Bark-bark

Hey! I'm an art college student in the United States who's very interested in languages! I post language related things and my own language learning adventures on this blog. Welcome!!

[polyglottitude]

I think a very real question everyone on langblr needs to get better at asking themselves is: why do I want to study this language? Is it for vanity? Am I commodifying it? Would it be more respectful to study it without speaking it? And if you’re uncomfortable with posing these questions, then you need to take a massive, massive step back.

[polyglottitude]

this guy is blocked now but anyway. asking for respect for ethnic languages is not overthinking things, it’s just asking that we don’t repeat mistakes of the past wrt linguistic colonization. and the fact that people genuinely get butthurt over being told “don’t fetishize other people’s languages that they’ve often been marginalized for speaking just so you can win some points online”… incredible

furthermore, to me, there are a few reasons to study a language, all of which are defeated if you force your way into a closed speech community:

communication (unless you are going to move to Ethiopia to speak Hareri, or whatever else you’ve been flaunting in your tumblr bio for vanity, what in the g-ddamn was the point? Oh, right, commodifying someone else’s language, which again, they have been marginalized for speaking.)

raising your socioeconomic status by speaking a particular language 

love & curiosity of other cultures (again moot if you’re forcing your way into a closed speech community, because the first thing about love is respect, dumbass)

frankly the most enraging part of this is the “respect is not a variable that needs consulted.” if minorities & speakers of minority languages are telling you you need to be respectful about something, then refusing to do so is just!!!!! SO blatantly disgusting how do you not see this (except of course that you’re clearly a westerner lol)

[injerabae-deactivated20190818]

Can I just add one thing here? Almost nobody in Ethiopia speaks Harari besides people who literally live in Harar and even then it’s primarily the ethnic population who actually use the language—many of the speakers I’ve met show a bit of anxiety towards the trend the language is going on now considering that Eastern Oromo and Amharic have much more social mobility prestige and Harari itself has always historically been restricted to the ethnic Harari population and some of the Argobba whom live in Harar—but the Argobba are unique in the sense that many of them come to no longer associate their ethnicity with their language as of recent. I’ve never actually seen someone say they’re trying to learn Harari, besides diaspora who can’t speak the language their parents know natively; but I wouldn’t be shocked if people tried to somehow find resources for it for brownie points on Langblr. The speakers literally call it ‘Gey Sinan’ which means “city language” (well you could translate ‘sinan’ as ‘discourse’ as well; the same root means arguing, in my language). They specifically associate it with the city that their ethnic identity is tied to.

But in all regards, a huge part of this issue is that people living primarily in western societies don’t comprehend languages as part of cultural property and identity in the same way I would as an ethnic Tigray from Ethiopia, or a multitude of other peoples globally. Because most languages in Europe, with some exceptions of course, are spoken by people of all different backgrounds since they’re the regional Lingua Franca if not the national language. So there isn’t that tie to identity in the same sense—so the idea of a language being the discreet property of a specific speech and ethnic population is indeed foreign and seems to them, somehow, to be selfish. Which it isn’t—polyglotism as a hobby is a Western thing. Being multilingual in much of the globe is a thing of circumstances but not a pastime. There’s people back home who speak 5-6 languages on a daily basis but it’s only because that’s circumstantial—but there’ll be neighboring speech communities who are on average monolingual because they need not speak more than just their own language.

[injerabae-deactivated20190818]

Just to put this out there but

Why does anyone think it’s appropriate to just go around learning Yiddish like it’s Swedish or French? I’m not sure how actual speakers feel—albeit I grew up with plenty—but every time I think of Yiddish I think of the fact that the grand majority of its native speech population were killed during the Holocaust and the language never actually recovered from it in Europe. Like you can’t just, ignore that.

Again, I’m not Jewish. I certainly have no ties to Yiddish. But Yiddish isn’t just some language, you know. It has one of the most disastrous stories of speech population loss that I can think of and it’s explicitly tied to the identity of millions of Jews whom still face normalized anti-Semitism in Europe.

[culmaer]

as a non-jewish person who has studied a little Yiddish, here are some comments, for whatever it’s worth

I realise this is a sensitive topic, so I would be very happy to receive feedback and discussion, particularly from jewish and Yiddish-speaking folks

I started out learning about Yiddish, studying it theoretically, while I was learning about all the Germanic languages. my focus there was on contextualising Afrikaans (my L1), and I would often mention some of the interesting features, differences and similarities between Yiddish and Afrikaans to my jewish friends who are also into languages. and when I decided to start learning Yiddish, they were open to it too. the one friend in particular was actually quite supportive and helpful. most jewish South Africans I’ve met seem to be fine with goyim learning Yiddish

two of the foremost Yiddish language research centres in Europe — the Medem Yiddish Library in Paris and the Yiddish Institute in Vilnius — offer language courses, all of which are open to goyish students. (aside : in my French course at uni we did a module on the literature of the Shoah. it was really interesting to be able to compare some of the themes in the French lit to the themes found in Yiddish poetry, and I had actually wanted to go to Medem after that)

However — I realise none of this means that all jewish people are necessarily fine with any random person learning the language !!

