Parrot Time - Issue 2 - March / April 2013

Parrot TimeThe Thinking of Speaking Issue #2 March / April 201 3

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Contents

Parrot Time | Issue #2 | March / April 2013 3

06 Linear A & Linear B - Lost MinoanCrete is famous for it's mythological Minotaur, the half-man,half-bull creature that prowled a labyrinth, devouring youngsacrifices. However, Crete is also the home of thousands ofancient tablets which contained two previously unknown writingsystems, one of which is still a mystery today.

1 8 At the Cinema - Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner

1 2 Edward Sapir - Patterns of LanguageAnthropologist and linguist Edward Sapir combined his study ofNative American Indians and their languages with his ownstudies of grammar and phonemes to create a whole new schoolof thought on how languages, cultures, and people are allinterconnected.

21 Languages in Peril - The Rhaeto-Romance Trio

24 Word on the Streets - Norwegian Notables

28 Where Are You?

35 Revisited - ProverbsProverbs are born from common sense expressions andmetaphors. We look back to an article from almost one hundredyears ago at some English proverbs and what they really mean.

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.

38 Linguistics Love SongFor that special linguist in your life: let them know how muchthey warm your double brackets with this song of love.

Departments

Features

05 Letter From The Editor

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 Cobá Group pyr-amid, part of the Mayan ruinsat the Coba archeological sitein Quintana Roo, Mexico.

44 Sections - Recordings

30 Celebrations - Valentine’s Day

40 Language Learning Methods - BooksThe second in our series of articles about language learningmethods covers probably the most popular: books.

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wwwwww..ppaarrll eerreemmoo..oorrgg

Letter From The Editor


WWhen I was a child, I used to see advertisements in comic booksfor a pair of glasses. These wonderful items were said to be x-raygoggles, which would allow the wearer to look through items,including clothes and human flesh. There was even a drawing ofsomeone wearing them and being able to see the bones in theirhands! For years, I imagined what I could do with such a pair ofthese wonderful goggles. But alas, I was a just a child, and therewas no way I could get the money to buy them, so I eventuallygave up thinking about them.

As I grew older, I learned that I had actually been saved from aheartbreak, not to mention getting cheated out of my money. Ofcourse, there are no such things as x-ray goggles, so whateverthey were selling was some kind of trick. My father told me itwould be an optical illusion, but of course, I didn’t believe him atthe time. After all, it said they are real x-rays, and you can’t lie inadvertising, right?

Well, perhaps “lie” is too strong a word. Most of us have probablybeen attracted to something we saw being sold and were hookedon it’s promises of what we could have, do or become. Most of us thenprobably discovered that what we were promised wasn’t quite true. Theitem didn’t perform the way it was described or provide us with whatthey said it would, and we felt cheated. It’s a very bitter lesson to learn.

This happens all the time in the language learning world as well. We’veall see them: the books that promise to make us “fluent in just 30 days”,the CDs that will make us “speak like a native in 10 lessons”, thesoftware that will “help us learn effortlessly”. And how many of us havetried these products only to discover they didn’t quite live up to thehype?

Language learning isn’t easy. It won’t come overnight. When I talk topeople that have really gained some level of fluency, they don’t talkabout how long they have studied it in terms of hours, days or weeks.They talk about years. They don’t tell me about this amazing productthat made them learn everything with effort. They talk about studyinghundreds of words a week. And while they might tell you a few methodsthat worked for them, they will always tell you of the ways that werecomplete wastes of time. And those are almost universally the “quick”and “easy” ways.

So when you are getting frustrated in your own language studies,remember the famous quote by Andrew Carnegie, “Anything in life worthhaving is worth working for.” If that isn’t enough for you and you stillwant to reach for the product that promises everything easy, thenremember your Latin “Caveat Emptor” - let the buyer beware.

Truth in Advertising

Erik ZidoweckiERIK ZIDOWECKIEDITOR IN CHIEF

OOnnCCrreettee,, aa ssoouutthheerrnn iissllaannddooffGGrreeeeccee,, iissKKnnoossssooss,, oonnee oofftthhee mmoosstt iimmppoorrttaannttPPaallaacceess ooffMMiinnooaann cciivviilliizzaattiioonn.. IItt iiss iimmppoorrttaanntt nnoott oonnllyy iinniittss hhiissttoorriiccaallffeeaattuurreess,, bbuuttaallssoo iinn iittss mmyytthhoollooggiiccaallbbaacckkggrroouunndd,, aass wweellllaass bbeeiinngg tthhee llooccaattiioonn ooffssoommeeffaasscciinnaattiinngg lliinngguuiissttiicc aarrttiiffaaccttss,, ssoommee ooffwwhhiicchhrreemmaaiinn aa mmyysstteerryy eevveenn ttooddaayy..

Linear A and B

LostMinoan

Linear A and B - Lost Minoan


In ancient times, Knossoswas the seat of the legendaryKing Minos. It lies 5 kilometerssoutheast of Heraklion, in thevalley of the river Kairatos,which runs through Knossos be-fore spilling into the Minoan har-bor, Katsabas. During Minoantimes, the river flowed yearround bringing life to the sur-rounding hills, which werecovered in oak and cypresstrees.

The first palace was builtand occupied, along with otherhouses and structures, betweenthe 19th and 17th centuries BC,although the very first settle-ment in the Knossos area wasestablished circa 7000 BC, dur-ing the Neolithic Period. It wasthe economic, social and politic-al development of the settlementwhich eventually led to the con-struction of the Palace of Knos-sos.

After the first Palace wasdestroyed circa 1700 BC, it wasrebuilt, only to be destroyedagain by fire in 1350 BC. Thearea around the Palace was con-verted into a sacred grove for thegoddess Rhea, and never inhab-ited again. It was a monumentalsymbol of the Minoan civiliza-tion, not only because of its size,but also its use of materials,design, and advanced buildingtechniques.

Knossos became settled after1450 BC by Mycenaeans fromthe Greek Mainland. It againflourished during the Hellenisticperiod and in 67 BC, it was cap-

tured by the Roman QuintusCaecilius Metelus Creticus.

Minos KalokairinosIn 1878, the first large-scale ex-cavation of Knossos was begunby a wealthy Cretan merchantand antiquarian named MinosKalokairinos.

He conducted the first ex-cavations at Kephala Hill, whichled to the discovery of part of thestorage rooms in the west wingand a section of the west facade,as well as many large pithoi(storage pots) .

Crete was still under Turk-ish occupation at the time,however, and the local authorit-ies prevented any further diggingby Kalokairinos, for they fearedthat the finds would be expropri-ated by the Turks and taken toIstanbul.

Sir Arthur EvansIn 1894, Kalokairinos showedhis finds to Arthur Evans, whohad come to the island in searchof information about the strangeinscriptions he had seen onsome tablets in Oxford andAthens. Evans had been busydeciphering script on seal stoneson Crete, and when the islandwas declared an independentstate in 1900, he purchased thesite of Knossos and began hisexcavations of the palace ruins.It was then that they werenamed “Minoan” by Evans, afterthe legendary king of Crete.

Evans uncovered 3,000 claytablets during excavations andhe worked to transcribe them.From the transcriptions, it be-came clear that the tablets con-tained more than one script.

Evans spent the rest of hislife trying to decipher the in-scriptions, but with only limitedsuccess. He realized that the in-scriptions represented three dif-ferent writing systems: a“hieroglyphic’ script”, Linear A,and Linear B. The hieroglyphicscript appeared only on seal

stones and has still not been de-ciphered. Linear A is also, as yet,undeciphered, but it is thoughtto have evolved from the hiero-glyphic script. Linear B probablyevolved from Linear A, thoughthe relationship between thosetwo scripts remains unclear.

Linear BEvans figured out quite a bitabout Linear B, including that itcontained decimalnumerals, punctu-ation and symbolsfor man and wo-man and certainanimals. Evans alsosuggested that thelanguage used in-flection. He de-cided, perhapsmore because of hislove of the Minoan history thanfor any scientific examination,that these Cretan scripts mustbelong to the Minoan culture,and therefore Linear B could notbe Greek.

Among the many scholarsthat attempted to decode LinearB, it was general agreed that thewriting direction of Linear B wasfrom left to right, and that mostof the clay tablets were inventorydata, which concurred withEvans’ own determining of thenumerals. The large number ofdistinct characters that wereidentified, around 90, indicateda syllabary writing system. Whilesome scholars suspected it was

Ancient Greece, with Crete in the south

Palace ruins at Knossos


8 Parrot Time | Issue #2 | March / April 2013

Crete is the setting for many stories in Greekmythology, though whether these were createdby the Minoans themselves or by the Greekslater, it is hard to tell. It was these myths thatbrought Evans to Knossos, and fueled hiseagerness to uncover the history.

King Minos

In the myths, Minos was ason of the god Zeus and amortal woman, Europa(Zeus fathered many chil-dren with mortals) . Minosmarried Pasiphae, herselfthe daughter of the Greeksun god Helios. In reality,"Minos" may have been atitle or the name a of a dynasty of rulers.

The Minotaur

One of the most famous stories involves a ter-rible beast, with the body of a man and thehead of a bull, called the Minotaur. According tolegend, King Minos refused to sacrifice a certainbull. Poseidon, god of the sea, punished him bymaking his wife Pasiphae fall in love with theanimal, and she eventually gave birth to theman-eating monster.

Daedalus, an Athenian craftsman, designed forKing Minos the labyrinth, a large undergroundmaze, in which the king imprisoned theMinotaur. Anyone in the labyrinth could not es-cape it or the Minotaur.

After Minos' son Androgeus was killed out ofjealousy by the King of Athens when he wonmany events in the Athenian Olympics, Minosdeployed the mighty Cretan fleet to attackAthens. Rather than destroying Athens once itwas captured it, however, Minos decreed thatevery nine years, Athens was to send sevenyoung men and seven virgin women, whom Mi-nos would then throw them into a labyrinthwhere they were sacrificed to the Minotaur.

Theseus, the son of the Athenian King, volun-teered to be one of the seven sacrificed men, in-tending to kill the Minotaur and end thesuffering of Athens. If he succeeded in his mis-sion, he told his father he would return with thesails of his ship white instead of the normalblack.

Theseus and the Minotaur

Upon arriving at the palace, Theseus fell in lovewith Minos' daughter, Ariadne. Daedalus hadtold only Ariadne the secret of the labyrinth,and she in turn helped Theseus by giving him athread to use as a guide back out of labyrinth.Theseus entered the labyrinth, letting thethread unwind behind him. He killed theMinotaur and found his way back out.

Tragically, in his excitement, Theseus forgot tochange the sails to white, and when his fathersaw the sails, he believed Theseus to be dead.Overcome by grief, he threw himself into the seaand died.

The Fall of Icarus

The events surrounding this myth lead to an-other, dealing with Daedalus. One story saysthat King Minos learned that Daedalus hadbuilt a wooden cow so that his wife, Pasiphae,could near the white bull she loved safely, andhad Daedalus imprisoned, along with this son,Icarus. Another story says that Minos im-prisoned Daedalus and Icarus in the labyrinthout of rage when Theseus escaped.

Pasiphae helped both the craftsman and son toescape, and Daedalus made them a pair of waxwings so they could fly from Crete and not berecaptured. However, tragedy struck again, andIcarus didn't heed his father's advice about thewings. He flew to high, and the sun melted thewings, causing Icarus to fall to his death.Daedalus managed to escape to Sicily.

Mythology and the Ancient Minoans

Fanciful image of KingMinos



perhaps related to Greek or aCypriot language, most assumedLinear B was an unknownCretan language.

Shortly after Evans’ death in1941 , an American archaeologistnamed Alice Kober noted thatcertain words in the Linear B in-scriptions had changing wordendings, similar in manner tothe declensions of Latin orGreek. This provided a clue toanother scholar of Linear B, Mi-chael Ventris.

Ventris had encounteredEvans in 1936 at an exhibitionof Greek and Minoan treasuresat the Royal Academy in London.While Ventris was only 14 yearsold at the time, this touched offwhat became a lifelong obses-sion with Linear B.

As an adult, Ventris usedKober’s clue to construct aseries of grids, associating thesymbols on the tablets with con-sonants and vowels. While hestill could not determine whichconsonants and vowels theywere, he learned enough the un-derlying structure of the lan-guage to begin guessing.

Other Linear B tablets hadbeen discovered on the Greekmainland, and in comparison tothose found at Knossos, there

was reason to believe that someof the chains of symbols Ventrishe had found on the Cretan tab-lets were names. Noting that cer-tain names appeared only in theCretan texts, he made an ima-ginative guess that those namesapplied to cities on the island.He then got lucky when one ofthe sets could only be one par-ticular town, and no other.

This insight proved to becorrect. This allowed him to fillin the sounds of some of thesigns, and he was able to unlockmuch of the text. It was finallydetermined that the underlyinglanguage of Linear B was in factvery old Greek, dating backsome 500 years before Homer.This overruled Evans’ originaltheories of Minoan history andestablished that Cretan civiliza-tion, at least in the later periodsof the Linear B tablets, had beenpart of Mycenaean Greece. Lin-ear B was completely decipheredin 1952.

HieroglyphicsHieroglyphics are a form of writ-ing in which the letters/wordsare more picture-like, i.e. threewaving lines running parallel toeach other might denote “river”.The hieroglyphics that werefound at Knossos are samples ofvery old Cretan writing. Thiswriting appeared mainly on clayseal stones. They depict physicalobjects to most probably recordthe quantities of these objectsthey protected.

The normal progression of ahieroglyphic system is that is be-comes stylized and linear. Forexample, quantities would cometo be represented by numerals,instead of multiple impressionsof the same sign. The pictureswould become simplified, usinglines to represent what were themore elaborate parts of the pic-ture. Thus the term “linear” isused to describe the writing sys-tems that evolved out of thehieroglyphics.

