parrot time - issue 15 - may / june 2015

Parrot TimeThe Thinking of Speaking Issue #1 5 May / June 201 5

SSoouunndd NNoottaattiioonn SSyysstteemmssIIPPAA,, SSAAMMPPAA,, KKii rrsshheennbbaauumm,, AArrppaabbeett --WWhhiicchh iiss tthhee bbeesstt ffoorr yyoouu??

PPiiddgg iinnss aanndd CCrreeoolleessAA llooookk aatt hhooww ssoommee llaanngguuaaggeessaarree bboorrnn

WWhhoo AArree YYoouu TToo LLeeaarrnnAA LLaanngguuaaggee??LLeeaarrnn wwhhaatt ii tt ttaakkeess ttoo bbee aappoollyygg lloott

LLooookk bbeeyyoonnddwwhhaatt yyoouu kknnooww

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Contents

Parrot Time | Issue #15 | May / June 2015 3

30 At the Cinema - Dil Chahta Hai

6 How Do You Say It?A new language means new words, new grammar, and newsounds. But how do learn to pronounce those new sounds if youonly have written resources? We look at some common soundnotation systems.

52 Book Look

51 Where Are You?

26 Who Are You To Learn A Language?Are you having a problem learning a new language? Do youbelieve that you just aren't capable of learning one? Guestwriter and neurolinguist Jimmy Mello has some advice for you!

Parrot TimeParrot Time is a magazinecovering language, linguisticsand culture of the world around

us.

It is published by ScriveremoPublishing, a division of

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Departments

Features

05 Letter From The Editor

Editor: Erik ZidoweckiEmail: [email protected]

Published by Scriveremo Publish-ing, a division of Parleremo.This issue is available online fromhttp://www.parrottime.com

The editor reserves the right toedit all material submitted. Viewsexpressed in Parrot Time are notnecessarily the official views ofParleremo. All rights of reproduc-tion, translation and adaptation re-served for all countries, exceptwhere noted otherwise. All copy-right material posted in the public-ation retains all its rights from theoriginal owner. Parrot Time, Par-leremo, officers and administra-tion accept no responsibilitycollectively or individually for theservice of agencies or persons ad-vertised or announced in thepages of this publication.

Cover: A woman relaxes on abeach in the DominicanRepublic. She has spent allWinter studying languagesand needs a break in the sun.

44 Words in Your Mouth - Egg

34 Languages in Peril - Yumans on the Edge

1 6 Of Pidgins and CreolesJust like any living creature, languages grow, evolve, and die.Did you also know they can also be born and grow in a naturalway, without being created by a single person? Such is the lifeof pidgins and creoles.

PPaarrlleerreemmoo

LLeeaarrnnaallaanngguuaaggee,,MMaakkeeffrriieennddss,,HHaavveeffuunn!!

wwwwww..ppaarrll eerreemmoo..oorrgg

Letter From The Editor


AA short time ago, I was spending some time practising mypronunciation of some basic Italian phrases. I was using asimple app on my kindle that showed me the phrase, then Icould click on the icon to hear it spoken by a native speaker.

Now, I know the rules of pronunciation for Italian. I know therules of stress. I even understand how the entire phrase wasformed, with the meaning for each word and theircombinations.

But I just could not get my pronunciation to match that of thespeaker.

I kept listening to the recording, making mental adjustmentson what I was doing wrong. I would then try again, but still getit wrong. I can normally say what I need to properly (at least tomy untrained ear) . What was so wrong with me that I couldnot manage this simple phrase?

The more I thought about, I realized just how difficult learning the sounds of another languageis. No matter what you might read about how close to your language another one is, it is stillgoing to be strange to you, often in very subtle ways.

We become so attuned to our own language that we can tell when a phrase sounds wrong,grammatically, even if we cannot explain the rule for it. The same for the sounds. We can makethe sound for someone else, and hope they can match it, but we can rarely explain how tomake it.

Now, some people can handle new sounds better than others. We say they have an “ear forlanguages” to mean they can pick up a language quickly, but that can even more directly referto their ability to mimic the sounds.

My problem was not just with the new sounds of a few of the Italian letters, as I have learnedto match those (again, as far as my ear tells me). It was the flow of the speech. The soundschange based upon the other sounds around it.

In this case, I was having a problem combining “da” and “un” into an almost single soundwhile having it flow properly with the intonation of the next word. Still have not gotten itsounding good enough to even my own ears.

Sound like something which has happened to you (pun intended)?

Sounds Like

Erik ZidoweckiERIK ZIDOWECKIEDITOR IN CHIEF

A young woman sits in alibrary, studying how topronounce the foreign soundsin a new language. Specialnotations have been created tomake this process easier, butnone of them are perfect.

How Do You Say It? - A look at sound notation systems


hen you learn anotherlanguage, everythingabout it is new and

fresh. You need to learn anentirely different set of wordsfor everything there is. Thegrammar is foreign, literally,and even the writing systemmight pose a challenge.

But perhaps the strangestissue you will encounter isthe sound of the language. Alanguage is composed of aseries of sounds, called phon-emes, represented by the let-ter and letter groupings in thewords.

We learn these for ourown language when we learnhow to pronounce our alpha-bet, and we also recognizehow these sounds change incertain situations. For ex-ample, in English, the soundof a vowel in a word canchange if the letter “e” is ad-ded to the end, even if the “e”is not pronounced. The “a” in“can” is different from the “a”in “cane”, simply because ofthe addition of a silent letter

at the end.In Italian, the letter “h”

(acca) is silent, but changesthe way “c” is pronounced.The letter combination of “ci”is pronounced like the Eng-lish “ch”, but ironically, thecombination of “chi” is likethe English “k”.

Just learning the way thenew writing system sounds(and I say “writing system”because, strictly speaking,not all languages use an al-phabet. They might be syllab-aries or pictographs instead)may not be the only hurdle.Depending on how differentthe new language is fromyour own, you may encountersome sounds that you havenever heard or even be imme-diately capable of producingat the moment. There are farmore sounds in languagesthan you will know in yournative language, as odd asthat may seem at first.

For example, if your nat-ive language is English, thenyou will be very familiar with

the sound of “th”, which isdone by pressing the tip ofyour tongue to the bottom ofyour top teeth and exhalingslightly with a slight hum.However, for an Italian, this acompletely foreign sound, asthere is no “th” combinationpronounced like that in Itali-an. And by way of reversal,Italian (as well as a few otherItalic languages) has a rolled“r”, which can be difficult fora native English speaker toproduce properly.

These different soundscan be learned, of course, butit will take a lot of practice.The question is how do youlearn to pronounce soundsyou have never known be-fore?

ListeningThe obvious first answer tothis is by listening to nativespeakers. The more you hearthe language spoken, eitherdirectly or through media likefilm and recordings, your earwill become atttuned to the

AA llooookk aatt ssoouunndd nnoottaattiioonn ssyysstteemmss

How Do You

Say It?


8 Parrot Time | Issue #15 | May / June 2015

sound. You can then begin toform the sound on your own,comparing it to what youhear. Audio courses likePimsleur can be very usefulfor this.

Working with anotherperson will be the most use-ful, because they will be ableto correct your pronunciationand pick up on the nuancesyou are not yet capable ofhearing. This can be done ina language class, with a tu-tor, with someone on Skype,or with a friend.

A newer approach to this,in the age of the internet, isusing a recording system on awebsite which allows you torecord yourself reading a textin the new language, thenhaving others give you feed-back, either written or by wayof another recording. I thinkthis method is the most ver-satile, since it is both inter-active but also asynchronous- the person helping you does

not need to be online at thesame time as you. You canalso potentially get responsesfrom a larger group of people.

ReadingUnfortunately, it is not al-ways possible to practice withanother person, or to use au-dio materials. This may bebecause the language is notwidely spoken, you are un-able to find someone willingto talk with you, or you sim-pleydo not have access to theresources that allow interac-tion or even listening to re-corded materials.

If this is the case, thenyou will have to rely upon abook to teach you how tospeak. Is that really possible?Well, you will always need totalk to a live person to trulyrefine your pronunciation,but a book is capable of ex-plaining the basic sounds, soyou can begin to speak thewords properly.

Any written material try-ing to describe sounds willneed to have some kind ofstandardized system so thatit can be applied to manylanguages and be understoodin the same way by otherlearners.

IPAThe first and most importantsound notation system is theInternational Phonetic Al-phabet, or simply IPA. It usessymbols based upon the Lat-in alphabet to depict sounds.That is, while the Latin al-phabet can be used to rep-resent most of the sounds inEnglish, the IPA uses it, alongwith many other symbols andvariants, to represent all ofthose sounds as well as thosein other languages.

