Place names and "why the things around me were the way they were"

From Kate Grenville's 2012 novel, Sarah Thornhill.

Gammaroy, he said. You know it's some distant cousin of the word the black natives use for the place. The closest that our English can get. As we've done in Ireland you know.

Well, I didn't know, had not an idea in the wide world what he was talking about.

Take the Irish word for a place, he said. Mangle it into English. We call it Glenmire but in Irish it's ----- and then he said a word that did sound a little like Glenmire, but with more on the end, and a sort of hawk-and-cough thing in the middle. Easier for us English, you see, he said. Make it something we know. As we did with Gammaroy.He glanced to see if I was interested.

Now that I'd caught on to what he meant, I was. In all my fifteen years I'd never wondered where the name of a place might come from, nor ever met the kind of person who thought about such things. Made me ashamed, as Bub's old trousers didn't. The narrow ignorant life I'd led. Never been further than Sydney, never done anything grander than go to the Caledonian Hotel for dinner and catch a glimpse of the governor in a crowd, never learnt to read or write, not as much as my own name, or given a thought to why the things around around me were the way they were."

This makes me think of Tolkein and his interest in the buried history behind personal and place names. And makes me think of Placenames Australia, the Newsletter of the Australian National Placenames Survey and the endless interest in their work of detecting, tracing, ferretting for evidence and the wonderful stories that emerge from patient pursuit of "why?" Look at demonyms in the last issue for some linguistic fun and nonsense.

and the tongue is a fire

"Behold, how much wood is kindled by how small a fire! And the tongue is a fire ..."

My attention was caught by this biblical quote in Marilynn Robinson's novel GILEAD (2004). So I looked it up. So much poetic expression in this General Epistle of James. Here are the surrounding verses.

3:2 For in many things we all stumble. If any stumbleth not in word, the same is a perfect man, able to bridle the whole body also. 3:3 Now if we put the horses’ bridles into their mouths that they may obey us, we turn about their whole body also. 3:4 Behold, the ships also, though they are so great and are driven by rough winds, are yet turned about by a very small rudder, whither the impulse of the steersman willeth. 3:5 So the tongue also is a little member, and boasteth great things. Behold, how much wood is kindled by how small a fire! 3:6 And the tongue is a fire: the world of iniquity among our members is the tongue, which defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the wheel of nature, and is set on fire by hell. 3:7 For every kind of beasts and birds, of creeping things and things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed by mankind. 3:8 But the tongue can no man tame; it is a restless evil, it is full of deadly poison. 3:9 Therewith bless we the Lord and Father; and therewith curse we men, who are made after the likeness of God: 3:10 out of the same mouth cometh forth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be. 3:11 Doth the fountain send forth from the same opening sweet water and bitter? 3:12 Can a fig tree, my brethren, yield olives, or a vine figs? Neither can salt water yield sweet. 3:13 Who is wise and understanding among you? let him show by his good life his works in meekness of wisdom. 3:14 But if ye have bitter jealousy and faction in your heart, glory not and lie not against the truth. 3:15 This wisdom is not a wisdom that cometh down from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish. 3:16 For where jealousy and faction are, there is confusion and every vile deed. 3:17 But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without variance, without hypocrisy. 3:18 And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace for them that make peace. eBible

And that is a first century CE philosopher with a linguistic bent saying Life's what you make it with your discourse. Language matters much, content, diction, tone and attitude in context, and our speech acts determine war and peace, happiness and suffering. It also makes me think how much linguistics (before the term) grew out of the translation and interpretation of religious scripts.

I only read Housekeeping this month and now GILEAD. What a writer! Encouraging that she began later in life!

The slobbery origins of speech

“When you stop to examine the way in which our words are formed and uttered, our sentences are hard-put to it to survive the disaster of their slobbery origins. The mechanical effort of conversation is nastier and more complicated than defecation. That corolla of bloated flesh, the mouth, which screws itself up to whistle, which sucks in breath, contorts itself, discharges all manner of viscous sounds across a fetid barrier of decaying teeth—how revolting! Yet that is what we are adjured to sublimate into an ideal. It's not easy."

Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Journey to the End of the Night, 1932. Celine was a doctor who survived WWI, a misanthrope whom I expect the Absurdists would have adored. It's fun to read a counterbalance to starry-eyed adoration of the miracle of language. Be in a tough or quirky frame of mind if you consult this collection of Céline quotes.

LCNAU - the Languages and Cultures Network for Australian Universities

LCNAU - the Languages and Cultures Network for Australian Universities Colloquium

on September 26-28, 2011 at the University of Melbourne. Most papers or powerpoints now available.

Layla K Paada

Writings and travel and social observations of Laila Kurniawati Paada in English and Indonesian, including one translation, "Unbending as Coral", by Queensland student Kiah and me.