I’ve come to learn that some jewish Americans in particular are not so keen on goyim learning Yiddish. which is why I don’t post in Yiddish on tumblr as I would for my other target langs. Idek if that’s respectful in any meaningful way ? that said, the YIVO, based in New York, has collaborated with goyish Yiddish-language researchers in the past, as far as I can tell.

it’s also worth noting, that many of these courses teach Standard YIVO Yiddish. back when YIVO was founded in Vilnius before the Holocaust, many Yiddish speakers would distinguish between the “real Yiddish” dialects they actually spoke, and (almost dismissively) the “Yiddishistish” (i.e. YIVO Yiddish) used by academics and intellectuals.

many Yiddish speakers today, who learnt the language from their families, speak forms of the language descended from those spoken Yiddishes. And to be honest, I do feel like it would definitely be disrespectful and inappropriate for me to learn those forms of Yiddish. especially Ḥasidic Yiddish since they are a closed community. yet I feel like it’s alright to have studied YIVO Yiddish ? given it’s a standardised, literary language.

But again, I am open to comments on this

[cocelivros]

As a new (non-Jewish) Yiddish student, I’m obviously affected by this, so I’m not going to pretend to be unbiased, but I want to understand the point behind this. Would my treating Yiddish like a cursed language that shouldn’t be approached help in any way?

Of course, I know about Yiddish losing half of its population in less than 10 years, and of course I think I have to be respectful about this when studying and using Yiddish, but completely ignoring the existence of Yiddish, or avoiding it at all costs, would be hiding the pre-war Ashkenazi culture, except when someone bothers to translate an especially relevant text into English, and I don’t think that’s much fairer. Like, does being killed in a Holocaust make you problematic and non-approachable?

And another question that necessarily arises is: how many people should be OK with a non-Jew learning Yiddish for it to be valid? Is one person who disagrees enough?

I don’t know, I want to know if I am offending someone by learning Yiddish because I have barely blogged about it but I was thinking of starting.

[injerabae-deactivated20190818]

What you’re asking is missing the point of why I said this.

I don’t treat Yiddish that way. I don’t ignore it, it would be hard to ignore being the idiolect of language I personally have is influenced by that of the many Jewish Americans I grew up with—but this being said that’s just me. That’s on my account.

But in no way was I ever at such a polar extreme of “don’t talk about Yiddish” because if I was, my original post would be rather ironic would it not? I’m not Jewish. Surely not Ashkenazi. I’m far better versed in anything Hebrew related as opposed to Yiddish to be fair. Nor did I suggest Yiddish to be problematic. The way many people treat languages is problematic, and the way that Language Jam Challenge simply threw Yiddish into the mixed like a collectible card really highlights that. That’s what I’m personally getting at.

But in no way was my post on ever such an extreme as you may be suggesting. In regards to this I theoretically couldn’t be all or nothing, being I’m not part of the speech community. There’s other languages where I’m aware of the speech communities feeling’s, and then there’s my own language which I’m not comfortable with others learning because they don’t understand what its existence embodies and what being part of my ethnicity embodies.

But to highlight the numbers behind approval can be itself problematic—it’s disingenuous at best and that aspect of it can be innocently overlooked. I’m not calling you out for that, but I am saying that if one speaker says ‘no’, respect their feeelings. I don’t care if you argue with them that someone else wouldn’t care—that someone else could be aloof in regards to why said speaker saying no is saying no. So if one speaker says no, leave it at that. You shouldn’t just seek another speaker who will grant you approval because it shows that your own sense of entitlement overrides your own respect for the community to which the language belongs. Recall how often I’ve had the numbers argument thrown at me—and how utterly exhausting that was. It’s insulting, really. I don’t care if I say no and somebody else won’t. That other person could exist in a totally different context and the only thing we really share is an ethnicity and the language. But not an experience with said language, and not a trauma with said language.

[cocelivros]

OK, that’s fair (also, sorry if my previous message sounded a bit aggressive), but if I am to understand and respect the feelings of those who say no as well as the feelings of those who say yes, shouldn’t I then limit myself to not boasting about knowing that language (treating it as a medal, like you said) and not using it with people who aren’t comfortable with it (which after all is their right, as most bilingual speakers have a very intimate relation with their languages), more than not learning it? Specially when (like in my case) you intend to use the language to read an existing body of literature and not to actually speak with people (I mean, I’m not against speaking lol, just I don’t foresee it).

