Shibboleths in North-east India

Most students of linguistics (and sociolinguistics) will be familiar with the term shibboleth or shibboleth test which refers to a word or phrase that is used to prove a speaker's membership to a particular group, usually along national or ethnic lines - members of the opposing group are identified by their different pronunciation of this word or phrase. Such tests have been used in times of war to determine 'friend from foe', and are still being used quite controversially by immigration departments to test people seeking refugee status, since its use assumes linguistic features must correlate with nationality or ethnicity.

At the NEILS conference I was told of two such shibboleths used in the NE India in recent times. In Assam, at the height of the 'Assam Agitation' nationalist movement from 1979 to 1985, people were often made to count from 1 to 7 to see if they were 'Assamese' or an illegal 'Bengali'. The idea is that in Assamese the number is 7 is pronounced [xat] with a velar fricative [x] (I reckon it's closer to a velar approximant), while in Bengali / Bangla the number is pronounced [sat] (a much more conservative pronunciation if one compares it to Hindi and Nepali [sat]). The instant the speaker said [sat], they were hit and taken away (or worse).

Another NEILS conference participant from Mizoram recounted a similar story from a time when the Mizoram government was trying to stymie illegal immigration from the Burmese side. From memory, it was members of the Ralte tribe moving into Mizoram from Burma. The test involved them saying the word for 'chicken'. The main difference between the dialects spoken on the Mizoram and on the Burmese sides was that one group said the word with a lateral sound [l] while the other used the rhotic [r].

Apparently there was a man who had crossed over and upon being told to say the word for 'chicken' (I assume someone pointed to the actual animal and asked him to say what it was), he asked the border guard if he could say the word for 'pig' instead.

NEILS 6 - Last Day

I've been asked to write this year's conference report for the Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area (LTBA) journal, so I probably do want to make some more notes while the impressions are still fresh in my mind. I don't think the Vice-Chancellor's opening speech I mentioned in my last post will make it into the report.

The past three days have been really inspiring. Sure, the quality of the papers hasn't always been the most desirable, but I got to meet a number of native speakers working on their own languages, as well as people who are doing really exciting things in minority language education (MLE). People who are interested in linguistic theory to various degrees, but who certainly haven't forgotten that people are the ones who use language.



It's heartening to see so many local students in attendance, even if most of them are doing courses in EFL training and the only reason many of them come up to talk to you is to ask to take a photo with you. (They just want photos with the foreign visitors.) I even had a few people take photos 'with me' without even asking.



Of course, there are advantages to being one of the 'foreign scholars' (and therefore more 'senior'). This morning I was sitting at a talk and suddenly choked on my saliva, resulting in a extended bout of coughing. Within minutes, one of the volunteers had come up to me with a bottle of water!

I really shouldn't get used to such service.

With any luck, I'll be at NEILS 7 next year with a whole lot of exciting work to present.

NEILS 6 - Day One

Today was the first day of the 6th annual North East Indian Linguistics Society (NEILS) conference taking place this year at Tezpur University just out of the town of Tezpur, Assam. It's a great place for people for linguists and language workers and teachers working in the region to come and meet.

Now, the last time I came for NEILS it was held in Shillong, Meghalaya. It was a bit of a last minute trip and I'd only decided to attend at the last moment (I actually ended up spending half that conference at Cherrapunjee near the Bangladeshi border, hiking down to see the Khasi root bridges made by 'training' ficus trees to grow their roots across rivers. It was a trip I had planned to do anyway, but it just so happened that someone else from the conference was going there at the time.)

So today was my first time presenting at NEILS - I gave a talk on verb nominalisation in Sumi and how monosyllabic, disyllabic and sesquisyllabic verbs behave differently with regards to such nominalisation. I got some pretty good feedback. It's also always nice to present on the first day of a conference. It means you can relax for the rest of the conference and actually focus on what everyone else is talking about. In my case, it also meant having only one sleepless night.

It was quite an invigorating day for me, given that I got through the paper with no major hiccups. Outside the talks, I also had a few meetings with other participants regarding developing minority language educational materials. The sort of work being done is something I found truly inspiring. It just made want to head back to Nagaland and get a team together to do this sort of work now.

