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.)
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Monday, January 17, 2011
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.)
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.)
Adivasi or 'tribal'?
The Lonely Planet guide to Northeast India (2nd edition, 2009) features a pathetic 50 pages (!) on the seven main Northeast States of Assam, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh. The remaining 330 pages are devoted to Kolkata, West Bengal, Sikkim and Orissa, with a section on Bangladesh and Nepal too. But the book really is disappointing if you're looking for information on travel in what I think of what I think of 'Northeast India'.
But that's not the only reason I'm disappointed with the book. Throughout the book, the editors have decided to use the term Adivasi to mean 'tribal person' (as defined in their glossary). Now, in other parts of India, the term Adivasi is used to refer to all tribal people, but in the Northeast (which the guide claims to be about), the term is used exclusively to refer to the descendants of people who were brought to Assam by the British to work in the tea plantations. They are treated as a separate 'tea-tribe' ethnic group, as demonstrated by this 'traditional Adivashi house' (like in Nepali, sh and s have merged into one sound) at the Kohora ethnic village.
If you're looking for an umbrella term for the other ethnic groups of the region, the term tribal is used more commonly, even if it does sound terribly political incorrect and colonial to Western ears. There is still sadly the connotation of people who are backward and primitive and unfortunately, it's a view that doesn't look set to change in the near future.
But that's not the only reason I'm disappointed with the book. Throughout the book, the editors have decided to use the term Adivasi to mean 'tribal person' (as defined in their glossary). Now, in other parts of India, the term Adivasi is used to refer to all tribal people, but in the Northeast (which the guide claims to be about), the term is used exclusively to refer to the descendants of people who were brought to Assam by the British to work in the tea plantations. They are treated as a separate 'tea-tribe' ethnic group, as demonstrated by this 'traditional Adivashi house' (like in Nepali, sh and s have merged into one sound) at the Kohora ethnic village.
If you're looking for an umbrella term for the other ethnic groups of the region, the term tribal is used more commonly, even if it does sound terribly political incorrect and colonial to Western ears. There is still sadly the connotation of people who are backward and primitive and unfortunately, it's a view that doesn't look set to change in the near future.
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Counting in Indic languages
To commemorate my 100th post on this blog (yes, it's been a hundred) and the fact that I'm learning some Assamese here in Guwahati, I thought I'd talk about learning to count in an Indic language - basically any one of the many Indo-European languages spoken on the Indian subcontinent, including Hindi, Bengali, Nepali and Assamese.
Now I'm not talking about their numeral systems, since most of us use a derivation of the Hindu or Hindu-Arabic numeral system on a daily basis, which is a decimal system that uses only 10 digits from 0 to 9. What I'm talking about are the names for the numbers in these languages.
Now non-native speakers learning to count in English from 1 to 100, technically only need to memorise the names of the numbers from 1 to 20, then every multiple of 10 till 100. That's because after 20, we simply say 20 'twenty' and 1 'one' to get 21 'twenty one'; 20 'twenty' and 2 'two' to get 22 'twenty two' and so on. However, they still need to learn what 11-19 are since we don't say 'ten one' for 11, or 'ten two' for 12. They also need to learn the names for the multiples of 10 since these are not entirely regular - we don't say 'three-ty' for 30 or 'five-ty' for 50. (Sure, you might say there's a pattern with 40 and 60-90, but it's not as regular as say, 21-29.)
What non-native speakers find learning to count in Indic languages is that while there are some patterns like the kind you find from 60 'sixty' to 90 'ninety' in English, most of the time it seems like you just have to memorise the name of every single number from 1 to 100.
For instance, if we look at 5, 15, 25, 35 ... 85, 95 in Hindi:
5 पाँच paaNch (N indicates nasalisation on the preceding vowel)
15 पन्द्रह pandrah
25 पच्चीस pachchiis (20 is बीस biis)
35 पैंतीस paiNtiis (30 is तीस tiis)
45 पैंतालीस paiNtaaliis (40 is चालीस chaaliis)
55 पचपन pachapan (50 is पचास pachaas)
65 पैंसठ paiNsaTh (60 is साठ saaTh)
75 पचहत्तर pachahattara (70 is सत्तर sattara)
85 पचासी pachaasii (80 is अस्सी assii)
95 पंचानबे paNchaanabe (90 is नब्बे nabbe)
You can sort of see a pattern, but it's not quite possible to analyse each form morphologically and tease out the part that means 'five units'. Goodness also knows when to decide when to nasalise the vowel or not. Also, look at the words for 25 (pachchiis) and 50 (pachaas) - I always get their Nepali counterparts mixed up.
