Language Variety--Even in America

This was an extra credit response in my Sociolinguistics class. Seeing as it was internet based, I thought I'd share.
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For a country that has no official language, the American system sure can push English. Many of my family members, for example, still get offended when hearing people speak Spanish in public. Silly as this may be, the sentiment is shared by many Americans who perceive that English is, was, and should be the country’s only language. Listening to their rhetoric (or lack thereof), a power differential usually emerges, with the English speaker’s linguistic toes being stepped on by the utterance of a foreign tongue, and their imposition of a presumed English monolingualism in this country. However, this view, it could easily be argued, does not fit with the democratic ideals to which this nation claims to adhere. That’s why it is so good to see, hear, and experience a pluralism of manners of speaking in links such as the one to the MLA Language Map or the International Dialects of English Archive site.

The MLA Language map is very helpful in revealing the full extent of the US’s language diversity. A full 18% of speakers in America, it reports, use a language other than English. While ten percent of these speakers use Spanish or a Creole thereof, the other eight are a hodge-podge of languages like Chinese, Arabic, Russian, and Gujarathi. This diversity does not just point to a cultural or ethnic diversity, but a plurality of expression. Because our worldview is expressed largely through language, our processing takes on different structure, mood, or connotation based on our choice of expression. In my Sociolinguistics class, for example we looked at The Bilingual’s Creativity (1987) by Kachru (sorry, couldn't find a link to the full text outside of my school's library). It's a study of the discourse and stylistic features of dialects of English that emerge out of contact with other languages. It shows the abounding depth and texture to the English of bilingual speakers. Language plurality, therefore, is instrumental in maintaining a diversity of perspectives often neglected under the hegemony of English’s ubiquity.

Ironically, because of this ubiquity, English has been stretched into many different dialects the world over. The International Dialects of English Archive indicates the full extent to which English varies, while the Dictionary of American Regional English and Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English both show hearty variation on more domestic and local scales. English’s marked adaptability has been a huge part of its success. Because it is so widely used, it’s assimilated words from all over the world, with some 25+% derived from French languages. English’s ability to accommodate new vocabulary, and even calques, has been cited as “an adaptive strategy undertaken by speakers to enrich certain registers of a language, rather than having to switch to the new language for that register. (Mesthrie et. al. 2000)” Furthermore, despite efforts toward standardization, English continues to be used in new ways by speakers applying their native language's semantic and grammatical structures to English, and insodoing, contributing to variation within English itself. It is due to its plasticity that English enjoys the place it does today.

Notwithstanding, the prestige of English lends itself to pride and a strongly dominant posture among its speakers. American non-English speakers are often stigmatized for their lack of fluency.* But homogeny has never made for a realistic (let alone healthy) goal. Moreover, existing in community is inherently pluralistic, as no individual expresses in the same way, nor could they have the same ideologies, exactly. Then, to participate fully in this community, we go beyond what seems familiar, and exercise patience with something new, perhaps uncomfortable, and recognize the great value in someone else’s linguistic ways. In short, English’s prestigious speakers could learn a lesson from their language’s history, and then turn an ear to learn from the tongue of another.

[*Sometimes, even, they're assumed to be much less fluent than they might actually be, just because of a thick accent. Accents can be virtually impossible to eradicate from one's language outside having learned another before the speaker hits puberty.]

REFERENCES

• Baker, W., & Eggington W. G. (1999). Bilingual Creativity, Multidimensional Analysis, and World Englishes. World Englishes, 18(3), 343-358.
• Mesthrie, R., Swann, J., Deumert, A, and Leap, W. (2000). Introducting sociolinguistics. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

True Poetry

Again, I'm sorry to say that it's been quite some time since my previous post. I am, of late, preoccupied with studying Chinese in Taiwan. Any blogging that I've been doing is for my other blog. Recent events, however, have me thinking more about linguistic magic than Chinese studies, so here we all are.

The magic I speak of is the ability of words to hit so soundly on the intangible. That is, to refer to things far outside of the realm of the physical. I wrote in a previous entry that some things are simply incapable of being expressed with words. On the other hand, though, words can be bafflingly good at pinning down things bigger than the here and now. The example that comes to mind is a poem by Dylan Thomas called Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night. And boy, it's a good one. Before we take a look, however, I'd like to share a bit about what I've been considering lately.