Because I’ve been seeing your posts in my timeline for a time, and while I agree with you more often than not, the idea that the very act of learning a language by yourself somewhat harms the language always struck me as weird.

[injerabae-deactivated20190818]

I’m not going to speak on behalf of Yiddish, in this regard. I couldn’t. But I’ve openly said no about my language—and there’s reasons why. Plenty of reasons.

But the whole reason it harms the language is not that it actually harms it—it gained another supposed speaker—but the issue is in that, said person isn’t part of the speech community. They’re taking it onto themself because they want something of it, which falls into the rut of entitlement. It also falls into a wider category of appropriation and so forth but that’s a much longer topic; but to learn a language from a marginalized community because you want to, but you don’t at all have to deal with what said community does socially—it’s easy to see why that’s wrong. You’ll never feel what the speakers feel themselves. You’ll never undergo the same discrimination many times. In my case, you’ll never understand the complex feelings of being violently displaced and in a state of resent and remorse with an entire section of your own speech community. My case is traumatic enough that it affected me in my own life, as an infant. It’s something I of course can’t remember, but I can surely be aware of. But that’s why I’m so aptly aware of this. My language has more native speakers than Hebrew—really, is does—but it also is very contextually tied to an ethnicity and a speech community torn apart over the last century. And that still does not, at all, compare to what the Yiddish speech community has undergone not just in the last century, but in its entire history.

It’s harmful because as a non-member of the speech community, you’re picking up something that someone from the actual speech community is chastised for. But you never will be. You aren’t harming the language directly, but you’re harming the speakers indirectly. Given, as mentioned, there is respectful ways to approach Yiddish. But this is larger than Yiddish, like the question you asked. It’s weird because you may have never thought about it, but that’s okay. I didn’t always know these things to be fair, and I didn’t always know how to properly articulate my feelings towards even my own language. But a lot of this, a lot of it, is readily understood if you’re part of an ethnic minority or a marginalized community. But the thing is if someone says no, it’s no. It doesn’t have to be fair to you if they themselves have historically not been treated fairly for doing the same thing you yourself are trying to do. If you’re looking to be treated as an equal, it won’t happen. That’s expecting something you aren’t entitled to.

It’s all a case of self awareness and awareness of the larger dynamics at hand.

[languagessi-deactivated20210423]

“… but to learn a language from a marginalized community because you want to, but you don’t at all have to deal with what said community does socially—it’s easy to see why that’s wrong. You’ll never feel what the speakers feel themselves. You’ll never undergo the same discrimination many times. “

[parksanddeserts]

I agree with @injerabae . Because I have a Jewish background, I once decided to do a Yiddish course at uni. I was interested in the language, because the Jewish part of my family in The Netherlands abandoned most of their Jewish traditions, although we do use some Yiddish and Hebrew words. I was curious about the language and culture that we lost (I know there is still Jewish communities that speak Yiddish, but not in the Netherlands) and I was super excited that my uni offered a language course. But I felt extremely uncomfortable about my non-Jewish classmates trying to speak the language. Like injerabae said, it is not a neutral language to learn like French or German, so personally, I think you should stick to just using the language for reading literature or for analyzing linguistics trace, bcs even I dont feel comfortable using other Yiddish words than the ones I’ve learned from my grandma. So don’t boast about your Yiddish skills to Jewish people as if you know more about their culture than they do or as if you are saving their culture, don’t present yourself too much as an expert on Yiddish and yiddishkeit, don’t use Yiddish words as an identity marker, and don’t speak the language unless absolutely necessary (and I doubt you would ever really need to). Maybe other people feel differently about it, it’s very personal, so I would encourage you to also listen to their arguments (like injerabae said, my ‘yes’ doesn’t mean more than someone else’s ‘no’).

[banglanotebook]

THE BENGALI FAMILY: BASIC RELATIONSHIPS Dhaka, Bangladesh | Muslim

INTRODUCTION Bengali distinguishes bloodlines and marriage partners by using unique titles for each married pairing when it comes to aunts, uncles, and grandparents as well as using these titles to determine which cousins are parented by whom. In English, for example, we have to go through the trouble of explaining to a stranger how someone is related to us, but in Bangla the relationship is already implied by title. In Bangla, blood relation is prioritized when it comes to assigning a title. An aunt and uncle married pair earns their name by whichever partner is related to you by blood, and their children (your cousins) will be named after the blood relative’s honorific title. 

