TL;DR — Talk. Learn. Discover. Repeat. #05

Hey yall,

I hope you’ve been great because I have!

I can’t believe it’s already been a week since I arrived in Korea. Time really flies. I’m still loving it and doubt that’ll change anytime soon.

Arriving here has given me an even stronger boost of motivation for learning Korean. I’ve been listening in to random conversations around me when in the metro and reading a Korean novel as often as I can.

I, unfortunately, haven’t had the opportunity to have long conversations in Korean but it’s just a matter of time I’m sure!

Alright, let’s dive in!

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🗣️Talk languages

I took part this past weekend in Joel Neff’s presentation about creating new words. I expected to enjoy it because he’s always got something both insightful and funny to say but I didn’t expect my curiosity to be picked that much.

I ended up spending the next hour on the links he shared throughout his presentation, and especially the below two ones:

• Etymonline’s shockingly long list of words ending with ~ful

• Wikipedia’s not so surprisingly extra long list of portmanteaus

While I loved discovering the existence of words like mirthful (and the related mirthquake) or slothful, I discovered there were a lot of funny or confusing portmanteaus:

• Analrapist — No, don’t worry, it’s not what you think. It’s the combination of “analyst” and “therapist.” Still strange to hear though!

• Tae Bo — Combination of Taekwondo (a Korean martial art relying on legs alone) and Boxing. I mean… is it really different from kickboxing?

• RNGesus — Not in the Wikipedia list but such a good one. RNG (more or less luck in video games) combined with Jesus. Basically someone with unbelievable luck in a video game.

• Heliskiing — Combining Helicopter and skiing, and meaning going back up the slopes by helicopter instead of skilift

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  this feels like the choice of the highest of societies.

I challenge you not to notice the portmanteaus

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you’ll hear and use in the next few days.

And if you’re curious about words in general and want to laugh extending your knowledge of them, go check Joel’s newsletter, Learned. You won’t regret it.

✍️ Learn from my experiences

While I love to talk, I’m also extremely introverted and overly self-conscious of how bad I can be in my target languages. For this reason, I’ve often refrained from actually speaking them out loud.

And yet, I’ve never regretted speaking them. On the contrary, every experience I’ve had using them has been incredible. Even when I wasn’t sure of myself.

This is what I explained in further detail when I shared a few such experiences in a piece called What Happens When You Stop Being Afraid of Speaking Your Target Language.

In the end, actively using our target language will always be the right solution. And if you, like me in the beginning, are afraid of not knowing what to say, you can always practice conversations with the AI chatbot ChatGPT.

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🌎Discover new cultures

Last week, we talked about the impact of some Islamic cultures on caring for the environment.

This week, we’re starting with another Islamic country that follows the same practices, most notably Adat: Indonesia. Bali has had a water management system known as Subak since the 9th century.

Subak is a sustainable irrigation ecosystem linking the village’s community with the temples and the agrarian society. The water goes through each part in a well-oiled system. This system reflecting the Tri Hita Karana philosophy of life was recognized as a World Heritage Site by Unesco in 2012.

In India, the Vedic and Ayurvedic traditions place a strong emphasis on the interconnectedness of all living beings and the importance of living in harmony with nature. The Vedas

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associates the natural world with a manifestation of divine reality. Ayurveda is a traditional system of medicine with roots in the Vedic tradition that promotes physical and mental health by maintaining balance in the body, mind, and spirit. It relies on natural resources like herbs and minerals.

Similarly, the Shinto religion of Japan, which has been practiced for over 2,000 years, emphasizes the reverence of natural elements such as mountains, rivers, and waterfalls and the importance of living in harmony with nature. Shinto beliefs hold that natural objects such as rocks, trees, and waterfalls are sacred and are inhabited by kami (神, gods or spiritual beings).

This religion is one of the main causes of Japanese culture’s connection with the environment. Shinto’s influence can be throughout Japan and most notably in the art of bonsai, zen gardens, and the many matsuri (祭り, festivals) related to nature.

The relationship between Japan’s traditions and nature is a beautiful one to experience, especially when one strays away from major cities. I highly recommend it!