Of course there were a few really painful, though quite amusing moments. The first was when the vice-chancellor of the university, who knew nothing about linguistics, gave his ridiculously long welcome speech at the opening ceremony in the morning. All the while trying to sound like he knew what he was on about. He kept referring to 'the linguistics' and I couldn't tell if he meant 'linguistics' as a discipline or if he just got the wrong word for 'linguists'. For some reason he assumed that the majority of participants came from Nagaland, which was odd because there's only one Naga participant here (unless you also count me, as an adopted Naga). Then he went on for a bit about Nagamese and how to his ears it's like Assamese but 'without the Naga influence' (or something like that). There were a few terrible anecdotes he shared, before he mentioned the fact that he had spent 4 years in Germany and learnt that there are German words like tschüss which aren't found in the dictionary because they're 'slang words used by the young people'! (see Wiktionary entry here)

It's moments like these when I'm glad I'm just a nobody at these conferences and not sitting on the stage having to contain myself in front of the whole crowd.

The second incident happened when a presenter was asked how old the language she was working on was.

Given that languages are constantly changing, the question of a language's age seems quite absurd. I was told later that the Indian government takes the 'age' of a language very seriously, as it is one of the criteria used to judge where a language should be considered a 'Modern Indian Language'. Scott DeLancey clarified that what they really mean is 'How long has the language been written / had a written script?' The belief is that a language is only 'born' when it is codified in some written form.

That means that many languages here are still in their infancy, while most are still unborn!

Popular Linguistics

Hooray, there's a new online magazine Popular Linguistics that will hopefully bring some (more) linguistics to the general public:

http://popularlinguisticsonline.org/home/

Not that I'm expecting people to stop asking questions like:

'So what is it that you study?' or
'Oh, how many languages do you speak? or'
'My father does logistics too!'

(Okay, so the last one wasn't a question, but someone did say that to me once.)

Surviving fieldwork: Space, Stimulation and Sanitation

Doing linguistic / anthropological fieldwork in any place which isn't your own native environment can be a daunting task. Alhough I wasn't doing fieldwork this week, some of the principles of surviving fieldwork still apply. Many people doing fieldwork have the romantic notion of 'living like the locals' (that's also assuming all 'locals' live the same way which isn't the case), but for a healthy fieldwork experience - and I'm speaking only from personal experience - there are three necessary conditions that need to be met to the satisfaction of the researcher. If these are not met, one should get out of the situation before it takes its psychological toll with the researcher wondering what the heck they're doing there, longing to hide in a room or run away, and basically not getting much research done.

For the sake of alliteration, I'm naming them: Space, Stimulation and Sanitation.

But before I talk about them, here's a little preamble about the events of the past few days which have led me to post on this topic.

So having left Nagaland, I arrived in Diphu in Karbi Anglong - the largest district in Assam - on Tuesday. On Wednesday my friend here invited me to spend a few days with her at a cultural festival organised by one of the main political parties in the district. The festival was taking place at the new 'ethnic village' in Kohora close to the entrance of Kaziranga National Park. Having just left Nagaland, I was up for another adventure. I'm not quite sure what my friend expected was going to happen at the festival, but for me, living arrangements did not meet these 3 Ss.


1. Space
When doing fieldwork, one of the first things to establish is your own space - space to put your things, space to rest, space to hide from the rest of the world whose language and culture you barely understand but are - hopefully - trying to learn. The amount of personal space needed differs from person to person, but generally, a nice secure location, if only to store expensive equipment, is preferred.

For the 3 to 4 days I was going to be at the festival (my friend wasn't certain when we would be coming back), the sleeping arrangement was simple. There were two parts to the model house in the 'ethnic village'. The women were to sleep on the floor in the main part of the house, while the men were to sleep in a smaller section of the house right next to the toilets. During the day, these areas were used for the exhibition area and a baggage storage area respectively. This meant that the sleeping mats were only set up when guests had stopped visiting for the night and they kept early in the morning to prepare for any arriving guests.

3 to 4 days may not sound like a long time and one might say, "It's only a few days, I can suck it up." But imagine having just travelled 4 hours from a different town, arriving in a new place where no one's telling you what's going on. All you want to do is lie down and take a rest, but there's nowhere to do so. You don't know when people are going to bed, and you don't know what time they're waking up. Worse, because you don't speak the language and people don't speak English or may be shy to do so, no one's telling you what's happening, and your friend's busy with her own work and doesn't quite know the situation herself. In fact, 3 to 4 hours is generally more than enough time to get frustrated with the whole set-up.


