#Yaghan Native Language

[xtruss]

Excavating a Language at the End of the World

How an Old Dictionary is Revealing New Perspectives on an Indigenous Culture.

— By Katarina Zimmer | July 31, 2024

Image: Shutterstock

Deep in the southern hemisphere, where frigid waves lap against the toe of the South American continent, the sea has no single name. Locals have called it tāralömbi when the water is perfectly calm. Čilamaii are the swells that gather along the coast, mötālömön is the roughening of the water by western breezes. Döna is the term when certain winds ruffle the ocean’s surface in such a way that the movement of fish underneath cannot be discerned and canoes must return ashore.

The Indigenous Yaghan people who have spoken these words are native to Tierra del Fuego—the mosaic of islands, fjords, channels, bays, and coves created by the submerged foot of the Andean mountains in southern Argentina and Chile. The Yaghan and their ancestors are thought to have persisted in this harsh, windy, and cold seascape for thousands of years. There, they have built canoes, from which they hunted sea lions and seals with harpoons. They have caught fish, gathered mussels, made ornaments, and celebrated rites of passage. They have roamed far and wide.

The last truly native speaker of Yaghan, Cristina Calderón, died in 2022. Up to a few hundred members of the group are still alive today—including Calderón’s granddaughter Cristina Zárraga and others who are working to revitalize the language; Yaghan is classified as “dormant” by the Endangered Languages Project.

Dictionaries, it turns out, can be excavated for rich information missing from the archeological record.

Although archaeologists have long been fascinated by the deep history of this seafaring, nomadic people, many of the physical remains their ancestors left behind have been lost to time. Fortunately, they have also left clues in the Yaghan language.

The Yaghan words for the sea were exhumed from a 19th-century Yaghan-English dictionary compiled in the late 1800s by an Anglican missionary. In a recent paper in the International Journal of Historical Archaeology, a team of Norwegian scholars argue that studying this historical snapshot of Yaghan could yield important clues about these people’s lives over the centuries. The same approach could be used for potentially hundreds of other languages, dead, alive, or dormant, across the globe to better understand old ways of life, ancient ecologies, and humans’ connection to the landscape.

Dictionaries, Such As The One Created For The Yaghan Language, It Turns Out, Can Be Excavated For Rich and Nuanced Information Missing From The Physical Archeological Record.

“You could think about language in a similar way as we think about the archaeological sites in a landscape,” says the lead author of the new research, archaeologist Jo Sindre Eidshaug of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology’s Marine Ventures project, an international archaeological research effort. Eidshaug views language as something that “settles” a landscape just like physical artifacts, as people develop knowledge and vocabulary in places where they spent most of their time.

“This kind of research gives us a new tool to understand some [questions about] the life of these people in the past,” adds Angélica Tivoli, an archaeologist at the Austral Center for Scientific Research of the National Scientific and Technical Research Council in Ushuaia, Argentina, who wasn’t involved in the new work.

Today, while language revitalization efforts of Zárraga and others are underway, little Yaghan is currently spoken in Tierra del Fuego. The Yaghan culture and language underwent a devastating decline after Europeans arrived. In the 1880s, about 90 percent of the Yaghan people died from infectious diseases Europeans brought. The decline continued into the 20th century, when many Yaghans continued to die prematurely and faced discrimination for speaking the language. Today’s Yaghan people still fashion traditional harpoon points of whale bone and weave baskets, nowadays mostly to sell to tourists, but they can no longer canoe or boat freely due to restrictions by the Chilean Navy.

Thomas Bridges, who constructed the dictionary, first met the Yaghans as a teenager in 1856 and later lived with them for 30 years. Carefully documenting their language and culture helped Bridges to translate the Gospel of Luke into Yaghan, as part of Anglican missionary tradition to make the Bible accessible in local languages. But while a complete Yaghan Bible may never have come to fruition, Bridges’ dictionary includes about 32,000 words. “That level of detail he was documenting—it’s so beautiful,” says Oxford University ornithologist Andrew Gosler, research director of the Ethno-Ornithology World Atlas which collects Indigenous knowledge on birds. “To be able to document that kind of detail,” he says, demonstrates a closeness with the native speakers.

