I come from a land down under

One of the first things I learn to say in a foreign language is how to say, "I'm from..." or "I come from...", mainly because one of the first things people ask me is where I'm from. It's also a reasonable useful phrase for any language learner.

However, I find the phrase tricky to learn for 2 reasons. The first one is probably more specific to the geographically displaced person that I am. I usually say "I come from Singapore but live in Australia", even if my friends in Nepal and India will typically introduce me as their friend from Australia. It just seems less troublesome when I'm travelling in Asia and Europe, especially since I don't look like what many people expect an Australian to look like i.e. white, nor do I sound particularly Australian (although I did meet an American lady who insisted I had an Australian accent, which I found rather puzzling).

But discounting any potential geographic confusion of one's origins, the phrase is potentially problematic if you're asking for a literal translation in another language. I've found a few times that when I ask people how to say "I come from...", they often give me a sentence that is better translated as 'I am coming from...' or 'I have come from...', which tells the hearer the last place I visited, as opposed to my country / land of origin.

I suspect it's translating the verb 'come' that throws my tutors off - they're trying to convey the meaning of motion, when the English doesn't actually convey this.

Using the verb venir 'to come' works fine in French, although it's possible to just use the verb 'to be' and a preposition:
Je viens de Singapour 'I come from Singapore.'
Je suis de Singapour. 'I am from Singapore.'

But in Russian, what I'd say is:
Я из Сингапура ya iz Singapur-a 'I am from Singapore.' (lit. 'I from Singapore' with a preposition and no verb meaning 'to be')
I can't even think of a verb corresponding to 'come' that would be appropriate here. If I did use one here, I'd feel like I was talking about recently arriving from Singapore.

Similarly, in (Lower) Assamese I was first taught:
[would love to put the Assamese text here at some point]
Moy Singapur-pora ahisu.
(forgive the transliteration, this was based on my own transcriptions, and I have a LOT of trouble with the back vowels)

And in Sumi:
Niye Singapur lono ighi va.

However, both literally mean, 'I have come from Singapore.' (or to match the word order, 'I Singapore from have come'). The form of the verb 'to come' ahisu in (Lower) Assamese and the use of va with the verb ighi 'to come' in Sumi are used in sentences that one would typically translate as being in the perfect aspect in English. I suspect that both sentences suggest that I have recently arrived from Singapore, which is not the intended meaning.

Rather, in order to convey the meaning of origin, it might be necessary in languages to say something like 'I am Singaporean.' In Chinese, I would probably say:
我是新加坡人。
wo shi xinjiapo ren
(where 人 ren means 'person'.)

In Sumi, the equivalent of this would be:
Niye Singapur-mi.
with the suffix -mi meaning 'person' and no verb meaning 'to be'.

Alternatively, what I've learn to say in Nepali, is:
मेरो देश सिंगापुर हो, तर म ऑस्ट्रेलियामा बास्छु।
mero des Singaapur ho, tara ma Australiya-maa baaschhu
which literally means 'My country (des) is Singapore, but I live in Australia.'

Similarly, in Assamese, I can say:
mor dex Singapore, kintu moi bortoman Australiat thaku
'My country is Singapore, but nowadays I live in Australia.'

Of course, this often assumes that your country of origin is the same as your current nationality, which is not always the case. However, things are never that simple - some people I know who read this blog certainly have more complicated geographical origins!

I'd therefore be interested to hear of other ways to introduce where you come from in these and other languages. I'd also be interested to know why people choose to introduce themselves in this particular way.

Eventually, I suppose I will start introducing myself as being 'Australian'. Although I'm more likely to give a nod to Bruce Woodley and Dobe Newton and say, "I am Australian", instead of "I come from a land down under."

Vowels: Does /j/ + /a/ = /æ/ ?

This is something that has been bugging me a little bit since I was in Nepal back in October last year. It concerns the orthographic representation of the English vowel /æ/ in words like taxi /tæksi/ when they are borrowed into Nepali.

