Vida Latina

Como muchos jóvenes Bahá'ís, yo hice un año de servicio. En esto, los jóvenes generalmente van al estero para vivir y servir a la comunidad Bahá'í local por un período de entre 6 meses y un año.
Cuando estaba en el proceso de decidir a cuál país iría para este período, estaba considerando varias opciones. Uno fue México, porque era un país que conocía y que había visitado tres veces ya. Otro fue El Salvador, porque cuando trabajaba en un cine en San Rafael, California, por dos años después de graduarme del colegio, había muchos empleados de origen salvadoreño, y siempre me decían de lo bello que era su país y lo hospitable que era su gente.
Sin embargo, mi focus pronto se cambió a Sudamérica, porque en ésa época ya estaba ingresando en el campo de derechos indígenas, y me atrajeron la atención los países de Perú y Bolivia, a causa de su gran proporción de gente indígena. Decidí mandar peticiones a Perú, Bolivia, y Chile en el otoño de 2005. No recibí una respuesta de Chile, y fue la AEN (Asamblea Espiritual Nacional) de Bolivia que me contactó primero. Nos pusimos de acuerdo de que iría a La Paz por un año y ayudaría en la Sede Nacional de la comunidad Bahá'í, llevando a cabo trabajos de estadística acerca de la población de los creyentes. La AEN de Perú también respondió, pero ya había aceptado la invitación a Bolivia - nonobstante, algún día me gustaría realizar servicios allí también.
Llegué a La Paz el 6 de julio de 2006, y regresé al EEUU el mismo día de 2007. Durante el año que pasó entre esas fechas, aprendí un montón de la cultura y la historia de un rincón de América Latina, y, más importante, me maduré mucho. Tuve muchas experiencias fascinantes, algunas fantásticas y algunas dolorosas, pero todas fueron oportunidades para crecer, mejorarme, y entender mejor cómo viven y sobreviven las personas en las circunstancias en las cuales se encuentran en la vida. También conocí a unas de las personas más amables y lindas que he encontrado, y, através de cooperación y a veces conflictos, llegué a un punto de entendimiento y respeto mútuos con ellos, tal que los considero como verdaderos hermanos Bahá'ís (y no-Bahá'ís, ¿futuros Bahá'ís? también).
Ya llevo 9 meses de regreso al EEUU, pero Bolivia ya me está llamando de nuevo, y las ganas de regresar están surgiendo. Pienso en ir allí durante el otoño de 2009, tal vez por 2 ó 3 meses, no sólo para econtrarme de nuevo con todos los amigos y hermanos que he dejado, sino también para llegar a conocer mejor al país, especialmente las comunidades rurales del Altiplano, y la cultura Aymara, de la cual me enamoré muy rápidamente. También voy a ir para empezar a coleccionar datos que necesitaré para mi doctorado, sobre la interacción e influencia lingüísticas entre las culturas Andinas. De todas maneras, sé que regresaré a Bolivia, porque, después de mis lindas experiencias allí, me siento que es mi segundo hogar, y que para mí, la gente allí es verdaderamente familia.

Who owns Indigenous land?

