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Lingthusiasm Episode 24: Making books and tools speak Chatino - Interview with Hilaria Cruz

As English speakers, we take for granted that we have lots of resources available in our language, from children’s books to dictionaries to automated tools like Siri and Google Translate. But for the majority of the world’s languages, this is not the case.

In this episode, your host Gretchen McCulloch interviews Dr Hilaria Cruz, a linguist and native speaker of Chatino, an Indigenous language of Mexico which is spoken by over 40,000 people. Hilaria combines her work as an Assistant Professor of linguistics at the University of Kentucky with creating resources for her fellow speakers of Chatino, everything from paperback or cloth children’s books to high-tech speech recognition tools which will make it easier to create more resources like this in the future. And she’s also making these resources available for other underrepresented languages!

There were two big announcements at the top of the episode:

The first is that we have a date for our liveshow in Melbourne! We will be at the State Library of Victoria on Friday the 16th of November. Tickets on sale soon through our EventBrite.

We are also thrilled to announce we’ll be doing a liveshow in Sydney! We’ll be at GiantDwarf on Monday the 12th of November. Tickets available through their website.

We also have new merch!

Thanks to Lucy Maddox for bringing Space Babies to life! Check out the art in this post. A portion of the proceeds from the Space Baby merch will be donated to the Resource Network for Linguistic Diversity.

We also have new scarf colours, and t-shirts that say “I want to be the English schwa. It’s never stressed.” Check out our Merch page for more details.

This month’s bonus episode was about hyperforeignisms! We take an international tour through how our minds deal with the interesting edge cases of words that are kinda-English and kinda-other-languages. Support the show on Patreon to get access to this and all 19 bonus episodes.

Here are the links mentioned in this episode:

Chatino language (Wikipedia)

Lengua Chatino resources website (mostly in Spanish)

A video story told aloud in Chatino by Hilaria Cruz

Hilaria Cruz’s page at the University of Kentucky

Hilaria Cruz’s website

Joel Sherzer

Tony Woodbury

Hilaria’s PhD thesis (Linguistic poetic and rhetoric of Eastern Chatino of San Juan Quiahije)

Automatic Speech Recognition (Wikipedia)

Alexis Michaud

Oliver Adams

Tlingit, Ojibwe, Hupa languages (Wikipedia)

Here’s a photo of the children’s books that Hilaria Cruz and her students made! Books 1-6 (from left) are in Chatino. The rightmost book is in Hupa and the second from right book is in Ojibwe.

From the description on the ASREL Retreat website (Automatic Speech Recognition for Endangered Languages):

This retreat will foster a dialogue between computer scientists working on Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) specifically neural networks, native speakers of endangered languages, and linguists doing research on endangered languages to address the issue of the “bottleneck” of language transcription and discuss the use of technology in the transcription of language data.

Tools and technologies to automate and expedite the transcription and translation of oral texts from endangered languages are urgently needed. Most researchers working with endangered languages process their materials manually. Some researchers estimate that it takes roughly from 1 to 50 hours to prepare one hour of spoken text manually.

ASR technologies can significantly reduce the workload of transcribing large collections of speech recordings in these lesser-studied languages. Automating the process will enable the transcriber to become more of an editor, accelerating the overall transcription process. Implementation of ASR technologies could free up time for linguists, language activists, and speakers to create materials for teaching and learning the language, rather than spending countless hours transcribing.

You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening, and stay tuned for a transcript of this episode on the Lingthusiasm website. To received an email whenever a new episode drops, sign up for the Lingthusiasm mailing list.

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Lingthusiasm is on Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, and Twitter. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com

Gretchen is on Twitter as @GretchenAMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic.

Lauren is on Twitter as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.

Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our audio producer is Claire Gawne, our editorial producers are Emily Gref and A.E. Prévost, our production assistants are Celine Yoon & Fabianne Anderberg, and our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.

allthingslinguistic

It was so fun to get to talk with Hilaria about all her fantastic work!

dailycognates

Ring, harangue, curve, cancer

The noun ring comes the Old English hring from the Proto-Germanic *hringaz. A variant form of ring in Middle English was rink, which survives as the Modern English rink as in “ice rink”.

This same Proto-Germanic root produced Gothic *hriggs which was borrowed into Old Italian as aringo “a public assembly”, from the idea of a group of people gathered together in a circle, with an epenthetic vowel to break up the Gothic hr- cluster. This became the verb aringare (Modern Italian arringare) which formed the noun aringa which was borrowed into French as harangue “a public address”, which became English harangue.

The Proto-Germanic was earlier *hrengaz, borrowed into Proto-Finnic as *rengas, and derived ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European *krengʰ- from the root *(s)ker- “to turn”, “to bend”.

A nominal derivative *kr̥wós became Latin curvus, source of English curve. A reduplicated form *kr̥kr̥- became Proto-Italic *karkros, “enclosure”, “barrier”, which became Latin carcer “jail”, “prison”, the source of Modern English incarcerate. A variant form in Proto-Italic was *kankros with dissimilation of the -rkr- to -nkr-, which became Latin cancer “crab”, from the way a crab’s claws form a circular enclosure. This was also used to refer to a tumor, due to a perceived similarity in shape between some tumors and crabs, whence the medical use in Modern English

notorietydame

Latin is the only language about which you can say to another learner, “your skill is declining,” and mean it as a compliment.

gullethead

Weird language Thing™ with cognates: in Dutch, the word for “to speak” is “spreken,” first person “Ik spraak,” and the word for “languages” is “talen.” Meanwhile, in Swedish, the word for “to speak” is “talar,” no conjugation, and the word for “languages” is “språk.” So in Dutch, you say “Ik spraak talen,” and in Swedish, you basically reverse it and say “Jag talar språk.” #JustGermanicThings

allthingslinguistic

Luke A. Rudge on twitter:

If you had to recommend 5 phonemes to really get a feel for you and your tastes, which 5 would you pick?

melonmemes

#lmao #verb chart

foxlanguages

Favorite Spanish word

“el coso” meaning: an unknown thing or a replacement for a word one can remember the name of.

Yes, I know what you’re gonna say: that’s not an actual word. True, it’s not but I still like it and still use it.

Other variation:

“El cosito” meaning: El coso but small

#spanish

malteseboy

What would be some reasons to learn Maltese?

maltese is a semitic language!

it’s also the only semitic language which uses the latin script!!

maltese is like the love child of arabic and sicilian

maltese comes from a dialect of arabic, so by learning it you’ll also learn tons of arabic vocab

it was also heavily influenced by sicilian and italian so you’ll understand a lot of those too!!

it’s the native language to more than 430k+ people living on a small island in the mediterranean

malta is hecking gorgeous

if you come to malta and speak even a little maltese, we will love and worship you

you can flirt with maltese babes

you can really get in touch with malta’s rich history and amazing culture that many people don’t know about

we have weird cute letters too btw (ċ ġ għ ħ ż)

maltese sounds amazing

#maltese

witchofeindor

In case y'all thought Hebrew was an easy language (Those tiny points around the letters appear only in children’s books btw)

shoshanah-ben-hohim

those dots and dashes being the VOWELS, which only appear for children and language-learners

solarcat

This seems like a good time to ask… why? Is there a reason why the vowels are omitted from most texts, given that there’s a system to indicate them? *curious*

motleystitches

Is this is unique to a certain language system? Tolkien’s made-up tengwar does a similar thing…

malasnakkata

arabic does this too! i’ll let hebrew speakers explain theirs, but the explanation is simply that if you’re a fluent arabic speaker, the written forms and usage will provide the (non-textual) context that guides your pronunciation. what i mean by written forms for arabic is that every letter actually has a different morphology depending on their position in a word. kinda like… how… mm… the roman R in cursive changes forms depending on its position. tht helps a lot, i think. in any case, in regular practice, you do see the arabic vowel marks (depending on romanisation, is called harakah/harakat/harkat) appear regularly as a standard in quranic editions for non-arabic-using muslims. like, i grew up reading the ‘al-qur’an mashaf malaysia’ and thinking i was hot shit, and then i found my grandma’s pakistani one AND I DIED. lmao.