The realm of my understanding is most certainly composed almost completely of the here and now. There's no denying that I can rarely transcend the physical realm, just as much of my language has a concrete physical referant. "Shoe" refers to that thing that you put on your foot. Perhaps your concept of shoe-ness is complete with laces, a sole, and even a little tag by which you pull the heal onto your foot, as mine is. Even abstract words. Like love for example; for me it's usually conceptualized or rationalized by thinking of actions. Or perhaps the definition has to do with feelings, which again, grounds the word to some type of here-and-now-ness.

The mere fact that I have the ability to consider that "love" has an intangible, irrational, or incomprehensible quality leads me to believe that somehow, there is something beyond the here-and-now. Perhaps this "thing beyond" is merely some sense of social sentiments, or, as some philosophers call it, "fellow-feelings." Perhaps it's a collective consciousness or collective intelligence. Perhaps it really is God's Higher Purpose for our lives, after all. Whatever it is, I think it is. And that's all I can really say.

Because we humans can conceive of these things, and because we need a way to talk about them, and because the way we talk is with words, words are able to point beyond the physical realm. Poetry, good poetry, I think, is the most important method of doing so.

I think I can feel that bigger thing when I read Thomas's poem. I feel like this spectacular thing that we call life - the animating spark of the physical, the something that makes us breathe and laugh, and write poetry - is very precious. And its ceasing is to be lamented with fierce, burning tears of indignation. This poem, points so far beyond the words that are used, and it does so loudly, overtly, and unwaveringly. Thats the genius of it.

Here's the poem, after all (and for your listening pleasure a link to hear Thomas himself read it):

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Long time, no see!

How long it has been since I posted last!

In light of my impending trip to Taiwan, I'd like today to write about Chinese Language, or Zhong Wen, or Han Yu, depending on the specific thing we're talking about. (Zhōng Wén, or 中文, is the written language, and Hàn Yǔ, or 漢語 more usually refers to the spoken.)

Chinese's influence is broad and varied, and it's importance is increasingly obvious as the country gains economic and political prowess. So why not dive in?

Chinese is a tonal language, employing four tones, and one neutral tone. The tones make similarly sounding words completely different words to Chinese speakers' ears as the link will show.

As an analytic language, Chinese gets a lot of it's meaning from the word order in sentences. This is very similar to English: "The dog bit the boy," is quite a different sentence in English from "The boy bit the dog." The same goes for Chinese. Directions of verbs from subject to object are indicated by the order in which the nouns appear. So "我愛你" (wǒ aì nǐ) means "I love you," and not the other way around.

Another important thing to remember, is that Chinese has hundreds of dialects, many of which are completely unintelligible to one another. Usually when people talk about Chinese, they're talking about Mandarin Chinese, kind of the central government's dialect. Many Chinese people (and East Asians, for that matter) speak fluent Mandarin along with their local dialect.

Chinese hasn't had much interplay with the more western languages, largely because they're so different, but some words that English has from Chinese are katsup (from ke tziap for a condiment previously used in the Roman Empire), kowtow (from kou tou) and the phrase, "Long time, no see," (literally translated from hǎo jǐu bú jiàn). Notice how each word or phrase goes from a tonal and distinctly Chinese pronunciation, to an Anglicized version of the word fitting our phonetic system, and then gets smashed together as we repeat the word or phrase. This is very common, if not ubiquitous in borrowings from other languages.

Lastly, here's a vid that tries to teach a bit of basic Hàn Yǔ. You can get a feel for how Chinese sentences are formed, and hear the tonal differences in words. Keep in mind that Chinese is a language that comes with a whole different way of thinking; that's how "You Good," can mean something slightly different than the words separately. Cheers!

Unspeakable

In my experience, very many things are hard to explain. Such a predicament is a frequent source of frustration for me, eliciting gritted teeth and a cursed apostrophe to Reason or Communication or some such. Most of these dis-communications are usually re-communicated with some level of relief, even if the speaker has to go on arduously explaining what she means with a long winded sentence such as this. But no matter how deep a hole one digs on these matters, she can always, with enough time and effort, dig herself out. Lately, though, several conversations have brought me outside of the world of the communicable, and into the clouds.

