These comments were posted in response to the Petition to have textbooks in Kreyòl in the schools (the last post on this SLA Blog):

Nancy Reyes says
Are you implying that Haitian kids are dumber than kids whose first language is Catalan, Swiss dialect, Cebuano or Karanga but have to study books written in the language of the majority (Spanish, German, Tagalog, Shona)?

For younger kids, immersion works,In Africa, the teacher speaks slowly and explains things in the local language when they have a problem. And the cost of printing all textbooks in the local dialect is huge: remember, even in Haiti there are three local dialects.

Instead of spending oodles of money to print “new” textbooks in local dialect, if you want to improve education, find a way to give out cheap protein supplements into the villages and given out in school nutrition programs, so the kids brains aren’t damaged by malnutrition.

and, FYI:
It is corruption, not language, that is the cause of Haiti’s problems.
August 13, 2010, 6:31 pm

Patrick-André Mather, University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras says
Dear colleagues,
I have read the petition by Yves Dejean, and as a linguist and creolist, I am probably the only “voix discordante” in this apparently unanimous support for Haitian Creole as the sole language of instruction in Haiti.

Suggesting that the current principal language of instruction (French) is the sole or main culprit for Haiti’s failing education system seems unfair and misguided. There are many examples of successful diglossic situations throughout the world, for example in Switzerland where the majority of the population speaks Swiss German, yet is educated in Standard German, without any apparent problem in students’ success rates. To think that changing the whole educational system to Haitian is going to solve the poor perfomance, low literacy rates, and underfunding of the schools is not very realistic.

Most Haitian parents WANT their children to learn French in school. Who are we to tell them otherwise, even if we mean well? How likely is such a move to succeed, if it goes against the wishes of a substantial part of the Haitian population? Learning French, in addition to Haitian Creole, gives Haitians access to a major international language, from which most of their vocabulary is derived, and which is part of Haiti’s historical and cultural heritage, whether you like it or not. It also facilitates access to all kinds of exchange programs with French-speaking countries and universities, and should not be seen purely as an instrument of discrimination. In other countries, such as Canada (Quebec), native languages like Inuktitut are used during the first 2 or 3 years of instruction, after which other languages are introduced, such as French and English. Children are perfectly capable of acquiring native-like proficiency in more than one language, and I think well-meaning American linguists should perhaps ask the Haitians themselves if they think French should be eliminated from the education system, or whether a more moderate, mixed approach should be adopted, strengthening the teaching of both Haitian AND French, instead of using French as a scapegoat for the failings of a corrupt and underfunded education system.
Although I hold the authors and signataries of this petition in high regard (some are colleagues and personal friends), I cannot sign it as it is currently worded, because it is completly one-sided, and apparently does not take into account the wishes and opinions of Haitians themselves, who are, after all, “les principaux intéressés”.
Patrick-André Mather
August 15, 2010, 12:01 am

Ronald Kephart says
The fact is that the status quo, which denies Haitian children access to literacy and at least early education through their first language, Kreyòl, is at best educational malpractice and arguably a crime against humanity, a crime by the way that virtually all the nations of the West Indies are guilty of. See the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

There is of course no doubt that Haitian children can benefit from learning French, as well as English, Spanish, and whatever other languages they might find useful. But to claim that this means that Kreyòl should not be used in schools, and especially that it should not be used for literacy acquisition, is to be oblivious to the mountains of research that have shown that children only need to learn to read once, and that they accomplish this more easily and efficiently (not to mention enjoyably) in their first language, the one they are most in tune with. Learning to read first in Kreyòl will not cut children off from French, or any other language they want to learn.