The IPA was devised bythe International PhoneticAssociation and they occa-sionally revise it by adding,removing, or modifying lettersand diacritics. Currently,there are around 107 “letters”and 52 diacritics (marks thatcan be added to a letter tofurther define the sound).

It was first created by agroup of British and Frenchlanguage teachers in 1886.French linguist Paul Passyled the initial creation of thealphabet, but the idea wasproposed to him in a letter byDanish linguist Otto Jesper-son.

It started out as a spellingreform for English, but wasexpanded to make it usablefor other languages. At first,the sounds represented bythe letters could vary betweenthe languages, but in 1888, itwas revised so that the letterto sound representation wasuniform for everyone.

Man forming his mouth to produce a wide, protruded vowel



But how does it actuallyrepresent sounds? In lin-guistics, the study of lan-guage sounds is called“phonology”, and throughthat, the methods that thehuman mouth and nose pro-duce sounds have been givenspecific terms.

For example, there is aterm “fricative”, which can bedefined as “consonants pro-duced by forcing air througha narrow channel made byplacing two articulators closetogether”. An “articulator” is“the point of contact where anobstruction occurs in the vo-cal tract between an articu-latory gesture, an activearticulator, and a passive loc-ation”.

Other equally complexterms include labial, bidental,dorsal, radical, glottal, son-arant, lateral, pulmonic, alve-olopalatal, uvular,pharyngeal, and affricative.Some of these are probablyharder to pronounce than thesounds they refer to.

To a linguist who hasstudied these terms and un-derstands how thy apply tothe mouth and nose, the IPAshould provide an easy pathto pronunciation. Perhapsyou have learned them your-self, and are quite know-ledgable about how the IPAworks.

To others, such as myself,however, it is a very dauntingsystem to learn. If I want tolearn how to pronounce an“m”, do I really need to un-derstand what “bilabial nas-al” (or is it “nasal bilabial”)means? Just the thought of asound defined as “aveolopal-atal lateral approximant”makes me want to cringe andlook away.

Above: IPA chart, as revised in 1993Below: Tiles of different letter pairs which form unique sounds



This is one the reasons that despite itspurpose to make it easier for people to learnpronunciations, it is still only commonly usedin academic work. Not even all dictionariesuse it.

Another problem, and not specially withthe IPA, is that despite being standardized, itis hard to get people to agree on how a soundshould be represented. I learned this when Iwas creating a new design for products. Iwanted to show the letters “IPA” written inIPA. So I found what I thought was the properway, then asked a group of people to verify (Idid not want to put a design that was wrongon products I was selling) .

What I got was a long debate involving adozen people, arguing over the proper way itshould be done. I was very surprised, since Iwas fooled by the idea of it being “standard-ized”. The problem is not with the standardiz-ation but rather with how different peoplehear and speak sounds.

Think of it this way: if I ask five people tolook at a painting, then tell me what it meansto them, I am likely to get five different re-sponses, because each person is seeing it withthe biased of their own ideas and feelings,which are unique from everyone else.

Similarly, our brains and ears are traineddifferently, depending upon what languages

and sounds we have heard and used duringour lives. Some people will understand asound in one way, but another person, whilehearing the same overall sound, will hearslight variants. Perhaps they hear a moredefined palatization or the trace of a trill. Inthat case, they will want to represent it differ-ently from each other, while a person who isnew to all of it will not hear a difference.

This can happen between two people thathave the same native language. Now imaginewhat it is like between two people with differ-ent languages, trying to define the sounds of athird?

Table showing X-SAMPA, IPA, description of sound, and language sound equivalencies

Entries in dictionary which use IPA to denote pronunciation



SAMPA and X-SAMPAA third problem with the IPAhas actually come about be-cause of the increase of com-puter usage. While much ofthe IPA is based on Latin let-ters, there are also a largenumber of extra charactersand diacritics which cannotbe easily typed into a com-puter. Even then, a specificfont is required to display andprint them correctly.

This display issue wastackled in the 1980s with thecreation of the Speech As-sessment Methods PhoneticAlphabet, or SAMPA. Simplyput, it is the IPA convertedinto basic ASCII (the commonsymbols you can reproduce

with a keyboard). It uses thesame letters as IPA wheneverpossible, but replacing themwith others when necessary.For example, the schwa (anupside-down lowercase “e” -ə) in IPA, representing a midcentral vowel, is replaced withthe “at” sign, @, in SAMPA.

SAMPA was developed inthe European Commission-funded ESPRIT project“Speech Assessment Meth-ods” (SAM), and was initiallycreated just to cover thesounds of English, Spanish,German, French, Italian,Dutch, and Danish. Each setof symbols only matched thelanguage they were made for,similar to the way the IPA

was first created. Therefore, arevised set was made, to in-clude all languages in astandardized version. This isknown as X-SAMPA.

This was all done beforeUnicode, the system to rep-resent all the characters of allthe languages of the world,was supportive of the IPA.Now that Unicode and its fullcomputer version, UTF-8, areso widely used, the need forSAMPA and X-SAMPA hasgreatly decreased. However, itis still a system that shouldbe recognized alongside IPAfor those who may not be ableto properly display Unicode.

Schoolbook used by the boy emperor Puyi.The page shown is explaining in Chinese how and where in the mouth to pronounce the Latin letters



KirshenbaumSAMPA and X-SAMPA are notthe only attempts to makeIPA easier to use on com-puters. In 1992, a group ofdevelopers, led by EvanKirshenbaum, also startedcreating a system whichmapped IPA to ASCII charac-ters. Like SAMPA, they usedthe existing IPA alphabetwhen possible, linking eachphonetic character to a singlekeyboard character. Thenthey would apply extra ASCIIcharacters for IPA diacritics.

As a comparison betweenthe three, we can use theSwedish “Sj” sound. It is avoiceless fricative phonemeand represented in IPA by [ɧ] .This is not a character whichis available on a keyboard, soin X-SAMPA and Kirshen-baum, it would be written as/x\/ and /x^/, respectively.Note that IPA is normally en-closed in brackets ([] ) whileSAMPA is surrounded byslashes (// ) .

Phonetic EquivalenceNow, if you are like me,neither IPA nor SAMPA aregoing to be of much used towhen you still do not under-stand how to match thosephonology terms to the wayyou move your mouth. Mostpeople who are attempting tolearn a language do not wantto learn a whole other systemjust so they can properly pro-nounce “cappuccino”.

For this reason, manyphrasebooks and pronunci-ation charts depend on“phonetic equivalencies” todescribe how a letter is pro-nounced. What they do is at-tempt to tell the reader whatthe sound is like or similar toin their own language and,

when there is a difference,approximate the sound usingexamples.

Taking the example of“cappuccino”, you could lookat an Italian pronunciationchart to see how to say theletter “c”. IPA would list it as“[tS]” and “[k]” (it can havetwo sounds) and SAMPAwould list it as “/tʃ/” and“/k/”.

The sounds could be de-scribed as “voiceless postal-veolar affricate” and“voiceless velar plosive”. Thatis all fine, if you understandthose meanings or the sym-bols. The average person who

has just picked up a phrase-book for their trip to Italy isnot likely to.

In that case, the phrase-book is more likely to de-scribe the sound (assuming itis an Italian phrasebook forEnglish speakers, since equi-valencies are based upon theperson’s native language) assomething like

• When fol lowed by “e” or “i”, as“ch” in English “cherry”• When fol lowed by “a”, “o”, “u”,or a consonant, as “c” in English“cook”

Table showing both IPA and Arpabet transcriptions for sounds.



This method of approxim-ation is not going to be as ac-curate as IPA or SAMPA,especially since those Englishwords might be spoken differ-ently depending on regionand dialect. However, formost people, it is a start, andwill give them the confidenceto try to pronounce the lan-guage. And isn’t that the im-portant thing?

Some phrasebooks andlearning books would alsouse a phonetic system toshow how entire wordsshould be pronounced. “Cap-puccino” could be represen-ted by “cap-poo-CHEE-noh”or “kahppootcheenoa”, witheach syllable being spelledout in English phonetics. No-tice how much of a differencethere is between the ex-amples; there is no standardmethod for writing thingsphonetically.

While the IPA methodsmight scare a learner, a nat-ive speaker or IPA user wouldbe laughing at the phoneticequivalencies.

ArpabetGetting a person to properlypronounce the sounds of alanguage is a complicatedtask. It gets even more diffi-cult to teach a computer howto speak. Believe it or not,there was another phoneticrepresentation system de-vised to map English lan-guage sounds to ASCII, butthis one was not based uponIPA.

As part of the Speech Un-derstanding Project(1971–1976), the AdvancedResearch Projects Agency(ARPA) matched each soundwith one or two capital let-ters. Digits were also added,

indicating stress by beingplaced at the end of thestressed syllabic vowel. Evenpunctuation marks were in-cluded, used similarly to thewritten language, whichhelped to show intonationchanges, like at the end ofsentences and clauses.