Linear ALinear A is assumed to havebeen the evolution of the hiero-glyphics at Knossos, and LinearB to be the progression fromLinear A into the very ancientGreek. This assumption,however, has not been proven,or enabled either the hiero-glyphics or Linear A to be de-

ciphered.It is a syllabic (composed of

signs to represent sounds, in-stead of letter groups formingsounds) script written from leftto right, as is Linear B. The ap-proximate phonetic values ofmany syllabic signs which areused in Linear A are also knownfrom Linear B, but the languagewritten in Linear A remains un-known and will probably remainobscure, since it doesn’t seem torelate to any other survivinglanguage in Europe or WesternAsia.

The most straight forwardapproach to deciphering LinearA may be to assume that thevalues of Linear A approximatelymatch the values given to thefully transliterated Linear Bscript, and while this point of

Pylos Linear B tablet, similar to those found atKnossos

A sample of Egyptian hieroglyphics

Evans spent the rest of hislife trying to decipher the in-scriptions, but with only lim-ited success. He realized thatthe inscriptions representedthree different writing sys-tems: a "hieroglyphic script",LinearA, and Linear B.



view has been of great interest toarchaeologists, there is currentlyno linguistic grounds for accept-ing it. For the 213 Linear Asigns, the majority have no linkwith any Linear B sign, andmost of the similar signs have asmall difference, which suggestsa phonetic change.

TheoriesMany scholars have put forththeir own possible decipher-ments of Linear over the dec-ades, and while many havestrong merits, they also containlimitations. No one has beenable to definitively prove whatLinear A, or even what it mightbe related to.

Semitic OriginDr. Cyrus H. Gordon was anAmerican scholar of Near East-ern cultures and ancient lan-guages who also took an interestin decoding Linear A. Some ofhis own work included drawingconnections between the Greekand Hebrew civilizations. Usingthis work, his knowledge ofsemitic languages, and evencryptology (which he did whileserving in the U.S. Army inWWII) , Dr. Gordon suggestedthat Linea A was a semitic lan-guage, which the Bible calledHamitic, and his first articlesuggesting this was published in

1957. However, there is littleevidence to support this connec-tion, and while most scriptsused to represent Semitic lan-guages have few vowels, Linear Ahas many.

LuwianLuwian is an extinct language ofthe Anatolian branch of theIndo-European language family.It is closely related to Hittite andwas among the languagesspoken by people in Arzawa,later known as Lydia, in what isnow Turkey.

During the 1960s, a theoryevolved that Linear A could bean Anatolian language, close toLuwian, based upon the phonet-ic values of Linear B. This the-ory, however, lost manysupporters during the second

half of the 20th century due tothe growth of archaeological andlinguistic data about the Anato-lian languages and peoples.

In 1997, Gareth AlunOwens, a British-Greek academ-ic, published a collection of es-says titled “Kritika Daidalika”,which support the view that Lin-ear A might represent an archaicrelative of Luwian. He based thisassertion on the possible Indo-European but non-Greek rootsof a small number of words thatwere readable read by using theknown Linear B or Cypriotsound values of certain Linear Asigns.

Owens postulated that thephonetic values of 90% of theLinear A characters correspondto those of Linear B figures ofsimilar appearance. Ten charac-

Tablet of Linear A

Tourists on a section of the Minoan palace of Knossos,overlooking the central courtyard.



ters do not match, and theirmeaning can only be speculatedupon. Using his system of cor-respondences, Owens uncoveredseveral place names which ap-pear in the Linear B tablets andfigure prominently in the ar-chaeological history of Crete. Healso put forth that he had foundevidence of grammatical genderfor nouns, as well as vocabularyand noun and verb endings thatto indicated the basic “Minoan”language of the Linear A tabletsto be an Indo-European lan-

guage of the Satem branch.The drawbacks to this the-

ory include that there is no re-markable resemblance betweenMinoan and Hitto-Luwian mor-phology, no existing theoriessupport the migration of theHitto-Luwian peoples to Crete,and the obvious anthropologicaldifferences between Hitto-Luwians and the Minoans, asmentioned before.

PhoenicianPhoenician is a semitic languageoriginally spoken in what is nowknown as Lebanon, parts of Syr-ia, and parts of the Mediter-ranean coast.

Working from Gordon’s the-ories that Linear A might be aSemitic language, scholar JanBest published an article en-titled “The First Inscription inPunic — Vowel Differences inLinear A and B” in 1991 . In it,Best claimed to demonstratehow and why Linear A notatesan archaic form of Phoenician.However, for many of the samereasons, his theory drew wide-spread criticism. While there area few terms the may be of Semit-

ic origin, there simply isn’tenough evidence to make thelink.

Indo-IranianHubert La Marle, a French re-searcher in linguistics and epi-graphy, started studying Linearin 1989, and developed his owntheory that it may belong to theIndo-Iranian family of languages.This theory is based largely onthe frequencies of each sign incertain positions. He also com-pares Linear A to other ancientscripts around the eastern Medi-terranean. He suggests thatthese two methods provide manyconclusions about the phoneticnature of the syllabic signs for amost of the signs, and that as-pects of Linear A closely re-semble ancient Indo-Iranian.

Furthermore, La Marle’sstudy includes a coherentpresentation of the morphologyof the language. It avoids thecomplete identification of phon-etic values between Linear A andB.

However, his critics havepointed out a few problems withthis theory. First, it uses fre-quencies of signs, rather thantheir structure within Linear A,to make a translation. He alsoassigns phonetic values to thesigns based on superficial re-semblances to signs in otherscripts, as opposed to directmatches. While differences in

signs can occur over time, it isnot a good basis for determiningconnections. Some scholars alsocontend that the work is biased,because he attempts to translatethe words into a language hehas chosen, rather then match-ing a language to the transla-tion.

ConclusionWork continues on the de-cipherment of Linear A texts,and there may yet be a discoveryin the future that helps clarifythe meaning of the language. Itmay as yet be somehow connec-ted to Linear B, or connected toa currently existing language, asin the theories above. It is alsopossible, however, that the lan-guage was separated long agofrom any language we know anda connection will never be made.

Despite that, much has beenlearned about the Minoan civil-ization through the study of theartifacts inscribed in Linear A.Linear B has also been instru-mental in explaining the histor-ical connection between theMinoans and Greeks. Bothscripts have also been used inanalyzing other linguistic arti-facts, and it as yet possible thatsomeone might one day find an-other “Rosetta Stone” to helpsolve the mystery. PT

Linear A. Copy of inscriptions round theinner surface of cup

Knossos north entrance rebuilt

During the 1960s, a theoryevolved that LinearA couldbe an Anatolian language,close to Luwian, basedupon the phonetic values ofLinear B.

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ffoorreemmoosstt AAmmeerriiccaann lliinngguuiissttss aanndd

aanntthhrrooppoollooggiissttss ooff hhiiss ttiimmee,,

mmaakkiinngg mmaajjoorr ccoonnttrriibbuuttiioonnss ttoo

tthhee ssttuuddyy ooff AAmmeerriiccaann IInnddiiaann

llaanngguuaaggeess aanndd ppeeooppllee aass wweellll aass

eetthhnnoolliinngguuiissttiiccss..

Edward Sapir

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Edward Sapir - Patterns of Language


His name is probably most knownin association with the Sapir-WhorfHypothesis. He was a founder ofethnolinguistics, which is thestudy of the relationship betweenculture and language. Among an-thropologists, he is probably mostknown for his work in the classific-ation of Native American Indians.During his lifetime, he was a pro-lific publisher of materials in a fewdifferent fields that are still studiedtoday.

His LifeEdward Sapir was born in 1884 in Lauen-burg, Germany. His parents were bothLithuanian Jews, and while he learnedGerman as a child, the language in hishome was Yiddish. However, since hisfather, Jacob, preferred music to theology,the family was not strictly orthodox intheir religious observance.

The family moved many times duringSapir’s early childhood. He started kinder-garten in Liverpool, England, then hisfamily emigrated to the United Stateswhen he was five and they arrived in Rich-mond, Virginia in 1890. Tragically, Sapir’syounger brother Max died of typhoidshortly afterwards. Then while Jacob’s ca-reer declined into a series of short-termappointments, the family moved to theLower East Side of New York City whenEdward was ten. Eva Sapir ran a smallshop to support herself and young Ed-ward after she and Jacob divorced some-time after 1910.

When he was fourteen, Sapir won aPulitzer scholarship for four years at Hor-ace Mann High School, which was andstill is one of the top college-preparatory

high schools in New York, but he turned itdown, choosing a local high school insteadand using the scholarship for his under-graduate education at Columbia Uni-versity. After starting at Columbia in1901 , Sapir focused on Germanic philo-logy (the study of literary texts and writtenrecords) while getting formal training inIndo-European linguistics. He received aB.A. in German in 1904 after having takenonly three years to complete the four-yearprogram, then he received his M.A. , alsoin German, in 1905. He took two moreyears of courses in anthropology and Ger-man, receiving his Ph.D. in anthropologyin 1909 with a dissertation on theTakelma language of southwestern Ore-gon.

Sapir had aknack for languages,but since Columbiahad no true depart-ment of linguistics,Germanics was thefield of choice for astudent interested inlinguistic science.While there, Sapirmet and began tostudy with FranzBoas and was in-spired into the need to record endangeredAmerican Indian languages before theywere lost forever. In 1905, Boas sent himto the Yakima Reservation in Washingtonto do fieldwork on the Wishram dialect ofChinook, and then to Oregon, to work onTakelma. Sapir worked on Takelma andChasta Costa at Siletz Reservation in Ore-gon in 1906, then from 1907-1908 he wasa research associate in anthropology atthe University of California, where heworked on Yana. He spent two years atthe University of Pennsylvania in Phil-adelphia after that, first as a professorand then as an instructor. When Sapirsubmitted his description of Takelma as adissertation to Boas at Columbia in 1909,he was awarded a doctorate.

In 1910, he was hired to head thenewly established division of anthropologyin the Geological Survey of the CanadianNational Museum, and while he was ini-tially excited about this opportunity, hesoon became disappointed and com-plained about the isolation of life in Ott-awa. He did fieldwork on a large number

Columbia University in New York in 1915

Franz Boas



of languages, including Nootkaand Sarcee, and he publishedmuch in a number of areas. HisTakelma grammar was pub-lished in 1922 in the secondvolume of the Handbook ofAmerican Indian Languages.

While in Ottawa, his firstwife suffered a series of mentaland physical illnesses fromwhich she finally died. To addto his pain, Sapir’s efforts to de-velop anthropological researchon the natives of Canada werelargely halted by the financialrequirements of the First WorldWar. The money just wasn’tavailable and he became in-creasingly despondent and isol-ated. This led Sapir to devote alarge amount of his time to po-etry and music, as well as thewriting of many literary reviews.

Between 1917 and the early1930s, he was a major contrib-utor to The Dial, which was oneof the most important Americanliterary journals at the time. Hewas also a writer for otherjournals such as The Freeman,Poetry, The New Republic, TheNation, and others. Many of thetopics that he wrote about inhis nonacademic writing alsoappeared in his work in anthro-pology and he became increas-ingly interested in questions ofpsychiatry and the nature ofpersonality, particularly in therelationship between personal-ity and culture.

When In 1925 Sapir wasoffered a position at the Uni-versity of Chicago, he acceptedhappily. There, he had manystudents and in a short time, hebecame a major figure in Amer-ican anthropology. He contin-ued to do fieldwork on severallanguages, such as Navajo andHupa, and he had the chance todo many of the things he hadmissed while in Ottawa. Heeagerly joined in interdisciplin-ary conferences, and had a not-able collaboration withinternational psychiatrist Harry

Stack Sullivan and political sci-entist Harold D. Lasswell. Sincehe was teaching in the socialsciences, Sapir found himselfthinking a lot about culture,psychology and social sciencemethodology. For a while, hecontinued to write poetry, butthe pressure of other workfinally left him little time foranything besides his profession-al obligations. During this peri-od, however, he did not stop hislinguistic work, and even man-aged to make field trips to studyNavajo and Hupa.

Shortly after he arrived inChicago, Sapir renewed afriendship with Jean McClen-aghan, now a social work stu-dent on a practicum at theChicago Institute for JuvenileResearch, and the couple wasmarried in 1927. They wouldeventually have two children.

Sapir grew tired of theamount of administrative workrequired of him at Chicago, andso he accepted a very attractiveoffer for a Sterling Professorshipat Yale in 1931 . While at Yale,he again attracted numerousstudents, including many thathad followed him from Chicago.

Many of his plans in Yalewere undermined by local aca-demic politics, by the economiceffects of the Depression, andby feelings of anti-Semitism atYale, and Sapir became drainedand unhappy. Outside of Yale,he continued with his interdis-ciplinary activities, while in ithe focused on his own teachingin anthropology and linguistics.It was too much.

In 1937, while he wasteaching at the Linguistic Soci-ety of America Summer Insti-tute in Ann Arbor, Michigan,Sapir suffered a heart attack. Asabbatical to China in 1937 hadto be cancelled because of hishealth, and while he did he re-turn to teaching in the fall of1938, he had not recovered hisstrength. He finally died in

1939 of heart disease at the ageof fifty-five.

IALASapir was active in the interna-tional auxiliary language move-ment which pushed to create aconstructed language that couldbe used by people all over theworld instead of learning eachothers languages. He published“ The Function of an Interna-tional Auxiliary Language” inwhich he spoke of the benefitsof a regular grammar andpushed for a critical focus onthe fundamentals of languagewithout the bias of nationallanguage idiosyncrasies whileselecting an international aux-iliary language. He was also thefirst Research Director of theInternational Auxiliary Lan-guage Association (IALA). It wasa position he held between 1930and 1931 . Added to all this, hewas a member of IALA’s Con-sultative Counsel for LinguisticResearch from 1927 to 1938and consulted with AliceVanderbilt Morris to develop theresearch program of IALA.