Matters such as equality, ethics, emotion and (though I hate to break the e-lliteration) true-selfhood bring me away from this reality, and beyond what I find myself able to explain. I suppose this has something to do with the field of Metaphysics, though on a much less Theo-centric twist. I'm reading about Taosim as of late, and I get the feeling that reading books or talking with people is not the way to learn. Some things are better left to intuition and experience.

Embedded in this frustration at non-lucidity is the notion that one should be able to clearly explain ones ideas, so that two minds become one in their understanding of such-and-such a notion. It seems that with enough words and explanation, our interlocutors and we should have a crystal clear view of the truth before us. After all, if Truth is absolute, it would be the same for everyone, right? And, if we cannot express it, is it possible that we don't know what we're talking about? (For what do we know that we cannot express?) If I can't tell my classmate what I see from my perspective, could it be that my vision is too foggy to say, for sure, what (or how) the visage is?

My guess is that we do indeed see foggily. Our vision is never infinitely good. And, similarly, our communication is never infinitely lucid. As my friend and I talk about the truth from our own perspectives, undoubtedly our vantage points are different, and we could indeed be seeing two very different angles of what may be the same concept. Your side of the beach ball could be blue and orange, and white. The ball , I'll argue, is red, and white and yellow.

And we'll talk, and talk, and talk ourselves dizzy until we acknowlege our inadequate communication, our differing paradigms, and our own flawed vision.

Cop Out

This is from my Study of Modern English Class on the Topic "Who Wants to be a Linguist:"

Where the Rubber Meets the Road

"Linguistics," I assert when my grandmother asks what I want to study. She blinks, a blank look on her face.

"And that is...?" she returns.

"Well, um, it's, um... It's hard to explain."

To most, linguistics seems a nebulous field. I plan to spend my career studying and teaching it, and still have trouble coming up with the right words. I have tried saying that it's the study of languages, to which the reply is often, "So how many of them are you studying?" Language seems to be neatly segregated into the "non-math, non-science" category in our minds, so it's hard for many to understand how (and why) the two come together. By applying a scientific approach to studying language, however, linguistics not only informs our understanding of words and how we use them, but also allows us to objectively address our own bias, and expose social injustice.

Considering the ubiquity of language, it seems uncanny how often it is used to judge others. We often parse speakers of different dialects or languages into their own categories, and look down on them for being slovenly, uneducated, or illogical. The truth is, as one reads repeatedly from Bauer & Trudgill (1998), that language is highly organized, predictable, and perfectly valid. Bauer (1998) responds to the myth that "Some Languages Have no Grammar" with "All [languages] allow the precise communication of complex messages, and this requires grammar" (p. 79). Languages have to have rules to indicate the meaning of the utterances spoken. He later writes, "A language without grammar is a contradiction in terms" (p. 84). If language is a manner of communicating ideas, a language without grammar cannot exist. Many say that a language lacks the rules that ‘civilized' languages have, usually referring to Latin. While this may be true, in order for it to function as such, a language must have rules, and is perfectly capable of conveying thoughts accurately and precisely. By understanding the systematic nature of language, we can appreciate all language as legitimate. Evans (1998) also gets at this idea. His experience with Aboriginal languages, and peoples' attitudes toward them, shed light on the complexity and sophistication of languages many people term "primitive." One Aboriginal language has declensions as Latin does. And the adaptation of a singular noun to refer to one or two or more of that noun is efficient and rule-governed. Furthermore, many Aborigines not only learn their own complex language, but typically learn two or more languages from their spouses, grandparents, parents, and friends. Is a culture really "primitive" or uneducated if its members are multilingual? Predispositions to one's own language may blind them to the strengths of others'.

Such bias against different ways of speaking can have some devastating outcomes. In his "How I got into Linguistics, and What I got out of it," Labov (1997) chronicles how his research uncovered some nasty truths about discrimination, through studying language. In one study, he and colleagues found that the disparity between black and white students' reading abilities in Harlem was due to "the symbolic devaluation of African American Vernacular English that was part of the institutionalized racism of our society" (p. 4). Characterizing a trend in his research, he also notes that "increasing segregation in the northern cities is depriving the black community of its basic resources, and is in danger of creating a permanent underclass" (p. 5). Without his empirical approach to language, it's hard to believe that he would have exposed this important truth.