Assamese isn't much different. Here're the numbers from 1-12 in Assamese - which is as far as I'll go for now since it'll allow me to tell the time. I'll probably get up to 31 so I can give dates, and also learn a few more multiples of 10.
1 এক ek
2 দুই dui
3 তিনি tini
4 চাৰি sari
5 পাঁচ pans [pãs]
6 ছয় sôy [sɔj]
7 সাত xaat
8 আঠ aath
9 ন nô [nɔ]
10 দহ dôh
11 এঘাৰ egharô
12 বাৰ barô
When I come up with a good way to memorise the numbers from 0 to 100 in such languages I'll let you know. In the meantime, thank goodness people here in Guwahati also use English numbers.
Now I'm not talking about their numeral systems, since most of us use a derivation of the Hindu or Hindu-Arabic numeral system on a daily basis, which is a decimal system that uses only 10 digits from 0 to 9. What I'm talking about are the names for the numbers in these languages.
Now non-native speakers learning to count in English from 1 to 100, technically only need to memorise the names of the numbers from 1 to 20, then every multiple of 10 till 100. That's because after 20, we simply say 20 'twenty' and 1 'one' to get 21 'twenty one'; 20 'twenty' and 2 'two' to get 22 'twenty two' and so on. However, they still need to learn what 11-19 are since we don't say 'ten one' for 11, or 'ten two' for 12. They also need to learn the names for the multiples of 10 since these are not entirely regular - we don't say 'three-ty' for 30 or 'five-ty' for 50. (Sure, you might say there's a pattern with 40 and 60-90, but it's not as regular as say, 21-29.)
What non-native speakers find learning to count in Indic languages is that while there are some patterns like the kind you find from 60 'sixty' to 90 'ninety' in English, most of the time it seems like you just have to memorise the name of every single number from 1 to 100.
For instance, if we look at 5, 15, 25, 35 ... 85, 95 in Hindi:
5 पाँच paaNch (N indicates nasalisation on the preceding vowel)
15 पन्द्रह pandrah
25 पच्चीस pachchiis (20 is बीस biis)
35 पैंतीस paiNtiis (30 is तीस tiis)
45 पैंतालीस paiNtaaliis (40 is चालीस chaaliis)
55 पचपन pachapan (50 is पचास pachaas)
65 पैंसठ paiNsaTh (60 is साठ saaTh)
75 पचहत्तर pachahattara (70 is सत्तर sattara)
85 पचासी pachaasii (80 is अस्सी assii)
95 पंचानबे paNchaanabe (90 is नब्बे nabbe)
You can sort of see a pattern, but it's not quite possible to analyse each form morphologically and tease out the part that means 'five units'. Goodness also knows when to decide when to nasalise the vowel or not. Also, look at the words for 25 (pachchiis) and 50 (pachaas) - I always get their Nepali counterparts mixed up.
Assamese isn't much different. Here're the numbers from 1-12 in Assamese - which is as far as I'll go for now since it'll allow me to tell the time. I'll probably get up to 31 so I can give dates, and also learn a few more multiples of 10.
1 এক ek
2 দুই dui
3 তিনি tini
4 চাৰি sari
5 পাঁচ pans [pãs]
6 ছয় sôy [sɔj]
7 সাত xaat
8 আঠ aath
9 ন nô [nɔ]
10 দহ dôh
11 এঘাৰ egharô
12 বাৰ barô
When I come up with a good way to memorise the numbers from 0 to 100 in such languages I'll let you know. In the meantime, thank goodness people here in Guwahati also use English numbers.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Surviving fieldwork: Food
Now that I'm in Guwahati and able to better control when I eat, what I eat, and how much I eat - or almost, since the guest house only has Indian food and serves dinner at 9pm (but I can choose not to eat here) - I thought I'd about my eating experiences from the past two months and some strategies I've adopted in order to survive. It's not that I was mistreated or anything, but sometimes being the guest has its risks. Also bearing in mind that every household I've been too has had different eating habits, the three main factors I want to mention here are: 1) what is being served; 2) how much is being served; and 3) when it's being served.
1. What's being served
To begin with, I'm pretty lucky in that I can stomach most things - from amphibians to innards to fermented soya beans - and I can handle spicy food to a certain degree. So when my hosts ask me what I eat, I say I eat anything. But this actually surprises them, since most visitors to Nagaland are from the rest of India, and generally more picky about their food. Some of my friends also don't eat dog (which I wouldn't actively seek out) or blood curry (which I would actively seek out). Nagaland isn't kind to vegetarians (except at that Lotha wedding I attended in Kohima) but people are generally able to still cater for them, even if it's just a single vegetable dish and dal. After a month of feasting, I really wasn't that keen on meat and fat anymore - and thankfully neither were some of my friends.
