Parrot Time - Issue 1 - January 2013

Parrot TimeThe Thinking of Speaking Issue #1 January 201 3

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Contents

Parrot Time | Issue #1 | January 2013 3

06 The Rosetta Stone - Triple CypherIn Egypt, the key to unlocking the mysterious hieroglyphics, theRosetta Stone, was caught up in the lives of a boy king, aFrench general, and the work of two scholars, which wouldmake rivals of their countries.

20 At the Cinema - L’auberge Espagnole

1 4 Ferdinand de Saussure - Signs of LanguageWidely acclaimed as the father of modern linguistics of the 20thcentury, the swiss born linguist Ferdinand de Saussure was ateacher, scholar, and once a member of the Neogrammarians.His works inspired generations of linguists on two continents.

22 Languages in Peril - The Finno-Ugrics

26 Word on the Streets - The Russian Zone

30 Where Are You?

37 Revisited - SlangEnglish slang develops in many ways, even adopting anddistorting words from other languages. We look back to anarticle from almost one hundred years ago to see how accurateit proved to be.

Parrot TimeParrot Time is a magazine

covering language, linguisticsand culture of the world around

us.

It is published by ScriveremoPublishing, a division of

Parleremo, the language learningcommunity.

Join Parleremo today. Learn alanguage, make friends, have fun.

43 Language Learning Methods - AudioWe begin our first in a series of articles about language learningmethods with one of the most portable: audio.

Departments

Features

05 Letter From The Editor

42 We Are The LinguistsLinguists and students come together for their own version ofthe song “We Are The World”

Editor: Erik ZidoweckiEmail: [email protected]

Published by Scriveremo Publish-ing, a division of Parleremo.This issue is available online fromhttp://www.parrottime.com

The editor reserves the right toedit all material submitted. Viewsexpressed in Parrot Time are notnecessarily the official views ofParleremo. All rights of reproduc-tion, translation and adaptation re-served for all countries, exceptwhere noted otherwise. All copy-right material posted in the public-ation retains all its rights from theoriginal owner. Parrot Time, Par-leremo, officers and administra-tion accept no responsibilitycollectively or individually for theservice of agencies or persons ad-vertised or announced in thepages of this publication.

Cover: The bow of a boat,carved into a serpent head,looking out from EminonuPort, Tukey over the GoldenHorn. The Galata Tower canbe seen in the back.

32 Celebrations - Day of the Dead

46 Sections - Journals

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Letter From The Editor


MWelcome to the first issue of the new magazine,Parrot Time.

Most people are attracted to languages for at least one ofthree reasons. They might be interested in the science behindthem - the rules, the reasons one language evolves differentlyfrom another, the patterns they can see spanning multiplelanguages, and the theories of how the languages are unitedor divided. They might be interested in the culture of anothercountry - the traditions, foods, ways of viewing the world, andthe way that language is the doorway into all of those as wellas being reflected in them. They might be interested in thepure connection with the language itself - its sounds,rhythms, the way they touch the soul in a way nothing elsecan.

Any one of those reasons would and do provide enoughmaterial to fill dozens if not hundreds of magazines withthousands of articles. Parrot Time can not possibly begin tocover that vast expanse of knowledge, nor does it strive to doso. What it does hope to achieve is to bring a level of aware-ness and interest in various aspects of those areas of lan-guages, linguistics and culture. To that end, we will look atartifacts that have significant language influence or intrigue.A perfect example of one is the Rosetta Stone, which providedthe key to unlocking the ancient hieroglyphics. We will lookat famous linguists in both their personal lives and their con-tributions to the study of languages. We begin with Ferdin-and de Saussure and his theories of structuralism andsemiology. We will look at languages that are in danger of be-coming extinct, like three members of the Finno-Ugrics: Veps,Nenets and Komi. We will look at celebrations from aroundthe world, featuring Mexico's Day of the Dead in this first is-sue. We will discuss the varied methods that learners employto reach their language goals. We will discuss all these andmore.

Finally, Parrot Time is the magazine for the Parleremolanguage community. It will cover the happenings of thosemembers, the expansion of the website, and the reasons cer-tain things are the way they are. In this issue, we will belooking at three Russian literary giants who have streetsnamed after them in the Russian quarter.

We hope you will join us on this journey and in this com-munity. And we hope you will expand your thinking with thisnew Parrot Time.

A New Parrot Time

Erik ZidoweckiERIK ZIDOWECKIEDITOR IN CHIEF

The Rosetta Stone is anAncient Egyptian artifactwhich provided the key tounderstanding hieroglyphicwriting.

t is a black basaltfragment of a stela (afree-standing stoneinscribed with Egyp-tian governmental or

religious records) dis-covered in Egypt in1799. While ratherlarge, being three-quar-ters of a ton in weightand approximately120cm high, 75cm wide,

and 30cm deep (47in x30in x 12in), it is thewriting on it that madeit famous. It contains anancient royal decreewritten in the threescripts of Egyptianhieroglyphics, Demotic,and Greek, and thusprovided a connectionbetween the three.

The Rosetta Stone

TTrriippllee CCyypphheerr

I

The Rosetta Stone - Triple Cypher


HieroglyphicsOne of the oldest writing systems of the

word is Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics,which were used for nearly 3500 years, fromaround 3100 BC until the end of the fourthcentury AD. The name “hieroglyphics” camefrom the Greeks who discovered the writ-ings. They called it “ta hieroglyphica” or“sacred carved letters”. Hieroglyphics weremainly reserved for religious or government-al mandates, and the the language was usedto inscribe tombs, temples and other monu-ments.

Hieroglyphics were not letters like wethink of in our modern alphabets. They weresimple drawings of common natural and

man-made objects. They werenot, however, like cave paint-ings to represent basic ideas.They were richer than our ownalphabets, far more complexand more difficult to learn. Thenumber of glyphs used variedover time, from under one-thousand to almost six-thou-sand.

Part of the complexity wasthat glyphs were signs that in-

dicated sounds (called phonograms) or rep-resented complete words (called ideograms).Similar to modern Arabic and Hebrew, onlythe consonants were written, no vowels. Forexample, in English, the word “cloud” would

be spelled “cld”.However, this couldalso represent “cold”“could” “colada”. Totell the differencebetween such words,signs were addedcalled “determinat-ives”, which gave

specific meanings to certain words. In thecase of “cloud” as “cld”, the determinative forcloud would be placed at the end of theword. A determinative had no phoneticvalue.

One might wonder why they would both-er spelling out a word at all if they could justuse a determinative instead. For example,instead of using three glyphs to spell out“cld”, then adding a determinative, why not

just use a single glyph to represent a cloud?While determinatives didn’t representsounds, they did represent ideas, and theyinteracted with words differently. Think ofthem as putting a word into context. If inEnglish, someone uses the word “plant”,(“plnt”) you don’t know if they are referringto the act of planting or a living plant. Inthat case, you could use a determinativethat represents action to clarify the first,and another that means life to clarify thesecond. If you were using the word “plant” totalk about a factory, then a determinative forbuilding could be added.

Hieroglyphic inscriptions were normallywritten in rows from right to left or incolumns top to bottom. However, they mightalso be written from left to right, similar tomost modern alphabets. The way to tellwhich way to read an inscription was to lookat the direction toward which animals andpeople faced or walked. They always facedtoward the beginning of the line. To add tothe complication of reading, hieroglyphicshad no punctuation or spaces betweenwords or sentences.

HieraticBecause of these complexities, as well as

the sacred attachment of hieroglyphics, theEgyptians later developed hieratic, whichwas a sort of abbreviated version of hiero-glyphics. Despite the name, hieratic was nota derivative of hieroglyphics. The name“hieratic” derives from the Greek phrase

” (grammata hieratika; lit-erally “priestly writing”). This was first usedby Saint Clement of Alexandria in the

Sample ofhieroglyphics

Hieroglyphics carved into a wall

“The name “hieroglyphics”came from the Greeks whodiscovered the writings. Theycalled it “ta hieroglyphica” or“sacred carved letters”.


8 Parrot Time | Issue #1 | January 2013

second century AD, and at timeit was used only for religioustexts. Later, it was used to re-cord some government decreesand business transactions, butnot for sacred purposes. It wasmore commonly written with inkand brush on papyrus, andshows no indication of being adescendant of hieroglyphs,which were normally carved in

clay or stone. The two writingsystems more likely evolvedalong the same timeline, ratherthan one after the other.

DemoticOver time, a form of script

evolved from northern hieraticthat became very popular. It wascalled Demotic (from Greek:δηµοτικός dēmotikós, “popular”,not to be confused with demoticGreek). This became used formuch of the government docu-ments.

Around fourth century A.D.,Christianity had become morewidespread in Egypt, and hiero-glyphics were abandoned be-cause of their association withpagan gods. Demotic wasn’t ataboo language like hieroglyph-ics, so remained in use, buteventually evolved into Coptic.Coptic was a mix of the Greekalphabet and some Demoticcharacters for Egyptian soundsthat weren’t denoted by theGreek language. It was the firstalphabetic script used for theEgyptian language. Probablysoon after that, the knowledge ofhow to read hieroglyphics andhieratic was lost.

Ptolemic DynastyIn ancient times, Greece had

originally been united by Philipof Macedon, then ruled by Alex-ander the Great. After defeatingthe Persian forces, Alexander

then took his army to Egyptwhere he was welcomed as aconquering hero. The Egyptiansmade him a god and pharaoh,but he had other campaigns towage, so he took his army to theMiddle East and the Indus River

Valley, leaving a regent in chargeof Egypt.

When Alexander died in 323BC, his empire was dividedamong his three most trustedgenerals, and the throne ofEgypt came to Ptolemy I. TheEgyptians welcomed him as partof Alexander’s family, and he be-came a pharaoh, thus setting upthe Ptolemic Dynasty, the 32ndand last of Egypt’sgreat dynasties. Bytradition, all hismale successorswere called Ptolemyand all female oneswere named Cleo-patra (Greek for“father’s glory”).

Ptolemy IV(Ptolemy Pilopator)was a weak king, and when hedied at the age of 41, his son,Ptolemy Epiphanes, was only asmall boy of five and too youngto rule. Until he was old enough,

The beginning of the ancient Egyptian'Loyalist teaching' originally inscribed in

stone, but later copied in hieratic script ontopapyrus

Small sample of Coptic script

A tetradrachm(Ancient Greeksilver coin)portrayingPtolemy V

These decrees were set instone for all to read... inhieroglyphics, Demotic, andGreek.



the empire fell into turmoil asdifferent regents fought for con-trol. During this time, surround-ing empires, including theRoman, were vying for controland attempted to take advantageof the internal conflict. ThePtolemic Dynasty lost land inseveral areas.

In an attempt to restorepower and control, it was de-cided to coronate the then 13year old Ptolemy V in the city ofMemphis in 196 BC. To furthersolidify his royal credentials, aseries of royal decrees werepassed by a council of priests toaffirm the dynasty of kings. Thedecrees praised Ptolemy, claim-ing him as the manifestation ofdivine grace, and portraying theyoung king as a great benefactorof Egypt who adorned thetemples of Egypt’s traditionalgods, cancelled debts, reducedtaxes, freed prisoners, and nu-merous other deeds.

These decrees were set instone for all to read. During thePtolemic Dynasty, both Egyptianand Greek languages were used,so to make sure that as manypeople as possible could readthese decrees, they were writtenin hieroglyphics, Demotic, andGreek.

Napoleon and the EgyptCampaign

Around the turn of the 19thcentury, prominent French gen-eral Napoleon Bonaparte begana campaign of conquest overevery major European power. In1798, he turned his forces to-ward Egypt, hoping to take therecontrol and thus undermine Bri-tain’s trade route to India.

However, Napoleon didn’t justplan a military attack. Hewanted a complete infiltration ofEgypt, gathering informationabout Egypt’s past and presentpeople, environment, cultureand resources. Napoleonreasoned that to rule a country,one must know everything aboutit.

To that end, he assembled a“think tank” of scientists, schol-ars, mathematicians, chemists,archaeologists and more. Hecalled them the “Institute ofEgypt”, and they accompaniedhim on the invasion when hisforces landed off the coast ofEgypt at Aboukir Bay in August1798. However, the British navycrushed most of the French fleet,leaving Napoleon and his armystranded.

Finding the Rosetta StoneNapoleon was able to return

to France and continue his waragainst the world, leaving sometroops to maintain control aswell as the scientists to do theirwork. They settled in around theNile Delta, and while the military

built forts, the Institute collectedartifacts.

During the summer of 1799,Napoleon’s soldiers tore downsome ancient walls to expandFort Julien in the town ofRosetta (modern day Rashid),near Alexandria. Captain Pierre-Francois Bouchard found ablack stone when guiding thework, and noticing that it wascovered in ancient writing,turned it over to the Institute.

The Institute’s scholars wereable to determine that the stonewas some kind of decree andimmediately began attempts totranslate it. They named thestone the “Rosetta Stone” inhonor of the town in which itwas discovered, and they madeseveral copies of the writing onit, which was in three scripts.They had found a piece of one ofthe decrees about Ptolemy V,though they didn’t know it at thetime.