One of the many, many justifications that has been used by defenders of U.S. Manifest Destiny is that, since certain Indigenous groups conquered and displaced other Indigenous groups, these groups have no legitimate claim to the land that they had taken from the previous inhabitants. In their view, somehow, this is supposed to make permissible the subsequent U.S. conquest and appropriation of Indigenous lands. "Well, the Indians were fighting and conquering each other long before the Europeans got here," the argument goes. It's often left at that, as if it were obvious that that fact justifies what the U.S. devoted a huge amount of its energy towards in the course of the 19th century.
Suppose that the Axis had defeated the Allies in World War II, including the United States. The Germans and the Japanese, triumphant, decide to deport the entire population of the United States onto reserves in the Canadian arctic or in Soviet Siberia, leaving U.S. land open for German and Japanese colonists to settle. Would the fact that wars had taken place in North America prior to World War II, including the U.S. Civil War, somehow make the Axis justified in deporting so many millions of people off their land and appropriating it for their own peoples' use? "Well, they had been fighting each other before we got here." I hope this line of reasoning sounds as ludicrous to you as it does to me. Yet apologists for Manifest Destiny continue to trot it out as if it made perfect sense; in fact, this line of reasoning has been so little challenged that Indigenous groups feel the need to downplay their own cultural differences and the various (scientifically-supported) multi-wave models of their migration into the Americas, just to deny the apologists the ammunition that these facts would bafflingly provide them.
The Hungarian people arrived in central Europe from the plains west of the Urals during the 9th century AD, displacing prior Slavic populations in the region that eventually became Hungary. Does this mean that any nation so willing and able could, with complete justification, invade Hungary, expel all the Hungarians to far-flung reserves, and chalk it up to "the Hungarians themselves took the land from its previous owners"? Ludicrous, right? So why has this ridiculous idea been accepted as a legitimate argument in the discourse on the U.S. treatment of Indigenous peoples?

The Comparative Method IV

Since our whole analysis rests on regular phonological correspondences, let's take a closer look at what RPCs are and how to recognize them.
You can't find a valid RPC by only examining a handful of word sets; however, if you don't have a particular RPC to begin with, how do you look for more examples of one? The resolution of this catch-22 is a sort of bootstrapping method - at first, you do have to start with a handful of word sets; once you start recognizing likely patterns, you need to find more sets that will confirm or disconfirm the likely pattern.
In the European set we've been examining, I divided the six languages into two subgroups based on a few correspondences. The English-Dutch-German subgroup is an actual family called Germanic - it includes not just these three languages, but also Yiddish, Afrikaans, Frisian, Scots, and the Scandinavian languages Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Faroese, and Icelandic. The French-Italian-Spanish subgroup is also a family, one which many of you may be familiar with - the Romance languages. This group includes the three just mentioned plus Portuguese, Catalan, Provençal, Walloon, Romansh, Sardinian, Sicilian, Romanian, and many others, all of which are descendants of a language known as Vulgar Latin, which was the colloquial language of the Roman Empire, alongside the Classical Latin language used in Roman government and later in the Catholic church. These two varieties descended from an archaic Latin language that was spoken in central Italy, along with sister languages that included Faliscan, Oscan, and Umbrian. This family is called the Italic languages, and includes the Romance languages as a subfamily. Both the Germanic family and the Italic family in turn are descended from an ancient language that linguists have called Proto-Indo-European, which was spoken before 3000 BC somewhere in the region between Asia Minor and the Ural mountains (I'll talk more about this and other language families in a future post).
Anyways, was there enough data to justify me placing the six languages in our set into these two groups? So far, not really. But there were some promising RPCs that do provide a place to start. Let's look at the table again:

English	Dutch	German	French	Italian	Spanish	gloss
aɪ	ɪk	ɪç	ʒə	ˈio	jo	‘I’
mun	maːn	mɔnd	lyn	ˈluna	ˈluna	‘moon’
ˈsɪstəɹ	ˈzʏstəɾ	ˈʃvɛstəʁ	sœʁ	soˈɾɛlla	eɾˈmana	‘sister’
ˈfaɪəɹ	vyːɾ	ˈfɔʏəʁ	fø	ˈfwɔko	ˈfweɡo	‘fire’
eɪt	aχt	aχt	ɥit	ˈɔtto	ˈoʧo	‘eight’
fʊt	vut	fuːs	pje	ˈpjɛde	pje	‘foot’
dɹɪnk	ˈdɾɪnkən	ˈtʁɪnkən	bwaʁ	ˈbeɾe	beˈbeɾ	‘drink’

We see the fvf correspondence in Germanic initial consonants in two word sets, 'fire' and 'foot'. And as we saw in this table:

English	Dutch	German	French	Italian	Spanish	gloss
ˈfɑðəɹ	ˈvadəɾ	ˈfatəʁ	pɛʁ	ˈpadɾe	ˈpadɾe	‘father’
fɪʃ	vɪs	fɪʃ	pwaˈsɔ̃	ˈpeʃe	pes	‘fish’
foɹ	voːɾ	fʏʁ	puʁ	peɾ	poɾ	‘for’
fli	vlo	flo	pys	ˈpulʧe	ˈpulɡa	‘flea’

the same correspondence can be found in several more word sets, along with the equivalent ppp correspondence in Romance initial consonants for the same words. Now, how do we know that the ppp set is the one that corresponds to fvf, and not the fff set we see in the Romance words for 'fire'? We don't at first. But looking at more items, such as the ones in the second table, we will eventually find many more sets where ppp corresponds to fvf than where fff corresponds to fvf. This suggests that the fvf-fff set is not a real correspondence, but is merely a coincidence.
So assuming we've confirmed that fvf-ppp is a valid RPC set, we can begin to look for more examples. The more we find, the surer we are of the validity of the set. Here are a few for the Germanic languages:

English	Dutch	German
fi	ve	fi
fɝst	vɔɾst	fʏʁst
faʊl	ˈvoːɣəl	ˈfoːɡəl

We see the same fvf correspondence set. But this time there's a snag - the words in each set do not mean the same thing. In the first set is the English word fee, but its Dutch and German cognates, vee and Vieh, mean 'livestock, cattle'. In the second, we have English 'first', whose Dutch cognate (vorst) means 'ruler, monarch' and whose German cognate (Fürst) means 'prince'. And in the third set, we have English 'fowl' next to the Dutch and German words for 'bird', vogel and Vogel.
So, are these still cognates? Yes. Cognates are defined by their common ancestry phonologically; that is, they have evolved from their common ancestral word through a series of phonological mutations. But, human language being how it is, words also undergo semantic changes. Cognates can still be cognates even if they mean completely different things. And even so, in many cases the meanings don't have to be that different. Obviously, there's a semantic connection between 'fowl' and 'bird', the first being a specific type of the latter. Based on the fact that the Dutch and German cognates both mean 'bird' (a sort of ‘majority rules’), we can conjecture that this was the original meaning of the ancestral word, and that the English word 'fowl' at one time could refer to any type of bird. When we look at the word for 'bird' in other Germanic languages, we find the same cognate, which bolsters our conjecture that ‘bird’ was the original meaning.
Now I leave two exercises for the reader:
1 What semantic connections can you see between 'first' and 'monarch/prince'? How about between 'fee' and 'livestock/cattle'?
2 Look at the following table (the data is constructed). Are there any regular phonological correspondences that seem promising? How would you group the languages in this table based on them?

A	B	C	D	E	gloss
ˈhate	kaas	fuu	ˈkati	ˈputi	‘wind’
daˈpæɡe	niˈɾaax	ʦəˈbee 1	taˈpeke	niˈleɡa	‘mountain’
bɔˈdoja	moˈnuul	məˈnuur	moˈnula 2	moˈnaula	‘heart’
beˈzaɡa 3	piˈɾaax	fəˈɾaa	piˈɾaka 4	piˈlega	‘girl’
daˈɡoɡo	hoof 5	ʔoo	ˈhopu	taˈkuɡo	‘sea’
deˈɡeli	teˈxiil	ʦəˈɡii	teˈkili	teˈkajli 6	‘mother’

Semantic irregularities:
1 this means 'hill' in language C
2 this means 'liver' in language D
3 this means 'wife' in language A
4 this means 'sister' in language D
5 this means 'lake' in language B

The Comparative Method III

So, let's say we've compared several hundred word sets and we've found a likely genetic relationship between a group of languages. This tells us that the languages in the group form a language family, sharing a common ancestor. Now we need to refine our relationships further - within the language family, which languages seem to be more closely related than others? Let's take another look at the European set from the previous post. This time, I've changed the transcription to use the International Phonetic Alphabet, a writing system employed by linguists to precisely transcribe words and speech from any human language. I've also reorganized the languages into two groups based on certain regular phonological correspondences:

English	Dutch	German	French	Italian	Spanish	gloss
aɪ	ɪk	ɪç	ʒə	ˈio	jo	‘I’
mun	maːn	mɔnd	lyn	ˈluna	ˈluna	‘moon’
ˈsɪstəɹ	ˈzʏstəɾ	ˈʃvɛstəʁ	sœʁ	soˈɾɛlla	eɾˈmana	‘sister’
ˈfaɪəɹ	vyɾ	ˈfɔʏəʁ	fø	ˈfwɔko	ˈfweɡo	‘fire’
eɪt	aχt	aχt	ɥit	ˈɔtto	ˈoʧo	‘eight’
fʊt	vut	fuːs	pje	ˈpjɛde	pje	‘foot’
dɹɪnk	ˈdɾɪnkən	ˈtʁɪnkən	bwaʁ	ˈbeɾe	beˈbeɾ	‘drink’

Let's look at initial consonants to begin with. For 'moon', the words in the English, Dutch, and German set (which I'll abbreviate to EDG) all begin with m-, while those in French, Italian, and Spanish (FIS) all begin with l-. For 'drink', the words in the EDG set all start with dr- (don't worry about the various 'r' symbols - they represent different pronunciations, but the fact that they correspond is what matters), while those in the FIS set all begin with b-.
Now look at the 'foot' set. We see the sounds f-, v-, f-, p-, p-, p- in this, which may not seem like a good set at first. However, compare it to these correspondences:

English	Dutch	German	French	Italian	Spanish	gloss
ˈfɑðəɹ	ˈvadəɾ	ˈfatəʁ	pɛʁ	ˈpadɾe	ˈpadɾe	‘father’
fɪʃ	vɪs	fɪʃ	pwaˈsɔ̃	ˈpeʃe	pes	‘fish’
foɹ	voːɾ	fʏʁ	puʁ	peɾ	poɾ	‘for’
fli	vlo	flo	pys	ˈpulʧe	ˈpulɡa	‘flea’

Here we see the exact same pattern across four more sets of words. This is an excellent example of a regular phonological correspondence.
Now, take a look at the words for 'fire'. We see the same f-, v-, f- correspondence in the EDG set, but we then get an f-, f-, f- correspondence in the FIS instead of the expected p-, p-, p-. What's going on here?
When we get apparently inconsistent correspondences like this, there are two likely explanations. One is that we haven't accounted for the phonological environment. The phonological environment is the combination of phonemes around the phoneme we're examining. Depending on whether neighboring phonemes are consonants or vowels (and what types of consonants and vowels), whether the phoneme is at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end of a word, and even if it's in a stressed syllable or not, are all factors that can affect the value of the phoneme over time, and therefore affect the correspondences we're investigating.
However, this is not the case in the 'fire' set. All the phonemes in question are word-initial, and they're followed by a variety of vowels, just like the fvfppp set in the second table, so it's unlikely that a particular type of vowel is throwing off the correspondence. This brings us to the other likely explanation: there isn't meant to be a correspondence. That is, the words for 'fire' in the FIS set are not actually related to the words for 'fire' in the EDG set, despite their superficial similarity.
Words that are related to each other, such as the sets of words displaying the fvfppp correspondence, are known as cognates. Just as genetically related languages share a common ancestor, so too do 'genetically' related words share a common ancestor. When we look for regular phonological correspondences, we are looking for the existence of cognate sets between different languages. In the first table, the FIS-set words for 'moon' form a cognate set - they show regular phonological correspondences, not just in that they all begin with l-, but also that they all contain -n- after the first vowel. In other words, French lyn, Italian luna, and Spanish luna are cognates of each other. The conclusion we draw from this is that, in the language that eventually became French, Italian, and Spanish, a particular word became the three words lyn, luna, and luna over time.
Interestingly, the fvfppp correspondence set suggests that all six languages in the table are actually related, but that they fall into the above-seen EDG and FIS subfamilies. That is, while all six languages appear to share a common ancestor based on the fvfppp correspondence, English, Dutch, and German appear to share a common ancestor that is not shared with French, Italian, and Spanish, and vice versa, as evidenced by the two different word sets for 'moon' and 'drink' in each group, which show no real correspondences.
Next time, I'll explain more about how to recognize likely versus unlikely correspondences, and we'll look at some other complicating factors that need to be accounted for in a comparative study.
Bonus: Look at the word set for 'sister' in all three languages. It should be fairly clear that the Spanish word doesn't correspond well to the other five words. But what about those five? Do they correspond well to each other? Why or why not?