2. Stimulation
Being in a foreign environment is often an isolating experience. Even if people speak your language, they may have a completely different view of the world, and many conversations don't progress beyond 'Hi, how are you?' or people asking about what you think of their town / village / customs. It's a legitimate question, until everyone you meet asks you the same question every time and you find yourself having to praise even the dullest of locations. It's quite easy to just go into your own internal monologue and shut out everyone around you. It's necessary to have some sort of mental stimulation to avoid this - and not research-related stimulation either. For many, a book to read or a journal to write in might be enough, unless it's too painful to do any reading or writing that isn't research-related.

Being at a cultural festival doesn't guarantee all-day entertainment. After looking at the models of traditional houses at Kohora (and the workmanship really wasn't as good as what I'd seen at the Hornbill Festival at Kisama and at the Agri Expo in Dimapur), there's only so much dancing and singing I could take before calling it a day.

The first evening was probably the worse, because everyone was busy setting up for the exhibition, while I had absolutely nothing to do for about 5 hours. I didn't have a book to read (nor light nor a space to read if I wanted to) and I had no one to talk to. I had visited all the traditional houses (which took about 15 minutes) and there was nothing to watch apart from the long meeting held by the organisers of the festival. Worse, because I didn't have a space to lie down, I found myself pacing up and down like a caged animal. At one point I found a stone block under a pavillion to lie down on, but when I got up, I realised I'd be lying next to a dog the whole time!


3. Sanitation
This is probably the most important to many people. Keeping clean is an important part of feeling happy. Some, like myself, are psychologically prepared not to bathe as often as they are used to when they are in a different environment, especially if it's very cold and hot water comes in buckets (it's the time spent drying off afterwards that really bothers me). Access to a clean toilet is definitely a must, even if it means getting used to squatting and not using toilet paper for some. Also, for researchers in South Asia and other areas with heavily sweetened drinks, daily toothbrushing (and flossing) is essential if you don't want a hefty dental bill when you return home.

Now, between the 20 or so people staying in the house for the duration of the festival, there was one toilet and one bathroom, neither of which had any water. To make things worse, the toilet seat wouldn't stay up, so the guys simply peed on it. Naturally, many of the women refused to pee there so they used the drainage hole in the bathroom instead. The bathroom door didn't have a lock on the inside, so every time my friend went I had to stand guard outside.

Now, I was clearly aware that the sleeping arrangements were well outside my comfort zone. But I was more aware of the psychological trauma of spending 3-4 days in this kind of environment and I wasn't about to be gungho about the whole thing.

In the end, I only spent one night in the house, on the condition that my friend help me find a way back to Diphu the next day. However, it soon became clear to me that my friend did not want me to leave the next day since she herself felt uncomfortable in this situation - a clear sign that me as a foreigner shouldn't be in that environment. It was only after my mini-meltdown, when a guy I had spoken to for 2 minutes asked for my number simply because I was a foreigner, that she said it would be alright if I left.

In any case, transport back to Diphu that day turned out to be a bit of a problem, but thankfully her boss was able put me up in a hotel close to the festival ground the next day. However, that day I was actually moved no less than four times from one hotel to another (for various reasons), with people simply coming in to the room and telling me to "packing". Such uncertainty is another source of trauma. Also, although my friend's boss's bodyguard always had a cheerful smile on his face, I was always wary of the semi-automatic weapon (I think it was semi-automatic) he had slung over his shoulder.

I finally got back to Diphu yesterday when my friend's brother drove the 4 hours to the festival just for the afternoon.

This photo was taken after my friend had just made all the women move to a different section of the house so I didn't have to sleep with the boys next to the toilets. [UPDATE: the reason why I look so miserable in this photo wasn't because I had to sleep on the floor, it was because I was feeling super guilty that my friend had made all the women move out of the area so I could sleep there.] There was another guy sleeping next to me, so I wouldn't feel too bad.

But did I mention he snored like a dying pig?

Does the language we speak shape how we think?

The blogosphere is all atwitter with the debate on the Economist website, the proposition being:

This house believes that the language we speaks shapes how we think.
http://www.economist.com/debate/overview/190

My friends in linguistics will not find any of this new, but I did made a small comment on the site, mostly because people were arguing that it was culture, not language that shaped thought, which I agree with (I'm sure the situation is far more complex than I care to think about), but didn't feel was actually relevant to the points being raised by the proposer.

I'm certainly not a hard-core Whorfian believer in linguistic determinism - that the language I speak somehow limits my experience of the world - but I do believe in linguistic relativism in its 'weaker form'. There's something about the grammatical structures and lexical items in our native language/s that we retrieve so habitually and 'naturally' that we don't even realise it until we start to learn another language as adults.