tikkunolamorgtfo

Semitic languages are like, reading: expert death mode.

antisemitism-eu

The Hebrew vowels were only invented in the 8-9th century. There were a few versions vying for dominance. The Tiberias method won.

A Torah scroll is of course written with no vowels and no punctuation, as the traditional version was set long before these things were invented.

krakenartificer

For the record, I have never once thought that Hebrew was an easy language.

#semitic languages #hebrew #arabic #abjad

sociolinguo

Wales has launched bold plans to revive the Welsh language, which is deemed "vulnerable" to extinction by UNESCO. The Welsh government has set a target of

Wales has launched bold plans to revive the Welsh language, which is deemed “vulnerable” to extinction by UNESCO.

#welsh #endangered languages

spanishskulduggery

Spanish Vocabulary - Las fiestas [holidays]

(la) Navidad = Christmas navideño/a = Christmas (adj) / Christmastime

(la) Nochebuena = Christmas Eve [lit. “good-night”] (la) Víspera de Navidad = Christmas Eve [lit. “Christmas vesper”]

(el) Día de los Reyes Magos = Three Kings’ Day

(el) Adviento = Advent (el) Advenimiento de Cristo = Advent

Hanukkah / Chanukah = Hanukkah

(la) Nochevieja = New Year’s Eve [lit. “old-night”]

(el) Año Nuevo = New Year’s Day

(el) Año Nuevo chino = The Chinese New Year

(el Día de) San Valentín = Valentine’s Day

(el Día de) San Patricio = St. Patrick’s Day

Halloween = Halloween

(el) Día de los Muertos = Day of the Dead

(el) Día de Todos los Santos = All Soul’s Day (el) Día de los (Fieles) Difuntos = All Souls’ Day [lit. “day of the loyal/faithful deceased”]

(el) Día de Todos los Santos = All Saints’ Day Todos los Santos = All Saints’ Day

la Cuaresma = Lent

Mardi Gras = Mardi Gras / “Shrove Tuesday” Martes de Carnaval = Mardi Gras / Fat Tuesday / Carnevale

(el) Miércoles de Ceniza = Ash Wednesday (el) Día de Ceniza = Ash Wednesday

(el) Jueves Santo = Holy Thursday / “Maundy Thursday”

(el) Viernes Santo = Good Friday

(el) Sábado Santo = Holy Saturday (el) Sábado de Gloria = Holy Saturday

(el) Domingo de Ramos = Palm Sunday

(la) Pascua = Easter

(la) Semana Santa = Holy Week / Easter [the week surrounding Easter Sunday]

(el) Día de Independencia = Independence Day

(el) Día de los (Veteranos) Caídos = Memorial Day [lit. “day of the fallen (veterans)”] (el) Día de Conmemoración de los Caídos = Memorial Day [lit. “Day of Remembrance of the Fallen”

(el) Día de Acción de Gracias = Thanksgiving

el cumpleaños = birthday el cumple = birthday (slang)

el bautismo = baptism / christening

la boda = wedding

el velorio, el velatorio = wake (before a funeral)

el funeral = funeral

el entierro = burial

(el) Ramadán = Ramadan

(el) Yom Kippur = Yom Kippur (el) Día de Perdón = Yom Kippur [lit. “day of forgiveness”]

[side note: the term “holiday” is a little iffy to translate because it would normally just be las fiestas “holidays”, where it means “feasts” not “parties”… the English word “holiday” is a contraction of “holy day” so that would more be la fiesta religiosa. A regular holiday (bank holiday) or day off is often known as feriado, and if you’re British “going on holiday” is ir(se)/estar de vacaciones which for the US is “to go/be on vacation”]

