Gaston Dorren's Blog, page 4

Podcast: Africa’s relaxed multilingualism

[image error]Chapter 12 of Babel, which is about Swahili, discusses how Africans think nothing of mastering several languages. Many people speak at least three: their mother tongue, their region’s or country’s lingua franca and the official language of administration and education, usually French, English, Portuguese or Arabic. The chapter has been particularly well received by many readers.

The podcast America the Bilingual has dedicated its latest episode to the subject. It greatly enriches my own story by interviewing several people from East and West Africa about the how, what and why of their multilingualism. The show is 12 minutes long, and I highly recommend it. Click on the round red-and-white play button below and enjoy!

A cosmonought from Awestria

You know that game where you keep translating a sentence back and forth between two languages, until the original statement is only a vage memory? It also works with transcription between alphabets. I just came across a real-life example.

In 1991, Franz Viehböck was Austria’s first Raumfahrer (astronaut or, in this case, cosmonaut). A correct name tag was stuck on his clothing, along with a Cyrillic version: Фибёк. That’s not a bad approximation of the original pronunciation,

/ˈfiːbœk/, and probably based on official rules for German-to-Russian transcription.

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Name tag, on display at the House of Austrian History in Vienna.

After his flight, Viehböck got an official certificate, or rather two: one in Russian, one in English. But while the former once again spells his name as фибёк, the latter displays an entirely new version of his name: Feeberk.

That makes /ˈfiːbɜːk/ in IPA, which is pretty close to the German original if you ask me. But why didn’t the aerospace authorities check how their employee’s name was spelt? Didn’t they have a photocopy of his passport? Didn’t they have a  name tag left? Was there no radio contact? Did they do it on purpose because they were fed up with him? Was it an in-joke?

None of the above perhaps. This happened in the autumn of 1991. The Baltic republics had just broken away from the USSR, the Ukraine was to follow within weeks. The Union was not going to see the end of the year. All was turmoil.

Under the circumstances, issues of transcription may have taken a backseat, if not an ejection seat. Фибёк, Шмибёк – Feeberk, Shmeeberk.

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Certificate, on display in the same museum.

An m hidden in plain sight

[image error]You know how things can stare you in the face and you still somehow manage to overlook them? As in that famous video where a big guy in a gorilla outfit escapes most viewers’ attention?

It’s happened to me in my book Babel, in chapter 8. The story is about what it actually means when we say that ‘Russian, like English and Latin, belongs to the Indo-European family’. How does this show in the actual language? The chapter includes a little table of verbal endings, including the first person singular, which is a dead give-away of Russian being Indo-European: Latin has -m or -o, Russian has -m or -u. Germanic languages no longer have those particular endings, though Old German still had -o.

But the thing is: Germanic languages do still have that ending. Or rather, one does, in one verb. That may sound like a tiny remnant, but it’s some obscure word in some far-flung Faroese island dialect. Quite the contrary, I;m referring to the most common verb in the largest Germanic language, as big a verbal gorilla as one could wish for: it’s English’s to be. First person singular, present tense: am, more often than not reduced to its erstwhile ending, m.

In Proto-Indo-European the form was esmi, which begat Proto-Germanic izm(i), which begat Old English eom, which begat am. So there: it’s a direct cognate of the Latin and Russian words for ‘am’, which are sum and (the now archaic) esm’.

*****

Thanks to John McWhorter for pointing out the origin of am’s m-ending in his latest Lexicon Valley podcast.

Linguistics in Dutch society

[image error] Linguist Marc van Oostendorp is a professor of Dutch language and academic communication at Nijmegen, as well as a prolific writer pouring out high-quality popular books, columns, daily blog posts, frequent videos and more. He has just published a brief paper about linguistic outreach and popularisation in the Netherlands. With his permission, I am reproducing here substantial chunks of it for those of you who are interested in comparing the Dutch situation with that in your own country. Word of warning: unlike Marc’s popular writing, which is playful and lively, this academic piece is factual and dry, so don’t expect a juicy blog post. If you can’t get enough of it nonetheless, the full three-page text is available for download.