When home computersbecame available in the1980s, Arpabet became themethod of programmingspeech synthesizers for vari-ous machines, including theCommodore 64, the Amiga,and the IBM PC. It is still inuse today in the CMU Pro-nouncing Dictionary, a publicdomain pronouncing diction-ary created by Carnegie Mel-lon University.

Lahst WerdGiven all the problems in-volved in representing pro-nunciation in writing, whenyou are learning the soundsof a new language, the bestadvice is to find a nativespeaker and hope they have

the patience to let you prac-tise on them. If that is notpossible, you should invest insome kind of audio course orguide.

All of the written methodshave their purposes,strengths and weaknesses,and will continue to be usedin phrasebooks and coursebooks. Perhaps some newermethods will be created in thefuture, hopefully one thatuses simpler symbols anddescriptions than IPA withoutthe wild variations that existwith phonetic equivalences.

Then maybe I can finallyorder that cappuccino! PT

Old computer with speech synthesizer, designed to approximate humanpronunciation

Panorama of the center ofWillemstad, Curacao, where thecreole Papiamento is spoken

OOff PPiiddggiinnssaanndd

CCrreeoolleess

Just like any living creature,languages grow, evolve, and die.Did you also know they can also beborn and grow in a natural way,without being created by a singleperson? Such is the life of pidginsand creoles. But how does thishappen?

Of Pidgins and Creoles


here are several thou-sand living languages in

the world, most of which haveevolved over long periods oftime rather naturally. Someof these became isolated anddeveloped very differentlyfrom their related languages.Other were influenced by theneighbouring languages, tak-ing on different grammar andvocabulary, to diverge intovaried dialects or even com-pletely new languages.

There is one kind oflanguage evolution that ismore similar to two ormore languages creatingan offspring which later be-comes an “adult” language.When two languages meetand merge, the createpidgins and creoles. Theseare completely organiccreatures, which thenevolve in their own ways,taking traits from both par-ents, similar to a child.

The TermsThe terms pidgin and creoleare technical terms used todistinguish between twostages of this languagegrowth. Creole refers to theproduct of creolization, whichis the mix of people, cultures,or languages. You can seethis easily in culture throughmusic, art, and food when as-pects of the existing cultureand an overlaying culture,perhaps due to migration orinvasion, combine intosomething new.

One of the best knownexamples of this mixing ex-ists in the southern UniteStates area of Louisiana.Before the country wasformed, Louisiana was aFrench colony, and slavesfrom Africa were brought in

to work the land. Duringthat time, much of theAfrican and French cul-tures merged, forming aunique mix of religion,food, and music. Culturalaspects from other groupsbecame part of it later,such as Amerindian, Span-ish, Portuguese, and Carib-bean.

A very popular exampleof this mix of foods is thedish gumbo. It comes innumerous variants, com-bining the culinary prac-tices of the French, theSpanish, Native Americantribes, and Africa. Thereare also aspects of Italianand German cuisine.

French settlers learnednew ways of cooking andhow to use local edibleplants from the nativetribes of the New World.When slave ships startedarriving in 1719, theybrought rice as well as menwho knew how to grow andcook it. When Germanssettlers arrived in 1721 ,

they brought with them theart of making sausages. Allthese ingredients and morecombined in many ways toform the now traditionalgumbo. It has also becomea metaphor itself for themixing of cultures inLouisiana.

That new culture is acreole, but many peoplemistakenly assume thenthat “creole” refers only tothat - the French andAfrican mix.

The term “pidgin”,sometimes spelled “pigion”,originally referred toChinese Pidgin English.After English came toChine in the 1630s, a needfor a shared languagearose in order to conducttrade. Local workers com-municated with their Eng-lish-speaking counterpartsthrough broken English,which developed its ownpatterns and forms. Mostlikely, the word is theChinese pronunciation ofthe English word “busi-

Creole women in traditional costumes during Carnival in French Guiana



ness”. Eventually, the termbecame used for all pidginlanguages.

A more fanciful idea isthat it derives from thename of the bird, “pigeon”in English, which was onceused for carrying messagesbetween people.

Sometimes, people con-fuse the terms with lan-guages that haveincorporated them intotheir names. Some ex-amples are Kriol, an Aus-tralian creole language,Haitian Creole, the lan-guage used in Haiti, andHawaiian Pidgin. The de-scription of the languagehas become part of thename, if not replacing itentirely.

PidginsThe most basic definition of apidgin is “a simplified form ofspeech formed from one ormore existing languages,used by people who have noother language in common”.As was mentioned above, theoriginal pidgin languages wasdeveloped out of the need fortwo groups of people to com-municate. This is most com-monly used for business andtrade purposes, when it is be-neficial to both sides.

A pidgin will develop itsown basic grammar andvocabulary, but in rathersimplified ways compared tothe “parent” languages. Nor-mally, the majority of thevocabulary is from the targetor larger language (often Eng-lish), and most of the sounds,grammar, and syntax comesfrom the local language. Mostpidgins remain small andspecialized, being called“trade languages”. Pidgins do

not normally arise just fromtwo languages existing nextto each other.

Perhaps the best way toexplain pidgin languages isby example. Let us look atWest African Pidgin Eng-lish. It was developed dur-ing the late 17th century,when the British were run-ning a slave trade in theAtlantic. The sailors andslave traders spoke Englishbetween themselves whilebeing in constant contactwith African villagers, whospoke a number of WestAfrican Niger–Congo lan-guages.

Since both sides neededto communicate for busi-ness purposes, they star-ted trying to learn eachothers language and met inthe middle. Once a basicsystem was developed andbecame adopted, it spreadto other areas needing itfor the same purposes. Asthe British travelled inland,

the pidgin spread and de-veloped.

Then it started to di-verge and become morespecialized, like regularlanguages do, dependingon which languages weremixing with the English.These became GambianPidgin English (Aku), SierraLeone Pidgin English (Krio) ,Liberian Pidgin English,Ghanaian Pidgin English,Nigerian Pidgin English,and Cameroon Pidgin Eng-lish (Kamtok).

When using a pidgin, itis often rather simple tounderstand what is beingsaid if you already knowthe stronger language, likeEnglish. You just simplifyyour hearing on it, lookingfor the most basic wordsand elements.

An example in NigerianPidgin English would be thequestion “How you dey?”,which can easily be under-stood to mean “How are

Creole food of Louisiana cuisine



you doing today?”. Thewords are the same orshortened, making themeasier to learn, and the ex-traneous ones are re-moved. Spelling can alsobe simplified, such as “I nono” for “I do not know”.The first “no” is used to im-ply the negative with thesecond one being a phonet-ic spelling of “know”. A fewmore examples are:

“Gi mi.” = “Give it to me.”“I dey fine.” = “I’m fine. I’mdoing well. ”

“I no sabi.” = “I don’t un-derstand.”“Wetin dey happen?” =“What’s going on? What’shappening?”“Listen well well” = “Pay at-tention”“Troway” = waste, throwaway

The most obviouschange from English to thepidgin here is how somesounds are simplified.“Give” is shorted to just“gi”. “Throw away” getscompressed and the “th”

sound is shortened to a “t”sound.

Other words get re-placed with somethingcompletely different, per-haps coming from anotherlanguage instead of thetarget one. In this case,“dey” is a replacement for“is” and “be”. “Sabi”,meaning “to know”, is ac-tually coming from Span-ish and Portugueseinfluences with the word“saber”.

Sometimes, the mean-ing might be a little morehidden, coming about be-cause of an idea ratherthan the literal meaning.“Comot!” means “Get out ofhere!”, which might be acorruption of “come out” or“go out”, depending on thepronunciation. It mightalso come from “come on”.“Abeg” means “please”,coming from “I beg you”.

Another common as-pect of a pidgin is the re-peating of words toemphasize a meaning.“listen well well” means“listen very well” or “payattention”. Note that this isdifferent from “I no no”,which is using a differentspelling, not repetition.

Since pidgins normallydeveloped when major co-lonial powers moved intoless developed areas, theywere mixed with the lan-guages of those powers,mainly English, Por-tuguese, Spanish, andFrench.

So now you know howtwo languages can producea new one which has traitsof both, like a baby. Butwhat happens when thatbaby pidgin grows up?

Hawaii Pidgin inscriptions on a wall. It is a quote from the Bible



CreolesNobody speaks a pidgin astheir first language. Peoplewho speak a pidgin alsospeak another language astheir native tongue. Mostpidgins are short term lan-guages, existing only for a fewyears or decades during thetime in which they areneeded. If a pidgin does man-age to remain in use, or sur-vive, for longer than that, itmight develop into a creole.