I also need to point out that one important word not listed is las Pascuas. This is different from la Pascua meaning “Easter”… las Pascuas is used to describe all of the Christmas holidays which go from the end of December to the beginning of January. The most important ones for Spanish-speakers are Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve, and then the Epiphany on January 5th-6th which is often called "Three Kings’ Day" or “Three Wisemen’s Day”.Three Kings’ Day doesn’t really exist for people outside of Spanish-speaking countries (that I know of), but it’s a little bit like a second Christmas. You get presents, you leave food out for the Kings (and their camels), there’s a specific cake… I don’t think I can really do it justice just talking about it. So without further ado, here comes the list!

All months are treated as masculine, but don’t often show up with the definite articles, unless you’re saying something like para el enero “in January”; also note that the days of the month are all the numbers not ordinal numbers… el dos de febrero for example is “February 2nd” literally “February 2"The only ordinal number is used for the first of every month; el primero de (mes)… so el primero de enero is "January 1st”

enero = January

febrero = February

marzo = March

abril = April

mayo = May

junio = June

julio = July

agosto = August

septiembre = September

octubre = October

noviembre = November

diciembre = December

la estación = season

el mes = month mensual = monthly

el año = year anual = yearly / annual

la primavera = spring de primavera, primaveral = springtime

el otoño = autumn / fall de otoño, otoñal = autumnal / fall (adj)

el verano = summer de verano, veraniego/a = summery / summertime

el invierno = winter de invierno, invernal = winter(time), wintry

el equinoccio de primavera = spring equinox

el equinoccio de otoño = autumnal equinox

el solsticio de verano = summer solstice

el solsticio de invierno = winter solstice

el año bisiesto = leap year

las vacaciones = vacation / day off la feria = day off, holiday / “fair” or carnival

ir de vacaciones = to go on vacation/holiday veranear = to spend summer (somewhere) / “to summer”

el feriado = holiday feriado/a = a day that is a holiday, an “observed” holiday (el) día festivo, (el) feriado religioso = holy day, religious holiday

el puente = “bridge” [sometimes “long weekend” or “Bank Holiday”; a puente are the days off before or after a big holiday, so if Christmas falls on a Wednesday, you’d typically get the Tuesday off for Christmas Eve and probably the Monday off as your puente… not technically a holiday, but some places won’t make you come in to work that day; Black Friday (the Friday after Thanksgiving) in the U.S. is a puente as well, where you then have the weekend off and go back to work on Monday]

la fiesta = party / feast day, holy day, holiday las fiestas = parties / holidays (in this sense it more means observed holidays, so las fiestas de España means “the holidays/festivals of Spain” which can include national holidays or more regional holidays or what they call “popular holidays” like La Tomatina or something like that that’s unique to a city or region]

(el) día santo = saint’s day (el) día del santo patrón = saint’s day [lit. “day of a patron saint”]

celebrar = to celebrate

pasar = to spend (time), to observe a holiday pasarlo bien = to have a good time [can be pasarla bien if it’s specifically la fiesta or a feminine noun]

disfrutar (de) / gozar (de) = to enjoy something

regalar, dar un regalo = to give a gift

el regalo = gift, present

¡Feliz ___! = Happy ___!

*Note: With some exceptions, this list is mostly designed around the holidays observed in the U.S. and particularly Christian ones; other countries and religions have their own holidays that may or may not be included on this list so feel free to add any big ones I’ve missed.

Come join me over on Patreon!

#spanish #holidays #español #vocab

duzzzt

Aboriginal Syllabics (Ojibwe)

The syllabic writing system is an abugida used to write first nations languages such as Ojibwe, Cree, and Inuktitut. It was first devised by missionaries to spread the bible amongst aboriginal tribes but has since taken on a life of its own.

