TL;DR — Talk. Learn. Discover. Repeat. #16
Hey yall,
I hope you’ve been well!
I just arrived in Korea a few hours ago and unfortunately didn’t find the time to finish this newsletter on time before leaving, thus the delay in sending it.
For two weeks, I didn’t work or write (for public purposes). It was the first time in close to three years and felt strangely revitalizing. (The Alutiiq deep-dive was written before my time off.) And so, I’m back filled with ideas and energy!
Thank you to those who answered the survey in the last TL;DR. As the results requested, you’ll notice I’ve shortened the section about lesser-known languages. I’ve also tried to be more concise in the culture part.
It’s a work in progress though so we’ll see how this evolves further in the coming months!
Alright, let’s dive in!
🗣️Talk languages
I had originally planned to finish two TOPIK preparation books while on holiday in France but time flew by and I didn’t get to do it. I felt awful for it so it was almost funny to fall upon a new podcast episode by Heidi Lovejoy talking about just this.
In the episode, Heidi shared how she had to train herself to become used to not finishing books and other things. She also explained why it was important:
Whether we feel bad for it or not, the end result is the same.
Feeling bad can slow us down or even prevent us from moving forward at all.
It may seem like a simple thought but it’s also an important reminder for all language learners. There’s no need to put pressure on ourselves for nothing. We should enjoy the journey instead.
Hope this reminder serves you as well as it did for me!
✍️ Learn from my experiences
My love for learning languages and video games is no secret. So, how could I resist the urge to compare learning languages with the new game I’ve binge-played, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom?
It’s incredible how the world of this game reminds me of the journey of a language learner. From learning the basics to discovering advanced concepts, this new Zelda game is a perfect representation of the journey we all go through.
Hopefully, you’ll see what I mean by reading this piece I had a lot of fun writing!
🌎Discover new cultures
This month we’re turning to mythical creatures around the world. There are hundreds upon hundreds so I’ve decided to make June all about positive ones while we’ll turn to negative ones next month.
And we’re kicking things off with East Asia.
Korea has its fair share of mythical creatures but I just discovered the existence of the Haetae (해태). I probably should have known about it since a cartoon version named Haechi is the mascot for the city of Seoul.
Originally, the Haetae is a scaled goat-like creature believed to know right from wrong, and that helped passed judgment. This significance can also be found in the Chinese xiezhi (獬豸) but the Korean version was also believed to be a guardian against fire, which is why many statues can be found around Palaces in Seoul.
It seems this creature also exists in Japan under the name kaichi but is also less well-known. On the contrary, Japan has tons of other positive ones:
Shisa (シーサー) → This traditional Ryukyuan creature resembles the Chinese guardian lion. Statues of the Shisa usually come in pairs around a home. One on the left with the mouth open to ward off evil spirits and one on the right with its mouth close to keep good spirits in.
Kitsune (狐) → Famous around the world thanks to the brand of the same name, the kitsune are foxes capable of shapeshifting. While they can be cunning, they are more often than not associated with being messengers of the Shinto kami Inari. The more tails the kitsune has, the older, wiser, and powerful it becomes, with a maximum of nine tails.
Baku (獏 or 貘) → This creature’s depiction has changed from being a panda to a mythical chimera. The chimera’s form itself evolved through time. The most famous version is one of an elephant’s head, trunk, and tusks. The baku devours nightmares when called upon but this should be done sparingly as it may remain hungry and eat desires and hopes too as a result.
All those also exist in China under different names and with different meanings. Another such creature is the Fenhuang (鳳凰). While also existing in Japan (as hōō, ほうおう) or Korea (as bonghwang, 봉황), I think it’s safe to say this phoenix-like figure is more often linked to Chinese folklore.
And what a signification this creature has! It symbolizes virtue and grace, as well as the union of yin and yang. I never knew it but it turns out the Fenghuang used to be two animals: a male one called Feng and a feminine one called Huang. It was only during the Qin Dynasty (221 BC–206 BC) that it became a single (feminine) entity as the dragon became used to represent masculinity.
Did I skip one creature of the area you think I should know? Let me know in the comments!
Next week, we’ll turn to a few such creatures in South East Asia.
🗺️Repeat with me
Zuni - A curious language isolate found in New Mexico
This week, we’re turning to a new language isolate I hadn’t heard yet: the Zuni Language, also called Shiwi’ma Bena:we in the language, a language spoken by about 10,000 people in New Mexico.
Unlike most other indigenous languages in North America, Zuni is still widely spoken in its community.
Zuni went through quite a few alphabets before settling into its current system. With only 20 letters, the alphabet used is mostly similar to the Roman alphabet (without the letters c, r, g, v, z, x, q, f, and j) and a special letter I had never seen before: Ł, ł. This letter sounds like an h and l merged.
The Zuni language also uses apostrophes to indicate glottal stops (think of the stop in “uh-oh”) whenever they’re not at the start of a word, and relies on colons to make long vowels as in the plural marker a:- .
While Wikipedia states Zuni doesn’t have a strict word order and often relies on SOV, a 1997 dissertation paper about the language explains it’s not exactly true.
The verb should always go at the end (followed by a tense marker only) and the rest should be Subjet-Object as in SOV but this changes notably based on the type of pronoun used. Indeed, according to the 1997 paper author, Zuni has weak pronouns used as object pronouns and strong pronouns as subject pronouns.
Talking about pronouns, Zuni doesn’t have a third-person pronoun but does have a dual one to indicate two people. This difference, however, only appears for possessive pronouns.
Here are a few sentences to give you a sense of the language:
Keshi hom a:kuwaye. → Hello, my friends.
So’ a:ne. → I’m going / Goodbye.
Elahkwa → Thank you.
Dom ho’ unaye. → I see you.
[You I see]
Hom do’ unaye. → You see me.
[Me you see]
Ho’ iykya / Ho’ iya / Ho’ iyanna → I came / I come / I will come.
-kya
is a past marker, -nna
is a future marker
Strangely enough, despite being less endangered than other indigenous languages in the area, it felt much harder to find recent content about its structure as most resources online only refer to a 1967 grammar book by Stanley Newman which doesn’t use today’s orthography.
Learning the language online seems extremely complicated due to the lack of resources. You can, however, find quite a few interesting PDFs for free on this New Mexico Digital Collections directory, such as this manual or this glossary.
Thanks for reading this edition of TL;DR and see you next week on Tuesday!
Mathias,
An average polyglot