languagehat.com

That’s the conclusion of a study by Julie Boland and Robin Queen reported here by MJ Franklin:

A study published in March suggests what we’ve all long suspected: People who are obsessed with grammar aren’t as nice as the rest of us.

For the study, scientists Julie Boland and Robin Queen from the University of Michigan asked 83 participants to read email responses to an ad for a roommate, and then evaluate the writer on both social and academic criteria.

There were three types of emails shown in the study: emails without errors, emails with grammatical errors only and emails with typos only. […]

According to Boland and Queen’s research, more agreeable participants (as determined by the results of the Big Five Personality index) tended to rate grammar errors less harshly than less agreeable participants, who showed more sensitivity to “grammos” — homophonous grammar errors like to/too, it’s/its.

The study, published in the journal PLOS One, then speculates that the difference between the two groups may be “perhaps because less agreeable people are less tolerant of deviations from convention.”

Mind you, I wouldn’t put money on the accuracy of the results, but if it makes even a few people think twice about “correcting” other people’s spelling and grammar, I’m all for it.

Cambridge News reports on a worthy initiative:

A Cambridge start-up is on a mission to save some of the world’s most endangered languages from extinction.

Tribalingual is a language learning platform backed by the Cambridge Social Ventures programme in the Centre for Social Innovation at the Cambridge Judge Business School. It focuses solely on teaching rare and endangered languages.

It has been founded by Inky Gibbens, who became interested in endangered languages when she discovered that Buryat, the northern-Siberian language of her grandparents, was in danger of dying out.

“The rationale for using a language school to save languages is obvious,” said Gibbens.

“The only real way to save languages is by getting more people to speak them.”

So where others attempt to preserve languages by mummifying them through documentation and archiving, Tribalingual wants to give them a new lease of life by cultivating new generations and communities of speakers.

The company will initially focus on three dialects: Ojibwe, an endangered musical language in North America; Tulu, a South Indian language that is passed down orally only and doesn’t have a writing system; and Ainu, the language of a marginalised indigenous tribe in Japan, with less than 10 speakers worldwide.

Their website is here, and they’ve got a blog. Thanks, Trevor!

It’s been a while since reading about a new book on language made the bile rise within me; I’ve been very pleased with the increasing number and quality of good books on the topic. But Megan Garber’s piece in the Atlantic on Ross and Kathryn Petras’s You’re Saying it Wrong: A Pronunciation Guide to the 150 Most Commonly Mispronounced Words and Their Tangled Histories of Misuse accomplished that feat quickly and efficiently:

[…] the 180-page volume—a bloggy compendium of those words, featuring brief etymologies along with their correct pronunciations—does tell me, quite usefully, that “timbre” is pronounced “TAM-ber,” not “TIM-ber.” And that it’s “spit and image,” rather than “spitting image.” And “chaise longue” rather than “chaise lounge.” And “MIS-chuh-vus” rather than “mis-CHEE-vee-us.”

I’m feeling the bile again just copy-and-pasting that heap of steaming dung. Nobody says or writes “spit and image”; nobody except the kind of wretched pedant who would correct your “mispronunciation” of timbre or mischievous. (If you search on the phrase in Google Books, you get a bunch of usage guides.) And check out some of its “corrective pronunciations”:

açaí: ah-sigh-EE
phở: fuh
Budapest: boo-da-PESHT
Colombia: co-LOHM-bee-ya
Qatar: kuh-tahr
Uranus: YOOR-uh-nuss

You see the general approach: insist that English-speakers use an approximation of the pronunciation in the language the word was borrowed from, but get that pronunciation wrong enough to annoy anyone who actually knows the language. In Hungarian it’s BOO-daw-pesht (more or less), not “boo-da-PESHT”; in Arabic, it’s CUTter (with a really back C=Q), not “kuh-tahr.” And a lot of people are irritated, not impressed, by anglos pretending to give a Spanish twist to place names like Colombia and Nicaragua. And “YOOR-uh-nuss”? Seriously?