Grandmother Tongue: Cristina Calderón, pictured here, was the last known truly native speaker of Yaghan. She died in 2022, but her granddaughter Cristina Zárraga and others are working to revitalize the language. Historical perspectives, like that from the newly analyzed dictionary, help enrich contemporary understanding of the culture’s deep history—and connection with the landscape of Tierra del Fuego. Photo By: Víctor Alejandro Correa Rueda/Wikimedia Commons

Because Bridges was merely striving to record the Yaghan vocabulary as comprehensively as possible, his dictionary may be less colored by prejudices and personal agendas than ethnographic reports of the Yaghan by other missionaries and travelers, Eidshaug says. But still, the dictionary is limited in the kinds of questions about the past it can answer. Languages change over time, so it’s unlikely, for example, to shed light on deep archeological questions, such as the origins of the first marine hunter-gatherers in Tierra del Fuego some 7,000 years ago. Or to necessarily give a full picture of the richness and breadth of Yaghan life.

In other places, like Australia, male linguists have been historically more likely to ask men than women about their practices, documenting little on activities traditionally carried out by women, notes linguist Luisa Miceli of the University of Western Australia. Bridges also mostly worked with only one Yaghan couple—Okokko and Camilenna—to understand the language, possibly limiting his view of the communities’ activities as a whole, Gosler says. And, many concepts in Yaghan are so specific to culture and place that they’re hard, if not impossible, to fully encapsulate in other languages, adds Zárraga, who learned the language as an adult from her grandmother.

But the dictionary might have encoded detailed knowledge about the kinds of resources, practices, and deep environmental understanding that were assembled over hundreds or thousands of years in Tierra del Fuego, much of which hasn’t been preserved in the archeological record. “The kind of environmental knowledge that is picked up in this language has an antiquity to it,” Eidshaug says.

Most Physical Traces of Yaghan Culture, Like Any Remnants of Foraged Feasts, Were Lost To Time.

Wherever they went, Yaghans accumulated knowledge and vocabulary about their environment—the climate, the sea and its inhabitants, the coastline, the beach, and the forested hinterlands of Tierra del Fuego. Archaeological studies have mostly focused on shell middens along the coast—ring-shaped piles of shells that were discarded around dwellings—where animal bones and bone tools were preserved thanks to the alkaline chemistry of the shells.

The dictionary catalogs commonly hunted and foraged foods that don’t preserve—fast-degrading things like crab shells, berries, and fungi—in line with some ethnographic reports. Eidshaug counted 48 Yaghan terms for local fungi, many that describe their ripening in rich detail. For example, auačix, the round yellow summer fungus that grows on the šöšči tree: čikidönara describes immature fungi; pöša the second stage just before the fungus opens in holes and gets puffy; and dönara is when they are fully ripe, shortly after falling from the trees.

Most physical traces of the central vehicle of Yaghan culture, the bark canoe, like any remnants of auačix feasts, were also lost to time. Yet the dictionary describes in detail the resources and strategies involved in canoe-making. Bark is cut from the šöšči tree, and wood fiber called uri is used for sewing. Hūšun—seed stalks of wild celery—are sewn as pads into the seams to make them waterproof. Tstāgi soil is used to cement the seams. Tatega—pieces of young smooth bark—are attached to the canoe’s upper edges to protect paddlers from blisters. Through words like these, “we get a broader picture of the material culture,” Eidshaug says.

By Any Other Name: While trying to better understand the Yaghan language and culture—in order to craft translated Bible verse—a 19th-century Anglican missionary ended up creating a detailed map of the Indigenous group’s local knowledge and worldviews within his handwritten dictionary. Here, he documented the many Yaghan words for funguses. Credit: Yahgan Dictionary, 1865, hosted on Patagonia Bookshelf.

The dictionary also offers a window into some of the intangibles of Yaghan culture and worldview. Some entries pertain to rituals, such as kīna, an initiation ceremony for boys aged 12 to 17. The Yaghan word “to go” is often combined with prefixes to indicate direction; some denote the cardinal directions like north and south, but others indicate “toward land” or “away from shore,” illustrating how people mentally divided their landscape. Other entries explain how Yaghans kept time according to the seasonal changes in nature around them. Čgaiaŋgūta is the season for ripe auačix fungus. Čīyāgörana is the season when šöšči tree bark loosens, hākūa for making spring canoes. Iūan is the time when older crabs carry the younger ones, čīiūaiella the time after they’ve separated.