PhonologySapir made a major contribu-tion to linguistic theory with hiswork in phonology (the study ofsound systems). He publishedhis paper “Sound Patterns inLanguage” in 1925 in the firstissue of “Language”, the journalof the Linguistic Society ofAmerica of which Sapir was afounder. In this, he defined his



Classifying American Indian LanguagesEdward Sapir did a lot of work with Native American Indian languages and people, afew of which were on the very brink of extinction. Among the languages and culturesstudied by Sapir were:

• Wishram Chinook - One of the three varieties of Chinookian which is a language usedby the Chinook people in Oregon and Washington.

• Navajo - Also called Navaho. An Athabaskan language spoken in the southwestUnited States by the Navajo people.

• Nootka - Also called Nuu-chah-nulth. A Wakashan language spoken in the PacificNorthwest on the west coast of Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada.

• Paiute - A group of languages belonging to the Numic branch of the Uto-Aztecanfamily, spoken by the Paiute people of the western United States.

• Takelma - Takelma was the language spoken by the Takelma people of southwesternOregon. The last fluent speaker of Takelma worked with Sapir in writing about the language.

• Yana - Also called Yanan. An extinct language spoken in north-central California by the Yahi people.

In 1921, Sapir published a single page summary of a six-unit classification of the American Indian languages from hisstudies. He produced a complete version in 1929 with justifications and a classification of twenty-three units based onhis work and that of his colleagues from almost twenty years. He viewed this classification as a series of hypothesis,and while some found it controversial and too bold in some of the combinations, many anthropologists instantlyaccepted them as a concrete guide to language classification and tribal relationships.

I . Eskimo–Aleut

I I . Algonkin–Wakashan1 . Algonkin–Ritwan(1 ) Algonkin(2) Beothuk (?)(3) Ritwan(a) Wiyot(b) Yurok

2. Kootenay3. Mosan (Wakashan–Salish)(1 ) Wakashan (Kwakiutl–Nootka)(2) Chimakuan(3) Salish

I I I . Nadene1 . Haida2. Continental Nadene(1 ) Tl ingit(2) Athabaskan

IV. Penutian1 . Californian Penutian(1 ) Miwok-Costanoan(2) Yokuts(3) Maidu(4) Wintun

2. Oregon Penutian(1 ) Takelma(2) Coast Oregon Penutian(a) Coos(b) Siuslaw

(c) Yakonan(3) Kalapuya

3. Chinook4. Tsimshian5. Plateau Penutian(1 ) Sahaptin(2) Waii latpuan (Molala–Cayuse)(3) Lutuami (Klamath-Modoc)

6. Mexican Penutian(1 ) Mixe–Zoque(2) Huave

V. Hokan–Siouan1 . Hokan–CoahuiltecanA. Hokan

(1 ) Northern Hokan(a) Karok, Chimariko,

Shasta–Achomawl(b) Yana(c) Pomo

(2) Washo(3) Esselen–Yuman(a) Esselen(b) Yuman

(4) Salinan–Seri(a) Salinan(b) Chumash(c) Seri

(5) Tequistlatecan (Chontal)B. Subtiaba–TlappanecC. Coahuiltecan(1 ) Tonkawa(2) Coahuilteco

(a) Coahuilteco proper(b) Cotoname(c) Comecrudo

(3) Karankawa2. Yuki3. Keres4. Tunican(1 ) Tunica–Atakapa(2) Chitimacha

5. Iroquois(1 ) I roquoian(2) Caddoan

6. Eastern group(1 ) Siouan–Yuchi(a) Siouan(b) Yuchi

(2) Natchez–Muskogian(a) Natchez(b) Muskogian(c) Timucua (?)

VI. Aztec–Tanoan1 . Uto-Aztekan(1 ) Nahuatl(2) Piman(3) Shoshonean

2. Tanoan–Kiowa(1 ) Tanoan(2) Kiowa

3. Zuñi (?)

Southern Paiute indians



concept of a phoneme, viewing itin terms of its relationshipsamong sounds rather than itsobjective qualities. This ad-dressed phonemes as a psycho-logical phenomena and not justthe commonly accepted physicalaspects. Why this is of import-ance is that it raises phonemesfrom being single individual en-tities to being influenced by oth-

er phonemes, not just in onelanguage but across related lan-guages. By looking at these con-nections, one can see a largerpattern between languages. Hecontinued this pattern argumentin 1933 with his paper “The Psy-chological Reality of the Phon-eme” in which he discussed howthe the systematic and conven-tional nature of sounds is un-derstood at an intuitive level bynative speakers.

With these two papers, Sapirhad laid the groundwork formuch that would come in thefield of phonemics (the study ofconventionally relevant sounds).This new way of viewing phono-logy helped revolutionize Americ-an linguistics. It was derivedfrom Sapir’s extensive fieldworkwith the American Indian lan-guages, yet paralleled the workbeing done in Europe on pho-nomic models by linguistics thatwere working from the influenceof the Swiss linguist Ferdinandde Saussure.

GrammarAnother area of Sapir’s work in-volved carrying on and expand-ing on the ideas of his one timeteacher, Franz Boas, who ap-plied a very scientific method tothe study of linguistics and criti-cized heavily the previous workof fellow anthropologists. In

1916, Sapir published “TimePerspective in Aboriginal Americ-an Culture: A Study in Method”in which he put forth the meth-ods used by Boas to examine thehistorical connections betweenculture and language. He alsoincluded linguistics examplesfrom a wide range of cases. Es-sentially, as a culture develops,traces of the past are maintainedin the language, so languagesplayed a key role in understand-ing not just the current culturebut how it evolved. Since thesechanges came through thespoken language, they were us-able in the absence of a writtenlanguage. Furthermore, sincethe language sounds were trace-able across related languages, aconnection could be madebetween different peoples overtime. Languages could be usedto assist in showing genetic rela-tionships.

Sapir published the onlybook he completed in his life-time, “Language: An Introduc-tion to the Study of Speech”, in1921 . It was aimed at a moregeneral audience and talkedabout the precision and beautyof grammar of both written andnon-written languages and wasso visionary in its views that isstill influences modern linguists.

Sapir-Whorf HypothesisSapir published “The Uncon-scious Patterning of Behavior inSociety” in 1927. Combiningboth of his concepts of phono-logy and grammar, Sapir formu-lated that culture should beviewed as part of individuallylearned patterns, both consciousand unconscious and not as ex-ternal elements. If culture comesfrom learned rules of the societyinstead of as fixed structure,and language plays a key role inthought and communications,then culture and language aredistinctly tied together. The waya person expresses themselvesshapes their culture, even if they

don’t realize this is happening.His 1929 paper “The Status

of Linguistics as a Science”furthered these ideas. Becauseof a language’s central place in aculture, it works as a “guide to’social reality”’ and largelyshapes an individual’s and aculture’s perception of the world.Since language can be subjectedto a systematic analysis, it canalso be an essential tool for un-derstanding a culture, even it’smost elusive aspects.

These theories became hiscontribution to a larger theory,the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Oneof Sapir’s students, BenjaminLee Whorf, wrote more along thissame theoryafter Sapir’sdeath, publish-ing his own ob-servations onhow linguisticdifferences haveconsequences inhuman cogni-tion and beha-vior. HarryHoijer, anotherof Sapir’s stu-dents, actually created the term“Sapir–Whorf hypothesis”, eventhough Sapir and Whorf neverput forth any such hypothesis oreven worked together to formu-late the ideas apart from theteacher-student relationship. Yetthis has become what mostpeople know of Sapir.

Sapir contributed to almostevery important topic in lin-guistics and while some of hisworks no longer receive as muchattention, like that on the con-struction of an internationallanguage, his influence on lin-guistics and related fields canstill be strongly felt today. Healso produced an extremely largevolume of work during his life-time and his many themes arestill discussed by modern stu-dents of linguistics. PT

Benjamin Lee Whorf

The way a person expressesthemselves shapes theirculture, even if they don’trealize this is happening.



(1 907) "Prel iminary Report on the Language and Mythology of the Upper Chinook," American Anthropologist, n.s. , 9(1 91 0) "Some Fundamental Characteristics of the Ute Language" [abstract], Science, n.s. , 31 (1 91 0):350-352; Alsopublished in American Anthropologist, n.s. , 1 2(1 908) "On the Etymology of Sanskrit asru, Avestan asru, Greek dakru, in Spiegel Memorial Volume, J. J. Modi, ed.Bombay(1 911 ) "Some Aspects of Nootka Language and Culture," American Anthropologist, n.s. , 1 3(1 911 ) "The Problem of Noun Incorporation in American Languages," American Anthropologist, n.s. , 1 3(1 91 2) "Language and Environment," American Anthropologist, n.s. , 1 4(1 91 3) "Wiyot and Yurok, Algonkin Languages of California," American Anthropologist, n.s. , 1 5(1 91 5) Noun Reduplication in Comox, a Salish Language of Vancouver Island, Canada Department of Mines, GeologicalSurvey, Memoir 63, Anthropological Series, No. 6.(1 91 5) "Algonkin Languages of California: a Reply," American Anthropologist, n.s. , 1 7(1 91 5) "The Na-dene Languages, a Prel iminary Report, " American Anthropologist, n.s. , 1 7(1 91 5) "Corrigenda to Father Morice's Chasta Costa and the Dene Languages of the North," American Anthropologist, n.s. ,1 7(1 91 6) "Phonetic Orthography and Notes to 'Nootka, ' " in "Vocabularies from the Northwest Coast of America," Franz Boas,ed. , Proceedings, American Antiquarian Society, 26(1 91 6) "Phonetic Orthography and Notes to 'Nootka, ' " in Phonetic Transcriptions of Indian Languages, SmithsonianMiscellaneous Collections, 66(1 91 7) "Linguistic Publications of the Bureau of American Ethnology, a General Review," International Journal of AmericanLinguistics, 1(1 91 8) "An Ethnological Note on the 'Whiskey-Jack', " The Ottawa Natural ist, 32(1 920) "The Hokan and Coahuiltecan Languages," International Journal of American Linguistics, 1(1 920) "A Note on the First Person Plural in Chimariko," International Journal of American Linguistics, 1(1 920) Review of J. Alden Mason, The Language of the Salinan Indians, in International Journal of American Linguistics, 1(1 921 ) Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech (New York, Harcourt, Brace.(1 921 ) "A Bird's-eye View of American Languages North of Mexico," Science, n.s. , 54(1 922) The Fundamental Elements of Northern Yana, University of California Publications in American Archaeology andEthnology, 1 3(1 922) "The Takelma Language of Southwestern Oregon," in Handbook of American Indian Languages, Bureau ofAmerican Ethnology, Bul letin 40, Part I I ,(1 922) "Language and Literature" (chap. 11 of Language, 1 921 ), The Canadian Magazine, 59(1 923) "The Phonetics of Haida," International Journal of American Linguistics, 2(1 924) "The Grammarian and His Language," American Mercury, 1(1 925) "Memorandum on the Problem of an International Auxil iary Language," The Romanic Review, 1 6(1 925) "Pitch Accent in Sarcee, an Athabaskan Language," Journal, Société des Américanistes de Paris, n.s. , 1 7(1 925) "Sound Patterns in Language," Language, 1(1 926) "Philology," in The Encyclopaedia Britannica (Supplementary Volumes, 1 3th ed.), 3(1 926) "A Chinookan Phonetic Law," International Journal of American Linguistics, 4(1 926) "Language as a Form of Human Behavior," The English Journal, 1 6(1 927) "An Expedition to Ancient America: A Professor and a Chinese Student Rescue the Vanishing Language andCulture of the Hupas in Northern California," The University of Chicago Magazine, 20(1 929) "Central and North American Languages," Encyclopaedia Britannica (1 4th ed.), 5(1 928) "The Status of Linguistics as a Science," Language, 5(1 929) "Male and Female Forms of Speech in Yana," in St. W. J. Teeuwen, ed. , Donum Natal icium Schri jnen (Nijmegan-Utrecht),(1 929) "Nootka Baby Words," International Journal of American Linguistics, 5(1 929) "A Study in Phonetic Symbolism," Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1 2(1 930) Total ity, Linguistic Society of America, Language Monographs, No. 6(1 930-31 ) The Southern Paiute Language: Southern Paiute, a Shoshonean Language; Texts of the Kaibab Paiutes andUintah Utes; Southern Paiute Dictionary, Proceedings, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 65(1 931 ) "Language, Race, and Culture," Chap. 1 0 in V. F. Calverton, ed. , The Making of Man. New York,(1 931 ) "The Concept of Phonetic Law as Tested in Primitive Languages by Leonard Bloomfield," in Stuart A. Rice, ed. ,Methods in Social Science: A Case Book. Chicago,(1 931 ) "Notes on the Gweabo Language of Liberia," Language, 7(1 931 ) "The Case for a Constructed International Language" Propositions, Deuxième Congrès International de Linguistes(1 931 ) "The Function of an International Auxil iary Language," Psyche, 11 (1 931 ): 4-1 5; also published in InternationalCommunication: A Symposium on the Language Problem, by H. N. Shenton, E. Sapir, 0. Jesperson(1 931 ) "Wanted, a World Language," The American Mercury, 22(1 933) "Language," Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences (New York), 9(1 936) "Internal Linguistic Evidence Suggestive of the Northern Origin of the Navaho," American Anthropologist, n.s. , 38(1 938) "Glottal ized Continuants in Navaho, Nootka, and Kwakiutl (with a Note on Indo-European)," Language, 1 4(1 944) "Grading, a Study in Semantics," Philosophy of Science, 11(1 947) "The Relation of American Indian Linguistics to General Linguistics," Southwestern Journal of Anthropology,

PARTIAL LIST OF WORKS

At the Cinema - Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner


tanarjuat: The Fast Runneris the first feature film everto be written, directed andacted entirely in Inuktitut.

That in itself should be of interest toany language lover. Inuktitut is thename of some of the Inuit languagesspoken in Canada, where the moviewas filmed. I don’t know if all of theactors were absolute natives, but I amthinking they are. Most were not pro-fessional actors before this.