The only use for a book like this, the only possible excuse for its existence, would be if it confined itself to terms not found in dictionaries, like FOOD BRANDS (Fage: FAH-yay, Hoegaarden: HOO-gar-duhn) and FASHION DESIGNERS (Bulgari: BUHL-guh-ree, Givenchy: zhee-VON-she). But given their slovenly approach to other sorts of words, I don’t trust them on these, either. And check this out:

“In many cases,” they note, “so many people mispronounce a word that the new (originally wrong) pronunciation slowly becomes accepted … and sometimes even preferred.” They insist, though, that as that process takes place, there are clear lines between the correct and the incorrect. They note, in the book’s introduction, that 47 percent of Americans are “irritated” by mispronunciations and, as a result, correct their family and friends. In Britain, they add, “a whopping 41 percent go on the attack and stop a conversation to correct someone else.”

Clear lines, yes, that’s what this sort of peever always demands (and in the case of authors, claims to provide). Unfortunately, language is messy, people make different choices, and there are no “clear lines between the correct and the incorrect” — in almost all cases discussed in books like this, those terms are meaningless. And those statistics are clearly pulled out of the collective authorial ass. Please, people, if you want to know how a word is pronounced, look in a damn dictionary, and if there are two or more alternatives, feel free to use any or all. And shut the door in the face of anyone who shows up peddling crap like this.

Having read Pasternak’s pseudo-epics (or, as one might uncharitably call them, failed epics) of the mid-1920s, 1905 and Lieutenant Schmidt (both of which seem pretty unknown to English-speakers, to judge from Google results), I’ve taken a break to read Marina Tsvetaeva (along with the biography by Viktoria Schweitzer), and I thought I’d take a moment to give my impression of the long Pasternak poems. They’re both about the 1905 Revolution — apparently Pasternak wasn’t ready to deal with the more recent ones (when he was ready, the result would be Doctor Zhivago) — but nothing in them aroused my interest in either the revolution or the noble Lieutenant Schmidt, who gave up his life for the sake of the revolting sailors. What excited and moved me, and I’m sure what Pasternak put his heart into, are the passages that have nothing to do with politics or biography but are pure descriptions of nature (always close to Pasternak’s soul).

In 1905 there is the bravura passage about the sea that opens the section Морской мятеж [Sailor’s revolt], beginning “Приедается все,/ Лишь тебе не дано примелькаться…” (‘Everything palls;/ Only to you is it not given to become overly familiar from looking’ — you can see from that second line how impossible it is to translate); Dmitry Bykov said it sinks instantly into the memory of any Russian speaker, and I had little trouble memorizing a substantial chunk of it. I suppose the closest thing in English is Byron’s “Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean,—roll!/ Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain…” In Lieutenant Schmidt there’s a similarly glorious section about the Sebastopol harbor beginning “В зимней призрачной красе/ Дремлет рейд в рассветной мгле…” [‘In winter’s spectral beauty/ The roadstead slumbers in dawn’s haze…’], which has an irresistible passage in which he lullingly lingers on palatalized l’s: “Еле-еле лебезит/ Утренняя зыбь./ Каждый еле слышный шелест…” [‘Barely, barely flatter-crawl/ The morning ripples./ Every barely audible rustle…’]. But what prompted me to post was another passage, the start of section 2, that begins “Вырываясь с моря, из-за почты,/ Ветер прет на ощупь, как слепой” [‘Pulling itself out from the sea, beyond the post office,/ The wind makes its way by touch, like a blind man’]. I memorized that as well, with the result that it was fresh in my mind when I hit this bit from Curzio Malaparte’s The Skin: “The black wind is like a blind man, who gropes his way, caressing the air and barely touching nearby objects with his outstretched hands. It is blind, it does not see where it is going…” I don’t think it’s likely that Malaparte had read the Pasternak poem, even though he knew Russian literature, since it probably hadn’t been translated into any language he read; it’s just a coincidence, but certainly a striking one. I will never encounter a wind in my face quite the same way again.