Skimming through old issues of Dutch newspapers may sometimes provide for surprises: linguistics seems to have been taken very serious as an academic discipline in the period before the Second World War. After the Second World War, findings of linguistic research continued to reach the general public in a more or less constant stream until this day.

Although I do not really know how to draw the comparison, it seems clear to me that this connection [between academic linguistics and the general audience] is more intimate [here] than it is in other countries. There is a lot to be wished for, and the average Dutch person clearly does not know enough about the results of the language sciences, but at least somebody who wishes to, would be able in principle to get up to date with the most important insights of linguistic research. And an important reason for this, it seems to me, is that the Dutch linguistic community has for a long time shown at least some interest in outreach activities.

A central place in such a history would undoubtedly be played by the Society Our Language (Genootschap Onze Taal). Founded in 1931, Onze Taal still exists, and with its 23,000 members it is one of the largest associations of its kind in the world. Many practicing Dutch linguists have contributed to or been interviewed at least once in the magazine, which also features articles on language games, on usage, minority languages, language policy, and a variety of other topics that are on language but not necessarily linguistic.

It seems to me logical to think that this magazine has set the tone in a lot of other media. There have been several radio programmes on public radio. None of these programmes is characterised with the fascination for correctness that we find in other language areas; all of them have regularly hosted interviews with professional linguists.

Similarly, books on language tend to be rather light-hearted, and at least in some cases written with at least some basic understanding of linguistics. Most Dutch newspapers also have language columnists; most of them have at least some training as linguists, such as, in the current age, Ton den Boon, Peter-Arno Coppen, Paulien Cornelisse, Liesbeth Koenen and Ewoud Sanders. A language journalist that is known also internationally is Gaston Dorren, not originally trained as a linguist, but well-versed in many aspects of the field.

I think it is sometimes underestimated by Dutch linguists that this atmosphere is a blessing for the field. It is true that the average Dutch person will still believe that linguistics is about correcting spelling mistakes, and a lot of publications tend to be very superficial, but it is also true that very little outright nonsensical books appear here. Again, my evidence is only anecdotal, but my impression is that the situation in the Netherlands is relatively better than it is elsewhere.

Inversely, many Dutch professional linguists have shown an interest in outreach. Several important linguists to have done so are mentioned: Jac. Van Ginneken (1877-1945), Henk Schultink (1924-2017), Hugo Brandt Corstius (1935-2014), Nicoline van der Sijs (‘probably the best example’), Hans Bennis, Pieter Muysken, Jacomine Nortier and Jan Stroop. He modestly omits his own name, but it should most certainly be included.

Linguists have also discovered the internet. Peter-Arno Coppen, already mentioned as a newspaper columnist, but also a professor of linguistics at Nijmegen, was a pioneer in this, discussing grammatical issues since the 1990’s, initially under his pseudonym Taalprof (Language prof). Nowadays, scholars like Marten van der Meulen and Sterre Leufkens have a popular blog. The National Research School for Linguistics LOT has been supporting ‘popularizing’ activities since 1996, with an annual prize and by paying the work of Mathilde Jansen, again a linguistics PhD, as a linguistics journalist on a popular science blog (Kennislink). The work of Maaike Verrips, who has a PhD in language acquisition, deserves special mention. She currently owns a ‘language bureau’ that is unique in the world and among other things organises a yearly conference on language and multilingualism for a wider audience.

None of this should suggest, again, that things are ideal. There is probably a vast majority of Dutch linguists who have never shared any of their knowledge with a wider audience, and there may be a group of people looking down on such activities. Yet my impression is that relatively speaking more scholars are involved in these activities than in most other countries.

 

Around the world in 16 publishers (so far)

New translation contracts keep coming in! This week, early June 2019, I learnt about the sixteenth separate edition, in the thirteenth language: Romanian. Niculescu of Bucharest have acquired the rights.

Wow. Thanks to Profile Books and Andrew Nurnberg Associates, who make such a great job of selling the translation rights, I can now feel like a one-man multinational. Here’s an updated map of the Babel campaign:

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Around the world in 15 publishers (so far)

Babel is on a translating spree! This week, early March 2019, I learnt about the fifteenth separate edition, in the twelfth language: German. C.H. Beck of Munich have acquired the rights. I have several of their books on my linguistics shelves, so I’m pretty sure I’ll feel at home there.

