Languages in the Big Apple

My personal exposure to the Icelandic language is pretty limited; except for the occasional Bjork song, it’s not something I hear often, but I’ve often wondered about the history behind the language.

An article I found answered a lot of my questions. Here it is, the history of Icelandic, in a nutshell:

The most used language of Iceland is “the Icelandic” and it is one of the very famous Nordic languages group. This group is the sub-group of the Germanic languages. Normally, Germanic language is divided into two groups i.e. North Germanic or Nordic languages and West Germanic. Iceland was first inhabited in around 870 A.D and most of the first visitors were from Norway [west Norway], Sweden and Ireland. Some Celtics were also in the earliest arrivals to Iceland. The language that became the most popular in Iceland was that of the people of Norway. Some traces of Celtic language are also visible in Icelandic language. The only words borrowed from Celtic language are some personal names and some names of places. Till 14th century Icelandic and Norwegian language was almost same. It was after 14th century that they became totally different from each other. This change occurred due to significant changes in the language of Norway. Icelandic language didn’t change and this was due to rich Icelandic literature that was written in read in the same language in 12th and 13th centuries. Now it is said that not even a single word has changed in Icelandic language that’s why the texts written in twelfth century can be read by a ten year boy even now. Another quality of Icelandic language is its uniformity i.e. the absence of dialects.

William Safire’s latest On Language article for the Sunday Times magazine takes a look at the meaning of the phrase “suspension of disbelief,” and how its usage has changed over the years. Lately, it’s been in vogue among the political set: Hillary Clinton said it would be required to believe General David Petraeus’ report on the progress of the war, Republican Mitt Romney in turn used it to question the validity of Clinton’s statement, and Senator John McCain used it as a noun, declaring that “It’s a willing suspension of disbelief that Senator Clinton thinks she knows more than General Petraeus.”

What’s all the hoopla about? And who, if anyone, used the phrase correctly? Safire first gives us a little history:

“The phrase ’suspension of disbelief ,’ ” noted the columnist Alan Nathan in The Washington Times, “is a literary term of art referring to one of Aristotle’s principles of theater in which the audience accepts fiction as reality so as to experience a catharsis, or a releasing of tensions to purify the soul.” He went on to characterize the general’s testimony as “more in keeping with Bertolt Brecht’s philosophy of Verfremdungseffekt, or distancing from that suspended belief, in order to maintain a clearheaded appreciation of the drama in focus.”

He then takes us from politics to poetics, pointing out that Coleridge and Wordsworth had plenty to say on the matter as well. Read the entire article here.

A Tokyo judge recently ruled that the suicide of a 35-year old man was work-related, and that the government must pay reparations to the man’s family.

The man, who worked for a Tokyo-based pharmaceutical company, left a suicide note detailing the verbal abuse he received from his boss, which purportedly caused him to spiral into a depression that ultimately ended his life. He wrote: “My defects echo around my head, and I now despise myself.”

According to his wife, the man’s boss abused him on a daily basis, throwing out insults including: “Your existence is offensive to my eyes. Get out of my sight,” “You’re a wage-snatcher parasitizing the company,” and “You’re a social phobic, aren’t you?”

The ruling is significant because it is the “first time a court has ruled harassment by senior staff, such as abusive language and bullying, as being the direct cause of suicide, and recognized such a death as being work-related.”

While the incident may seem odd to write about on a language website, the legal action taken in response to the bullying is a significant step for workplace security. And while this particular man in Japan chose to end only his own life, the outcomes of verbal abuse have been bloodier here in the U.S. – for every school massacre and work place shooting that’s happened in America, there is a story of bullying behind it. Seung-Hui Cho was repeatedly made fun of for his social ineptitude and taciturnity, the Columbine kids claimed they were acting out in response to a school-sanctioned favoritism of jocks and jock culture, and the list goes on. There’s a great book by Mark Ames entitled Going Postal that looks into the environments in which these violent outbreaks have occurred; in each case, there is endless evidence of verbal abuse.

A new article in Science Daily reveals that toddlers are grasping language skills much earlier than expected, and “by the age of 18 months understand enough of the lexicon of their own language to recognize how speakers use sounds to convey meaning.”