After all these centuries of abuse, can we not give these children the benefits of our linguistic and educational research?
August 17, 2010, 10:11 am

Patrick-Andre Mather says
Dear colleagues,
Haiti’s educational reforms of the 1980s and 1990s specifically mention that Kreyol should be used as the language of instruction during the first years of schooling. In addition, Kreyol and French are now both official languages, which is a welcome development. The problem is that the educational reforms have not (yet) been properly implemented, due to lack of funds, awareness, etc.. If they were, then the mixed approach which i mention in my first post would be a reality. The central problem in the Haitian education system, is that there is neither the will nor the funds to properly implement reforms that would (a) ensure that ALL Haitian children have access to free, universal public education and (b) ensure that ALL Haitian children be afforded the possibility to be educated in BOTH official languages (and also in foreign languages like Spanish and English). Trying to eliminate French from the curriculum in itself will achieve nothing.

Patrick-André Mather

Dear friends and colleagues,

We ask that you please take time to read, sign and distribute Professor Yves Dejean’s urgent public petition about school reform in Haiti.

The petition is available online at:

http://ayiticheri.com/rebati/ — courtesy of indefatigable Web Designer Jean-Pierre Barthélémy.

If you sign the petition, you will receive an automatic message from the email address of Jean-Pierre Barthelemy. This email will ask that you please click on a website to confirm your email address. After you click on this website, and your signature will appear under the petition.

Here’s why we think Professor Dejean’s petition deserves as much support as possible:

With all the billions and the vast efforts that are now being invested in the reconstruction of education in Haiti, now is the time to solve one fundamental problem that has plagued Haitian schools since the country’s birth. This problem concerns the misuse of language in Haiti’s schools. This is a problem that Haitian governments since the 1980s have been confronting with only limited success to date. So we need to gather as much momentum and public consciousness as possible to address this problem with the necessary efficacy.

Indeed, by all accounts, Haitian schools are still not making optimal use of Haitian children’s native language of Kreyòl. Most school books and most school exams are still in French, a language that the vast majority of Haitians, including the vast majority of Haitian teachers, do not adequately speak and understand. Such a paradoxical and exclusionary practice is a consequence of Haiti’s past as a French slave-based plantation colony and its unjust neo-colonial legacies.

This practice of teaching and testing Kreyòl-speaking children in French goes against pedagogical best practice and scientific results that have accumulated in more than 50 years of research in linguistics and in education. Teaching and testing in a language that the vast majority of Haitians do not speak is one reason why Haiti’s education system has failed most Haitians throughout the country’s history. In turn, this language barrier and the attendant educational failure are at the root of much socio-economic inequity in Haiti.

We thus ask that you take a public stance against such blatant injustice: Please sign Professor Yves Dejean’s petition at http://ayiticheri.com/rebati/ and invite friends and colleagues to do so as promptly as possible. Once the petition has collected enough signatures, it will be forwarded to Haiti’s government officials, NGOs, media outlets and other institutions that are trying to usher some of the educational reforms that Haitian children desperately need.

The petition was written in Kreyòl by Professor Dejean, then translated into English and French by Professors Michel DeGraff and Hugues Saint-Fort, respectively. Jean-Pierre Barthélémy designed the website for the petition at http://ayiticheri.com/rebati/

In solidarity for Ayiti cheri,

Professor Michel DeGraff, MIT
Professor Hugues Saint-Fort, City University of New York

-michel.
____________________________________________________
Michel DeGraff
MIT Linguistics & Philosophy
77 Massachusetts Ave
Cambridge MA 02139
degraff@MIT.EDU

http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/people/faculty/degraff

____________________________________________________

A couple of months ago my then 5th grade daughter got into trouble with her school principal. She and some friends had invented a word-substitution system (the principal said a “language”, but then she’s not a linguist). In the system, fruit stood for common words (Pineapple was Hello, Coconut meant Yes and Orange meant No.  They used vegetables for their names. My daughter took the name Broccoli, and her friends were Brussels sprout, Carrot, Green bean, and Spinach.