This clip draws out some important questions surrounding language bias. Garrard McClendon, the author of the book Ax or Ask asserts that African Americans should learn to "defend themselves" from failure by learning the "rules of the game" when in the field of American English. This is certainly an effective way to adapt to a system hostile to nonstandard dialects. But is this right? Should speakers of African American English have to change their dialect to succeed in our system? It seems to me that if we have learned anything from our study of language, it is that any dialect is legitimate. So, in a system that unjustly discriminates against legitimate language on the mere basis of its being nonstandard, it's the discriminators that have the burden of change, and not the discriminated. Thank goodness we have a scientific method of studying these languages and their differences; and it is linguistics that offers us this approach, without which we may not be able to step outside our stigmas and uncover the truth about something we seem so familiar with: our language.

References

Bauer, W. (1998). Myth 10: Some Languages Have no Grammar. In Bauer L & Trudgill, P. (Eds.), Language Myths (pp. 77-84). London: Penguin Books.

Evans, N. (1998). Myth 19: Aborigines Speak a Primitive Language. . In Bauer L & Trudgill, P. (Eds.), Language Myths (pp. 159-168). London: Penguin Books.

Labov, William. (1997). How I got into Linguistics. Retrieved March 10, 2008, from http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~wlabov/HowIgot.html

Link - The New Jerusalem

While the green revolution is on its waning end in most of the western world, the United States could still do some catching up. I won't go into the Kyoto Protocol, or the heinous environmental policies of certain administrations, but rather offer some positive input:

It seems that Europe, on top of kicking our asses in every other area of common sense and progressivism, has quite the reputable think tank, cranking out super ideas about Combined Heat and Power systems, biomass energy, and green housing, all with the legislation to back them up. To get a better feel for their ideas, click here to be redirected to EfficienCity, a cute virtual town where seagulls chirp in the background as you enlighten yourself on the feasibility of a reduced-carbon future. Click around in the digital city to view videos and animations on cutting edge technology and real life operations that implement them.

The Value of One's Word

What's in a word? There's the sounds that compose the words (which linguists call phonemes), there's the letters that spell the word. There's also the history of the word (etymology), and the setting (time, place, social situation, surrounding words, genre) (or pragmatics), both of which help to contribute to the all around feeling of the word (connotation), and finally, its meaning to each unique mind with relation to all of the above (semantics). (NOTE: the links for these aren't mere Wikipedia articles. I did my research and the links are interesting!)

We also are quite aware that words have some type of power, beyond just the two-dimensional meaning of each word. Words themselves have not only referents outside themselves ("ring" refers to that thing you put on your finger) but can be used abstractly to refer to a whole world of complex and emotionally powerful meanings (follow the ring example?).

And when such impactful words are strung together to form more complex ideas, meaning can increase exponentially. When my family became members of my childhood church, the Pastor asked us a series of questions about our beliefs and intentions. By answering "I will"--just two simple words that apart from one another and this context have much less meaning--we declared our commitment and devotion to these things. There's a certain amount of aether involved, a level of the invisible that gets wrapped up in such words.

It is quite curious that, especially in religious or spiritual contexs, declaring our intent comes with such an expectation that what has been declared will be done to the highest efforts of the declarer. Such is the definition of a promise. (Oxford American Dictionary puts it: "A declaration or assurance that one will do a particular thing, or that guarantees that a particular thing will happen.") And should the promise be about a position or role that we are to assume, we call it a vow. (OAD: a solemn promise, (vows) a set of such promises committing one to a prescribed role, calling, or course of action). Should these promises involve an invocation of a god as witness or enforcer, we call it an oath.

What bothers me is the mutability of such oaths, especially today (divorce rate projected at something like 50%, and higher among religious Christians). In 1867, there was one divorce for every 35.9 marriages. Today (2000), that's at about one for every 2.46. So what kind of magic was in the words of all those married before? Was it male-dominated society's stranglehold over divorce laws? Probably had something to do with it. Could there have been the effect of conservative religious views? Perhaps. May it have been a higher level of duty and resposibility over today's rampant individualism? That's possible, too. A million other factors could be involved.

But there could also be something else involved; could it be that we no longer attatch such divine importance on our commitments? When I say I'll be at so-and-so's gathering on Friday night, I don't invoke a celestial witness. Even if my interlocutor depended upon me being there, and expected that I would, I'd say the same thing: "I will". I'd say it with the intention to do it. And were I to say this in a Church, nothing would change. I wouldn't worry that people were going to overhear me saying that and then find out that I wasn't there and say, "but you promised before God!"