The story of Atanarjuat is a legendthat is believed to be over five centur-ies old. The main plot involves twobrothers, Atanarjuat and Amaqjuaq,whose father has adopted a curseupon the family. The second wife ofAtanarjuat, Puja, makes love toAmaqjuaq and gets promptly beaten.Puja runs to her family, crying, claim-ing she has done nothing wrong. Herfamily plots with her a revenge uponthe brothers, and after Puja returns toAtanarjuat and Amaqjuaq, she begsfor forgiveness and is taken back in.Then she tells the other wives to gogather eggs while the men sleep. Whilethey are sleeping, her brother Oki andtwo others sneak up to the tent andstab spears through it. Amaqjuaq iskilled, but Atanarjuat runs out acrossthe ice, naked and barefoot. Atanar-juat manages to escape, barely, and isrescued and healed. He eventually re-turns to have his revenge upon Oki,the curse is lifted, and the communityis finally at peace.

The legend itself is rather vague,and the writers of the screenplayneeded to talk to several native Inuitsto piece together what they thoughtwas the most accurate story. Eventhen, they needed to flesh it out withcharacter development and accurateportrayals of Intuit life. This wasn’t aneasy thing to do, since while theycould get details about clothes andcustoms from the journals ofEuropean explorers, they needed tofigure out how people would have ac-ted and how they would have saidthings back then. For that, they con-stantly consulted elder Inuit nativesall during the process.

This is where the real importanceof the movie is shown. It becomes analmost historical archive of the Inuitpeople, helping to record their waysfor future generations. It also givesmodern day Inuit children a clearervision of their own heritage andsomething to be proud of, somethingwhich we often lose in culture, yet it isvital to the survival of that culture.Without a next generation speakingthe language and continuing the tra-ditions, an entire way of life dies outforever.

The movie itself is basically asimple story so watching it is like see-ing history unfold. The beginning is alittle confusing, however, as they at-tempt to show the original curse beingbrought about. It’s also not a film de-signed to be an action packed block-

At the Cinema

“

AAttaannaarrjjuuaatt:: TThhee FFaasstt RRuunnnneerr

Atanarjuat: The FastRunnerR 1 72 minDrama / Fantasy1 February 2002 (UK)

Country: Canada

Language: Inuktitut

They needed tofigure out howpeople would haveacted and howthey would havesaid things backthen.

At the Cinema - Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner


buster or a sweeping love story. Like many le-gends, it is more of a soap opera, with differentcharacters having their own schemes and pastevents being revived and concluded in the end.

One of the things which really caught my in-terest in the movie was that this wasn’t some ima-ginary setting on another planet. . . these people

really did live inthe frozen wilder-ness. Not onlydid they live,they did itwithout what somany of uswould consider

now as “bare necessities”, such as hot water andelectricity. One scene shows them building a newigloo for community gatherings, with them shapingeach brick out of snow and placing it carefully.There are also a few scenes of them preparing foodfrom the animals they have hunted, somethingthat most of don’t even want to think about doing.And while you might imagine that living like thiswould be completely miserable, they are playing,laughing and loving, just as we do in our “civilized”world. This observation might sound like a cliche,but for me, it is what really gives the movie itsheart. It is telling us a legend, but it is showing us

lives.The movie received many awards in 2001 and

2002, which is understandable, given the scope ofwhat the producers were attempting. Besidestelling the legend, the movie was providing peoplea vivid look at the Inuit culture and perhaps givingthem their first ever experience with the Inuktitut.In that, it becomes both a story of betrayal andhope and a real hope of helping to preserve theculture and language of the Inuit people. It in-spires future generations, both within and outsideof the Inuit society. I definitely recommend you seethis movie if you get the chance. PT

“It is what really gives themovie its heart. It istelling us a legend, but itis showing us lives.

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Languages in Peril - The Rhaeto-Romance Trio


Even languages ofthe popular Romancefamily are in danger ofbecoming extinct, so weare going to look at Lad-in, Friulian and Roman-sh, which are threeclosely related ones.

ost people know ofthe popular Romancelanguages like Latin,

Spanish, French, Italian,Portuguese and Romanian.If you talk to people who aremore interested in languagesthemselves and polyglots,you might hear them men-tion Catalan, Gallician andSicilian. We are going to lookat a few that are part of theRhaeto-Romance branchthat most have probablynever heard about.

Rhaeto-Romance refersto a large area of the Alpswhich was home to Celtic

and Raetictribes in an-cient times. TheRomans namedit "RaetiaPrima". Threelanguagesevolved fromthis area, eachdeveloping inits own way

while retaining the commonfeatures that unite them in asingle group: Ladin, Friuli-an, and Romansh.

LadinLadin (not to be confusedwith the Spanish dialect,Ladino) has an estimated30,000 speakers, but this isvery difficult to verify be-cause not all provinces inwhich it is spoken declare itas their native language. Itis spoken in South Tyrol,Trentino and Belluno in theDolomite mountains ofnorthern Italy.

The name "Ladin" is de-rived from "Latin" because itwas originally a form of vul-gar Latin in the Romanconquered Alps. It began inAquileia, an ancient Romanmilitary colony in Italy,which was founded 181 BC.The Celtic population of thearea, which was greaterthan that of the Romans,used a distorted form of Lat-in, mixing their own Celticlanguages with it.As it was spoken,influences fromlanguages in thesurrounding territ-ories made modi-fications to itsphonetics andvocabulary. It de-veloped on its ownpath, as did itssister languages ofItalian, Spanishand French. Afterthe barbarian in-

vasions of the 5th centuryand the fall of OstrogothicKingdom, which had takenover the region, the Dolo-mites became separatedfrom the region known asFriuli, and the language wassplit, developing into Ladinand Friulian.

During the Middle Ages,when the area fell underAustrian Habsburg ruler,Ladin underwent a processof Germanization. At the endof World War I in 1918, Italyannexed the southern partof Tyrol, which included theLadin areas, and the Italiannationalist movement viewedLadin as an "Italian dialect",which greatly upset the Lad-ins. Fascists leaders like Et-tore Tolomei and BenitoMussolini put pressure onthe Ladin communities togive up their identities toItalian and forced many

Languages in Peril

TThhee RRhhaaeettoo--RRoommaannccee TTrriioo

Trilingual road sign in Ladin-German-Italian in SouthTyrol. "in case of snow or ice"

Fascists leaders likeEttore Tolomei andBenito Mussolini putpressure on theLadin communitiesto give up their iden-tities to Italian



Ladin place names to use Italianpronunciation. When World WarII ended, the Gruber-De GasperiAgreement of 1946 between Aus-tria and Italy gave autonomy forTrentino and South Tyrol whilehaving them remain part of Italy,but this did not extend to theLadins. It wasn't until a secondautonomy statute for South Tyr-ol was made in 1972 were therights of these communities re-cognized.

There is little Ladin literat-ure, since it dates back only un-til the 1700s. Work is being doneto revive this endangered lan-guage through consolidation ofthe Ladin economic structure,increased usage of the languagein the mass media and teachingof Ladin in primary and highschools. But will it be enough?

FriulianFriulian currently has approx-imately 800,000 speakers. It isalso called Friulan, Furlan andeven Eastern Ladin because ofits shared roots with Ladin. It isspoken mainly in the Firuli-Venezia Giulia region of north-eastern Italy as well as in Udine,

Pordenone, Trieste and Gorizia.Its major dialects are central,western and eastern Friulian,Gortan, Asino and Carnian, allof which were influenced by thesurrounding languages of thearea: Slovenian, Italian and Ger-man.

Friulian came from the samemodified Latin as Ladin. Whenthe Friuli region became isolatedfrom Italian cultural life in the6th century, the languagemutated further from its Latinbase. The first documents usingFriulian go back to the 13th cen-tury, but they were mostly ad-ministrative in nature. Friulianliterature and poetry has been

found from the 14th century. Bythe early 15th century, most ofthe population of the regionspoke Friulian while the nobilityand educated classes spoke Lat-in or German. However, whenFriuli came back under Italianrule after 1420, the Venetiandialect of Italian became thedominant language, and Friulianstarted to decline.

Friulian came under unex-pected scrutiny during the NaziOccupation of Italy during theSecond World War. Pro-NaziGerman scholars theorized thatthe German language and cul-ture had been a "profound influ-ence" on the Friulians, includingloan words and medieval place-names. Evidence was found thatthe Friuli people had been in-volved in the early German em-pire as well, and it was decidedthat the Friulians, by being partof the "German cultural field",were therefore historically part ofthe German empire. These Nazisprobably intended to attempt a"Germanization" of the Friulianspeakers, but their defeat in thewar prevented that.

While the language is en-Road sign in Italian and Friulian. "Paderno townof Udine"



dangered, after the war a revivalof interest in it began. In the1950s, two new grammar books,a description of the dialects anda history of the Friulian lan-guage were published. It istaught in a few schools and haslimited use in the media.However, it is still fighting for itssurvival against the more popu-lar languages of the region.

RomanshRomansh is the third in theRhaeto-Romance trio. It hasabout 95,000 speakers inSwitzerland where it is an officiallanguage, but that makes it verysmall, relative to the population,with just over one percentspeaking it. Those speakers aremainly in the Rhaeto-Romaniaarea.

The origins of Romansh aresimilar to that of Ladin and Fri-ulian, coming from a modifiedform of Latin when the Romansconquered the area known asRaetia. The languages of that re-gion at the time were Celtic andRaetic and they were mixed withthe Latin. This form was useduntil the 5th century, when Ger-manic tribes from the northmoved in and Raetia becamepart of the Ostrogothic Kingdomuntil it fell. When the Ostrogothssurrendered the province of Rae-tia to the Frankish Empirearound 547 AD, a process ofGermanization also began on thelanguage which lasted for manycenturies.

Romansh did not have astandardized writing system,having been mainly used bycommon people and not admin-istrators. Several regional writ-ten varieties of Romansh arefound from the 16th century.The first real literary work thathas survived was an epic poemwritten in 1527. Other writersand poets began to write in Ro-mansh variants as well as trans-late other works into thelanguage. A standardised written

form, known as RumantschGrischun, was finally created in1982 by the Zurich linguistHeinrich Schmid, although ithasn't been widely adopted byRomansh speakers, who prefertheir own dialects.

Romansh struggled to sur-vive against the more popularGerman and Swedish while theRomansh speakers saw theirlanguage as an economic and

social block. Schools andchurches replaced Romanshwith German, weakening it evenmore. The "Rhaeto-RomanceRenaissance" movement beganat the end of the 19th century torevive the language, and in1938, Romansh became recog-nized as a national language ofSwitzerland, along with German,French and Italian. Today it isused to an extent in schools andthe media, but its survival is stillin doubt.

Spread the WordAll of these languages are de-scribed as "definitely en-dangered" which means thechildren of native speakers nolonger learn the language as amother tongue in their homes.We hope that this article will in-spire you to learn more aboutthem and to tell others what youhave learned. The next timesomeone mentions the Romancelanguages, you can add thesethree to the list know you havetaken a step to help them sur-vive. PT

Title page of "Dotrina christiana Breciana" of1734

Mural with the text "Friûl libar" (Free Friuli)in Aiello del Friuli, Italy.

TThhee ssttrreeeettss ooff PPaarrlleerreemmoo aarreennaammeedd aafftteerr ffaammoouuss wwrriitteerrssffoorr tthhee llaanngguuaaggee ooff eeaacchhqquuaarrtteerr.. TThhiiss iiss wwhheerree wweettaakkee aa qquuiicckk llooookk aatt wwhhyytthheeyy aarree ffaammoouuss..

Word on the Streets

NNoorrwweeggiiaann NNoottaabblleess

Word on the Streets - Norwegian Notables


Henrik Ibsen was one of themajor Norwegian playwrightsof the 19th-century and isconsidered one of the greatestplaywrights in the Europeantradition, comparable even toShakespeare. He influencedother playwrights and novel-ists, as well as artists. The fe-male characters of his works

even influenced the feminist movement in theUnited States.

Ibsen was born on 20 March 1828 in the port townof Skien, Norway. When he was 15, Ibsen quitschool and went to work as an apprentice in anapothecary in Grimstad. While working there, hespent his free time writing poetry, and in 1849, hewrote his first play, Catilina, in verse likeShakespeare, who was one of his great influences.The next year, he moved to Christiania (modernday Oslo) to study at the University of Christiania.One of the friends he met there, Ole Schulerud,paid for the publication of Catilina, but it receivedlittle attention.

The next year, Ibsen was offered a job as a writerand manager for the Norwegian Theatre in Bergenby Ole Bull. Though that, Ibsen learned muchabout the theatre and he even traveled abroad tolearn more. He returned in 1857 to take up run-ning the theatre, but this did not go well and he asaccused of mismanaging it. He finally left Norwayagain in 1862.

During this time, he moved a few times betweenItaly and Germany, writing some of his best workswhich were critically acclaimed. While his playsearned him the title "the father of modern theater",Ibsen's productions were often considered scan-dalous for his time period. While traditionalEuropean theatre reflected strict morals of familylife and propriety, Ibsen instead focused on thetruths that were behind these many facades, giv-ing his audience and critics a new look at the con-ditions of life and morality. His plays gave them anew set of moral questions to examine.

One of Ibsen's masterworks was "Peer Gynt" whichwas a modern version of Greek epic tragedies, fol-lowing the title character on a quest. Another fam-ous work was "A Doll's House". This play exploredthe struggles of a woman with the traditional rolesof wife and mother and her own need for self-ex-ploration.

