Láadan

The relationship between language and gender has interested me since I bought a copy of Womanspeak by Dr. Maeve Conrick when I was still a teen. A few years later I was lucky enough to be able to take one of Dr. Conrick's classes on the French language in Canada when I was doing my undergraduate degree in UCC.

I first came across the Láadan language (a construct language) when I read the book Native Tongue by sci-fi author and linguist Dr. Suzette Elgin. Native Tongue forms the first part in a triolgy of novels of which The Judas Rose and Earthsong are the second and third parts repectively.

The trilogy is centered in a future dystopian American society where the 19th Amendment has been repealed and women have been stripped of civil rights. A group of women, part of a world-wide group of linguists who facilitate human communication with alien races, create a new language for women as an act of resistance.

Elgin has this to say about Native Tongue and the Láadan:

Native Tongue was a thought experiment, with a time limit of ten years. My hypothesis was that if I constructed a language designed specifically to provide a more adequate
mechanism for expressing women's perceptions, women would (a) embrace it and begin using it, or (b) embrace the idea but not the language, say "Elgin, you've got it all wrong!" and construct some other "women's language" to replace it. The ten years went by, and neither of those things happened; Láadan got very little attention, even though SF3 actually published its grammar and dictionary and I published a cassette tape to go with it. Not once did any feminist magazine (or women's magazine) ask me about the language or write a story about it.

Now while the Láadan language is not as well know as Esperanto, Quenya or Klingon it does enjoy a small following on the internet. There is a A First Dictionary and Grammar of Láadan, a Láadan Language Community, a Reference Page, and, perhaps most importantly of all for a student linguist like myself, Láadan Lessons which are available in both HTML and PDF versions. Other links include: A Láadan Index and Elgin's own page.

I downloaded the Lessons PDF last night and I have been going through the first few lessons. The most interesting thing for me as of yet is the syntax of Láadan. Some of the most striking things are the Speech Act Morphemes, the Evidence Morphemes and the lack of distincton between verbs and adjectives.

Each sentance generally has to start with a speech act morpheme (and end with an evidence morpheme.

Bíi thal with wa. -The woman is good.
Báa thal with? - Is the woman good?

Bíi: Speech Act Morpheme: declarative; thal: 'to be good'; with: 'woman/ person'; wa: Evidence Morpheme - claimed to be true because the speaker herself perceived what has been said; Báa: Speech Act Morpheme: interrogative.

Bíi laya bal wáa. - The bread is red (I hear from a trusted source).
Bíi laya ra bal wa. - The bread is not red (according to my perceptions).
Bíi laya ra bal wi. - The bread is not red (obviously--because it is present for the speaker and hearer to examine).

laya: to be red; bal: bread; wáa: Evidence Morpheme: assumed true by speaker because speaker trusts source; ra: negative, no, not; wi: Evidence Morpheme: known to the speaker because the matter is self-evident to the speaker and the hearer

I think I will investigate this language further as I find it very interesting. Who knows, in a couple of years I might add it to one of the list of languages I know.

France: One state, One language

J'en ai marre de cette non-politique linguistique en France...
I'm sick of this linguistic non-policy in France

One language, one state: France says ‘Non’ to its ‘regional’ languages
From: Eurolang by Davyth Hicks

The French Government refused on Wednesday (7th May) to ratify the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ECRML) or to modify their constitution to allow for some recognition of the languages on its territories. A new law was proposed for regional languages, but any official status or usage was ruled out. France, however, may find that it has problems - it has ratified the Lisbon Treaty, which, if it comes into force, will require France to respect linguistic diversity and prohibit discrimination against languages and national minorities.

Despite the efforts of deputies from Brittany, led by Marc le Fur and Marylise Lebranchu, Pays Basque, North Catalonia, Corsica, and the Alsace, the French government, represented by Culture Minister Mme Christine Albanel, stuck to its hard line policy on refusing any legal recognition of regional languages. The grounds given being that it would undermine the eighteenth century French centralist idea of one language, one state, set up to unify the regions and countries taken over by France before and after the French revolution.

She ruled out any notion that regional languages have any official status or official usage making it clear that France has no intention of ratifying the European Charter for Minority Languages. She argued that the Charter “is against our principles” because it “implies [...] an inviolable right to speak a regional language, notably in the public sphere,” and that ratification is “against constitutional principles fundamental to the indivisibilty of the Republic, equality in front of the law and the unity of the French people.”

