Japanese issues with Siri / Shiri

I don't actually own a smartphone, but this video's been making the rounds since the introduction of Siri with the new iP***e. I thought I'd just make a small phonetics-related comment.

Listening to the speaker, the main problem here is his production of the NURSE vowel (typically /ɜ/ or /ɜr/),  which is a notoriously problematic one for many a non-native English speaker. The Japanese speaker produces the vowel closer to the THOUGHT vowel (typically /ɔ/). I'm just surprised that with a binary option: 'work' or 'home', Siri doesn't just go with what sounds closer to the 'work' option (but I'm not one who knows anything about programming, so I'll let the techsperts deal with that.)

I'm a little late to talk about this, but for the past 2 weeks, people have been talking about how siri means 'buttocks' in Japanese. Some people like this guy at TechnoBuffalo argue that it doesn't (it means nothing he claims). The thing is, technically, the 's' /s/ sound in Japanese never comes before the 'i' /i/ vowel: think of Japanese words that have been borrowed into English, like sushi, where 's' can precede the 'u' /ɯ/ vowel, but 'sh' /ʃ/ comes before 'i''.

However, in some transliterations of Japanese, you will see the word for 'I' written as both watashi and watasi. The reason is, as stated above, that the 's' sound can't come before 'i' and must be replaced by 'sh'. Therefore by default, the si in watasi will be read as shi. So siri by default, will be pronounced like shiri, which the internet would have me believe is Japanese for 'buttocks'.

Translation fail (Melbourne Airport)

A few months ago, I spotted this at the departure lounge at Melbourne International Airport:

Somewhere in the translation from English to Chinese, gates 17, 19 and 20 just disappeared.

The system called 'reciprocity'

In honour of the new book that's being launched in the department this afternoon: Reciprocals and Semantic Typology (edited by Nick Evans, Alice Gaby, Steve Levinson and Asifa Majid), I thought I'd mention what 'reciprocals' are in linguistics and give some examples from a few common languages. (Given that I haven't seen the book yet, the examples given may be somewhat contradictory to what is given in the book.)

Those of you familiar with the concept of 'reciprocity' (or the Chicago number which the title of this post comes from) will know that it involves an 'I scratch your back, you scratch mine' or 'you be good to Mama, Mama's good to you' attitude. Similarly, 'reciprocals' in linguistics typically refer to grammatical structures that encode events where a participant is doing something to another while another participant or participants are doing the same thing to the first participant at / around the same time.

Languages do this in a number of ways. One way is to use a free standing pronoun. English uses this strategy somewhat, with each other and one another the most common ways of marking reciprocity. English grammars often treat these as 'reciprocal pronouns', but at least one editor of the book treats them differently, though they are still considered to be noun phrases. In any case, some examples in English include:

They hit each other. (By the way, linguists love using the verb 'hit' when they need a transitive verb.)
We help one another.

(Also:
We scratch each other's backs.
Mama and you are good to each other.)

Russian uses друг друга 'drug druga' (in the accusative case) or друг другу 'drug drugu' (in the dative case).

Они били друг друга.
'They hit each other.'

Мы помогаем друг другу.
'We help one another.' (lit. 'We help to one another.')

A second tactic would be to use a 'bound pronoun' or clitic. People familiar with Romance (and Slavic) languages will know the recognise the pronoun se which really can't stand by itself as a full word that can be stressed and needs to attach itself to the verb.

For instance, in French we have:

On se voit bientôt.
'We'll see each other soon.'

Ils s'aiment.
'They love each other.'

French also has the phrases l'un l'autre (for 2 participants) and les uns les autres (for more than 2 participants) which are comparable to English one another, but they're still used in conjunction with se to add emphasis to the pronoun (or so I'm led to believe by French grammar books).

Il s'aiment l'un l'autre.

'They love each other.'

A third strategy would be to use an adverb, like mutually in English. Although in English, you often still need to have the pronoun, as in:

They mutually dislike each other.

Mandarin typically uses the adverb 互相 hù xiāng to make a reciprocal construction (I usually associate its use with 'positive' actions, but I know it can be used with less mutually beneficial actions.)

我们互相帮助。

'We help each other.'

There are numerous other ways in which languages mark reciprocity, and I'm fairly certain most are covered in the book. From what I've read of the blurb, the book also considers whether the concept of reciprocity is the same across all languages, or if they are best viewed as a cluster of related ideas.

Some of you may be wondering why on earth anyone would be interested in reciprocals. I'm not sure if I have any real insight into the matter myself, since reciprocals don't really fascinate me the way other aspects of grammar do. Nevertheless, these constructions occur across languages (though they make take different guises), and any learner of a foreign language will have to, at some point, learn how to use such constructions in the target language.

In any case, shouldn't the sentence 'We should help one another' be something we ought to utter more often, in any language? (Sadly, the only sentence with a reciprocal that I have in Sumi is: Nikujo ithi kile acheni. 'We used to know each other.)

Translation pls

This post is actually about code switching on one's Facebook wall and negotiating this particularly virtual space.
[EDIT: I've made a few changes to the original because it sounded a lot more aggressive than I intended it to be.]