Information buried in the dictionary might also help interpret the physical archeological record. In the dictionary, for instance, Uštānim is described as a porpoise jaw used as a comb. Isöska is the lower jaw bone of a whale used as spear bones. Dictionary entries of this type could help archaeologists make sense of a hodgepodge of bones found underneath shell middens, and perhaps provide important context to certain tools, Tivoli says. “Maybe it’s a way of calling our attention to look deeper into the archaeological record,” she says.

Many nouns describe local animals, which represent a third of the dictionary. The wealth of different terms for certain animals—such as for shellfish—may reflect a recent increase in their importance as a resource relative to other creatures.

This new, linguistic approach to uncovering more about a long-lived culture as described in Eidshaug’s paper is quite valuable, says archaeologist Flavia Morello of Chile’s Institute of Patagonia and the Cape Horn International Center, both part of the University of Magallanes. It shows how dictionaries can act as gateways to unique cultures and in doing so help foster a deeper societal appreciation for cultural diversity and the kinds of relationships humans can cultivate with landscapes. “It’s very inspiring as a paper,” she says.

Archaeologists elsewhere are increasingly interested in leveraging language in similar ways. Miceli and her colleagues recently published a pilot study to explore what kind of information they could glean—from dictionaries of 10 Aboriginal languages in Australia—about domestic fire use, and whether this could be useful in guiding archaeologists in excavating sites, Miceli says. Past collaborations between archaeologists and linguists have often centered on answering questions about the likely homeland of ancestral languages, and how and why they spread, rather than using vocabulary to help with archaeological excavations. “That, I think, is quite new,” Miceli says.

Watertight Insights: Many of the physical artifacts of the Yaghan people—whose ancestors have occupied Tierra del Fuego likely for thousands of years—have been lost to time and harsh weather. By digging through the 19th-century dictionary, scholars were able to learn more about the details of how people once made the canoes that plied the area’s waters. Photo courtesy of Springer Link.

Eidshaug and his colleagues also applied this same proof of concept to a dictionary of Norwegian as it was spoken among coastal fisher-farmers and other people in the area in the 1840s. And there are many more old dictionaries of languages waiting to be excavated from archive shelves.

In the case of the Yaghan, the hope is that such investigations not only answer archaeological curiosities but also help the living communities engage more deeply with their past. “We’ve connected several times with archaeologists who study artifacts and middens, and it has always been an interesting topic for us Yaghans,” says Zárraga, who spoke with me through an interpreter from her native Spanish language.

Zárraga spent a decade living with her grandmother, learning Yaghan practices, values, and language—and about her grandmother’s experience as the culture around her eroded. “It was … very pure cultural knowledge that my grandmother had, through the language,” Zárraga recalls. She is working to carry this ancestral knowledge forward in time. She’s already written two educational books on the Yaghan language and has plans for a Yaghan-Spanish dictionary. Eidshaug, meanwhile, has digitized Bridges’ dictionary to make it more easily accessible.

Though media reports often described her grandmother as the last Yaghan speaker, Zárraga hopes her efforts will ensure that the language and its embedded information will not molder in archives, and that the unique culture it described won’t go the same way. “That’s why it’s very, very important, all of these things that my grandma gave me,” she says. “So we are not the last ones.”

— Katarina Zimmer is a Science and Environment Journalist Currently Based in Germany.

[bhaskarhindinews]

अजब-गजब: इस अनोखी भाषा को पूरी दुनिया में अकेले बोलती है यह महिला

दुनियाभर में लगभग 6,900 से भी ज्यादा भाषाएं बोली जाती हैं। इनमें से कई भाषा ऐसी हैं, जो हजारों साल पुरानी है। वहीं कई भाषा ऐसी भी हैं, जिनका अस्तित्व बहुत जल्द ही खत्म होने वाला है। क्योंकि इन भाषाओं को बोलने वाले मुश्किल से हजार लोग ही बचे हैं। कुछ इसी तरह की एक भाषा यघान है। अर्जेंटीना के एक द्वीप की ये मूल भाषा अब लगभग गायब हो चुकी है।

[script-a-world]

Hey I have a question about creating countries that are made up of islands, but not have seafood as a staple and vegetarianism is the norm among religious adherents and even among common people vegetarianism isn't unheard of. How can that make sense?

