Recently in Global Awareness Category
An interesting quirk happened in an iTunes search today. I have to admit that I religiously check out the iTunes Song/Video of the Week (even on vacation on my slower home DSL connection).
Two Artists, One Person
This week, the video was from singer Utada, a pop singer hoping to break into the English market. The iTunes description noted that she was from Japan, and being a linguist, I HAD to check out the Japanse originals (especially since she sounds just like an American R&B singer).
In iTunes, you can click on the tab of the artist's name (Utada) to see more of her (or his) work. But when I clicked, I only found her English songs. Was iTunes NOT selling her Japanese material?
Actually, they were, but under her full name of Utada Hikaru. So apparently, you need to go to Utada for English and Utada Hikaru for Japanese (aka Hikaru Utada or Hikki). What's happening here?
Without too much investigation, it seems like that the ultimate cause is U.S. vs Japanese marketing. Hikaru does have the major challenge of trying to be the first East Asian star to break out into the U.S. market which thus far has only accepted a few Latino and non-English speaker European stars. I would say that the name Utada was chosen as a way to emphasize her R&B style (as in Rihanna, Beyoncé, Tweet, and others) as well as de-emphasizing her "alien" name. Alas the alternate "Hikki" was not an option in the U.S. market.
So now we have an American vs Japanese name, and a database that doesn't appear to do cross references so well. Hmm.
Database Questions
First, I do have to comment that I wish iTunes had a slightly smarter database. Artists sometimes go through a lot of name changes (Puff Daddy/P. Diddy anyone), and some academics aren't always in tune with the music scene. Even in FileMaker I know of ways of circumventing this issue.
Speaking of cross references, I wouldn't mind if iTunes could connect bands with spin-off solo acts. For instance, I heard Ann & Nancy Wilson stopped recording under Heart and switched to a new name, but the only way to know for sure is to check Wikipedia. I bet they (& Apple) are losing some sales here.
Can't I Find More international Music?
But let's switch back to global culture for a moment. Another quirk of the iTunes database is that the Utada Hikaru songs in Japanese are classified as "J-Pop" (Japanese pop I presume), but other than language, I don't think Utada is actually a different genre from say Rihanna, the Spice Girls or Jazmine Sullivan. All three acts feature strong vocals, well-crafted tracks which vary between ballads and uptempo.
The Japanese tracks are all Western musically (unless I'm missing a spare Japanese instrument). Note that this is somewhat different from Latin American music which often features traditional Latin American musical elements.
So shouldn't Japanese Utada Hikaru be the same genre as American Utada? Apparently iTunes isn't sure we're ready for that yet, and maybe we're not. But since iTunes lets us purchase single songs and experience 30-second previews, I think the opportunity for Americans to learn more about world pop (and traditional world) is there as never before. I just wish it were a little easier to move beyond the categories already established in the U.S. market.
FYI - I applaud iTunes for it's "World" category which is mostly traditional music. But I do also want to know that the world teens are listening to - even if it's U.S. style music with Japanese lyrics. Besides, Utada HIkaru can really, really sing.
As the action adventure show Burn Notice ended last week, the lead character Michael said that the mysterious agent Carla spoke "Arabic with a Kurdish accent". Hmmm.
What could this mean? First, I should note that Kurdish is actually a separate language from Arabic. In fact Kurdish is very distantly related to English (but more closely related to Persian and Pushto).
So "Arabic with a Kurdish accent does not mean Carla is speaking Arabic with a native accent, but rather that she has somehow picked up Arabic with a foreign accent (e.g. it would be like a French person learning to speak English with a Mexican accent). I initially thought this might be another TV screw up, but I decided to see if "Arabic with a Kurdish accent" was plausible.
If you look at the UCLA Kurdish Map, you'll see that the Kurds are a minority group living in several countries including Turkey, Armenia, Iran and Iraq. Because they are a minority group, it's likely than many are bilingual in Kurdish and the main language of the country they are currently living in. The candidate countries would be Turkey (Turkish), Armenia (Armenian and possibly Russian), Iran (Persian/Farsi) and ... Iraq (Arabic!).