Whatever the case, my generation has very few qualms with going back on one's word, especially if it doesn't hurt anyone directly; I no longer am "willing to give of their time, abilities, and resources to support the various church interests, according to their ability." But that doesn't bother me at all. I didn't say, "I will," with any more conviction than when I say "I wil" finish my homework before Monday." I intend to do it, but if something comes up that supersedes the desire to execute that action, I will go back on my word.

So what is it that gives certain I will's so much meaning, so much expectation, and so much...oath-iness? Is it the sea of religious people watching us? Is it the belief that God will punish you if you screw up, or the level of dependance upon the execution of the promise? Is it the loss of the magic surrounding words, or a laziness? Or is it something I've missed altogether?

Pinker on Morality

Steven Pinker, one of my favorite authors, is a linguist, psychologist, and, now it seems, somewhat a moralist. He was featured a couple of days ago on an episode of NPR's Talk of the Nation, after his column "The Moral Instinct" was printed in the 13 Jan edition of the NY Times. Both feature about the same information, so take your pick; are you an auditory or visual learner? Either way he raises some very interesting questions. Here's a recap from the article (cutting and pasting is so much easier) to start, then some notes from the radio show:

• "Many of these moralizations, like the assault on smoking, may be understood as practical tactics to reduce some recently identified harm. But whether an activity flips our mental switches to the ''moral'' setting isn't just a matter of how much harm it does. We don't show contempt to the man who fails to change the batteries in his smoke alarms or takes his family on a driving vacation, both of which multiply the risk they will die in an accident. Driving a gas-guzzling Hummer is reprehensible, but driving a gas-guzzling old Volvo is not; eating a Big Mac is unconscionable, but not imported cheese or crème brûlée. The reason for these double standards is obvious: people tend to align their moralization with their own lifestyles."

• If you're going to read the article, pay attention to the moral dilemmas on the third page. They reveal a lot about our moral psychology: "People don't generally engage in moral reasoning, ... but moral rationalization: they begin with the conclusion, coughed up by an unconscious emotion, and then work backward to a plausible justification."

• Pinker goes into the physical psychology of moral judgments including the trolley dilemma. Different parts of the brain light up when making the moral judgment between throwing a fat man in front of the trolley barreling toward 5 unsuspecting victims, than when considering pulling a switch that will amount in about the same outcome. Three areas light up in the former: (1) "implicated in emotions about other people", (2) "implicated in ongoing mental computation (including nonmoral reasoning, like deciding whether to get somewhere by plane or train)", and (3) "an evolutionarily ancient strip lying at the base of the inner surface of each cerebral hemisphere, registers a conflict between an urge coming from one part of the brain and an advisory coming from another." In the latter, however, only the second area lit up, which "corroborate Greene's theory that our nonutilitarian intuitions come from the victory of an emotional impulse over a cost-benefit analysis."

• In listening to the radio show (at about 8:00 into the broadcast) Pinker answers an interesting question about war, implying that the way we do war, with kinship metaphors and communal meals, are ways of brainwashing people into thinking that they're fighting for their clan or family, rather than "a more abstract entity called the nation-state."

• The morality of certain issues, like homosexuality, is amoralized over time, and amoral issues of the past are now moralized; take smoking for example.

• Five ways to moralize: Purity (vs. Contamination), Group Loyalty/Conformity to Norms, Avoidance of Harm, Fairness, and Deference to Authority. Interestingly, Left wingers tend to appeal more to Avoidance of Harm and Fairness, whereas conservatives favor Purity, Group Loyalty, and Deference to Authority...

• One caller on the radio show poses the question of whether this is a more convincing approach for justifying morality than an appeal to something like a divine edict. Pinker, in his response says, "I don't think that Traditional religion is a viable source for morality." Rather, the more convincing source of morality lies in "rational interchangeability of perspectives (23:47)." He even implies that there is a higher standard for morality than the Bible, citing different contradictory commands in the bible in which we make a moral judgment one way or the other.

If there's one thing that this teaches us, it's that morality's origin is at least gray. Enough questions surround this topic to conclude that humility should be the name of the game. In any moral question, and in the questions surrounding the nature of morality itself, it must be assumed that you could be wrong.

