The Tahoe Tongue: Stand Up, Y'All!

The second form of Washo which Jacobsen presents is the imperative prefix (the command form) on vowel-initial stems. Just as the prefixes of the previous lesson disregard the distinction between singular and plural, so too does this prefix ignore grammatical number. Another feature which has carried over from the previous lesson is “vowel coloring”; the imperative prefix ge- changes íme' 'drink' into géme', but á:hu 'stand' (plural) keeps its a in gá :hu. The vowel coloring which changes the i to e normally ends at the first consonant (including h), but the glottal stop lacks sufficient vigor to prevent further change. The imperative, therefore of the root í'is 'to hold, take, bring', is gé'es, and that of í'iw 'eat (something)' is gé'ew.

The most interesting feature introduced in this lesson is one which the Anglophone who is less experienced with non-Western languages might miss; yet it is a characteristic feature of Washo. The verb form á:hu means 'stand', but only with a plural subject.; there is a separate singular form, which will be introduced later. The imperative gásaw 'laugh!' can be addressed to one or many, but gá:hu 'stand!' can only refer to more than one. Languages which do this are said to have 'pluractionality', which may seem strange, but if some languages indicate grammatical number on both the subject and the verb, and some only on the subject, why shouldn't some indicate it only on the verb?

The Very Eσσence of You (Singular)

As the wheels of progress in Modern Greek became bogged in the mud slough of the passive (something with which, no doubt, any students of Classical or Koine Greek can identify), it was amusing that Hellenophones, ever resistant to the collapse of conjugations, such as occurred in French and English, have restored, once again, the sigma to the second person singular forms of the passive.

The change of [s] to [h] and thence to oblivion is a common process in the history of languages, and but this change affects Indo-European languages (of which Greek is one) particularly severely because the [s] marks the difference between the second and third persons, i.e., between 'you' and 'he'. Languages which which lose the sound sense between these two forms (and possible examples of such appear as early as the Hittite Empire) must make presonal pronouns obligatory; the guardians of the Greek tongue strenuously resist this aspect of analytical languages. Classical Greek uses the sigma, in various positions, as the marker of second personal singular, the future, and the aorist. The second person singular of the present active form (λυεις, “you loose”) is already a restoration of the consonant from the second person singular of the imperfect form (ελυες, “you were loosing”), although the resurrected sigma, like a borrowed letter of the alphabet, was placed after the new long vowel (ει) rather than between the two former short vowels where it had existed before (*εσι). The sigma of the future was restored in the empty position (sigmata?) between the vowels of the verb on the analogy of the sigmas which followed consonants, but not for every verb.

The damage, however, that the disappearance of future sigma caused does not compare to the jarring contractions from the absence of sigma in the present and imperfect of the medio-passive verb. This disruption appears most clearly in the student recitation of verbal endings, in a singsong voice and with frequently wrong syllabic stress, when the pleasant symmetry of the trisyllabic first and third person forms fails to appear in the second person and contracts (ηι < *εσαι, ου < *εσο), thereby hiding the characteristic vowels of these particular conjugations. Classical Greek possesses many contracted forms of verbs (three classes, in fact), but usually all six forms are contracted, not just one. The historian Herodotus' Ionic dialect shuns most contractions (and some contractions are probably the result of Attic or Atticizing editors), but even there the asigmatic second person (εαι) causes the tongue to stumble.

The preservation of the (medio)passive form in Modern Greek is not startling, given the large number of mediopassive and deponent verbs in Classical Greek, but the restoration of the sigma in the second person form (in the linguistically historical form εσαι, no less, even if the pronunciation has slightly changed) provides a symmetry and sensibility of the passive forms, and fits well with the extensive analogical remodeling of the Greek verbal system.

The Tahoe Tongue: Blankets, Blood, and Bone

The first "grammatical" chapter of Jacobsen's Washo grammar - it seems to be a language learning book tradition to treat proper pronunciation as a section before a chapter - discusses possessive prefixes on vowel-initial stems. A complete Washo "word" always begins with a consonant, of which the glottal stop is one. The expected three persons, a grammatical trinity appear here, with a fourth, more neutral, form, but there is no distinction of number. The ways of plurality and duality will be revealed in later chapters, but the idea of plurality seems less central to Washo than English. This, I am given to understand, is fairly common among North American indigenous languages, and certainly many Spanish and Chinese primary language speakers drop the English plural and find context sufficient.

The method by which the language indicates a possessor is prefixation. Thus 'my house' is láŋal, 'your house' is máŋal, and 'his/her/its/their house' is ťáŋal. Since Washo is a language in the real world, naturally this elegant system comes with a few notes. The first person prefix is not l-, but le-, in which the superscript e indicates that the /i/ of a root becomes /e/ after the first person prefix. This 'vowel coloring' will appear in later prefixed forms. What is necessary now is to note that the series 'my blanket, your blanket, his blanket' appears in Washo as lépi?, mípi?, ťípi?, in which the root is 'blanket' ípi?. The other caveat about these forms is that there exists a fourth form, d-, which indicates no particular possessor. The d- prefix, however, does not occur on every form. Vowel-initial stems for words which indicate physical relationships or parts of the body that would identify the species must take ť-. The physical relationship requirement is the clearer of the two categories; íyeš means 'daughter-in-law', and one must be a daughter-in-law in relation to someone else. The latter category can be best illustrated by two roots: ášaŋ, 'blood', and á:daš, 'meat'. The source of blood, prior to the modern era, was not immediately identifiable if the source had departed, but the source of meat could be identified by the meat itself. Rattlesnake tastes different (and worse, so I'm told) than venison. Thus dášaŋ and ťášaŋ are valid forms, but ťá:daš is the only valid form for its root.

