Second Languages

A fellow immigrant here, unable to find employment in his field (engineering) locally, has asked me to teach him English so that he can expand his search elsewhere, in some of the English-speaking provinces. It has been some time since I've done language exchanges (English conversation for practice in French). Usually the respective level of competence in the "other" language was pretty much equal: somewhere in the middle-Intermediate range. This time, however, my student knows very little English and does what I do sometimes when I get stuck and can't find the appropriate word or remember the correct verb ending: i.e., revert to using the former known, familiar language.

This is detrimental to progress in the new language, and a very difficult habit to break. At the university here, when you take a French immersion course, you are not permitted to not-speak French. (I'm told for every non-French word you utter, you must fork over 25 cents. At least that is what a former student told me several years ago. Whether or not that's still true, I don't know, but it seems a compelling reason to try harder. (It could also be a good self-imposed incentive, not just for self control but to increase one's savings! Ten unguarded relapses could net you enough for a coffee and a croissant, au moins. :)

My student is a French-speaking Berber from Algeria. French is his second language and his French is vastly superior to mine. The accent and some words are different from the French spoken here (Quebeçois). (I find it easier, in general, to understand French speakers from Belgium, Paris, the Sudan or even Haiti than French-Canadians. Even after some years here, my own spoken French comes out sounding more "international" than local, with a slight accent not always immediately identifiable as Anglo-based. Strange.)

Accent acquisition is a curious phenomenon. For example, in Boston they swallow the "r" in some words and add an extra "r" on the end in others ("square" becomes "squay-uh", "yard becomes "yahd", "Barb" becomes "Bob" and "pizza" becomes "pizzer", etc.). Odd though that neither I, nor my children--who were born and raised there--ever acquired the accent.

Here's how native Bay-staters pronounce the names of certain of their towns and cities (in case you ever go there):

Peabody ("PEE-Bitty")
Medford ("MEHfid")
Gloucester ("GLOSS-tah")
Woburn ("WOO-bin")
Worcester ("WOOSE-tah")

Soft drinks are not called sodas in Boston; they're "tonics". What is a "hoagie" (submarine sandwich) in Pennsylvania is called a "grinder" in Boston. A "regular" coffee in one state might refer to plain black coffee; in another, it means with milk and sugar. Go figure. I add this last point because a former Pennsylvania colleague came back from a trip to Boston once complaining that "they don't know what a regular coffee means "out there"!! ("Out there", as in "Not-here" land, i.e.) Another friend's annoyingly repetitious but relevant saying immediately came to mind: "Never assume anything."

Sometimes how a person pronounces a single word can tell you where they're from. (For Boston, the word "third" usually nails it for me, ha ha; for Pittsburgh, it's the words "no" and "down". For Philly and Central Pennsylvania, a nasal tone; for Vermont, indescribable but immediately recognizable. I used to be able to differentiate between a Ukrainian speaking English from a Moscow native speaking English though I cannot myself speak either Russian or Ukrainian.

Sound threads weaving past that grab the attention, unconsciously, to later surface as recognition... or something like that. One could do that with observations of physical gestures as well, how one expresses (or doesn't express) a thing ... fascinating. What we absorb and unconsciously imitate in our respective cultures, what we alter or suppress or enhance to become what we already are, but more (or less) so. How we are all different, and yet the same...

Suppose you want to learn another language and don't have access to or cannot afford language classes or a private tutor. This is a good little starting point, for an interactive, sound-integrated introduction to English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Hebrew, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Russian, Hindi or Vienamese, with titles in Polish, Greek, Turkish and Indonesian, etc. It might be interesting to at least learn numbers and colors and salutations in these respective tongues. You never know, it might come in handy some day. This is the easy part, it seems to me. It's the darn grammar that takes working on. And the idioms! And of course, practice.

I have a book somewhere in my library upstairs (in need of reorganization after some shuffling and switching of bookcases) that gives words in 26 languages. It's fascinating to see the similarities and differences among linguistic families. I sometimes read the dictionary as one might begin to read a novel. The words have stories, the descriptions conjure up imaginary others. One doesn't normally admit to this because, well, you get that Look. I once saw a video of the actor Richard Burton reading a telephone book; he made it "sound like Shakespeare."

Anyway, my student has invited me to learn how to make Algerian cuisine (his wife will show me) and in the meantime has sent me some recipes, in Arabic. Which I can't read, of course, but can follow the pictures.