Greg Uyeno has a CBS News story on the unusual (for mainstream media) topic of communication with aliens, which is of interest to someone like me who grew up immersed in sf and interested in language. The hook is the forthcoming sf movie Arrival (which I am eager to see), based on an excellent story by Ted Chiang (which is a pleonasm, because all his stories are excellent), and after a long excursus on Daniel Everett and his work with the Pirahã, it concludes with this passage:

But even if people are able to discern the patterns in the language, the way the message is sent could be a challenge. Humans communicate mainly through sight, sound and touch, but aliens might not. “It’s hard to imagine a language working on taste, but who knows?” Everett said.

If extraterrestrials​ have starkly different perceptual or expressive systems than those of humans, technology could help bridge the gap between human perception and alien output, linguists said. For example, if aliens spoke at frequencies that people can’t hear, humans could instead interpret digital recordings as visual waveforms.

Snedeker said she asks her students a question on exams to test their understanding of the shared structure and evolutionary basis of human language: “If we discover a new kind of creature on Mars that seems to have a symbolic system of great complexity, who should we send, and how likely are they to succeed?”

“There’s no right answer to the question,” Snedeker said.

I wish I thought the question might be answered in my lifetime.

Ingi Birchell Hughes lives in a Welsh village and is learning Welsh, and she didn’t like a piece in the Grauniad:

Last week the Guardian published an odd mean little article about how 5 boxes of Scrabble yn Gymraeg had been lingering unsold on a dusty shelf in Waterstones in Carmarthen.

It was a master class in invalidation — implying, without ever stating, that the reason they hadn’t sold must have been either a lack of Welsh speakers who like to play board games — fitting into the ‘Welsh people are thick’ trope, or worse, a general lack of Welsh speakers, fitting into the ‘Welsh is a dying language’ trope.

I don’t know about you, but most people into board games buy them online. And just so you know most Welsh speakers and learners in Carmarthenshire, who are perfectly able to shop online by the way, are more likely to buy books and other items in the Welsh language from Siop Y Pentan — which happens to also be in Carmarthen. Welsh speaking people have got so used to not having their needs catered for, that they are probably quite surprised that boxes of Welsh Scrabble are to be found in the Carmarthen branch of Waterstones. These are quite possibly, apart from Welsh language course books, the only items Yn Gymraeg in the entire shop.

She describes some of the problems she’s encountered learning the language, e.g.:

Wales is a bilingual country but English is the default language in supermarkets, shops and public spaces. If I go to Germany, and shop in a German supermarket, all the products will be labled German, all the the conversations I have with the checkout person or shopkeepers will be in German. Here in West Wales everything bar occasionally eggs and some milk, is labelled in English. You rarely get immersed in the language in public spaces. If I want to practise my Welsh I can try it out in the chemist — and I have found several chemists more than willing to help me practise. However discussing health matters in your second language is uncomfortable and an irony not lost on me.

Nothing spectacular, but an interesting read.

A Literature Across Frontiers post announces:

KurdîLit website is now online!

The English version of the website provides a mission statement:

KurdîLit is a website that aims to bring together and digitally archive basic information regarding actors (writers, translators, publishers, and periodic literary publications) operating in the field of Kurdish literature and publishing. The efforts to make this basic information accessible in three languages aim to establish more solid networks of communication between Kurdish literature producers in Turkey and actors operating in the international literary arena. KurdîLit was planned as a result of collaborations that emerged from conversations on the field of Kurdish literature among Diyarbakır Arts Center, Lîs Editions, and Literature Across Frontiers. This project undertakes to catalog current information and knowledge about Kurdish literature, which stands at a critical juncture of debates over cultural rights and freedom of expression in Turkey. In so doing, KurdîLit aims to improve the visibility of contemporary literature in the Kurmanjî and Kurmanjkî dialects of Kurdish, not only in Turkey but also in the wider region and the international arena; and it aims to foster relationships between contemporary Kurdish literature and European languages and literatures.

The Kurds have had a rough century or so, and I hope this initiative brings wider awareness of their culture and languages. Thanks, Trevor!