For example, your mother’s sister is your aunt, so you call her khala. Her husband is named after her because of her position as a blood relative, so he is called khalu. You refer to their daughter (your cousin) as your khalato bon, which roughly means “sister from khala.” Blood relatives lend their titles to their families regardless of their gender.

THE ROLE OF RELIGION The most stark differences in familial titles across Bengal result from differences in religious background. Bengal was once a mostly Hindu region and after waves of Persian and Arab influence the language of the region changed. The most dramatic changes can be seen in the communities that converted to Islam and therefore adopted a lot of Persian and Arabic vocabulary. For example, a Hindu Bengali in West Bengal has a কাকা [kaka], who would alternatively be called  চাচা [caca] by a Muslim Bengali in Bangladesh, and a Hindu’s মাসী [masī] might be a Muslim’s খালা [khala]. Despite this shift, Muslim families may still use the traditional Bengali terms, as is the case in my partner’s family. They keep the Arabic খালা but prefer to use the Bengali কাকা instead of চাচা. These slight variations come down to familial or regional preference.

DISCLAIMER  This post is based on my partner’s family’s usage, focusing on titles and conventions used by a Muslim family from Dhaka, Bangladesh. This can differ from other Bangladeshi families and from other Bengali families as a whole.

For a vocabulary list of the words used in the chart above, and for additional notes, continue reading below:

Keep reading

[languagessi-deactivated20210423]

If I ever post or reblog something that disrespects your language or culture please let me know

[hownottolearnalanguage]

I was reading this and it’s like okay but most Americans also “have a very hazy idea of the composition of the UK.”😂

[injerabae-deactivated20190818]

Linguistic Diversity Challenge — Week 1

Just in the event anyone was interested in the challenge but missed any contribution I provided, here’s what I did:

Orma (Cushitic, Afroasiatic)

Baŋɡɛri Mɛ (isolate)

Dahalo (Cushitic, Afroasiatic)

Ts’ixa (Khoe-Kwadi)

Tagdal (mixed Amazigh-Songhay)

Ma’a (mixed Bantu-Cushitic)

Ilwana (possibly mixed Bantu-Cushitic)

An overview of: Cushitic

For anyone interested in the challenge, here’s the original post by @languagesandshootingstars for reference.

[injerabae-deactivated20190818]

‘one’ in various Semitic languages

Just to break the maps down:

Punic in Carthage

Neo-Aramaic, Syriac, and Akkadian

Canaanitic, Arabian, and the language of the Deir ‘Alla inscription

Dedanitic, modern Arabian Arabic varieties, and Razihit (the sole remaining Sayhadic language)

South Arabian and Sayhadic

North Afrosemitic, Central Transversal South Afrosemitic, Harari, and Afro-Sabaic

Eastern Transversal South Afrosemitic (minus Harari) and Outer South Afrosemitic

[vilikemorgenthal]

Are the South Aravian ones related to the rest? Assuming sound changes or prefixation.

[injerabae-deactivated20190818]

No. They aren’t.

It’s fairly normal for South Arabian to have a number of basic lexical items that aren’t of Semitic origin—this is why I constantly highlight that substratum study needs to be conducted on Near Eastern Semitic because it usually doesn’t go past a handful of Sumerian loans in Northwest Centeal Semitic or Akkadian; but considering that Homo Sapiens have been in the Near East for over 100,000 years stuff like this should be expected—South Arabian just happens to have a lot more unique lexical items although lexical items that can’t be substantiated for South Arabian, Afrosemitic, Central Semitic, and Akkadian should always be held in question unless they have actual Afroasiatic cognates.

[injerabae-deactivated20190818]

Concept: a language learning app focused on national languages and lingua francas outside of European languages, that is contributed to by linguists so the interface can actually work with polysynthetic and isolating languages for instance. There would be an introduction course on what the language actually is, where it’s spoken, and some of its history—so you actually know about the language you’re looking to learn. Courses only would be released if it offers orthography lessons and audio recordings of native speakers to assist with familiarization with the phonology of said language, and would offer the option to also have IPA transliteration as well to help visualize the actual pronunciation as opposed to attempting to copy an audio recording.

