7 Bullet Points About Languages - Week 88

Middle finger positive meaning, Going back to what you know, Bread, and The Na'vi language!

Hey language lovers,

I hope you all had a magnificent week!

Updates

Mine was just amazing.

I began reading The Vegetarian by Han Kang in Korean (채식주의자) and, despite what I feared, I don’t have to look up tons of words. Most of what I have to look up is food-related as I usually don’t spend much time on this type of vocabulary.

I also listened to tons of episodes of an audioseries called 내 남편을 결혼해줘, read many webtoons, and played 5 hours of a visual novel in Korean too.

I feel I’m slowly getting outside the plateau I’ve been on for years in Korean and there’s no better feeling than this!

As for other languages, I began reading one webtoon in German yesterday (Everything is Fine, by Mike Birchall). It’s not the greatest so far but it’s simple enough to allow me not to have to look up every word.

The only downside of last week was that, as I was on the move most of last week, I didn’t get to write much and I’m struggling a bit to get back into the flow.

Alright, let’s dive into what you came for!

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7 Bullet Points

Each week, I share 7 things about languages.

I hope they can help you improve your journey, tickle your curiosity, and inspire you to keep exploring.

A quick reminder first: I’m not affiliated with any resource so far. Every recommendation you find below comes from my own research and experiences.

🎥 One video

The middle finger doesn't mean what you think. The evolution of sign language — TaiwanPlusOne

I mean. Come on. You know you want to click on that title too.

And you should! This short video was so interesting. I just researched gesture differences across cultures a few weeks ago and now discover this? And to discover this originated from Japan? Incredible.

I won’t say more, have a look, it’ll be 5 worthwhile minutes.

(Come back to read the rest though! 😅)

📚 One article I read

Brain Acts the Same Whatever the Language — on The Language Magazine

The more time I spend learning languages, the more I get curious about how our brains handle languages. Being born speaking French never prevented me from speaking other languages so it makes sense to imagine the brain has an overall manner to handle all kinds of languages. And yet, French is so different from Japanese that I expected my brain to work differently when I speak Japanese.

It turns out that’s not the case.

In this first-of-its-kind study, they studied which part of the brain activates when hearing languages other than English. They found it to be similar, which now will allow for future studies to verify how hearing languages using morphemes instead of word order really impacts the brain.

An interesting read to say the least!

✍🏽 One article I wrote

The Easiest Way to Become a Polyglot Is to Not Try

I’m still taking a break from writing long pieces on Medium, so here’s another one I loved writing in the past.

In it, I talked about what’s most important in learning languages and shared my favorite metaphor about language learning.

Hope it can inspire you!

🎧 One podcast episode

S2E10: Go Back to What You Know — The Language Confidence Project

I love this podcast because it’s so relaxing and supportive, it helps me stay motivated even when I’m a bit low. Every daily weekday episode is incredible but I can’t share them all so here’s one of my favorite recent ones.

In it, Emily talks about why it’s okay to go back to study things we’ve already learned and, even more importantly, why we should enjoy it!

Come on, it’s only 6 minutes long. You know you have the time to listen to it!

🌎 One cultural aspect

Bread Around the World

As a French, I love my bread and I love to look down on other countries’ bread. I know it’s bad but I can’t help it. I mean, have you ever had a real baguette or good ol’ pain de campagne (French sourdough)?

And yet, one of the best baguettes I ever had was in a small shop open only on Sunday mornings 20 minutes away from the first train station in the suburbs of Tokyo¹.

The lesson? Good bread exists everywhere.

And yet, French bread is only one type of bread. There are many more so let’s cover a few.

Challah is a famous Jewish bread eaten on Shabbat and on holidays except during Passover. Despite its brioche-like appearance, it contains no dairy.

I always considered India’s most famous bread to be the Naan bread but, strangely enough, it was other Indian breads that kept on appearing in my research. From the rice-based southern Indian “dosa,” to the northern Indian unleavened flatbread Chapati, or others like the Bhatura and many more!

