Consonant Aspirations - Archive

(This post was meant to have come out yesterday, but I was having trouble uploading the photos.) Yesterday I arrived in Kohima. I wasn't originally planning on being here this year during the annual Hornbill Festival (which runs from 1 Dec - 7 Dec at the Kisama Heritage Village just out of town). The traffic in town is terrible and getting to the festival site isn't terribly easy without private transport. And frankly - this coming from someone who is genuinely interested in the different cultures here - after a day or two of performances, all the dances start looking the same (the commentary isn't always that illuminating). Last year, I ended up taking photos of foreign tourists ogling these 'naked' Nagas like they were animals at a zoo (see here ). That said, I am looking forward to seeing people compete in the Naga pork eating competition and Naga chilli competitions this year. But I digress. This year I decided to come for a number of reasons, one important ...

As I mentioned, one of the nice things about travelling by private car is being able to stop and look at people selling fruit and veg by the roadside. It also gives one the opportunity to stop and pick fruit growing in the middle of nowhere. And it so happened that we chanced upon a lonely gooseberry tree on a hill. Technically, these are 'Indian gooseberries', though most people here just call them 'gooseberries', or amla , the Assamese word for them [correction: the amla is the Hindi word for them and amlokhi  the Assamese word]. In Sumi they're called kholethi  if I'm not mistaken. In Assam and Nagaland, I've seen posters advertising their high Vitamin C content and how they're good for your health etc etc. This particular tree was just bursting with fruit. Our driver Huto ended up climbing up to shake and break off branches, which we then picked up from the ground. The first time I had Indian gooseberries was 3 years ago on my first trip to...

On of the advantages of travelling by private car and not by Sumo (the most common type of vehicle for inter-town travel) in Nagaland, is that you can stop at the roadside stalls anytime to buy fresh fruit. I was fortunate enough to be able to catch a ride with Ab. and her dad from Dimapur to Kohima exactly 2 weeks ago. Visitors heading up to Kohima from Dimapur to attend this year's Hornbill Festival will no doubt see a few of these pineapple stands on the way. Between Kohima and Zunheboto we also stopped outside the gate to the village of Usütomi, where some of the villagers were selling produce. (Usütomi was one of the villages I got to visit last year to do a few recordings.) On offer were oranges, pumpkins, wild brinjals, chillis and some jungle greens. There were also a few types of yam, as well as large ginger - the village takes it name from the kind of ginger grown there, ausü (Drop the ubiquitous a- prefix and you get usü . Add to which means 'hill...

Generally, if I wanted to know what someone else was up to at a later point in time, I'd probably ask them, "Do you have any plans for today / tomorrow / later?" or "What're your plans for today / tomorrow / later?" Except when I'm in India. Here, it was far more common for people to ask, "What is your programme for today / tomorrow?" Consequently, it's what I've come to ask people too. The first time I heard the word 'programme' used in this context, it sounded as if my life was some sort of show with carefully scheduled performances throughout the day. Ironic of course, given that in my experience of India, nothing has ever run according to schedule - I was once booked to catch a train that turned out to 13 hours late. As a friend pointed out, "Back home, we'd called that train 'cancelled'. However, the words 'programme' and 'plans' are not always interchangeable. For instance, today m...

After a week and a half without internet and barely any mobile phone reception, I'm back online! Last Wednesday, Youthnet and the Zunheboto Range Students Union held a Right to Information (RTI) hearing in the Zunheboto Town Hall. It was 4 hours long and mostly in Sumi, with a fair bit of Nagamese and English. The story has since been covered by all the major newspapers: the  Nagaland Post , the Morung Express and the Eastern Mirror . It's risky business here trying to unearth corruption, and I admire the brave members of Youthnet for what they do. This wasn't the first time they'd done what they call 'social auditing' in Nagaland. The process involves an initial meeting with members of the community where they are invited to voice any specific problem areas. They then visit and audit the respective departments to look for discrepancies in the way allocated funds have been spent. A public hearing is then held to openly discuss their findings with the publ...