[pansoph]

for chinese new year they get all these famous actors and comedians together and they do a lil show and one of the comedians was like “i was in a hotel in america once and there was a mouse in my room so i called reception except i forgot the english word for mouse so instead i said ‘you know tom and jerry? jerry is here’

[beefmilkthings]

jerry is here

[eruriholic]

my chinese teacher once shared this story in class about someone who went to the grocery to buy chicken, but they forgot the english word for it, so they grabbed an egg, went to the nearest sales lady and said “where’s the mother”

[cuddlyaxe-deactivated20190218]

When I was a teenager, we went to Italy for the summer holidays. We are German, neither of us speaks more than a few words of Italian. That didn’t keep my family from always referring to me when they wanted something translated because “You’re so good with languages and you took Latin”. (I told them a hundred times I couldn’t order ice cream in Latin, they ignored that.) Anyway, my dad really loved a certain cheese there, made from sheep’s milk. He knew the Italian word for ‘cheese’ – formaggio – and he knew how to say ‘please’. And he had already spotted a little shop that sold the cheese. He asked me what ‘sheep’ was in Italian, and of course, I had no idea. So he just shrugged and said “I’ll manage” and went into the shop. 5 mins later, he comes out with a little bag, obviously very pleased with himself. How did he manage it? He had gone in and said “'Baaaah’ formaggio, prego.”

I was done for the day.

[ravenpuffheadcanons]

This makes me feel better about every conversation I had in both Rome and Ghent.

[elodieunderglass]

I once lost my husband in the ruins of a French castle on a mountain, and trotted around looking for him in increasing desperation. “Have you seen my husband?” I asked some French people, having forgotten all descriptive words. “He is small, and English. His hair is the color of bread.”

I did not find my husband in this way.

In rural France it is apparently Known that one brings one’s own shopping bags to the grocery store. I was a visitor and had not been briefed and had no shopping bag. I saw that other people were able to conduct negotiations to purchase shopping bags, but I could not remember the word for “bag.”

“Can I have a box that is not a box,” I said.

The checkout lady looked extremely tired and said, “Un sac?” (A sack?)

Of course. A fucking sack. And so I did get a sack.

[kat2107]

I once was at a German-American Church youth camp for two weeks and predictably, we spoke a whole lot of English. 

When I phoned my mom during week two I tried to tell her that it was a bit cold in the sleeping bag at night. I stumbled around the word in German because for the love of god, I could remember the Germwn word for sleeping bag.

“Yeah so, it’s like a bag you sleep in at night?”

“And my mother must probably have thought I lost my mind. She just sighed and was like ‘So, a Schlafsack, yes?”

Which is LITERALLY Sleeping sac … The German word is a basically a one on one translation of the English word and I just… I failed it. At my mother tongue. BIG

[eridaniepsilon]

My former boss is Italian and she ended up working in a lab where the common language was English. She once saw an insect running through the lab and she went to tell her colleagues. She remembered it was the name of a famous English band so she barged in the office yelling there was a rolling stone in the lab…

[backonrepeat]

I’m Spanish and have been living in the UK for a while now. I recently changed jobs and moved to a new office which is lost somewhere in the Midlands’ countryside. It’s a pretty quaint location, surrounded by forest on pretty much all sides, and with nice grounds… full of pheasants. I was pretty shocked when I drove in and saw a fucking pheasant strolling across the road. Calm as you please.

That afternoon I met up with some friends and was talking about the new job, and the new office, and for the life of me I couldn’t remember the English word for pheasants. So I basically ended up bragging to my friends about “the very fancy chickens” we had outside the office.

Best thing is, everyone understood what I meant.

[eridaniepsilon]

I love those stories so much…

[acleverforgery]

Picture a Jewish American girl whose grasp of the Hebrew language comes from 10+ years of immersion in Biblical and liturgical Hebrew, not the modern language. Some words are identical, while others have significantly evolved.

She gets to Israel and is riding a bus for the very first time.

American: כמה ממון זה? (”How much money?” but in rather archaic language)

Bus Driver: שתי זוזים. (”Two zuzim” – a currency that’s been out of circulation for millenia)

[learningftw]

that’s hilarious

[shiraglassman]

I am officially screamlaughing at my desk from that last one OH MY 

[speakertoyesterday]

Does everyone know the prime minister who promised to fuck the country?

So in Biblical Hebrew the word for penis and weapon are the same. There is a verb meaning to arm, which modern Hebrew semanticly drifted into “fuck”: i.e. give someone your dick.

The minister was making a speech while a candidate, bemoning the state of the world. “The Soviet Union is fucking Egypt. Germany is fucking Syria. The Americans are fucking everyone. But who is fucking us? When I am prime minister, I will ensure we are fucked!”

[andhishorse]

What the hell Biblical Hebrew.

[moral-autism]

Just guessing: The path from something like “give someone a blade” to “give someone a blade, if you know what I mean ;)” is probably not that difficult or unlikely.

[liminalreader]

^Given that the Latin word for sheath (like, for a sword) is literally “vagina”, I can verify that this metaphor is a time-honored one. 

[liminalreader]

Oh yeah and one time my Latin professor was at this conference in Greece and his flight was canceled, so he needed to extend his hotel stay by one more night.

