quenya translator that gave me ‘savindo’ warned that it was fan-created, but ‘sav-’ is in fact the Quenya verb for believe, and there was a whole section in the Quenya-English dictionary I looked at for “one who ___” verbs and they all ended in ‘indo’, so I think it’s a correctly derived translation.
Tl;dr--those are the three best translations I came up with, and I highlighted where I wrote each of them out in Elvish in the image above. So, now I’m asking you to vote: which Elvish translation of Daydream Believer should I write on the boat on my coloring page? “Celain ely thenid pen”, “eraid ely esteliad pen”, or “árë maur savindo”? Vote in the replies or reblog with your vote! :)
Postscript: If anyone wants to see my full Elvish translation scribblings which led to this, here’s what my process in my sketchbook looked like:
(There was a reflection from an old art class in the top left so that’s what I roughly photoshopped out if you were wondering.)
It’s always fun to have an excuse to mess around with translations and practice writing things in Elvish script :)
Some internet language things I really like:
Phrases like “that’s certainly a thing”, “it’s so shaped”, or “one of the most animals” (is there a name for this?)
when people write with little to no punctuation like they are just so done
More specifically, asking questions without punctuation i.e. ‘what’ or ‘why’. It’s like, you want to know but also you are resigned to the answer?
When people capitalise The Thing for emphasis - particularly if they add a trademark symbol to really drive The Point™ home
How we use both bold and italic text for emphasis, but they convey it in different ways and I can’t quite explain how
Responding to things exclusively with punctuation, because sometimes words fail you and all you can say is !!!
people understand that Spanish speakers speak different dialects of the Spanish language but don’t understand that black people speak a dialect of the English language
I saw this on quora and thought it was cool and wanted to share it on here. Its a long read but crazy. Its from Erik Painter
They did try. And they did capture Navajo men. However, they were unsuccessful in using them to decipher the code. The reason was simple. The Navajo Code was a code that used Navajo. It was not spoken Navajo. To a Navajo speaker, who had not learned the code, a Navajo Code talker sending a message sounds like a string of unconnected Navajo words with no grammar. It was incomprehensible. So, when the Japanese captured a Navajo man named Joe Kieyoomia in the Philippines, he could not really help them even though they tortured him. It was nonsense to him.
The Navajo Code had to be learned and memorized. It was designed to transmit a word by word or letter by letter exact English message. They did not just chat in Navajo. That could have been understood by a Navajo speaker, but more importantly translation is never, ever exact. It would not transmit precise messages. There were about 400 words in the Code.
The first 31 Navajo Marines created the Code with the help of one non-Navajo speaker officer who knew cryptography. The first part of the Code was made to transmit English letters. For each English letter there were three (or sometimes just two) English words that started with that letter and then they were translated into Navajo words. In this way English words could be spelled out with a substitution code. The alternate words were randomly switched around. So, for English B there were the Navajo words for Badger, Bear and Barrel. In Navajo that is: nahashchʼidí, shash, and tóshjeeh. Or the letter A was Red Ant, Axe, or Apple. In Navajo that is: wóláchííʼ, tsénił , or bilasáana. The English letter D was: bįįh=deer, and łééchąąʼí =dog, and chʼįįdii= bad spiritual substance (devil).
For the letter substitution part of the Code the word “bad” could be spelled out a number of ways. To a regular Navajo speaker it would sound like: “Bear, Apple, Dog”. Or other times it could be “ Barrel, Red Ant, Bad Spirit (devil)”. Other times it could be “Badger, Axe, Deer”. As you can see, for just this short English word, “bad” there are many possibilities and to the combination of words used. To a Navajo speaker, all versions are nonsense. It gets worse for a Navajo speaker because normal Navajo conjugates in complex ways (ways an English or Japanese speaker would never dream of). These lists of words have no indicators of how they are connected. It is utterly non-grammatical.
