#Language Rights

[arkipelagic]

The languages of the Philippines. From the Inquirer (2022):

As we celebrate the National Language Month, let's take a look at the state of Philippine languages according to the Summer Institute of Linguistics' Ethnologue 2022.

Updated data show that of the country's 184 living languages, 11 are "dying," while 35 are "in trouble."

The 11 "dying" languages include: Arta, Bontok (Northern), Bontok (Southwestern), Dumagat (Remontado), Inagta Alabat, Agta (Katubung), Ata, Ayta (Sorsogon), Ratagnon, Tagbanwa (Central), Eskayan.

A "dying" language, as categorized by Ethnologue, means that "the only fluent users (if any) are older than child-bearing age, so it is too late to restore natural intergenerational transmission through the home."

[Note: Fairly recently, my grandmother - who is over ninety years old and is in the emergency room as I write this - complained about the overuse of the Cebuano language over her native language. She has ancestry from both east and west of Mindanao but is rooted firmly in Agusan where, as a child, she spoke fluent Manobo and Maranao in addition to the newcomers’ Cebuano.

Some of her younger relatives have married Visayan men and speak Visayan languages. It has always irritated my grandmother to speak to family in Manobo and be understood - only to be replied to in Cebuano!]

[useless-catalanfacts]

Clip from the German stand up comedian Shahak Shapira who did a gig in Barcelona (Catalonia's capital city). He saw it so clearly.

[moonshinemagpie]

Everyone: Please please please don't write your books in Google Docs. Frankly don't use Google Drive for personal stuff.

Their terms of service say they take down stuff like content related to terrorism and trafficking, but this Google Sheet was literally a list of movies I'd watched this year and books I'd read.

[alivingtypo]

you can pry starting sentences with 'and' or 'but' out of my cold, dead hands

[surviving-the-next-4-years]

Republicans deliberately use coded language to trick people to vote for them and radicalize their group. Many don't even realize they're radicalized or what they're saying is even racist. This is why they think the Left is "over reacting" because the either know they're using coded language and don't care, or they don't know anything at all.

[iyemarathichiyenagari1971]

चला, राष्ट्रीय एकात्मतेसाठी संस्कृती जोपासूया…

भाषा सक्ती, राष्ट्रीय एकात्मता, व्यक्तीवाद आणि मानसिक असुरक्षितता…. India,that is bharat shall be a union of states…असं भारतीय संविधानाचे निर्माते डॉ. बाबासाहेब आंबेडकरांनी लिहून ठेवलंय….त्यांनी Federation हा शब्द जाणीवपूर्वक नाही वापरला. का नसेल वापरला?…कधी विचार केला आहे ? याचं कारण ज्यावेळी भारत स्वतंत्र झाला त्यावेळी आधीच धर्माच्या नावावर देशाचं विभाजन झालं होतं…या देशात अनेक राष्ट्रकं आहेत…

[stingrayextraordinaire]

Another year, another group of my delightful ninth graders trying to spell the word "tragedy" for their Romeo and Juliet assignment.

Last year's collection

[fozmeadows]

fact: when pidgin dialects involve english, -glish becomes the suffix, eg: chinglish, konglish, hinglish fact: slash pair name order puts the top first and the bottom second, eg: deancas vs casdean conclusion: english is an uke language and that’s why we have an omegaverse, not an alphaverse

[ikuzeminna]

I need your help with a hypothesis!

For context: My linguistics professor and I got into a discussion after a test she did with us, and I was of the opinion that the reason for the results was different from the one she offered, so she encouraged me to test my theory.

What I need

All you need to do is draw a coffee cup (with a handle, not the disposable stuff) and then answer three questions.

I don't need to see the coffee cup. You can draw it wherever you like; on a piece of paper, digitally, in the sand, on a foggy window. Anything works. It does not have to be good. A doodle is fine.

You have to draw the coffee cup before you see the questions. This is very important. If you decide to help me with this, please doodle the coffee cup before you keep reading.

Assuming you have drawn the coffee cup, I now need you to answer these three questions:

On which side did you draw the handle?