Creoles are the lan-guages that are developedby the children of pidginspeakers. When the chil-dren of the adults speakingthe pidgin start learning itas their first language, ithas proven itself to be astable language. Then, asthe children grow up, theyexpand the vocabulary,pronunciation, and gram-mar.

While pidgins are oftenlimited to a vocabulary ofaround 300 words, creolestypically have at least 1000to 3000 words. In a sense,the young language growsup along with the children.We consider this genera-tion to be native speakersof the creole language. Thisprocess is called nativiza-tion.

It may sound a bitstrange to describe thechanges in a language assimilar to those of a per-son, but the comparison isnot so far off. An odd oc-currence which linguisticscholars have notices isthat creoles tend to sharemore grammatical similar-ities with other creolesthan they do with the par-ent languages, much thesame way children broughtup in the same environ-ment can develop the same

habits, even when theyhave different parents andbackgrounds.

There is no widely ac-cepted theory on how orwhy this happens. Onetheory is that the formationof creoles reflects the mostbasic grammatical struc-ture the human mind caninvent, so they are all goingto be developed with thatbaseline. More elaborategrammars takes a muchlonger time to develop, be-ing influenced by the situ-ation of the speakers andthe older languagesnearby.

One of the most spokencreoles is Tok Pisin. It isspoken by over five millionpeople, primarily in PapuaNew Guinea, where it is theofficial language. Over onemillion people are taught itas a first language. Mostpeople there speak it to a

Pidgin English leaflet, which was droped over New Guinea from Allied aircraft during WWII.

ALL LULUAIS, TULTULS AND GOVERNMENT BOYS.We have defeated the Japanese and gained control of Salamaua, Lae and Finschafen.Most of the Japanese soldiers are marooned and they want to force you to help them and work for them.You know that in the past they have hurt and abused many locals from Rabaul in the manner, also some locals have been byour powerful bombs.Keep away from the Japanese, there is no need for you to be killed for nothing.If you get this message out soldiers are nearby, so some and fine the Patrol Officer who is with them.The Government says this.



certain degree, but not ne-cessarily fluently.

The name comes fromthe English words “talk”and “pidgin”, and in truepidgin manner, thosewords became simplifiedinto Tok Pisin. The vocab-ulary is mostly Indo-European, coming mainlyfrom English, German,Portuguese, and Latin,while the rest comes fromMalayo-Polynesian andTrans-New-Guinea lan-guages. The grammarstructure is mostly Aus-tronesian based.

Tok Pisin can be easyfor a native English speak-er to understand withmany of the words beingsimplifications, such as go-het (go ahead), hariup(hurry up), kamaut (come

out) , and sidaun (sit down).An interesting aspect of

Tok Pisin is its usage of in-clusive and exclusive formsof pronouns. Western lan-guages normally just havea singular and plural forms(I, we), while Tok Pisin alsohas a dual and triple form,which are used to defineexactly who is involved.The are constructed byadding the words “tu” and“tri” into the pronounforms.

Tok Pisin also utilizesreduplication, mainly todistinguish between differ-ent words. For example,the word for “ship” is “sip”,but since that might alsosound like a corruption of“sheep”, it is doubled, so“sheep” is “sipsip”.

Some other examples of

reduplication are “lukluk”meaning “look after; watch”compared to “luk” for“look”, “singsing” (dance,celebrate) compare to“sing” (to sing), “tingting”(thoughts, opinion) com-pared to “ting” (think),“waswas” (bathe, swim)compared to “was” (to washsomething), and “toktok”(talk, conversation) com-pared to “tok” (say).

Papiamento is anothercreole, spoken mainly onthe Caribbean ABC islands(Aruba, Bonaire and Cur-açao). It was developed bymixing English, Spanish,Portuguese, some indigen-ous languages, and someDutch (mainly for thenames of the months). Thisone has evolved a little dif-ferently, having two dia-

1908 painting by R. Hellgrewe of Limbe, Cameroon, when itwas known as Victoria. Most of the population speaksCameroonian Pidgin English.



lects, which is a result ofdeveloping on three separ-ated islands. The dialectsalso have differences inspelling, and this extendseven to the name of thelanguage, which can bespelled as Papiamentu orPapiamento.

Papiamento is morePortuguese based thanEnglish, while also con-taining a mix from the vari-ous languages. FromPortuguese comes sapatu(shoe) from sapato, kachó(dog) from cachorro, andgaliña (chicken) from gal-inha. From Spanish comeshòmber (man) from hombreand siudat (city) fromciudad. Dutch gives it apel(apple) from appel and buki(book) from boekje. Englishcontributes as well, likebèk (back).

For a comparison ofphrases, there is “Bon bini”(Welcome) in Papiamentowith “Bem vindo” in Por-tuguese. Likewise, bonsuerte (good luck) to boasorte and mi ta comprende(I understand) to com-preendo.

There are no accuratenumbers on just how manycreole languages exist, butit is estimated that aroundone hundred creole lan-guages have “been born”since 1500, mostly due toEuropean colonization. Thecreole with the greatestnumber of speakers isHaitian Creole, with overten million native speakers.

OdditiesWeird as it may sound, notall creoles develop frompidgins, and they are not al-ways easily recognizable. One

example is the language ofAfrikaans, spoken in parts ofAfrica, which developed whenthe Dutch settlers arrivedthere during the 17th cen-tury. Sometimes it is referredto as a dialect of Dutch,though it has adopted wordsfrom other languages, likeMalay, Portuguese andBantu. As a result, there arearguments, sometimes ratherheated, about whetherAfrikaans is an independentlanguage, a dialect of Dutch,or a Dutch creole.

Even rarer, sometimesa merger results in a creolethat becomes so popular, itis elevated to being thedominant language, forcingout the original language.A case of this occurred onthe island of Rama Cay, offthe coast of Nicaragua,where the indigenous lan-guage of the Rama peoplebecame mixed with Eng-lish, creating Rama CayCreole. As the nativesswitched to using this, theparent language of Ramabecame abandoned and is

now on the edge of extinc-tion. Sadly, Rama CayCreole is struggling to sur-vive as well.

All Grown UpBorn out of necessity andraised among human chil-dren, pidgins and creoles arefascinating creatures. Theynot only act as a bridgebetween languages and cul-tures, but they also give usinsight into how languagesdevelop, since they are cre-ated and brought to adult-hood in a relatively shorttime.

To me, they are the trueauxiliary languages, onesthat are agreed upon and ac-cepted naturally. They arealso a testament that whilelanguages can decline and dieout, they can also be bornand flourish into full lan-guages, even becoming theofficial languages of a coun-try. I hope you take sometime to consider learning onethe next time you are lookingfor a new language. PT

"Kapu" (Keep out in Hawaiian pidgin) - a familiar sign on the island of Lanai, mostof which is owned by a single pineapple-producing company

Who Are You To Learn A Language?


efore getting into the article, let me pro-pose some scenarios:

Studying languages nowadays is a verypopular thing, we have lots of free or paidprograms and apps, from the famous oneslike free Duolingo to the controversial and ex-pensive Rosetta Stone. Do they really work? Ifso, will they always work no matter what andwho uses them?

We have also a new scenario: polyglotsfrom all over the world are appearing andshowing their fabulous skills. If they can learn5, 10 and 30 languages, the question is canwe reproduce their results on other people? If,so how can we do that?

Common people, I mean non-polyglots orlanguage learners, can’t even imagine thisPolyglot Scenario. I grew up in huge monolin-gual country, Brazil. Here we do not need anylanguage other than Portuguese. We haveeverything in Portuguese, TV, radio, books,the internet; even with the country being sur-rounded by Spanish speakers, the populationdoesn’t really care about learning it. English,being an international language, attractsmore people’s attention, especially with the“Americanization”. American films and singersare quite popular among us, so this really at-tracts people’s attention. This scenario is notonly in Brazil, but in Russia, Italy, Poland,Spain and others. Those people can’t stillreally believe that they can learn a new lan-

guage - a polyglot in Brazil is like a “MythicalCreature”. The issue is: how can we help themto overcome this barrier and misconception?And beyond that, how can we help them tolearn a language?

When we decide to learn a language, oneof the first things we think about is where andhow should we start. This is surely a goodquestion, but not the best question! That’sbecause if you don’t know who you are, thiscan be very difficult. That is, are you onlystudying languages because it’s fashionable,are you a trained polyglot, or a person thatbelieves that you will never learn anything?Do you think you are the kind of committedenough person to study a language by your-self or do you need a teacher and a languageschool?

WWhhoo AArree YYoouu TTooLLeeaarrnn AA LLaanngguuaaggee??

bbyy JJiimmmmyy MMeelllloo

Who Are You To Learn A Language?