The Comparative Method II

Let's say we have languages A, B, C, and D, and we want to know if they're genetically related. We start by taking a sample of basic vocabulary from each of them, and then compare those samples to each other. The best semantic categories from which to draw basic vocabulary includes pronouns (I, you, he, etc.), numbers (especially 1-10), human body parts (eye, head, heart, etc.), kinship terms (mother, father, etc.), natural objects and phenomena (sun, moon, water, fire, etc.), and very basic actions and states (see, know, die, etc.). Here's a small selection of possible vocabulary from languages A, B, C, and D.

A	B	C	D	English
ka	ka	ko	zimi	‘we’
nami	name	nom	soo	‘two’
paluma	paroma	polm	jai	‘eye’
litiki	redege	riik	enefo	‘mother’
kutusu	kodozo	kuts	vaha	‘water’
panu	pano	pon	haaz	‘eat’

In the comparative method, we're looking for regular phonological correspondences (which I'll abbreviate to RPCs). That is, given a set of words from each of the languages in question, we want to see if there is a regular pattern of phonemes that occurs between the items in the set. For example, look at the words for 'we' and 'water'. In all three of languages A, B, and C, these words begin with the phoneme k-. Likewise, in the words for 'eye', and 'eat', all the words in A, B, and C all begin with the phoneme p-. And in the word for 'two', we find all the words in A, B, and C beginning in n-. These are all examples of RPCs.
The phonemes don't all have to be the same to be regular. In the words for 'eye' and 'mother', language A has -l- whereas language B has -r-. Likewise, in 'we', 'two', 'eye', and 'eat, languages A and B have -a- where language C has -o-. These correspondences are just as regular as the k-, p-, and n- correspondences because they recur in multiple sets of words.
Now, what about language D? A close comparison between the different phonemes in language D's words and those of languages A, B, and C, reveals no meaningful correspondences; this suggests that D is not genetically related, or at least not closely genetically related, to languages A, B, and C, which, due to their numerous correspondences, seem to be very closely genetically related.
Now, a set of 6 words is not nearly enough to make conclusions about genetic relationships. Ideally, several hundred word sets should be selected, including not just nouns, verbs, or adjectives, but grammatical items such as plural markers on nouns, person, number, and tense markers on verbs, prepositions, different pronoun forms, etc. The more functional the items examined (those parts of the vocabulary which contribute more structure than meaning), the more solid the conclusions that can be drawn about genetic relationships.
Now, as an exercise for you the reader, here is a set of data from 5 European languages. Many of you will be familiar with at least some of these languages, but I'm going to change their spelling to make them slightly less recognizable, and also to reflect their true pronunciation a little better. Your task is to examine the word sets, look for regular phonological correspondences, and make a guess as to which languages are genetically related to which others (or which are more closely related to which, if it seems that they are all ultimately related).

A	B	C	D	E	English
ik	io	zhuh	ih	yo	‘I’
maan	luna	lyn	mont	luna	‘moon’
zyster	sorella	sur	shvester	ermana	‘sister’
vyyr	fwoko	fuh	foyer	fwego	‘fire’
akht	otto	wit	akht	ocho	‘eight’
vut	piede	pie	fus	pie	‘foot’
drinken	bere	bwar	trinken	bever	‘drink’

Bonus question: to which of the above do you think English is most closely related? What phonological correspondences can you name between English and that (or those) languages? Remember to concentrate on pronunciation, not spelling, since how a word is spelled may not reflect its pronunciation accurately.