Wow. Thanks to Profile Books and Andrew Nurnberg Associates, who make such a great job of selling the translation rights, I can now feel like a one-man multinational. Here’s an updated map of the Babel campaign:

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Around the world in 14 publishers (so far)

Babel is on a translating spree! Today I learnt about the fourteenth separate edition, and it’s frankly quite an unexpected one: Greek! Metaíchmio (or Metaíxmio, Metaíhmio – several transcriptions of Μεταίχμιο circulate) of Athens have bought the rights. And talking about the Greek alphabet: this will be the fifth script Babel is going to be published in, after Latin, Cyrillic, Chinese characters (both traditional and simplified) and Korean.

Wow. Thanks to Profile Books and Andrew Nurnberg Associates, who make such a great job of selling the translation rights, I can now feel like a one-man multinational. Here’s an updated map of the Babel campaign:

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Learn one language, get one free

My Dutch-language book Taaltoerisme (2012) included a chapter about Limburgish, the regional language that ‘I was fed with the porridge spoon’, as the Dutch idiom goes – my mother tongue, that is to say. For the English-language edition of the book, titled Lingo (2014), Katy McMillan–van Overzee was kind enough to translate and radically localise it to reflect her own Scots-language Edinburgh childhood. In the end, however, the publisher and I settled on a different kind of chapter for Scots. Reading this interview with the Scots Scriever, Michael Dempster, and a Twitter exchange with Peter Blake led to the idea of publishing it here for the first time.

When I was growing up in central Edinburgh in the 1960s, the people on the TV spoke a different language from the one we spoke at home. But I still understood them. When I went to school I discovered that the language I was expected to speak was not the ‘home-grown’ variety but more akin to the BBC English of Listen with Mother. I don’t remember that being a problem. I just went with the flow.

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Picardy Place roundabout, Edinburgh, late 1960s (source)

But how? How did I learn ‘English’ when I had communicated in Scots all my young life – with my friends, the local shopkeepers, my family … ? I have absolutely no idea. When I had to do it, I just did. Not perfectly of course, but certainly without inhibition. So did my sister, and all the other kids in the neighbourhood.

What may have helped was my total unawareness of the concept of ‘language’. English wasn’t another language exactly; it was more a different way of speaking. Where exactly the difference lay did not concern us one way or the other. The fact that we spoke Scots did not fill us with pride or shame. It was just part of life, like gravity, or a shower of rain. The way you spoke, the fact that things fell downwards and not upwards, and getting soaked to the skin now and then – well, these were things that just ‘were’.

English kids who had moved north of the border and who came to our school understood Scots, because that was the official language of the playground. When we spoke to them separately, we used English. Not because we were all that polite, or to show off – we just did. It simply went without saying.

When I learned to write, I dutifully copied words like ‘house’, ‘flower’ and ‘head’ from the blackboard. It never crossed my mind that, in my world, these should be spelt hoose, flooer and heid. Because when you wrote down words, you used English. That was common knowledge. I knew that.

But speaking was a different matter altogether. People did that in lots of different ways. For example, Mrs Wycisk, who lived around the corner, was married to a Pole who couldn’t speak English – but had developed his own brand of Scots, complete with the rolling rrr at the end of words: ‘Zat’s a braw carrrr ye’ve goat zerrr’. Glaswegians took some getting used to. Even in central Edinburgh we would say ‘it’s the wrong one’ and not ‘it’s the wrang wan’. And my granny, who came from the borders, called a dog a doag, while we called it a dug.

As for me, well, I took this wide-ranging vocabulary in my stride. Not for one second did I stop to think why people said dog, dug or doag, wrang wan or wrong one, gel or girrrl … After all, I understood it all – or at least most of it.

What I did find strange was when people suddenly used words in an unaccustomed way. I remember feeling confused when my Sunday school teacher suddenly spoke Scots to me when she met me in the street. And when my mother broke into ‘Jean Brodie English’ every time the GP came on a home visit. She would then address me in the same way – which I found seriously disconcerting.