Earlier this week, I'd posted this on an Australian friend's Facebook wall:

Quoi de neuf? What's this about living semi-permanently in XXXX?

This was in response to something I'd read about him moving back to XXXX. I used the French for 'What's new?' at the start because he's living in France and I knew that he had been learning French. I didn't want to write the whole post in French because I wasn't sure of his current level.

However, his reply was about 4 lines long, completely in French. It was actually a piece of bad news, but I assume he felt comfortable enough to put it on his wall, even if most of his friends don't speak French. His switching from English to French made me feel like he was privileging me with the response / information. Of course I didn't know how much his other friends already knew and thought that maybe he'd already mentioned something before and didn't want to repeat himself in English.

So following his lead, I continued the conversation in French with a comment expressing my condolences.

Within the hour, another friend had commented:

Translation pls?

A few hours later, there was another:

English, please. ;-)

Now, if comments like these appeared on my own wall I would be really annoyed for two main reasons. One, I perceive the wall on my Facebook profile as belonging to me - I mean, it's 'my' wall. I own it. (And Mark Zuckerberg owns me, but that's a different story.)  Sure, it's designed for public viewing, but I still perceive it as a space in which someone should be allowed to express thoughts / vent frustrations / share news in whatever language they choose and without having to explain themselves. It's fine for people to post on other people's walls, but they still have to be mindful that they are in someone else's 'personal space'.

For instance, I once posted a link to an article about the 2009 Xinjiang riots involving Hans and Uyghurs. A 'friend' on my Facebook (who I don't know very well and who also happens to be one of the annoying commenters above) replied to my post with a comment that I thought was somewhat racist and potentially insulting to my Uyghur friends, so I deleted it. Offended, this 'friend' accused me of denying him his freedom of speech. I said, sure he could say anything he liked, but just not on my wall. I then proceeded to block him.

Two, if someone posts in a particular language, I assume it's because they have a particular target audience in mind (also assuming they're not being a show-off douche). When one of my friends who lived in Japan for a bit posts in Japanese, I know it's intended for his fellow Japanese-speaking friends - the shared linguistic code serves as an in-group marker demarcating a group of friends within his larger network of friends. Some people might consider it rude to everyone else on the friends list, but I liken it to when people post quotes from a TV show, knowing that the only people who will get the joke are fellow viewers of that show. It therefore strikes me as somewhat rude when other people demand a translation for posts in a language other than English, like it's their right to understand everything that's on the wall. Admittedly there are times when people, including myself, make posts that sound a little cryptic in order to fish for questions or comments, but the idea is, if someone posts is in a language that I don't speak, I just ignore it, because it probably wasn't meant for me anyway!

I don't know how my friend felt about those requests / demands for English translations, but I can't imagine he would have wanted to repeat what he'd just said. His lack of a response to their comments seems to confirm my own suspicions that he didn't want to repeat himself.

In any case, here's a simple solution to people who still think it's rude that people post in languages they don't understand:

Just learn the language.

Or just learn to use Google Translate.

How many languages...

On the weekend I was having brunch with a polyglot friend who asked me, "How do you answer the question, 'How many languages do you speak?'"

Before I continue, I should point out that just about everyone I know who has had to say, "I'm a linguist" or "I study linguistics" has also faced the inevitable question, "So how many languages do you speak?" It's such a common phenomenon that most language / linguistics-related blogs would have a post covering the topic and there's even a Facebook group named 'You're a Linguist? How many languages do you speak?'
(The other usual comment is "I'd better watch what I say around you" and I've even had a good friend who was shocked when he realised I wasn't a grammar Nazi or a punctuation Nazi (like srsly, wtf?))

Anyway (and before this post spirals into a rant about how linguists should not be expected to be polyglots), the question asked by my friend raises two issues that gives me constant grief: since I am a polyglot, how do I quantify the number of languages that I speak? And more importantly, how on earth do I give an answer that will satisfy both me and my interrogator?

Measuring language competency, or rather 'competencies', is a pretty big issue in language testing and personally, I always have a (self-assessed) 'Language Competencies" section near the start of any CV I submit. Following the format of a professor's CV, I list English as my native language, then specify my 'reading/written competence' and 'spoken/listening' competence for each subsequent language. It looks like this:

• English (native language)

• French (full reading/written competence and excellent spoken/listening)

• Mandarin (...)

• Russian (...)

• (random 5th language) (typically 'basic reading and speaking')

I always put a maximum of 5 languages (depending on the job, I might just list 3 so I don't look too much like a wanker). The adjectives I use with regard to competence are 'full', 'excellent', 'good' and 'basic', whatever 'full' means since I'd still need a bilingual dictionary if I was reading a French book. And yes, I might sometimes overstate my competencies. After all, it is a CV, and I do want to highlight the fact that I possess more language skills than your average monolingual English speaker. And breaking down the competencies into two categories seems to be a more 'honest' reflection of my language skills, even if what I'm referring to are different aspects of grammatical competence (using Canale and Swain's 1980 terminology).