The poetry of Bill Ndi

Bill writes in both French and English

Bleeding Red: Cameroon in Black and White
Sing Love 101
Toil and Delivery
or look up all Bill's work on Amazon.com and many samples at
http://www.postnewsline.com/bill-f-ndi/

Alexander Adelaar on historical linguistics

Want to know what a world expert linguist does? Visit the Melbourne University podcast series UpClose Episode 127 is about Alexander (Sander) Adelaar, Dutch born expert on Malay/Indonesian languages. Listen online or download to your computer or mp3 player: An ocean away: An African nation's roots in Southeast Asia. Especially helpful is his answer when asked to give a brief description of the mechanics of what an historical linguist does: "hunting for regular correspondences". Looking for who's related to who in language families. How does linguistics work with archeology (incisions in animal bones?), mythology and even maternal mitochondrial DNA research? Look up Austronesian languages on Wikipedia to see a good map of distribution of this language family. UpClose Episode 127, 25 MIN 13 SEC , MP3 FORMAT You can listen and/or read a transcript

"Christmas Tree – Genealogy of an Island"

by Hélène Bartleson

A geologist friend of mine used to say that the only thing you can do with Languages and History is teach languages and history. (Surely geology is the history of the planet under its skin.) This talk "Christmas Tree – Genealogy of an Island" presented by Hélène Bartleson at the National Archives of Australia in Perth on 23 February 2010 shows how those two fields can yield such personally rewarding knowledge. Her dad was fascinated by old cemeteries especially with Chinese headstones and their 'hidden history' of itinerant Chinese tinkers and peddlers. 'He was fascinated by their lives, I was fascinated by their language which I did eventually get to study, and it has been a huge help to me, as you'll see shortly.' Hélène also reads Jawi (Malay written with an adapted Arabic script).
She describes photos taken by 'poor Fred Christian ... of mixed-race groups together; the Malays and Chinese and the Europeans were all together and they were all enjoying themselves and actually talking to each other.' Christmas Island sounds like a symbol of multicultural Australia, of what our world might be if everybody just had Hélène's curiosity and interest in people, different people whose hidden histories require us to make the effort to learn their languages. How terrible that it is instead the place currently associated with refugee detention centres and boating tragedies. Read "Christmas Tree – Genealogy of an Island". There's an audio file so you can download and hear it also - link at bottom of that Archives of Australia page. Christmas Island on Wikipedia and on googlemaps.

une culture où on est belle

"Faut decouvrir une culture où on est belle!" Bon motto crée aujourd'hui par Jenny Lynd, Melbourne. Pour moi, ca veut dire trouver un état d'esprit où on se sent heureux et à l'aise avec les autres.

Words sing, hurt, teach, sanctify

Words sing. They hurt. They teach. They sanctify. They were man's first, immeasurable feat of magic. They liberate us from ignorance and our barbarous past. Leo, Calvin Rosten, 1972.
BUT
The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.
~ ~ ~Philip K. Dick
AND
A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged; it is the skin of a living thought, and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used.
~ ~ ~Oliver Wendell Holmes
More amusing, provoking quotations about words and see my collection of pro-languages quotes down in left hand column.

LiveMocha and Busuu

Just received this email reminder:
Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini said, “A different language is a different vision of life." As a member of Livemocha you know learning a new language is more than grammar and vocabulary - you're experiencing new cultures and bringing the world closer through language! Return to Livemocha and continue to learn and contribute to the global community.
There's also BUSUU offering six European languages.

Revitalisation of Australia’s Indigenous languages

"Re-awakening languages: theory and practice in the revitalisation of Australia’s Indigenous languages" Edited by John Hobson, Kevin Lowe, Susan Poetsch and Michael Walsh. Sydney University Press. ISBN: 9781920899554 And this potent quote was on the email from John Hobson that brought me notice of the book.
"When you lose a language, you lose a culture, intellectual wealth, a work of art. It's like dropping a bomb on a museum, the Louvre." Comment by the late Kenneth Hale, cited in The Economist (November 3,2001).

Budget cuts to schools hurt health, business and foreign languages.

Budget cuts to schools hurt health, business and foreign languages. [The Daily News Online]
"Foreign language instruction has never been a strong suit for American public education. There are relatively few strong foreign language offerings at the elementary and middle-school levels. Most high schools around the country offer basic introductory courses in just a couple of languages. Opportunities for language study have declined in recent years. John Schmid of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel writes that, "From 1997 to 2008, the share of all U.S. elementary schools offering language classes fell from 31 percent to 25 percent, while middle schools dropped from 75 percent to 58 percent." These are the latest figures from the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Applied Linguistics. But anecdotal evidence suggests that this trend has continued and may have accelerated with the recession."
"For both the student and the nation, the ability to speak another language is a difference maker as far as competing in the global market place. Indeed, it's small world. That's something most other nations have long recognized. Most country's in Europe and Asia make foreign language study compulsory from elementary school through high school."
Did you spot the grammar/punctuation error in the above? That's ironic in an article lamenting the decline of language study. Foreign language study definitely makes us more aware of accuracy in speaking and writing conventions. Hey, we all make typos and spelling errors - to err is human (and common in journalese). And there's no fun being a stuck up language maven. Language is all about flexibility (variability in systematicity, M Long) and the more language(s) you know the easier it becomes for the brain to adapt and enjoy linguistic variety through established systems, or even creatively disrupting them. To be blithely unaware and not even proficiently monolingual is pure disadvantage. To be obstinately monolingual and monocultural is dangerous.