Some member of this group of 10 and 11 year-olds decided to invent rude words (truly an unusual thing for tweens to think of doing!). My daughter tells me that Mango meant “very bad word” while Banana meant” semi-bad word”. I learned about these words when my daughter got into trouble at school because, and here I quote the principal’s letter to me:

“she participated in and wrote down a language that was used to insult and hurt other students.   The language included very foul swear words.   My job is to provide a safe learning environment for all students.   The students using the language during free time upset several students and brought them to tears.”

Now, right at this very minute I am participating in and writing down a language which includes some pretty foul swear words, and this language is used in playgrounds all over the English speaking world during free time in ways that upset fellow students and bring them to tears. My daughter has, herself, been brought to tears sometimes through foul swear words and sometimes through the use of the epithet “geek”, a term with which she has become familiar since moving to our new city and a new school.
I somehow managed to keep my daughter out of situations in which being intelligent was a mark of shame until we moved. And of course we moved so that I could take the really excellent tenure-track job in four-fields anthropology department that I had been hunting for quite some time. This may make me more sensitive than I might be to the issue of hurtful language.

A conversation with the school principal after the email exchange from which I cite above has led me to think more deeply, and professionally, about the nature of playground slurs, and in particular why I find “geek”, when used as a slur, more offensive than words which may commonly be viewed as quite foul and offensive.
The conversation I had with the principal was memorable. Among other interesting revelations, the principal informed me that Mango and Banana did not mean simply “very bad word” and “semi-bad word”. Rather, they were substitutes for specific English-language swear words. Banana meant, according to the principal, “sh*thead”, while Mango was the substitute for the time-honored “motherf%$&er”. She asked me several times during the course of our conversation “Don’t you mind that Elizabeth has invented a language with the word “motherf%$&er” in it?” to which I consistently replied “Did SHE, my daughter, use these words in a bullying fashion?” The response to both questions was, essentially, “No.” I noted that my daughter had herself been subjected to offensive language, being referred to as both a “geek” and a “bitch”. I went on to say that I really did not feel that there was anything wrong with knowing that a language contained profanity, or with writing down that profanity (although I realize that in this blog entry I have been careful to write the “really bad word’ and the “semi-bad word” in such a way as to mark their generally accepted offensive quality, while even I feel more comfortable writing the terms my daughter has been called without recourse to symbols).
Why, then, do I retain the persistent sense that I’d really rather someone called my daughter a “mother%$&r” than a “geek”? (And I don’t mean to say that I would welcome either epithet, only that I have them at different positions on a scale.) And, perhaps even more interesting, why did the school principal pale at the thought of kids saying Mango Banana, asserting that this was BECAUSE they were saying motherfucker shithead? Would she have been OK with the idea that Mango meant geek?
One of the things that drew me to Linguistic Anthropology and keeps me fascinated is that my chosen field often explores the interface between language and power, where power is understood as the ability to influence the behavior and attitudes of others without applying actual physical force. (I draw on the work of Michel Foucault to get to this idea of power.)
All this has me thinking about what bad words are for – and in particular the role they play in our own culture as markers of adult status. Vocabulary is explicitly marked, as in the ubiquitous warning of “adult language”, generally associated with the equally dire “adult content”. We seem to have decided as a society (although certainly with exceptions) that over the top violence – giant mechanical creatures smashing one another and their human constructed surroundings, vampires and werewolves battling for the favors of teen princesses, aliens and monster fighting for the Earth – is part of the “natural” content of childhood, while certain words ought never to come from the mouths of these violent creatures.

Meantime, we also seem to be steadily demonizing and trivializing intelligence, so that “geek” can be hurled at someone in the most “PC” context and defending oneself against accusations of intellectual prowess seem to have become a requirement to attain and retain political office.
What are we, society in the guise of my daughter’s principal, so afraid of? Why is bad language, even the knowledge of bad language, a challenge to the order of the school? Because it is a challenge to the order of the school, or the perception of such a challenge, that I think must lie at the base of the principal’s over-reaction to the fruit language. The problem of the fruit language is its ineluctable evidence of childish ability to manipulate and lay claim to language which in the school is prohibited even to the adults. No one may use “adult” language in the space in which children are taught not to be adults but to be children appropriately. And yet I suspect that in another school the fruit language might have simply raised an eyebrow or two. It is not sufficient, then, to simply say that “bad words” challenge the existing order and had to be quashed thoroughly.

