Stupid Expert

I've always been interested in languages. I took lots of electives in college just for fun and have several shelves of books about languages.

But the stupidest thing I've ever read was in a book by a supposed expert in Linguistics.

I read it so long ago I can't even remember the title or author's name, but I've never been able to forget one stupid thing that supposed expert wrote in his book.

He (and, yes, I do remember it was a man) gave an explanation for the variety of Native American languages.

Here's the explanation:

Thousands and thousands of years ago early humans came across the land bridge that existed between northern Europe and the North American continent and traveled southward, then across the continent.

As they traveled they dropped off babies and toddlers who hadn't yet learned to talk at multiple points along the way. Each group of tiny children developed their own language.

In the first place, what are the chances of kids that young being able to survive without adults to care for them?

And why would any people simply drop off their babies and leave them, probably to die?

Even if the toddlers survived to adulthood, could they really invent complex languages?

The whole concept is so impossible I don't know how whoever wrote that book even got it published.

I wish I could find out the title or author. He ought to have won an award for the worst academic book ever written.

The Power of Words

I've mentioned in previous blog posts that one of my college Linguistics professors told us when studying a society, if you come to a word they can't define you know it's one of the most basic concepts in their culture.

I believe a lot of the conflict and, possibly, the outcome of the presidential election in the United States of America depended on two definitions: What is a human being? What is a marriage?

Yes, there were lots of other issues, but many people cast their votes because of one or both of those two concepts.

Is a fetus a human being? If people believed it is, they probably voted for Trump.

Is a marriage a committed sexual relationship between two people, or only between a man and a woman? How they defined that term determined a lot of people's choice between the candidates.

And those aren't the only things that divide us. Do we continue to welcome the poor, the huddled masses yearning to be free? Or do we focus on helping big businesses grow so they'll help our economy? Etc., etc., etc.

To me, this is scary.  If we can't agree on basic things like these does it mean our culture is falling apart?

They say no democracy has ever lasted more than 250 years, and we're getting close to that number of years since our country was founded.

But I believe we can rise above all these conflicts by treating one another with respect and love.

Another of my professors told us "When the happiness and well-being of another is essential to one's own happiness and well-being, a state of love exists.

As a popular song from the days of my youth says, "Come on people...Let's get together and love one another."

We need to do that right now!

Whatchamacallems

I have a complicated, extended family and my husband coined the term, step-neighbor-in-law, to describe some of the relationships.

But some people need different terms and I wonder what we can use. for those relationships.

Lot's of kids today have step parents, step brothers and sisters, step grandparents, etc. and those terms are generally understood and accepted.

But a lot of couples live together with no intention of getting legally married and, for people with no religious affiliation, that is becoming the norm in our society.

Kids may call their parent's partner by his or her first name, but how do they refer to each other and  tothe parent's partner's relatives? In most cases they just call them by their names, but when mentioning them to other people, such as teachers, that can be confusing.

I wouldn't be surprised if our language develops some new words to  describe those relationships.

If some of those terms are already in use, please let me know what they are.

Names

My name is Janet Ann Collins, but many of my friends call me Jan.

Nobody called me that when I was little because, due to World War II, everyone knew Jan was a boy's name in Holland.

When I was a kid I only knew one other person named Janet until the movie star, Janet Leigh, became famous. Then hundreds of girl babies were named Janet. I'm in several writers' groups and all of them have at least one other member named Jan or Janet.

It's amazing how many other people have similar or related names. John, Jane. Juan, Shawn, Sean, Shanna, Juanita, Hans, Giovanni, Zane, Ivan, Jeanette, Jean, Jonathan, Janice, and many others are all related. (In case you can't tell, I've always been interested in Linguistics.)

I understand the original version of those names was Hebrew, and the meaning was something like "God gives grace," ""God is gracious," or "Gracious gift of God."

With a meaning like that it's no wonder so many people chose similar names for their babies. Of course, as the name spread through various cultures and languages, lots of parents were unaware of the original meaning and simply named their children after other people.