British forces landed onAboukir Bay and were finallyable to overcome the Frenchtroops in 1801. A dispute thenarose over the artifacts and find-

Around the turn of the 19th century, prominent French general Napoleon Bonaparte began acampaign of conquest over every major European power.

In 1798, he turned his forces toward Egypt, hoping to take there control and thus undermineBritain's trade route to India.

Napoleon's troops in Rosetta



ings of the Institute. The Frenchwanted to keep them for theirown, but the British consideredthem forfeit in the name of KingGeorge III and wanted to takethem back to England. One ofthe scientists, Etienne GeoffroySaint-Hilaire, wrote to the Eng-lish diplomat William RichardHamilton, threatening to burnall the discoveries, in referenceto the burning of the Library ofAlexandria (destroyed during aMuslim invasion in 642). TheBritish gave in and insisted onlyon the delivery of the artifacts.The scientists attempted to hidethe Rosetta Stone but failed, andthey were only allowed to takethe plaster casts and copies ofthe text they had made. TheStone was brought back to Bri-tain and presented to the BritishMuseum in 1802.

Translating the StoneThe easiest part of the Stone

to translate was the Greek, forwhile knowledge of the Greeklanguage and alphabet were lim-ited among certain scholars, theWestern world had become ac-quainted with Greek centuriesago, during the Renaissance. In1802, the Reverend Stephen We-ston completed his translation ofthe Greek text. While this didn’tgarner much attention, it wouldprovide the basic text to buildthe other translations upon.

In 1802, French scholarAntoine-Isaac Silvestre de Sacyand Swedish diplomat Johan

DavidÅkerbladboth setabout totranslatetheDemoticportionof theStone.De Sacywas ableto detectthe prop-er namesof

“Ptolemy” and “Alexander” in thetext and used those as a startingpoint for matching up soundsand symbols. Åkerblad, however,approached the work using hisknowledge of the Coptic lan-guage. He noticed some similar-ities between the Demotic andCoptic inscriptions, and by com-paring these, he was able to de-code the words “love,” “temple”and “Greek.” He attempted touse those as a basic outline forthe rest of the translation. Hemanaged to find the correctsound values for 14 of the 29signs, but he wrongly believedthe demotic hieroglyphs to beentirely alphabetic.

Both de Sacy’s and Åkerbladwork, however, provided vitalclues, and an English polymath(a person whose expertise coversa significant number of subjects)Thomas Young was able to com-pletely translate the Demotictext in 1814. He then startedwork on deciphering the hiero-glyphics.

When hieroglyphics hadbeen first discovered, one of theearliest attempt at translating

them came from a fifth-centuryscholar named Horapollo. He setup a translation system basedupon hieroglyphics’ relation toEgyptian allegories. This hypo-thesis led to 15 centuries ofscholars dedicat-ing themselves tousing this trans-lation system asthey tried to de-code the ancientwritings. However,they all failed, be-cause the basicpremise, it wouldturn out, was false. Some of thelater scholars that were workingon it were the German JesuitAnthonasius Kircher, the Eng-lish bishop William Warburtonand the French scholar NicolasFreret.

Young made an importantbreakthrough in the same yearthat he completed the Demoticwhen he discovered the meaningof a cartouche. A cartouche is anoval-shaped loop that around aseries of hieroglyphic characters,and he realized that these car-touches were only drawn aroundThe Rosetta Stone

Thomas Young

Historical canons in modern day Rosetta. There is arepresetation of the Rosetta Stone with a plaquebetween them.



proper names. That enabled him to identi-fy the name of Ptolemy. Figuring that aname sounds similar across languages,Young parsed out a few sounds in thehieroglyphic alphabet using Ptolemy’sname and the name of his queen,Berenika. However, Young was also relyingon Horapollo’s premise that pictures cor-responded to symbols, so he couldn’t quitefigure out how phonetics fit in. Young gaveup the translation but published his pre-liminary results in 1818.

A former student of de Sacy namedJean François Champollion had also beenstudying the hieroglyphics of the RosettaStone since he was 18, in 1808. He pickedup where Young left off, but didn’t makemuch headway for a few more years. Then,in 1822, he was able to examine some oth-er ancient cartouches. One contained fourcharacters, with the last two being thesame. After identifying the duplicated let-ter as being “s”, he looked at the firstcharacter, and guessed it to represent thesun. Here, Champollion made a leap usinghis knowledge of Coptic, in which the wordfor sun is “ra”. This gave him the name of“ra-ss”, and he only knew of one namethat would fit: Ramses, another Egyptianpharaoh.

This connection between hieroglyphicsand Coptic showed to Champollion thathieroglyphics wasn’t based on symbols orallegories at all. They were phonetic, sothe characters represented sounds. Hewas then able to correct and enlargeYoung’s list of phonetic hieroglyphs, andfinally, using this knowledge and compar-ing to the other translations of the Demot-ic and Greek, translate the rest of theStone.

That same year, his achievement wasannounced in a letter he wrote to the

French Royal Academy of Inscriptions, inwhich he outlined the basic concepts ofhieroglyphic script: Coptic was the finalstage of the ancient language, the hiero-glyphs were both ideograms and phono-grams, and the glyphs in cartouches werephonetic transcriptions of pharaohs’names. The hieroglyphics code had beenbroken.

PoliticsBoth France and Britain competed on

many levels over the Rosetta Stone. Afterthe initial struggle of ownership, their wasalso a disagreement about who did the“real work” of translating. The Britishclaimed that Young completed the Demot-ic and made the breakthrough on thehieroglyphics by figuring out the car-touches. The French claimed that Cham-pollion was the true translator, for it washis insight using Coptic that led to thetranslation.

Moreover, when Champollion pub-lished his translation in 1822, Young and

others praised his work, butYoung published his ownwork on it in 1823, to ensurehis contribution to Champol-lion was recognized, evenpointing out that many of hisfindings had been sent toParis in 1816. Young had in-deed found the sound valuesof six of the glyphs, but hadnot been able to determinethe grammar of the lan-guages. Champollion wasunwilling to share the credit,however, further dividing thecountries.

The two countries remain

Part of Champollion'swork on decypheringthe hieroglyphics

Jean FrançoisChampollion

Hieroglypicsshowing acartouche

Experts inspecting the Rosetta Stone during theInternational Congress of Orientalists of 1874



competitive to this day on whoshould get credit and whoshould own the Stone. While theRosetta Stone was being dis-played in Paris in 1972, in celeb-ration of 150 years sinceChampollion published his find-ings, rumors flew that Parisianswere plotting to secretly steal theStone. There was even disagree-ment over the portraits of Youngand Champollion that were dis-played alongside the Stone, withthem being of unequal sizes andthus glorifying one scholar overthe other.

The Egyptian governmenthas also been involved with itsown claims. In 1999, Egyptmade it well known that theywould not be celebrating the bi-centennial of the finding of theStone because it was in thehands of the British. They hadwanted Western countries togive back Pharaonic period mas-terpieces, including the RosettaStone, in 1996, but UNESCOagreements grant the right to re-cover items only on those stolenafter 1971. Still, in 2003, Egyptagain requested the return of theRosetta Stone. The British Mu-seum sent them a replica in2005, but refused to give up theStone.

The issue of ownership isvery tricky. While technically theRosetta Stone and all the relicscaptured by the British from thedefeat at Alexandria were legally

obtained, and their release gran-ted by representatives of the na-tional government which ownedthem, that is not the same stateof Egypt that exists today. TheFrench could also give possibleclaim to the Stone as spoils ofwar.

Also, the Rosetta Stone isnot like other artifacts found inthe exchange. It is not a work ofart, or religious icon, and itsvalue arose from the potentialinformation it could yield as akey in the decipherment ofhieroglyphs. Therefore, while it apiece of Egyptian heritage, itsimportance was only fulfilled bythe work of the Europeans, bothFrench and British, who trans-lated it. Without that, it wasonly one of thousands of stoneswith writing on it.

For this reason, it has beenseen by some as a piece of“world heritage”, and therefore itshouldn’t matter where it is dis-played. An exact copy also existsin the Egyptian Museum ofCairo, but the politics of whohas the original is likely to con-tinue for a very long time.

ConclusionThe importance of the

Rosetta Stone in its aid to deci-phering Egyptian hieroglyphicscan not be overstated. It un-locked the unknown history ofso much of the ancient Egyptianculture. So much has since

been learned about their history,ways of life, beliefs, and techno-logical advances. It has alsoaided in solving the mysteries ofthe pyramids and other ancientevents. We still don’t know howfar its importance will stretch, asEgyptian artifacts, in the form ofpharaohs’ tombs, are still beingdiscovered. Ironically, while theStone was originally made tobolster a weak king, its existenceopened up the history of all thekings and civilizations that hadbeen lost with the knowledge ofthe hieroglyphics. PT

The Rosetta Stone on display

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e laid thefoundation formany develop-ments in lin-

guistics, and hisperception of linguist-ics as a branch of ageneral science ofsigns, which he called

“semiology” would in-fluence many genera-tions to come. Hiswork also laid the ba-sic foundation for theconcept known asstructuralism in thelarger fields of the so-cial sciences.

H

Swiss born linguist Ferdinand de

Saussure is widely recognized as

the creator of the modern theory

of structuralism as well as the

father of modern linguistics of

the 20th century.

Ferdinand de Saussure

Signsof

Language

Ferdinand de Saussure - Signs of Language


His LifeFerdinand de Saussure was born on

November 26, 1857, in Geneva, Switzer-land, into a family of well-known scient-ists.

Young Ferdinand was a bright andeager student, and he showed promiseearly on in the area of languages. Helearned Latin, Sanskrit, Greek, English,German, and French. His mentor at thatage was the eminent linguist Adolphe Pict-et who encouraged the young man to pur-sue his growing passion for languages.

Because of his parent’s work, he at-tempted to follow in their footsteps and

began attending the prestigi-ous University of Geneva in1875, studying chemistryand physics. He was onlythere a year, however, beforehe convinced his parents toallow him to go to Leipzig in

1876 to study linguistics.He studied Sanskrit and comparative

linguistics in Geneva, Paris, and Leipzig,as well as a variety of courses at the Uni-versity of Geneva, and commenced gradu-ate work at the University of Leipzig in1876.

While in Leipzig, he became part of acircle of young scholars known as theNeogrammarians. Karl Brugmann, aprominent member of the group, was oneof his mentor. Hewas also close toKarl Verner andothers in the group.

Two years later,in 1878, Saussure,now 21, publishedhis first full-lengthbook, “Mémoire surle système primitifdes voyelles dansles langues indo-européenes” (Dis-sertation on thePrimitive VowelSystem in Indo-European Lan-

guages). It was considered by most as abrilliant work, and the book launched deSaussure’s reputation as a new expert be-cause of its contributions to the field ofcomparative linguistics. This work also re-vealed an important discovery in the areaof Indo-European languages that becameto be known as de Saussure’s laryngealtheory. However, the theory would not be-come widely accepted until the mid-20thcentury. De Saussure also published “Re-marques de grammaire et de phonetique”(Comments on Grammar and Phonetics)in 1878.

In 1880, he completed his doctoraldissertation and graduated summa cumlaude from the University of Leipzig.Shortly afterwards he moved to Paris andbegan lecturing on ancient and modernlanguages.

His first professional work in the fieldof linguistics was as a teacher at the ÉcolePratique Des Hautes Études in Paris.There, he taught numerous languages, in-cluding Lithuanian and Persian, which hehad added to his range of languages. Healso became an active member of the Lin-guistic Society of Paris, in which he servedas its secretary in 1882. He remained atthe École Practique for 10 years beforeleaving in 1891 to accept a new positionas professor of Indo-European languagesand comparative grammar at the Uni-versity of Geneva.

A linguistic system isa series of differencesof sounds combinedwith a series ofdifferences of ideas.

University of Leipzig



De Saussure lectured onSanskrit and Indo-European aswell as teaching historical lin-guistics at the University ofGeneva for the remainder of hislife. It wasn’t until 1906 thatSaussure began to teach hiscourse of “General Linguistics”.It was this class which wouldbecome the basis for his per-haps most influential work “ACourse in General Linguistics”.This was published in 1916,three years after his death, andwas edited entirely by two of hisstudents, Charles Bally and Al-bert Sechehaye. The book trans-formed the comparative andhistorical philology 19th-centuryinto the 20th-century contem-porary linguistics.

While living and teaching inGeneva, de Saussure marriedand had two sons. Saussurecontinued to lecture at the uni-versity for the remainder of hislife until his death from canceron February 22, 1913.

There has been indication,through historical records, thatde Saussure had a great fear ofpublishing any of his works un-til they were proven to be abso-lutely accurate. Therefore, manyof his works were never releasedduring his lifetime, and many ofhis theories have since been ex-plained in books by other au-thors.

Also, according to RobertGodel, in an essay in “CahiersFerdinand de Saussure”, deSaussure was “terrified” when in1906 the University of Genevaasked him to teach a course onlinguistics, because he believedhimself not qualified for the job.Godel wrote that de Saussure“did not feel up to the task, andhad no desire to wrestle with theproblems once more. However,he undertook what he believedto be his duty.”