The word for taxi in Nepali is ट्याक्सि, which transliterated gives Tyaaksi, where T represents a voiceless unaspirated retroflex stop (the tip of the tongue is slightly further back than when you produce a normal alveolar 't' sound in English). The appearance of the retroflex is not surprising here as English alveolar stops are usually borrowed into Indic languages like Nepali and Hindi as retroflex stops. (Assamese is the exception here as it has lost its retroflex stop series.)

The Nepali spelling suggests that the word is pronounced /ʈjaksi/ (/j/ represents the sound 'y'). My friend Sara insisted that Nepali speakers would palatalise (produce a particular speech sound while simultaneously raising the body of the tongue towards the roof of the mouth) the first consonant when saying the word and her theory was that they were trying to follow the American pronunciation of the word 'taxi'. (Correct me if I got this wrong Sara.)

I wasn't convinced with that explanation. For one thing, I would often hear speakers say something closer to /ʈɛksi/, without palatalising the first consonant and with the vowel /ɛ/, which is much more similar to /æ/. I also didn't see why Nepali would borrow English /t/ as a palatalised retroflex stop /ʈj/ since English /t/ isn't palatalised in this context. Also, I thought it counterintuitive that speakers would follow an American English pronunciation to guide their spelling, given the influence of British English across the Indian sub-continent.

Instead, my theory was that the combination of the letters 'y' and 'a' (या) represent the vowel /æ/ (or a close approximation like /ɛ/) and are not pronounced like /ja/. Unfortunately, other things came up (like 2 months in Nagaland), and I wasn't able to get more evidence to support my hypothesis.

Then today on the bus back to the Guwahati University Guest House, I found myself staring at the sign for the Volkswagen showroom while we were stuck in traffic. While I'm not as familiar with the Assamese script, the main thing I noticed was that the syllable corresponding to 'wa' in Volkswagen was written as ওয়া, which would be transliterated as 'oya'. Now, I'm assuming that the transliteration of Volkswagen in the Assamese script is based on the English pronunciation of the word and not the German one - the presence of 'o' in 'oya' suggests that it is trying to approximate /w/, not /v/. If this is true, then it provides evidence from another Indic language that a combination of the letters 'y' and 'a' are used to represent the English /æ/, as in 'wagon' /wægən/, or a close approximation of that sound.

I have to take a photo of that Volkswagen sign next time I pass by. Once I do and have evidence that Assamese does in fact use 'ya' to represent /æ/, I might try and confirm that Nepali uses the same strategy to represent this vowel.

(Note: standard Hindi avoids this problem altogether because it has the vowel /ɛ/ in its phoneme inventory, which is close to /æ/. It is often transliterated as 'ai' even though it is not a diphthong, e.g. in टैक्सी Taiksii 'taxi'. Also, the vowel in Bollywood actress Katrina Kaif's last name is not pronounced as a diphthong in standard Hindi.)

Guides and Porters

Last night, an English guy at my guest house here in Namche mentioned that despite his attempts at speaking Nepalese (sic) with people on the trekking routes, he found quite a number of guides quite unfriendly, especially if he wasn't part of that guide's group (and since he didn't have a guide). He said this unfriendliness, bordering on hostility, was much more evident in areas past Namche, but people further down in the Dudh Kosi valley were much friendlier.

I can't really say that has been my experience, although I've spent most of my time in Khumjung, where groups just tend to spend the day to acclimatise before heading back to Namche. I did notice one of two guides today on my walk to Thame were not particularly forthcoming with conversation at rest stops, but most of the guides (and porters) seemed quite keen to know where I was from and where I learnt Nepali. One porter even decided to lag behind his group to chat to me about his Bachelor degree in English Literature and Rural Development - we joked that trekking in Khumbu counted as 'homework' for his Rural Development course.

The guides also seemed more than happy to tell me which path to take and how long it would take to reach the next village each time I asked them. This was in stark contrast to the English guy's experience (he said that some guides refused to tell him if he was going in the right direction, since he wasn't part of their group). As I was having lunch in Thame, one guide even came up to me to chat about where he'd been - he'd taken three guests up to do the 'three passes', but two of them got sick along the way, so he was left with one trekker from New Zealand.

