The Mystery Of Abkhaz

Just last night I met a native speaker of Abkhaz, and I chatted with him about it some, because I'm not very familiar with languages from the Caucasus. When I heard where Abkhazia was exactly (I did have some idea) I figured it was most likely a Caucasian language. He told me that it was in fact Indo-European. Considering he knew such designations, I figured he was at least versed in basic linguistics. I asked if it was a Slavic language or if it was Indo-Iranian, but he insisted that it was in fact Scythian, which he did not seem to know is a sub-branch of Indo-Iranian. He said that one of the closest languages related to it was Ossetic, which is a Scythian language.. I asked him if they wrote in a variant of Cyrillic and he said that they have a system, but since 1991 are trying to switch to Latin, because it better suits the language.

Now, most of my information comes from wikipedia and a few other sources, but it seems first off, that while there is a modified Cyrillic alphabet for Abkhaz, no Latin script seems to be in notable use. As for whether Latin is better suited for the language, there are so many consonants that there would need to be extra characters created there as well. Perhaps it is better suited as it will further distance itself from Russia, as they did with the elimination of the Georgian script years ago. Now, on top of that Abkhaz is not related to Ossetic, and it is not a Scythian language, rather it is a Caucasian language relatively close to Ubykh. So, I am now stuck with a mystery: was he misinformed about his language, did he misinform me intentionally, or is there something else even going on? I can only assume there is some debate somewhere, ideological or otherwise, that has prompted him to produce such answers.

Graffiti Cannon

My interest in the band They Might Be Giants leads me to try and keep up with their efforts occasionally, and today I was reading a fan recap of a show from four days ago, and noticed a strange error of sorts. The user Writer61 had this to say:

Linnell asked for a do-over of the break in "Bed, Bed, Bed," saying he forgot to do something. The second time around, the graffiti cannon went off.

Now, for everyone who does not know, there is no such thing as a "Graffiti Cannon" (there are two google hits that seem like the words are actually strung together on purpose, and they are both not referring to actual objects, I imagine). TMBG does, in fact, have a confetti cannon.

My only theory is that this writer had a momentary lapse in his mind, and just wrote down a 3 syllable word ending in I, with an F and a T, and one of those has to be in a pair. I can see some vague similiarities in the words, but I really can't imagine ever confusing them or actually substituting one for the other, just for phonological (or spelling) and stress related reasons.

Chinese In Schools

I was flipping through today's Buffalo News and noticed on the section "Next", the "voice of the next generation" they call it. On the cover they show a student drawing Hanzi and the caption says "China 101." I flip open to the article and read through it to see what was going on. Apparently, City Honors school, a school I am quite familiar with, is mandating all 5th and 6th graders to take Chinese, and offering it as an elective to 8th graders. There are a few other schools with Chinese programs popping up in Buffalo as well.

The article does make the mistake of saying that Chinese is the most spoken language in the world. It does beat the pants off of English for native speakers (Spanish might be ahead too), but if you included second-language speakers, English gets about 700 million more knotches.

I'm glad about the prospect, and I always figured it would catch on, but it seems that it has caught on a little ealier than I thought. It'll be good for kids to learn a non-Indo European language. The article goes on to have a teacher speak in broad terms about how English is more like French and Spanish and not at all like Chinese. They aren't genetically related, but if I remember my typology, Mandarin and English aren't that radically different. The teacher even notes that the main obstacles will be learning the tones, and the basic characters. I say kudos to those who now have the option and are willing to pursue it, students, teachers, and administration alike.

Reduplication Commercial

I just saw a commercial for Pep Boys where they are advertising buy three tires, get the fourth one free. The commercial has a skeptic ask repeatedly about the true cost of the fourth tire and other possible trickery. The clerk informs him that the fourth tire is in fact "free free." The customer replies "then why does it just say free, jackass?"

Well that's how I remember it happening. He might not've said "jackass," but it was about 10:15 at night or so.

Linguistics, Unmarketable

Stephen Colbert reported a couple of days ago (8/1, episode 3099, I just got back from a trip with no television) on the value of linguistics, at least as an undergraduate major. The relevant excerpt was taken from The No Fact Zone:

It’s a breakthrough that allows me to achieve a long time dream, arranging all fields of knowledge into a three-tiered pricing system: ‘marketable’, ‘non-marketable’, and ‘you know this is killing your parents’.

Now, ‘marketable’ is the priciest: business, engineering and science. And whatever future professional football players major in.

Then there’s ‘non-marketable’. That’s for majors like history. Why spend a lot for it when you won’t get a high paying job? Plus, if you don’t learn history, evidently you’re doomed to repeat it, and you’ll find out what happened for free.

Finally, the lowest tier, which includes classics, comparative literature, linguistics; basically, anything taught by someone who says he ‘lives to teach’. Of course, if these universities really want to revolutionize education, they should apply monetary values not just to majors, but to individual facts. [emphasis mine]

The acticle linked to from The No Fact Zone doesn't seem to mention any of the third-tier programs that Stephen mentions, so it would seem to be something added by the writers for the show. As it is a satire, I would imagine that it is being based off of common (mis) conceptions. Generally speaking though, the low value applied to the listed majors are "what are you going to use that for?" If the focus is more on the end result of a job that one might gain from a type of degree, it might line up with these opinions better. Personally, I never associated the value so much with direct marketabilitiy, and I wouldn't even go so far as to say that a linguistics degree is unmarketable, there have been some surges in demand that have added quite some value, just maybe not in directly linguistics-related areas.