Tex: I don’t know how far back you want to look in order to find an island culture that doesn’t eat seafood or any other type of meat, but for the sake of context I’ll be throwing some darts around the map and see what island cultures typically eat.

I’ll start with Pacific Islanders and list a few of the cultures from the Pacific Ocean:

Polynesian region, composed of peoples such as the Samoans, Māori, Tahitians, Native Hawaiians, and Tongans

Micronesian region, composed of peoples such as the Carolinians, Chamorros, Chuukese, and Nauruans

Melanesian region, composed of peoples such as the Papuans, Moluccans, the Austronesian descendants in Vanuatu, and at a stretch the Torres Strait Islanders of Australia

These groups are roughly divided into two ethnolinguistic groups: the Austronesian peoples who speak Oceanic languages, and the Papuan peoples who speak the Papuan languages. For the most part, both groups are from Southeast Asia (the Papuan first wave was from the Malay Archipelago), and their linguistic origins reflect that.

It should be noted that none of these people ultimately originated from these island regions - they all came from part of a continent that was close to the Pacific Ocean. Ye olde ages ago did their ancestors decide to strike out and immigrate to new areas, and their diet adapted accordingly. Religions that ban the eating of things like shellfish and animals are a comparatively recent phenomenon, because it meant abstaining from an easily-accessible food source.

I’m going to momentarily branch off and list some island cultures of the Atlantic Ocean so my examples are a little more balanced:

Northern: Faroe Islands (Danish, sort of), Iceland, Baffin Island (Canada)

Eastern: Azores (Portugal), Canary Islands (Spain), Madeira (Portugal), São Tomé and Príncipe (Gulf of Guinea)

Western: Barbados of the Lesser Antilles, Prince Edward Island (Canada, a traditional island of the Miꞌkmaq), and Cuba (native lands of the Guanahatabey, Taíno, and Ciboney)

Antarctic region: Tierra del Fuego (Chile, native land to the Yaghan),

Many of these islands were close to nearby continents, and often traded with each other for resources, so there is cultural precedent of eating things other than marine life. A couple examples would be the Taíno, and the Kalinago peoples, both of whom originate from South America. The Yaghan “traveled by canoes between islands to collect food: the men hunted sea lions, while the women dove to collect shellfish”, so still ate some form of meat.

For a couple of Atlantic island examples that did not have indigenous people: the sailors who visited Ascension Island hunted the local birds and turtles for food, and those whole lived on Saint Helena imported livestock, fruit trees, and vegetables for the purpose of colonization.

Many, if not all, of these Atlantic islanders also ate meat of some sort, be it livestock from a continent, birds, fish, or shellfish. Historically speaking, meat of any sort was a cheaply-obtained food in terms of net caloric gain compared to net calories spent obtaining said food.

While the over-consumption of anything is bad, and red meats in particular are often touted as lending an increased risk for cardiovascular diseases - which a 2016 meta-analysis noted frequently occurred with a lifestyle risk factor (Citation 1) -  red meat in moderation is fairly healthy (Citation 2, Citation 3). There is evidence that diet affects the activation of different alleles (phys.org), which is indicative of a population’s change toward agriculture (Citation 4), though in particular an overconsumption of carbohydrates can result in metabolic inflammation and obesity (ScienceDaily).

Humans are omnivorous by default, and require 20 amino acids in order to be healthy. The nine that the human body cannot produce must be consumed from an outside source - MedicalNewsToday does an excellent job of breaking this down and informing readers of viable sources of each of these essential amino acids. Unfortunately for those who might have abstained from meat before the invention of supplements, the healthiest diet for them was made with the addition of dairy products (Citation 5, eggs (The Incredible Egg, Citation 6), and fish (Seafood Health Facts 1, Seafood Health Facts 2, Citation 7)

As I don’t know the level of technology your countries, I cannot make the assumption that non-meat amino acids can be created and distributed to your populace in a relatively inexpensive manner. The nutrient density of meat vs non-meat foods is debatable (Citation 8), so I would hesitate to forgo meat entirely in a culture without some reason as to why an otherwise viable source of nutrition cannot be used.