My feeling is that two things are at work here. First, as a 'Western' foreigner he is seen as having more money and not taking a porter or guide is viewed negatively. He mentioned in Tengboche, when the guy at the guest house asked him if he had a porter and he answered in the negative, the reply from the owner was 'typical'. For some reason, it seems more reasonable for me to be travelling alone, perhaps because I look more Nepali (?) and even though I could be some rich foreign Japanese / Korean / Chinese person, helping me out for nothing seems more reasonable because I look more like family to them.

The second thing is, and I didn't have the heart to tell the English guy, was that his Nepali was simply awful. He said he greeted people on the path with 'Namaste' (the ubiquitous 'hello'), followed by 'Kasto chha?' - a phrase Lonely Planet says means 'How are you', but one that I have rarely heard uttered to strangers. When he said the word for 'water', it sounded just like 'pony', not 'paani'. When he tried ordering in Nepali at the guest house, I had no idea what he was saying. Not that my Nepali is great, but at least I've had lessons and I've been able to hold conversations with people (even if it's only about where I'm from and what I do and where my family live and what they do...). I suppose when people hear him speak Nepali, they might just think 'why on earth doesn't he just speak English'. Again, being 'Western' usually entails a knowledge of English, whereas in my case, it's more acceptable for me to speak in broken Nepali because there's less expectation that I know English.

Just my two cents here.

Inherent vowels in Nepali

People who are familiar with Indic writing systems will know that unlike in alphabetic writing systems (like the Latin alphabet we use in English), consonants in such scripts have an inherent vowel associated with them, e.g. in Hindi, क represents 'ka' (pronounced more like [kə] with a schwa), while कि represents 'ki' [kɪ] and के 'ke' [ke], with the vowel symbol replacing the inherent vowel of क. (It is is this replacing of the inherent vowel that separates such scripts from syllabaries such as Japanese hiragana.)


Having learnt some Hindi before attempting Nepali, I started by assuming the inherent vowel in Nepal was also pronounced as schwa [ə]. I quickly learnt from Lauren and from my own ears that it is not a schwa, but rather an open back vowel, closer to [ʌ] (like the vowel in 'hut'). This analysis was further substantiated by Khatiwada's 2009 phonological description of Nepali as part of the Journal of the International Phonetic Association (JIPA)'s Illustrations of the IPA series which gives /ʌ/ as the underlying vowel phoneme. (Incidentally, I'm waiting to hear back from them regarding an article draft I submitted a few months ago.) However, Lauren and I also noticed that this vowel could be pronounced with rounded lips [ɔ] (like the vowel in 'hot'). Khatiwada notes such variation for this particular vowel, along with other variants, depending on the speaker and surrounding consonants (basically, there's a whole lot of factors and it's too hard to tease out right now.)


It was therefore with some satisfaction that my Nepali tutor asked me yesterday to say 'dog', which I pronounce [dɔg], and 'duck' [dʌk] (the latter with an unreleased [k], but the vowels themselves distinctly different to me). She then asked me if they were pronounced the same, providing some evidence that to her ear, [ɔ] are [ʌ] are the same sound (or, allophones of the same phoneme).

Of course, for an English speaker such as myself, it's still quite annoying because since I hear the difference between the two vowels all the time, sometimes I just want to know which one I should use!

Food sayings

During dinner at L. and S.'s, L. shared a proverb / saying that according to him was popular with soldiers (he used to be in the army, though it's not clear to me which army):

दाल भात तरकारी जिउ मेरो सरकारी 

daal bhaat tarkaari, jio mero sarkaari

(which seems to translate into something like 'lentil curry, rice and vegetables, my body my government')

I'm not sure what it's supposed to mean exactly - apart from expressing one's love for (and loyalty towards) the dish.