The editors of his posthum-ous work, “A Course in GeneralLinguistics”, Bally andSechehaye have been criticizedfor not clearly showing how theirprofessor’s ideas evolved as well

WhoWere The Neogrammarians

The Neogrammarians (also known asYoung Grammarians, GermanJunggrammatiker) were a German groupof linguists, originally at the University ofLeipzig, in the late 19th century. Thegroup flourished between 1875–1893, andits primary members were KarlBrugmann, August Leskien, HermannOsthoff, and Berthold Delbruck. Mostmodern linguists share theNeogrammarians’ objective approach tolanguage data and their insistence on itssystematic nature.

They proposed the Neogrammarianhypothesis of the regularity of soundchange, in which a diachronic sound change affects simultaneously allwords in which its environment is met, without exception. That is, ifwithin a language, the way a letter or combination of letters ispronounced is alterred, all words using that combination immediatelyhave their pronunciations change within the same area the change hasbeen implemented.

The Neogrammarian hypothesis was the first hypothesis of soundchange to attempt to follow the principle of falsifiability according toscientific method (any exception that can be reliably reproduced shouldinvalidate the simplest theory). However, today this hypothesis isconsidered more of a guiding principle than an exceptionless fact,because numerous examples of lexical diffusion (where a sound changeaffects only a few words at first and then gradually spreads to otherwords) have been shown.

Other contributions of the Neogrammarians to general linguistics were(from Routledge dictionary of language and linguistics):

The object of linguistic investigation is not the language system,but rather the idiolect, that is, language as it is localized in theindividual, and therefore is directly observable.

Autonomy of the sound level: being the most observable aspectof language, the sound level is seen as the most important levelof description, and absolute autonomy of the sound level fromsyntax and semantics is assumed.

Historicism: the chief goal of linguistic investigation is thedescription of the historical change of a language.

Analogy: if the premise of the inviolability of sound laws fails,analogy can be applied as an explanation if plausible. Thus,exceptions are understood to be a (regular) adaptation to arelated form.



as for not making clear that deSaussure rarely believed his in-novative concepts to be whollyformed.

Scholars have also citedevidence that de Saussure wasstrongly influenced by his aca-demic peers, William DwightWhitney and Michel Bréal, sug-gesting that de Saussure’s theor-ies were not as original as theywere once believed to be.

Before he died, de Saussurehad told some friends that hewas writing up his lectures him-self, but no evidence of this wasfound. In 1996, eighty yearslater, a manuscript in Saus-sure’s handwriting was found inhis family home in Geneva. Thisproved to be the missing originalof the work, and in 2002, “ÉcritsDe Linguistique Générale” (Writ-ings in General Linguistics, pre-pared by Simon Bouquet andRudolf Engler) was published.

This new textual source an-swers several questions aboutwhat de Saussure believed. Italso brings to light new elementswhich require a revision of thelegacy of Saussure, and call intoquestion the reconstruction ofhis thought by his students inthe Course in General Linguist-ics.

TheoriesDe Saussure brought about

many changes in linguistic stud-ies. He emphasized a synchronicview of linguistics in contrast tothe earlier diachronic view. Thesynchronic view looks at thestructure of language as a func-tioning system in whole at anygiven point of time. The dia-chronic view looks at the way alanguage develops and changesover time. This distinction wasconsidered a breakthrough andbecame generally accepted.

His work was wide ranging,and the three most predominantcontributions are those dealingwith Indo-European philology(Laryngal Theory), the relationsbetween words and rules (Struc-turalism), and the combinations

of “signs” in a language (Semi-ology).

Laryngeal TheoryIn Saussure’s first major

publication, which dealt withIndo-European philology, heproposed the existence of“ghosts” in Proto-Indo-European(PIE) called “primate coeffi-cients”. The Scandinavian schol-ar Hermann Möller suggestedthat these might be laryngealconsonants, leading to what isnow known as the laryngeal the-ory, and the sounds becameknown as “laryngeals”.

These consonants havemostly disappeared or have be-come identical with othersounds in the recorded Indo-European languages, so theirformer existence has had to bededuced primarily from their ef-fects on neighbouring sounds.There were three such laryn-geals: h1, the “neutral” laryn-geal; h2, the “a-colouring”laryngeal; and h3, the “o-colour-ing” laryngeal.

The theory did not begin toachieve any general acceptanceuntil Hittite was discovered anddeciphered in the mid-20th cen-tury. At that point, it became ap-parent that Hittite had

phonemes (tiny sound units thathelp distinguish between utter-ances), for which the laryngealtheory was the best explanation.

Nowadays, the existence ofthese sounds is widely acceptedby philologists, mainly becauseproposing their existence helpsexplain some sound changesthat appear in the language des-cendents of PIE.

It is most likely that deSaussure’s attempts to explainhow he was able to make sys-tematic and predictive hypo-theses from known linguisticdata to unknown linguistic datastimulated his development ofstructuralism.

StructuralismDe Saussure created two

terms to define a way to look atlanguage. The first, “parole”,which is French for “speech”,refers to the sounds that a per-son makes when speaking, or agraphic representation of thatsound. The same paroles mightexist in multiple languages, buthave very different meanings.The second term, “langue”,which is French for “language”,refers to the system of conven-tions and rules that are appliedto paroles, to make them under-

Synchronic vs. Diachronic Linguistics

Two ways of studying languages are synchronic and

diachronic linguistics. Synchronic is the study of a language

at a certain point. It looks at the way the language works at

a particular point, like Shakespearean English. The English

of that time is different from Modern English. Diachronic is

the study of the changing state of language over time. That

would compare the differences between Shakespearean

English and Modern English, seeing how the first became

the second. In a sense, it's looking at languages as an

evolving being rather than a fixed entity.



standable between people. As anexample, the sound we make inEnglish for “see” ([si:]), has mul-tiple meanings in English: it is averb meaning to visualize withan eye, a large body of water,and a letter of the alphabet. Weunderstand its meaning by itscontext, which is part of therules set up in the langue.Moreover, the same parolemeans “yes” or “if” in Italian,and is understood by the langueof that language.

Both of these ideas are in-tegral to the modern theory ofstructuralism. De Saussure putforth that a word’s meaning isbased less on the object it is re-ferring to and more on its struc-ture. That is, when a personselects a word, he does so in thecontext of having had thechance to choose other words.This idea adds another dimen-sion to the chosen word’s mean-ing, since humans normallyinstinctively base a word’smeaning upon its difference fromthe other words which were notchosen. So the words we use aredecided upon by our refining ourmeanings in a logical, structuredfashion.

De Saussure’s theories onthis subject laid down thefoundations for the struc-turalist schools in both so-cial theory and linguistics.His impact on the develop-ment of linguistic theory inthe first half of the 20thcentury is huge. Two cur-rents of thought cameabout independently ofeach other.

In Europe, the mostimportant work was beingundertaken in the PragueSchool. Nikolay Trubetzkoyand Roman Jakobsonheaded the efforts of thePrague School in setting thecourse of phonological the-ory for the decades follow-ing 1940. Jakobson’suniversalizing structural-functional theory of prim-atology, which dealt with

how primates developed lan-guages, was the first successfulsolution of a plane of linguisticanalysis, using the de Saus-sure’s hypothesis. In the Copen-hagen School, Louis Hjelmslevproposed new interpretations oflinguistics from the structuralisttheoretical framework.

In America, de Saussure’sideas helped guide LeonardBloomfield and the post-Bloom-fieldian Structuralism practices.These influenced such research-ers as Bernard Bloch, CharlesHockett, Eugene Nida, George L.Trager, Rulon S. Wells III, andthrough Zellig Harris, the youngNoam Chomsky. This further in-fluenced Chomsky’s theory ofTransformational grammar, aswell as other contemporary de-velopments of structuralism,such as Kenneth Pike’s theory oftagmemics, Sidney Lamb’s the-ory of stratificational grammar,and Michael Silverstein’s work.

Outside the field of linguist-ics, the principles and methodsemployed by structuralism wereadopted by scholars such as Ro-land Barthes, Jacques Lacan,and Claude Lévi-Strauss, andwere implemented in their vari-ous areas of study. However,

their broad interpretations of deSaussure’s theories, whichalready contained ambiguities,and their application of thosetheories to non-linguistic fieldssuch as sociology and anthropo-logy, led to some theoretical dif-ficulties and proclamations ofthe end of structuralism in thosestudies.

SemiologyWhile de Saussure seems to

have veered off the path estab-lished for him by his scientificrelatives, he was and still iswidely regarded as a scientist.His perception of linguistics as abranch of science he called se-miology (the theory and study ofsigns and symbols) and throughhis teachings, he encouragedother linguists to view languagenot “as an organism developingof its own accord, but as aproduct of the collective mind ofa linguistic community.”

De Saussure’s “Course inGeneral Linguistics” laid out anotion that language may beanalyzed as a formal system ofdifferent elements, which he re-ferred to as “signs”. Within alanguages, these signs evolveconstantly. A sign comprises of

Modern day University of Geneva



two parts: the signifier (what itsounds or looks like in vocal orgraphic form) and the signified(the object the signifier repres-ents).

For example, a small objectthat can be held in the hand andholds a liquid for drinking wouldbe the “signified” of the sound“cup”, which would be the signi-fier. The relationship betweenthe two parts of the sign, deSaussure postulated, is hazyand the parts may be impossibleto separate because of their ar-bitrary relationship. There is noparticular reason that the sound“cup” is applied to that particu-lar object, as can be easilyshown by looking at its name inother languages (tasse, cupán,filxhan, kop, bolli, cangkir).

Moreover, because of this ar-bitrary nature of the relation-ship, signifiers can shift within alanguage over time. The meaninghappens only when people agreethat a certain sound combina-tion indicates an object or idea.Then this agreement creates a

“sign” for the object or idea.Without that, nothing has mean-ing.

We know what a cup isthrough its relationship to otherthings. It holds water, unlike abook, while a lake also holds wa-ter, but we can’t hold that in ourhands to drink from it. Ourminds, therefore, develop con-cepts because of these relation-

ships. When we form theserelationships because of whatother objects are not, we areforming negative relationships,known as “binary oppositions”.

Followers of Saussure haveextended this two part structureof signs to a three part one, inwhich the signified is an idea orconcept (like the idea of holdinga liquid in an object) and the ob-ject itself is called the “referent”.

Despite his many and for-midable contributions to thefield of linguistics, de Saussurehas been criticized for narrowinghis studies to the social aspectsof language, thereby omitting theability of people to manipulateand create new meanings.However, his scientific approachto his examination of the natureof language has had impacts ona wide range of areas related tolinguistics, including contem-porary literary theory, decon-structionism (a theory of literarycriticism that proposes thatwords can only refer to otherwords and which tries to showhow statements about any wordssubvert their own meaning), andstructuralism.

Fan or critic, however, onemust concede that Ferdinand deSaussure’s contributions to hisfield as well as others were farreaching and revolutionary, andhave influenced generations ofscholars. PT

(1 878) Mémoire sur le système primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo-européenes

(Memoir on the Primitive System of Vowels in Indo-European Languages)

(1 878) Remarques de grammaire et de phonetique (Comments on Grammar and

Phonetics)

(1 91 6) Cours de linguistique générale (Course in General Linguistics); ed. C. Bally and A.

Sechehaye, with the collaboration of A. Riedlinger, Lausanne and Paris: Payot; trans. W. Baskin

(1 993) Saussure’s Third Course of Lectures in General Linguistics (1 91 0–1 911 )

(2002) Écrits de linguistique générale (Writings in General Linguistics) (edition prepared by

Simon Bouquet and Rudolf Engler)

WORKS

At the Cinema - L'auberge Espagnole


’auberge Espagnole is a filmby French writer and directorCedric Klapisch. It tells thestory of Xavier, a French stu-dent who spends a yearstudying Economics in Bar-

celona via the Erasmus program. Itfollows his adven-tures of dealing withanother culture,various affairs, andan apartment full ofother students fromall over Europe.

The movie itselfdoesn’t have astraight forward plotor goal, which mayconfuse some people.Instead, it is more ofa collection of scenesthat show some ofthe stuff that Xavierand those aroundhim deal with. Since life itself doesn’thave a single plot, I found this setupto be more believable.

The name of the movie seems tocause confusion. It won an award atthe 2002 Karlovy Vary Film Festival as“Euro-pudding”, played in Spain as“Una Casa de Locos”, in the UK as“Pot Luck” and in North America as“The Spanish Hotel” before finally set-tling on the title “L’auberge Es-pagnole”, which is the Spanish versionof the American title.

There are countless reviews ofthis 2002 movie, so I don’t plan on do-ing a point by point review of its plotsor events. Rather, I want to talk aboutwhy this movie is of interest to lan-guage learners and travelers. From the

start, this is a French movie takingplace largely in Spain, so both thoselanguages are included. Xavier lives inan apartment with six other students,each from other countries, so add onEnglish (British, not American),Catalan, Danish, German and Italian.