Dan Nosowitz has a wonderful Atlas Obscura post called “Why Linguists are Fascinated by the American Jewish Accent”; here’s a bit of it:

But is really a religious or ethnic thing? Can we call it a “Jewish accent” rather than, say, a “New York accent”?

Scholars say, yes, there is an American Jewish accent, but it’s complicated. “Intonation has kind of been the red-headed stepchild of linguistics, where for a lot of time there was debate about whether or not it’s really part of the linguistic system, or whether it was something else overriding it, essentially,” says Burdin. It’s only been about 15 years since linguists—just a few of them, really—have begun systematically attempting to study the rhythm, timbre, intonations, stresses, and pauses of speech, and the study is still in its infancy. It is particularly murky territory in English, where melody is not as important as it is in other languages. But there are some groups whose speech, long having been described as sing-songy, is suddenly of interest to researchers breaking new ground in the study of prosody. Appalachian English is one of those. And Jewish English is another.

It describes the Mel Brooks-style version, then continues:

The other major American Jewish English accent comes from the more observant communities of Jews, the Orthodox and the Hasidim. This is sometimes known as “Yeshivish,” coming from the word “yeshiva,” generally referring to the schools for the organized study of Jewish holy texts. Yeshivish, like the more secular Jewish English of Mel Brooks and Woody Allen, has some ties to New York City, but is much more heavily influenced by Yiddish. Many of its most distinctive elements are actually exceedingly, almost unimaginatively direct translations of Yiddish phrases and intonations.

I love the word “Yeshivish,” and I love the illustrative videos, and the whole thing makes me intensely nostalgic for New York. Go, read, watch, enjoy, you won’t regret it!

This Harriet post by Kenneth Goldsmith provides one of the most remarkable book-related stories I’ve ever read; the main text is by Keith Waldrop, and begins:

On Wednesday, May 23rd, 1973, Robert Ashley and I went to see John Barton Wolgamot. We met and talked to him in the lobby of the Little Carnegie Cinema, of which he was the manager. I hold on to this date, because so many moments I would like to pin down are imprecise or uncertain.

For instance, I do not know when Wolgamot was born. At the time we met, I got the impression he was in his sixties. Tall and thin, in a black suit with a velvet collar. He was an old-fashioned spiffy dresser, a bit too aristocratic to look right on fifty-seventh street — except, perhaps, down at the end of the block, in Carnegie Hall.

Sometime in the summer of 1957, I had stumbled onto his book, In Sara, Mencken, Christ and Beethoven There Were Men and Women. I am given to scratching around in second-hand book stores. My brothers had recently started a used car lot in Danville, Illinois, and a crony of theirs ran a second-hand book store. Naturally, I scratched around in it.

As I went along the shelves, Wolgamot’s book — odd-shaped, wider than tall — caught my eye. The publisher’s name, like the author’s, was John Barton Wolgamot. At a glance, I could make nothing of it. I put it back.

I went away. But it stuck in my mind, the book with the odd shape, and I went back and (actually on my third visit) I bought the book. It was, after all, only fifty cents.

I won’t spoil the story for you by summarizing any more of it, but I would have had a strong suspicion it was all made up except that I found it via this Ask MetaFilter question from somebody who had actually seen the book and was trying to find out what it was. Also, the full text (along with prefaces by Waldrop and Ashley) is here (pdf). As for the odd-looking name Wolgamot, it’s a variant of Wohlgemuth.

Our beloved bulbul is having it rough but took time out from his shitty job and PhD woes to call my attention to this wonderful post by Max Dingli; never mind the silly “untranslatable” framing (I wish that meme would dry up and blow away), these are just world-class phrases that make me want to learn Maltese. Sample:

1. “M’hawnx min ibul ma saqajk!”

Literal translation: “There is nobody to urinate against your legs.”

What it means: “You are unparalleled in the field of whatever we are discussing”

Example of use: “Sewwejtlek l-Escort, Fred.” (“I’ve fixed your Escort, Fred.)

“King int, m’hawnx min ibul ma saqajk!” (“You’re a king. There is nobody to urinate against your legs.”

Great gifs, too. Now go forth and conquer, bulbul! Illegitimi non carborundum!