Consonant Aspirations - Archive

It was back to Natha New on Christmas morning. After tea, biscuits and fried Sümi sho , we were off to the village where lunch was ready for us at 8am - my stomach no longer knows when it should be full, so I just eat when I am fed. There was a morning service (yes, another service) at the local church, before another service up at the feast venue, which was H S Rotokha's brother's compound. Remember the butcher's area from the day before? Amazing how some pine leaves and a few chairs can transform the place into the VIP area. I was eventually asked to sit on one of the chairs on the little 'stage' area, which I always find embarrassing, but at least I got a good view of the entertainment. The women of the village put up two comedy skits, though given my lacking listening comprehension skills in Sumi, Nagamese and Hindi I wasn't able to follow them. But  I did certainly appreciate the physical comedy. The Chief Officer (I think) from the local Assam R...

I was invited to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas Day at the distinguished H S Rotokha (or 'apuh Sükato')'s home village of Natha New, which is so close to Zunheboto town, it might even become a suburb (or assa 'colony' as sub-divisions of towns are known here) of the town. The village of Natha New H S Rotokha was throwing a feast for the villagers on Christmas Day, and by the time I arrived at the village on Christmas Eve, preparations had been well underway. I was told that all up, 8 pigs, 2 mithun and 1 rooster had been slaughtered for the feast (that's for another post). H S Rotokha and his wife, in front of the women pounding rice using akhumu , big pestles, in the big aboshu , a long log-like structure with little depressions carved from a single piece of wood. Basically, a very big mortar. I got to try my hand at pounding rice in the aboshu . They also dressed me in head gear meant for women... Some men were busy making baskets out of bam...

A few days ago, a friend back in Australia asked me if it even felt like Christmas over here. It's a fair question, given that I am in India, where the majority of the population are Hindu. Nagaland is different. Most people in this region refer to the rest of India as 'the mainland', and if you look at a map of modern India, you can see that the whole northeast region looks like India putting an arm around Bangladesh. More importantly, Nagaland is predominantly Christian - Baptist, to be precise. (According to an unsubstantiated claim on Wikipedia, Baptists account for 75% of the state's population, making it even 'more Baptist' than the state of Mississippi. where only 52% are Baptist.) Since the beginning of December, people all over the state have been busy putting up Christmas lights and Christmas stars (big red stars usually fixed to tall bamboo poles) even though most households don't receive constant power and the added drain from so many lights ...

On Sunday at 4pm, I left Dimapur with Ab . and a whole busload of farmers heading back to Zunheboto after the Agri Expo. Given that sumo tickets are sold out till after Christmas, this was the best option for the return trip to Zunheboto for Christmas. The trip was meant to take 12-14 hours, though it only took 10 hours in the end. Now, 10 hours on a bus doesn't usually sound like a long time to be since I've been on much longer bus rides and I usually end up sleeping most of the time. This time however, I was aware that we were travelling at night on some very winding and badly maintained roads. I was also aware that there was no heating on the bus and that we was going to get very cold at night, especially as the bus approached Zunheboto. Ab. rugging up for the cold night. The seat would've been more comfortable if I could've stopped it from reclining all the way back every time I leaned back. The worst thing about the trip was that just as we were le...

Since I have to wait for the bus to go back to Zunheboto with Ab. and the farmers (which was meant to leave at 4pm, then 9am, then 4pm again), I thought I'd post a few pictures from the North-east Agricultural Expo that's on (and ending today) here in Dimapur. The expo showcased produce from all over the 7 northeastern states of India - Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura, among other things. They also had a few model morungs  from each of the major Naga tribes like at the Kisama Heritage Village. I came to town to meet up with some people who've been doing work on Sumi, and the meetings went pretty well. Ab. was also in town for the entrepreneur seminars happening at the expo and we're going back to Zunheboto, hopefully, later today. The 'welcome mithun' showcasing local beans and king chillies. The governor was arriving the day I took this shot. The costumes reminded me a lot of China for some reason. Maybe it was ...

After the two weddings on the day I was meant to leave Kohima, my friend's sister and cousin surprised me by telling their driver to take us to the nearby town of Khonoma, Nagaland's first 'green village'. It's not just the roofs that are green, the village actually has rubbish bins everywhere, and with the exception of a few bottles on the street, it looked like the locals actually used these bins. Certainly not something you see everyday in Nagaland. I'd wanted to visit Khonoma this time. Unfortunately, getting here from Kohima isn't easy unless you have a private car - there's no regular bus / taxi service to and from Kohima and  the town's inhabitants have their own bus to take them to Kohima and back. My original plan to spend a few nights here at a guest house  (basically someone's house with a room or two for rent) wasn't feasible either, and I don't know if I would've enjoyed the stay if it was just me. So I was really hap...