Another point worth raising: morality, evolutionary or a result of something else, serves a purpose and is part of our make up for a reason. And morality for morality's sake seems an unlikely reason. As people began facing social pressures rather than environmental pressures as the primary obstacle to survival, we began to possess a negative reaction to behavior that compromised the community upon which humanity came to rely.

This is interesting, because it implies that morality is highly reasonable. And being reasonable has its benefits. We can talk about it in concrete (as concrete as concrete, at least) terms, and get out of our dogmatic bubbles when talking about "right" and "wrong."

And if morality has evolutionary origins, that hints that our existence in a community has a synergistic effect. We wouldn't evolve with socio-philic emotions hard wired within if it didn't benefit the species in some way to exist in community. And that offers a bit of hope, I suppose.

From the Frying Pan into the Fire

I was reading some literature from my "Liberal Studies Reader" a selection from John Dewey's Experience and Education and stumbled upon this quote:

"Impulses and desires that are not ordered by intelligence are under the control of acidental circumstances. It may be a loss rather than a gain to escape from the control of another person only to find one's conduct dictated by immediate whim and caprice; that is, at the moercy of impulses into whose formation intelligent judgment has not entered. A person whose conduct is controlled in this way has at most only the illusion of freedom. Actually he is directed by forces over which he has no command."

This is, of course found in a context, that being the assertion that education as Dewey saw it was more about regurgitation of facts than the offering of profound educational experience that perpetuates further education and enjoyment. But the nature of this quote made me think on several conversations I've had with good friends about the illusion of freedom. Freedom is a tricky thing. When at first it would seem that we are free, all because we've thrown off by the bonds of "custom and established routines," as Dewey puts it in the selection I read, we find ourselves our own masters, seeking to fulfill every whim that we have. But a truly freeman is he who submits to another authority: society, love, intellectualism--call it what you like, it's what defines you. What governs who you are. It is the measure by which you set yourself. And until we free ourselves to submit to such an authority, we shall forever be in bondage of something.

MLK's World House

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 and gave this lecture in December of that year. My favorite quote is the following:

"True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it understands that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."

His lecture which has been given the title "World House" outlines a rationale for making the eradication of poverty, racism, consumerism, and militarism high on our list of priorities. Below is a "found poem" using the words from Dr. King's speech.

the deep rumbling of discontent
thundering of disheartened masses
lured into the mines
locked out of the earthly kingdom of
health, wealth, and
happiness
yearning for freedom

the chants of the conquerors of old
who came
killing in persuit of peace.
oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever.
dark storm clouds form

do we have the courage
to face the
challenge of change?
and say
with riteous indignation
This is not just.

how much longer will we
play at deadly war games,
before we heed the plaintive pleas?

the fierce urgency of now
tomorrow is today

Dying Languages

I was reading this NYT article called "Racing to Capture Vanishing Languages" and was stricken by a few thoughts.

Diversity is a concept that many people value, citing its benefits in its fostering of synergy in multiple perspectives and variety of experience. But few remember that diversity goes beyond race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, or socio-economic status. Diversity is a broad concept, characterizing the value in variety of any difference. Standardization has its benefits, but remembering the rich complexity that life offers is another very important side of the same coin.

And so it is with language. In the above article, the story of a documentary film crew is used as a springboard for much deeper themes. Their passion for preservation of ways of expression is something that I share; I ache for the death of yet another precious language. Why? Because a complex way of thinking is wrapped up in how Chulyum language (a Serbian tongue with only 5 remaining speakers) rationalizes this chaotic universe with words.

So I applaud the many efforts of linguists, language enthusiasts, the beautiful people of the endangered cultures across the globe, and their part in the preservation of the many diverse linguistic expressions.

Start at the Begining

Hello all-

After enjoying the entries of many blogs over the recent years, and being required this semester to keep a different blog for class, I've decided to take the plunge into the vast field of average joes on soapboxes.

Here are some preliminary thoughts about this blog:

I'd like to make commentary on the way we use words, and perhaps readers may be witness to snide quips or emotional outbursts about such usage.

Such commentary may turn political or social, and I will not try to withold my opinoin. What else is a blog than an editorial column for the every-man(person)?

I'll probably post note worthy readings, links to other blogs, and participate in networking to enrich my words with those of others.

And lastly, I'll probably be MIA for weeks at a time. I have a tendency to act as a pendulum on such pseudo-commitments as this. Relax, I'll be back in time.

Yours,
TongueTied