In regards to the other students,they are mostly stereotypes, whichmight upset a few people. I found thestereotypes to be funny and played offwell against each other. One of thebest scenes to show this is whenXavier is first interviewed to see if theywill accept him as a new flatmate. Youhave the flatmates seated around thetable, arguing over which questionsthey should be asking as well as ex-plaining where they are from, whileXavier just looks on, thinking in hishead (parts of the movie have himnarrating in this fashion) how muchhe wants to be a part of them.

There are other scenes like this.One scene shows Wendy (the Englishwoman) answering the phone in the

At the Cinema

“

L'auberge Espagnole

The movie itselfdoesn't have astraight forward plotor goal, which mayconfuse some people.

L

L'Auberge EspagnoleR 1 22 minComedy / Romance / Drama1 9 June 2002 (France)

Country:France & Spain

Language:French, Spanish, English,

Catalan, Danish, German,I tal ian

At the Cinema - L'auberge Espagnole


apartment to find Xavier’smother on the other end. Notunderstanding French, Wendychecks the wall by the phonewhich has a chart on it, show-ing various phrases, groupedby language. The humour inthis scene is her misunder-standing the French for “uni-versity” (faculté). Thishighlights the confusion thatcan happen in a multilingualenvironment, in which manylanguage learners have prob-ably found themselves in, bychoice or accident.

Another scene showing thedynamics of the flatmates in-volves the refrigerator. Theyhave divided the refrigerator in-to sections for each flatmate,and there is some friction whenanyone puts something in thewrong place. A quick scenelater shows the refrigerator nowin total chaos, with just thenarrative “The refrigerator sor-ted itself out”.

One of the main discus-sions regarding languages in-volves theclashbetweenCatalan andSpanish inSpain. TheErasmusstudents arefrustratedthat theirprofessorinsists onlecturingthem inCatalanwhile they

are still just learning Spanish.When they ask him to useSpanish, he tells them it wouldbe unfair to the other students(although they speak bothSpanish and Catalan), andsays if they want to speak

Spanish, go to Madrid or SouthAmerica.

This follows up with ascene with Xavier and Isabelle(a woman from Belgian) talkingto other students about iden-tity, culture, and language.Isabelle later says it’s a drag tobe torn between two languages,and Xavier points out that Bel-gium has Flemish and Walloon,but Isabelle tells him that’s notthe same. She tells her she isFlemish, that she doesn’t speakWalloon, and when she goes toFlanders, she tells them she isFrench so they speak French toher. Essentially, your own situ-ation isn’t strange.. just others.

There are numerous otherscenes which show differencesbetween the cultures and lan-guages, so I would recommendthis to anyone with an interestin either of those. It’s also justa generally fun movie to watch.PT

“One of the main discussionsregarding languages in-volves the clash betweenCatalan and Spanish inSpain.

Quotes

These are some quotes from the

movie to give you a sense of the

ideas in it.

(Quotes are taken from the

IMDB)

Xavier: When you first arrive in a

new city, nothing makes sense.

Everythings unknown, virgin...

After you've lived here, walked

these streets, you'll know them

inside out. You'll know these

people. Once you've lived here,

crossed this street 10, 20, 1000

times... it'll belong to you

because you've lived there. That

was about to happen to me, but I

didn't know it yet.

Xavier: Later, much later, back in

Paris, each harrowing ordeal will

become an adventure. For some

idiotic reason, your most horrific

experiences are the stories you

most love to tell.

Isabelle: It's contradictory to

defend Catalan at the very

moment we're creating a

European Union.

Catalan Student: I don't agree.

First of all, because we're

dicussing identity. There's not

one single valid identity, but

many varied and perfectly

compatible identities. It's a

question of respect. For example,

I have at least two identities: my

Gambian identity, which I carry

internally, and my Catalan

identity. It's not contradictory to

combine identities.

Xavier: I'm French, Spanish,

English, Danish. I'm not one, but

many. I'm like Europe, I'm all

that. I'm a real mess.

Languages in Peril - The Finno-Ugrics


There are thousandsof languages that are indanger of becoming ex-tinct. Here, we will belooking at three of themthat are a member of theFinno-Ugric family:Veps, Nenets and Komi.

If you mention theFinno-Ugric language groupto a language geek (since anon language geek will justlook at you like you’ve growna third head), chances arethey will only be able to tellyou of two or three lan-guages in it: Finnish, Esto-nian and Hungarian.

There are, however, aswith most language groups,a number of lesser knownrelated languages. We aregoing to look at three ofthem.

VepsVeps, or Vepsian (native:

vepsän kel’, vepsän keli, orvepsä) is spoken by, unsur-prisingly, the Vepsians (alsoknown as Veps). Thesepeople mainly live Russianow, and the language hasthree main dialects, spokenin specific regions. CentralVeps is spoken in the SaintPetersburg region and west-ern Vologoda Oblast. South-ern Veps is also spoken inthe Saint Petersburg region.

Northern Veps, the most dis-tinctive dialect, is spokensouth of Petrozavodsk andnorth of the river Svir.Speakers of this dialect referto themselves as “ludi” or“lüdilaižed”.

Vepsbelongs tothe Balto-Finnicbranch ofthe Finno-Ugric lan-guages andhas closeties to both Karelian andFinnish. It only has approx-imately 6 thousand speak-ers, a sharp drop from areported 12 thousand fromSoviet statistics in 1989 (al-though all the Soviet statist-ics related to this arequestionable), and that islargely in the older genera-tion; younger people are not

likely to learn it. Efforts weremade to revive it and at thestart of the 20th century,schools were started forteaching Veps. At the sametime, a written version was

created us-ing a form ofthe Latin al-phabet.Vepsprimers andtext bookswere pub-lished start-ing in 1932,but an as-

similation policy was intro-duced in the Soviet Union,and with the Vepsians beinga minority group, theseschools were closed down,the teachers were thrown inprison, and the textbookswere burned. Many Vepsi-ans gave up the languageand, being surrounded byRussians, adopted Russian

as their languageinstead.

In 1989, ef-forts were restar-ted to revive thelanguage, but theyhave not beenlargely successful,and the number ofnative Vepsspeakers contin-ues to declinetoday. Now, InRussia, over 350children are learn-

Whether it can berevived... or not willdepend on how manyof these children willpass it on to the nextgeneration

A Soviet textbook for native speakers of Veps printed inthe 1930s.

Languages in Peril

The Finno-Ugrics



ing the Vepsian language in fivenational schools. Whether it canbe revived and the decline re-versed or not will depend on howmany of these children will passit on to the next generation.

NenetsAnother Finno-Ugric lan-

guage, belonging to the Sam-oyedic branch, is Nenets (native:Ненэця’ вада / Nenėcjaˀ vada).The name “Nenets” is taken fromtheir word for “man”. The nativeterm for their language is “n’en-ytsia vada”. And older term“Yuraks” is more widely knownoutside of the former Soviet Uni-on and is taken from the Komiword “yaren” referring to Sam-oyeds. It has two main dialects,spoken in northern Russia bythe Nenets people.

The first dialect is TundraNenets and is more widelyspoken with over 30 thousandspeakers than the second dia-lect, Forest Nenets, which hasjust 1-2 thousand speakers. Un-like the dialects of Veps, whichare mutually intelligible, Tundraand Forest Nenets have only avery limited mutual intelligibil-

ity, so much so that they aresometimes referred to as separ-ate languages. Both have beengreatly influenced by Russian,but Tundra Nenets has alsobeen influenced by NorthernKhanty and Komi, while ForestNenets has adopted aspects ofEastern Khanty. The dialects ofKhanty are mutually unintelli-gible, so these influences furtherdivide the Nenets dialects. Komiwill be discussed further later.

The Nenets were first writtenusing pictographic symbolscalled “tamga”. Orthodox mis-sionaries, like modern linguists,

tried to create a written form forTundra Nenets and in 1830,archimandrite VenyaminSmirnov published some reli-gious texts using one of theseforms. In 1895, some spellingbooks for Tundra Nenets werecreated, but they did not last. Aliterary language for it was es-tablished around 1931 using a

Latin alphabet, but this waschanged to Cyrillic in 1937 andis still in use today. Forest Nen-ets was only first written in the1990s using the Cyrillic alpha-bet as well.

Both of the Nenets are con-sidered endangered languages,but Forest Nenets is on the seri-ously endangered list, which en-compasses those languages withfew children learning the lan-guage.

KomiNow Komi (or Zyrian, or Ko-

mi-Zyrian) has a much largernumber of speakers then Nenetsor Veps, with over 350 thousandspeakers, mainly in the KomiRepublic of northern Russia.This language is part of thePermic branch of the Finno-Ugrics and is closely related tothe other member of thatbranch, Udmurt.

Komi has several dialectswith two main dialects. Komi-Zyrian is the largest of the dia-lects, spoken in the Komi Re-public, and it is used as themain literary basis for that area.The second dialect, Komi-Yo-dzyak, is spoken in the southernparts of the Komi Republic aswell as in a small area of Perm.Both dialects are closely relatedand mutually intelligible.

Komi has gone throughquite a number of writing sys-tems over the centuries. Thewriting system Komi first usedwas the Old Permic script, in-vented by a missionary in the14th century. The alphabetseemed to be a mix of medievalGreek and Cyrillic. In the 16thcentury, this was replaced bythe Russian alphabet with somemodifications. In the 17th cen-tury, Komi adopted the Cyrillicalphabet then changed again inthe 1920s with another modifiedCyrillic alphabet, Molodtsov. Itchanged to the Latin alphabet inthe 1930s, then in the next dec-ade converted back to Cyrillicwith a few extra letters. In itscurrent form, it has seven vow-

If a language could havean identity crisis, .. Komiwould be a likelycandidate for one.

Nenets family in their chum



els. If a language could havean identity crisis (and somewill argue they can), Komiwould be a likely candidatefor one.

The Komi language is“definitely endangered”,

meaning children no longerlearn the language as theirmother tongue at home. In1989, the First Komi Na-tional Congress establisheda Komi National RevivalCommittee, which managedto get Komi and Russiandeclared coequal state lan-guages in the Komi Repub-lic, but progress in revivingit beyond that has beenlimited.

CommonalityA common tie in the

Finno-Ugric languages isthe absence of grammaticalgender, a trait shared withEnglish. They also have arich case system which canbe daunting to first timelearners. They are also nor-mally agglutinative innature, meaning words are

comprise of morphemes at-tached together withoutmany changes happeningbetween them. Each of thesemorphemes has its ownmeaning, so a normal Finno-Ugric verb will consist ofseparate morphemes whichrelate the tense, aspect andagreement.

Now you know moreabout the Finno-Ugric lan-guages in general as well asabout some lesser knownmembers than probably didbefore. Next time one of yourfriends mentions he or sheis learning Finnish or Hun-garian, you can ask them ifthey have considered one ofthese other related lan-guages. Then they can lookat you as if you’ve grown athird head. PT

Trilingual(Russian, Zyrianand English) signin a hotel inUkhta, KomiRepublic

Nenets children on a sled. If endangered languagesaren’t passed on to the children, they cannot survive.

Turkey

Turkey is a richly historical country featuring incredible landscapes and naturalwonders bordered by four different seas. People all over the world come forrelaxing beach holidays, many sporting activities, and some of the best cuisineyou will ever taste. The scenery will sweep you away, from white-sand beaches tosoaring mountains, and the welcoming Turkish hospitality will bring you backagain and again.

EEssccaappee ttoo TTuurrkkeeyy ttooddaayy!!

TThhee ssttrreeeettss ooff PPaarrlleerreemmooaarree nnaammeedd aafftteerr ffaammoouusswwrriitteerrss ffoorr tthhee llaanngguuaaggee ooffeeaacchh qquuaarrtteerr.. TThhiiss iiss wwhheerreewwee ttaakkee aa qquuiicckk llooookk aattwwhhyy tthheeyy aarree ffaammoouuss..

Word on the Streets

The Russian Zone

Words on the Street - The Russian Zone


Mikhail Lermontov was afamous Russian romantic writer,poet and painter, considered to bethe greatest Russian poet, secondonly to Pushkin. His influence onRussian literature is felt even todayand his works can be easily quotedfrom memory by millions ofRussians. His had his firstpublished poem, “Spring”, in 1830.One of his greatest works was“Borodino”, a poem describing theBattle of Borodino, the major battleof Napoleon’s invasion of Russia,was first published in 1837.

However, his works weren’talways appreciated. Expressing hisand his countries anger at the deathof Pushkin in 1837, he composedthe passionate “Death of the Poet” in

which he accused the inner circlesof the government to be complicit inPushkin’s death. Tsar Nicholas Ibanished Lermontov to theCaucasus for his impertinence.

Lermontov finished his greatestwork, the novel “A Hero of Our Time”in 1839, which featured adisenchanted young noblemannamed Pechorin. It earned himwidespread acclaim, but it alsodescribed a duel which was similarto the one which eventually took hislife. In July of 1841, a russian armyofficer named Nikolai Martynov tookoffense to one of Lermontov’s jokes,challenged him to a duel, andLermontov was killed by the firstshot.