Ibsen returned to Norway as a literary hero In1891 . He had left Norway as a frustrated artistand returned as an internationally known play-wright. Sadly, in 1900, Ibsen suffered a series ofparalysing strokes that left him unable to writeand he died peacefully on 23 May 1906. He wasconsidered a literary giant and received a state fu-neral from the Norwegian government. To this day,Ibsen remains among the most popular studiedand produced playwrights

Bibliography• Catilina, 1850 [Catiline]• Kjæmpehøjen, 1850 [The Burial Mound/TheWarrior's Barrow]• Norma, 1851 [Norma]• Sancthansnatten, 1852 [St. John's Eve]• Fru Inger til Østeraad, 1854 [Lady Inger of Oestraat]• Gildet paa Solhaug, 1855 [The Feast at Solhaug]• Olaf Liljekrans, 1856 [Olaf Liljekrans]• Hærmændene paa Helgeland, 1857 [The Vikings atHelgeland]• Digte, 1862 (collection of poetry)• Kjærlighedens Komedie, 1862 [Love's Comedy]• Kongs-Emnerne, 1863 [The Pretenders]• Brand, 1866 [Brand]• Peer Gynt, 1867 [Peer Gynt]• De unges Forbund, 1869 [The League of Youth]

• Kejser og Galilæer, 1873 [Emperor and Galilean]• Samfundets Støtter, 1877 [Pillars of Society]• Et Dukkehjem, 1879 [A Doll's House]• Gengangere, 1881 [Ghosts]• En Folkefiende, 1882 [An Enemy of the People]• Vildanden, 1884 [The Wild Duck]• Rosmersholm, 1886 [Rosmersholm]• Fruen fra Havet, 1888 [The Lady from the Sea]• Hedda Gabler, 1890 [Hedda Gabler]• Bygmester Solness, 1892 [The Master Builder]• Lille Eyolf, 1894 [Little Eyolf]• John Gabriel Borkman, 1896 [John Gabriel Borkman]• Når vi døde vaagner, 1899 [When We Dead Awaken]

OnlineWorks by Henrik Ibsen at Project Gutenberghttp://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/i#a861

Henrik Ibsen20 March 1 828 – 23 May 1 906

Ibsens vei



Knut Hamsuns vei

Bibliography• Den Gaadefulde. En kjærlighedshistorie fra Nordland(Published as Knud Pedersen), 1877• Et Gjensyn (as Knud Pedersen Hamsund), 1878• Bjørger (as Knud Pedersen Hamsund), 1878• Lars Oftedal. Udkast (11 articles), 1889• Fra det moderne Amerikas Aandsliv, 1889 [The SpiritualLife of Modern America]• Sult, 1890 [Hunger]• Mysterier, 1892 [Mysteries]• Redaktør Lynge, 1893• Ny Jord, 1893 [Shallow Soil]• Pan, 1894 [Pan]• Ved Rigets Port, 1895 [At the Gate of the Kingdom]• Livets Spil, 1896 [The Game of Life]• Siesta, 1897• Aftenrøde. Slutningspil, 1898• Victoria. En kjærlighedshistorie, 1898 [Victoria]• Munken Vendt. Brigantines saga I, 1902• I Æventyrland. Oplevet og drømt i Kaukasien, 1903 [InWonderland]• Dronning Tamara (Play in three acts), 1903• Kratskog, 1903• Det vilde Kor (Poems), 1904 [The Wild Choir]• Sværmere, 1904 [Mothwise (1921), Dreamers]• Stridende Liv. Skildringer fra Vesten og Østen, 1905• Under Høststjærnen. En Vandrers Fortælling, 1906[Under the Autumn Star]• Benoni, 1908 [Benoni]

• Rosa: Af Student Parelius' Papirer, 1908 [Rosa]• En Vandrer spiller med Sordin, 1909 [A Wanderer Playson Muted Strings]• Livet i Vold (Play in four acts), 1910 [In the Grip of Life]• Den sidste Glæde, 1912 [The Last Joy]• Børn av Tiden, 1913 [Children of the Age]• Segelfoss By 1, 1915 [Segelfoss Town (Vol 1)]• Segelfoss By 2, 1915 [Segelfoss Town (Vol 2)]• Markens Grøde 1, 1917 [Growth of the Soil]• Markens Grøde 2, 1917• Sproget i Fare, 1918• Konerne ved Vandposten I, 1920 [The Women at thePump]• Konerne ved Vandposten II, 1920• Siste Kapitel I, 1923 [The Last Chapter (Vol 1)]• Siste Kapitel II, 1923 [The Last Chapter (Vol 2)]• Landstrykere I, 1927 [Wayfarers]• Landstrykere II, 1927• August I, 1930 [August (Vol 1)]• August II, 1930 [August (Vol 2)]• Men Livet lever I, 1933 [The Road Leads On (Vol 1)]• Men Livet lever II, 1933 [The Road Leads On (Vol 2)]• Ringen sluttet, 1936 [The Ring is Closed]• Paa gjengrodde Stier, 1949 [On Overgrown Paths]

OnlineWorks by Knut Hamsun at Project Gutenberghttp://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/h#a2376

Knut Hamsun4 August 1 859 – 1 9 February 1 952

Knut Hamsun was a NobelPrize winning Norwegian au-thor. He is considered to beone of the most influential lit-erary stylists of the past onehundred years and was evenonce praised by King Haakon

VII of Norway as "Norway's soul". His work usuallyfocused on more rural and primitive ideals, goingagainst the ideas of civilization. He also wrotesome pioneering psychological literature whichembraces techniques of various streams of con-sciousness.

Much of Hamsun's work was linked to the spiritu-al movement pantheism, which embraces the ideaof not just one god, but many, because of his de-pictions of the natural world around us and reflec-tions on the woodlands of his homeland. He wroteabout man and nature unified in a spiritual bond-ing, and that was the main theme of many of hisnovels, most notably "Growth of the Soil", which iscredited as being the reason for his Nobel Prize inLiterature.

Hamsun was also a long time admirer of Germany,and he expressed his support for the German war-effort during World War II, even meeting withHitler. Upon Hitler's death, he published a shortobituary in which he praised the dictator. Theseviews proved disastrous for Hamsun, and in 1945,he was detained by police for "acts of treason"while they took away his property. He was tempor-arily put under psychiatric observation under theexcuse of being hospitalized because of "his ad-vanced age". His last years were spent in povertyand he died in Grimstad in 1952.

During his lifetime, Hamsun published over 20novels, several of which have been adapted as mo-tion pictures, as well as short stories, plays, es-says and poetry. Two years after his death, afifteen-volume compilation of his complete workswas published. In 2009, the Knut Hamsun Centrewas opened in Hamarøy in his memory.



Olav Duuns vei

Olav Duun21 November 1 876 – 1 3 September 1 939

Olav Duun was one of the mostnotable writers of Norwegian fiction inthe 20th century. He was one of thefirst Norwegian writers to write inLandsmål, the native language of thepeople of the northern region. He drewfrom the traditions of his nativeNamdalen region and his workscombined the Norwegian folk essencewith the European cultural form.

Duun wrote often of the fierce battle ofthe peasants against nature for theirsurvival. His books used the dialects ofmany of the working classes andexamined the varied aspects of ruralpeasant life. His characters had strong

family traditions to inspire his modernreaders. The independent peasant, theone who best represented purpose andworth, was glorified in these writings.

Probably his most notable works arehis six volume saga "The People ofJuvik" which is the story of fourgenerations of a family of peasantlandowners, following the rise of thefamily from very basic humblebeginnings to an enlightened state.Between 1907 and 1938, Duunpublished 25 novels, four short storycollections, and two children's books.He died in Botne, near Holmestrand, onSeptember 13, 1939.

Bibliography• Løglege skruvar og anna folk, 1907 [Oddballsand Other People]• Marjane, 1908• På tvert, 1909 [Crosswise]• Nøkksjøliga, 1910 [The Slope by Nøkk Lake]• Gamal jord, 1911 [Old Soil]• Hilderøya, Storbåten, 1912 [Hilder Island]• Sigyn, Sommareventyr, 1913• Tre venner, 1914 [Three Friends]• Harald, 1915• Det gode samvite, 1916 [Good Conscience]• På Lyngsøya, 1917 [At Heather Island]• Juvikfolket, 1918-23 [The People of Juvik]• Juvikingar, 1918 [The Trough of the Waves]• I Blinda, 1919 [The Blind Man]• Storbybryllope, 1920 [The Big Wedding]

• I eventyret, 1921 [Odin in Fairyland]• I ungdommen, 1922 [Odin Grows Up]• I stormen, 1923 [The Storm]

• Blind-Anders, 1924• Straumen og evja, 1925• Olsøygutane, 1927• Carolus Magnus, 1928• Medmenneske, 1929 [Fellow Man]• Vegar og villstig, 1930 [On the Road and GettingLost]• Ragnhild, 1931• Ettermæle, 1932 [A Reputation Left Behind]• Siste leveåre, 1933 [The Final Year of Life]• Gud smiler, 1935 [God Smiles]• Samtid, 1936 [The Present Age]• Menneske og maktene, 1938 [Floodtide of Fate]

Coming in March

• Puzzle over the mysteries of the Voynich Manuscript

• Meet the other side of the Sapir-Whorf pairing, Benjamin Whorf

• Explore the Polish connection between Kashubian, Rusyn and Silesian

• Celebrate Holi with the rest of India

Where Are You?


This fishing port is actually spread over sevenislands, two of which are connected directly bybridges. It dates back to the ninth century when acastle was built in the area. It wasn’t actually granteda township status until the mid nineteenth century.Its primary vocation is fishing, and it is the modernday fishing capital of its country. Because of itssetting in the water, it also supports fish processingand fish farming. Some of the islands are linked tothe mainland by three of the world’s longest sub-seatunnels.

Its other main attraction is its unique architecture.This was done by design after a major fire at the startof the twentieth century wiped out most of the city,with its wood buildings. Fortunately, only oneperson died in the fire. She was a 76-year-old womanwho, oddly enough, lived next to the fire station. TheGerman Kaiser of the day made major contributions

to the city, sending 4 ships full of materials to aid inits rebuilding. It was then that the city was rebuiltout of brick stones, by a mayoral decree. The newarchitecture is a mix of towers, turrets and medieval-romantic frontages.

The city’s islands are home to a twelfth centurymarble church, a historical lighthouse, and preservedStone Age dwellings. Ornithologist flock to itsnearby “bird rock”, which is the largest in thecountry. The city is a beautiful tourist spot which stillretains its “old-world” charm.

Can you name this city and country?

Where Are You?

Last month's answer: Volendam, Netherlands

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

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

Available in both PDFformat and individualimages suitable for yourcomputer desktopwallpaper!

Don'tspendanotherdaywithout it!

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Young and in love. A couple at a Valentine’sDay dance. Such dances are often organized tobring loved ones together.

Celebrations - Valentine’s Day


Love! Most people around the world knowthat the day of love and lovers is Saint Valentine’sDay, on February 14th. On this day, people expresstheir love for special people in their lives in variousways.

But who was this Saint Valentine, and why ishe so linked to love? It is common for the Christi-an church to set aside days to celebrate specificsaints for their actions. In this case, there were atleast three saints named Valentine, all martyrs(people who have died for a particular cause) andall dying on February 14th. The first was Valentineof Rome who was a priest in Rome, killed around269 AD, and buried on the Via Flaminia. Hisflower crowned skull is on exhibit in the Basilica of

Santa Maria in Cosmedin,Rome. The second wasValentine of Terni who be-came a bishop then amartyr during the rule ofEmperor Aurelian. He wasalso buried on the ViaFlaminia but in a differentlocation, and his relics areat the the Basilica of Saint

Valentine in Terni. The third Valentine was mar-tyred in Africa, but little else is known of him.

In the official church biographies of thesesaints, there are no romantic attachments, and bythe time anything involving romance was linked toSaint Valentine in the fourteenth century, any dis-tinction between which Valentine was involved waslost. Saint Valentine’s head was preserved and re-spected in the abbey of New Minster inWinchester, England, but no celebrations for himdiffered from any other celebration of other saints.

LegendsHistorical research has most scholars believingthat Saint Valentine was a priest near Romearound 270 AD, a time when the church was un-der persecution by the Roman Emperor ClaudiusII. Many priests worked to help Christians escapepersecution as well as provide them with basic

sacraments (a sacred rite recognized as of particu-lar importance and significance) such as marriage,which was outlawed during this time.

More information than that, however, becomesmixed with myth and legends. In the 6th century, astory by Passio Marii et Marthae was publishedtelling of the martyrdom of a Saint Valentine ofRome. It states that Valentine was caught and in-terrogated by Emperor Claudius II personally.Claudius is said to have been impressed byValentine and tried to convert him to Roman pa-ganism in exchange for his life. Valentine refused,however, and instead tried to convert the emperorto Christianity. For this impunity, we was sen-tenced to be executed. While awaiting his execu-tion, he supposedly performed a miracle by curingthe blind daughter of his jailer. When he did this,. . . it had become a

common practice inEngland to give giftsand exchange hand-made cards onValentine's Day.

Celebrations

Valentine’s Day

Painting of St. Valentinekneeling by David Teniers III



the jailer, his daughter, andforty-six other people came tobelieve in Jesus and were bap-tized. Another part of the legendis that on the night of his execu-tion, Valentine sent the daughtera letter and signed it “from yourValentine”. A further legend isthat while having illegal wed-dings for other Christians,Valentine reportedly cut smallhearts out of parchment andgave them to the persecutedChristians as a reminder ofGod’s love.

LupercaliaThere was an archaic pagan riteassociated with fertility and lovecalled Lupercalia which was cel-ebrated on February 13-15 untilit was abolished by Pope Gelasi-us around 492 AD. Althoughthere is no historical facts con-necting this with SaintValentine’s day, many people dobelieve they are related.

ChaucerSo when and why did SaintValentine become associatedwith love? The first recordedconnection came from a poem byGeoffrey Chaucer in 1382 named“Parlement of Foules”. Theprimary verse which addressesthis was:

For this was on seynt

Volantynys day

Whan euery bryd comyth there

to chese his make.

For those whose Old Englishis a bit rusty, it translates to“For this was on SaintValentine’s Day, when every bird

cometh there to choose hismate.”.