Ah, language. Visual, spoken, unuttered. You would need two lifetimes to explore even the surface of them! Dabblers and masters, and how to graduate from the former to the latter: the apprentice's dream.

Inuitological musings

In
I have always been deeply drawn, for reasons largely unknown to me, to the Far North. I wondered what it would be like to live in Nunavik, where they speak Inuktitut.

I am fascinated by languages—how they’re constructed, how they sound, and especially, the words chosen to name or describe a thing. This site gave me the Inuit alphabet, a guide to its pronunciation, and a few phrases to get me started:

Hello	Ai
Goodbye	Assunai
Thank you	Nakurmik
You're welcome	Ilaali
Yes	Aa
No	Auka
How are you?	Qanuippit
Are you well?	Qanuinngilanga
What is your name?	Kinauvit?
My name is...	... uvunga
Who is it?	Kinauna?
What is it?	Sunauna?
Look!	Takugit!
Come here!	Qaigit!
I don't know	Aassuk
Oh well	Ajurnamat
Let's go, come along	Atii
Do you understand?	Tukisivit?
That's it, that's all	Taima
Again	Atiilu
Would you like some tea?	Tiiturumavit?

Even in one's own culture, conversations can be sometimes surreal. I imagine two beings out walking alone one day each on opposite ends of the ice. They may or may not be Inuit but for the purposes of this exercise, let's say they speak Inuktitut. They meet in the middle of the tundra and pause a moment before passing one another. Using the guide above, I created a mini exchange whereby they attempt to communicate with one another but ultimately fail--because there is simply not enough vocabulary available here to make it even remotely interesting. Even with an arsenal of words at our disposal, this happens frequently to all of us at times and it is not the fault of language.

Let's say MAN1 is a friendly, inquisitive fellow out for his daily walk. MAN2, let's say, is pacing the tundra in search of himself; he suffers from an unspecified spiritual malaise with which he has not yet come to terms, much less is able to explain. [It is necessary to supply this mini-plot in order to make sense of the following, stilted exchange. Faced with limitation, lack of material and/or narrow parameters, one is forced to be creative!]

MAN 1: Ai.
MAN 2: Ai.
MAN 1: Qanuippit?
MAN 2: Aassuk.
MAN 1: Qanuinngilanga?
MAN 2: Qaijit, takugit.
MAN 1: Sunauna?
MAN 2: Tukisivit?
MAN 1: Auka.
MAN 2: Takugit atiilu.
MAN 2: Tukisivit?
MAN 1: Auka.
MAN 2: Ajurnamat, taima. Assunai.
MAN 1: Ai, Assunai.

Translation:
M1: Hello.
M2: Hello.
M1: How are you?
M2: I don’t know.
M1: Are you well?
M2: Come here, look.
M1: What is it?
M2: Do you understand?
M1: No.
M2: Look again. Do you understand?
M1: No.
M2: Oh well, that’s it, that’s all. Goodbye.
M1: Yes, Goodbye.

I doubt that resembles anything like what a real conversation between two Inuit would sound like, ha ha. The utter inability of travel-book type phrases to get beyond mere pleasantries to the crux of the matter! The audacity to imagine all one has to do is master a few phrases to get by in a culture. My apologies to Inuits everywhere. But language is a door, and the more you know about one's language, the better equipped you are to enter into a deeper understanding of who and what a people are all about.

Quebec is home to roughly 12,000 Inuit, nearly all of whom live in Nunavik. According to the 2001 census, 90% of Quebec Inuit speak Inuktitut. [1] How has the language held up as a result of interaction with their French- and English-speaking neighbors to the south?

When Quebec linguist Louis-Jacques Dorais analysed words for imported items in Nunavik (arctic Quebec), he found that less than six per cent of the new words were borrowed from English, whereas 76 per cent were descriptive expressions (the others were modifications of traditional words). Furthermore, of the descriptive words, nearly half described the new item by its function, rather than by its appearance — a pretty sophisticated approach to word definition. For instance, the Inuktitut word for computer is qarasaujaq — "something that works like a brain" — while qulimiguulik, meaning "that which has something going through the space above itself," is Inuktitut for helicopter. [2]