So I would guess that "Arabic with a Kurdish accent" would mean Northern Iraq. Interestingly, there may be people of Kurdish heritage in northern Iraq who now primarily speak Arabic, but may be maintaining Kurdish phonology (i.e. "a Kurdish accent"). This would be similar to speakers of Hiberno-English (Irish English) who only speak English, but with phonolofical features of Irish (Gaelic) or even some New York English speakers of Latino descent who mostly speak English, but with a slight Spanish accent
I'll be interested to see if mystery agent Carla has indeed spent some time in northern Iraq (it would make plot sense). I'll also be curious to see if she speaks both Kurdish and Arabic....
I'm cleaning my desk and ran into an alumni magazine with the provocative headline Did the Samurai Have a Sense of Humor? Gee - I wonder if the answer is "Yes!". Oh look the subtitle is The Phenomenon of 18th-Century Japanese Comic Books - and we all know how silly they are. Hey if you don't believe me, ask Harvard 18th century Japanese expert Adam Kern
The article goes on at great length to explain that not only was there 18th century satirical manga in Japan, but that it was a criticism of modern political and social events. But let's just cut to some compelling dialogue from 1785's Playboy, Roasted à la Edo
Plot: The semi-attractive mercantile son Enjiro asks friends and geisha for advice on obtaining the love of many women proclaiming: "For a lifetime of memories, I'd kill myself."
Best Advice: When placing tattoos representing fake women on your arm, don't forget to remove some later to show that you have "discarded" them.
Kinosuke: (experienced playboy) It'll look suspicious if some tattoos aren't erased, so we'll burn them off later with moxa
Enjiro: (aspiring playboy) Who'd've thought becoming a playboy would hurt so much?
Now that you're done giggling, I do have a point which is that it's still a shock when we discover that an ancient/foreign culture is capable of "sophisticated" humor or irony. Somehow we expect people far outside our culture to either be so serious or so "different" that they could not really understand Western humor or "abstract" concepts like social satire.
For instance, Vikings, Celts and Saxons are portrayed as fierce warriors whose idea of a good idea was binge drinking in the mead hall and that their comedic range was restricted to maybe bad Three Stooges pratfalls with helmets. Yet one of the best "parodies" of the fantasy quest is from the Middle Welsh Mabinogi. When the hero Pwyll, who spends a year chasing the beautiful Rhiannon on horseback, finally catches up with her, she asks him why he didn't just yell out to her to stop in the first place. And you thought Princess Leia's spunk was a modern invention.
So watch the Discovery Channel carefully the next time a Caucasian adventurer wants to experience a more primitive life and see if you don't spot an "indigenous" citizen barely containing snickers at the complete idiocy that only a city slicker can display.
One question that comes up a lot is why is it important for all students to learn algebra or trigonometry if only a small minority will ever use these tools in daily life. The standard answer is that algebra teaches you "mathematical thinking," but I'm pretty sure most students (especially those who hate math) miss the point. Actually, I would say that if you want to learn "deductive" skills, you're better off taking formal logic or rhetoric.
However, there is one aspect of algebra that is important in real, but rarely pointed out and that's its ability to provide multiple respresentations for "the same thing". For instance the concept of "1" can be represented as "1", 4/4 (four-fourths), x0, |i2| and my personal favorite - .999999... And believe me I haven't even touched the tip of the iceburg. Although these formulations all represent the same quantity, they do not quite the same meaning.
You normally use "1" in real life, but if you're working on a weird property issue where an piece of lanf is divided into quarters maybe the formulation "4/4" would have meaning. Or maybe you have a formula which you raise x to a certain power - whatever it is. It's just that when it's zero, the result is 1.
My point isn't just that the "same" item can have multiple representations but that the different representations can be selected to help you focus in a different aspect. To borrow a concept from Semantics class, the meaning of something is partly fixed by your context - but you have to know EXACTLY what your context is.
The use of multiple representations does extend beyond algebra (and I don't just mean linguistics either). For instance, there are lots of places around the world which have multiple place names, and sometimes you select one based on what era you are studying.
For instance modern historians may study be studying "Turkey", but historians from the 14th-early 20th century may be studying the heartland of the "Ottoman Empire" while those who specialize in the Bronze Age probably study "Anatolia" and Roman historians are probably studying "Asia Minor." It's roughly the same place, but the different names not only establish the time context, but can be used fudge minor details like changing political borders.