Bibliography• Spring, 1830, poem• A Strange Man, 1831, drama/play• The Masquerade, 1835, verse play• Borodino, 1837, poem• Death of the Poet, 1837, poem• The Song of the Merchant Kalashnikov, 1837,poem• Sashka, 1839, poem• The Novice, 1840, poem• A Hero of Our Time, novel• Demon, 1841, poem• The Princess of the Tide, 1841, ballad• Valerik, 1841, poem

OnlineWorks by Mikhail Lermontov at ProjectGutenberghttp: //www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/l#a469

Translations of various poems by MikhailLermontovhttp: //www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/lermontov/lermontov_ind.html

Various Lermontov poems in Russian withEnglish translations, some audio fileshttp: //max.mmlc.northwestern.edu/~mdenner/Demo/poetpage/lermontov.html

Texts of various Lermontov workshttp: //i l ibrary.ru/author/lermontov/index.html

Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov(Russian: Михаиtл Юtрьевич Леtрмонтов)1 5 October 1 81 4 – 27 July 1 841

улица Лермонтова



Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin was thevery first Russian writer to win theNobel Prize for Literature and hiscollection of works in poetry andstories is said to be one of therichest in the Russian language.

He won his award based mainlyon his autobiographical novel “TheLife of Arseniev”, published in 1939,but his list of works was extensiveboth before and after that. He wasalso best known for his short novels“Dry Valley” (1912) and “The Valley”(1910) and his cycle of nostalgicstories “The Dark Alleys” (1946).

Bunin was friends with andinfluenced by many of the great

literary giants of the time. He metand became close friends with AntonChekhov, as well as Maxim Gorky,to whom he dedicated a collection ofpoetry, “Falling Leaves” (1901). Healso met Leo Tolstoy in 1894 andwas infatuated with his prose.Bunin tried to match Tolstoy’s ownlifestyle, and was even sentenced tothree months in prison fordistributing Tolstoyan literature in1894, but he managed to avoiddoing the time due to a generalamnesty when Nicholas II took thethrone.

Bunin died in 1953, the sameyear as Joseph Stalin, of a heartattack.

BibliographyShort story collections• To the Edge of the World and Other Stories1897• Flowers of the Field, 1901• Bird’s Shadow, 1913• Ioann the Mourner, 1913• Chalice of Life, 1915• The Gentleman from San Francisco, 1916• Chang’s Dreams, 1918• Temple of the Sun, 1917• Primal Love, 1921• Scream, 1921• Rose of Jerico, 1924• Mitya’s Love, 1924• Sunstroke, 1927• Sacred Tree, 1931• Dark Avenues, 1943• Judea in Spring, 1953• Loopy Ears and Other Stories, 1954

Novel• The Life of Arseniev, 1939

Short novels• The Village, 1910• Dry Valley, 1912• Mitya’s Love, 1924

Poetry• Poems (1887–1891)• Under the Open Skies, 1898• Falling Leaves, 1901• Poems, 1903• Poems of 1907• Selected Poems, 1929

OnlineIvan Bunin site. Collection of biographies,articles, photos and memoirs. (In Russian)http: //bunin.niv.ru/

Bunin: Biographies, photos, poems, prose,diaries, critical essays (in Russian)http: //noblit. ru/content/category/4/56/33/

Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin(Russian: Иваtн Алексеtевич Буtнин)22 October 1 870 – 8 November 1 953

улица Бунина



Ivan Andreyevich Krylov isRussia’s best known fabulist (writerof fables). His stories used animalsto satirize social and individualfaults in the tradition of Aesop andLa Fontaine. Some of his early workin 1805 was translating many of LaFontaine’s own stories until herealized he could write his own, andthese are still an integral part ofRussian primary and secondaryeducation today.

Krylov wrote three plays In 1807that became quite popular andsuccessful on the stage. “TheFashion Shop” and “A Lesson Forthe Daughters” were especiallysuccessful because they mocked thenobility’s attraction to Frenchlanguage, fashion and manners.They were performed many time, butdespite the successes, Krylov quitplaywriting and began devoting moretime to fables.

In a single year he wrote 17 fablesand in 1809 his first fable collectionwas published under the title"Basni". He then devoted himselfentirely to the genre, and throughthat got the attention of the imperialfamily and was given a job in the St.Petersburg public librarian, wherehe worked as librarian for 29 yearswhile writing his fables and otherworks.

Many honors were given toKrylov during his lifetime. TheRussian Academy of Sciences madehim a member in 1811, andbestowed on him its gold medal in1823. A great festival was held in1838 under imperial sanction in acelebration jubilee of his firstpublication. A statue of him wasbuilt in the Summer Garden in 1855and remains one of the most notablemonuments in St.Petersburg. By hisdeath 1844, over 77,000 copies ofhis fables had been sold in Russia.PT

Selected works• Cofeinitsa, 1782 [The Fortune-Teller]• Filomena, 1786• Amerikancy, 1788• Prokazniki, 1788 [The Mischief-Makers]• Trumf / Podshchipa, 1799• Modnaia lavka, 1807 [The Fashion Shop]• Urok dochkam, 1807 [A Lesson forDaughters]• Basni, 1809 [Fables]• Novyia basni, 1811• Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 1847 (3 vols.)• Krilof and his Fables, 1869 (tr. by C.Fillingham Coxwell)• Polnoe sobranie basen I. A. Krylova, 1900

• Kriloff’s Fables, 1920 (tr. by C. FillinghamCoxwell)• Russian Fables of Ivan Krylov, 1942 (tr. byBernard Pares)• Sochineniia, 1955 (2 vols.)• Fifteen Fables of Krylov, 1965 (tr. by GuyDaniels)• Sochineniia, 1969 (2 vols.)• ’Eulogy to the Memory of My Grandfather,’1971• Krylov’s Birds and Beasts, 1990 (tr. by E.E.Ralphs)• Polnoe sobranie dramaticheskikh sochinenii,2001 (ed. by L.N. Kiseleva)

Ivan Andreyevich Krylov(Russian: Иваtн Андреtевич Крылоtв)1 3 February 1 769 – 21 November 1 844

проспект Крылова

Where Are You?


Although born as a fishing village in the 14th cen-tury, this city had gone through tremendous changesin its lifetime. Basque fishermen moved into its areain the 16th century, and it fell mostly under RomanCatholic influence. It proceeded to then isolate itselffrom the rest of its country.

The village was “found” at the end of the 19th cen-tury by European painters, creating a sort of Renais-sance phenomenon. Books in the 1870’s told of thevillage’s charm, and, with the help a local entrepren-eur who took the opportunity to promote the village,organized tourism blossomed. In modern day, ahotel restaurant bares his name and contains a largecollection of paintings he collected as payment forservices rendered.

Sadly, at the start of the 20th century, reclamation ofa shallow inlet ended this village’s livelihood, asmany dikes were built which turned the once thriv-ing fishing waterways into farmland.

To survive, the village needed to diversify, and star-ted bringing in even more “outsiders”. It also re-formed itself, suppressing some of its customs andcostumes to become more “modern”, much like Rus-sia did under Peter the Great. Except that this wasn’tdictated by a powerful leader, but rather by the needto survive as a community.

In the fifty-one years between 1938 and 1989, thepopulation exploded from a mere 1,000 to 17,000.Today, it still manages to retain much of its historicalcharm, even promoting the costumes it once workedto suppress. It has become one of the richest “vil-lages” of its country, flourishing under its strongtourist industry. Despite losing its “fishing village”status, seafood is always in abundance. It is alsoknown for its pottery, as well as giving its countrysome of its finest soccer players and pop musicians.

Can you name this city and country?

Where Are You?

Graveyard visit at the Day of theDead celebration in Leon,Guanajuato, Mexico. The graves areabove ground and burial rights arefor a l imited time. Each squarerepresents a grave. On November 1 ,family members visit the departedones, bring flowers and clean up thegraves.

Celebrations - Day of the Dead


Every year in Mexico, at the start ofNovember, people celebrate and remembertheir family members and loved ones thathave died in a festival called “Día de losMuertos” (“Day of the Dead”). People gathertogether to pray, honor and reacquaintthemselves with their deceased with food,flowers, parades and dance. It takes placeon November 1, to coincide with the Catholic

holidays of AllSaints’ Dayand All Souls’Day (which isNovember 2).

The tradi-tion can betraced backover 3000years, to theAztecs thatwould take aday each yearto seem tomock death.At least, that

is how it would appear to the Spanish Con-quistadors that landed on what is now mod-ern day Mexico over 500 years ago. Theindigenous people kept skulls as trophiesand would put them on display during thisto symbolize death and rebirth. This month

long celebration was held onthe ninth month of the AztecSolar Calendar (about thesame as our August). The nat-ives viewed death not as theend of life but as a continu-ation of it, which they em-braced. They felt that only in

death, does one truly become awake fromthe dream of life. Their festival was presidedover by the Aztec goddess Mictecacihuatl,whom the natives called “Lady of the Dead”.

To the Spaniards, this was viewed asbarbaric, and as part of the effort to convert

the natives to Catholicism, they tried to puta stop to the festival, but failed. They thendecided to make it more “Christian” by mov-ing it to the start of November, to matchtheir own Catholic celebration, much theway Christmas was moved to December to“Christianize” the pagan Winter Solstice cel-ebrations.

The modern Day of the Dead has its own“Lady of the Dead” in the form of the Catrina(sometimes spelled “Catarina”). In 1910,Mexican artistJosé GuadalupePosada createdan image hecalled “La Ca-lavera de la Ca-trina” (skull of therich woman) in aparody of a Mex-ican upper-classfemale. Whilemost of his workswere meant to besatirical, afterthis death theybecame associ-ated with thisholiday, and Ca-trina images and

Some also believepossessing Day ofthe Dead items willbring them goodfortune

Family altar

Participant in Catrina costume

Day of the Dead celebrations at the cemetery of San AntonioTecómitl, Mexico.

Celebrations

DDaayy ooff tthhee DDeeaadd


Celebrations - Day of the Dead

items are now a very prominent part of the celeb-ration.

On the day, people visit cemeteries to be withthe spirits of their dead and build private altarscontaining the favorite foods, photos and memor-abilia of the departed. This is to encourage visitsby the souls, so the souls will hear the prayers

and the words of theliving for them. Thesecan be sad or humor-ous as the parti-cipants rememberfunny events andstories about the de-

parted. Altars may also be built at home, usuallycontaining a Christian cross and icons of theBlessed Virgin Mary, many candles, and offerings(“ofrenda”).

These offerings take many forms. For deadchildren (“los angelitos”, or “the little angels”), toysare brought, while bottles of tequila or jars of atole(a traditional masa-based non-alcoholic hot drink)are set out for adults. Candy, “bread of the dead”(“pan de muerto”), and other foods are also setout, for some people believe the dead eat the “spir-itual essence” of these foods. Thereare even little skulls made of sugar.

One of the most common symbolsof the holiday is the skull (“calavera”)which is incorporated into foods (likethe sugar skulls), masks, costumesand face paints. Many foods andtreats are also made to look likeskulls and bones. Some also believepossessing Day of the Dead items willbring them good fortune, so theycarry dolls of the dead and get tat-toos. In some parts of Mexico, theyhave even started a custom similar tothe trick-or-treating of Halloween inwhich the children go around knock-ing on people’s doors for small gifts ofcandy or money.

Other Day of the Dead celebra-tions are held in various parts of the

world on the same day,largely originating fromthe Mexico tradition.Brasil has its “Dia deFinados” in whichpeople visit churchesand cemetaries. Spaindoes similar, along withfestivals and parades.African and Asian cul-tures have similarevents. For a centuriesold tradition that theSpaniards tried to des-troy, the Day of theDead tradition is verymuch.. alive! PT

They felt that only indeath, does one trulybecome awake fromthe dream of life.

Hillside decorated with shrines to loved ones.

Pan de muerto, eaten on the Day of the dead

Candles for the dead on the Day ofthe Dead, Farkasréti Cemetery,

Budapest, Hungary

Vocabulary

Día de los Muertos

La Calavera de la Catrina

ofrenda

los angelitos

pan de muerto

calavera

- Day of the Dead

- skul l of the rich woman

- offerings

- the l ittle angels

- bread of the dead

- skul l

The Parleremo 2013 Calendar is now availableonline! This beautiful calendar is full of imagesfrom countries around the world along withdescriptions of their languages.

The countriesincludeMalta,Finland, India,Latvia, Lao andthe languagesinclude Amharic,Xhosa, Kannada,Pashto andPanjabi.

Available in both PDFformat and individualimages suitable for yourcomputer desktopwallpaper!

Don'tspendanotherdaywithout it!

http: //www.parleremo.org/deskcalendar

Revisted - Slang


[ Editor's note: This article is a re-print from "Stories That WordsTell Us" By Elizabeth O'Neill. Itwas published in 1918, but stillgives a good insight on how andwhy slang is made. Also, comparewhich slang words it talks to arestill in use today and see if its pre-dictions proved true. ]

very child has someidea of what is meantby "slang," becausemost schoolboys and

schoolgirls have been correctedfor using it. By slang we meanwords and expressions whichare not the ordinary words forthe ideas which they express,but which are invented as newnames or phrases for theseideas, and are at first knownand used only by a few peoplewho use them just amongthemselves. There are all kindsof slang--slang used by school-boys and schoolgirls in general,slang used by the pupils ofeach special school, slang usedby soldiers, a different slang

used by their officers,and even slang used bymembers of Parliament.

