Consonant Aspirations - Archive

This past week I've been in London and a friend of mine, Premila, invited me to join her at the annual Gurkha Cup day celebrations out in the town of Aldershot, a military town close to Guildford. The Gurkha Cup is an all-day soccer tournament that's been organized by the Tamu Dhee Association and held every year on the Sunday of the May Day bank holiday long weekend. The event draws huge crowds. The vast majority of attendees are Gurkhas (both active and retired) and their families live around Aldershot, as well as in neighbouring towns such as Farnborough. Actress Joana Lumley was instrumental in fighting for the rights of retired Gurkha soldiers to settle in the UK , though this has not been without controversy. During the half-time show for the final game of the day between  QGS Red  and  B13 , we got to see the military band in action, as well as a demonstration of prowess with the traditional  khurkuri  knife. We didn't actually stay to wat...

Today's post is brought to you by "ongoing problems with terminology in linguistics". As my newsfeed this week has filled up with reblogged and retweeted articles about Singlish, often the first thing that gets mentioned is that Singlish is an English-based "creole". But what exactly does the term creole mean? In many introductory linguistics textbooks, dictionaries and the Wikipedia entry (at the time of writing), the term creole (or creole language ) is mostly commonly defined as a stable natural language that has developed from a pidgin, while  pidgin  is typically defined as a simplified contact language developed to enable speakers of different languages to communicate. In other words, a pidgin is said to become a creole when children learn it as their first language and the new language develops its own set of rules and conventions - its own grammar. That means that languages which have "Pidgin" in their names, such as Hawaiian Pidgin,...

The BBC just covered this story:  Singapore terms join Oxford English Dictionary , which is basically about how Singapore English words like wah and shiok get to join their linguistic compatriots lah  and  kiasu  in the OED, the world's "definitive record of the English language". There's even a little quiz at the bottom of article for those of you who want to flaunt your Singlish. However, I was drawn to the opening line of the article, which I think continues to perpetuate the myth of how words end up in the OED (and many dictionaries in general): Several Singaporean and Hong Kong English terms, including "wah", "shiok" and "yum cha", are now officially recognised as acceptable English. By saying that these new words are "now officially recognised as acceptable English " , the BBC article continues to perpetuate the myth that the job of the OED is to be  the  judge of what is acceptable or not acceptable English, and t...

So I should probably apologise / apologize for my lack of updates the past year or so. It's been pretty crazy since I started grad school - I'd have to spend many a blog post explaining all the wonderful things I've been able to do since I started in the linguistics PhD programme here at the University of Oregon. In the meantime, in the 'American' spirit of self-promotion, I thought I should mention that I finally finished revising my University of Melbourne MA thesis A phonological and phonetic description of Sumi, a Tibeto-Burman language of Nagaland  and got it published with Asia-Pacific Linguistics in Canberra. It's an open access ebook (print on demand), and you can download it right here at the  ANU digital collections page here . I have too many people to thank for this, especially my family who've supported me all through this crazy journey, as well as the Sumi community / my Sumi family. I'm so thankful for all the amazing people I...

My apologies to all my readers, I just haven't had all that much time to blog since I started grad school, though I have a lot of things I'd like to blog about! (I'll be making time after finals week next week to catch up on my posting.) Thanks to the  Nom Nom Linguistics  Facebook page, I just found out about this Tumblr site called Linguistics Sample Sentences:   http://lingsamplesentences.tumblr.com/ Here you can see a selection of the weirdest / funniest / slightly more obscene examples that linguists use to illustrate various points about the grammars of other languages. Sometimes linguists need these 'weird' examples to see how a language performs a certain function. Sometimes these examples highlight how creative the speakers of a language can be. And sometimes linguists just choose the weirdest examples for comic relief. (Because talking about grammar.) In general, I'm told we sound like a violent bunch. If we're trying to study something l...