The poem was in honor ofthe first anniversary of the en-gagement of King Richard II ofEngland to Anne of Bohemia.The reference to SaintValentine’s day connects thiscelebration of love along withthat of couples finding theirmates. However, some scholarshave pointed out that Februaryis too early a time for birds to bemating and that the day in ques-tion might be referring instead toMay 2nd, which is the celebrationof Valentine of Genoa who was a

bishop that died around 307 AD.Regardless, the connection alongwith the previously mentionedlegends and the date of Luper-calia have all helped to solidifySaint Valentine’s Day of Febru-ary as a time for lovers and lovedones.

French and English literat-ure of the fourteenth centurytalks about the practice of loversusing this day to exchange spe-cial love letters and tokens. Inthe following centuries the holi-day evolved and by the 18th cen-tury, it had become a commonpractice in England to give giftsand exchange hand-made cardson Valentine’s Day. This eventu-ally spread to the Americancolonies, then to other countries.

Celebrations Around theWorldIn the United States of America,Valentine’s Day is very popular

as well as heavily commercial-ized. The most common traditionis to exchange cards expressinglove or even the common“Valentine” which is a special-ized card. A Valentine also refersto the person giving or receivingthe card, so these cards nor-mally carry the phrase “Pleasebe my Valentine”. The exchan-ging of valentines is very popularamong children duringclassroom parties in theirschools. Simple poetry is oftenexchanged as well, with the mostcommon lines to begin it being“Roses are red, Violets are blue”.

As part of the commercializ-ation, small gifts are also ex-changed. The most common ofthese are roses and chocolategiven to women by men, buteverything from stuff animals todiamond jewelry is also given.The reference to “love” has alsobeen expanded to include boththe platonic love between friendsto the intimate kind betweenspouses and lovers. Specialdances and dinners are also or-ganized for lovers to spend timetogether.

In Britain,the exchange ofcards and giftsis done like inthe US, butchildren alsosing specialsongs related tothe occasion forwhich they arerewarded withcandy, fruit, oreven money.

Valentine postcard,circa 1900-1910

Man and woman with Valentine’s Day gifts

Shop with Valentine's Day gifts



Composing poetry is also done ata much greater level than in theUS, especially since the first ro-mantic poetry associated withValentine’s Day was written inBritain. The English also bakespecial “valentine buns” as ameans of celebrating fertility.

Valentine’s Day was oncecelebrated as an open air SpringFestival in Italy, but it hasn’tbeen celebrated like that for cen-turies. Instead, it is now treatedas other holidays imported fromthe US, like Halloween, and iscelebrated mainly by youngpeople in the same way as theUS. However, it is more desig-nated toward lovers, and so fam-ily members and friends do notnormally exchange gifts.

One aspect of this holidaythat Italy and Britain sharedwas that unmarried girls weresupposed to wake up beforesunrise and stand by their win-dows, for it was believed that thefirst man an unmarried girl seeson Valentine’s Day would marryher within a year.

The French once had aValentine custom called “draw-ing for”. It involved unmarriedindividuals to enter houseswhich faced each other and call-ing from one window to the oth-er, pairing off with a chosenpartner. If the male was not veryhappy with his “drawn”valentine, he would leave her. Atthe end of the day, a bonfire waslit so that the rejected womencould burn images of the un-grateful man and verbally abusehim aloud. Due to the amount ofnastiness this custom caused,however, the French governmentfinally banned it. In modernFrance, they celebrate this dayby the exchange of cards andgifts as in other countries.

In Germany, the custom isthat the man of an unmarriedcouple presents his beloved withflowers on February 14th. Giftsand messages are also ex-changed, but these are not re-

stricted toValentine’sDay and canbe given onany joyousoccasion.

A specialcard is usedin Denmark

called a “lover’s card”. Earlierversions of these were transpar-ent and when held up to lightshowed the image of a loverhanding his beloved a present.Now, any Valentine’s Day card iscalled a “lover’s card”. Anothertradition the Danish practice isthe sending of pressed whiteflowers called Snowdrops totheir friends and loved ones.Like Italy, however, Valentine’sDay is generally viewed as beingfor the young, between the agesof 15 and 30.

In Japan, Valentine’s Day isactually broken into two differ-ent dates. On February 14th, wo-men give gifts to the boyfriends,spouses, lovers, or any manyclose to them. This is then re-warded on White Day, March14th, when the men who receivedsuch gifts then pamper the wo-men who gave them. Chocolategiving from women is a verystrong custom on these days.Women give close male friendsand bosses “giri-choco” but ithas no romantic association.“Giri” means “obligation” andwomen make sure to gift all menclose to them with this since it isembarrassing for a man to notreceive any. For boyfriends, lov-ers and husbands, “hon-mei” isgiven. Many women even feelthat it isn’t true love if thischocolate is bought, so they pre-pare them personally. “Hon-mei”means “prospective winner”, soany man receiving these feelsvery lucky.

The Koreans share the sametradition of splitting Valentine’sDay and exchanging chocolates,with one notable exception. Onthe “White Day”, many men con-

fess their love for the first timeto their valentines. For thosepeople that have no particularromantic partners or interests,there is a third date set aside.On April 14th, or “Black Day”,these people get together and eatJajang noodles, which are black.

One custom in Scotland is togather an equal number of un-married men and women andhave them write their names onpieces of paper which are thenplaced in two hats, one for menand one for women. The womenthen draw the names of men andthe men draw the names of wo-men, as a means of creatingcouples. However, since it is veryunlikely that any of these nameswould match correctly, if theydon’t, the male would go withthe female that selected hisname. Gifts are then given to thewomen, and those women pinthe name of their partner totheir clothes, either over theheart or on their sleeves. This isoften followed by a dance andsometimes, at the end of thefestival, some marriages takeplace.

These are just some of the waysValentine’s Day is celebratedaround the world. More coun-tries have begun to celebrate itin recent years, adopting the USand British ways of exchanginggifts and cards as well as creat-ing their own traditions. Be sureto spend time with your lovedones this Valentine’s Day! PT

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Revisted - Proverbs


[Editor’s note: This article isa reprint from “Stories ThatWords Tell Us” By ElizabethO’Neil l . I t was published in1 91 8, but sti l l gives a goodinsight on how and why pro-verbs are created andused. ]

very child knows whata proverb is, thoughevery child may not,

perhaps, be able to say in itsown words just what makes aproverb. A proverb has beendefined as “a wise saying in afew words.” At any rate, if it isnot always wise, the personwho first said it and the peoplewho repeat it think it is. Most

proverbs are very old, and takeus back, just as we saw thatwords formed from the namesof animals do, to the earlydays before the growth of largetowns.

In those days life wassimple, and people thoughtchiefly of simple things. Whenthey thought children oryoung persons were going todo something foolish they gave

them good advice, and tried toteach them a little lesson fromtheir own experience of whathappened among the commonthings around them.

A boy or a girl who wasvery enthusiastic about somenew thing was warned that“new brooms sweep clean.”When several people wereanxious to help in doing onething, they were pushed aside(just as they are now) with theremark that “too many cooksspoil the broth.” The peoplewho use this proverb now gen-erally know very little aboutbroth and still less aboutcooking. They say it because itexpresses a certain truth in astriking way; but the first per-son who said it knew all aboutcooks and kit-chens, andspoke out of thefullness of her(it must havebeen a woman)experience.

Again, aperson who isdiscontentedwith the way inwhich he livesand is anxiousto change it iswarned lest hejump “out of the

frying-pan into the fire.” Againthe wisdom comes from thekitchen. And we may remarkthat these sayings are difficultto contradict.

But there are other pro-verbs which contain state-ments about birds andanimals and things connectedwith nature, and sometimesthese seem only half true tothe people who think aboutthem. We sometimes hear itsaid of a person who is veryquiet and does not speakmuch that “still waters rundeep.” This is true in Nature. Alittle shallow brook will babblealong, while the surface of adeep pool will have hardly aripple on it. But a quiet person

RReevviissiitteedd

PPrroovveerrbbss

No one can say who was thefirst person to use any par-ticular proverb.

Just how deep are these still waters?

Revisited - Proverbs


is not necessarily a person ofgreat character or lofty thoughts.Some people hardly speak at all,because, as a matter of fact,they find nothing to say. Theyare quiet, not because they are“deep,” but because they areshallow. Still, the proverb is notaltogether foolish, for whenpeople use it about some onethey generally mean that theythink this particular quiet per-son is one with so much goingon in his or her mind that thereis no temptation to speak much.“Empty vessels make mostsound” is another of these pro-verbs which is literally true, butis not always true when appliedto people. A person who talks agreat deal with very little to sayquite deserves to have this pro-verb quoted about him or her.But there are some people whoare great talkers just becausethey are so full of ideas, and tothem the proverb does not apply.

Another of these nature pro-verbs, and one which has exas-perated many a late riser, is,“The early bird catches theworm.” Many people have in-quired in their turn, “And what

about the worm?” But the pro-verb is quite true, all the same.

Again, “A rolling stone gath-ers no moss” is a proverb whichhas been repeated over and overagain with many a headshakewhen young people have refusedto settle down, but have changedfrom one thing to another androamed from place to place. Andthis is quite true. But we mayask, “Is it a good thing for stonesto gather moss?” After all, theadventurous people sometimeswin fortunes which they couldnever have won if they had beenafraid to move about. And theadventurous people, too, winother things--knowledge and ex-perience--which are better thanmoney. Of course the proverb iswise to a certain degree, for merefoolish changing without anyreason cannot benefit any one.But things can gather rust aswell as moss by keeping still,and this is certainly not a goodthing.

“Where there’s a will there’sa way.” So the old proverb says,and this is probably nearly al-ways true, except that no onecan do what is impossible. “Look

before you leap” is also good ad-vice for impetuous people, whoare apt to do a thing rashly andwonder afterwards whether theyhave done wisely.

The most interesting thingabout proverbs to the student ofwords is that they are alwaysmade up of simple words suchas early peoples always used.But we go on repeating them,using sometimes words whichwe should never choose in or-dinary speech, and yet nevernoticing that they are old-fash-ioned and quaint.

It is true that there are somesayings which are so oftenquoted that they seem almostlike proverbs. But a line of po-etry or prose, however often itmay be quoted, is not a proverbif it is taken from the writings ofa person whom we know to haveused it for the first time. Theseare merely quotations. No onecan say who was the first personto use any particular proverb.Even so long ago as the days ofthe great Greek philosopher Ar-istotle many proverbs which areused in nearly every land to-daywere ages old. Aristotle describesthem as “fragments of an elderwisdom.”

Clearly, then, however truesome quotations fromShakespeare and Pope andMilton may be, and however of-ten repeated, they are not pro-verbs.

“A little learning is a danger-

ous thing.”

This line expresses a deeptruth, and is as simply ex-pressed as any proverb, but it ismerely a quotation from Pope.Again,

“Fools rush in where angels

fear to tread”

is true enough, and wellenough expressed to bear fre-quent quotation, but it is not aThis is what happens when you don’t keep rolling.

Revisted - Proverbs


“fragment of elder wisdom.” It ismerely Pope’s excellent way ofsaying that foolish people will in-terfere in delicate matters inwhich wise people would neverthink of meddling. Here, again,the language is not particularlysimple as in proverbs, and thiswill help us to remember thatquotations are not proverbs.There is, however, a quotationfrom a poem by Patrick A.Chalmers, a present-day poet,which has become as commonas a proverb:--

“What’s lost upon the round-

abouts

We pulls up on the swings.”

[Editor: I’ve never heard this

quote, but I am assuming it is

similar to the proverb “What goes

around, comes around” ]

The fact that this is ex-pressed simply and even un-grammatically does not, ofcourse, turn it into a proverb.

Though many of the pro-verbs which are repeated innearly all the languages of theworld are without date, we knowthe times when a few of themwere first quoted. In Greek writ-ings we already find the half-true proverb, “Rolling stonesgather no moss;” and, “There’smany a slip ’twixt the cup andthe lip,” which warned theGreeks, as it still warns us, ofthe uncertainty of humanthings. We can never be sure ofanything until it has actuallyhappened. In Latin writings wefind almost the same idea ex-pressed in the familiar proverb,“A bird in hand is worth two inthe bush”--a fact which no onewill deny.

St. Jerome, who translatedthe Bible from Greek into Latinin the fourth century and wrotemany wise books besides, quotestwo proverbs which we knowwell: “It is not wise to look a gift

horse in the mouth,” and, “Liarsmust have good memories.” Thefirst again deals, like so many ofthe early proverbs, with theknowledge of animals. A personwho knows about horses can tellfrom the state of their mouthsmuch about their age, health,and general value. But, the pro-verb warns us, it is neither gra-cious nor wise to examine tooclosely what is given to us freely.It may not be quite to our liking,but after all it is a present.

The proverb, “Liars musthave good memories,” means, ofcourse, that people who tell liesare liable to forget just what talethey have told on any particularoccasion, and may easily contra-dict themselves, and so showthat they have been untruthful.It is necessary, then, for such aperson, unless he wishes to befound out, to remember exactlywhat lies he has told.

Many proverbs have re-mained in the English language,not so much for the wisdom theycontain as for the way in which

they express it. Some are in theform of a rhyme--as, “Birds of afeather flock together,” and “Eastand west, home is best.” Theseare always favourites.

Others catch the ear be-cause of their alliteration; that isto say, two or three of theirwords begin with the same let-ter. Examples of this are: “Lookbefore you leap.” The proverb “Astitch in time saves nine” hassomething of both these attrac-tions, though it is not exactly arhyme. Other examples of allit-eration in proverbs are: “Delaysare dangerous,” “Speech is sil-vern, silence is golden.”

A few proverbs are witty aswell as wise, and these are, per-haps, the best of all, since theydo not, as a rule, exasperate thepeople to whom they are quoted,as many proverbs are apt to do.Usually these witty proverbs aremetaphors. PT

Netherlandish ProverbsThe cover picture is part of a 1559 painting by Pieter Bruegel theElder. It depicts a number of Flemish proverbs that were popularduring the time.