The chief value ofslang to the people whouse it is that at first, atany rate, it is only un-derstood by the inventorsand their friends. Theslang of any publicschool is continuallychanging, because assoon as the expressionsbecome known and usedby other people the in-ventors begin to invent oncemore, and get a new set ofslang terms. Sometimes aslang word will be used foryears by one class of peoplewithout becoming common be-cause it describes something ofwhich ordinary people have noexperience, and therefore donot mention.

The making of slang isreally the making of language.Early men must have inventednew words just as the slang-makers do to-day. The differ-ence is that there are already

words to describe the thingswhich the slang words de-scribe. It may seem curious,then, that people shouldtrouble to find new words. Thereason they do so is often thatthey want to be different fromother people, and sometimesbecause the slang word ismuch more expressive than theordinary word.

This is one reason that theslang of a small number ofpeople spreads and becomesgeneral. Sometimes the slangword is so much better in this

EWould like some swish on your bagel?

RReevviissiitteedd

Slang

Revisited - Slang


way than the old word that it be-comes more generally used thanit, and finds its way into the or-dinary dictionaries. When thishappens it is no longer slang.

But, as a rule, slang is uglyor meaningless, and it is very of-ten vulgar. However common itsuse may become, the best judgeswill not use such expressions,and they remain mere slang.

A writer on the subject ofslang has given us two good ex-amples of meaningless and ex-pressive slang. The people whofirst called marmalade "swish"could have no reason for invent-ing the new name except to seemodd and different from otherpeople. Swish is certainly not amore expressive or descriptiveword than marmalade. The onemeans nothing, while the otherhas an interesting history com-ing to us through the Frenchfrom two old Greek words mean-ing "apple" and "honey."

The expressive word whichthis writer quotes is swag, aslang word for "stolen goods."There is no doubt that swag is amuch more expressive wordthan any of the ordinary wordsused to describe the same thing.One gets a much more vivid pic-ture from the sentence, "Thethieves got off with the swag,"than he would had the wordprize or even plunder or bootybeen used. Yet there is no signthat the word swag will becomegood English. Expressive as it is,there is a vulgar flavour about itwhich would make people whoare at all fastidious in their lan-guage very unwilling to use it.

Yet many words and phraseswhich must have seemed equallyvulgar when first used havecome to be accepted as goodEnglish. And in fact much of ourlanguage, and especially meta-phorical words and phrases,were once slang. It will be inter-esting to examine some ex-amples of old slang which havenow become good English.

One common form of slangis the use of expressions connec-

ted with sport as metaphors inspeaking of other things. Thus itis slang to say that we were "inat the death" when we mean thatwe stayed to the end of a meet-ing or performance. This is, ofcourse, a metaphor from hunt-ing. People who follow thehounds until the fox is caughtand killed are "in at the death."

Another such expression is to"toe the mark." We say a personis made to "toe the line" or "toethe mark" when he or she issubjected to discipline; but it isa slang phrase, and only goodEnglish in its literal meaning ofstanding with the toes touchinga line in starting a race, etc., sothat all may have an equalchance.

We say a person has "hit be-low the belt" if we think he hasdone or said something unfair inan argument or quarrel. This isa real slang phrase, and is onlygood English in the literal sensein which it is used in boxing,where it is against the rules to"hit below the belt." The term

"up to you," by which is ex-pressed in a slang way that theperson so addressed is expectedto do something, is a slang ex-pression borrowed from cards.

Even from these few ex-amples we can see that there arevarious degrees in slang. A per-son who would be content to usethe expression "toe the line"might easily think it rathercoarse to accuse an opponent of"hitting below the belt." Therecomes a time when some slangalmost ceases to be slang, andthough good writers will not useit in writing, quite serious peoplewill use it in merely speaking. Ithas passed out of the stage ofmere slang to become a "collo-quialism."

The phrases we have quotedfrom present-day sport whenused in a general sense are stillfor the most part slang; butmany phrases taken from oldsports and games, and whichmust have been slang in theirtime, are now quite good Englishand even dignified style. Wespeak of "wrestling with a diffi-culty" or "parrying a thrust" (ametaphor taken, of course, fromfencing), of "winning the palm,"and so on, all of which are notonly picturesque but quite dig-

But, as a rule, slang isugly or meaningless, andit is very often vulgar.

They were once "cabriolet" but got shortened to "cab" then evolved into "taxicab."Now they are "taxicabs", "taxis" or "cabs", depending on which slang was adopted.

Revisted - Slang


nified English.A very common form of

slang is what are called"clipped" words. Such wordsare gov for "governor," bikefor "bicycle," flu for "influ-enza," indi for "indigestion,"rec for "recreation," loony for"lunatic," pub for "publichouse," exam for "examina-tion," maths for "mathemat-ics." All of these words arereal slang, and most of themare quite vulgar. There is nosign that any of them will be-come good English. The mostlikely to survive in ordinaryspeech is perhaps exam.

[ Editor: Note that most ofthese slang terms are eitherstill in use or have completelyreplaced the originial word.We visit a "pub", not a "publichouse". ]

Yet we have numbers ofshort words which have nowbecome the ordinary namesfor certain articles, and yetwhich are only short forms ofthe original names of thosearticles. The first man whosaid bus for "omnibus" musthave seemed quite an adven-turer. He probably struckthose who heard him as alittle vulgar; but hardly anyone now uses the word omni-

bus (which is in itself an in-teresting word, being theLatin word meaning "for all"),except, perhaps, the omnibuscompanies in their posters.Again, very few people usethe full phrase "ZoologicalGardens" now. Children aretaken to the Zoo. Cycle for"bicycle" is quite dignified andproper, though bike is cer-tainly vulgar. In the hurry oflife to-day people more fre-quently phone than "tele-phone" to each other, and wecan send a wire instead of a"telegram" without any risk ofvulgarity. The word cab re-placed the more magnificent"cabriolet," and then with theprogress of invention we gotthe "taxicab." It is now theturn of cab to be dropped,and when we are in haste wehail a taxi. No one nowadays,except the people who sellthem, speaks of "pianofortes."They have all become pianosin ordinary speech.

The way in which goodEnglish becomes slang is wellillustrated by an essay of thegreat English writer DeanSwift, in the famous papercalled "The Tatler," in 1710.He, as a fastidious user ofEnglish, was much vexed bywhat he called the "continualcorruption of the English

tongue." He objected espe-cially to the clipping of words--the use of the first syllable ofa word instead of the wholeword. "We cram one syllableand cut off the rest," he said,"as the owl fattened her miceafter she had cut off their legsto prevent their runningaway." One word the Deanseemed especially to hate--mob, which, indeed, wasricher by one letter in hisday, for he sometimes wroteit mobb. Mob is, of course,quite good English now todescribe a disorderly crowd ofpeople, and we should thinkit very curious if any oneused the full expression forwhich it stands. Mob is shortfor the Latin phrase mobilevulgus, which means "excit-able crowd."

Other words to whichSwift objected, though mostof them are not the words ofone syllable with which hedeclared we were "over-loaded," and which he con-sidered the "disgrace of ourlanguage," were banter, sham,bamboozle, bubble, bully, cut-ting, shuffling, and palming.We may notice that some ofthese words, such as banterand sham, are now quitegood English, and most of theothers have at least passed

from the stage of slanginto that of colloquial-ism.

The word bamboozleis still almost slang,though perhaps morecommon than it was twohundred years ago,when Swift attacked it.Even now we do notknow where it camefrom. There was a slangword used at the timebut now forgotten--bam,which meant a trick orpractical joke; and somescholars have thoughtthat bamboozle (which,of course, means "to de-ceive") came from this.

A mexican cowboymight tell you to"vamoose". Thesemen have real"grit".

Revisited - Slang


On the other hand, it may have been theother way about, and that the shorterword came from the longer. The wordbamboozle shows us how hard it is formeaningless slang to become good Eng-lish even after a struggle of two hundredyears.

We have seen how many slangwords in English have become goodEnglish, so that people use with propri-ety expressions that would have seemedimproper or vulgar fifty or ten or evenfive years ago. Other interesting wordsare some which are perfectly good Eng-lish as now used, but which have beenborrowed from other languages, and inthose languages are or were mere slang.The word bizarre, which we borrowed

from the French, and whichmeans "curious," in a fant-astic or half-savage way, is aperfectly dignified word inEnglish; but it must havebeen a slang word at onetime in French. It meantlong ago in French "sol-dierly," and literally"bearded"--that is, if it camefrom the Spanish wordbizarra, "beard."

Another word which weuse in English has a much less dignifieduse in French. We can speak of the cal-ibre of a person, meaning the quality ofhis character or intellect; but in Frenchthe word calibre is only in ordinaryspeech applied to things. To speak of a"person of a certain calibre" in French isvery bad slang indeed.

Again, the word fiasco, which weborrowed from the Italian, and whichmeans the complete failure of somethingfrom which we had hoped much, was atfirst slang in Italian. It was applied espe-cially to the failure of a play in a theatre.To break down was far fiasco, which lit-erally means "make a bottle." Thephrase does not seem to have any veryclear meaning, but at any rate it is farremoved from the dignified word fiascoas used in English.

The word sack as used in describingthe sack of a town in war is a pictur-esque and even poetic word; but as itcomes from the French sac, meaning"pack" or "plunder," it is really a kind ofslang.

On the other hand, words which be-

long to quite good and ordinary speechin their own languages often becomeslang when adopted into another. Aslang word much used in America andsometimes in England (for American ex-pressions are constantly finding theirway into the English language) is va-moose, which means "depart." Vamoosecomes from a quite ordinary Mexicanword, vamos, which is Spanish for "letus go."

It is very interesting to find thatmany of our most respectable wordsborrowed from Latin have a slang origin.Sometimes these words were slang inLatin itself; sometimes they were usedas slang only after they passed intoEnglish. The French word tête, whichmeans "head," comes from the Latintesta, "a pot." (We have seen that this isthe word from which we get our wordtest.) Some Romans, instead of usingcaput, the real Latin word for "head,"would sometimes in slang fashion speakof some one's testa, or "pot," and fromthis slang word the French got their reg-ular word for head.

The word insult comes from the Lat-in insultarc, which meant at first "tospring or leap at," and afterwards cameto have the same meaning as it has withus. The persons who first used this ex-pression in the second sense were reallyusing slang, picturing a person who saidsomething unpleasant to them as"jumping at them."

We have the same kind of slang inthe expression "to jump down one'sthroat," when we mean "to complain vi-olently of some one's behaviour." Theword effrontery, which comes to us fromthe French effronterie, is really the sameexpression as the vulgar terms face andcheek, meaning "impudence." For theword comes from the Latin frons, "theforehead."

An example of a word which wasquite good English, and then came to beused as slang in a special sense, andthen in this same special sense becamegood English again, is grit. The wordused to mean in English merely "sand"or "gravel," and it came to mean espe-cially the texture or grain of stones usedfor grinding. Then in American slang itcame to be used to mean all that wemean now when we say a person has"grit"--namely, courage, and strength,and firmness. This use of the word

Besides thefact that slang

often becomes goodEnglish, we have tonotice that good

English often becomesslang.

Revisted - Slang


seemed so good that it rapidlybecame good English; but theAmerican slang-makers soonfound another word to replace it,and now talk of people having"sand," which is not by anymeans so expressive, and willprobably never pass out of therealm of slang.

An example of a word whichwas at first used as slang notmany years ago, and is now, ifnot the most elegant English, atleast a quite respectable word fornewspaper use, is maffick. Thisword means to make a noisyshow of joy over news of a vic-tory. It dates from the relief ofMafeking by the British in 1900.When news of its relief camepeople at home seemed to gomad with joy. They rushed intothe streets shouting and cheer-ing, and there was a great dealof noise and confusion. It wasnoticed over and over again thatthere was no "mafficking" oversuccesses in the Great War.People felt it too seriously tomake a great noise about it.

A slang word which has be-come common in England dur-ing the Great War is sträfe. Thisis the German word for "punish,"and became quite familiar toEnglish people through the hopeand prayer to which the Ger-mans were always giving expres-sion that God would "sträfe"England. The soldiers caughthold of the word, and it was verymuch used in a humorous wayboth at home and abroad. But itis not at all likely to become aregular English word, and per-haps will not even remain asslang after the war.

Besides the fact that slang

often becomes good English, wehave to notice that good Englishoften becomes slang. One of themost common forms of slang isto use words, and especially ad-jectives, which mean a great dealin themselves to describe quitesmall and ordinary things. Tospeak of a "splendid" or "magni-ficent" breakfast, for instance, isto use words out of proportion tothe subject, though of coursethey are excellent words inthemselves; but this is a mildform of slang.

There are many people nowwho fill their conversation withsuperlatives, although theyspeak of the most commonplacethings. A theatrical performancewill be "perfectly heavenly," anactress "perfectly divine." Apartfrom the fact that nothing andno one merely human can be"divine," divinity itself is perfec-tion, and it is therefore not onlyunnecessary but actually incor-rect to add "perfectly." A scene orlandscape may very properly bedescribed as "enchanting," butwhen the adjective is applied tooeasily it is a case of good Englishbecoming slang.