Languages like Ojibwe and Cree can be written using latin characters, and frequently are (especially in the States), but it’s sorta cumbersome. Think of Japanese words like Mi·tsu·bi·shi, Na·ga·sa·ki. Japanese would never have a word like ‘scratched’ (thanks Tom Scott for the example), because every syllable must have a single consonant and a single vowel sound, with very few exceptions.

Most aboriginal languages are the same, so writing a separate character for a consonant and a vowel is kinda worthless. The Ojibwe word ‘a·ni·shi·naa·be’ is written as the shorter ᐊᓂᔑᓈᐯ.

ᐊ : a ᓂ : ni ᔑ : shi ᓈ : naa ᐯ : be

In syllabics, every consonant has its own shape (ᐁ, ᐯ, ᑌ, ᑫ, ᒉ, ᒣ, ᓀ, ᓭ, ᔐ, ᔦ), and every vowel has a direction that the shape is rotated in, example:

Following is the simplified version of the syllabics chart. To build a syllabic, you look for which consonant you want to start with, then follow the line until you hit the vowel you want that pair to have. Think of the chart like the game Battleship (the consonants such as ‘p’ often come with fortis-lenis variants, in this case ‘b’. In syllabics, they are equivalent).

EXCEPTIONS AND QUIRKS

The exceptions to regular rules are the first row, which have only a vowel and no accompanying consonant, and the last two rows. An ‘h’ character, frequently used as a glottal stop, is added separately, and a ‘w’ character is represented as a dot that can be placed left of any character, sandwiching the sound between the consonant and vowel, ie.

ᐁ = e ᐌ = we ᑌ = te ᑗ = twe (note the dot on the left)

Likewise, long vowels, written as aa, ii, and oo in latin spelling, are simply the syllabic with a dot placed above, ie:

ᐃ = i ᐄ = ii ᐱ = pi ᐲ = pii ᐼ = pwi ᐾ = pwii

If a sole consonant is needed, you use a ‘final’, a smaller version of the ‘a’ syllabic. ie.

ᐸ = pa ᑉ = p ᓴ = za ᔅ = z

When transliterated, a piece of Ojibwe text such as this (I found it on fb, don’t know what it says lol)

gaawiin nda minikwesii shkode'aaboo gaawiin nda zagaszowaasii nda mino bemaadiz

will look like this

ᑳᐐᓐ ᓐᑕ ᒥᓂᑴᓰ ᔥᑯᑌᐦᐋᐴ ᑳᐐᓐ ᓐᑕ ᓴᑲᔅᓱᐙᓰ ᓐᑕ ᒥᓄ ᐯᒫᑎᔅ

#objiwe #writing systems #abugida #syllabary #canadian languages

linguisticmaps

Languages with gaps in the plosives’ systems

These languages generally have a voicing distinction like [p, b, t, d, k, g], but lack either [p] or [g].

#linguistics #maps

salutcavaouiettoi

How french people use the word “grave” 🇫🇷

This word has a lot of signification in french nowadays, either for slang or in everyday situations. Here are some of its uses!

In general GRAVE means “serious”, but we use it for many other situations

How teenagers/young adults use GRAVE:

“C'est grave cool” = It’s really cool (to insist)

“Grave, mec” = Totally dude (to agree)

A very common french expression:

“C'est pas grave” = It’s no big deal

In its common and normal sense:

“La situation est grave” = the situation is serious

#french #slang #idiom

spanishlandia

#spanish #español #vocab #cuerpo

meanplastic

#lmao #language thoughts

valtharr

Whenever you ask “is there a ridiculously long German word for [X]?”, the answer is either “yes” or “not officially, but I can quickly build you one if you want”

inoffizielles-deutschland

Like for example a word describing this phenomenon could be “Wortzusammensetzungsmöglichkeit”. It didn’t exist before but now I made it up and people know what I mean when they read it.