Nick Evans writes in his book Dying words: endangered languages and what they have to say, "Languages differ not so much in what you can say as in what you must say" (paraphrasing Roman Jakobson). In learning a new language, one often encounters distinctions that one wouldn't otherwise have to consider in their own language, like having to specify each time whether I'm going to get from point A to B on foot or by transport in Russian, or specifiying whether I farted on purpose or by accident in Sherpa (see here). Native speakers of these languages don't realise they're making these decisions because they're so automated, but for someone else trying to learn these languages, I don't think there's any doubt that they require a slightly different way of thinking about events in the world.

Anyway, whatever! Have a look at the live debate at the Economist site and see what others are saying!

Calques

I just purchased a book on linguistics: Linguistics: an introduction by Radford et al. (2009 edition) for my friend Ab.'s reference. It's not in my opinion the best textbook (or introduction for the total beginner), but it was the best of the lot I could find here in Kohima.

In the book, one of the authors writes,

"Sometimes when new concepts are introduced from other societies, the speakers of a particular language may use their own native linguistic resources to coin a new word. These are known as calques.".

The examples given include Irish Gaelic sciath fearthanna 'umbrella' (lit. 'rain shield') and Maori wai mangu 'ink' (lit. 'water black'). Under this definition, Chinese 电脑 'computer' would also be considered a calque because it comprises two morphemes meaning 'electric' and 'brain'.

The problem here is, I always thought a calque referred to the borrowing of a compound word or phrase from another language by translating each individual component of that compound or phrase. Therefore, examples like English flea market from French marché aux puces, French gratte-ciel from English skyscraper or Russian детский сад from German Kindergarten would qualify as calques. (Note that the English word kindergarten isn't considered a calque since it's been borrowed 'wholesale' from German.)

By this definition, the examples cited in Linguistics: an introduction would therefore qualify simply as neologisms, created by compounding morphemes already in the language. Since they are not literal translations of terms from another language, I would be hard-pressed to call them 'calques' - last time I checked I don't call my computer an 'electric brain' or 'electro-brain'.

The Wikipedia page seems to confirm my own definition (with the same French examples I've given above - I'm sure they're the ones commonly used in other linguistics textbooks), but maybe I'm missing something here?

ZOMG, it's a new language!

In the past few days, articles have surfaced on news sites like CNN and Reuters regarding the discovery of a new language in NE India - specifically in Arunachal Pradesh, a region which China claims as part of its territory too.

The form of the articles seemed to follow the familiar structure used when talking about the discovery of a new species of animal (incidentally, close to 150 new species have been discovered in the Greater Mekong area).

Already knowing about the amount of diversity found among the world's languages and their plight, I couldn't help but find even the title a little sensationalist. Yeah sure, there's a new language, so what? Oh, it's on its way out? Again, what's new about that? It also didn't help that according to one language blog I follow:

The announcement this week of findings regarding a previously unknown language has shaken up the field of linguistics.

Seriously? I'm pretty sure the field of linguistics is already badly shaken by the current rate of language death on the planet. But this article appears to be from a non-journalist, simply commenting on the news reports.

Looking at the major articles again today, and couldn't really find the sensationalist element explicit in the writing. Beyond the title - the major role of which is to attract readership - the articles themselves present facts about the speakers, their living environment, the classification of the language in a non-gushing manner. The CNN article is also quick to point out that: "Like most languages, Koro is unwritten and transmitted orally" to readers who may not be aware that there are far more languages without a written tradition.

In contrast, the sensationalist elements in the articles, seem to come from the quotes from the linguists themselves. David Harrison says, "We didn't have to get far on our word list to realize it was extremely different in every possible way." He also writes that, "Koro could hardly sound more different from Aka." Finally, we have the statement: "Koro brings an entirely different perspective, history, mythology, technology and grammar to what was known before."

'Extremely different in every possible way'? 'Hardly sound more different'? 'Entirely different perspective'? What is this? If Koro was a language isolate spoken by a community completely isolated in a valley that had somehow been blocked off from the rest of civilisation thousands of years ago, then maybe. Heck, if it was an alien language from a different language I would embrace such hyperbole. But if it's one of the many Tibeto-Burman languages in the region facing extinction, then how could it be that different?

I could speculate on the reasons the team would say things like these - excitement at the serendipitous discovery of the language, garnering public support and maybe even funding? Maybe the whole 'novelty' of the language is how they're marketing the project, in addition to the sentimentality often associated with language documentation projects. I don't blame organisations like Enduring Voices for doing that - surely, funding is a main problem in this sort of work and part of a successful project is its ability to engage the (global) public and to spur its imagination.

