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    5月8日

    That muumuu you wear so well

    The ban on Hawaiian language materials is now lifted and I can now share with you the word mu'umu'u (which is where we get our English muumuus). 

     mu‘u.mu‘u. 1. nvs. Cut-off, shortened, (okay so far-ed), amputated, maimed; person with arms or legs missing, amputee. Hula mu'umu'u, a sitting dance. 2. n. A woman's underslip or chemise; a loose gown, so called because formerly the yoke was omitted and sometimes the sleeves were short.

     There's a company called Muumuu Heaven if you really want to get your own.

     

     

    20:21 | 添加评论 | 固定链接 | 写入日志 | Field methods (Hawaiian)
    4月7日

    Some of the best words in Hawaiian

    I was in charge of asking about body parts. The most interesting term came out when I asked about "wrist". Holo said he didn't know a word for that but that the heel of one's hand is called "phu lima" (note: my transcription, yikes). Later, when I asked about "forearm" he said, basically, "Well, now that you mention it, phu lima is also the word for signature and kind of all the parts that you set on the table to write it, so this underside of the forearm and the heel of the hand, both."
     
    I also like the sound of 'leg': vavai. And 'brain': lolo.
     
    Something tremendously tricky is happening with the word for nose, something like i hu, but nothing I did made Holo think I was saying it right. Anubha couldn't hear the difference between his way of saying it and mine, either. There were a number of problems, though this one was pretty dramatic.
     
    When Doug asked his words, I discovered that the stress on trisyllabic words is hard for us English speakers to do: the words often seem to have primary stress on the first syllable followed immediately but a secondary stress on the second syllable.
     
     
    The very best word in Hawaiian so far
    (Out of the 150 or so I've heard)
     
    Spider: nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh
     
    Isn't that great?
     
    Other fun stuff
    • It seems like there are different words for sister depending upon whether the person talking about their sister is a man or a woman. And if the sister is older or younger than they are.
    • The word for 'fire' seems to be like the Japanese word for fire (ahi). Don't know if they are related but certainly could be.
    • Heya is the sky, the air, the space all around you.
    • Mo'o is the word for lizard and also for a 1/2 lizard, 1/2 woman person who guards fish ponds (she's both good and evil at times).
    • There don't seem to be any /t/'s  (they turn into /k/'s like tv=kivi). No /d/ or /g/ either. Lots of /k/, /m/, /v/, /p/, some /l/.
    • Holo's favorite food is a smoked beef dish called pipikhola.
    19:44 | 添加评论 | 固定链接 | 写入日志 | Field methods (Hawaiian)

    Some fun facts about Hawaiian

    You might also hear Hawaiian called 'Olelo Hawai'i or 'Olelo Hawai'i Makuahine. It's pretty similar to other Polynesian languages (76% lexical similarity with Tahitian). In terms of super-families, it's an Austronesian language.
     
    There are about 500 first-language speakers of Hawaiian and they're all in their 70s and 80s. Because of a massive revitalization effort, there are about 1,000 kids between two and 15 who are learning it as a second language, about 350 other people age 15-25. Our consultant, Holo, is one of those. (I think he's 20.)
     
    In 1900 there were 37,000 first-language speakers, btw. In 1778 there were probably 500,000 pure Hawaiians all speaking Hawaiian. (Right now there are 400,000 ethnic Hawaiians in Hawaii (most of them are only partly Hawaiian, though).)
     
    I have found some information that suggests that in 1993 there were 8,000 people who could speak and understand Hawaiian--I'm not sure how that squares with the numbers above, though.
    19:20 | 添加评论 | 固定链接 | 写入日志 | Field methods (Hawaiian)

    First steps in field methods

    We began our elicitations by asking for words in isolation. We checked on words from these semantic domains, which tend to have sources of words for all languages. They concentrate on noun or noun-like concepts because those are easy to do without getting lots of morphological complexity. Try to avoid asking for things you know will be complex (plurals, possessives).
     
    Start off with trying to get the inventory of sounds, then try to figure out what the allophones are.
     
    Here are some semantic domains to try:
    • kinship terms (mother, uncle)
    • people (doctor, old man)
    • body parts above the armpit
    • body parts below the armpit
    • clothing and jewelry
    • traditional man-made items (rope, pot, blanket, knife)
    • modern man-made items (book, car, radio)
    • food
    • plants
    • four-legged animals
    • fish, birds, non-human body parts
    • insects, etc.
    • weather and celestial phenomena (rain, earthquake)
    • topographic features and natural items (non-plants) (water, canyon, fire)
    • numbers
    • time words and greetings (day, goodbye)

     

    19:12 | 添加评论 | 固定链接 | 写入日志 | Field methods (Hawaiian)

    An intro to field methods

    This semester I'm taking field methods with Brook Danielle Lillehaugen at Stanford. Brook studied at UCLA and has worked on a variety of languages from very different families, though all of them seem to be in North America (by which I do mean to include Mexico and Central America).
     
    The class is meant to show how you learn about language from a person, without ever looking at any existing grammars, dictionaries, etc. The point of field methods is that out in the field you may not have access to these things, they may not exist, or they may be wrong. For the class, we're banned from reading anything about Hawaiian for at least the first six-eight weeks of class.
     
    A few notes about field methods:
    • Write in a notebook with a hard cover. This helps for archiving. Otherwise all your data is at risk--if not while you care about it, then later on when some librarian is trying to do something right for the language.
    • There are a bunch of names you can call the person you're learning from. Brook uses "consultant", you could also use "language teacher". The only one to be avoided is "informant", which has been taken over by people looking for a euphamism for "informer". The idea of being a traitor to your cultural is all too possible, so stick with something safe.
    • Write the date, the speaker's name, the language and your location on the top of EVERY page. You should probably write who else is present, too.
    • Don't use a tape as a crutch. You might not really listen, moreover, taping doesn't give you non-voice cues.
    • You can ask the speaker several times, but you should at some point say it back. Your consultant may tell you that you have it wrong (uh, this happened a lot to me). Listen to him again, repeat. Never ask him to repeat without trying again.

    Just so you know, the whole class meets for two hours, twice a week. We also each meet with our consultant, Holo, once a week for an hour.

     

     
    19:07 | 添加评论 | 固定链接 | 写入日志 | Field methods (Hawaiian)