The disorderly universe presented by “bad words”, which was raised again in an essay by Linton Weeks posted on the  NPR site even as I was finishing this essay, becomes more frightening at points where language ideologies (and other ideologies) are in contact. I suspect that my daughter’s principal was more concerned because the children in our school (which qualifies for Title I federal funding, a program designed to “improve the academic achievement of the disadvantaged”) often come from backgrounds the principal in question cannot quite imagine. This has led her, for example, to announce in markedly rapid, upper Midwestern English that the Spanish, Punjabi and Vietnamese interpreters who had been requested are present and anyone who wants to avail themselves of these services should make this known, an announcement which is invariably followed by silence which she bulldozes right through, shrugging, wondering why folks indicated on their paperwork that they would want an interpreter. Children from economically disadvantaged backgrounds who proudly announced to my daughter’s 4th grade teacher on the first day of school that they “hate school” also create significant challenges for educators, and the school’s reputation for bullying in the playground must be taken into account. But why, then, is Mango Banana so serious while Geek is not?

“Geek” does not create a crisis, I think, because it does not belong to any of this dangerous terrain, but resides safely in the mainstream anti-intellectualism about which no one seems all that afraid.

The problem of “bad words” is not simply one of resistance or rebellion. Instead, “bad words” index, or point out, the rubbing together of ideological differences which cannot, in the presence of such words, be ignored. So I do understand the fear which drove the principal to her unreasonable response, just as I understand the closely related to the distress expressed by Weeks in his essay. But I still think that Mango Banana is a useful phrase, and I am proud that my daughter, like me, is a geek.

Staff members, Jason Watkins and Carla Fernandez, had already been hard at work preparing for Dr. Monica Heller, Dr. Rob Albro and myself to arrive. In a complex web of flip charts, coloured labels and index cards we sorted and slotted an enormous amount of academic knowledge. I can’t say much more, but I can say SLA members will be intrigued to see the ways in which the conference theme Circulation has been taken up. There are also some other exciting program elements which I will talk about in upcoming posts. The full program will be online very soon!

Vuvuzelas at the World Cup, picture from Wikipedia's Caldwella

Steven Black wrote:
As a scholar who specializes in linguistic anthropology and who has conducted work on isiZulu in South Africa (isiZulu rather than ‘Zulu’ is the correct term for the Zulu LANGUAGE rather than the Zulu people), I am getting awfully tired of mistranslations and misinformation about South African languages surrounding the world cup. Though the information posted here is basically correct, I feel a need to give it some more contextualization and verification rather than merely quoting BBC and wikipedia on the society for linguistic anthropology’s website!

First, as an additional example of misinformation not listed here: the South African team’s name, Bafana bafana, has been translated on international television as “the boys the boys,” but if you understand not only the lexical translation (bafana does mean ‘the boys’) but also the syntax of isiZulu, then you know that Bafana bafana is more correctly translated as “boys are boys” which can be MOST correctly glossed as “boys will be boys.” This makes a lot more sense, and is a lot more fun, than saying “the boys the boys.”

About the vuvuzela term: first, the suffix -ela is an “applicative” extension in isiZulu. The suffix “ela” means “an action… performed for, on behalf of, or in the direction of something or someone” (Mbeje 2005:229). Second, there are a large number of ideophones in isiZulu (in fact, the term was first invented as a grammatical category for the linguistic analysis of isiZulu). An ideophone is basically type of onomatopoeia. Thus the term “vuvuzela” can be understood as ‘the thing with which you make the vuvu sound for someone or something’.