I know friends doing fieldwork in other parts of the world often face the problem of not getting enough food (some hosts may think a couple of biscuits is enough for a meal), but in Nagaland, the danger is more from being overfed as the guest.
3. When it's being served
Towards the end of my stay in Nagaland, I was asked at what time I normally 'took food'. My reply:
"I eat when I'm fed."
And it was true. My stomach no longer knew when it should be filled, simply that it is should be filled when food was provided. My first week I had to get used to having lunch at 8am and dinner at 4pm. Then at another friend's place, I was having lunch at 11am and dinner at 8pm. On Christmas Day, I remember getting tea, biscuits and Sumi sho at 7am, then being offered lunch at 8am, before the Christmas feast at 2pm. After nightfall I think I just had a light snack.
I suppose there's not a lot one can do about mealtime, apart from adjusting slowly to it. One thing I did to cope with having a big meal at 8am (remember, mountains of rice) was to wake up early, like between 5 and 5.30am so that my hunger would build up slowly. The other thing I did was to have snacks on hand like dried figs, or ask for bananas to quell my hunger during long stretches without food.
A pretty nice dinner set-up - and just the right amount of rice for me!
Also, these mostly apply to more intimate settings when I've been invited to people's homes for food. Ironically, it is much easier to get through the big feasts without feeling nauseated because they're all done buffet style, so you just line up, take as much or little as you want and go sit somewhere where people are too busy to observe how much you're eating. I also noticed when returning my plate that other people had left mountains of rice on their returned plates, which made me feel better about myself.
1. What's being served
To begin with, I'm pretty lucky in that I can stomach most things - from amphibians to innards to fermented soya beans - and I can handle spicy food to a certain degree. So when my hosts ask me what I eat, I say I eat anything. But this actually surprises them, since most visitors to Nagaland are from the rest of India, and generally more picky about their food. Some of my friends also don't eat dog (which I wouldn't actively seek out) or blood curry (which I would actively seek out). Nagaland isn't kind to vegetarians (except at that Lotha wedding I attended in Kohima) but people are generally able to still cater for them, even if it's just a single vegetable dish and dal. After a month of feasting, I really wasn't that keen on meat and fat anymore - and thankfully neither were some of my friends.
I don't do so well with monotony, so being served the same dish everyday makes me lose my appetite (my friend Lauren is more familiar with this), but I remember that this trip I mentally prepared myself for rice at every meal and to focus on the variety of meat and vegetable dishes I was getting. (At the end of my last trip I had such a bad craving for salmon sashimi. I was surprised and thankful this trip when Ab.'s brother brought back seaweed sheets from Delhi.)
2. How much is being served
The ideal situation is being able to serve yourself, so you can eat as much or as little as you want. The most important rule here is controlling the amount of rice on the plate from the very start (and to take into account the fact that you're expected to have seconds). Of course, sometimes the host insists on serving the rice from the start - one person did so even after I had quite loudly protested. The problem here is that many people are used to eating mountains of rice and also to serving mountains of rice to their guests, where I would only have about the third the amount back home. My last trip I remember absolutely dreading every single mealtime because of the vast quantities of rice I felt compelled to eat. It doesn't help that since I'm bigger than most people here, they instantly assume I eat more than them.
But mealtime shouldn't be nausea-inducing, and I did discover this trip that it is perfectly reasonable to give rice back right after it has been served without offending too much - it's much better than having a heap of leftovers on the plate that might be taken as a sign that the food isn't good. Another thing I've had to get used to is eating a lot more rice with a few dishes, since I used to having a little bit of rice with a whole lot of other dishes.
But mealtime shouldn't be nausea-inducing, and I did discover this trip that it is perfectly reasonable to give rice back right after it has been served without offending too much - it's much better than having a heap of leftovers on the plate that might be taken as a sign that the food isn't good. Another thing I've had to get used to is eating a lot more rice with a few dishes, since I used to having a little bit of rice with a whole lot of other dishes.
I know friends doing fieldwork in other parts of the world often face the problem of not getting enough food (some hosts may think a couple of biscuits is enough for a meal), but in Nagaland, the danger is more from being overfed as the guest.
Towards the end of my stay in Nagaland, I was asked at what time I normally 'took food'. My reply:
"I eat when I'm fed."
And it was true. My stomach no longer knew when it should be filled, simply that it is should be filled when food was provided. My first week I had to get used to having lunch at 8am and dinner at 4pm. Then at another friend's place, I was having lunch at 11am and dinner at 8pm. On Christmas Day, I remember getting tea, biscuits and Sumi sho at 7am, then being offered lunch at 8am, before the Christmas feast at 2pm. After nightfall I think I just had a light snack.