At the moment, I'm TA-ing for a course called Language and Power here at the University of Oregon, and I've been recounting the following story to my students. It happened more than 10 years ago after I'd just moved from Singapore to Melbourne. I was at my university orientation, where I met a number of people, including a guy from Sweden. We got to talking, and he eventually asked me what languages I spoke. I told him that I spoke English and some Chinese (Mandarin), but that my Chinese wasn't very good. The very next thing he said to me was, "Oh, so you don't speak any language well!" Before I could recover from the shock of what he'd just said, he quickly proceeded to 'correct' my English. I remember we were talking about purchasing textbooks for our courses at a particular bookshop. I said something like: " You can get them cheap over there." He told me that it should be: "You can get them cheaply over there." ...

Okay, I apologise for the long delay, but finally(!), I present you with the solution to the problem set I posted in my last blog post, many months ago (see here ). (Right click the image below and select 'Open Image in New Tab'. Or  click here for an image you can magnify. )  The language is Singaporean  Teochew , as spoken by an aunt of mine who lives in Singapore. It's part of the Min Nan group of languages, but Singaporean Teochew is said to have undergone dialect leveling with Singaporean Hokkien - the two are much more mutually intelligible than their counterparts still spoken in China today. Also, although most descriptions of Teochew give 8 tones, I've only been able to find 7 contrastive ones - but there might still be an 8th one that I've missed! I know I was supposed to post this in mid-June, but a lot of stuff came up, including a move to the United States (via Australia). As some of you may already know, I've just started grad school at ...

The past few months, I've been learning a language here in Singapore that's been noted for its crazy mind-bending use of  tone sandhi . I thought I'd write a little about it in this post, since it's a   phenomenon that some linguists may not be familiar with (given the tendency for many to run away at the first 'hearing' of anything tonal). At the end of this post, I'm also going to throw in a little puzzle set that I created, just to give people a chance to see the sorts of data some linguists work with. I'm hoping it'll appeal to all the puzzle solvers out there. Tone sandhi in Mandarin Chinese Experienced learners of Mandarin will already be familiar with the phenomenon, exemplified by the initially confusing and dreaded rule that specifies that Tone 3 becomes Tone 2 before another Tone 3. This prevents you from saying two Tone 3s, one after the other. For example, the word for 'you' in Mandarin is 你  nǐ  (with Tone 3) when said on i...

Last week I had a few friends ask me about a recently published study titled "Ultraconserved words point to deep language ancestry across Eurasia" by Mark Pagel, Quentin D. Atkinson, Andreea S. Calude and Andrew Meade. It's been making headlines all over the globe in articles with titles like "English May Have Retained Words From an Ice Age Language" (Wired.com), "Ice Age language may share words with modern tongues" (News.com.au and various sites) and "15000-year-old 'fossil' words reveal ancestral Ice Age language" (LA Times). You can download their report  here . Also, the data for the study comes from the Languages of the World Etymological Database, which can be accessed  at this site . As always, Language Log has a great post by Sally Thomason that highlights many of the issues about the study here, including issues with both the data and methodology. Similarly, another post at GeoCurrents by Asya Pereltsvaig  rubbishes th...

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary , the English word hotel  was first recorded in the 1640s and denoted a 'public official residence'. The modern sense of the word as 'an inn of the better sort' (i.e. 'a place offering lodging, food and other services to travellers') was first recorded in 1765. The word comes from the French hôtel , which itself is derived from the Medieval Latin hospitale via Old French hostel . In French,  hôtel was used to refer mainly to public official buildings that frequently received visitors, but this has been largely replaced by the meaning of 'place offering lodging and food to travellers', as used in contemporary English. However, you can still see traces of this old usage in words like  hôtel de ville 'town hall' and hôtel des impôts 'tax office' and hôtel de police 'police headquarters'. In India, the term hotel  has taken on a slightly different meaning (and pronunciation, with st...