The term Nguni, rather than ‘Bantu’, is now popularly used in southern Africa to describe a subset of languages that share grammatical features because the word ‘Bantu’ has pejorative connotations due to its use by the oppressive Apartheid government. This is not an entirely satisfying solution for linguists because the term ‘Bantu’ is more inclusive and refers to a large swath of languages (see work by Larry Hyman on the subject). Still in this case the term Nguni is correct referring to a subset of several southern African languages share that many grammatical and lexical features, so much so that they are (partially) mutually intelligible.

Finally, “township slang” is a rule-governed phenomenon quickly becoming a creole language or two in South Africa, one of which is often known as “tsotsitaal”–from the word tsotsi (urban slang for ‘gangster’ that crosscuts multiple Nguni languages) and taal (Afrikaans for ‘language’).
July 10, 2010, 7:15 am

One of the most frequent uses of linguistic anthropology is to help us understand how people in marriages communicate with each other.

Article on people “learning to be married” and the importance of using videotapes to understand how people interact with each other.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/18/AR2010061804509.html?sid=ST2010062404889

This article is on studies from UCLA’s Center for the Everyday Lives of Families including those of Elinor Ochs.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080101093852.htm

More on Elinor Och’s work, marriage, and the phrase “Hi Honey, I’m home!”
http://www.boston.com/jobs/news/articles/2006/02/12/repeat_after_me_welcome_home_dear/

Multi-lingualism and schools

While ever more news comes out about Arizona trying to ban linguistic diversity, a couple of other points of view emerge.

First, Samy Alim and other Stanford faculty have come out with a letter pointing out the faulty linguistic assumptions in the Arizona legislation.
http://www.stanford.edu/~halim/StatementArizonaEnglishFluencyJune2110.pdf

Second, some schools are leading the fight by example. The first American bilingual Hebrew English school has opened in Brooklyn, New York. While the majority of the students are Jewish, one third come from a diverse set of backgrounds including African American Muslims and Latino.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/25/nyregion/25hebrew.html

Public and Private Language

General Stanley McChrystal was fired by President Barack Obama on Wednesday June 23 over remarks reported in an article in Rolling Stone by Michael Hastings. The Hastings article was a portrait of a man more comfortable with Budweiser than Bordeaux and part of the jocular, profanity laced culture common in the US military. I am putting links to this article and reactions to it in this Linguistic Anthropology Roundup because it illustrates the construction of public and private language. While there has been a lot of discussion about the intermingling of the two realms, the existence of the separation between the two realms is revealed by the reactions to the interview. The Rolling Stone interview treated McChrystal like a rock star, describing his likes and dislikes, his flipping of the middle finger at an aide, and his flippant comments about Vice President Joseph Biden and the French. The level of disclosure typical of portraits of rock stars, however, goes directly against military ideologies of language use. Elliot Cohen called the article an “appalling violation of norms of civilian-military relations”. The coverage after McChrystal was replaced by Gen. David Patreus often focused on “voice,” an idea connected to power, the wielding of power and the act of arguing for certain lines of action.

The Rolling Stone article: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/119236
The aftermath as reported in
The Blogs of War, including comments by Eliot Cohen and Joe Klein:
http://www.blogsofwar.com/2010/06/23/mcchrystal-meeting-with-obama-at-the-white-house/
The New York Times on the problems created by McChrystal’s interview: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/24/us/politics/24mcchrystal.html?hp
Business Week commentary by Margaret Carlson comparing McChrystal with Lady Gaga:
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-06-22/lady-gaga-s-pose-more-standup-than-general-s-margaret-carlson.html
Washington Post on Obama firing McChrystal:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/23/AR2010062300689.html
New York Times on “Strong Voices”:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/25/world/europe/25petraeus.html
NY Times columnist David Brooks on the problems of not separating private from public speech:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/25/opinion/25brooks.html?hp

In response, the Department of Linguistics at the University of Arizona has drafted a statement summarizing research on language variation and its effects on language acquisition. The statement was sent to Governor Jan Brewer and to Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne. A PDF version of the statement is also publicly available here.