I suppose there's not a lot one can do about mealtime, apart from adjusting slowly to it. One thing I did to cope with having a big meal at 8am (remember, mountains of rice) was to wake up early, like between 5 and 5.30am so that my hunger would build up slowly. The other thing I did was to have snacks on hand like dried figs, or ask for bananas to quell my hunger during long stretches without food.
A pretty nice dinner set-up - and just the right amount of rice for me!
Also, these mostly apply to more intimate settings when I've been invited to people's homes for food. Ironically, it is much easier to get through the big feasts without feeling nauseated because they're all done buffet style, so you just line up, take as much or little as you want and go sit somewhere where people are too busy to observe how much you're eating. I also noticed when returning my plate that other people had left mountains of rice on their returned plates, which made me feel better about myself.
Standing 3 hours on a train
Just when I thought the adventures were coming to an end for this trip (it's less than a month till I'm back in Singapore), I arrived at Diphu station this morning at 6 to learn that the train (the Brahmaputra Mail) was late. By 10 hours. Apparently it was only leaving Dibrugarh at 10am, and would take about 6 hours to reach Diphu.
As L., who's from Germany, said, "Back home, we call that a 'cancelled' train."
Since I had to get to Guwahati by afternoon to move into the Guwahati University Guest House and to meet my Assamese tutors, the next best option was to catch the Mariani Guwahati Intercity Express - which my friends called the 'Mariani Special' - scheduled to leave at 8.15am and arriving at Guwahati around 1.45pm.
Unlike the Brahmaputra Mail or the Jan Shatabdi (the train I had caught from Dimapur to Diphu), there are no seat reservations for the Mariani Special. The scene on the train when I boarded at Diphu looked like this.
The train just got more crowded as it absorbed all the other Brahmaputra Mail passengers further down the track, and it was only 2.5 hours into the trip that I got a seat. It was pretty much forced upon me by two middle-aged gentlemen who knew I was a foreigner (like that should matter). I felt quite bad, but I was really sleepy, my back was hurting and they insisted. But I said we could take turns sitting down. However, about half an hour later a woman in her 30s or 40s came up from behind and demanded the seat. The men told her about me, but I ended up giving up the seat to her after 15 minutes. She turned out to be a lecturer in political science at a local college and she was quite lovely to talk to.
Eventually the train emptied itself as people got off at their respective stops before Guwahati and I got to sit down for the last hour of the journey. I also got to see a few things I hadn't seen before on trains here. Since I've usually had a comfortable set in the 'cleaner' and less crowded compartments, I hadn't seen as many men selling badam, channa and other snacks walking up and down the crazily packed aisle. There was also a pair of girls who got on while we were on the outskirts of Guwahati and started doing backward cartwheels and somersaults in the aisle.
We finally arrived in Guwahati at 2.15pm, just half an hour behind schedule. My voice went hoarse from yelling at people trying to board the train while people were trying to get off. A Karbi guy I met on the train and his friend helped me with my luggage and got me an auto to the University Guest House.
Overall, it actually wasn't too bad an experience. It reinforced my already positive impression of people from NE India as being friendly and accommodating.
As L., who's from Germany, said, "Back home, we call that a 'cancelled' train."
Since I had to get to Guwahati by afternoon to move into the Guwahati University Guest House and to meet my Assamese tutors, the next best option was to catch the Mariani Guwahati Intercity Express - which my friends called the 'Mariani Special' - scheduled to leave at 8.15am and arriving at Guwahati around 1.45pm.
Unlike the Brahmaputra Mail or the Jan Shatabdi (the train I had caught from Dimapur to Diphu), there are no seat reservations for the Mariani Special. The scene on the train when I boarded at Diphu looked like this.
The train just got more crowded as it absorbed all the other Brahmaputra Mail passengers further down the track, and it was only 2.5 hours into the trip that I got a seat. It was pretty much forced upon me by two middle-aged gentlemen who knew I was a foreigner (like that should matter). I felt quite bad, but I was really sleepy, my back was hurting and they insisted. But I said we could take turns sitting down. However, about half an hour later a woman in her 30s or 40s came up from behind and demanded the seat. The men told her about me, but I ended up giving up the seat to her after 15 minutes. She turned out to be a lecturer in political science at a local college and she was quite lovely to talk to.