These questions can seem silly, but be-lieve me, if you don’t know exactly what kindof person you are, you WILL NOT reach yourgoals. If you are a trained polyglot and decideattending a course with 10-15 students thatare learning because of their jobs or becauseit’s fashionable, and if you are doing it in atraditional school full of grammar, and in along term course, you will inevitable fail. Andthe same will happen if you are a person whobelieves in your own “incapacity” and “inabil-ity” to learn languages yet decide to buy abook with CDs and try to study alone, you willprobably find everything difficult and this willonly reinforce your ideas of impossibility.

So, YES, there is a perfect form to learn

a language, but this is a subjective issue, andit will depend on how you are supposed to actand how you prefer learning. Maybe you don’tknow what kind of person you are; maybe youneed an external help or point of view!

As a Linguist, Scientist of Education, andNLP Master, I can assure you that if one per-son can learn 30 languages, you can do thesame, following the same patterns, but adapt-ing them to your personal style!

Ok, ok, I guess you are still wanting adefinitive answer, aren’t you? I will give you adefinite answer: there is no magic pill, thereare no shortcuts, there is no perfect method,but there is one thing that can take you toyour goals, and one thing that can stop you.This only thing is your mind! It can be yourbest friend and your worst enemy.

Being a polyglot has nothing to do withnumbers of languages, not even with A, B orC levels. It is not a competition. For me, it is away of living. How many languages do youlove? How many languages have you tried andfailed? In how many languages have youalready tried a conversation? For me, the bestpolyglot is the one who loves languages! Thebest question is “How many languages shouldI have in my heart to be a polyglot?”. If youfollow this idea, start to get off the “self-run-ning race”, discover your way of learning, andgive up the search for the magic pill, you willlearn a language. PT

Parrot Time is always looking for guest writers, so

if you are interested in writing for us or donating

something you have written for your own blog,

please contact us at [email protected].

We look forward to your contributions!

Jimmy Mello is a neurolinguist and holds two degrees:

one in Linguistics and other in Educational Science. He

is a polyglot and has been learning and teaching

languages for over 20 years. He is fluent in English,

Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, and he can also speak

Catalan, French, German, Dutch and Polish at different

levels. He has developed a new method suitable for

teaching any foreign language. He currently lives in

Brazil where he runs his own language school, which he

established in 1995. Find him at:

www.mellomethod.com, www.mypolyglot.com,

Twitter.com/jimmymello, and

www.facebook.com/jimmymelloreal.

At the Cinema - Dil Chahta Hai


his month, I am reviewing the2001 Bollywood film Dil

Chahta Hai. It is about three in-separable friends who all ap-proach, and find, love in their ownways.

I can start by saying this is oneof my favourite films of all time. Ifirst saw it somewhere around2004 when a film channel washaving a “Bollywood Month” andshowed three films every week.This was among them, and I in-stantly loved it.

The three friends all are verydistinct in personalities. Sameer isawkward and is constantly “fallingin love”, although he is absolutelyclueless about how to deal withwomae and usually ends up get-ting rather used by them. Akashtreats everything as a joke anddoes not believe that people reallyfall in love. He considers any rela-tionship a trap. Siddharth, per-haps the most mature of the trio,is an artist and prefers to paintthen get involved in trivial relation-

ships. He is looking for the “deeplove”.

After they graduate from col-lege, their lives seem to increase inintensity. After Akash engineers abreak-up between Sameer and hiscurrent girlfriend (Akash is con-vinced he is helping him, and con-sidering how controlling thegirlfriend is, he might be), theytake a trip to seaside Goa. WhileAkash flees the infatuatious pur-suit of Deepa, a girl from their col-lege, Sameer finds another girl whohe “falls in love” with and tells theothers he is going to stay in Goa alittle longer with her, so the othertwo return home.

Sameer’s newest love turns outto be a thief who ties him up whileher accomplice takes all hismoney, luggage, and passport. Hemanages to get a ride back home,where he relates the story to Sidand Akash, who immediately burstout laughing.

His troubles seem to worsenwhen he finds his parents have

DDiill CChhaahhttaa HHaaii

Dil Chahta Hai1 83 minComedy / Drama24 July 2001 (India)

Country: IndiaLanguage: Hindi / English /Urdu

“The film is a truework ofart,mixing comedyand drama sobeautifully thatyou cannot helpfeeling for all thecharacters.

The three friends, having a good time together

At the Cinema



arranged a marriage for him, which he iscompletely against. However, after he meetsthe lovely Pooja, he is sure she is “the one”.When he tells her he is against arranged mar-riages, she happily agrees, and Sameer dis-covers that she already has a boyfriend. Hedoes not let that deter him, though, and be-gins to work his way into their lives.

Meanwhile, Sid has met and become ro-mantically involved with Tara, an older wo-man who has moved into a nearby house. Shehas a tragic life story of an abusive ex-hus-band and it has left her an alcoholic. Sheloves Sid’s paintings and she and him growcloser, but she is fearful of Sid’s attachmentto her.

When Sid professes his love for her to theothers, his mother is shocked and considers itscandalous. At the same time, Akash makesfun of it, implying Sid is after something elseand an offensive comment causes a riftbetween the two. When Tara finds out all ofthis, she feels she has ruined Sid’s life and re-fuses to see him anymore. Heartbroken, Sidgoes to his Uncle’s house to get away fromeveryone and be allowed to paint in peace.

Akash has his own troubles. His parentsdecide he needs to mature and get some dir-ection in his life, so they send him to Sydney,Australia, to take over the running of abranch of the families business. On his tripthere, he meets Shalini, a girl from his collegewho he jokingly proposed to after graduationbefore getting punched by her boyfriend, Ro-hit, to whom she is now engaged.

Akash apologies to Shalini for his earlierprank, and asks her to show him aroundSydney, where she is currently staying withher Uncle. She agrees, and they soon findthey enjoy each other’s company.

They clash over the idea of love, however.While Akash claims that love is false, Shalinitries to convince him it is real and to get him

to open up his true feelings. She finally has toreturn to India to marry Rohit, who is a con-trolling egotist she had agreed to marry to re-pay his parents who raised her after she losther own parents. After she leaves, they bothrealize they are in love with each other andfall into depression.

When Akash’s parents discover the emo-tional state of Akash, they have him return toIndia as well. When he returns, he finds outthat Tara is in the hospital, her alcoholismhaving finally caught up with her. Sid andSameer are there with her, but Akash refusesto join them.

What happens next? Will these threefriends find the love they are seeking? Willthey be able to put the past behind and be-come friends again?

The film is a true work of art, mixingcomedy and drama so beautifully that youcannot help feeling for all the characters. It ismuch more modern than most other Bolly-wood films of the time and introduces somechanges to the music and dance scenes,which are the hallmark of Bollywood films.About half the songs are integrated with thecharacters singing and dancing, the other halfare done as music over the storytelling.

One example is the way Sameer and Poojaare shown to be falling in love. The two enterinto a theatre, where they see themselves inthe movie, singing and dancing, in the stylesreflective of Bollywood cinema over the dec-

Akash and Shalini, meeting again on the airplane to SydneySameer and Pooja, realizing their feelings for each other

Sid and Tara, discussing Sid's paintings



ades. It is a fun tribute and as they watch it,they realize that they really do love each oth-er.

On the other end of the emotional spec-trum, the song Tanhayee is sung over scenesshowing how Akash and Shalini are lost anddepressed without each other. We see thembecoming unable to deal with the worldaround them, so great is their loss. It is themost emotionally charged song in the film, yetthe characters never sing a note or dance astep.

The title translates into English as “Whatthe Heart Wants”, but the film is more com-monly distributed as “Do Your Thing”. I amterrible with remembering Bollywood filmtitles, but I always remember Dil Chahta Hai.

The language of the film is Hindi with thenormal mix of English. As I often say in thesereviews, this is not an action film. There areno car chases or explosions, and there only afew instances of fists being used. Although I

do not really like the idea, I would say this issomething like a “chic flick” for guys. Whilethe female characters are critical to the plot,we really do not get to know them as much asthe male leads, since the film is about them.Perhaps in that is my one minor complaintwith the movie: there is not enough of Shalini,who is played by the beautiful and talentedPreity Zinta.

I would definitely encourage anyone to seethis film. It is funny, touching, and inspiring,and so I give it a firm 5/5. PT

Languages in Peril

YYuummaannssoonn tthheeEEddggee

his month’slanguages in peril

belong to NativeAmerican Indians.The Yuman branch oflanguages can befound among thepeople living insouthern Californiaand northern Mexico,along a strip of landcalled the BajaCalifornia Peninsula,which is officially partof Mexico.

