łaá siri li łasaaliraa'isá!

The name of this website means "Every day I'll try to make you smarter with łaá siri!" This website acts as a blog and as a reference for my conlang łaá siri. It also includes various posts about linguistics and such. łaá siri is a conlang I have worked on for over 5 years. Notable features include: an inventory of merely 10 phonemes, a complicated grammatical system of pitch-accent, and verbal conjugation for five degrees of spatial deixis. I have worked extensively on it since January of 2011, and it has gone through various revisions, and is currently being revised. For the record I used the word "siri" to mean "language" before Apple's iPhone with Siri came out. >:c

[lhaasiri]

So, I have been offered admission to all but 1 of the linguistics PhD programs I applied to! That means, U. of British Columbia (currently top choice), U. Chicago, UC Berkeley, and U. Hawaii. Does anyone here in the tumblrverse have any perspective they can offer on any of these linguistics programs? Pros, cons, insider tips, insight, sagacious wisdom? I am unexpectedly in a position of making a hard decision. :’) 

[lhaasiri]

Are these two sentences truth-conditionally equivalent? 

1a. Dogs are not rocks.  1b. Rocks are not dogs. 

(i.e. does the order of the arguments in a negated copular construction matter?)

[killerkitty707]

“Yoink” is the opposite of “Yeet”

[wierdrocks]

But it’s just as fast

[viewtiful-kim-deactivated202105]

The Lord yeeteth and the Lord yoinketh away

[amediocremermaid]

In many ‘Spaghetti Western’ films, a broad sub-genre of American Western films that emerged during the 1960s in the midst of Sergio Leone’s film-making success, many of the vuglar roles Native Americans were hired to act in forced them into offensive portrayals with little attention paid to authenticity, with emphasis only placed on painting them as “simple savages.” As a result, many American filmmakers paid little attention to actually translating the indigenous languages for what they were saying on screen. As a result, many actors were able to say what they really felt.  

Reel Injun, Documentary (2009) 

[bonemischief]

it’s on netflix right now for anyone that wants to catch it

[ardatli]

This is such a good documentary, guys. I try and convince all my students to watch it. It was made by Neil Diamond, a Cree filmmaker, and it’s an utterly fascinating look at portrayals of indigenous peoples in North American cinema. 

[lauren-ashley-howard-studies]

Need to watch.

[lhaasiri]

https://youtu.be/YNZBpn9asng

[lhaasiri]

Here’s an excerpt of an original fairy tale that I just finished writing in łaá siri. No idea where the inspiration came from but it just flowed out of me! PDF HERE (for the interlinear) 

[lhaasiri]

I would like you all to know that whenever you say ‘welp’ or ‘whelp’ instead of ‘well,’ you’re basically just saying, ‘puppy’

whelp, here goes nothing 

(aka PUPPY HERE GOES NOTHING) 

[lingthusiasm]

Lingthusiasm Episode 28: How languages influence each other - Interview with Hannah Gibson on Swahili, Rangi, and Bantu languages 

The Rift Valley area of central and northern Tanzania is the only area where languages from all four African language families are found (Bantu, Cushitic, Nilotic, and Khoisan). Languages in this area have been in contact with each other for a long time, especially in the minds of bi- and multilingual speakers, so it’s a really interesting place to learn more about why and how languages influence each other. 

In this episode, your host Lauren Gawne interviews Dr. Hannah Gibson, a Lecturer in the Department of Language and Linguistics at the University of Essex, about her work on how word order differences between Rangi and Swahili, both Bantu languages, are related to the different languages that they’ve been in contact with. They also get enthusiastic about Bantu languages in general and especially how the famous Bantu noun class system works. (Swahili, for example, has 16 different noun classes. including humans, natural things that aren’t human, abstract nouns, places, and words that begin with ki-.)  

This month’s bonus episode was about naming people, a topic which has been on Lauren’s mind a lot recently! Support Lingthusiasm on Patreon to gain access to this and over 20 previous bonus episodes.

Here are the links related in this episode:

Hannah Gibson, University of Essex website

Hannah on Twitter

Blog post by Hannah on the research process and finding the construction she was working on in another language, Simbiti 

Research talk by Hannah with more details about her research on language contact in the Rift Valley (youtube) 

Paper by Hannah on word order change in Rangi 

Rangi (Wikipedia)

Grammatical gender (Wikipedia)

Lauren’s football fan analogy of linguistics (Superlinguo)

Bantu languages (Wikipedia)

Great Rift Valley (Wikipedia) 

Languages of Tanzania (Wikipedia)

Language contact (Wikipedia)

Word order (Wikipedia)

Auxiliary verbs (Wikipedia)

Noun class (Wikipedia)

SOAS, University of London

University of Dar es salaam: Department of Swahili Language and Linguistics and Department Of Foreign Languages And Linguistics 

Zanzibar University

You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, 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.

You can help keep Lingthusiasm advertising-free by supporting our Patreon. Being a patron gives you access to bonus content and lets you help decide on Lingthusiasm topics.

Lingthusiasm is on Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, Pinterest, 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 manager is Emily Gref, our editorial producers are A.E. Prévost and Sarah Dopierala, and our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.

[lhaasiri]

In translating this text, I did not adhere strictly to the original story because I was attempting to do two things: (i) take łaá siri’s new verb morphology for a test-run, (ii) pioneer (for myself) a new style of storytelling in łaá siri that adheres to different storytelling conventions than English does. Noticeably, repetition in phrases that come up several times and repetitive use of verb roots wherein a relativized verb root is an argument of another identical verb root. This has the rhetorical effect of some sort of conclusive emphasis; e.g. ya’ara luya’á sa (‘this is how it is’), sara laasaa sa (‘of course, obviously,’ lit. ‘what is true is true’). Thus, what was important to me was to make this a thoroughly łaá siri retelling of the story, NOT just a translation.

@sic-semper-amicis because you asked! 

Here is the line-by-line gloss of my translation of The North Wind and the Sun into łaá siri. 

[lhaasiri]

Full translation of the North Wind and the Sun in lhaá siri.

[linguisticalities]

Rising Voices / Hótȟaŋiŋpi - Revitalizing the Lakota Language

[sic-semper-amicis-deactivated20]

The North Wind and the Sun in Missa

A nice transcription

Keep reading

[sic-semper-amicis-deactivated20]

Visit Original Link

Inspired by @lhaasiri posting the North Wind and the Sun in Łaá Siri, I recorded myself (attempting) to speak the translation of The North Wind and The Sun I did back in October.

[lhaasiri]

Are you gonna post the text too???

[sic-semper-amicis-deactivated20]

I’d click the link in the OP if I were you.

[lhaasiri]

Got it!! 🤣😂

[sic-semper-amicis-deactivated20]

Visit Original Link

Inspired by @lhaasiri posting the North Wind and the Sun in Łaá Siri, I recorded myself (attempting) to speak the translation of The North Wind and The Sun I did back in October.

[lhaasiri]

Are you gonna post the text too???

[lhaasiri]

you can hear me read the first few lines of a new translation of the North Wind and the Sun in lhaá siri!

(；・∀・)

[lhaasiri]

Strike two, Puritans.

[lhaasiri]

Well, I'm officially a rule breaker.

I refuse to apeal this because it's not my job to train tumblr's misguided algorithm on how to better censor people. 🖐️

[lhaasiri]

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

lasaya'a lirsa lhaalir'á! Happy new year to you too!