Except he doesn’t speak a lick of modern Greek, and the receptionist couldn’t speak English.  Or French.  Or German.  Or Italian.  (He tried all of them.)

Finally, in a fit of inspiration, he went upstairs and got his copy of Medea in the original Greek (you know, the stuff separated from modern Greek by two and a half thousand years).  He found the passage where Medea begs Jason to let her stay for one more day, went downstairs, and read it to the receptionist.

She laughed her head off, but she gave him the extra night.  

[madenthusiasms]

Reblogged just for Medea

[localshortqueer]

@verysadbee

[lostboylovestory]

My cousin’s mother tongue is English, but she also speaks Spanish, French, and Arabic so you could say she’s pretty good with languages. She also has an extensive English vocabulary. She spent two years in Peru and spoke nothing but Spanish while she was there. For the first few hours after we picked her up from the airport, she was fine and used her crazy advanced vocabulary like she hadn’t left. But we were eating dinner and she was telling a story and said “There something on the…” she said something in Spanish. We’re like “Sorry Meg we don’t speak Spanish. She huffs and says “You know, the /thing/.” She points down and waves other hand in a flat plane. After her struggling like this for another 30 seconds my uncle is just like “Do you mean the ‘ground’, Meg?” She slammed her hand down on the table “YES!”

[gamer-crow-deactivated20250412]

I was in Panama with my parents, who met a lovely German couple about the same age. They hit it off and the conversation started to blend into German, which both my parents spoke. I, however, had spent the last 3 years learning Spanish and spoke it frequently, so when they were responding to the German couple, they threw in a lot of Spanish and the couple was instantly confused.

They said “yes, my mother and father were both from Berlin” in German, but then added “we haven’t been back in years but hope to someday” in Spanish.

[injerabae-deactivated20190818]

The other day I was speaking to my sister-in-law’s friends, whom are of the same ethnic group as me and hence know the same ethnic language—Tigrinya. One of them asked me how I was and I replied with ሠናይ [sɐnaj] and got stared at and asked “what does that mean? Don’t you mean ጹቡ?”

I kinda stood there officially realizing I speak like an old person from the countryside, or I’m just not making an effort to distinguish between my knowledge of both Ge‘ez and Tigrinya since they’re both *mostly* mutually intelligible.

I also forgot Muslim Tigrinya-speakers usually don’t even come into contact with Ge‘ez.

It was, awkward.

[injerabae-deactivated20190818]

Okay, so “Nubia” seems to actually not be thought to mean “gold land” anymore—and considering this is mentioned in Cooper (2015) it has to be seriously taken into consideration:

I feel like my whole life is a lie, I need to read more papers about the study of etymologies in Egyptian, especially from loanwords. And this being a term of Meroitic origin makes a lot more sense than the previous suggestions which are apparently the folk linguistic etymologies we all know for “Nubia”.

[injerabae-deactivated20190818]

Okay, it gets more interesting. This paper recognizes that “Nubians” to the Egyptians are distinctly not a specific group of people as well:

Given I’m sure many of us already knew “Nubians” was an umbrella term but it’s crazy to think this term actually meant “peasant” or “slave” in languages neighboring Egyptian, like Meroitic.

[injerabae-deactivated20190818]

Bringing this back because “Toponymy on the Periphery: Placenames of the Eastern Desert, Red Sea, and South Sinai in Egyptian Documents from the Early Dynastic until the end of the New Kingdom” (2015) by Julien Cooper is a necessary read for anyone interested in languages in Northeast Africa.

Definitely interesting that he finds traces of what we can with some confidence say are Beja (the “Medjay” language) and perhaps the earliest attestation of Afrosemitic (“Puntite”) but to be fair he isn’t the only Egyptologist whom holds these viewpoints either. Francis Breyer definitely was one of the first to suggest what little we know of “Puntite” via Middle Egyptian is likely from an Afrosemitic source language.

[br3adstic]

Why are we silent???

[injerabae-deactivated20190818]

I’m sympathetic to the whole “Egyptians are the ancestors of Balck Americans” fantasy, because it’s founded in a real traumatic loss of cultural and ancestral memory—but look you shouldn’t deny a whole region of Africa from their actual heritage so you can feel better about your own identity.

It’s not right because first off, it’s denying a people of their right to their heritage in popular discourse, but it also breeds on neo-colonial racial views that inherently seek to remove Northern Africa from the rest of Africa in the most absurd ways that boil down to repetitions of late 19th and early 20th century racial invasion theories. It’s just, wrong.

And I always take it personally because it has implications for me, too. If Egyptians aren’t “African” in the colonial sense, then I’m not either; because unfounded migration theories were used to explain my ethnic group too. Nearly a half of Africa’s physical geography is non-African in its human dimension according to this line of thought and that’s inherently colonial and just outright founded in those antiquated white supremacist views.