Languages in Peril - Yumans on the Edge


The languages here canbe broken into what is called“Core Yuman” and two otherlanguages - the now extinctCochimí and the endangeredKiliwa. Core Yuman is dividedinto the three groups ofDelta–California Yuman,River Yuman, and Pai.

Most of these languagesare endangered, but we willbe focusing on just Kiliwa,Paipai, Kumeyaay, andCocopah. They have beenaround for thousands ofyears, but suffered when theSpanish started settling theNew World.

KiliwaThe first on our list of Yumanlanguages is Kiliwa. Spokenby the Kiliwa people in BajaCalifornia, it is the mostsouthern of the Yumanlanguages. It is also the mostdistinct from the others.Kiliwa is also on the edge ofextinction, with less than 50speakers.

Very little is known aboutthe Kiliwa people before theirfirst recorded Europeancontact with Juan RodríguezCabrillo in 1542. Cabrillo hadbeen working his way up the

coast with three ships,finding and naming newregions while sometimeshaving conflicts with theindigenous tribes. During oneof these skirmishes, Cabrillowas hurt and later died, afterwhich his fleet returned toNavidad, Spain, with theresults of his explorationsgoing unnoticed.

Little further contact wasmade until WenceslausLinck, the last remainingJesuit missionary explorer inBaja California arrived. Hetravelled overland andentered into Kiliwa territoryin 1766.

Mission Santo Domingowas founded a few years laterin 1775, being placed amongthe Kiliwa people. As so oftenhappens when explorersmixed with indigenouspeople, the natives were notimmune to the diseases thatwere brought in, and theKiliwa population quicklydeclined. Ironically, thisdecline led to the missionbeing used less and less, andit was finally abandoned in1821 . The settlers had wipedout the very people they weretrying to convert.

Peveril Meigs, anAmerican geographer, studiedthe surviving Indian groups ofnorthern Baja California. Heestimated that the Kiliwapopulation has originallybeen approximately 1300. By1929, Meigs reported thatonly 36 adult Kiliwa peoplewere still alive in three smallsettlements of the area. Inanother twenty years, thatnumber had dropped to just30.

There is some debate bylinguistic prehistorians aboutthe origins of the people.Some believe they migrated tothe Baja California Peninsulafrom the north, separate fromthe other members of theYuman group. Others claimthat they were natives of theregion and had simplybecome differentiated fromthe other tribes around 2000-3000 years ago.

There were never manyKiliwa people to begin with,and the settling of Europeansinto their region practicallydestroyed them. Now,according to the Alliance forLinguistic Diversity, therecould be just under 10 nativespeakers still alive, placing

The Yuman language regions, aslocated in North America

The Baja CaliforniaPeninsula, showingthe four language/ tribe areas,with Paipai inred



Kiliwa on the criticallyendangered list, with almostno hope of it being saved.

PaipaiMoving up the coast, we findthe Paipai people, whoselanguage is also called Paipai.Paipai belongs to the Paibranch of the Yuman family,but it likely separated fromthe Northern Pai languages(Yavapai and Upland Yuman)many years ago, and the Paibranch itself separated fromthe other branches of CoreYuman between 1000 and1700 years ago.

The Paipai language hasbeen documented by JudithJoël and Mauricio J. Mixco,who also published texts andstudies of syntax. Eventhough it has separated fromthe Upland Yuman language,it is still very similar to it.

The first Europeanencounter with the Paipaipeople was not with Cabrillo,but with Spanish explorerSebastián Vizcaíno when hewas leading an expedition tomap the northwest coast ofBaja California in 1602.Spanish settlements weresetup in the region in 1769when another expedition, ledby Gaspar de Portolà andJunípero Serra, came in.

Like the Mission SantoDomingo and the Kiliwa, theDominican mission of SanVicente was founded in 1780near the coast, in Paipaiterritory. It was a centre forthe Spanish administrationand military control of thatregion, and another mission,Santa Catarina, wasestablished in 1797, near theborder of Paipai andKumeyaay territories.However, that one was

eventually destroyed by someof the indigenous tribes in1840.

Based upon Meigsobservations, it is estimatedthat there was a population ofaround 1800 Paipai nativesduring the time of thesemissions. Now, there are lessthan 200 speakers, with littlehope of that improving, sincethe new generations are not

learning the language. Theremaining Paipai people livein a settlement called SantaCatarina (same as thedestroyed mission, but notthe same as Santa Catarinain Guanajuato), which theyshare with Kumeyaay andKiliwa people. Paipai isconsidered to be severelyendangered.

Native Americans of the Lower Colorado River Valley in Native Americans in 1857



KumeyaayContinuing north, we come tothe Kumeyaay people.Kumeyaay is one of thelanguages of Core Yuman, Atone point, it was believed thatKumeyaay along with twoother languages near it, Ipaiand Tipai, were all simplydialects of a single languagecalled Diegueño (after themission of San Diego), but aslate as 1990 they wereidentified as three distinctlanguages.

There is still confusionnow about how to call thepeople. Sometimes,Kumeyaay refers to both Ipaiand Tipai together, othertimes as a separate tribe. Thename Kumeyaay means“those who face the waterfrom a cliff”, while bothnames Ipai and Tipai mean“people”.

There is evidence ofhuman settlements goingback as far as 12,000 yearsago in the area that is nowKumeyaay territory. At onetime, their land extendedfrom the Pacific Ocean toEnsendada, Mexico, then

from the Colorado River toOceanside. They alsoprobably lived in what is nowTorrey Pines State NaturalReserve.

By the time of their firstEuropean encounter, therewere about 30 clans ofKumeyaay people. Their firstencounter was with Cabrilloin 1542, when a group of theexplorers approached a

gathering of them. All butthree of the Kumeyaay ranaway. To these, the men gavesmall gifts, hoping it wouldmake them friends. Later,however, when another groupcame ashore to fish, theKumeyaay saw this as athreat and attacked themwith arrows.

When Vizcaíno came tothe Kumeyaay territory inNovember 1603, he namedthe area “San Diego”, afterone of his ships. Aftertravelling a short way inland,his men also encountered theKumeyaay people, but themeeting went peacefully.

When the Spaniardsbegan setting up theirmissions in the later 1700s,they established Mission SanDiego de Alcalá, and the localtribes got the nameDiegueños. They also broughtwith them new flora andanimals, which damaged thecurrent ecology of the region.

Mexico took over the landfrom the Spanish in the

A modern day Mexican couple. The man is Mestizo and the woman is Paipai

Some of the remains of the San Vicente mission



1830s, but American settlersstarted unlawfully claimingthe land for themselves in1870. American PresidentUlysses Grant createdreservations in 1875, and theAct for the Relief of MissionIndians was passed in 1891to protect the survivingmembers of the Kumeyaay,Ipai, and Tipai.

There is no clear idea ofhow many Kumeyaay therewere before the Spanisharrived. The estimates rangefrom 3,000 to between 16,000- 19,000. By the end of the18th century, there were onlybetween 3,000 and 9,000,and by 1828, that haddropped drastically to just1711 Kumeyaay in themission. Their numberscontinued to dwindle rapidly,down to 1571 in 1860, then1200 in 1900. According tothe Bureau of Indian Affairs,a total of 1322 was said to beliving by 1968.

Some efforts are beingmade to save the languageand culture. A series of

reservations for theKumeyaay is collectivelyknown as the KumeyaayDiegueño Nation, and there isthe Kumeyaay CommunityCollege there to help promoteand support cultural identityand sovereignty. The mainfocus is on the Kumeyaaylanguage, philosophy and art.

It might be helping. As of2010, there are an estimated3000 Kumeyaay in thereservations, but the actualnumber of fluent speakers ismuch fewer, with between 40and 50 as of 2011 . This putsKumeyaay on the criticallyendangered list.

Kumeyaay woman in front of her traditional house at Campo

The word “mission” has two basic meanings. Thefirst refers to a task or objective, as in “He wason a mission to retrieve the secret documents”.

The second meaning, which is the one used inthis article when referring to exploration, is “aministry commissioned by a rel igious organiza-tion to propagate its faith or carry on humanitari-an work”.

When settlers moved into a region already in-habited by indigenous people, they would nor-mally establish a place where priests andspecific members of the church, cal led “mission-aries” would l ive.

From there, they would try to convert the localpopulation to their rel igion, usually Christianity.

The idea among the church fol lowers was thatthey could “save” these people by making themaccept their own beliefs. The view of the con-querors was that this would help control the pop-ulation by replacing the tribal bel iefs and culture.Part of this often included suppressing the locallanguage.

As can be expected, this conversion processwas often met with violence, making missionarywork dangerous. All too often, the missions weredestroyed and the settlers there driven out orki l led.

What is a mission?