The statement points out eight facts about language and language acquisition drawn from linguistic research ranging from William Labov (1963) and Eric Lenneberg (1967) to recent (2009) publications in psycholinguistics, applied linguistics, etc.

I will  quote the statement’s eight bullet points here. Check out the PDF for the detailed descriptions.

1. ‘Heavily accented’ speech is not the same as ‘unintelligible’ or ‘ungrammatical’ speech.
2. Speakers with strong foreign accents may nevertheless have mastered grammar and idioms of English as well as native speakers.
3. Teachers whose first language is Spanish may be able to teach English to Spanish‐speaking students better than teachers who don’t speak Spanish.
4. Exposure to many different speech styles, dialects and accents helps (and does not harm) the acquisition of a language.
5. It is helpful for all students (English language learners as well as native speakers) to be exposed to foreign‐accented speech as a part of their education.
6. There are many different ‘accents’ within English that can affect intelligibility, but the policy targets foreign accents and not dialects of English.
7. Communicating to students that foreign accented speech is ‘bad’ or ‘harmful’ is counterproductive to learning, and affirms pre‐existing patterns of linguistic bias and harmful ‘linguistic profiling’.
8. There is no such thing as ‘unaccented’ speech, and so policies aimed at eliminating accented speech from the classroom are paradoxical.
   (University of Arizona Department of Linguistics, May 26 2010)

The Speculative Grammarian is a parody academic journal that describes itself as “the premier scholarly journal featuring research in the neglected field of satirical linguistics.”

I will admit that I seldom read SpecGram, as fans call it, since I don’t really enjoy its brand of humor, generally very dry, deadpan satire of academic writing and more specifically the discourse of descriptive and theoretical linguistics. This month, however, three different acquaintances commended the latest “Special Fieldwork Issue”.

On the principle of de gustibus non est disputandum and as your humble conduit, I present links to Speculative Grammarian’s Special Fieldwork Issue 1 (April 2010) and Special Fieldwork Issue 2 (May 2010). I did get a good chuckle from Elwin Ransom’s piece, “On the Applicability of Recent Theoretical Advances in Linguistics to the Practice of Fieldwork.” And really, what more can I demand for the price of my subscription?

The Simpsons question my life choice

Speaking of humor, I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry at this YouTube video: “The Simpsons – Comments about PhDs and Grad Students.”

Muscogee (Creek) Nation responds to Arizona’s immigration bill

Last month Arizona passed the “Support our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act,” a controversial but popular law involving local police in immigration law by making it a misdemeanor to be in Arizona without carrying immigration papers. Many commentators responded at that time by drawing or recalling cartoons of Native Americans viewing Europeans as illegal immigrants.

Although the law does not officially go into effect until July, some local media outlets and several blogs have suggested that Native Americans as well as US-born Latinos are already being detained or harassed in Arizona, an apparent reversal of those cartoons.

Now the Muscogee (Creek) Nation is discussing a resolution that would condemn the Arizona law. A bill being discussed by the Muscogee (Creek) Nation legislative committee would declare that the tribe “opposes laws and policies that unfairly target minorities and supports other tribal nations that challenge these bills.” It also urges the state of Oklahoma, where the Creek Nation is located, to refrain from passing similar laws. Oklahoma House Bill 1804 would empower state and local police to enforce immigration law, similar to the Arizona law. It would also deny state services to people without proper documents.

Other tribal governments oppose the Arizona law.

In a similar note, Indian Country Today reports that many Native American governments, including the Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, have opposed Arizona’s immigration enforcement law. The Inter Tribal Council of Arizona and representatives of various tribes urged the Arizona legislature not to pass the bill, and are now apprising federal officials of their concerns.

In contrast, and despite the breadth of coverage of protests against the law, the Pew Research Center found broad support for the Arizona law, especially among older Americans. Most respondents (59%) approve of the Arizona law; 74% of respondents over 65 years of age report approval, compared to just 45% of those under thirty.