However, in the face of strong arguments from deputies from all the parties, Mme Albanel offered a glimmer of hope with the promise of a new law, “a reference framework”, that would fit in with current French law.

Read on

Poor little letter 'C'

This is taken from a thread on the Zompist Conlanging Forum.

Question:

I'm wondering, how come that in the real word, in many languages, is pronounced like /s/ when preceeding 'e', 'i' and 'y', and like /k/ when preceeding 'a', 'o' and 'u'? Is there maybe some kind of sound change that made some original phoneme turn into /s/ or /k/ depending on the following vowel?

Answer:

This is the explanation given to me by my kindergarten teacher: A long time ago, all the letters were given sounds. W was given the "wuh" sound, and R was given the "ruh" sound, and so on. Poor little C was in the bathroom when all this happened, and when it came out, all the sounds had been given away. C cried and cried. S and K felt bad, so they agreed to share their sounds with C. Before I, E, or Y, C would make the S sound, and before A, O, or U, C would make the K sound.

Dirty linguistics

These are taken from a thread on the Zompist Conlanging Forum where the challenge is...to write a paragraph that sounds as dirty as possible using only (within reason) linguistic terms.

So a verb sees a hot-looking noun at the bar and walks up to her and says "Hey, babe, wanna go back to my place and conjugate?" She replied, "I decline".

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Her slit fricative causes me to ejectivize my plosives.

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Can you produce rectal plosives? What about vulvular ejectives?

All true Lesbians are Greek?

Text from BBC New's Lesbos islanders dispute gay name

Campaigners on the Greek island of Lesbos are to go to court in an attempt to stop a gay rights organisation from using the term "lesbian".

The islanders say that if they are successful they may then start to fight the word lesbian internationally.

The issue boils down to who has the right to call themselves Lesbians. Is it gay women, or the 100,000 people living on Greece's third biggest island - plus another 250,000 expatriates who originate from Lesbos?

The man spearheading the case, publisher Dimitris Lambrou, claims that international dominance of the word in its sexual context violates the human rights of the islanders, and disgraces them around the world.
He says it causes daily problems to the social life of Lesbos's inhabitants.

Read on on the BBC New's Website

Teeme ära!

Tegimegi ära! We sure did it!

Kus ja kuidas pidutseme? Where and how shall we party?

Teeme ära! Let's do it!

Today 40,000 people took part in one of the biggest organised clean-ups in history. The plan was to clear the forests of Estonia (for which the country is well known) of 70,000 tonnes of rubbish dumped their (sadly) by its citizens.

The clean up (Teeme 2008) was just one of the events organised for the 90th anniversary of the birth of the first republic.

I'd would like to see something similar happening in Ireland. Ireland, a country well reknowned world wide for its natural beauty (especially amongst Americans) is in truth rather filthy, none more so in the cities and towns. Plus we need more trees. Trees, Ireland, trees!

No room at the Gaelscoil

It has been reported in the Irish Independent here that:

Gaelscoileanna around the country are turning hundreds of children away, as they do not have the capacity to cope with the volume of applicants.
....
'It is a problem that there is just not enough spaces to meet the demand of people who want their students taught through Irish," said Blathnaid Ni Ghreachain [sic]*, chief executive of Gaelscoileanna Teo.
Some of the issues facing gaelscoileanna are accommodation and staffing. Just over 50pc of all primary gaelscoileanna are housed in temporary accommodation, mostly in sports clubs.

I agree with Gael Gan Náire when he says here:

ba chóir go mbeadh an cheart iomlán sa reachtaíocht ag gach páistí in Éirinn chun oideachas trí-mheán na Gaeilge a bheith acu. (It should be the legislative right of all children in Ireland to be educated through the Irish language).

Outside of raising our children through Irish, the Gaelscoil movemnet is the key to protecting the Irish langauge and making sure its strength grows. You would think that the government would be rushing to build new Gaelscoileanna, making exisiting schools into Gaelscoileanna or at least providing Irish language immersion streams in English language schools to keep up with the demand, but you'd be wrong.

So instead, as the government is soon to implement the 20 year bi-lingual plan, we just shrug our shoulders and forego the opportunity of having these kids educated in our native language. And we cod ourselves into believing we truly treasure the Irish language.

* Bláthnaid Ní Ghreacháin