CocopahOn the border of bothKumeyaay and Paipaiterritories is the region of theCocopah people. The Cocopahlanguage is part of the samebranch as Kumeyaay but isnot mixed in with the samegroup as Ipai-Kumeyaay-Tipai. The Cocopah peoplecall themselves “Xawiƚƚkwñchawaay” or “Those WhoLive on the River”, referring tothe Colorado River.

The first contact with theCocopah people withEuropeans is attributed toSpanish explorer Hernandode Alarcón when he sailedinto the Colorado River deltain 1540. He was actuallyattempting to meet up withanother explorer, FranciscoVasquéz de Coronado’s, butthat did not happen becauseCoronado never arrived.

The Cocopah were alsomentioned specifically in therecords of another expeditionled by Juan de Oñate in1605. The purpose of this, hislast expedition, was to find a

supply port for New Mexico,as an alternative to having totransport everythingoverland.

Oñate encounterednumerous tribes during hisexplorations, many of whichwere chronicled in Historia de

la Nueva México (“The Historyof New Mexico”) , one of thefirst travel journals to bepublished, in the form of anepic poem about Oñate’sactivities.

Today, the Cocopahpeople of the United Statesare part of the CocopahIndian Tribe, living mainly onthe Cocopah Reservation,which was established in1917. There, they establishedtheir first Constitution andTribal Council in 1964.

Of all these languages,Cocopah perhaps has the

best chance of surviving dueto the amount of effort beingput into its revival. By theend of the 1990s, it wasspoken by fewer then 900people, and so the CocopahMuseum began offeringlanguage classes.

Until the 1970s, Cocopahhad no alphabet, so a studentcreated one as part of auniversity dissertation. Itproved to be inadequate,however, and so anothercreated by the tribe at thestart of the 21st century. Newwords have had to be addedto the language for modernobjects.

By 2010, according to theUS Census, there werearound 1 ,000 members livingand working in theReservation. Even with thecurrent attempts to save theculture and languages,Cocopah is considered anendangered language.

On the EdgeWhenever Europeans havemoved into territories alreadyinhabited by native tribes, itis the indigenous people thatsuffer for it. The population ofthe people listed were alreadysmall before contact with theSpanish, and after that, theyfound themselves brought tothe edge of extinction. Sadly,as it is with most endangeredlanguages, they are not likelyto be revived enough tosurvive, and will likely betotally gone within the nexttwenty years. PT

A group of the explorers approached a gathering ofthem. All but three of the Kumeyaay ran away. Tothese, the men gave small gifts, hoping it wouldmake them friends.

Mission San Diego de Alcala

Book Look


Corner of a grocery store withseveral shelves displayingcartons of eggs for sale.

Words in Your Mouth - Egg


ike eggs, etymologies canalso be scrambled some-

times.

When I started asking fortranslations of this month’sword “egg”, I was asked whatkind I was referring to. Mostof the time in English, we use“egg” to refer to a chicken,using other words to be morespecific, like fish eggs, ostricheggs, etc. It is the chicken eggword I am trying to focus onin this article.

In biological terms, an eggis “the female sex cell, orgamete.” In zoology, the Latinterm “ovum” is normally usedto refer to the single cell,while the word “egg” can beapplied to the entire special-ized structure that consists ofthe ovum, its various protect-ive membranes, and any ac-companying materials.Personally, when eating eggs,I prefer NOT to think of themin this manner, but rathersomething a chicken laid.

The word “egg” in Englishcomes directly from the OldNorse “egg”. However, lin-guistically, it’s the newer ver-sion in English. Prior to

around the 16th century,English used the word “eye”(pl. eyren) , from the Old Eng-lish ǣg. During the 14th and15th centuries, Norse immig-rants brought in the word“egg”, and for over a century,the two words were used in-terchangeably.

Both the Old English andthe Norse words were actuallytaken from the PrehistoricGerman “ajjaz”, which is thesource of the German (Ei) andDutch (ei) .

The Slavic forms seem toalso taken from “ajjaz”, butslightly rearranged, as inRussian (яйцо [jajco] ) , Polish(jajko) , and Serbian (јајe) .

The Italic forms are takenfrom the Latin “ōvum”, suchas Italian (uovo) , Spanish(huevo) , Portuguese (ovo) , andthe French (œuf) .

Surprisingly, the Prehis-toric German and Latinforms, as well as the Ancient

WWoorrddss iinn YYoouurr MMoouutthh

EEgggg

An egg omelette being cooked in a pan



Greek “ōión” (now αυγό [avgo]in the modern form), comefrom a common Proto-Indo-European word: ōwo. This, inturn, may have from a basefor “bird” in Ancient Sanskrit.

“Egg” as a verbIn English, we also use “egg”as a verb in some instances.The most basic is easily seenwhen referring to damagedone when someone throwsone of these little balls at aperson’s property. To “eggone’s house” means, literally,to have thrown eggs at it,thus creating a horrible mess.This is a common prank. Amore obscure reference is“egging a person on”, mean-ing to push them verbally.“He wanted to stop, but hisfriends egged him on.”

SlangWe use “egg” in several othermanners. It can be a refer-ence to someone who is im-mature, as a master mightaddress his student as an“egg”. This could have a fondor a contemptuous connota-tion. “Egg” is also used to

refer to a person, as in himbeing a “bad egg” or a “goodegg”. It can also denote intel-lect, referring to a very smartperson as an “egghead”.When a person has made amistake, or shown himself tobe a fool, we say he “has eggon his face”. When a persontotally fails, they have “laidan egg”.

A “nest egg” refers tosomething of value, usually acollection of money, to which

someone is keeping safe. An-other usage refers to a cause-and-effect dilemma: “Whichcame first, the chicken or theegg?” The idea is that achicken is born from an egg,so an egg must have existedfirst, but if the egg came froma chicken, then a chickenmust have existed first.

Being literally minded, Ialways point out that eggsexisted long before chickens,in the forms of insect eggs,fish eggs, and even dinosaureggs. Also, since a chickendid not suddenly spring up init’s modern form, but ratherevolved over time, one has todefine what they mean by“chicken”. It’s about this timethat the person’s eyes haveglazed over, or he has simplywalked away in disgust.

ConclusionAll yolks aside, we crackedopen this topic and foundseveral twists and turns inthe evolution of the egg, inmore ways then one. I hopeyou found this educationaland “egg-citing”. PT

The mother of all eggs: the chicken

Traditional English breakfast of sausages, mushrooms, hash brown, bacon,eggs, and a tomato



Other pictures related to eggs

From top left, clockwise: Chick hatching out of egg; Basket of freshly gathered eggs;Romaninan painted Easter eggs; Pressack, a dish made of sausage, onions, cucumbers,and eggs; Young girl hunting for Easter eggs; Eggs on disply in at a vendor in China



GERMANICWestern

Afrikaans: eierDutch: eiEnglish: eggFlemish: eiFrisian: aaiGerman: EiLimburgian: eijLuxembourgish: Ee

NorthernDanish: ægFaeroese: eggIcelandic: eggNorwegian: eggSwedish: ägg

SLAVICWestern

Czech: vejcePolish: jajkoSlovak: vajce

EasternByelorussian: яйка [jajka]Russian: яйцо [jajco]Ukrainian: яйце [jajce]

SouthernBulgarian: яйце [jajce]Croatian: jajeSerbian: јајeSlovenian: jajce

ITALICAragonese: güegoAsturian: güevuCaló: anró / albaire / peléCatalan: ouFrench: œufFurlan: ûvGalician: ovoItalian: uovoJudeo-Spanish: guevo / uevoLadino: üLatin: ovumNeapolitan: uóvoOccitan: uòuPortuguese: ovoRoman: ovoRomanian: ouRomansh: ovSpanish: huevoWalloon: oû

ITALIAN DIALECTSBergamasco: öfBolognese: ôvBresciano: ófCalabrese: uavu / ovuFerrarese: ovLeonese: güevuLombardoOccidentale: oeuvMantuan: oeuv / ovMarchigiano: òoMudnés: ovParmigiano: ovPiemontese: euvPugliese: úaveReggiano: ovRomagnolo: òvSardinian (LimbaSarda Unificada): ouSardinianLogudoresu: obu / ovuSicilian: ovuTriestino: ovoVenetian: ovo / coco / vovo / vuovoViestano: ov'Zeneize: euvo

CELTICGoidelic

Irish: ubhScots Gaelic: ugh

BrythonicBreton: uiCornish: oyWelsh: ŵy

ALBANIANAlbanian: vezë

GREEKGreek: αυγό [avgo]Old Greek: ωόν [ōon]

INDO-IRANIANHindi: अंडा [aṇḍā]Kurdish Kurmanji: hêkPersian: [tokhm]

OTHER INDO-EUROPEANGriko Salentino: agguòSanskrit: अण्डUrdu:

مخت

ہڈنا



INDIAN LANGUAGESBengali; Bangla: ডীমKonknni: तांतियाMarathi: अंडेPunjabi: ਅਂਡਾ

ALTAICKorean: 달걀 [dalgyal]Mongolian: өндөг [öndög]

TURKICAzeri (Latin Script): yumurtaTurkish: yumurta

INDEPENDENTBasque: arrautzaJapanese: 卵 [tamago]

FINNO-UGRICEstonian: munaFinnish: munaHungarian: tojásSaami: monni

CAUCASIANChechen: kho'

MALAYO-POLYNESIANIndonesian: telur / telorMalagasy: atodyMalay: telurTetun: manu-tolu

EAST POLYNESIANMāori - Tahitic

Reo Māori (CI): `UāmoaReo Māori (NZ): hēki / hua manuReo Mā'`ohi: Hua

RapanuiVānanga Rapa Nui: mamari

WEST POLYNESIANSāmoic

Samoan: fua]

MESO-PHILIPPINETagalog: i tlog

SEMITICArabic:Hebrew:Maltese: bajda

SINO-TIBETANChinese: 蛋 [dàn]

BALTICLithuanian: kiaušinis

KADAIThai: ไข่ [khai]

NIGER-KHORDOFANIANShona: zaiSwahili: yai

ANDEAN-EQUATORIALAymara: k'awnaQuechua: runtuQuichua: lu lun

TUPIGuarani: tupi 'aTupi: upiá

CREOLESPapiamentu: webu

CONSTRUCTEDEsperanto: ovo / frajo

OTHERChamorro: chadaaDzoratâi: âoFerrarese: ovFurlan: ûvGriko Salentino: agguòGujarati: ઈંડ ુંHmong: qeKalasha: ayukunKhowar: ayukunLingala: l ikeiLuganda: magi (plural)Mapunzugun: kuramMarchigiano: òoMaasai: emosoorriNuristani: pudukRoman: ovoPashtu: huPugliese: úaveSicilian: ovuSomali: ugax / ukunSranan: eksiTok Pisin: kiauYucatec: he', je'

ضْيَبהציב

Where Are You?

51 Parrot Time | Issue #6 | June 2013

Our place this month is the largest city of the country, as well as its capital. With a population ofover 2 million, it is the 7th largest city in the European union. It was also the largest Germanspeaking city in the world at the end of the 19th century. Often regarded as the "City of Music",it is also renowned in the psychology field for one of its famous citizens.

The city has roots in Celtic and Roman settlements. As far back as 500 BC, the Celts founded thecity and the Romans built it in a larger city a few hundred years later, to guard against Germanictribes.

During the 10th century, the city became the centre of a huge dynasty, and it eventually becamethe capital of the Holy Roman Empire. It was invaded by other countries over the centuries,being occupied by Hungary and attacked by the Ottomans. It also had its population drasticallyravaged by a plague in 1679.

The name of the city actually comes from Italian. Today, it is a popular tourist stop, with its richmusic history and art centre. Almost equally famous are its fine cakes and desserts along with itssmall sausages, which are named after the city. PT

Where Are You?

Last month's answer: Buenos Aires, Argentina

Can you name this location and country?

Book Look


To be honest, I don't know when or whereI picked this book up. I feel like I havealways had it. While the cover isappealing, it doesn't appear imposing, asif it is going to unlock some great secrets.It's not a large book, nor is it glossy orflashy. Yet I find it one of my most"comfortable" books on languages in mycollection.

The title may seem a little odd, soundinglike it's both an encyclopedia and adictionary. However, that is what it is. Theentries are very straightforward, so youwon't be tangled in a lot of unnecessaryknowledge. At the same time, whenappropriate, the entries are longer, tomake sure the topic is covered.

And the topics have a wide range.Opening randomly, I can read down theentries for "Bloomfield, Leonard", "bodylanguage", "Bokmål", and "bold", referringto, respectively, a linguist, acommunication method, a language and awriting format. It's very easy to pick upthis book and start reading each entry,learning something new with almost eachentry. Terms are drawn from variousfields of language study, includingstylistics, language teaching, typography,and lexicography, as well as from basictopics such as figures of speech, basicphonetics and grammar.

Just about anything you can think ofregarding languages seems to be listed.There are language trees, alphabet listingsand samples of several entries, although

perhaps not as manyas one would like. Forexample, it shows aRunic alphabet, butnot the Greek one; ithas a table of kinesics (symbolsrepresenting body and face movements) ,but not of diacritics.

What the book does have is a sense ofhumour. Scattered throughout thedictionary are various cartoons depictinglanguage humour. One such cartoonshows two tribesmen sitting facing eachother. The first one is attempting tocommunicate using a string ofconsonants: "Zgbt nrvlb rsktdgm pqvftnz." The second one is seen to bethinking "VOWELS! THAT'S what weneed!".

The dictionary is not an exhaustive workfor all things linguistic. It does, however,do an excellent job at covering the basicson a very wide range of language topics.When I come across a term I don'trecognize, this is the first book I turn to,and it's also sometimes the only one thatwill contain any information on what I amlooking for. While my copy is now over 20years old (having been published in 1994),I believe most of the information to still behighly relevant. This remains one of themost used and most loved books in mylibrary of language materials. I thinkothers would feel the same. I give it a 5/5.PT

An Encyclopedic Dictionary of Language and Languages

by David CrystalLanguage: EnglishI tem Rating:ISBN-1 0: 01 4051 2349 - ISBN-1 3: 978-01 4051 2342

BBooookk LLooookk

*****

Credits


Letter From the EditorWriter: Erik ZidoweckiImages:Petey: Woman in cafe

How Do You Say It? - A look at sound notation systemsWriter: Erik ZidoweckiImages:ish_ishwar: Diagram of mouthNohat: IPA chartlumix2004: Tiles of letter pairsj ixue: Entries in dictionaryWikipedia: Table showing X-SAMPA, IPAYiddophile: Old computer with speech synthesizerPetey: Girl studying; Men forming his mouth; Schoolbook used by emperor Puyi; Table showing IPA, Arpabet; Cappuccino

Of Pidgins and Creoles - A look at how some languages are bornWriter: Erik ZidoweckiImages:Ghettocash: Panorama of Curacao (title)Didwin973: Creole women in costumesPetey: Creole food of Louisiana cuisine; Hawaii Pidgin inscriptions; Pidgin English leaflet; Painting of Limbe, Cameroon; Kapusign on island of Lanai

Who Are You To Learn A Language?Writer: Jimmy MelloImages:Petey: Landscape (title); Al ice; Alice and Caterpil lar

At The Cinema - Dil Chahta HaiWriter: Erik ZidoweckiSources:• "Dil Chahta Hai" Internet Movie Database <http: //www.imdb.com/title/tt0292490/>All images are copyright Excel Entertainment, Spark Worldwide (UK)

Languages in Peril - Yumans on the EdgeWriter: Lucil le MartinImages:Gabriel Flores Romero: Cerro Cuchumá, Kumeyaay refuge area (title)ish ishwar: Yuman-Cochimi language mapRhymeNotStutter: Paipai mapRodrigo Gardea: Mexican young peopleKen Lund: Mission San Diego de AlcalaPetey: Yuman Native Americans in 1 857; San Vicente remains; Kumeyaay woman in front houseSources:• "Kil iwa language" From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia <http: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kil iwa_language>• "Kil iwa people" From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia <http: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kil iwa_people>• "Paipai language" From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia <http: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paipai_language>• "Paipai people" From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia <http: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paipai_people>• "Kumeyaay language" From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia <http: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumeyaay_language>• "Kumeyaay people" From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia <http: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumeyaay_people>• "San Diego Chicano History" San Diego State University <http: //aztlan.sdsu.edu/chicanohistory/chapter01 /c01 s06.html>• "Sycuan Tribal Timeline" Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation <http: //sycuantribe.org/our-heritage/sycuan-tribal-timeline/>• "Cocopah language" From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia <http: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocopah_language>• "Cocopah" From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia <http: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocopah>• "Welcome to Cocopah Indian Tribe" Cocopah Indian Tribe <http: //www.cocopah.com/>

Credits

Parrot Time | Issue #14 | March / April 2015 55

Words in Your Mouth - EggWriter: Erik ZidoweckiImages:Petey: Shelves of cartons of eggs (splash page); Eggs in carton (title); Omelette in pan; Chicken; Traditional English breakfast;Chick hatching; Basket of eggs; Romaninan painted Easter eggs; Pressack, egg dish; Young girl with Easter eggs; Eggs ondisply in China

Where Are You?Writer: Sonja KrügerImages:Petey: Mystery image

Book LookWriter: Erik Zidowecki

parrot time - issue 15 - may / june 2015

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