You don't want to start calling modern Turkey "Anatolia", but the use of the term "Anatolia" is useful for referencing the set of Bronze Age cultures in the region (none of which are now related to the modern Turkish culture in terms of language or religion)...so you don't usually call ancient Anatolia "Ancient Turkey" either (unless you're writing a tourist brochure). And no matter what - you never want to confuse Turkey with Turkestan (not cool).
This kind of mathematical thinking isn't about accepting one "right answer," but systematically determining what the possible answers are and when to deploy them while understanding that some answers are just plain wrong!
I've participated in and/or observed a lot of hot academic debates such as "language rules or language constraints?", "qualitative or quantitative research?", "English or Spanish?" "Mac or PC" and a new addition "Is history about trends or dates?" The premise behind many of these discussions is that you must choose between or option OR another. Rarely is it the case that a discussion centers around the idea that maybe BOTH categories could be appropriate.
As a linguist, I believe in categories, but have you noticed that items often fall into more than one category? Or that depending on what "filter" you have on at the time - items may appear different?
Take the social science debate of "quantitative" (data primarily from statistical analysis) "qualitative" (data from interviews). Quantitative specialists prefer this method because results are more precisely quantified and easier to generalize (assuming your survey pool is long enough). On the other hand qualitative specialists feel that interviews allow to learn unexpected details that a survey might miss and will allow you to follow an productive inquiry path with a subject as needed.
But guess what - I think both perspectives are both right...in their own way. I do like that qualitative studies can give you more details and unexpected twists, but it usually is hard to generalized (unless you bring in some statistical analysis). On the other hand, quantitative statistics is great for highlighting oddball trends a casual user might miss in an interview. The only problem is that if you don't ask for the right input, you might miss a discovery. Using both strategies might give you a fuller picture of a social trend.
Yet from what I have seen students in the social science pursuing a degree are typically forced to choose EITHER quantitative or qualitative. Only rarely are you allowed to combine BOTH quantitative and qualitative together. The idea that you might want to combine two techniques seems almost heretical.
FYI - Linguistics has the same "either/or" issues to suffer through. For instance it's rare to find a linguist comfortable with both formal grammatical theory and sociocultural issues.
And it's not just academia. I often hear discussions of whether immigrant children in the US should learn English or their parents' language. Why not both? Their little brains are set up for multiple languages.
Or maybe you wonder if a university should be all PC or all Mac. Maybe the answer depends on whether you are working on supply chain managment (PC probably) or video editing (Mac probably). This is one reason why a major university usually has to support both platforms...even if to adds to overhead.
I know there are sometimes we have to choose (left turn or right turn to the grocery store) but there are many times I wish society was more willing to explore some "both/and" options.
For instance, maybe it really is OK for people to say both "Merry Christmas" and "Happy Holidays" - I never understood why either side asked us to choose just one holiday salutation.
I'm not sure of the particulars, but it looks like the Bowdoin Student Government passed two resolutions asking the administration to begin Arabic language instructions. Part of one bill says, "it is the opinion of BSG that the Academic Affairs division of the College should address these requests for the teaching of Arabic."
Obviously I'm impressed that the student body is pushing their administration in their desire to expand the range of languages taught. And no matter what your political views are, I would hope most people realize that knowledge of Arabic today is as important to U.S. policy as Russian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Spanish, French and other world languages.
And while we're at it, we shouldn't forget Persian (Iran), Kurdish (Northern Iraq) and Urdu (Pakistan) either - I think we really do want to try to understand what's going on in these regions as well.
You might think that the pan-global economy and culture would be dangerous for minority languages, but here's an interesting article that claims that some speakers are looking back to their roots as a way to resist globalization.
That is, the more the culture becomes "Standardized", the more people are looking for ways to create regional quirks, including resurrecting of regional languages like Welsh, Catalan and even Occitan, Walloon and Breton.
Even in the U.S. we see the development of new regional varieties such as a more pronounced versions of Great Lakes English, Canadian English, Hispanicized English and Californian/West Coast English. Given that the U.S. has been watching the same TV networks for 50 years now, this is unexpected.
I think there's something to this theory, because we are also seeing trends like regional foods cuisines (e.g. using regional ingredients) and an interest in indigenous crafts like knitting, woodworking and quilting.