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But the only way to approach this discourse is through sympathy and actual understanding. Because too many times it’s rooted in a negative worldview of Black Americans, Afro-Caribbeans, and so forth and it’s just not right. And trust me after years of being told “you aren’t African”, it’s easy to be resentful. I know it’s easy. I’ve been there because that’s how utterly traumatic it can be for some people. I’ve been through the stages of “I’m sick of people denying me what I am because of colonial era racial stereotypes”. Trust me, it’s not worth being resentful.

But nobody is going to get anywhere if you’re triggering someone else’s identity defense mechanism because you’re being ignorant, and calling someone out on something that isn’t factual but it’s coming from a place of malice.

[ihavemovedyay-blog]

Sailors and Daughters. Early Photography and the Indian Ocean (the Swahili Coast) 

Sailors and Daughters reveals the expansive maritime societies of Zanzibar, the east African coast, and beyond. From the 1840s, cameras traced the international migrations of traders, sailors, sons, and daughters through Indian Ocean ports, continuing trade that dates back over five millennia. East African cities flourished as hubs of both land and sea trade routes, which extended to the central African interior, Horn of Africa, Persian Gulf, Indian Ocean islands, western India and the Far East. The region’s intercultural ethos generated a multitude of encounters between subjects, photographers, and the global audiences who viewed the resulting images. By gathering images from scarce and little-known collections of early photographs, lithographs, postcards, and private albums, this exhibition focuses attention on a diverse cross-section of the region’s people and their cosmopolitan cities by the sea. It serves as a starting point for a larger photographic and creative visual history of the prosperous and diverse communities of the Indian Ocean world.   From the 1850s, photographs captivated people across the globe, and Zanzibar was no exception.   By 1883, Sultan Barghash bin Said created a camera obscura room in a high tower of his new palace, called the House of Wonders. Life-sized portraits in oil, stereopticon viewers, and photo albums replete with cartes-de-visite of local and European sovereigns graced the Sultan’s many residences. Turn-of-the-century Zanzibar studios thrived on elite patronage, while also marketing urban views and portraits to growing numbers of temporary residents and visitors. The abolition of slavery in 1897 marked a turning point in the history of photography as well. Demand for touristic images of Zanzibar’s legendary beauties, posed and smiling, coincided with the moment when newly freed women began to dress and adorn themselves in ways previously forbidden. Though such photographs were mass-marketed as postcards and souvenirs, these images nevertheless suggest a complex interaction. Wearing expensive clothes, many of the women’s poses and demeanors suggest a strikingly modern and assured connection with the camera. Taken within the context of photography’s sudden expansion to include wealthy and poor, aristocratic and newly freed, these portraits remain an extraordinarily valuable trace of the island’s untold histories. The art collection includes images from not just Zanzibar but also other Swahili city states capturing the beauty of Swahili (Waswahili) women. © Smithsonian , National Museum of African Art. 

[bintimombasa]

Swahili women have always been so fashion forward and we take pride in looking good -flips leso-

[banglanotebook]

২২ জ্যৈষ্ঠ ১৪২৬ | 5 june 2019

Bangla Word of the Day: আংটি [aṁti] | ring

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I’ve officially resorted making a tourist poster advertising languages in Africa.

Since people say they aren’t interesting enough.

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So I’m considering making these for different linguistic areas within Africa—the Horn of Africa’s highlands, the Rift Valley, the Congo Basin, etc.

Here’s the one for the Sahel—with the term “fragmentation belt” in reference to Güldemann (2008). Including a picture of a man from the Nuba mountains, debatably one of Africa’s most linguistically diverse geographical areas and part of the Sahel.

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And of course I had to do the region I belong to—while so small, so undeniably diverse.

This will likely focus on specific regions instead of just the general “East Africa” or “West Africa” since it is recognized linguistically Africa has specific areas of contact and high diversity.

[merrybitchmas91-deactivated2019]

Why "doing something relaxing” does not help your anxiety

A lot of the time when people give advice intended to relieve anxiety, they suggest doing “relaxing” things like drawing, painting, knitting, taking a bubble bath, coloring in one of those zen coloring books, or watching glitter settle to the bottom of a jar.

This advice is always well-intentioned, and I’m not here to diss people who either give it or who benefit from it. But it has never, ever done shit for me, and this is because it goes about resolving anxiety in the completely wrong way.  

THE WORST THING YOU CAN DO when suffering from anxiety is to do a “relaxing” thing that just enables your mind to dwell and obsess more on the thing that’s bothering you. You need to ESCAPE from the dwelling and the obsession in order to experience relief.