Then there’s the Soda bread which can be found in Ireland, Scotland, Australia, Serbia, or North America. This type is a quicker-leavened bread, which uses buttermilk mixed with baking soda to create gas bubbles².

Of course, there’s also the typical Mexican tortilla we all love. But there are other types of breads in South America! For example, it’s common to eat a cheese bread called the Pão de queijo in Brazil during breakfast. In Chile, the Pan Amasado (literally: “kneaded bread”) is a common type of bread prepared in wood-fired clay ovens. There are yet others too!

There are tons of types of bread around the world.

Listing them all would be impossible but here’s a piece with 50, with pictures! And it’s missing a lot more!

What’s your favorite bread and where did you find it? Tell us in the comments!

📜 One quote to ponder

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” — Will Durant

🌐 One Lesser-Known Language (LKL)

Na’vi - Avatar's constructed language

I saw the 2009 movie Avatar one or two years after it came out and thought it was overrated. I didn’t get how it could be such a blockbuster. When I hear Avatar 2 was finally coming out later this year, however, I thought I had to give it another go.

And, this time, I loved it. Not only was it full of magnificent sceneries, it had a well-developed constructed language. How could I not be more curious?

Knowing how big the movie had been, I expected to find a few small yet intense fans but not a world of well-made websites and a thriving community. It’s been 13 years after all!

Looking into Na’vi was extremely satisfying. I hope you’ll want to dig into the rabbit hole just as I did. Let’s do this.

Na’vi is the language of the Na'vi people on the moon of Pandora. These tall blue people are a hunting race that lives in harmony with nature.

The language is called Lìʼfya leNaʼvi (literally “language Navi”). The language’s creator, linguist Paul Frommer, is still active in the community to this day. On his website, he writes about the language, answers questions from learners, and decides whether how new words should be made.

Here’s a video where he explains how he constructed the language.

The best place to learn the language, however, is a website called Learn Na’vi. It has a complete grammar textbook as well as links to every type of resource (dictionaries, flashcards, audio files, pronunciation guides, etc.).

If only every language had a website like this one!

But enough about how well the community is organized. Let’s talk construction.

The most particular aspect of Na’vi is its use of infixes (adding a particle in the middle of the verb, rather than before or after) for conjugating verbs. Some languages, like Tagalog, can use an infix but no other language relies on infixes as much as Na’vi does for conjugation. Depending on the situation, you can even add two infixes! Let’s see with the verb ftia (to study):

• -am- : past tense → ftamia = I studied

• -ìm- : close past → ftìmia = I (just) studied

• -ìy- : close future → ftìyia = I will study (soon)

• -ay- : future → ftayia = I will study

• And so on

Na’vi is a “free word order” language. This means, there is no required order between the Subject, Verb, and Object. Instead, case endings are used to indicate which word serves which purpose in the language.

The Na’vi only have 4 fingers on each hand. For this reason, their way of counting is not decimal but octal. I didn’t know this but some other languages, like the Yuki Language in California, use this (because they count the space between fingers instead).

What’s an octal system? It means that once you get to “8”, you’re actually at “10.” In all honesty, my head can’t seem to compute this well but I invite you to check the wiki tables about it.

Finally, instead of giving you a few sentences, I invite you to watch this short video with the pronunciation. Indeed, the pronunciation is quite peculiar and the way it is written probably won’t make sense compared to the way it sounds³.

I look forward to seeing if/how the language will evolve when Avatar 2 will be out!

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As always, thanks for reading!
Mathias Barra

1. Lucky me, I lived a minute away from it for two years and found it by accident 8 months after moving in. I was shocked. Happy. But shocked.

2. In all honesty, I’m really not a big fan of those. I find they don’t have much taste and feel extremely heavy.

3. Unless you learn how to read it!