Aloha Judd

I have decided, with much reluctance, to abandon Judd's Hawaiian grammar. Neither the antiquity of the book nor the paucity of the 'okina has forced this decision; the former has a certain appeal to me, and the latter provides a more realistic way that English speakers would render words and places in Hawaiian. The rising complexity of the grammar, however, has proven difficult without an answer key in the back of the book or a native speaker, and I find learning material in the wrong way a more grievous sin against the goddess Grammar than learning it correctly after a delay. As I have noted, this is a painful and disappointing decision, given the fascinating features further down the path, but I feel it is the right one. But fear not! I shall not abandon my linguistic browsing, but merely seek sustenance in other fields.

How Stupid Is "You"?

One of the infuriating aspects of translation exercises in which one of the languages is English is the ambivalence of "you". Although the standard varieties of English are content with this ambiguity, an informal style which arose from an excess of formality, the common language is not, as the proliferation of forms such as  "yous", "y'all", and "yinz" attests. If the exercise in question involves English only, the ambiguity remains a minor annoyance. If another language which does not treat familiar forms so cavalierly enters the situation, the :"you" problem becomes critical. Many European languages use the second person plural as a polite singular, and others retain the simple singular/plural distinction. Often I use "thou" in my language notes, thereby transforming the familiar term to a technical one, and eschewing the hideous parenthesis (pl). This method, however, is analogous to the abbreviations we all have used in note taking - it suitable for private use, but would confuse and annoy those from whom we recieve grades. In Latin and Greek learning texts, the distinction is clearly marked, and expected to be noted, but in more casual texts of the modern languages, the poor Anglophone does not know which to use. At least in European countries politeness is the criterion rather than ethnicity!

Easter Adjustment: Perhaps This Is the 2012 Big Change

This year and next, the Western and the Eastern Churches celebrate Easter on the same weekend rather than one or two weeks apart. Although one of the advantages from my (admittedly selfishly aesthetic) perspective of the Easter schedule differential is the ability to fulfill my obligations and also attend an Orthodox service (even an ordinary Orthodox service is worth experiencing once), this calendrical concordance presents an opportunity to harmonize the Easter dates. Such an action has precedent; there were far more than two dates for Easter in the ancient Christian world, just as there were multiple dates for Passover within the Roman Imperium. The discordant dates (thankfully now reduced to two) appeared again when Pope Gregory consulted his astronomers and found that the Western Calendar had slipped 11 days; so he decided that the year would lack 11 days (calendrical and orthographical reform are two of the few benefits of autocracy). The change was not adopted all at once; the Catholic countries adopted it, but the Protestants were not about to change their calendars at the word of someone whom they deemed the Anti-Christ. The Protestant businessmen, who had Catholic contacts, eventually prevailed upon their respective governments to adopt the Gregorian reform. The difference in calendars had become entrenched by the time the Russian government decided to change, but by the end of the twentieth century, the only area in which the Easter date remained different was the Orthodox calendar.

It would be a great show of Christian unity if the Easter calendar could be made to harmonize. It is not dependent on a point of theology (then, neither, is the celibacy of Catholic priests), so the many disputes are moot. The past half-century has seen much smoothing over of previously prickly arguments. Next year is also a "shared" year, so the time is short for harmonization.

Who would lead in this adjustment of the calculation of Easter? Ideally, it would be a conference between Protestant leaders, the Pope, and the Eastern Metropolitans, but the recent outbreak of priestly child abuse has the Pope and the arthritic national churches of Europe distracted. If anyone is going to lead this drive, it should be the Metropolitans and the Protestants, but the final decision needs to be agreed upon by all the denominations.

I Found My Heart in San Fran-βρίσκω

One of my resolutions for this year (and possibly next!) is to work through all the Teach Yourself books and pamphlets which line my shelf. Unlike certain fraudulent intellectuals, I feel guilty about having books on my shelf which I have not read, and I love doing grammar exercises (I recite declensions and conjugations as a concentration/anti-drowsiness tool). So I have made the above resolution, although I should note that I am exempting the phrasebooks, because they lack the exercises I find essential to learning a foreign language. If anyobody has lsuccessfully learned a language from a phrasebook, I would love to hear how you managed.

I did Malay last summer, and Washo this spring (check out the University of Chicago Washo Language Revival website here), and am now working on Modern Greek. It is my eternal shame that I, a Classical Languages major, have not yet been to Greece, and although I am more interested in the ancient than the modern, I can't talk to modern Greeks in Classical or Koine! The first adjustment, of course, was the abundance of "i" in Modern Greek; but if you actually scutinize the vowel system of Modern Greek without the overlying archaic orthography, it is a standard five vowel system. Greek has experienced similar analogical pressures and analytical tendencies as the Romance languages (or any system that is moving away from a highly developed system of conjugations and declensions), but its conjugations and declensions have weathered the process better than those of the Romance languages, at least Dhimotiki - Tsakonian dialect apparently has gone further down the analytical path.

One of the delights of learning a later version of a language when you have learned an earlier stage (and I do not wish to get into the language/different language argument) is the pleasant surprise of discovering that the unfamiliar word is familiar after all, a sort of diachronic déjà vu.The formation of the future of δουλεύω with a ψ was a little surprising, but made sense given the consonantal pronunciation of υ in former υ-second diphthongs. Even that knowledge did not prepare me to immediately recognize βρίσκω and βρήκα as descendants of Archimedes' bathtime revelation. In hindsight, this is what naturally would have happened to any verb that seemed to have an augment (ε is the the default) in the present, where no augment ought to be, and, in truth, the augment was less firmly attached in ancient poetry than in prose.