You can drive to a quiet farm, drive to the beach, drive to a park, or anywhere else, but as someone who has tried it all many, many times, trust me–it’s a waste of gas. You will just end up still sad and stressed, only with sand on your butt. You can’t physically escape your sadness. Your sadness is inside of you. To escape, you need to give your brain something to play with for a while until you can approach the issue with a healthier frame of mind. 

People who have anxiety do not need more time to contemplate, because we will use it to contemplate how much we suck.

In fact, you could say that’s what anxiety is–hyper-contemplating. When we let our minds run free, they run straight into the thorn bushes. Our minds are already running, and they need to be controlled. They need to be given something to do, or they’ll destroy everything, just like an overactive husky dog ripping up all the furniture. 

Therefore, I present to you: 

THINGS YOU SHOULD NOT DO WHEN ANXIOUS

–Go on a walk

–Watch a sunset, watch fish in an aquarium, watch glitter, etc.

–Go anywhere where the main activity is sitting and watching

–Draw, color, do anything that occupies the hands and not the mind

–Do yoga, jog, go fishing, or anything that lets you mentally drift 

–Do literally ANYTHING that gives you great amounts of mental space to obsess and dwell on things.

THINGS YOU SHOULD DO WHEN ANXIOUS:

–Do a crossword puzzle, Sudoku, or any other mind teaser game. Crosswords are the best.

–Write something. It doesn’t have to be a masterpiece. Write the Top 10 Best Restaurants in My City. Rank celebrities according to Best Smile. Write some dumb Legolas fanfiction and rip it up when you’re done. It’s not for publication, it’s a relief exercise that only you will see. 

–Read something, watch TV, or watch a movie–as long as it’s engrossing. Don’t watch anything which you can run as background noise (like, off the top of my head, Say Yes to The Dress.) As weird as it seems, American Horror Story actually helps me a lot, because it sucks me in. 

–Masturbate. Yes, I’m serious. Your mind has to concentrate on the mini-movie it’s running. It can’t run Sexy Titillating Things and All The Things That are Bothering Me at the same time. (…I hope. If it can, then…ignore this one.) 

–Do math problems—literally, google “algebra problems worksheet” and solve them. If you haven’t done math since 7th grade this will really help you. I don’t mean with math, I mean with the anxiety. 

–Play a game or a sport with someone that requires great mental concentration. Working with 5 people to get a ball over a net is a challenge which will require your brain to turn off the Sadness Channel. 

–Play a video game, as long as it’s not something like candy crush or Tetris that’s mindless. 

THINGS YOU SHOULD DO DURING PANIC ATTACKS ESPECIALLY:

–List the capitals of all the U.S. states

–List the capitals of all the European countries

–List all the shapes you can see. Or all the colors. 

–List all the blonde celebrities you can think of.

–Pull up a random block of text and count all the As in it, or Es or whatever.  

Now obviously, I am not a doctor. I am just an anxious person who has tried almost everything to help myself.  I’ve finally realized that the stuff people recommend never works because this is a disorder that thrives on free time and free mental space. When I do the stuff I listed above, I can breathe again. And I hope it helps someone here too. 

(Now this shouldn’t have to be said but if the “do nots” work for you then by all means do them. They’ve just never worked for me.)

[lovelyplot]

This would’ve been great an hour ago

[h0lyhandgrenade]

This is good advice for anxious peeps and peeps with anxious friends. Seems obvious now but I hadn’t thought about it this way before.

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THANK YOU FOR THIS POST OMG

Back when I was really mentally unhealthy, I kept trying yoga as it was always something suggested by people to become calm and happy. It was literally torture, staying in these poses and just thinking about my sadness and/or panic and the minutes seemed like hours. Yoga has been the most toxic, scary thing for me omg.

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So just to provide a comprehensive overview of my original context regarding languages in Africa, albeit much of it is languages in Northeast Africa, I decided to make this easily more accessible by putting links to all of such in one place for those interested. Mind you, this is only posts with visuals. So, here you go:

Visual Swadesh lists (42 posts)

Linguistic Diversity Challenge week 1 (7 posts)

Lingusitic Diversity Challenge: ’Bëlï

Linguistic Diversity Challenge: Defaka

Linguistic Diversity Challenge: Sandawe

An Overview of: Oromoid

An Overview of: Surmic

An Overview of: Cushitic

Introductions: Eastern Omo-Tana (9 posts)

Introductions: Central Cushitic (5 post)

Introductions: Saho

Introductions: Sidamo

Introductions: Gumär

Introductions: Mäsk’an

Introductions: Dahalik

Zigula: Retroflex Consonants

There’ll be more, of course. So this will be periodically updated.