One of the things I was impressed with during my short stay in Taiwan was the  Taiwan Indigenous Television  (TITV) channel, which features programming for and by indigenous peoples of Taiwan, including news programmes, educational shows and variety shows. Here's a screenshot of a programme that is in (what I assume to be) the  Seediq language  (sometimes still classified with Atayal). And here's a screenshot of a news programme in what I assumed was the  Amis language  ('Pangcah' is the endonym for the group). Although I couldn't understand what they were saying, I did see that the story they were running was about Julia Gillard's  March 21  apology to victims of forced adoptions  in Australia. Her apology echoed Kevin Rudd's 2008 apology to victims of the Stolen Generation, a policy which I believe has some resonance among the indigenous people of Taiwan, given their own experience of institutionalised racism. Speakin...

Last month, I was in Taiwan for about a week with Mum. We spent a few days at Sun Moon Lake (日月潭), which we used as a base to visit our places, including Alishan (阿里山). The mornings and evenings were blissfully quiet without the hordes of tourists arriving by mid-morning. One thing I did not expect to see were signs for 'Assamese Black Tea' products, including this one for 'Assamese Black Tea' egg rolls. This signboard near the Shuishe visitor centre also mentioned 'Assam Black Tea Cuisine'. What I didn't realise was that in 1925 (or 1926), black tea from Assam was brought by the Japanese to the Sun Moon Lake area for cultivation. Apparently, the climate and soil conditions of the area are similar to those of Assam and so the tea thrived here. I have to admit, the area did remind me a little of North-east India, but mainly because of the extensive betel nut (areca nut) plantations filling the valleys! Today, black tea...

I just got to see  Phou-oibi, the Rice Goddess , as part of the  Tapestry of Sacred Music 2013 programme here at the Esplanade in Singapore.  It is described as a Manipuri ballad opera, performed by the Laihui Ensemble from Manipur in North-East India. It tells the story of a number of goddesses, including the Goddess of Fish, the Goddess of Water, the Goddess of Land, the Goddess of Metal, the Goddess of Wealth and the eponymous Goddess of Rice, Phou-oibi, who are sent by the Supreme God to the realm of humans, Lamlen Madam Madaima, to help them prosper. However, when they try to leave, they are stopped by the four protectors of the realm, under the orders of the Supreme God who believes that humanity will suffer once they leave. Phou-oibi, the Goddess of Rice, is the only one unable to escape - the stream she tries to cross turns into a huge river. Unable to cross the river, she meets a man, Akongjamba, who is out hunting. They meet and recognise instantly a connec...

India and its immediate neighbours celebrate not one, not two but... a bewildering number of New Year's Days  (not even counting the one in the Gregorian calendar, the Islamic New Year and Tibetan New Year). In fact, this week alone will see the start of a new year for a number of different communities across South Asia - and they don't all fall on the same day or signal the start of the same year! If you are Kannadiga or Telugu living in Karnataka or Andhra Pradesh, you would have celebrated Udagi on 11 April, and the start of the year 1935, according to the Saka Calendar . But in Nepal, 14 April 2013 will mark the start of the year 2070, following the Bikram Sambat calendar  (which is not to be confused with the Nepal Sambat calendar  where the current year, 1133, started last November). If you are Meitei / Manipuri you would have just celebrated  Sajibu Cheiraoba  on the same day as Udagi, but I have no idea what year you are in. Also, if you are Tamil,...

In my previous post , I looked at what the government had hoped to accomplish through its language policies, as summarised here in this quote from Lee Kuan Yew: "Our ideal was that the Chinese would be able to speak English and Mandarin, Malays would be able to speak Malay and English, and Indians would be able to speak Tamil and English. Alas, the situation did not develop as we had hoped." In this post, I consider the seeming perpetual need for English and Mandarin campaigns in Singapore. After all, English was meant to be the language of wider communication, and the 'mother tongues' were to be the language of each respective race. But even after decades of policy that has institutionalised and privileged languages like English and Mandarin (and involved the vilification of Chinese dialects), why do we still need the  Speak Good English Movement  (SGEM) and the  Speak Mandarin Campaign  (SMC)? [Note that despite falling use across  all ...