Eventually the train emptied itself as people got off at their respective stops before Guwahati and I got to sit down for the last hour of the journey. I also got to see a few things I hadn't seen before on trains here. Since I've usually had a comfortable set in the 'cleaner' and less crowded compartments, I hadn't seen as many men selling badam, channa and other snacks walking up and down the crazily packed aisle. There was also a pair of girls who got on while we were on the outskirts of Guwahati and started doing backward cartwheels and somersaults in the aisle.
We finally arrived in Guwahati at 2.15pm, just half an hour behind schedule. My voice went hoarse from yelling at people trying to board the train while people were trying to get off. A Karbi guy I met on the train and his friend helped me with my luggage and got me an auto to the University Guest House.
Overall, it actually wasn't too bad an experience. It reinforced my already positive impression of people from NE India as being friendly and accommodating.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Karbi Anglong
Given that I've spent most of the past week here, it's only fair I post a thing or two about Karbi Anglong. It's the largest district in the state of Assam, with its headquarters at Diphu, which surprisingly isn't even featured on the map in the Lonely Planet guide to North-east India. The name of the district translates as 'Karbi Hills', the Karbis being the dominant ethnic group here.
I'm here visiting my friend L. who's been doing research on the Karbi language for some years now. I got to sit in on a few sessions with her main language consultant which was really cool. I'm also staying with a Karbi friend whom L. introduced me to when I first visited in early 2009 and have been staying at her family (apart from the 2 nights I was at Kohora).
The Karbi totem pictured above is known as Jambili Athon and consists of a bird at the apex surrounded by five smaller birds and two even smaller birds on the main body of the totem. I like it because the main bird is a drongo, usually a species of racquet-tailed drongo with its long tail feather extensions. You can find drongos in rainforests across SE Asia and they're always a pleasant find (unless you're from Australia, where the word 'drongo' refers to an idiot). Anyway, according to my friend here the drongo symbolises the king of the Karbi people, and the four birds around it represent the four main Karbi clans. The little birds are also said to offer food to the drongo, who pretty much lives in luxury.
One reason my friend says the drongo is respected is its ability to mimic most other sounds, including the barking of dogs - a fact I'm familiar with back from my nature guiding days in Singapore. Its call also signals the presence of danger nearby, although I'm not sure what one would listen out for it in the jungle, given its ability to mimic most other sounds.
L.'s language consultant called it a 'bird of paradise', which is apparently what many people call it in English. However, true birds of paradise are only found on the island of New Guinea.
Now the last time I visited Diphu in 2009, the situation wasn't terribly stable. I remember there was a protest march near the football field and seeing a few fires lit. I'm not quite sure, but it was probably led by a rebel group agitating for independence / greater autonomy from Assam, following the shooting of someone by the police.
Since then, the situation has stabilised with the surrender of most members of the Karbi Longri National Liberation Front (KLNLF). In exchange, the government has offered them both amnesty and plots of land. According to my friends here, some people who weren't KLNLF members also 'surrendered' in order to get some land. Hmm....
I'm here visiting my friend L. who's been doing research on the Karbi language for some years now. I got to sit in on a few sessions with her main language consultant which was really cool. I'm also staying with a Karbi friend whom L. introduced me to when I first visited in early 2009 and have been staying at her family (apart from the 2 nights I was at Kohora).
The Karbi totem pictured above is known as Jambili Athon and consists of a bird at the apex surrounded by five smaller birds and two even smaller birds on the main body of the totem. I like it because the main bird is a drongo, usually a species of racquet-tailed drongo with its long tail feather extensions. You can find drongos in rainforests across SE Asia and they're always a pleasant find (unless you're from Australia, where the word 'drongo' refers to an idiot). Anyway, according to my friend here the drongo symbolises the king of the Karbi people, and the four birds around it represent the four main Karbi clans. The little birds are also said to offer food to the drongo, who pretty much lives in luxury.
One reason my friend says the drongo is respected is its ability to mimic most other sounds, including the barking of dogs - a fact I'm familiar with back from my nature guiding days in Singapore. Its call also signals the presence of danger nearby, although I'm not sure what one would listen out for it in the jungle, given its ability to mimic most other sounds.
L.'s language consultant called it a 'bird of paradise', which is apparently what many people call it in English. However, true birds of paradise are only found on the island of New Guinea.
Now the last time I visited Diphu in 2009, the situation wasn't terribly stable. I remember there was a protest march near the football field and seeing a few fires lit. I'm not quite sure, but it was probably led by a rebel group agitating for independence / greater autonomy from Assam, following the shooting of someone by the police.
Since then, the situation has stabilised with the surrender of most members of the Karbi Longri National Liberation Front (KLNLF). In exchange, the government has offered them both amnesty and plots of land. According to my friends here, some people who weren't KLNLF members also 'surrendered' in order to get some land. Hmm....
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