Special Feature


Let me have your heart and I wil l give you loveThe denotation of my soul is the aboveIf there’s anything I lack, it’syou as my double bracketsYou make me mean thingsI can’t say enough.

Consider me your anaphor, I ’m bound to youThere’s no one else that I could be referring toYour features all attract meWe’re such a perfect match, pleaseAgree with meI need to be with you.

Well I don’t know how to say exactly how I feel about you‘Cos it seems my Broca’s area stops working right around youForgive me my disfluency –There’s nothing I can do, you see,You speak to me, l inguistical ly I ’m yours.

Now I know you tend to isolate, and that’s al l rightLike free morphemes you and I could lead our separate l ivesBut if we were to agglutinateTogether we would do so greatand I ’d hate to miss the words we could derive.

Well I don’t know how to say exactly how I feel about you‘Cos it seems my Broca’s area stops working right around youForgive me my disfluency –There’s nothing I can do, you see,You speak to me, and l inguistical ly I ’m yours

So please don’t be my allophone and disappearreally awkwardly whenever I start getting nearLet’s be a minimal pair‘Cos I ’m total ly cool with us both being thereMy environment is better when you’re hereMy environment is better when you’re hereYeah, my environment is better when you’re here.

- Copyright © Christine Collins, 2010-2013

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Language Learning Methods - Books

o matter what you areusing to help you inlearning a language, you

are most likely going to pick upa book during the process. Thereare a number of types of booksyou may use, and among those,the quality will vary greatly.

TextbooksIf you are studying by taking acourse with other people or evenhaving a personal tutor, you areprobably going to be using atextbook. Textbooks are usuallythe most formal types of booksyou could use because they aredesigned to be used by teachersin a professional capacity. Theyare also usually considered to bethe most boring, since it is theirjob to present you with the in-formation. It is the role of theteacher to explain further whatthey are telling you and make itinteresting.

Textbooks are broken intomany lessons with each lessondivided further into rules, ex-amples, and exercises. A teacherwould go over the lesson withthe students during the class,work some of the examples withthem, then assign them some ofthe exercises to be done by thestudents outside the classroom.These exercises might be collec-ted later and graded by theteacher, adding to the overallgrade for each student for thelanguage course.

Textbooks are also usuallyvery expensive, compared to oth-

er learning books, because astudent is forced to buy specificbooks for a course and can’tchoose a cheaper one. Everyoneuses the same textbook for thecourse.

Self-studyThe most common kind of bookused for self-study is a “teachyourself” book. These books areaimed at the individual readerand will try to make the contenteasy and interesting, since itnow has to be both the teacherand the source of information.The method the books uses willvary between series. Some mayfocus on teaching by using con-versations, another by usingreadings, and others might focusentirely on grammar as theprimary format. In general, thesebooks will offer rules, examples

and exercises, like a textbookdoes, but in a more entertainingand informal way. We will lookat a few of these common series.

Teach YourselfOne of the most common andmost successful series is theTeach Yourselfone. The name issometimes confusing, sincepeople refer to the entire kind of

book as “teach yourself”, so thetitle is often shortened to “TY”.These books have been aroundfor decades. The modern varietyare large paperbacks and mayhave accompanying grammarbooks and dictionaries. Theymay also have an audio aspectin the form of cassettes or CDs.

The common format forthese lessons is to start with aconversation along with vocab-ulary for the newest words andphrases used in the dialogue.Some simple questions might beasked for the reader to makethem think about what theyread. The lesson will then givegrammar explanations of someparts of the conversation, fol-lowed by another conversationor some exercises. The answersto the exercises are given in theback of the book. There may alsobe a reading to help the learner

LLaanngguuaaggee LLeeaarrnn iinngg MMeetthhooddss

BBooookkss

While studying a language,you are most probablygoing to pick up some kindofbook or printed materialto aid you.



practice their new vocabularyand grammar understanding.

These books are popular fortheir simple approach usingsituations backed up by gram-mar rules. The books also willusually contain simple linedrawings to represent somethings. They are a good size fortravel as well, being larger than“pocket size” but not the burdenof a full-sized textbook.

Made Simple BooksThe Made Simple series is like ateach yourself / textbook hybrid.These books are paperback andtextbook sized, but thinner thana normal textbook. They aretitled with the name of the lan-guage, like “Italian MadeSimple”, but there are Made

Simple books for many othersubjects.

The language branch ofthese books are similar to theTeach Yourselfseries in theirmethod, using a conversation orreading followed by vocabulary,grammar explanations and exer-cises. However, they present thematerial flatly, without reallytrying to engage the reader. Theycould probably be consideredthe “lite” version of a textbook,being much cheaper, whichmakes them popular among stu-dents who want the textbook ap-proach without the textbookprice.

BerlitzBerlitz is one of the big names inlanguages, providing productssuch as teach yourself books,audio courses, full classroomcourses, software and phrase-books. It is their phrasebookswhich are perhaps the bestknown product, being both veryconcise as well as colourful.

The Berlitz self-teachingbooks focus more on vocabularyand phrase learning, giving onlya few grammar rules and ques-tions. They also have a smalldictionary in the back. This

format is used because theBerlitz line of products are aimedmainly at the travel aspect oflanguages. They are the booksyou would pick up when you areplanning to travel to anothercountry and want to learnenough to get around, not ne-cessarily to become fluent.

Living LanguageThe Living Language series is es-sentially a grammar guide withphrases and audio. The normalsetup is to have one book beingthe “conversational manual”,which teaches the grammar andphrases and another book being

the “common usage dictionary”.Cassettes or CDs are likely tocome with these to provide thestudent with an audio to goalong with the readings. Thebooks also contain exercises.These books are probably thethinnest among the series dis-cussed here, perhaps relyingmore on the audio to help guidethe student, although one might

wonder which is supposed to besupplementing the other. LivingLanguage also produces onlinecourses and apps.

“Promising” BooksThere is a variety of self-studybooks I called “promisingbooks”. These are the kind thatclaim you will learn a languagewithin a given amount of time orin a certain way. Such titles areHindustani in Three Months,German in 32 Lessons and Ja-

panese in 10 Minutes A Day.These books are promising thereader they will reach their goal(whatever that may be) within agiven amount of time as long asthey adhere to the methods giv-en. The major problem with thisapproach is that it almost cer-tainly will damage your self-es-teem. While you may start usingone of these books believing itwill do just as it promises you,when you fail to master the lan-guage in the given time, you willfeel like you have failed. Thesetitles are made specifically to sellthe book, not to teach you thelanguage.

These books will use allkinds of methods of presentingthe material, often claiming they

If you are using a grammarbook as yourmain sourceof self-study, then a diction-ary becomes essential.

Young woman studying a phrasebook while traveling.



have found a “new” and “advanced” method thatwill allow you to succeed as they promise. They arealso the books you are most likely to see being ri-diculed in the media by expanding what is to belearned while minimizing the time given, such as“Mastering Ancient Tibetan in 39 Seconds”.

PhrasebooksBelieve it or not, phrasebooks are often used asself-study books because they present the readerwith the essentials they will need for basic thingswhile traveling as well as providing them withsome pronunciation guides and vocabulary. Formany, that is all they are trying to achieve in thelanguage, not requiring full fluency. If they are go-ing to be staying in another country for a longperiod of time, these books can provide the bridgeto a natural immersion that they can’t get fromany book

For these reasons, some of the series we men-tioned above, like Berlitz and Living Language, fo-cus much more on learning phrases thangrammar. There are also a large number of booksthat sound like they will be self-study books butare actually basic phrasebooks, and they are oftennot even good phrasebooks.

Italian in a Nutshell sounds like a it would be agood course book, but it is really a thin paperbackwhich gives a pronunciation guide to the alphabet,a paragraph on sentence structure, then vocabu-lary and phrases for many situations. Pronunci-ation guides accompany all the phrases. At theend, there is some grammar, focusing mainly onforming verbs, then a short dictionary. It is pocketsized and obviously made for travellers.

Let’s Study Japanese is a basic phrasebookwith simple line drawings. There is no attempt toteach you grammar or even the alphabet, sinceeverything is romanized. It has some “exercises”which are just phrases with blanks, no answers.At the end is a very small dictionary which is ba-

sically useless.Just Enough Serbo-Croat is little better. It is all

just phrases and vocabulary lists with basic pro-nunciation guides. At the end are eight pages of“Notes on the language”.

Say It In Dutch is the same as the Just Enoughbooks, except without the final pages of notes. Outof all of these books, only this one tells you it is aphrasebook. The others want to leave you with theimpression that they will actually be teaching yousomething.

If you are wanting to get a phrasebook forlearning or as a refresher, you are probably goingto get the most out of the Berlitz series. They arethe among the most compact and concise, provid-ing the reader with colour coded sections, a largevariety of phrases (usually having pronunciationguides) and vocabulary lists.

Grammar BooksFor the really hardcore language learners (thosewho spend a lot of time studying various lan-guages), a grammar book might be the best meth-od to learn the language. These books won’t wastethe readers time with long explanations and ex-tensive dialogues. They will present the grammarof the language in a concise manner, giving per-haps a few examples. They also won’t spend anytime explaining what a noun or an adjective is, orwhat is meant by a verb tense. These are referencebooks only.

DictionariesNo matter what kind of self-study book you aregoing to use, a multilingual dictionary is always abook you should pick up. The best ones are di-vided into two parts, with one part having thewords listed in the readers native language, thesecond with them listed in the new language, sothat one can easily find the meaning of new wordsthey encountered while also being able to find anew word they need. If you are using a grammarbook as your main source of self-study, then adictionary becomes essential.

Three different versions of Langenscheidt dictionaries.



Just like the teach yourselfbooks, there are a wide variety ofdictionary series to choose from.Perhaps the most popular is theLangenscheidt series, producedin Germany. These are verysmall but thick, usually withplastic covers, and the mostmodern ones are in a noticeablebright yellow, but you can findolder ones in a variety of darkercolors. They are designed fortravel, although there are larger,hardcover versions.

Even if the book you use hasa small dictionary in the back,the advantages of having a sep-arate dictionary can not be over-stated, as you will alwaysencounter new words in yourstudying.

ReadersSome learners find that readingin their new language is themost beneficial way of pickingup the grammar and vocabulary.It is closer to an immersion styleof learning than most of the oth-er books mentioned here, al-though there are a few coursebooks that are also written en-tirely in the new language.

A learner could pick up anovel or set of short stories intheir new language and try toabsorb the language that way,although this is usually donewhen the learner has alreadybeen studying the language for awhile, since otherwise it requiresa lot of looking up words in adictionary. Such a book is oftencalled a “Reader” for obviousreasons.

Dual-Language BooksAn alternative to a Reader is aDual-Language book. As thename implies, it has the contentwritten in two languages, eitherin opposite columns on eachpage or on opposite pages. Thesegreatly reduces the need forlooking up new words and istherefore less disruptive to theflow of reading.

These books might be collec-tions of poetry, short stories, orentire novels. They are likely tocontain some notes on particularparts of the text, for example ex-plaining a particular idiom,since languages rarely translateword-for-word. These notes be-come even more important if thesource text is from an oldersource.

Comic BooksWhile this may sound odd, com-ic books, sometimes called“graphic novels”, can be a goodsource of study material. First ofall, they are mostly dialogue in astory setting, which makes themuseful for learning speech pat-terns. They are, by nature, visu-al, which aids in explaining whatis being said (there is a reasonthat comic books are often thefirst books a child reads) . Thenature of the stories given willalso give an insight into culturalpatterns and references.

The comic book format ofJapanese Manga is often used tohelp learn Japanese. There waseven a magazine called Mangajin

during the 1990s that specific-ally used comics to teach Japan-ese.

Of courses, there are somedrawbacks to using comicbooks. They are likely to be us-ing many idioms and slangwhich may be confusing. Also,depending on the type, not allthe words will be easily translat-able. For example, how does onetranslate “web-slingers” or“kryptonite” from a superherocomic?

Magazines & NewspapersWhile not really books,magazines and newspapers canbe very helpful in learning a newlanguage. They are usuallystraight forward in the writing,not using many idioms or slangreferences, and are relative todaily events. Also, since they areproduced on a regular basis(newspapers normally once aday or week, magazines once amonth), new content is availableoften. They are also very cheapto buy, if you can get them loc-ally, as well as being very easy tofind online for most major lan-guages for free.

While studying a language,you are most probably going topick up some kind of book orprinted material to aid you.What kind of book you choosewill largely be based upon yourpreferred method of learning aswell as your time constraintsand eventual fluency goals. Ihope this article has helpedprovide you with some ideas onwhich will be best for you. PT

Japanese Mangabooks

Sections - Recordings


Sections is a mothly column about different

parts ofPaleremo, explaining their purpose

and how to use them.

o matter what kind of self study methodyou use - whether it’s books, audio, soft-ware or something else - the biggest

obstacle is probably in checking your own speak-ing ability. You may be able to form all the sen-tence correctly and speak it out loud to yourself,but how good is your pronunciation? Will someoneelse be able to understand what you are saying? Ifnot, then you might be wasting hundreds of hourstraining yourself to speak the wrong way. Such athing can easily be corrected in a classroom oreven a private tutoring setting when you can prac-tice on others, but not in a self study situation.

The internet can provide some help in this. Apopular thing among language learners is a voicechat. This is the process in which people can prac-tice their speaking skills on each other and gettold by others how to correct their pronunciation.Such systems can be done utilizing programs likeSkype and TeamSpeak, which require the user toinstall some software on their computer. Thismethod has a few problems, however. First, it re-quires that the two people are online at the sametime and using the same system. A person withTeamSpeak software can’t talk to a Skype system.Second, the interaction is most likely to be donewith just one other person, since even if there aremany others using the system at the same time,they won’t easily be able to all correct you. Finally,once you have received a correction, how do youreview what they said later?