Diverse Languages, One Identity

A few days ago I was wandering my favourite section at my favourite bookshop in Singapore - the languages section at Books Kinokuniya at Takashimaya. I came across a small booklet titled Diverse Languages, One Identity, "a joint initiative between the National Institute of Education (NIE) and the National Library Board.

As you can see, the booklet covers basic conversations in the four official languages of Singapore: English, Mandarin Chinese, Malay and Tamil. The blurb on the back adds, "This booklet aims to create an awareness of the spoken mother tongue among students and teachers and serves as a good platform to build understanding and respect among the various races in Singapore."

Usually I'd be quick to dismiss any attempts by a national board to encourage a more 'cohesive' society (think 'Racial Harmony Day'), but given the focus on language, I thought I'd give it a second glance. The NIE news says the launch date for the booklet was back in April 2010, but judging from the stacks of copies on the shelf, I doubt it's been a bestseller.

For one thing, the price of $10.70 for a modest 64-page booklet (with pages smaller than your standard A5 size) seemed a little exorbitant. The only reason I can offer for the rather hefty price is the mini CD that comes with the package, given that no mention of said CD is found on the cover of the book. The distributors would have done better to have the words 'FREE CD INCLUDED' on the packaging.

Now, the fact that there is a CD included puts this booklet, in my mind, above any random Lonely Planet phrasebook marketed to travellers (who are often absolute beginners in a language). Sadly, though not surprisingly, this little booklet still suffers from a large number of shortcomings.

The introduction states that the booklet "is designed to develop basic inter-personal aural and oral skills in the three official mother tongues of Singapore with the objective of promoting inter-ethnic linguistic awareness and cross-cultural understanding." The book is divided topically (or rather by speech acts): Greetings, Making Introductions, Ordering Food, Making Apologies, Congratulating etc. English and Malay are written using their standard orthographies, while Chinese is transcribed using the romanised hanyu pinyin system (no characters are given), and Tamil with 'simplified and Romanised IPA notations" for reasons given in the introduction of the booklet. Each chapter contains a list of "useful phrases" (often just commonly used vocabulary) given in each language as well as a few "scenarios" consisting of 2-3 people speaking a total of 2-4 lines of dialogue. All phrases and scenarios have been recorded on the accompanying mini CD.

From a language learner's perspective, many of the phrases are not terribly helpful. Many of the initial dialogues are artificial and the English is clearly set at the wrong register (one I think of as 'formal post-colonial'), e.g. 'Hello, how's everything lately?', "I'm fine, it has been a while since we last met." There are more complex sentences, e.g. "I really did not expect to win it", but their translations are difficult to analyse morphologically (or word by word) without any prior knowledge of those languages, and it is unlikely any beginner would dare to use these sentences in real life with nothing else to continue a conversation in. Some of the recordings are also too fast for the untrained ear to pick up, especially with no explanation of the sounds represented by the various transcription systems used in the booklet.

Taking a step back and looking at the larger aims of the book, these are predicated on the rather outmoded concept of 'mother tongue' in Singapore, based not on one's 'first language' nor on what is spoken at home, but on one's race. (Ironically enough, it's one's family name, taken from the father, that is taken into consideration.) These are the three official languages taught as 'mother tongues' in school, with English as the 'first language'. Therefore, if you're Chinese (or just have a Chinese family name) you learn Mandarin in school as your 'mother tongue', if you're Malay you learn Malay and if you're Indian you learn Tamil. Never mind that your home language might not be any one of these three languages - even if you're Chinese it might be Hokkien or Cantonese that you speak at home. Furthermore, ethnic Malays and Indians who wish to learn Mandarin in school cannot take it as a 'mother tongue', though there are limited opportunities to study it.

It is therefore counter-intuitive to have an initiative designed to get people to understand each other's 'mother tongues', when the whole system is set up to divide people based on language categories that have been largely constructed. While I can see reasons in trying to preserve / construct / reconstruct distinct cultural identities through language, it makes little sense to then have to resort to initiatives like Diverse Languages to bridge them again.

This brings me to my next point. We already have a common language in Singapore, and it's Singlish. Whenever I see inter-ethnic groups of Singaporeans together, they're speaking Singlish. If you want to create a single 'Singaporean' identity that separates the 'locals' from all the 'expats' (and the rest of the world), we already have one with its own linguistic basis, and it doesn't even need to be taught in schools, or in booklets for that matter.