It still doesn't make answering the question "How many languages do you speak?" any easier though. If I listed out all my competencies in a normal conversation, I'd sound like an academic suffering from Aspergers (or, maybe just an academic). It's worse as a linguist interested in phonetics and morphosyntax, because I know a lot of stuff about languages that I don't speak. For instance, I wouldn't even consider myself a speaker of Sumi, even though it's the language I worked on for my Masters. It also doesn't help that I know short phrases from Greek to Japanese to Sherpa...

So lately, I've begun responding to the question by saying, "The better question would be to ask: how many languages can you survive in?" I suppose when I talk about survival, I mean being able to handle a wide range of communicative contexts in a particular language. I then list 3 or 4 languages.

Of course, this brings up the issue of how many such 'contexts' are needed for me to qualify as being competent. For instance, in Guwahati I'm happy to jump into an auto and give my driver basic directions in Assamese, but I would not be as comfortable trying to buy a SIM card only relying on Assamese. (I wouldn't be able to hold an entire conversation in Assamese either.) Also, 'survival' implies strategic competence (using Canale and Swain's terminology again): I could still survive in a foreign language situation with minimal language skills by relying on non-verbal means to get my message across.

So I guess It's not ideal, but most people really don't care for that much detail anyway.

I mean if I felt like it, I could always go with my other measure of language ability:
How many languages do I speak well enough to swear at people in?

Back in business

It's been 6 months since my blog post. A lot has happened since then, not all of it India-related. But I'm back and eagerly awaiting my return to Assam and Nagaland.

First, a shout-out to my friend Abokali for the amazing work she's been doing the past year keeping up the documentation of traditional Sumi songs and knowledge. She's got her own awesome blog here at:
http://thevillagemicroscope.blogspot.com/

Her brother Canato also has a blog - check out his fantastic artwork at:
http://canajimo.blogspot.com/

So the big news is that we've received two grants this year. One from the Firebird Foundation for Anthropological Research, and another from the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme (ELDP), the granting component of the Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project. These grants are for project that aims to document traditional songs and stories of the Sumis of Nagaland. I was around last year to help with a few pilot recordings last December (see photo below) and with some local fundraising (not fun) in the town of Zunheboto. With the funds, we will be able to purchase new equipment, purchase gifts / offer payment to performers, hire staff to do transcription and translation work, and produce a book and DVD for the community.

In the meantime, I'm trying to sort out my travel arrangements...

More posts will come, now that I'm back.

(Also, check out L.'s new linguistics blog at:
http://www.superlinguo.com/)

Literacy And Livelihoods For 445 Women In Nepal

I'm coming out of hiatus to blog about something that involves the Language Development Centre in Kathmandu. As some of you know, I visited the centre last year to find out more about their work and to also get ideas about developing minority language education / literacy programmes in Nepal and NE India. Lauren and I are also hoping to work with them in the near future to assist in running workshops to develop literacy materials for a minority language spoken in Nepal.

They have had great success with the adult literacy programmes and multilingual education in schools. (For those of you who think that children should just learn in the majority language of the country / English, imagine if you only spoke English at home and had to go a school where Mandarin was the language of instruction for everything, and you didn't have much exposure to Mandarin outside school.) Through such education programmes, they've also helped to liberate girls who would've otherwise been sold into slavery, taught mothers what to do when their babies get sick and have diarrhoea and given people the necessary literacy skills to do tasks that most of us take for granted.

The following is an email from a friend who's doing work for the centre:

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Dear Aussie linguist friends,


I want to let you know about a fundraising initiative that Language Development Center Nepal is doing. I hope you'll take a look, since this can make a big difference for helping LDC become self-sufficient without SIL or other religious support. And let your friends who are interested in supporting language diversity know - often it's hard to know what to do to support endangered languages, other than doing linguistic work yourself, but this is one such way.


Language Development Center Nepal, is working to get a permanent spot on Global Giving, a website where people (like you!) can donate to support LDC's work in literacy and improved livelihoods: http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/literacy-and-livelihoods-for-445-women-in-nepal/


We have been selected by the GlobalGiving Foundation to participate in its Open Challenge, a fundraising opportunity for nonprofit organizations working around the world. In order to succeed in GlobalGiving’s Open Challenge, LDC must raise $4,000 from 50 donors by April 30th. If we meet this threshold, we will be given a permanent spot on GlobalGiving’s website, where we have the potential to benefit from corporate relationships, exposure to a new donor network, and access to dozens of online fundraising tools. In addition, we could earn as much as $3,000 in financial prizes for raising the most money.


Not only will I personally be thrilled if we raise money and get a permanent spot on GlobalGiving, it will make a big difference in the lives of people who really could use some help - but in a way that respects their dignity and allows them to create lasting change in their own lives. I know money is tight, but since we need to get donations from at least 50 individuals to get a permanent spot on the website, just $10 makes a big difference. Please take a moment to check it out at: http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/literacy-and-livelihoods-for-445-women-in-nepal/.


Also, we need your help spreading the word. Please share this with your friends and family, including through facebook - there's a prize from Global Giving for the project that gets the most facebook shares.


Thanks for thinking about this! I know everyone wants your money, but I will personally vouch for this being an awesome organization doing great work!


Best,


Miranda

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