This care for nature was even more vital to the Ainu people, found in Hokkaido as they lived with their Kamui. I already wrote in depth about this here.

Next week, we’ll turn to a few cultures in Europe and North America that did get it right in the past.

🗺️Repeat with me (Lesser-Known Languages)

KhoeKhoe — A Khoe language with 20 click sounds

Languages with clicks have always been a wonder to me. While I can

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make 4 of the 5 basic clicks, inserting them in front of consonants and vowels feels like an insurmountable challenge.

So making complete sentences with clicks sprinkled throughout? Don’t make me laugh.

This is why I wanted to dive into a language filled with clicks this month. That’s how I found the beautiful world of Khoekhoe.

This language—also known as Khoekhoegowab, Namagowab (Nama), or ǂNūkhoegowab (Damara)—used to be called Hottentot

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and is considered to be the largest language using clicks.

Interestingly enough, while Xhosa

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is often taken as the prime example of a language with click sounds, it’s not a Khoe language but rather a Bantu language that borrowed clicks from the Khoe language family. It appears Khoe languages have a large vocabulary featuring words with clicks but these can only appear at the start of words. Bantu languages have fewer words with clicks but these can appear in the middle of words.

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Khoekhoegowab uses 4 click sounds: ǀ, ǁ, ǃ, and ǂ (sometimes written as #).

Each click can then be articulated in 5 different manners, therefore creating 20 different combinations! This YouTube video (for conlangers) explains click consonants and how they work. Otherwise, you can check this Wikipedia section to see the table of sounds but it didn’t make much sense to me either before I researched it more!

If you thought that’d be where this language would stop being shocking, think again.

Not only does it have three genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter), it also distinguishes number into three categories: singular, dual, and “more than two”. These differences are indicated as suffixes.

If, like me, you’re not used to this system of having a “dual” version, this might seem inconvenient but the truth is that it can be extremely useful as an added precision in daily life! This is contrary to the Bantu languages that have noun classes (as we saw when we looked at Kirundi).

The Khoekhoe language is an SOV (Subject-Object-Verb) language like other Khoe languages. It doesn’t have conjugation based on the subject and its tenses are expressed using up to three prepositions (for example, the future perspective is nî hâ i).

Here are a few sentences to get you started:

• Tita ge ra xoa. — I write/I am writing (I + [present tense] + write)

• ǁîb ge ra !gû ǂgao — You want to go. (you + [present tense] + to go + to want)

• ǃGâi ǁgoas – Good morning

• ǃGâise ǃgû re – Goodbye

• Matiko? — How much?

• Gangans — Thank you.

If you want to learn this language, I haven’t found any resources with audio apart from a few 13+ years old videos on YouTube about the very basics, like this one. As for written ones, you can get the Peace Corps guide for free or refer to this website. Finally, you can also use this trilingual (Dutch, English, Khoekhoegowab) textbook for a lot more examples.

It’s so unfortunate there aren’t more audio resources though. This seems like such a beautiful language to listen to!

ǁKhawa mûgus

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1. Hey, another portmanteau!

2. Side note: Come on English, if you’re going to take French words and keep our “strange eau spelling for o, why don’t you keep the word completely as it was in French (porte-manteau)? 😂
Side note 2: After checking, the word we use in French for this is “mot-valise” (literally “word-luggage”). Funny to see a French word inspired by an English word that was inspired by a French word. What a loop!

3. If you don’t know what ChatGPT is, what are you still doing here?! Go try it out right away, you won’t regret it! You can refer to this short section I wrote about how to use it.

4. A collection of the oldest sacred texts in Hinduism that deal with understanding the ultimate reality and the meaning of human existence. Veda (वेदः in Sanskrit) means knowledge and covers topics like cosmology, metaphysics, and philosophy.

5. If I concentrate well.

6. A term now disused in part because of its racial background.

7. I wonder if this could be because Nelson Mandela was a Xhosa himself?

8. No language uses clicks to end a word or syllable. Because it’s inconvenient I guess?

9. “See you soon” in Khoekhoegowab.