The closest saying in another language I could think of comes from Russian (and this one was apparently also popular with soldiers and it rhymes as well):

щи да каша пиша наша

shchi da kasha pisha nasha

('Cabbage soup and buckwheat porridge, that's our fare')

Counting wives

The other day I had to catch a taxi out of town to a place called Thecho just to the south of Kathmandu.

The great thing about being in a taxi in Nepal is that I get to unleash my basic Nepali on the poor unsuspecting taxi driver. A situation where both parties are stuck in one-on-one situation for about 30-40 minutes tends to breed patience, at least for the duration of the taxi ride (one can also bond easily over stupid drivers on the road and complain about the amount of traffic and cows on the roads). But to my credit, after a week of 1 hour one-on-one classes I've actually gotten quite good at introducing myself, talking about where I'm from, where I live, how many people are in my family, where they live, what they do etc. I can also ask other people about these same things, though I may only understand 50% of what they tell me.

Now, one thing you should know about Nepali, is that it uses numeral classifiers, similar to languages like Mandarin and Malay, where you almost always have to introduce a numeral classifier before a numeral and the noun it modifies. For example, if you want to say 'two bags', you need to say दुइटा झोला (dui-Taa jholaa), where दुइ (dui) is 'two', झोला (jholaa) is 'bag' and टा (-Taa) is a reduced form of the classifier वटा (-waTaa) which can be used with almost all nouns (like 个 ge in Mandarin). For people however, the classifier ना (-janaa) is used, e.g. दुइजना मन्छे (dui-janaa manchhe) 'two people'. This is something that my Nepali teacher had insisted on.

It therefore struck me as odd when my taxi driver said दुइटा श्रीमती (dui-Taa shrimati), referring to his 'two wives'. Acknowledging that Nepali society can be rather sexist in its treatment of women - one particular example is the festival Teej, where women fast for their husbands' long lives (no festival where husbands do likewise for their wives exists) - I simply took for granted that the use of the 'demeaning' numeral classifier here was an example of culture and social cognition reflected in the language's grammar.

At supper last night, Lauren and I confirmed that both दुइजना (dui-janaa) and दुइटा (dui-Taa) were acceptable when counting wives. However, both were equally acceptable when counting husbands श्रीमन (shriman). This leads me to suspect that despite my teacher's insistence that ना (-janaa) be used with people, वटा (-waTaa) is the more general one, with ना (-janaa) used to denote additional respect for people and in particularly situations (like 位 wei in Mandarin).

So unfortunately, no, the driver saying दुइटा श्रीमती (dui-Taa shrimati) wasn't a clear example of grammar reflecting a condescending view of women. Of course, given that polyandry is not practised in Nepali culture, one would still not expect to hear दुइजना श्रीमन (dui-janaa shriman), let alone दुइटा श्रीमन (dui-Taa shriman) 'two husbands' here!

Kathmandu!

Arrived safely in Kathmandu yesterday. Singapore seems a world away. Except that all the tourist-oriented cafes look like they belong in Singapore, with prices to match. My friend Lauren came to pick me up from the airport with the guy from the guest house we're staying at. It's always nice to see a familiar face upon arrival.

I've start Nepali lessons tomorrow. I've booked in for about 15 hours of lessons starting tomorrow, with plenty of opportunity to practise out of class. I'm also meeting a speaker of Kagate (that Lauren introduced me to online) later in the week to talk about some dictionary making. I thinking I'll use a program called WeSay, but more on that later this week.

At the moment, my Nepali is really basic, but knowing some Hindi helps, and I can read Devanagari alright, albeit very slowly. My main problem now is that because I spent the last few days on Bintan (an Indonesian island just 1 hour away from Singapore), my brain keeps going to the little Malay / Indonesian it knows. Incidentally, Malay has historically borrowed many words of Sanskrit origin which are cognate with Nepali words e.g. bahasa 'language', so sometimes it helps, although the two languages are still grammatical worlds apart.

For non-Singaporeans, I also explained over breakfast that the name 'Singapore' itself has roots in Sanskrit (via Malay) - singa 'lion' and pura 'city / town'.