Human nutrition is plainly a complex topic with many sub-specialities, and would take any one of us a very long time to adequately explain even a portion of it, especially in conjunction with anthropological factors such as geographic origin and developed cultural norms. I’ve added some more things to peruse in the Further Reading section below, but please be aware that all of this only starts to scratch the surface of what you’ve asked. If you would like to return with more precise questions, we’d be more than happy to try answering them.

Citations

PDF - Song M, Fung TT, Hu FB, et al. Association of Animal and Plant Protein Intake With All-Cause and Cause-Specific Mortality. JAMA Intern Med. 2016;176(10):1453–1463. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2016.4182

PDF - McAfee, Alison J., et al. "Red meat consumption: An overview of the risks and benefits." Meat science 84.1 (2010): 1-13.

PDF - Wyness, Laura. "The role of red meat in the diet: nutrition and health benefits." Proceedings of the Nutrition Society 75.3 (2016): 227-232.

PDF - Ye, Kaixiong, et al. "Dietary adaptation of FADS genes in Europe varied across time and geography." Nature ecology & evolution 1.7 (2017): 0167.

PDF - Rafiq, Saima et al. “Chemical Composition, Nitrogen Fractions and Amino Acids Profile of Milk from Different Animal Species.” Asian-Australasian journal of animal sciences vol. 29,7 (2015): 1022-8. doi:10.5713/ajas.15.0452

PDF - Hoffman, Jay R., and Michael J. Falvo. "Protein–which is best?." Journal of sports science & medicine 3.3 (2004): 118.

PDF - Ralston, Nicholas VC. "Selenium health benefit values as seafood safety criteria." EcoHealth 5.4 (2008): 442-455.

PDF - Bohrer, Benjamin M. "Nutrient density and nutritional value of meat products and non-meat foods high in protein." Trends in food science & technology 65 (2017): 103-112.

Further Reading:

Greater Antilles - Wikipedia

Gulf and sea island of the Atlantic Ocean - Wikipedia

List of Caribbean islands - Wikipedia

Amino acid synthesis - Wikipedia

“Microbial production of amino acids and derived chemicals: synthetic biology approaches to strain development.” - PubMed

Lobster history as prison food - Wikipedia

Religious restrictions on the consumption of pork - Wikipedia

Taeniasis/cysticercosis - World Health Organization

“How Dietary Supplements Work” - How Stuff Works

“Risks and side effects of dietary supplements” - American Cancer Society

PDF - ADVERSE EFFECTS OF NUTRACEUTICALS AND DIETARY SUPPLEMENTS by MJJ Ronis et al.

Dietary Supplements - National Institutes of Health (NIH)

“Evolution of tryptophan and its foremost metabolites’ concentrations in milk and fermented dairy products” by Antonella Bertazzo et al.

PDF - Associations of Maternal Vitamin B12 Concentration in Pregnancy With the Risks of Preterm Birth and Low Birth Weight: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Individual Participant Data by Tormod Rogne et al.

Saphira: A less historical approach would be to analyze why the Vegetarianism is highlighted by Religious pursuit. I would even gamble that the culture was originally focused on seafood, until something changed. Did a new predator enter the seas, making it hard to feed the people? Did they overfish? Who knows.

But something saved them from starvation when the waters rose empty. Things grew on land. Either it was a gift from the Divines that they worship, or a Prophet, or perhaps there’s even a stranger lore more Maoi styled: And so the [Divine] in all their wisdom told [ancient hero] to take the last fish of the sea, and plant it on the highest hill. [Ancient hero] fed their family from the catch, but did not eat the last fish. Hungry and tired, they climbed to the highest peak and planted the fish in the Earth- and the [Divine] blessed his faith and good will. From the fish sprouted the first [main plant food], in such abundance, that [Ancient Hero] ate their fill, and brought down the plenty for the first farmers.Contrived? Yes. Tried and true? You betcha. Consider how the habits and the rituals they serve today serve as tethers, or tangible connections to their heritage, history and culture.