I guess there are many ways to defy Gapification with both food and grammar.
Persian vs. Arabic
Since the helpful Ingolo.com incorrectly labeled the language for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as "Arabic" instead of "Persian" (or Farsi), I thought I would point out a few resources on Persian.Persian Profile Pages
Compare this to Arabic
UCLA Arabic ProfileAlthough I think most of us in the U.S. tend to muddle the two, it actually is an important distinction. Not only are the two languages NOT related, but the cultural traditions are different yet intermingled.
You may be familiar with "Persian" culture from the Greek era when they and the Greeks were at each others throats. At that time, Persia was a major cultural and technology center who gave us several nice innovations including paradise, divans, jasmine and other important necessities of life. One important facet is that the Persians of this era were not Islamic (Mohamed would not be born for about another 1,000 years). Many Persians at this time were Zoroastrians, and this belief system has persisted into the modern era (it's one reason some Iranians left).
Although Persian civilization later embraced Islam for the most part, there is an awareness of a longer pre-Islamic history. Some Iranians view this pre-Islamic past positively, but others are either ambivalent or negative towards it because it is "pagan." It's always interesting to see how different groups of Iranians react to pre-Islamic Persian archaeology and history.
Arabic civilization is its own unique entity, but it did borrow from the Persian civilization, which is why the two are often blended together in Western minds.
"Persian" vs. "Farsi"
Another interesting aspect of the language of Iran is it's English name. When I was college (before this decade), I heard speakers from Iran call their language "Farsi" (although the culture was "Persian." Now there has been a shift to calling it "Persian" again (but not everywhere)
Here's some information on the debate with different perspectives
If you're getting confused, don't worry - even I got thrown by the Farsi/Persian debate.
For now, I am sticking with Persian, but am prepared switch on a dime. One benefit of the term "Persian" is that people do have a better concept of "Persian culture" than of "Farsi culture" - now you have to make sure we can distinguish "Persian culture" from "Arabic culture".
My previous post mentioned Mr Thingamajig, the animated American idiom generator who can really talk your ear off. The funniest thing is that he does mimic a stereotype of the endlessly talking American.
Is it a true stereotype? Well, we don't ALL talk as frequently as Mr. Thingamajig, but in comparison to some cultures...we sure do gab a lot.
An American at Breakfast
In fact, since you're here....let me tell you a story.
At one point, I was lucky enough to live in a dorm in Wales with students from Europe and America. I don't actually consider myself a great talker (e.g. I don't do airplane conversations and will use headphones when necessary).
On the other hand, I was trained that if you are eating at the same table with someone you are morally obligated to attempt small talk (it's rude to eat in silence). This applies even at breakfast, especially at a conference.
But when I performed my small talk duties at breaksfast, I noticed my European colleagues would answer, but then get the most delicate of frowns (more like a slight squint). The more questions I asked, the deeper the furrow in the brow. What to do? Apparently the answer was to SHUT UP ALREADY.
I discovered the great truth that many Europeans do not require small talk at breakfast (it is rather early after all). I was off the hook! I could just munch my cereal quietly and absorb the morning vibe. What a treat, but still a little strange. Who knew I could chatter so much in the first place?
A few days later at dinner, I noticed that the conversation lapsed and there was complete silence. Sure enough after about 30 seconds, a fellow U.S. citizen asked another question and conversation began again. I guess you can't keep a good small-talker down.
It’s a common complaint that Americans are a little clueless on the nuances of external geographic realities. Actually the truth is that Americans are often clueless about what happens in the next state as well as outside the US. On the other hand, the international community doesn’t always fare so well either.
Witness this article on European Views of Wales in which neighboring countries typically consider Wales a slightly exotic region of England and ask if Wales has bagpipes (not really) or if Sean Connery is Welsh (no, he’s Scottish). Some people realize that there is a separate Welsh language, but one person said she only knew that it was “hard.”
Ironically, most of these comments are pretty much what I would in the USA, but at least we have an ocean-wide gap we can use as an excuse!
Actually, this shouldn’t be about playing a blame game about who knows the least geography, but a recognition that we ALL need a little help.
After all it’s just as dangerous for a European to assume that Walmart defines America as it is for an American to assume that the Eiffel Tower defines France.