So my original plan to travel to Dimapur fell through today, given that I would probably have had to spend the night in a hotel, and without a hard copy of my new Restricted Area Permit, that might be a bit of a problem. Means I'll be heading down there tomorrow morning. All wasn't lost today. The sister and cousin of the friend I'm staying with here in Kohima brought me along to two different weddings. At first I was told that at the first wedding, it was the brother of a cousin who was getting married (which made me wonder why she didn't just say 'cousin') but I told out later it was the brother of a friend. It sounded all very complicated, so I didn't probe. Given that it's December, two weddings in one day is not common. In fact, even after attending the ceremony, I counted no less than 3 different venues sporting the banner 'Wedding' and no less than 2 car entourages on the street, each car bearing the sign 'Wedding'. December is c...

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 ...

One thing I had noticed when I was working on my MA thesis was that along with the verb  wu 'to go' (though I think it might actually just be  u ), Sumi also had two other verbs: wo and hu . The verb wo  is generally used with the noun aki 'house', as in aki lo wo 'to go home' ( lo  is a locative or allative marker), suggesting that the verb also conveys the meaning of motion towards one's home / point of origin. The verb hu is usually used with the noun alu 'field', as in alu lo hu 'to go to the field', suggesting that the verb also conveys the meaning of motion away from one's home / point of origin. The verb wu therefore simply means 'to go' with no direction specified. Let's also not forget the verb ighi 'to come', which specifies direction towards the speaker / hearer / some common reference point, but at the time I was more interested in the wo and hu distinction at the time, which I think I've ...

On Thursday (9 Dec) I was invited by a friend to attend with her the inaugural programme (basically the inauguration ceremony) of the 34th Indian Folklore Congress at ATI (Administrative Training Institute) Kohima. I thought it would be a good idea, given that the chief guest (guest of honour), Khekiye Sema, is Sumi himself, and back in Zunheboto we had originally planned to come down to Kohima to meet with him and discuss the oral literature project. After the sweet little traditional song presentation by some Angami kids (see above), Professor Jawaharlal Handoo, the President of Indian Folklore Congress, gave the keynote speech. I wasn't terribly impressed with the speech because he simply read off a 5-6 page document that only some members of the audience were given. Still, I suppose it's the fashion for some professors to do that here (and having spent a year at a French university has given me more patience for such things). In the talk he mentioned issues to do with...

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 anot...

Christmas is definitely coming soon to Nagaland. Not only are people starting to put up their Christmas lights and stars, but last week before I left Zunheboto, I got to watch the boys living at Ab.'s have a 'little' bonfire. These boys really aren't scared of fire. Afterwards, I even saw them doing cartwheels in the still glowing cinders.

This was the view from my friend's balcony here in Kohima. I had walked out to get my laundry, but ended up running back to my room to grab my camera. It's been unseasonably wet here these past few weeks. When I was in Zunheboto it rained quite a bit two weeks ago. And here in Kohima in rained non-stop for close to 15 hours yesterday and the day before. I had assumed that the monsoon would've ended a while ago. At least the mist and clouds made for a very pretty sunset.

Note: the wood plate ( asükhu in Sümi) I'm referring to is a traditional Naga plate with its own stand carved from a single piece of wood (such as teak). Step 1 Ask at the India Post counter at Kisama during the Hornbill Festival if they have a parcel box large enough for the plate. Receive confirmation that such a box exists and can be sent internationally. Step 2 Go and purchase a plate at one of the festival stalls (1,200 Rs). Step 3 Return to the India Post counter to discover that none of the boxes there are large enough. Tell them you will go back to the main post office in Kohima to send the parcel. They tell you that there will be boxes there. Step 4 Take the plate to the India Post Office in Kohima. Step 5 Discover that there are no boxes large enough, but the bookshop across the street can help with packaging. Step 6 Go to the bookshop with the plate and ask them if they have a box (or 'carton' as people usually call them here). Step 7 Watch...