Very few native children in western Nunavut speak, or even understand, their native language today. Not only does this people's language require salvaging, so, apparently does some of their land. Due to global warming, some of their villages will, in the not-too-distant-future, become completely uninhabitable. [3]

I am intrigued with their cosmology:

The Inuit cosmos is ruled by no one. There are no divine mother and father figures. There are no wind gods and solar creators. There are no eternal punishments in the hereafter, as there are no punishments for children or adults in the here and now. [4]

According to the Inuit thought, the universe is inhabited by human beings (humans, animals, vegetables), deceased’s and spirits (tuurnngait) each who live in different but inter-penetrating worlds. Every human being is provided with an anirniq “breathing, breath of life ” which, when the subject dies integrates a new animal or human body. The conception of the Inuit world represents a continuum, where every element is a part of a whole. [5]

Breath of life, prana, chi, soul, reincarnate into another being, we are all one ... how many of our various beliefs are interrelated.

I haven't looked at Inuit art in some time. Some people I know collect them: Hand-carved bears and whales and fish and caribou. The most amazing piece of Inuit creativity I ever saw was in the gift shop of a small museum house in Montreal some years ago. It was one of those items you occasionally come across that you just can't take your eyes off of, you go back to it again and again to stare at it, study it. There were far larger, much more beautifully sculpted pieces commanding, and getting, greater attention; I was instead inexplicably drawn to this tiny, crude, simple little object made from the bones of a caribou.

It was about the size of my index finger. It had a hole in the middle into which a string had been inserted attaching two second, smaller bones, so that they dangled, one on each side of the longer, vertical piece. Two miniscule holes were indented at the top, filled in with black ink. Those were its eyes. It looked like something a child might have made but in fact, it was made FOR a child. It was a primitive little doll, a child's plaything, made by a loving parent from the materials at hand using the tools of everyday life.

This little stick-thing with two dots for eyes--was a doll!! I picked it up and and turned it around, as a child might, wondering what could you DO with it? It had no hair, no mouth, no clothes, no feet. It didn't even have a real head--it was just basically two sticks joined together with a string--two animal bones waiting for an imaginary journey into the mind of an Inuit child. The simplest toys provide the impetus for the best imaginings. I've watched children have more fun playing with stones and a popsickle stick than with their battery-operated counterparts where all you do is turn on a switch and the toy performs, always in the same way. Eventually it gets boring. But with a wooden stick and a stone--why you can make them into anything you want.

At any rate, I found myself returning to this tiny bone doll again and again, as if it were the most important object in the universe. A simple trinket in a gift shop. I have never seen another like it and regret to this day not buying it.

These particular stone carvings (at the right) caught my eye today because, unlike the majority of Inuit art that I've seen, they portray a mood rather than a thing. Inuit artist Alec Lawson Tuckatuck creates sculptures that reflect "our spirits just starting to be awakened to the seriousness we are facing" vis-a-vis the urgency of climate change. This particular sculpture is called "It is Coming".
It could be the face of a modern-day native of Salluit, thinking about the gigantic mudhole his village may become, in his children's lifetime, because of global warming.

Likewise, when I look at Maudie Ohiktook's Shaman with Seal Spirit, I hear the cacophony of the times: From one corner, rage at the commercial clubbing of seals for pelts, and disgust at the idea of eating bloodied, raw seal meat, a practice the Inuits have engaged in as part of their survival; from another corner, loss of tradition, livelihood and land. [Note, the EU's ban on commercial hunting of seals exempts the Inuits, for whom seals provide an essential food source in Nunavut communities; they just can't sell the meat or products.]

What does the seal spirit think about all this? Is the expression in the eyes of Maudie Ohiktook's Inuit shaman one of surprise or anguish? I cannot tell. Perhaps it's both. Takugit! it seems to be trying to say. Look! Look!

Some other Inuktitut words, from the glossary in Interviewing Inuit Elders about Childrearing Practices, a book you can download here.

Nanguluttuq
To cause disharmony.

Qaqiliqtuq
To lose the ability to hear birds.

Mikilirannguaq
The toe beside the baby toe.

Atiqsuqtuq
To display traits of a person you were named after.

Iglisiq
Wood or stones placed at the edge of the bed to stop the bedding from moving.

Kangaaqtuq
Having a premonition or expectation that isn't fulfilled.

Nunujuq
Hesitation while giving birth.

Qatimaajuq
The sound that a qalupalik makes under the ice.