It's no wonder there are so many of us in the world!

Living Language

I've always been fascinated with the science of Linguistics, even when I was a little kid and didn't know that term.

When my brother was a toddler learning to talk I could understand him when the grown-ups couldn't, and that made me feel important. Then we moved from New Jersey to California when I was five years old and I was amazed that people out west used different words for some things than people did back east.

I took lots of electives in college on the subject,of Linguistics, too.

And I'm still fascinated by the way languages evolve over the years.

English has the largest vocabulary of any language on our planet because it has been influenced by nearly every other culture over the centuries.  Since most people reading this would find the topic boring I won't begin to list the various ones that have influenced our language over the centuries. If any of us were to time-travel to England hundreds of years ago we'd probably find it difficult to communicate, at least for a while.

English is still changing because it's a living language. Only languages no longer in use stop changing.

That's why it bugs me when I hear people complain about how others are using grammar and vocabulary that wasn't used in the past. Okay, maybe our high school English teachers would have given us bad marks for some of the modern usages, and current English teachers and professors may do the same. And in formal, academic writing those things aren't acceptable.

But centuries in the future many of them will have become standard usage - unless our culture has been destroyed and English is a dead language.

I certainly hope that doesn't happen.

Why I Love Language

As you probably know, my blog is about words, books and kids. I post lots of book reviews, but I thought it might be time to explain why I also talk about language.

I’ve been fascinated with language ever since I was a little kid. I was about four years old when my little brother was learning to talk. I felt very proud because could often understand him when our parents couldn’t. I now realize that’s because they were trying to decipher his words but he used intonation patterns to communicate.

Later when I was five years old we moved from New Jersey to California and was surprised to hear people used different words for things than we did back East. For instance we had a sofa, but our California neighbors had couches. Dialects are different in different parts of the country.

When I got a little bit older I thought it would be fun to learn  every language in the world when I grew up. Obviously that didn’t happen! I am fluent in American Sign Language, took Latin and German in High School and French in college.

A family from Germany moved in next door to us the first week I started taking German. Since they had little kids I wasn't embarrassed to try using that language with the children. However my first attempt was a big failure. I tried to ask their names but was actually asking them what color they were. However our communication did improve after that. Because I actually used that language I learned it better than the others I studied in school and plan to take some informal lessons to brush up.

Of course nobody speaks Latin today. However I once worked in a school where the kitchen staff were all from Mexico and had very limited English. I used Latin based English words to communicate with them and they could understand everything I said. Everyone else used the “simple” English, which is based on the Anglo-Saxon language and those words were the hardest for the kitchen crew to understand.

I took French in college in the 1960s. (Yes, I'm old.) The French professor was from Quebec and they were trying to get French accepted as an official language in Canada. She kept telling us French was the best language in the world and much better than English. Even then I knew enough about Linguistics to realize one language isn't better than another. I resented her attitude and flushed the French out of my mind once I had passed the tests. That was stupid since I had taken the classes in order to learn the language.


Later in college I took a lot of Linguistics electives just for fun.

Back in the 1960s my fiancé knew I was interested in languages and introduced me to a friend who was a Sign Language interpreter. That friend taught me ASL and I married him instead of my fiance'.
To be honest, I'll admit there were a few years in between but it makes a better story if I don't mention that.

I did become fluent in ASL, though I've been out of the Deaf community for a while and don't know the newer signs.

And, of course, I use my native language all the time, both in  everyday activities and as a writer.

Languages

I've always been interested in languages. Maybe that's partly because when I was five years old my family moved from the East Coast to California and I was surprised by the difference in dialects.

As a kid I intended to learn all the languages in the world but, for some strange reason, that didn't happen. However I did take Latin and German in High School and French in college because English is related to those three languages.

I've forgotten most of the Latin, but using English words of Latin derivation has helped me communicate with people who speak Spanish.

A family from Germany with little kids moved in next door to us the week I began studying German. I actually used that language, so I remember it better than the other ones I took in school.