Then to speed it up, and make it even harder to break, they substituted Navajo words for common military words that were often used in short military messages. None were just translations. A few you could figure out. For example, a Lieutenant was “one silver bar” in Navajo. A Major was “Gold Oak Leaf” n Navajo. Other things were less obvious like a Battleship was the word for Whale in Navajo. A Mine Sweeper was the Navajo word for Beaver.
A note here as it seems hard for some people to get this. Navajo is a modern and living language. There are, and were, perfectly useful Navajo words for submarines and battleships and tanks. They did not “make up words because they had no words for modern things”. This is an incorrect story that gets around in the media. There had been Navajo in the military before WWII. The Navajo language is different and perhaps more flexible than English. It is easy to generate new words. They borrow very few words and have words for any modern thing you can imagine. The words for telephone, or train, or nuclear power are all made from Navajo stem roots.
Because the Navajo Marines had memorized the Code there was no code book to capture. There was no machine to capture either. They could transmit it over open radio waves. They could decode it in a few minutes as opposed to the 30 minutes to two hours that other code systems at the time took. And, no Navajo speaker who had not learned the Code could make any sense out of it.
The Japanese had no published texts on Navajo. There was no internationally available description of the language. The Germans had not studied it at the time. The Japanese did suspect it was Navajo. Linguists thought it was in the Athabaskan language family. That would be pretty clear to a linguist. And Navajo had the biggest group of speakers of any Athabaskan language. That is why they tortured Joe Kieyoomia. But, he could not make sense of it. It was just a list of words with no grammar and no meaning.
For Japanese, even writing the language down from the radio broadcasts would be very hard. It has lots of sounds that are not in Japanese or in English. It is hard to tell where some words end or start because the glottal stop is a common consonant. Frequency analysis would have been hard because they did not use a single word for each letter. And some words stood for words instead of for a letter. The task of breaking it was very hard.
Here is an example of a coded message:
béésh łigai naaki joogii gini dibé tsénił áchį́į́h bee ąą ńdítį́hí joogi béésh łóó’ dóó łóóʼtsoh
When translated directly from Navajo into English it is:
“SILVER TWO BLUE JAY CHICKEN HAWK SHEEP AXE NOSE KEY BLUE JAY IRON FISH AND WHALE. “
You can see why a Navajo who did not know the Code would not be able to do much with that. The message above means: “CAPTAIN, THE DIVE BOMBER SANK THE SUBMARINE AND BATTLESHIP.”
“Two silver bars” =captain. Blue jay= the. Chicken hawk= dive bomber. Iron fish = sub. Whale= battleship. “Sheep, Axe Nose Key”=sank. The only normal use of a Navajo word is the word for “and” which is “dóó ”. For the same message the word “sank” would be spelled out another way on a different day. For example, it could be: “snake, apple, needle, kettle”.
Here, below on the video, is a verbal example of how the code sounded. The code sent below sounded to a Navajo speaker who did not know the Code like this: “sheep eyes nose deer destroy tea mouse turkey onion sick horse 362 bear”. To a trained Code Talker, he would write down: “Send demolition team to hill 362 B”. The Navajo Marine Coder Talker then would give it to someone to take the message to the proper person. It only takes a minute or so to code and decode.
linguistics notes // decolonization · language revitalization
这个学期，我有“漂亮的汉子课”，汉子的历史和书法，那么东西。我喜欢历史，看怎么汉子改变不同的时代。有繁体字很漂亮，我想要没有改变了。但是，也有简单字我很高兴现在使用。书法，我不耐心。我也不在乎如果我的汉子是理想。但是，我赏识这个传统的艺术。
我几乎忘了，我开始了实习期。它是在一家亚洲文化中心。我有两个中国主任。我下还这个实习期。我很高兴。很好的机会。我现在更老，不是孩子或者年轻人。好吧，我饿死了。我现在要吃爆米花。再见 ！
totally missed halloween, idk why i didn’t post these
照片 · 笔记 · 朋友
My Languages
part 1
in order of when i picked it up. I grew up in an english speaking home, had friends who only spoke english, and really did not get any conscious exposure to another language until i was around 7 years old. my great grandmother on my mom’s side, married into the family, was a lovely woman from Tokyo whom we called Chick. she awoke my interest in other languages and cultures. i was eager to learn japanese from her, and she taught me some. just a few sentences here and there.