Apparently the wee tykes are also able to discern which sounds to ignore – those, for example, that don’t play a significant role in speaking their native tongue. If you’ve ever wondered why you have so much trouble rolling your ‘r’s, this is why – the most important period for acquiring the speech patterns and sounds of one’s native language is during a child’s first year. Sounds that don’t factor largely into the language a child is hearing – in our case, the rolled ‘r’ – are categorically ignored, causing our tongue and brain to develop accordingly.

This is why Japanese toddlers, like Japanese adults, cannot tell apart the English “r” and “l” sounds and why English speakers have trouble with certain French vowels because they all sound the same to non-native speakers due to language learning in infancy. The Penn study shows that even when two words sound very different, toddlers know whether to take this difference seriously or to chalk it up to random variation depending on how their language works.

So while linguists are finding that learning a new language as an adult isn’t as impossible as previously believed, your accent could be there forever.

Read the complete article: here

After a summer of heated debate, the Khalil Gibran International Academy, New York’s first Arabic public charter school, opened its doors for the first time on September 4th.

Over at City Hall, those opposed to the academy united to protest. Here’s a quote from Irene Alter, one of the objectors:

“The mayor and chancellor owe the citizens and taxpayers an explanation for the necessity of a school like this. And, additionally, [an explanation of] how they plan to monitor it, since it’s well known that many of the texts emanating from countries such as Saudi Arabia are filled with anti-American, anti-Zionist rhetoric.”

Oh, Irene, let me count the ways your logic falters: First of all, “countries such as Saudi Arabia”? The academy, one of 70 dual-language schools in the city, has nothing to do with Saudi Arabia in particular, but rather will provide a secular focus on Arabic language and culture. Secondly, “anti-Zionist” rhetoric? Since when must America’s public schools adhere to a Zionist regime? True, the separation of church and state has suffered some serious blows in the past few years (prayers in schools, anyone?), but to base your opposition to the Khalil Gibran International Academy on the fact that there are texts in the Middle East that aren’t down with Israel is the fast track to making yourself look like a xenophobic fool.

Hopefully, the school will succeed in teaching its 55 enrolled students to use language with a bit more precision.

Quote source here.

How does a country make up for the mass murder and subjugation of the land’s indigenous people?

In America, we scoot them onto reservations and give them booze and gambling licenses. In Australia, they’ve recently decided to include Aboriginal languages in the curricula of schools with large indigenous populations.

The Sydney Morning Herald recently reported that after successfully testing of the idea on Bourke High School, Australian school officials are eager to introduce Aboriginal language programs into many more schools, with hopes that doing do will “improve Aboriginal retention rates and literacy standards” and help “Aboriginal students identify with their culture [to improve] their confidence and sense of identity.”

After the start of British colonization of Australia in 1788, the Aborigines — much like the Native Americans here — suffered greatly at the hands of Old World epidemic diseases: over half the Aboriginal population was killed by Small Pox alone. Add to that the loss of their own land and colonial violence, and by 1900, only ten percent of the population remained. Today, around 35,000 Aboriginal students are enrolled in Australian state schools, 35 percent of whom complete their 12th year of education.

While including Aboriginal studies in Australian schools may seem a token consolation to a wronged people, it actually represents a pretty progressive step in repairing the damages of colonialism. And with conservatives throwing so many hissy fits about foreign languages in American public schools — the Arabic school in Brooklyn, the many Spanish-speaking schools in California — not to mention the continuing problems facing Native American youth (they have the highest suicide rate of any ethnicity), perhaps we could learn something from Australia.

Read the original article here.

Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker has a new book out entitled The Stuff of Thought, in which he argues that language is a display of our inner nature. Douglass Hofstadter wrote a thorough, if somewhat unfavorable, review for the LA Times.

That language reveals our inner nature is not a terribly revolutionary premise — language is, after all, our primary means of expression — but the book also tries to take the academic notion of semantics down from the ivory tower to show that the meanings of words matter more than we suspect.

Coining the term verbivores (a species that lives on words), Pinker argues that “our verbivorous, highly biased perception of reality differs radically from the findings of science yet allows us to thrive in a complex universe.”

Translation: there are many classes and “microclasses” of verbs, some of which incorporate alterations into their usage based on the objects which they describe, and some of which don’t.