Constablewrites: Writing With Color covered the role of cows in Hinduism here, which might be helpful for framing your thinking. But when religion is negatively impacting the survival of the community, it’s generally more likely that religion sprouts a loophole than that the whole tribe piously starves to death. (See also the Catholic church designating beaver as a fish for purposes of Lent.)

[linguisten]

Endangered Languages Challenge: Yaghan

Endangered Languages Challenge — round 1, post 7: Yaghan

name(s) of the language Háusi Kúta, Jagan, Tequenica, Yagan, Yagán, Yaghan, Yahgan, Yamana, Yamaná, Yámana, Yamaneg, Yapoo

genealogical affiliation Isolate

location of the language Navarino Island, Tierra del Fuego, Chile

number of speakers 1 speaker (91 years old as of 2019); small remaining ethnic community of less than 1600 people

endangerment situation  The language is critically endangered, its extinction is imminent, as there is only one speaker left and regular vertical transmission had already ceased generations ago.  Following the death of 84-year-old Emelinda Acuña (1921 – October 12, 2005), only one native speaker remains, Cristina Calderón of Villa Ukika on Navarino Island, Chile. Calderón (often referred to as simply Abuela) is the sister-in-law of Acuña. In 2017, Chile's National Corporation of Indigenous Development convened a workshop to plan an educational curriculum in the Yagán language, and in June 2019 it plans to inaugurate a language nest in the community of Bajia Mejillones.[7][8] The government is also funding the publication of a "concise and illustrated dictionary" of the Yagán language. [wikipedia]

speaker community Currently no “community” left; if revitalization efforts bear fruits, a new generation of speakers (or: heritage speakers) may grow up.  In 1876 a serious smallpox epidemic decimated the Fuegians. Between 1881 and 1883 the Yahgan population dropped from perhaps 3,000 to only 1,000 due to measles and smallpox. When Chileans and Argentines of European descent studied, invaded and settled on the islands in the mid-19th century, they brought with them diseases such as measles and smallpox for which the Fuegians had no immunity. By 1876 the British missionaries claimed to have converted the entire Yamana people. [wikipedia]

language breakdown Structural collapse has not yet been reported. The language fell out of use in all domains decades ago.

official / legal status The language does not have any official status.

documentation status The language has been subject to over 160 scholarly articles and has been described linguistically (grammar, dictionary); there are archived corpora and teaching materials

Sources & Resources:

http://www.multitree.org/codes/yag.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuegians

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaghan_language

http://endangeredlanguages.com/lang/1647?hl=en

http://www.language-archives.org/language/yag#language_descriptions

https://glottolog.org/resource/languoid/id/yama1264

[ootravels]

BEST Places to Visit in Ushuaia - Best Things to Do in Ushuaia | ootravels

Ushuaia is an Argentinian city positioned on the banks of the Beagle Channel, a gateway to Antarctica, Cape Horn and the South Pole. Situated in a harsh and hostile land, it is known to be one of the most southern localities in the world, at the southern end of Patagonia and the Andes Mountains. The Capital of the Land of Fire province (Tierra del Fuego), Ushuaia coincides with the end of the Pan-American Highway in its southern part. This network of land routes connects all the continents of the Americas on a main road covering approximately 30,000 kilometres.

Meaning “At the bottom of the bay” in the language of the Yaghan native people, the first inhabitants of the region, Ushuaia is a unique destination at the end of the world. Due to its location on the Big Island of the Land of Fire, it is separated from the rest of South America by the maritime passage of the Strait of Magellan (the latter marks an important crossing point between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans). Further south, the bay gives way to a vast archipelago made up of approximately one hundred islands shared between Chile and Argentina. They are home to dense wildlife with its colonies of birds, penguins, seals and sea lions. Mountains, forests, plains, beaches, islands, rocky coasts and glaciers extend there as far as the eye can see. Off Ushuaia, icebreakers and cruise ships coexist in a magnificent natural landscape.  Places to visit in ushuaia

Despite its geographic isolation, this province has been inhabited for over 10,000 years by nomadic Amerindian peoples. The first explorers from Western Europe discovered it in 1520.