I'm already in Nagaland but thought I'd post a few photos from my short visit to the District Museum in Diphu. It was actually closed the morning that Linda and I were deposited in front of its gate and told to hang around for about half an hour. There was no one inside and no lock on the gate. We walked right in and even found their electricity bill lying on a table! One the building were the words অসম সাহিত্য সভা Asam Sahitya Sabha 'Assam Literary Society' which I presume is in charge of similar museums in other districts across the state of Assam. Again, I had to assume this was the Karbi Anglong branch. I suppose there were enough old stone carvings for the place to warrant the name 'museum'. All of them seem to have been dated to the 10th century, which would place them as originating during the kingdom of Kamarupa. There wasn't a lot of useful information on hand, but most of the stone fragments had suitably descriptive labels. Some labels we...

When I first heard the term other backward class , I thought it was a joke. Then when I read about the creamy layer  principle, I was sure it was a joke. But I'm getting ahead of myself here. On previous visits to India, I'd heard the term 'scheduled tribe' used to describe the many tribes / groups of Nagaland. I simply assumed it meant 'officially recognised tribe' (and I wasn't far off the mark with that). But the other day a friend here in Diphu was talking about how he was interviewing candidates for a job, but the job was only available to people from one of the 'other backward classes'. Then a few days later, he was talking about the upcoming local election (which has been postponed till next June) that he's working for and how 'other backward class' is an option on the form for people to state their caste. He was also saying how it was ironic that the former rulers of Assam, the Ahoms, are now considered an 'other backward ...

I'm actually really surprised I hadn't had silkworms until this week. I'd seen them on skewers in Beijing but never dared to try them. This despite telling people that I eat anything. Well, there are certain things I don't eat, like dog and cat, but in general, I eat most things that are laid in front of me. So at the guest house when I was given ingki ok , the Karbi name for this delicacy, I happily ate them. (By the way, ok in Karbi means 'meat', and is found in compound nouns denoting more usual meats, e.g. phak ok 'pork' (lit. 'pig meat') and lang ok 'fish' (lit. 'water meat'). But this was just the 'finished' product on the plate. It wasn't until a few days later that I got to see where the ingki came from. The mum of one of our Karbi friends makes traditional Karbi clothes and bags, and buys (from I don't know where) large quantities of the silk cocoons, as seen below. The silk looks a bit rough, bu...

In light of this week's post about a certain person who shall remain unnamed (lest he receive any more publicity), I thought I'd mention that when I started this blog last year, I made it a point not to turn it into a personal online venting ground. Rather, it was meant be a way of keeping in touch with people back home while I was in Nepal and NE India. It has since become a place where I share interesting things about the places I visit, the languages I come into contact with, and language in general. In this blog, I try to be as positive as possible, even after  spending 3 hours standing on a train or 10 hours on a bus  suppressing the urge to throw up because of food poisoning. My little outburst this week was actually many weeks coming, having read some of the idiotic comments this person had been making on Twitter and in articles featured on The Age . The final straw was when he launched a ludicrously personal attack on a colleague who had written a rather lengthy cri...

On a completely different topic from my last post, I saw this on the screen at the SBI (State Bank of India ) ATM here in Diphu. I wonder if there's a person (or people) sitting in front of a computer screen monitoring the number of 'Unhappy' text messages being received every day. Goodness knows what they actually do with such 'information'. (I'm going to need to find someone willing to text them - I'm hesitant to text them myself for fear of being spammed afterwards.)

I wasn't planning on writing anything about Dean Frenkel, whom the Age has described as an "expert speech analyst and vocal instructor" and who has released recently released a book titled Evolution of speech . I'm in a fairly remote place in India, without constant electricity and I've been down with a cold. I don't want to waste my time on the internet on this guy. But I am angry. I just read Mr Frenkel's reply to a post by Aidan Wilson on Crikey's language blog Fully (sic) that criticises his recent claims and book. I don't care what Mr Frenkel's qualifications are or what his educational background is. I *really* don't care that he's not a linguist or speech pathologist (I am aware of the hubris of many a linguist). But he writes about topics and make bold claims that even linguists would not have any confidence talking about, and worse, makes claims that can be easily disproved. For instance, he writes: It is perfectly r...