That naïve idea somewhere at the back of a child’s mind that gravity, rain and language are just things that are dies pretty soon when you go to school. At school, all these things are explained. You learn about Newton who sat under a tree and was hit on the head by a falling apple. You hear that rain clouds are made of evaporated seawater. And, in the English lessons, you have to think about why you say what you say and why you say it in one way and not another … and how to spell. You discover that there is actually a system of sorts, an underlying structure in English – something you’d never even thought about before.

If one manner of speaking has a specific system, then another is bound to have a specific system as well, or so you would expect. And it’s true, but the deeper implications of this didn’t hit home until years later – when I started learning foreign languages, with systems of their own. Only then did I start to understand the logic of my mother tongue. For instance, the patterns in I dinnae (‘don’t’) and he disnae (‘he doesn’t’) were repeated in I havenae (‘I haven’t’) and he hasnae (‘he hasn’t’).

Once I started analysing all of this, it was one surprise after another. Why did I use the word yon for both ‘that’ and ‘those’? Why did I say yon book and yon books? Was yon plural or singular? Why did people north of the border ‘go the messages’ while people south of the border ‘did the shopping’? Was ‘going the messages’ some sort of domestic ritual from an era when there were no shops, before money was invented and when people bartered goods?

For a long time I made forays inside my own head. All the things I knew – and I never knew that I knew them! Just when I was slaving away at French, German and Latin, here was a language that had been bestowed on me – effortlessly and free.

Scots was certainly different from English, with its own influences from French brought over by the Stuart entourage. What other person in the English-speaking world would understand expressions such as Dinnae fash yersel (‘Don’t get angry’)? But a Frenchman would recognise se fâcher (‘to get angry’). The syntax and grammar of Scots and English might be largely – though not entirely – the same, but we had our own pronunciation and vocabulary. What I did was more than just speak a bit differently, I concluded: it was another language – anither leid, to put it in Scots. At first, I felt that calling myself bilingual took some stretch of the imagination, but to my surprise, it became official in 2001, when Scots was recognised as one of Britain’s regional languages.

Not that bilingualism is all that uncommon these days, of course. Most British cities have grown so multicultural that being bilingual is no longer exceptional. In the Gaelic Highlands and Islands and much of Wales, too, having two languages is nowadays a cause for pride, not shame, and even Cornwall and the Isle of Man are trying to revive their Celtic heritage. What all this means is that English, for all its world-language status, does not reign supreme in this linguistically not-so-United Kingdom of ours. The only parts where such a claim would be justified are the rural areas of England – the Conservative and pro-Brexit strongholds, to put it in political terms.

Which goes to show what monolingualism does to people.

Around the world in 12 publishers (so far)

Babel is on a translating spree! Today I learnt about the twelfth edition (without counting the audiobook), and this one is particularly close to my heart: Vietnamese. Nhã Nam of Hanoi will publish it. It is the fourth East Asian edition after Mandarin (two separate versions) and Korean. I owe thanks to both my Vietnamese teachers, Phạm Bảo Thanh Huyền and Saphire Dang, who translated a letter I wrote to introduce the book to Vietnamese publishers.

Wow. I feel like a one-man multinational. Here’s an updated map of the Babel campaign:

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Catalan or Spanish: Deciding which language to speak in Barcelona

Alex Rawlings is a Barcelona-based polyglot who recently exited from Britain. If you want to peep into the mind and daily life of a person speaking a dozen or so languages, follow his blog. Here’s a repost of his latest story.

Alex Rawlings

A few days before my big move to Barcelona, I found myself talking to my now ex-colleague, Jesús. It was late at night, and we were on the Gatwick Express, heading into Victoria on our way back from the Polyglot Conference in Slovenia. Jesús is from Valencia, and so he took a particular interest in my decision to move to Spain. He asked me if I already had any friends in Barcelona.

“Yes,” I said, quickly. “Lots of friends. So many people, from all over the world. I know all of them.” There was a pause, which I interrupted to re-emphasise: “I have lots of friends.”

“OK,” Jesús replied, cautiously. “Just that I know you know lots of people, but just in case you need anything, my sister’s been living in Barcelona for years now, and she lives very close to where you’re going to be, so if you…

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