Stiod Sharing: Talking Dictionary for Endangered Languages

Logo for Wikipedia:WikiProject Endangered languages (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I read gladly of this idea for saving memory and existence of small communities languages with a talking dictionary. That is of great importance because of preservation of endangered languages and moreover to saving their own sounds. So far we had the creation of grammars and some written dictionaries that does not help as much to preserve the language itself. Who of us can recall the real Latin? Every group has its own way of pronunciation of this now only written language   as a matter of fact.

It was only the good and old Latin who died. There have been said that every two weeks one language dies around the world. But how is in important to notice.

A language does not die alone. The culture it is related to dies as well, the sense of community and the pride for the ethnicity it represents dies as well. A language is the mark of a motherland. Why do languages die, is a long long question to be debated, but I believe among other many reasons that people’s unwillingness to declare and/or believe that there are different ethnic groups, different branches of culture into a same country is killing many languages – and many cultures.

Some language thinkers believe that things exist because they are named. One passage that describes it can be found in  Through the Looking Glass (Chap. 3) by L. Carroll. Alice comes to the wood where things have no name. There she cannot distinguish anything, nor herself as a human being or the so. Isn’t our not giving name to things making them un-existing so to say?

Similarly if small communities stop naming the things with their own names, or even naming themselves they will slowly stop existing. As there is never absolute synonyms there is not absolute translation to things, as the way I perceive one thing is sure other then you, dear reader do.

Well much of a reflection by now it is only to give my perception of the necessity of helping these small languages to keep on existing and as a consequence keep the memory and pride of their using communities.

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Stiod Opinion: Gender Inflection for saving women equality

Presidenta Dilma (credit: Wikipedia)

I’d like to thank a linguist friend for the insight. Portuguese is a gender inflected language. That means if you say “beautiful woman” in Portuguese, you have to mark “beautiful” such a way it tells you it is feminine. Check: “Bonito” (masculine beautiful) and “Bonita” (feminine beautiful) etc.

Now Brazilian President (the Brazilians speak Portuguese) shall to inflect the word President (presidente and presidenta) etc. Now there is a law for that. It does not exactly control the spoken language, but at least the written ones, diplomas, certificates etc. So, if you are a master it will be different if you are man or woman (mestre, mestra), if you are Chemist (químico, química) etc. It was not so in many professions that were common for both genders.

It represents a step forward if you think of the position of women in the work market etc., but it is in fact a step backward: just think of the freedom of sexuality/ gender. Sad. Moreover, you cannot rule a language, or dictate about a field you are not expert in.

To the presidenta’s and other politicians’ trying to be “politically correct”, I give her some tips:

• Allow women having menstrual leave two or three days a month at work and school;
• Demand women having long hair (and forbid that from men), so to say their femininity;
• Free makeup program: It is not fair women being ugly and less feminine – check her look before and after her journey to the presidency.
• Epilation in the state health clinics (different kinds, for respecting the woman’s personality)

I do like Dilma Rousseff in a bunch of aspects, and admire her as politicia. But let’s be realistic, she`s not linguist and did she consult any of them, tell me so I satirize her/him instead,

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Zoolinguistics Research

 “The cat lives alone, has no need of society, obeys only when she pleases, pretends to sleep that she may see more clearly, and scratches everything on which she can lay her paw.”

 Chateaubriand

I have never seen a discipline like that in the schools I studied and had contacts with. The name does not figure out in dictionaries what tells me it is not common just as I have been thinking. But there were linguists who studied the communication system of animals. I had even had a professor who claims her dogs talk to her.

The fact is that observing my cat sounds I figured out he has many different sounds, only one of them I can imitate. And he understands. As well as he “understands” Husband question if his food is good. Ok crazy, you think. No problem.

Cat Conspiracy (credit: Tjflex2)

Things in science is like that – trial and error. My stiod now is having a study in order to interpret cats’ mood or intentions in their meowing. Something that tells us if the cat is happy, unhappy, hunting (that I and Husband can understand from Pip, but not reproducing, it’s like he barks). No, I don’t mean cats have the same ability of as human or  language learning as chimps.

But animals might have their own communication system and people could just study that – why not? It’s just recording them a whole time in their natural habitat. For some hours. And then describing. Wanna help with the project write or skype me.

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Digital interpreter

Title page of one of the earliest phrase books of Sindebele to be published in Rhodesia: J. O'Neil's "Phrase Book in English and Sindebele", 1910: Ellis Allen, Bulawayo, Rhodesia. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

You might say: “Come on, dear… we got those fantastic (half working) phrase book App. We do not need any one more.

Yeah. That’s true, but as far as I’ve seen these phrasebooks work partially and not as this one.

Despite it is still non-totally-working because of the bad quality of voice recognition technology we have nowadays, it might work better, with some pre-configured set of languages.

It will work with voice recognition, and you say the phrase you need to say somewhere in the world (in some preset language, of course), it recognizes your message (let’s say it works as source language mainly English, and then it gives you the phrase in the target language. You can just play the thing out loud in a restaurant, bus station, news stand etc (it can be separated by categories, so the set to look up the sentences will be quite restricted).

If you need, for example order a beer, you say the sentence in English (ok, am I being too lazy, you can type it, but we are talking about communicating, and speaking is faster) or select it from a given set. Your phrase book App look up for the counterpart in the target language and says it aloud to you.

If you are a daring person, you can try to repeat it by yourself, but you can avoid the scene, and help native people go quicker then you “treiaul oov seayiing dthe  seenteenss in dtheirr laenguaegdj” . Why that if you can have your personal digital interpreter?

Your interpreter will also help you to understand the answers you get. You ask your service/ product provider to speak clearly to your phone/ tablet/ gadget. The App will look for a similar sentence into its database. It will, then return you a (written) translation.

I am afraid it will have to rely on web, for having both ways of translations. But if you skip this last feature, I do not think only an off-line application would be non-working.

We have plenty of platforms for that, such as Forvo or Google voices. And I am in the queue for acquiring one in my next travel to Hungary – I don’t dare trying to speak that language myself.

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Learner’s blog

When I was a teacher, I used to say on and on that my students should write as way of improving their language skills. That is because when you are writing, you get plenty of time to plan your “speech”. Fair enough time to come back and review, redo, and check back, how your production was done.

In the last three years, I have learned to speak Swedish fair enough to let me understood as well as comprehending people and texts. However, despite I write pretty well e-mails, I do not feel comfortable in writing an article or a academic paper.  That’s why, some hours ago I had an insight and planned blogging also in Swedish as a way of practicing my writing skills in this language (the result).

“Our lives with all their miracles and wonders are merely a discontinuous string of incidents – until we create the narrative that gives them meaning”Arlene Goldbard

So, if you are in a educational field or learning to do something (paint, physics, handcraft) try to use blogging as an additional tool/ source of  knowledge and practice!

If your learning has nothing to do with language, blogging might help you figure out your strengths and debilities. As well as challenge you to have something new periodically to post. As an outcome of your work, sure you shall get feedback (not so often) about your practices. Try it out!

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