If you thought this post was something about 'traditional Indian customs and practices', stop reading here. It's about my latest experience going through Indian customs at Delhi Airport. Before I left Singapore, Mum had suggested I take with me some bakkwa , sweetened dried meat (usually pork) from the famous Bee Cheng Hiang franchise in Singapore. They're nicely packaged and would make nice gifts, given that most people I'm staying with are also huge pork eaters. I didn't think India had any issues with meat imports. Then I saw the customs form. Through the sleepy haze of catching a 2am flight out of Changi Airport, I read at the bottom: Are you carrying any meat / meat products / dairy products ... Years of travelling to Australia made my hand circle 'Yes' right away.  I mean, it's all packaged. I'll show it to them, they'll just wave me through. I'm pretty sure they'd even wave this stuff through in Australia as long as you d...

Today, the news programmes in India are all about one person: Bhupen Hazarika ভূপেন হাজৰিকা. Now, I know a number of people who read this blog are from / based in India, and I must ask your forgiveness for not knowing who he was before today, but something tells me that I'm going to be hearing a lot about him in the coming days. This great Assamese singer passed away in Mumbai this afternoon . He sang in a number of Indian languages and was beloved all over India and in Bangladesh, but he has a special place in people's hearts here in his homeland of Assam. I'm told that he even sang in Karbi when he used to visit Karbi Anglong. I was told that he received a doctorate in communication from Columbia University. According to Wikipedia, his thesis was titled "Proposals for Preparing India's Basic Education to Use Audio-Visual Techniques in Adult Education". From the stories I've been told, it seems that he was an advocate for tolerance and equality. One...

That last post reminded me of the oddest and most annoying conversation I've ever had about my origins. It was with a German guy who I met while I was living in Lyon, France. The conversation was in English and went something like this : - Where are you from? - Singapore, but I live in Australia. - No, where are you from originally? - I was born in Singapore. - Yes, but where are your parents from? - They were born in Singapore. - What about your grandparents? - My grandmothers are from SE Asia, but my grandfathers were from China. - Oh, so you're from China! There was sure no fooling this guy...

One of the first things I learn to say in a foreign language is how to say, "I'm from..." or "I come from...", mainly because one of the first things people ask me is where I'm from. It's also a reasonable useful phrase for any language learner. However, I find the phrase tricky to learn for 2 reasons. The first one is probably more specific to the geographically displaced person that I am. I usually say "I come from Singapore but live in Australia", even if my friends in Nepal and India will typically introduce me as their friend from Australia. It just seems less troublesome when I'm travelling in Asia and Europe, especially since I don't look like what many people expect an Australian to look like i.e. white, nor do I sound particularly Australian (although I did meet an American lady who insisted I had an Australian accent, which I found rather puzzling). But discounting any potential geographic confusion of one's origins, t...

In yesterday's post I talked about the correspondence between Hokkien 't' and Mandarin 'zh' (a retroflex sound produced with the tongue slightly further back than the sound represented by 'ch' in 'chunk' and without the puff of air). Both sounds are descended from an earlier 'tr' cluster in Early Middle Chinese, as reconstructed by historical linguists. What does this have to do with the word for 'tea'? People who know Hindi, may laugh surreptitiously when they hear people order a 'chai tea', since चय chay means 'tea' in Hindi, so the order is basically for a 'tea tea'. In English though, 'chai tea' is perfectly acceptable because the word 'chai' has been borrowed to designate what one would call मसाला चय masaalaa chai 'spiced tea' in India. The Hindi word for tea is चय chay is much closer to the Mandarin cha (the 'ch' sound here is pronounced like the retoflex 'zh...