Are you right-handed or left-handed?

Do you primarily write using the Latin alphabet or a different one? (please specify which)

More context

Most people will draw the handle on the right side. My professor says it's because most people are right-handed, so they draw the handle in the direction that would be comfortable for them to pick up.

I said drawing it on the right side just felt more comfortable to my hand and argued it's probably because we write a bunch of letters like that. B, b, D, P, p, R all look like a tiny "handle on the right side" and are all a straight line followed by a round one (so "cup first, handle second," like most people draw cups). The Latin alphabet doesn't have letters like that that face the other way, except maybe d, depending on how you write it, so it makes sense to me that people writing mostly Latin letters would go with the handle on the right side.

Which means that I need to know what Asians, Arabs and Greeks do and if the distribution of left and right sides of handles differs from the Latin alphabet group. Cyrillic seems to favor right, too, though it'd be interesting to see if there are differences.

If there are, my theory is right. Doubly so if there is a sizeable increase in a group whose alphabet has letters that benefit the left side choice.

So feel free to spread this to as many people as you like and put the answers in the comments or the tags of a reblog. The more answers I get, the better I can assess whose theory is better.

Thank you for your help!

[talshiargirlfriend]

the percentage of my internet searches that are just me checking if that word really means what I think it means is so high

[useless-catalanfacts]

Yesterday, the linguist and activist Carme Junyent died. It saddens me deeply to write this post, because she was someone who I really admire.

She was a linguist who led the Grup d'Estudis de Llengües Amenaçades (GELA, Research Group on Endangered Languages) in University of Barcelona and author of many books and articles about language diversity and the defense of minoritized and/or indigenous languages here and around the world, and a firm defensor of immigrants' language rights and cultural diversity. She was also very active in defense of the language rights of her own community, Catalan speakers, against linguistic imperialism from Spanish and French.

Even in her last moments, she wrote an article about the right to die speaking one's mother language (Catalan in our case) if you are in your own country, instead of the usual case of forcing the patients who are part of the local marginalized and/or indigenous language community (even those in the very last moment of their lives) to speak in the dominant state language (Spanish, in our case). She sent it to the newspaper Vilaweb, where she often collaborated, to be published right after her death:

She has died of cancer at 68 years old. In her last months, most doctors who treated her in Catalonia's public healthcare system did not speak or did not want to speak Catalan, only Spanish. But she took the decision to keep firm and not change her language, so she could die in her mother tongue.

[rikaklassen]

CW: medical neglect

Went in for a medical appointment two years ago because I was worried I might have something going on and wanted an informed opinion on what to do and what we can do. Then was told: "Oh no, don't worry about it. Just come in for regular check-ups every few months."

Only to receive a confirmation during today's appointment I do have the condition I was concerned about. And they're just kind of like "oh, we will just have to remove it eventually in the future. It's fine for now."

This annoys me because did research what surgical measures could be done before making that first appointment several years ago to prevent the progression of the condition from getting worse, in which resulted in several sessions and follow-up appointments. I informed myself because I'm deaf and there's no interpreters here. Video relay is atrocious. And I needed to know what we were talking about via pen-and-paper and lipreading.

Gosh, and professionals wonder why disabled people don't trust doctors.

Doesn't really help with my anger at the moment because I did repost a video about healthcare access for deaf, hard-of-hearing and deafblind individuals a few weeks ago.

I am also angry because right before the COVID lockdowns, I did have a friend who offered to interpret for me at the doctor if I travelled to visit them and stay at their place. Even moreso infuriating because I did once have another friend who wanted to go through the process of legal cohabitation, common-law or marriage to make sure I have access to universal healthcare.

[rocketbirdie]

face value

[pangur-and-grim]

also I thought that finding a publisher would be gruelling, because I applied to 100+ literary agents and only got one acceptance, BUT a surprising percentage of the publishers we've applied to have been interested???

having an agent who knows how to describe your book as something marketable is such a boon. I think a lot of my trouble when I was still on my own is that I had no idea how to sell myself

[shiverandqueeef]

Rūrangi S1E4 (2020) dir. Max Currie