Education systems of the world, do your job - for your people! Invest in languages education.

Clichés

"I should have worn jeans and a Hawaiian shirt; everyone thinks Australia is an outpost of America anway. I should have been a walking cliché; clichés make people relax. They stop asking questions. They assume they know." [Roberta Lowing, 2010, Notorious, Allen and Unwin, p.30.]

Language champions

This is an inspiring little collection of pages at Asia Education FOundation. The quotes from Major Michael Stone are brilliant, especially from a humane military man. It would be good to get school students to debate these claims, shake students out of apathy. Michael Stone and Gen. Peter Cogsgrove ask, how do we avoid the obscenity and stupidity of war except by intelligence, respect and responsibility? We in advanced countries have responsibility to forestall misunderstanding by being able to communicate with different others in their languages. To be educated to high levels only in technical and economic matters is to deny that human cultures are rich, complex and diverse, so of course cross-cultural relationships are challenging. To refuse to make the persistent effort is obstinate ignorance that leads to the deaths in war of our children. Debate that.

Two only sample quotes:

Language skills form the foundation for ‘relationship building’, life’s greatest skill and ‘force multiplier’.

Many of the world’s problems could be dealt with peacefully if we had the skills to listen to each other. Learning each other’s Languages is critical in this regard.

Forgetting the culture of cake

Forgetting the culture of cake Scott Steensma November 03, 2010
"My sister and I are the products of what could be seen as a perfect example of migrant assimilation. We are the second generation of a family that arrived in Australasia with minimal English and no friends, slotted themselves into menial work and adapted to an alien culture where cake was strictly avoided before 10am. On the surface we are textbook examples of what many say migrants should do when they arrive in Australia. Under the surface the waves of shock and cultural loss still ring through our family."[Winner of a MARGARET DOOLEY AWARD for young writers]. A very touching and thoughtful reflection.

Language Quotes at WorldofQuotes.com

I can remember the lush spring excitement of language in childhood. Sitting in church, rolling it around my mouth like marbles--tabernacle and pharisee and parable, trespass and Babylon and covenant. Author: Penelope Lively

To God I speak Spanish, to women Italian, to men French, and to my horse--German.
Author: Jason Chamberlain Source: inaugural address at University of Vermont, 1811

Pedantry consists in the use of words unsuitable to the time, place, and company.
Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Source: Biographia Literaria (ch. X)

To have another language is to possess a second soul.
Author: Charlemagne

More delicious language sayings at worldofquotes.com/language and see my own collection at left lower down on this page.

What makes etymology an interesting subject?

LIBERMAN: "Everything in our world leaves a trace in language. If you know the history of language and understand the main forces that make language change, you have one of the most important windows into the growth of the human mind, civilization, and even politics. Take any word, from guitar to democracy. While studying their development, we inevitably learn a good deal about music and the rise of social institutions. And only the history of language is able to reveal the history of thought, for, unfortunately, an examination of the gray matter in our heads is not sufficient for that purpose. Let me repeat: there is nothing in the man-made world that is not reflected in language.".

The Hidden History of Words is just one entry on the fascinating University of Minnesota College of Liberal Arts Discoveries blog. An intellectual labyrinth to get delightfully lost in. The College offers studies in many languages and cultures, including Asian, African, American Indian, European, linguistics, anthropology and more. See departments and majors, Research Languages & Literatures or Language instruction. You can even hear Prof. Liberman on public radio Word origins with Anatoly Liberman - the Minnesotan equivalent of Australia's Roly Sussex.

World Languages Day (University of Minnesota) 2010

Conversations in the Language Center: World Languages Day! (University of Minnesota)

What a difference one day makes!If ever you think all your promotional efforts are in vain, here's reassurance. World Languages Day: Step One on My Journey to Italy by Teran on April 13, 2010

Testing words to their utmost power

"When you are writing laws you are testing words to find their utmost power. Like spells, they have to make things happen in the real world, and like spells, they only work if people believe in them." From Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel, probably the best fictionalised life of Thomas Cromwell ever written. What skill is needed to avoid cliché when an artist resurrects such well known material and characters, as people did with stories and figures from the ancient classics and the Bible for thousands of years. Henry VIII, Wolsey, Cromwell, More, the Boleyn woman, Pope Clement, the whole cast, even the period, have become stock characters in so many plays, films, novels and 'serious history'. For language teachers this book is full of interest, given that most courtiers and merchants of that time were adept in four or five languages required for scholarship, diplomacy, trade, war, law and even marriage. See Washington Post Review http://www.wolfhall.com/