Then, besides the use of su-perlative adjectives to describethings which do not deservesuch descriptions, there is acrowd of rarer words used in aspecial sense to praise things.

Every one knows what a"stunning blow" is, but fewpeople can ever have beenstunned by the beauty of anoth-er's clothes. Yet the expression"stunning hat" or "stunning tie"is quite common. Expressionslike a "ripping time" are evenmore objectionable, because

they are even more meaningless.Then, besides the slang use

of terms of praise, there are alsomany superlatives expressingdisgust which the slangmongersuse instead of ordinary mild ex-pressions of displeasure. Tosuch people it is not simply "an-noying" to have to wait for a lifton the underground railways; forthem it is "perfectly sickening."

Horrid, a word which meansso much if used properly, is ap-plied to all sorts of slightly un-pleasant things and people.When one thinks of the literalLatin meaning of this word ("sodreadful as to cause us to shud-der"), the foolishness of using itso lightly is plain. People fre-quently now declare that theyhave a "shocking cold"--a de-scription which, again, is too vi-olent for the subject.

Another form of slang is tocombine a word which generallyexpresses unpleasant with onewhich expresses pleasant ideas.So we get such expressions as"awfully nice" and "frightfullypleased," which are actuallycontradictions in terms.

This kind of slang is theworst kind of all. It soon losesany spice of novelty. It is notreally expressive, like some ofthe quaint terms of school oruniversity slang, and it does agreat deal of harm by tending tospoil the full force of some of ourbest and finest words. It is verydifficult to avoid the use of slangif one is constantly hearing it,but, at any rate, any one whofeels the beauty of languagemust soon be disgusted by thisparticular kind of slang. PT

Coming in February

• Explore the Palace of Knossos and discover the secrets of Linear A

• Meet Edward Sapir and hear his theories on grammar and phonemes

• Hear of the history and possible end of Ladin, Friulian and Romansh

• Learn about Saint Valentine and his connection to love

We Are The WorldThere comes a timeWhen we heed a certain cal l ,When linguists must come together as one.There are people speaking,They bind and c-command;I t's grammar, the greatest gift of al l .

We can't go onPretending day by dayThat we know our language works in the brain.We are all a part ofGod's l inguist family,And the truth, you know, grammar's al l we need.

Chorus:We are the world,We are the l inguists,We are the ones who make a brighter dayBy making theories.There's a choice we're makingBy forming hypothesesAnd we'l l describe a languageJust you and me.

Send them a research groupSo they'l l know that someone caresAnd their data wil l be thoroughly explored.God has shown usBy turning stone to breadThat even a linguist must be fed.

Chorus

When you're criticizedThere seems no hope at al l ,But if you just bel ieveThere's a usage-based approach.Well , well , well , well , let us realizeThat debates wil l always comeEven though we stand together as one.

Chorus

We Are The LinguistsIn 201 0, on the 20th birthday of the Budapest ELTE-MTA Theoretical Linguistics Programme, some of the

professors and students created and performed their own version of "We Are The World".

Video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIol1 _ktcP4

soloists: László Kálmán, András Cser, Zoltán Bánréti, Csilla Novák, Attila Novák, Ádám Nádasdy, MiklósTörkenczy (Ágnes Füle), Zsófia Zvolenszky, András Máté;choir: some of the professors and students of the last 20 years of the Budapest ELTE-MTA TheoreticalLinguistics Programme


Language Learning Methods - Audio


When we talk about learn-ing a language, the most com-mon idea is probably of taking acourse, perhaps in a local uni-versity. However, there are manyother methods of picking up anew language that don’t requirelong classes with total strangersand high fees. A popular altern-ative is an audio course. Withthe increase in popularity of di-gital players and podcasts, thesehave increasingly become themethod of choice.

Audio courses are not a newidea, however. Ever since thefirst audio playback devices wasinvented, they have been usedas teaching tools for languages.A student could obtain a “longplaying” (LP) with relative ease.Over time, these became re-placed by cassettes, then CDs,and now digital files. The con-tents of these different mediumshave not evolved as much. Sincean audio recording isn’t truly“interactive” - one can only listenand respond but no one actuallyhears your response - it is up to

the learner to gauge their ownprogress. Most of the time, ifonly achieving the ability to beunderstood is desired, then thisis fine. But for true fluency to beachieved, some kind of feedbackfrom another person is required.

The methods used in theserecordings vary. Courses fromPimsleur, Berlitz, Barron’s andMichel Thomas are all popular,and invoke different ways ofpresenting their material. Theoldest method is to have the an-nouncer on the audio tell you aword in your native language,

like English, then have a nativespeaker say the equivalent word,leaving then a pause while thestudent repeats it. For example,an Italian course would have theannouncer say “Hello”, then anative Italian would say “Ciao”.There would be a pause (some-time preceded by the announcerencouraging the student to re-peat it) in which the learner isgiven the chance to respond with“Ciao”. This might be, at least atbeginner levels, repeated a fewtimes, having the word repeatedalternately by the native speaker

then the student. Finally, theannouncer announces the nextword, and the process is re-peated.

As you can imagine, learninga single word this way will takesome time, and therefore thevocabulary you can obtain froma single recording is severelylimited. Also, this method de-pends entirely on rote memoriz-ation. As the student progresses,the words become phrases, thephrases become longer and thenumber of repetitions is reducedas the student becomes more fa-miliar with the language’ssounds and patterns. A greatmany of the people using thesecourses were doing so not to be-come fluent so much as preparefor a vacation or business trip toanother country. To that end,the words and phrases taughtwere specialized to what mightneed in those situations. “Whereis the train station?” and “Howmuch does that cost?” would bepreferred to something like “Ilike red balloons” or “Would youlike to play chess, Boris?” (thatlast phrase was actually foundin an old cassette course forRussian).

The Pimsleur MethodPaul Pimsleur developed an-

other method that focuses onactive participation instead ofrote memorization. In these les-sons, the student repeats the

A great many of the peopleusing these courses weredoing so not to becomefluent so much as preparefor a vacation or businesstrip to another country.

Audio lessons were first recorded on LPs

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words and phrases spoken bythe native, as in the old courses.However, the student is alsomade to create new phrases byinference, thus making them ac-tually think about the language.For example, if they havelearned how to say “Where is themuseum?”, then the word for“hotel” might be given, and thestudent would be asked to “ima-gine” a situation in which theyhad to ask “Where is the hotel?”.

Another part of the Pimsleurmethod is to learn a long word inparts, starting from the end.This is not completely unlikehow children are taught to read -by sounding out each part of theword before saying it all at once.The benefit from this is that inprevious methods, a long wordor phrase can come out as ajumble that is too fast for a stu-dent to properly even hear beforebeing told to repeat it exactly.

The real breakthrough in thePimsleur method, if you can callit that, would most like be the“spaced repetition”. Once a per-son has learned a word in themore conventional method, theyare unlikely to use that wordmany more times during the

course. However, if they are ex-pected to reuse the word a fewminutes after they have learnedit, then at other intervals alongthe way, they are keeping thatknowledge at the front of theirthoughts and thus more likely toretain it. Spaced repetition sys-tems (SRS), while having beenfirst developed in 1932 by Pro-fessor C. A. Mace, have becomevery popular in recent years andwe will look at them more com-pletely in another article.

ConversationsWith the older courses

mainly being used to teach com-mon phrases for traveling, thenewer courses are more likely toemploy two native speakers whoare having a conversation. In

this way, the student has a morenatural way of hearing howsomeone might respond to whatthey say. Just because youmay learn how to ask “Whereis the museum?”, there is noway to guarantee you will un-derstand all or even part of theanswer you are given (“Overthere.”, “On 23rd street.”, “Gothree blocks that way thenturn left at the statue ofGaribaldi.”, etc). Conversationsare also used in most otherlearning methods, since theygo to the heart of why you arelearning the language.. tospeak with others. But theproblem of understanding theresponse is always the same. Itis a common joke in films toshow a tourist stumbling overa phrase from a book to askdirections of a native, only tohave the native then respondrapidly in a long stream of sen-tences to which the poor tour-ist can only stare in complete

confusion. Memorizing one ortwo possible short replies justwon’t be enough.

DrawbacksAs has already been men-

tioned, the first major drawbackto learning by audio is the slow-ness in building up a largevocabulary. Audio courses haveto go slow, by their very nature...they are completely linear andnon interactive in that they can’tbe sped up or slowed down de-pending upon the students cap-abilities. You also can’t justcasually find just the words youwill need. The lesson will go overall of them, regardless of theirusefulness to you. For example,if you are planning to be study-ing economy in Barcelona, youprobably don’t need to know thenames of animals. Ironically,you are unlikely to learn many ofeither of those categories, sincethe course will be telling teach-ing you about hotels and mu-seums.

And that brings us to thesecond point: specialization. Un-less you have access to a com-prehensive set of audio lessonswith thousands and thousandsof hours of material, you aren’tlikely to pick up what you arefocusing on. For example, oneperson might be trying to learnhow to get around in the citywhile another person will be try-ing to carry on conversationswith their family and a thirdperson might be wanting tolearn how to chat up foreign wo-men on the internet. There is noway you are going to be able to

Since they can be used justabout anywhere... theymight seem as a perfectsolution to people that feelthey don't have the time tolearn a new language.

Woman listeningto her MP3 player

An iPod, which can be used to play audiolessons



sort through and replay justwhat you want on your pocketMP3 player. You can direct yourlearning using other learningmethods like books, software,and websites. Even a phrasebook gives you more direct con-trol.

Of course, the most obviousdrawback to this method is thelack of spelling knowledge. Youmight know how to pronouncewords and phrases, but you stillwill have a very hard time hand-ling anything as simple as amenu. In some languages, therewon’t be much of a problem ifthe spoken and written formsare similar to what the studentis used to. However, if you arelearning a language with a verydifferent sound system, likeWelsh, or one with an entirelyalphabet, like Russian orHebrew, then the audio coursewill leave you clueless on basicliteracy. Some audio courses docome with some written materi-al, but it usually appears moreof an afterthought to the course.

It will also leave you very de-prived in terms of grammar.While you should be able tolearn some basic grammar rulesthrough the variants in thephrases, you won’t know howthose rules are really defined.For example, you might learn tosay “Come stai?” to a person inItalian yet at other times betaught to say “Come sta?”, youwouldn’t be sure when to usewhich. And what about a lan-guage that has nouns that aredeclinable? How do you learnwhich forms to use when if youhave just learned the word “car”in three different forms, depend-

ing on if it’s a subject, direct ob-ject or indirect object? And don’teven think about verbs, with alltheir forms and tenses. Withoutbasic grammar knowledge, youwill be hard pressed to createnew phrases beyond the mostbasic levels.

BroadcastsLessons on LPs, cassettes or

CDs are not the only kind of au-dio learning. Dating back to the1920s, people have broadcastnews and information to othersall around the world usingshortwave radios. The modernday British Broadcasting Cor-poration (BBC) began as “BBCEmpire Service” in 1932 forbroadcasting in shortwave. Earlybroadcasts were largely to gain alarger audience for normal radiobroadcasts which were limitedby their range (shortwave refersto a transmission method whichproduces, you guessed it, short-er and tighter wavelengths thatcould be bounced off the atmo-sphere to reach places furtheraway). After WWII, shortwavelistening became very popular,and many countries were notonly broadcasting in many lan-guages but also using suchbroadcasts to help studentslisten to other languages, music,and cultural information. BBCwas perhaps the biggest broad-caster, transmitting news tomany countries in their own lan-guages as well as courses inEnglish. One of the main reas-ons English is so widespreadnow is because of these lan-guage lessons.

PodcastsWith the rise of the internet,

broadcasting via shortwave hasbecome almost obsolete. Manyservices have reduced or ceasedentirely their broadcasts, movinginstead to the internet, usingstreaming radio or “podcasts”. Apodcast (named for the devicefor playing MP3s, the iPod, and“-cast” from “broadcast”) is aserialized audio program which

can be of any content. Sincebuying audio courses likePimsleur can be very expensive(the French I course fromPimsleur costs $345 on CDs,$120 on MP3s), podcasts havebecome a very popular alternat-ive. The content and methods ofthese podcasts will vary greatly,of course, since just about any-one with a microphone and re-cording software can create theirown. They are also likely to havemost of the same drawbacks asconventional audio courses. Oneadvantage, however, is thatsince they are obtained from theinternet, they are likely to havesome kind of accompanying in-teractive materials.

In general, audio courses area good way to get a personlistening to a new language andgive them some basic phrasesand words. Since they can beused just about anywhere, suchas in your car or your portabledevice, while you are doingsomething else, they might seemas a perfect solution to peoplethat feel they don’t have the timeto learn a new language. Peoplewho are intent on becoming flu-ent in a language, though, willfind that impossible relyingsolely on audio courses. Theyare simply too limiting in depthand content to provide a studentwith all they require. Theyshould be used as an introduc-tion and perhaps as a refresherfor hearing the language whileother materials are used as theprimary method of learning. Anhour with a book course couldeasily surpass several hourswith an audio course in terms ofactual material learned.