Among them is the Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan. He called it “Land of Manure” because of the blaze lit along the coast by the Amerindian people (probably an alert signal to warn the various camps of an imminent threat). This appellation was later changed to Land of Fire (“Tierra de los Fuegos”) by the Spanish monarch Charles V, Holy Roman Empire. In the 19th century, Ushuaia attracted the first seal skin hunters, whale fishermen and gold diggers. Then, this place became a penitentiary centre and the place of a military prison in which many political prisoners are detained. It was not until the 1980s that Ushuaia aroused the interest of new adventurers and explorers, seduced by its preserved natural heritage. Like the Falkland Islands, the South Orkney Islands, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, the region of Places to visit in ushuaia is the subject of strong territorial claims. Based on historical and strategic elements, Argentina, Chile and the United Kingdom regularly compete for its possession.

  For more information please visit our website: Ootravels.com/en

[thetrendingfashions]

Only one woman in the world speaks this unique language!

New delhi date. 04 October 2020, Sunday

More than 6,900 languages ​​are spoken worldwide. How many of them are languages ​​that are thousands of years old. Then there are some languages ​​that are coming to an end very soon. Because only a few thousand speakers of these languages ​​have survived. Something like this is just a language. This native language of an Argentine island is now almost extinct.

The shocking thing about the Yaghan language is that the only person alive who speaks this language is a woman. It is worth mentioning that the Yaghan language was spoken by the tribal people living on the island of Tierra del Fuego between Argentina and Chile. This language is considered to be similar to Sanskrit. However, there is only one older woman who speaks this language.

The Yaghan-speaking woman's name is Christina Calderon. The locals call Christina Abuila. Abuilla is a Spanish word meaning grandmother. The rest of Cristina's family members speak languages ​​like Spanish or English. However, many members of the family understand the language but cannot speak it.

Christina has also been honored several times for the survival of the Yaghan language. In 2009, the Chilean government awarded him the title of Living Human Treasure. This title is given to those who have played an important role in preserving the culture.

It is worth mentioning that Yaghan was not only a language but also the name of a Banjara society, which spread from South America to Chile and Argentina. The Portuguese first learned of the clan in 1520, and today Christina is campaigning to keep the Yaghan language alive with government help. Christina works to teach this language to young children in a school in Argentina.

For more information please go to https://ift.tt/3bbz2Ph

[mrclassin-blog]

Sometimes You Just Don’t Have the Right Word? Now You Do!

There are times when you stammer and gesticulate but can’t come up with the right word to express your thoughts and ideas. And unfortunately not all the words you might be looking for exist in your native language. Now you search for the word in the multiple languages you speak in (if you’re a polyglot) but always doing that becomes a polyglot problem. True? Fret not! MrClass has figured out an easy and fun solution for this: just use an untranslatable word from any foreign language! Why?                

Untranslatable words offer vivid descriptions for things you wouldn’t otherwise be able to explain easily as they capture essential meanings that words in other languages do not. Additionally, untranslatable enhance your vocabulary. So here are the 5 untranslatable words you should know to describe the complexities of life-  

1. Schadenfreude

Say it as SHAH:dən:froy:də

Language: German

Meaning: Pleasure derived from someone’s misfortune.

2. Mokita

Language: Kilivila

Say it as it is.

Meaning: Something everyone knows but do not discuss.

3. Mamihlapinatapei

Language: Yagán/Yaghan

Say it as Ma-meh-la-pin-a-ta-pay

Meaning: Named as the “most succinct” word by the Guinness Book of World Records. It refers to an expressive exchange of glances when two people share the same thought.

4. 侘寂 (Wabi-sabi)

Language: Japanese

Say it as it is.

Meaning: Beautiful imperfection.

5. Tartle

Language: Scottish

Say it as it is.

Meaning: The hesitation when you’re about to introduce someone but realize you’ve forgotten his or her name.

Aren’t these untranslatable words descriptive, entertaining and absolutely cool? Want to learn more? Join

MrClass. The best institute for spoken English and Foreign language learning in Bhubaneswar. So the next time you can’t figure out the right word to communicate your thought or idea, do not hesitate to throw in an untranslatable word!