Seeing all the signs for 'Nagaland, Land of Festivals', it's pretty clear how the current tourism department is trying to promote the state. (Of course it probably feeds the Indian preconception that all people do here is party and celebrate in tribal outfits - but I won't rant in this post again.) Instead, what I want to point out is the animal on the poster. It's the state animal, known as a 'mithun' or 'Indian bison'. I would call it a 'gaur', rhyming with both 'power' and 'sour' - apt descriptions of the animal or so I recall from reading Willard Price's Indian Adventure as a kid. According to Wikipedia 'mithun' refers to the domesticated variety, but people here call even the wild ones 'mithun'. They are pretty massive, being larger than African buffalo. Their skulls adorn many important houses around Nagaland, although nowadays the typical method of execution is a bullet through the forehead s...

At the Hornbill Festival, I took this photo of some performers waiting to enter the stage area. Aware that their butts were hanging out of their costumes, I was a little hesitant to take the photo without asking their permission, perhaps being a little too culturally sensitive. But as at the Ahuna festival, it was a local friend who suggested I take the shot, and I reasoned that this was a performance, these people were in costume and there were going to be cameras all over them in a second anyway. A few minutes later, while the same performers were getting ready to go onstage, this is what I saw. I think the guy on the left was American, and I heard the guy on the right speaking in French. Now surely there's a limit to what you can and cannot do with your camera in such situations. I still don't know what to think of these guys. They probably wanted a better angle of the performers for their photo collections, but come on, these are still people here! I suppose it wo...

Here're a few photos from this year's Hornbill Festival (1 Dec - 7 Dec). It's held every year at this time here in Kohima - though the festival ground itself is in the village of Kisama, which is a bit of a drive to get to and the traffic coming back into Kohima was atrocious both times I went. There were other activities in and around Kohima too, like a night bazaar, the Miss Nagaland 2010 beauty pageant and the Hornbill Rock Contest. I only made the trip out to Kisama twice given that I was in Zunheboto till the third day of the festival, and had spent most of the fourth day travelling. Anyway, I managed to catch a number of performances on the main stage, see replicas of the morungs (the traditional boys dormitories) of all the major tribes in Nagaland, check out the WWII museum, and even bought Mum that asükhu (wood plate on a stand) that she asked for (the guy at India Post assured me they could deliver it, but I'm having my doubts). I don't have a lot of...

Yesterday at the Hornbill Festival, they held a  Naga Chilli eating competition  for the first time. The winner popped 8 of the fiery peppers, known as raja mircha,  ('king chilli'),  Naga jolokia ,   bhut jolokia . This may not seem like a lot to people used to popping  which may not sound like a lot, unless you know that these chillies have been found to rate up to 1,041,427 units on the Scoville scale which is a measure of spicy heat. Wikipedia gives the rating for Tabasco sauce as between 2,500 to 5,000 units, while bird's eye chillies rate between 50,000 to 100,000 units. The only chilli hotter than raja mircha  is a hybrid called the Naga Viper made by cross-breeding the raja mircha  and two other chillies and was developed in the UK. Prize-winning chillies at the horticultural centre next to the Hornbill Festival grounds at Kisama. In any case, these are still the hottest chillies in the world that are being cultivated an...

So I'm spending a few days in Kohima, the state capital of Nagaland. I'm in town mainly for the Hornbill Festival, but also to meet with one of the linguistics professors at Nagaland University, as well as to sort out some other 'administrative' things like an extenstion to my current permit *fingers crossed* and Tata mobile internet for when I'm in Dimapur and Assam (I'm not sure if the Tata Photon Plus will work in Zunheboto, *fingers crossed*). I'm staying with B., who's organised both my permits to enter Nagaland, and her husband. They live next to the original Kohima village site known as Tsütuonuomia Khel or more commonly, T-Khel. The term khel refers to a village sub-division - nowadays it almost corresponds to the local term 'colony' (or 'suburb' to most Anglophones). In Angami tradition, villages (and khels ) were generally named after their founders. Hence the name Tsütuonuomia, the founder of this khel , whose name trans...

When we arrived in Satoi, it became clear that our little 'sightseeing' trip would involve a little more than sightseeing. It was the 50th anniversary of the local pastor's appointment in the village and the occasion was in away a retirement party for him. I think it was also meant to commemorate his 75th birthday. Arriving with the reverend meant more VIP treatment - this time we got chappatis and avi kighinoli (mithun innards) and more cups of milk and black tea. We were then led into the church, where the service was held. I was a little embarrassed because they first ushered me right to the front to sit on the couches in the front row, when even the pastor was sitting on a plastic chair. At least we managed to give our seats to the pastor and his wife, but I ended up sitting in front of other guests of honour. During the service, I also had to stand and give a little wave while Ab. introduced me to the whole congregation - being a foreigner, having an MA and havi...