We hope you enjoyed thisfirst article in this series of lan-guage learning methods. Wewould like your thoughts andcomments on the article andyour experiences with audiocourses. Please write to us [email protected]. PT

An older portable shortwave radio

Sections - Journals


Sections is a mothly column about different

parts of Paleremo, explaining their purpose

and how to use them.

o matter how much grammar or vocabu-lary a person learns, the real test of a per-son’s ability in a language comes whenthey have to be able to create their ownwritings. If they do this on their own, there

is no real way to tell if they got everything correct.This is where many language learning methodslike listening to audio, using software and bookstudy fail while working online with other learnerscan really shine.

Two major ways in which people can practicewriting with others over the internet is using achat system or a forum. The chat may be througha web page or using a chat client and connectingto the IRC (Internet Relay Chat). A forum is wherepeople can post a topic and have others respond toit, then others respond to those responses. Both ofthese are good methods, but also have their owndrawbacks for the learner.

A chat is in real time, so a person has to re-spond quickly. This can be very intimidating for abeginner. Also, using a chat is by its very natureaimed at short statements in a conversation. Itdoesn’t really give the person a chance to writeabout things they might be interested in.

Using a forum take more time, so beginnerscan spend more time writing. However, the samerestriction is subtly placed on the content. It’s adiscussion environment, so it could be harder for aperson to write something that isn’t in the form ofstarting a topic to talk about, and if people aren’tinterested in the topic, they won’t respond.

A better solution is one in which a person hasthe time to write about anything they want and getspecific comments and tips from other speakers.This is a direct feedback on how they did and theyhave plenty of time to reflect on what they are told.A popular site online utilizes this method of learn-

ing: lang-8 (http://www.lang-8.com). Users selecta native language and target language of interest.They can write about anything they want in ajournal entry in their target language and nativespeakers will review it, making corrections andleaving comments.

Parleremo JournalsParleremo has its own version of this in the

Journals section. Any member can instantly writetheir own journals. They select a language that itwill be written in, give it a title, then write as muchas they want on whatever they want. Once theyare done, they select whether people can leavecomments and corrections or not. Each correctionhas a place for a comment, but there is a separatecomment section for an overall comment. Thisway, a person can choose what level of feedbackthey want. They can even turn off all commentsand corrections, turning their journal into a blog.

Once they have selected the level of feedbackallowed, they can then restrict who can read it. Itcan be open to anyone on the internet to read, butnon-members won’t be able to leave comments orcorrections. They can set it so that just memberscan see it, thus keeping it “in the community”.They can also restrict it so that just their “bud-dies” can read it. Lastly, if they are still hesitant toshare what they write, they can even keep itprivate.

Finally, they can add some words that will actas tags for people searching the journals. When aperson does a search, these tags help identify whatthe journal entry is about.

The editor for the entry is not the normal textform that is common on most online forms and

N

SSeeccttiioonnss

JJoouurrnnaallss

Sections - Journals


forums. It is a Rich Text editor, also called a WYSI-WYG (“What You See Is What You Get”), whichmeans it’s more like a word processor you mightuse on your computer. You can change font size,colour and type, add bold, underline, italics, andseveral other formatting commands and the textwill look just as it will when it’s posted. The usercan even insert web links and images, which reallyappeals to members using it as a blog.

Once the entry has been posted, anyone withpermission to view it can do so by selecting it froma list. The first part is the entry itself. Here, theycan read it as well as giving it an overall rating (1 -5 stars). For those cases in which the entry is be-ing used as a blog, there is also a translation but-ton which utilizes the Google Translate system toconvert the text into the readers language (as se-lected by them on the site). There are also somesocial networking buttons so people can share theentry with others on places like Facebook, Twitter,and more. An RSS feed is also available.

After the entry will be the list of comments andcorrections (if they are allowed by the entry) fromother users. It shows the commenter’s avatar andname, date of their post, the corrections theymade, and any comments associated with eachcorrection. Each correction also has a “like” but-ton, in the form of a “thumbs up” icon so that oth-er people can agree with the correction. This canhelp people see what corrections the most peopleagreed with. If the correction or comment is rudeor abusive, a reader can also report it to an admin-istrator to look at.

Next is the actual area in which a person canmake corrections and add comments. Each sen-tence from the entry is separated out and given itsown place. If the reader finds a problem with it,then can choose to correct it. A space will thenopen under it giving them the text in another RichText box so they can add, delete, colour, orwhatever else they feel will help show what is in-correct and how to fix it. If they don’t think that isenough of an explanation, they can add a furthercomment under the correction. Any previous cor-

rections are also with the text, so people are notlikely to make the same corrections to a part of thetext.

At the very bottom is a singular box for theoverall comment on the entry (again, if the originalauthor set it to be allowed). The reader then sub-mits all their corrections and comments.

Each member has a place where all theirjournal entries, if they have made any, are listed.These sections also tell how many were added inall, in the past week and in the past month.Journals can be listed by date written, number ofviews, ratings, and language. These options appearon the side of the main journal area. There is alsoa list of tags that have been used and how manytimes, so entries can be listed by those. If a user is

looking for text by content, there is a search func-tion for that as well.

Finally, there is a statistics area so an over-view of all the journals can be seen. Here, all thelanguages that journal entries have been writtenare listed along with how many of each. Otherstatistics include the total number of comments,corrections, the average rating, and who made themost entries, comments and corrections.

For those that don’t know what to write about,there is a page of possible topics to choose from.These are of course just suggestions to help givethe user ideas. With over two hundred topics, theposter should be able to find something to writeabout.

All of this has been designed to help learnersget feedback from other members on their writingskills. We hope you find the system valuable inyour own language development. PT

Credits


Triple Cypher - Rosetta StoneWriter: Lucil le MartinImages:Jon Sull ivan: Hieroglyphics (black wall)dariuszman: Hieroglyphics (carved)Jastrow: Tetradrachm Ptolemy VSebi: CartouchesMati ja Podhraški: Rosetta Stone (on display)cleomedes: top (Hieroglyphics wall)TheEgyptian (Amr Fayez): Canons in RosettaFlorian Prischl: Hikers in Sinai Desert val leyPetey: Loyalist Teaching, Coptic script, Campaign Map, Troops in Rosetta, Rosetta_Stone, Thomas_Young, Jean-FrancoisChampoll ion, Champoll ion_notebook, Rosetta Stone at International CongressSources:• "Mr. Rowlings Rosetta Stone Page." Browse the World MrDowling.com September 6, 2009. <http: //www.mrdowling.com/604-rosettastone.html>• "Story." The British Museum. September 6, 2009. <http: //www.ancientegypt.co.uk/writing/rosetta.html>• "The Story of the Rosetta Stone, 'Finding a Lost Language'. " Minnesota State University. September 6, 2009.<http: //www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/egypt/hieroglyphics/rosettastone.html>• "The Rosetta Stone." Chrystal l inks. September 6, 2009. <http: //www.crystal inks.com/rosetta.html>• "The Rosetta Stone." Egyptology Online. September 6, 2009. <http: //www.egyptologyonline.com/rosetta_stone.htm>• "Pharoh's Exhibition." The Cleveland Museum Of Art. September 6, 2009. <http: //www.clevelandart.org/glyphs.html>• "How the Rosetta Stone Works." Keener, Candace - howstufworks. September 6, 2009.<http: //history.howstuffworks.com/rosetta-stone.htm>• "Rosetta Stone." NationMaster.com. September 6, 2009. <http: //www.statemaster.com/encyclopedia/Rosetta-Stone>

Signs of Language - Ferdinand de SaussureWriter: Sofia OzolsImages:DeeJer: Geneva Lake (top)Sylenius: Entrance to University of GenevaPetey: Ferdinand de Saussure 1 , Leipzig University, Karl BrugmannSources:• "Ferdinand de Saussure - Definition." Word IQ.com. September 6, 2009.<http: //www.wordiq.com/definition/Ferdinand_de_Saussure>• "Biographical sketch of Ferdinand de Saussure." Kemmer, Suzanne. September 6, 2009.<http: //www.ruf.rice.edu/~kemmer/Found/saussurebio.html>• "Ferdinand de Saussure." Answers.com. September 6, 2009. <http: //www.answers.com/topic/ferdinand-de-saussure>• "Ferdinand de Saussure." Nation Master.com. September 6, 2009. <http: //www.statemaster.com/encyclopedia/Ferdinand-de-Saussure>• "de Saussure, Ferdinand." New World Encyclopedia. September 6, 2009.<http: //www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Ferdinand_de_Saussure>

At The Cinema - L'auberge Espagnole

Writer: Erik ZidoweckiSources:• "L'auberge Espagnole" Internet Movie Database (IMDB) <http: //www.imdb.com/title/tt0283900>All images are copyright Fox Searchl ight Pictures and the producers of the fi lm.

Languages in Peril - The Finno-UgricsWriter: Luke DelgadoImages:Robert Weemeyer: Nenets familyDr. A. Hugentobler: Nenets children on sledPetey: Title scene, Do not Disturb sign, Veps reading bookSources:• "Veps Language" Wikipedia <http: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veps_language>• "Nenets Languages" Wikipedia <http: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nenets_languages>• "Komi Language" Wikipedia <http: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Komi_language>• "Veps" Omniglot <http: //www.omniglot.com/writing/veps.htm>• "Nenets" Omniglot <http: //www.omniglot.com/writing/nenets.htm>• "Old Permic alphabet" Omniglot <http: //www.omniglot.com/writing/oldpermic.htm>• The Red Book of the Peoples of the Russian Empire <http: //www.eki.ee/books/redbook/introduction.shtml>• "Tundra Nenets" Salminen, Tapani <http: //www.helsinki. fi/~tasalmin/sketch.html#intro>• "List of endangered languages in Russia" Wikipedia <http: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_endangered_languages_in_Russia>

Credits


Word on the Streets - The Russian ZoneWriter: Sofia OzolsImages:Petey: Onion domes, Lermontov, Bunin, KrylovSources:• "Mikhail Lermontov" Wikipedia <http: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Lermontov>• "Prominent Russians: Mikhail Lermontov" Russiapedia <http: //russiapedia.rt.com/prominent-russians/l iterature/mikhail-lermontov/>• "M. Iu. Lermontov" Poet Page <http: //max.mmlc.northwestern.edu/~mdenner/Demo/poetpage/lermontov.html>• "Ivan Bunin" Wikipedia <http: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Bunin>• "Prominent Russians: Ivan Bunin" Russiapedia <http: //russiapedia.rt.com/prominent-russians/l iterature/ivan-bunin/>• "The Nobel Prize in Literature 1 933 Ivan Bunin" Nobelprize.org<http: //www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/l iterature/laureates/1 933/bunin-autobio.html>• "Ivan Krylov" Wikipedia <http: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Krylov>• "Prominent Russians: Ivan Krylov" Russiapedia <http: //russiapedia.rt.com/prominent-russians/l iterature/ivan-krylov/>• "Ivan (Andreyevich) Krylov" books and writers <http: //www.kirjasto.sci. fi/krylov.htm>

Celebrations - Day of the DeadWriter: Sonja KrügerImages:Tomascastelazo: Skulls title, Graveyard visitSteve Bridger from Bristol, UK: Family altarEneas de Troya: CemetaryThelmadatter: Catrina costumeStu Spivack: Bread of the Deadkaroly czifra: Cemetary in Budapestardelfin: Hil lside shrinesSources:• "Day of the Dead" Wikipedia <http: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_of_the_Dead>• "Day of the Dead" azcentral.com <http://www.azcentral.com/ent/dead/articles/dead-history.html>

Revisited - SlangWriter: Elizabeth O'Neil lImages:Radomil : Efez Curetes street (top)stu spivack: mamalade and bageljessica poli : taxis in times squareVince Alongi: gaucho encountersSources:• "Slang" Stories That Words Tell Us Elizabeth O'Neil l , M.A. London: T. C. & E. C. Jack, Ltd. 35 Paternoster Row, E.C. AndEdinburgh 1 91 8

We Are The LinguistsAll images and lyrics are Copyright © 201 0 by the professors and students of the Theoretical Linguistics program at EötvösLoránd University in Budapest, Hungary.

Language Learning Methods - AudioWriter: Erik ZidoweckiImages:Matúš Petri la: CD on table (top)Chris Chidsey: girl l istening to mp3 playerAldert Grey: iPod 4GPetey: shortwave radio, record player

Where Are You?Writer: Sonja Krüger

Section - JournalsWriter: Erik Zidowecki

Parleremo AdvertisementImages:Mckay Savage: India - Jaipur2 - si lhouette from the Amber Fort

All images are Copyright - CC BY-SA (Creative Commons Share Alike) by their respective owners, except forPetey, which is Public Domain (PD) or unless otherwise noted.

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Parrot Time - Issue 1 - January 2013

Education

magazinecovering language

language learningcommunity

language goals

knowparrot time

t h e ro s e t t

y o fth e d e

s t o n eprem iere issue

g em e xi c o s d