Parleremo RecordingsWith the goal of providing people with a meth-

od of practicing their vocabulary without the draw-backs of using a voice chat, the ParleremoRecordings system was created. The idea is simple:a person records themselves reading a text in thelanguage they are studying, posts it, and people

can then give comments on the recording, rate it,and even make a recording as part of a reply.

To begin with, a person goes to the Recordingssection of the site. There, they will see a list of textthey can use to record. This list can go on formany pages, so they can use a language selectionto filter the list to just the language they are inter-ested in.

Once they have found a title they like, theycan click on it and be taken to a recordings page.The built-in recording method currently requiresFlash. If this is the first time using the system, theFlash driver might ask permission to access yourmicrophone. Once you have allowed it access toyour microphone, two buttons should appear be-side the text to be recorded. The first button lookslike a microphone. This button is used to start andstop a recording. When the user is ready to record,they click this button, read the text aloud intotheir microphone, then click the button again.

When the recording is done, two things shouldhappen. First, the second button, which looks likea triangular arrow pointing right (a universal signfor “play”) will become clickable. Second, in thecolumn on the right of the screen there should ap-pear a new box. This box will contain two smallbuttons, play and stop, which the user can use toplay back their new recording. Other informationsuch as length and size of the recording will bethere, along with a close/delete button and a sub-mit button. The usermay make a small num-ber of these recordings,then decide which is thebest for posting. To sub-mit it, they click thesubmit button besidethe recording. If theywant to delete that re-cording, they shouldpress the delete button(this should be a red X).If there is a problemwhile making a record-

SSeeccttiioonnss

RReeccoorrddiinnggss

Sections - Recordings


ing or saving it, the system will give the user an er-ror message.

Now, not everyone will have Flash enabled andinstalled, or they might prefer to make a recordingusing their own software. Both of these situationsare handled by allowing a user to upload their ownrecordings. Clicking on the text under the record-ing section beside the reading will open the up-loading section. The user then can browse for thefile on their computer and submit it. It must be inone of the allowed formats (wav, mp3, or ogg, al-though these might differ) and under the file sizelisted.

Once the user has submitted the recording, itgets stored with the others. Sometimes, there maynot be a text available for a person to record in thelanguage they want. If that is true, or they justdon’t like what is available, they may make a re-cording with their own text. This option is avail-able on the right column of the main recordingtext list. Under that is also the option for a personto add their own text for everyone to make record-ings with. Any text submitted for that purpose willfirst need to be checked over by an administratorto make sure the text is good for recording, andnot something vulgar or useless. Making a record-ing from their own text is just the same as makinga recording from given text except there is an areafor the text to be entered, long with a title, lan-guage, and possible notes.

The other vital part to this system is of courseallowing for people to listen to and comment onthe recordings that are made. Again, the user cansee a list of the recordings made by others, filter-ing it by language if they need to, then selectingone for review.

On the review page will first be given the titleand text, so the reviewer can read what was recor-ded. Under that is an option to record their ownversion of the text. If there is something wrong oroffensive with the recording, a person can also re-port it to an administrator.

Under the recorded text is the playback box. Ithas the name of the recorder and the play andstop buttons as we saw earlier. These may vary de-pending on the type of file the recording is in andwhat the reviewer has installed for playback ontheir browser. There is an option to also play therecording in whatever software the reviewer hasinstalled on their computer. On the right side ofthe recording box will be shown a number of starswhich represent the current average rating for therecordings (as given by other reviewers) as well asthe length of the recording.

Below the playback box is the comment area.This contains a basic rich-text editor for typing ina comment. The reviewer can add bold, underline,

italics, strike-through and color to their com-ments, to help make their report (similar to thecorrections section of the Journals) . On the right isthe option to leave a rating (1 -5, 1 being lowest, 5being highest) using stars or, if javascript is notenabled, a drop down menu.

There is also an area to record a response un-der the text box, enabled by clicking on the “Re-cord a comment” text. This can be particularlyuseful when a reviewer wants to record howsomething should sound. Finally, under this feed-back area is a list of other comments, if any, havebeen left before.

On the right side of the page is a list of some,if any, recordings that other people have made us-ing this text. This acts as a cross reference to howothers sound and what was said about them.

Once a person has used the system for awhile, they may wish to track their own activities.For this, there is a “My Recordings” area. Here, aperson can see there activities in different ways.They may see a list of the recordings they havemade, the comments they have left for others, thecomments others have left for them, and the textsthey have added. Each of these is selectable from alist on the right which shows how many of eachthey have done. There is also a general statisticsbox above that to show how much they have ad-ded in total, in the last month, the last week, orthe current day.

Finally, there is a large Statistics area so auser can see how many recordings and text havebeen made and for what languages. Selecting oneof those languages will take them to a listing ofthose in that language.

We haven’t covered all the features of the Re-cordings section here. There are other things of in-terest, such as the ability to translate text in manyareas (wouldn’t help if a comment is left for youthat you can’t understand).

As was said at the beginning, this Recordingssection was built to allow users to help each otherwith their pronunciation skills. We hope you willfind it useful in your studies. PT

Credits


Letter From the EditorWriter: Erik ZidoweckiImages: Sarah G: Woman in X-ray goggles

Linear A & B - Lost MinoanWriter: Lucy MartinImages:AlexKitch: Egyptian hieroglyphicsCorvax: Knossos North EntranceJapo: Palace ruins at Knossoskoikichi: top (Crete bay)Lapplaender: People on central courtyardPetey: Map of Crete, Arthur Evans, King Minos, Theseus Minotaur Mosaic, Linear B, Linear A tablet, Linear A cup, Model ofKnossosSources:• "Linear A." Hirst, K. Kris Hirst - About.com. September 6, 2009. <http: //archaeology.about.com/od/lterms/qt/l inear_a.htm>• "Linear A." Wikipedia. September 6, 2009. <http: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_A>• "Linear A." Omniglot. September 6, 2009. <http: //www.omniglot.com/writing/l ineara.htm>• "Linear A and Linear B." Encyclopedia Britannica. September 6, 2009.<http: //www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/342055/Linear-A>• "Linear A." Ancient Scripts.com. September 6, 2009. <http: //www.ancientscripts.com/l ineara.html>• "Sir Arthur Evans." Scribd. September 6, 2009. <http: //www.scribd.com/doc/23981 332/Sir-Arthur-Evans>• "Sir Arthur Evans." Dilos. September 6, 2009. <http: //www.dilos.com/location/1 3407>• "Encyclopedia of World Biography on Arthur John Evans, Sir. " BookRags. September 6, 2009.<http: //www.bookrags.com/biography/arthur-john-evans-sir/>• "Sir Arthur Evans (1 851 -1 941 ) A Bio-Bibl iography Of Arthur John Evans, Archaeologist. " Ariadne's Thread. September 6, 2009.<http: //pages.cthome.net/cyberel ise/aevans.html>• "Arthur Evans." Wikipedia. September 6, 2009. <http: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Evans>• "Knossos - The Palace of Minos." Odyssey - Adventures in Archaeology. September 6, 2009.<http: //www.odysseyadventures.ca/articles/knossos/knossos_evans.htm>• "Knossos Minoan Palace." Explore Crete. September 6, 2009. <http: //www.explorecrete.com/Knossos/knossos.html>• "Arthur Evans." HistoryWiz. September 6, 2009. <http: //www.historywiz.com/historymakers/arthurevans.htm>• "Irakl ion ( Heraklion ) Crete island /Knossos." Travel Info.gr. September 6, 2009. <http: //www.travelinfo.gr/irakl io/knossos.htm>

Edward Sapir - Patterns of LanguageWriter: Sofia OzolsImages:Petey: Edward Sapir, Franz Boas, Benjamin Whorf, Southern Paiutes Indian, Phonology, Columbia University, Navajo mountainSources:• "Edward Sapir" Wikispaces <http: //l ife-long-learners.wikispaces.com/sapir>• "Edward Sapir" The National Academies Press. Regna Darnell and Judith T. Irvine<http: //www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/biomems/esapir.html>• "Edward Sapir" the ful l wiki <http: //www.theful lwiki.org/Edward_Sapir>• "Biographical sketch of Edward Sapir" Suzanne Kemmer Ling 403: Foundations of Linguistics<http: //www.ruf.rice.edu/~kemmer/Found/sapirbio.html>• "Encyclopedia of World Biography on Edward Sapir" Book Rags <http: //www.bookrags.com/biography/edward-sapir/>• "Edward Sapir" English!nfo <http: //engl ish. turkcebilgi .com/Edward+Sapir>

At The Cinema - Atanarjuat: The Fast RunnerWriter: Erik ZidoweckiSources:• "Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner" IMDB <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0285441 />• "Atanarjuat" Wikipedia <http: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atanarjuat>All images are copyright Digital Fi lm Group, Vancouver, Canada and the producers of the fi lm.

Word on the Streets - Norwegian NotablesWriter: Sofia OzolsImages: Petey: Norwegian street, Ibsen, Hamsun, DuunSources:• "Henrik Ibsen" Wikipedia <http: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrik_Ibsen>• "Henrik Ibsen" The Literature Network <http: //www.online-l iterature.com/ibsen/>• "Henrik Ibsen" Biography.com <http://www.biography.com/people/henrik-ibsen-3701 4>• "Knut Hamsun" Wikipedia <http: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knut_Hamsun>• "The Nobel Prize in Literature 1 920 Knut Hamsun" Nobelprize.org<http: //www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/l iterature/laureates/1 920/hamsun-bio.html>• "Olav Duun" Wikipedia <http: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olav_Duun>• "Olav Duun" eNotes <http: //www.enotes.com/olav-duun-salem/olav-duun>

Where Are You?Writer: Sonja KrügerImages: arancia: Mystery picture

Celebrations - Valentine's DayWriter: Sonja KrügerImages:

Credits


anitapeppers: Couple at dancecohdra: roses in title, rose boquet, Heart box of chocolatesDMoc2IV: people with giftsDavid Hawgood: UK shop with heart bal loonsNewone: Valentine's kissPetey: Saint Valentine kneeling, Valentine postcardSources:• "Valentine's Day" Wikipedia <http: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentine%27s_Day>• "St. Valentine" New Advent" <http: //www.newadvent.org/cathen/1 5254a.htm>• "Valentine's Day History" Borgna Brunner infoplease <http: //www.infoplease.com/spot/valentinesdayhistory.html>• "Valentines Day Around the World" <http: //www.stvalentinesday.org/valentines-day-around-the-world.html>• "Around the World" <http: //www.novareinna.com/festive/valworld.html>• "Around The World Valentine's Day Celebrations" The Holiday Spot<http: //www.theholidayspot.com/valentine/around_the_world.htm>

Languages in Peril - The Rhaeto-Romance TrioWriter: Lucil le MartinImages:Aconcagua: Dolomites Mountain range <http: //commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi le:070406-1 0_Sellajoch. jpg>Sajoch: Rhaeto-Romance languages map <http: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fi le:Rhaeto-Romance_languages.png>Gérard Janot: Ladin sign <http: //commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi le:Ladin.JPG>alesmini: Friul ian sign <http: //commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi le:Padier.JPG>Robert Bellarmin: Romansh text <http: //commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi le:Dotrina_christiana_Breciana. jpg>Sources:• "Ladin" Omniglot <http: //www.omniglot.com/writing/ladin.htm>• "Ladin language" Wikipedia <http: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladin_language>• "The Ladin language" Alta Badia <http: //www.altabadia.org/en-US/language-ladin.html>• "Friul ian language" Wikipedia <http: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friul ian_language>• "Friul ian in I taly" Euromosaic <http: //www.uoc.edu/euromosaic/web/document/friula/an/i1 /i1 .html>• "Friul ian (furlan/mari lenghe)" Omniglot <http: //www.omniglot.com/writing/friul ian.htm>• "Romansh language" Wikipeida <http: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romansh_language>• "Romansh (rumantsch)" Omniglot <http: //www.omniglot.com/writing/romansh.htm>• "The Romansh Language" Roger Kreuz <http: //www.rogerkreuz.com/gen/Romansh.htm>

Revisited - ProverbsWriter: Elizabeth O'Neil lImages: Petey: japanese garden pond, moss on stone wall , Netherlandish Proverbs imageSources:• "Proverbs" 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• "Netherlandish Proverbs" Wikipedia <http: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlandish_Proverbs>

Linguistics Love SongWriter: Christine Coll insImages:Petey: WikiheartRobert Proksa: Neverending Love SongBil ly Alexander: Love Banner

Language Learning Methods - BooksWriter: Erik ZidoweckiImages:fastfood: BookshelfJonathan C. Haynes: Woman reading phrasebookcohdra: Open dictionaryshinjaejun: Japanese Manga Booksclarita: News rackPetey: Bookstore, Langenscheidt dictionaries

Sections - RecordingsWriter: Erik ZidoweckiImages:kpeterson: MicrophonePetey: Woman on headset

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.

For long centuries, the history of the Minoan culturehad been lost in the realm of Greek tradition andmythology. At the beginning of the last century,however, the history of Minoan Crete was actuallypieced together and it revealed that the civilizationwas not one of the most advanced and important inprehistoric times. The archaeological site of Knossos,the ancient capital of the Kingdom of Minos,provides an amazing source of knowledge about thiscivilization.

The ancient Palace of Knossos was the origin of thelegend of the labyrinth, which dates back as far as2000 BC. The factual relevance is no less fascinatingas it provided us with the linguistical mysteries ofLinear A and B. The Palace was a multi-storiedstructure with many floors and corridors, excavatedand reconstructed by Sir Arthur Evans in 1900.

Come to Heraklion, Greece for a guided tourthrough this political, economic and religious centerof the glorious Minoan Dynasty.

TThhee PPaallaaccee ooff KKnnoossssoossTake-A-Tour

Parrot Time - Issue 2 - March / April 2013

Documents

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language learningmethods

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linguist edward sapir