My French professor was from Quebec. At that time people in Canada were trying to get French accepted as an official language, so that's probably why she told us over and over again that French was the best language in the world and much better than English. I knew no language was better than  others, so I pretty much flushed French out of my brain after passing the tests in her class.

As an adult I learned American Sign Language and became fluent in that one because I've actually used it to communicate with Deaf people for many years.

And I've even learned some dog language from a deaf dalmatian we once had. I wrote about that dog in a story published in the Chicken Soup for the Soul book, I Can't Believe My Dog Did That.

I still wish I could learn every language in the world, but don't have the time or energy to study even one more. Oh, well, I guess I know enough to get by.

Bad Words, Etc.

Since my last post, which is about swearing, I've been thinking about what makes certain words unacceptable while others that are literally synonyms, are considered okay. Nobody is likely to be offended by the mention of excrement, and eternal punishment is often mentioned in religious discussions but using other words for those things would be rude.

Once when I heard one man yell at another using words that literally meant "Your mother is a female dog and I want to to mate with you," I couldn't help laughing out loud.

Sometimes perhaps the "bad" words are of Anglo-Saxon origin and the "good" ones are Latin or French based because of the class differences in England during the Middle Ages, but that isn't usually the case. There isn't really much reason for the distinction between good and bad words, it's just a matter of what people agree about.

Come to think of it, that's true of other things, too.

Why should gold be highly valued in so many cultures? Yes, it's rare and pretty, but we can't use it for food, shelter or other things necessary for survival. It made better sense for the Romans to use salt to pay soldiers their salaries.

And money is only valuable because it represents gold but people all over the world now accept it as having worth.

Since humans disagree about so many things I guess its just as well that we do agree about some things, even if only which words are bad.

Learning to Love Language

It's probably because of two things that happened when I was a little kid that I became fascinated with the science of Linguistics.

When my brother was born I was two-and-a-half years old. As he began learning to speak I could understand him when the grown-ups couldn't. Looking back I realize that was because the adults were trying to decipher his attempted words, but I tuned in to his intonation patterns and body language.

Not long afterwards we moved from New Jersey to California and I was amazed at the differences in the way people talked. Instead of pushing baby carriages they used baby buggies. Instead of sitting on sofas people in CA sat on couches.

One day we were visiting some of my mother's friends when the older kids told me there was a whale on the kitchen table for me. I assumed they were teasing me, especially since they were all eating ice cream and didn't offer me any. Later an adult asked me why I'd let the whale melt instead of eating it and I discovered it was a chocolate-covered ice cream popsicle. "Whale" was the brand name. In the neighborhood where I'd lived before we called that kind of treat winter popsicles because the little neighborhood grocery store only had them for sale during the cold part of the year. In the warmer months they sold summer popsicles, the kind made of fruit-flavored ice.

The difference in names was so interesting it almost made up for my disappointment in not getting to eat the delicious thing.

What Can They Mean?

One of my college Linguistics professors told us when someone is studying a different language and they come to a term the native speakers can't define it means the word represents a concept  absolutely basic to that culture. In recent years there have been several terms we used to define easily in American English that people no longer agree on. For instance there have been conflicts about what it means to be dead, how to define a human being, and the meaning of the word "marriage." Although our country has been a "melting pot" made up of immigrants from all over the world, most of us have always agreed on the definitions of those basic terms. But things don't stay the same and our world is certainly changing. In fact there have probably been more changes in the last hundred and fifty years than in the preceding thousand years. I predict that it will be quite a while before we can ever agree on those basic terms again.

This One's for Adults

"Talking Hands" by Margalit Fox is a fascinating book for anyone interested in linguistics or how our brains work. It's about a Middle Eastern community where the people have developed their own Sign Language because of frequent hereditary deafness. Even the hearing people who live there use that language in addition to their spoken one. 

The book is popular in style and comfortable to read, but it relates the experiences of scientists studying the local Sign Language as well as insights they're gaining about how our brains work to process language. I found it fascinating.