Consonant Aspirations - Archive

I've made it back to Melbourne, in more or less one piece. Got back on Tuesday and have spent the past few days catching up with friends and sorting out the apartment. To be honest, I'm already looking forward to going back to India. But there's a lot of stuff that needs to be done in the meantime. Friends have been asking me what I've been doing over in Nepal and India. Though I'd love to condense it all into a 30 second speech that I can repeat over and over again, it's just not going to happen. I tell them I'm looking at minority language education (MLE), especially teaching kids to read and write in their home language, not a foreign language. I also look at language documentation projects for minority / endangered languages, including recording traditional songs and stories, as well as dictionary making. The push for MLE is particularly strong now, given that more and more parents are sending their kids to schools where a dominant language like Engl...

The other night I went to the Crystal Jade restaurant at Holland Village (Singapore). As I got to the top of the stairs I saw a sign on the glass door saying 'PUSH' with a mini handprint next to it. I was just about to push the door, when it started to slide to the side. This confused me greatly and I mentioned it to my friends once I walked in and found their table. One response was, "Aiyah, it means 'push the button to open the door.'" The glass door at the entrance was one of those semi-automatic sliding doors that only open when you touch the sensor (I can't remember there really was a button) on them, so that they don't keep opening and closing every time someone walks by. It just so happened that someone had touched the sensor for me from inside when they saw me walking towards the door. Now it's perfectly alright to say 'push the button', but the problem with seeing a sign that says 'PUSH' on a door, is that one would imm...

Talking about dialogues which are less than useful, I should mention that the main reason I was doing Assamese classes was to help me to learn Nagamese, an Assamese-based creole and the lingua franca of Nagaland. One book (see picture below) I purchased on my last trip conveniently provided translations of Nagamese words in both English and Sumi. It's probably one of the only resources I have found on Nagamese, but - and no offence to the writer for his work - I've found most of the 'mini-dialogues' in the book rather bizarre. Given the format of the book, it's difficult to tell when one dialogue ends and another begins, although one can often group together a few lines by context. Often, lines appear to have been inserted in a rather haphazard manner. Some make sense: (page 96) - Gari chalabi. - Aste chalabi. - Besi joldi na chalabi. - Rukhibi. - Drive the car. - Drive slowly. - Don't drive it too fast. - Stop. Others don't: (page 98) -...

Most language learning textbooks these days include a dialogue (or two) in each chapter, along with a vocabulary list, followed by some discussion of grammar. The dialogues are usually based on some assumed needs analysis of the learner, and focus on common scenarios language learners are likely to encounter, in the order in which learners are presumed to encounter them. For this reason, many books I've seen start with a 'Meeting at the airport' scene. There's the typical greeting, followed by a brief introduction (simply one's name), and sometimes talk about luggage. Now while this all seems a reasonable way to start the book, I really don't like this kind of dialogue. In my experience, if someone's coming to pick me up at the airport, they're either family, friends or a business associate, all of whom would probably speak the same language as you. (Sometimes it's just the driver who may not speak the same language, but none of the dialogues I...

I think the last time I came back from India I was feeling much more traumatised, and I'd developed some weird allergies that I hadn't before (like to the feathers in the doona which I had been using for a whole year in Melbourne). I just constantly felt itchy and dirty. Watching Slumdog Millionaire didn't help either, especially that scene when the male protagonist as a boy gets to meet Abitabh Bachchan. I suppose after any long trip to a place that's different from home (doing fieldwork or not), coming back can be a little of a shock. Reverse culture shock, they say. I don't think I've ever experienced (severe) reverse culture shock. Returning home - whatever 'home' means - has often been a relief for me. I suppose it also helps that I'm 'homeless' in that I often refer to both Melbourne and Singapore as 'home' but don't feel like I quite belong in either place. But coming back, there are things I often need to adapt to aga...

Back in Singapore, there are two things I need to remind myself of. One, I'm once again in a place where tap water is potable! The whole idea seems so alien to me now. Two, rice does not have to be part of every single meal. I'm aware that this is a sentiment shared by many people in Asia (a tour package Mum and I took to Paris offered rice at every meal except the last dinner, which was the only 'French' meal for the tour) and there are still people in Singapore who need rice in every meal. But I'd say they belong to the older generation, and it's certainly not the case in my family that we need rice at every meal. Now despite being mostly on my own during my last few weeks in Assam, I was still subjected to rice at most meals. Take for instance the first night I stayed at the hotel in Guwahati. I ordered room service: fish and chips plus a serving of masala peanuts. I knew full well that the fish and chips would be crap, but I just wasn't in the mood f...

This afternoon I'm flying back to Delhi, where, with any luck, I'll catch my connecting flight to Singapore. I've given myself 6 hours between the two flights, but one never knows. The last time I left India feeling completely traumatised. One of the reasons was that I'd spent a few days in Guwahati and was paranoid about bed bugs from below and mosquitoes from above, so I didn't get to sleep much for 2 days. Then I had to go to Kolkata for another night before flying back, and I really just wanted to get home by then. In contrast I'm a little sad to leave this time, though I'm planning to be back later this year. In fact, part of me can't wait to come back to the NE next time to see all the friends I've made and to do all the projects I need to do. Even if it hasn't been completely smooth sailing, I've had an amazing last 3 months in India, and a fantastic month and a half in Nepal before that. But I'm not going to jinx it too much...

Most students of linguistics (and sociolinguistics) will be familiar with the term shibboleth or shibboleth test which refers to a word or phrase that is used to prove a speaker's membership to a particular group, usually along national or ethnic lines - members of the opposing group are identified by their different pronunciation of this word or phrase. Such tests have been used in times of war to determine 'friend from foe', and are still being used quite controversially by immigration departments to test people seeking refugee status, since its use assumes linguistic features must correlate with nationality or ethnicity. At the NEILS conference I was told of two such shibboleths used in the NE India in recent times. In Assam, at the height of the 'Assam Agitation' nationalist movement from 1979 to 1985, people were often made to count from 1 to 7 to see if they were 'Assamese' or an illegal 'Bengali'. The idea is that in Assamese the number is...

No conference is complete without a little sightseeing excursion around the local town. On the second day of the NEILS conference, we got a chance to see visit a few scenic spots around the town of Tezpur. Leaving at 3.30pm wasn't ideal (especially when the sun sets around 4.30), but it was still a pleasant little trip. We started at Bamuni Hill, where the ruins are said to date from the 10th to 12th centuries. From my rather sketchy knowledge of the history of Assam, I think it means they were built during the time of the Kamarupan Kingdom which precedes the Ahom Kingdom which was founded by invading Tai speaking people from what is now Burma / Myanmar. The thing is, most of the 'ruins' were just lying exposed to the elements, with people allowed to walk all over them. Given the yearly monsoon, most of them looked surprisingly unweathered. It seems a tad bit silly to excavate them just TO lay them out in the open for people to trample on. But I suppose it makes mor...

I've been asked to write this year's conference report for the Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area (LTBA) journal, so I probably do want to make some more notes while the impressions are still fresh in my mind. I don't think the Vice-Chancellor's opening speech I mentioned in my last post will make it into the report. The past three days have been really inspiring. Sure, the quality of the papers hasn't always been the most desirable, but I got to meet a number of native speakers working on their own languages, as well as people who are doing really exciting things in minority language education (MLE). People who are interested in linguistic theory to various degrees, but who certainly haven't forgotten that people are the ones who use language. It's heartening to see so many local students in attendance, even if most of them are doing courses in EFL training and the only reason many of them come up to talk to you is to ask to take a photo with you....