These classifications are used to support “the idea that we sometimes frame events in terms of motion in physical space and sometimes in terms of motion in state-space”, a notion that makes it seem as though Pinker may have failed in plebeian-izing the theoretical study of semantics; still, it sounds like a good read.

Get the complete Los Angeles Times review here.

The Defense Department is looking for a new way to refer to the men and women in the U.S. armed forces. With possibilities ranging from troops, fighters, soldiers, servicemembers, and combatants, it looks like warrior may be the forerunner.

The term probably evokes images of bows and arrows or medieval knights more than a bunch of buzz-cutted Americans in camouflage, but that seems to be precisely the point.

In what is depicted as a means of employing an all-inclusive word — i.e., one that doesn’t exclude women — the situation strikes me as a little shady, and I’m guessing this is more of an image-makeover than feminism.

What’s wrong with “soldier?” According to the International Herald Tribune, we’re in need of an all-around term to reference troops, marines, and those in the airforce that isn’t as complicated as “servicemember.”

And why doesn’t “troop” fit that description?

“Troops presents plural difficulties. One troop is a group. When you say ‘two troops’, do you mean two military units or two individuals? When we say ’send in the troops,’ we usually mean large numbers, but when speaking of two or three members of our armed forces, we say soldiers or special forces or whatever branch of the armed services they serve in. One person is not a troop”.

Right. Still, warrior strikes me as a pretty misleading euphemism, romanticizing a war that the majority of Americans don’t support.

Perhaps a more honest nomenclature would be “killer.”

Bloomburg’s got a new agenda: he wants tourists to be treated nicely.

A new ad campaign featuring celebs such as Robert De Niro, Jimmy Fallon, and Julianne Moore aims to give New York a small-town vibe by soliciting tid-bits with explanations such as the fact that Fifth Avenue acts as the divider line between the East Side and the West Side. Just Ask The Locals.

But are New Yorkers even unfriendly? I can’t recall what it was like to be a tourist here, so I can’t say for sure, but at the same time, I myself have never witnessed bumbling tourists being treated with contempt.

I’ve even found that strangers seem to strike up conversations more often here than anywhere else I’ve lived.

So where does the reputation come from? I suppose the only interactions that fall into the ‘unfriendly’ category are the routine exchanges where there isn’t any time for pleasantries. Like at the grocery store, or Duane Reade, where asking How Are You? or leaving with Have a Nice Day isn’t as common as it probably is in, say, Louisville, Kentucky.

But that’s just a by-product of city living — when you have so many interactions with so many people every day, the extraneous gets cut out for the sake of convenience. Not exactly hostility.

Which is why, in New York, these new ads seem just a little hokey.

People in New York love to hate on newcomers. The fact is, the majority of people who live here aren’t natives, but that doesn’t stop them from pretending. After a few years in town, people are desperate to seem like old-timers, and part of what vindicates that claim is mocking the bumbling masses who move here each year. The easiest targets, of course, are college freshman.

There are so many schools in New York, but the most conspicuous college kids are undoubtedly NYU and Columbia students. This fall, the grumbling is in full effect.

Everyone from gawker to New York magazine has written something bemoaning the swarms of new students invading Union Square and Morningside Heights. Toda’s Metro section in the Times features an article telling students what not to do.

Never, ever mispronounce Houston:

“Houston Street, the Lower Manhattan thoroughfare that put the Ho in SoHo, is pronounced HOW-ston. Unlike the city in Texas, which was named for the first president of the short-lived Republic of Texas, Samuel Houston, Houston Street is named for William Houstoun, a Georgia delegate to the Continental Congress who married into a powerful Manhattan family that owned some of the land on which the street is built. The street name was shortened to Houston is the early 1800s.”

Calling Houston HOW-ston is basically equivalent to walking down the street in overalls with a blade of grass between your teeth or tattooing the word “hick” across your forehead. Very embarassing.

But one can’t help but feel sorry for these wide-eyed new students. Yes, they’re annoying, in a loud-mouthed, perpetually-drunk-on-the-subway, let’s-go-out-in-a-group-of-twenty-people type way, but to act like we’ve never been new in New York is just a lie (except for the tiny sliver of people who were actually born and raised here). Laugh at them, sure, but don’t be actin’ all superior-like, because even if you have been here for five years or longer, chances are you grew up somewhere in Iowa.