Unilateral hearing loss hurts language development

Science Daily reports on work by Judith Lieu and colleagues on the effects of unilateral hearing loss (loss of hearing in one ear) on language development and school success. According to Lieu, “For many years, pediatricians and educators thought that as long as children have one normal hearing ear, their speech and language would develop normally.” In work to be published in Pediatrics, Lieu and her coauthors argue that children with hearing loss in one ear — a condition that effects approximately one in twenty children — show lower scores on tests of oral language ability. The study does not show whether such hearing loss is similarly correlated with overall educational achievement.

Alexandra (Misty) Jaffe, Professor of Linguistics at Cal State University, Long Beach, will serve as Editor. Misty brings to the position 6 years of experience as Co-editor and Editor-in-Chief of the Elsevier journal Linguistics and Education. Paul Garrett, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Temple University, will serve as Associate Editor. I thank Misty and Paul for agreeing to take on these duties.

I also want to thank our current editors, Paul Manning and Miiyako Inoue, for the stellar job they have done and continue to do. Under their direction the journal has experienced an unprecedented increase in submissions and accompanying visibility. Paul and Miyako will be turning over to the new editors a robust enterprise that they have positioned well to enjoy further growth and new development.

Congratulations and best wishes to both editorial teams.

Regards,
Kit Woolard
President, SLA

Linguistic Diversity

Linguistic diversity has been in the news in the last few weeks in a couple of different guises.

First, there was an article about the many languages of New York City (particularly Queens)

Listening to (and Saving) the World’s Languages

The chances of overhearing a conversation in Vlashki, a variant of Istro-Romanian, are greater in Queens than in the remote mountain villages in Croatia that immigrants now living in New York left years ago.

Accompanying that article was a brief list of the least spoken languages in NY state

Land of Lonely Tongues

There were also a variety of reactions to growing international language mixing including a Republican candidate for governor who declared “This is Alabama. We speak English” in one of his ads for the primary, promising “We’re only giving that test in English if I’m governor,” The Candidate From Xenophobia

And legislators in Arizona banned Ethnic Studies and “teachers with accents”
Arizona Ethnic Studies Classes Banned, Teachers With Accents Can No Longer Teach English

In China, there is a campaign led by the Shanghai Commission for the Management of Language to clean up maladaptations of English such as “teliot” and “urine district”

Shanghai Is Trying to Untangle the Mangled English of Chinglish

A Sampling of Chinglish

Other Web Worlds

I also wanted to take the opportunity to talk about other places that linguistic anthropology has a presence on the Web.

The oldest web presence is the Linguistic Anthropology e-mail list, aka the Linganth List which can be joined through the Resources tab above or at:

Linganth Subscription

The Linganth List is usually used for collecting information, exchanging recent news, and letting people know about various opportunities.

We have also a Facebook page:

Facebook.com/SocLingAnth

Come, join and post things. It is particularly good for chatting and posting interesting links.

Just starting are Twitter adventures: Twitter.com

As you have only 140 characters per tweet, twittering has some very arcane ins and outs.

You sign up for an account and then you search for people to follow, either by topic or because you know them from another life. I am LeilaMonaghan If you ever want to write a note directly to me you would start your note with @LeilaMonaghan (Another good person to follow is Kerim Friedman, former editor of this blog, aka @Kerim). This note, however, is not private but seen by anyone who follows you. If someone doesn’t have an obviously soft porn icon, the usual etiquette is to follow people who follow you.

If you have something you want to say to larger audiences, there are thousands of channels, indicated by #’s. For example, I just started a #linganth channel and it is an excellent way to get messages out to people you don’t already know. Other fun channels I have found so far including #language and #edchat.

If you want to post links, it is often useful to have a link shortener. I usually use Bit.ly/ although other sites are also available.

Come on by and tweet your heart out! (Given we still have snow on the ground here in Laramie, WY some semblance of Spring would be most welcome.)