it wasn’t until middle school that i really got back into languages. i remember feeling excited for moving to high school, and being able to take french. i told my father over dinner at one of our favorite mexican restaurants, where he, my sister, and i would almost ritualistically go to [until it burned down]. he was quite irate that i had fancied french over spanish, and understandably so. spanish is much, much more common and useful in the united states than french is. however, i couldn’t be deterred. i was naturally drawn to french, and that’s what i would choose. i primed myself using google translate, looking up random words here and there. i would go on to study it for four years in high school. i was the top of my class, and everyone knew it. i just simply loved french and was good at it. i was fortunate enough to take IB French (international baccalaureate) which i can’t brag enough about. ib was awesome. like a breath of fresh air compared to the crap american standardized education feeds us. well, anyway. french will go along to become my major in university, not so much due to passion or interest, but because it’s common enough that it’s a major at most universities. france isn’t my favorite country and i don’t really want to live there. i’d choose quebec or luxembourg or belgium first. but hopefully it serves me well.
japanese was my other focus. in middle school i got into anime (death note specifically) besides already being madly in love and obsessed with pokémon and yugioh. i attempted to teach myself katakana. i remember thinking my name kyle would be キユレ kiyure, cuz i didn’t know how katakana worked back then. it’d probably be more like カイヨウル. however aside from that i didn’t really have much more need or pressure to learn more. the high school i would later go on to offered japanese, but for some reason that escapes my memory, i never took it. i ended up taking four languages in high school, but japanese was not one of them.
i guess this would be a good segue into spanish. but back to japanese first. i would later study japanese in college, centre college, to be exact. im thankful i did because i was able to write my great grandma chick a letter with the japanese i had learned. she was living in north carolina with my grandma and step grandpa, as she lay dying. i wasn’t able to see her before she passed, but my grandma said she loved my letter and wouldn’t stop mentioning it. lol.
synchronicitly, my japanese professor would be an awesome mormon man who i would have a good rapport with, because i was passionately mormon at this time in my life. and he was pretty awesome. he probably just thought i was some dumb kid, and i was. but if you’re reading this brother dixon, おはようございます！「元気ですか？」
i supposed i have lied, though. i forgot that i studied spanish in elementwrycschooo. so i did have exposure to foreign languages. we did not take spanish in middle school though, which is odd and embarrassing tbh. but i would later take spanish in high school for three weeks, before i dropped it because my class mates were pronouncing me llamo like... mee lahmo. not may ahmo like literally anyone should know by now.... so i switched to chinese.
inspired by avatar the last air bender, and an anxious and impulsive desire, i signed up for chinese class to get away from the heathens who didn’t know elementary spanish. why i didn’t ask if japanese or german was available, and honestly now that i think of it, i may have. at least one or the other. i distinctly remember being told chinese was available, and i just took it. so began my journey with 中文.
spanish was too easy and nothing about spain or south america really draws me. i do like argentina though, and catalan seems interesting. and definitely portuguese, but that’s not spanish!
before i continue on that though, let’s rewind. my knack for languages was already blossoming in middle school, even though i hadn’t had any formal study besides elementary school spanish from señor ramos. i told my dad as we sat together at the dinner table that i wanted to learn five languages. i was surprised later when he brought it back up, because i didn’t think he had remembered. looking back, i guess that is kind of unique. not many people have that desire, let alone accomplish it. in america at least.
well i still remember those languages. i believe they were japanese, french, german, spanish, and danish. yes. undoubtedly those were it. which one doesn’t belong? lol. danish, i know right? which is why we need to rewind. my love for denmark probably isnt worthy of its own post, but i will leave off here, and pick this up later. i gotta go to school, hun.
xx gossip girl