Tag: language

nonfiction

Book Review: A Death in the Rainforest: How a Language and a Way of Life Came to an End in Papua New Guinea by Don Kulick

Stephanie1 Comment

The next prompt on the 2023 Pop Sugar Reading challenge was for a book that features two languages, and while many of the books I’ve read so far would qualify here, I like having a new book for each category, so I poked through my TBR and found A Death in the Rainforest: How a Language and a Way of Life Came to an End in Papua New Guinea by Don Kulick (Algonquin Books, 2019). I have a map on the wall where I keep track of all the places I’ve ‘traveled’ to in my reading throughout the year, so I was happy to be able to put a pin in Papua New Guinea!

Don Kulick is a renowned anthropologist and linguist who has spent a good portion of his career living and working in Gapun, an extremely remote village in Papua New Guinea, studying the demise of Tayap, their native language. Why was it being abandoned in favor of Tok Pisin, and what did it look like when a language was voluntarily left behind? What would the community lose, and how would it be affected? Over several decades, Don Kulick lived with the villagers of Gapun, getting to know them and their lives and working hard to compile what he could of the Tayap language before it disappeared completely.

But this book isn’t solely about language. Mr. Kulick’s time among the people of Gapun is fascinating and eye-opening. While their remote lives in a village that lacks even the basics of what Westerners would consider technology look extremely different from ours, at heart, the people are extremely similar to us. They gossip about each other. They desire more for their lives. They raise children, they fall in love, they grieve losses and try to find meaning when someone dies. And, increasingly, violence between the people of Gapun and outsiders becomes a part of everyday life.

There’s so much to consider in this book that I think it’s going to stick with me forever. The demise of the Tayap language is, from a linguistic standpoint, tragic; we lose so much knowledge, history, and culture when a language disappears, especially one not completely documented (something Mr. Kulick laments, especially the knowledge of the names and uses of the rainforest plants that the villagers knew and that he could never make heads or tails of. Solidarity, Mr. Kulick; I stink at identifying plants even as I live very close to where I grew up!). The culture in Gapun is obviously different from anything I’m familiar with, and reading about his experiences there and his struggles to fit in and understand their ways of life was absolutely an adventure. The life of a traveling linguist definitely isn’t for me, but this makes for an intriguing read. There are some scary parts; an attack on the village while Mr. Kulick is there leaves a man dying in front of him (Mr. Kulick got extremely lucky that he wasn’t harmed), and at one point, he uses his satellite phone to charter a helicopter out of the village on an emergency basis. The food he describes…doesn’t exactly sound palatable to my Western tastes, and the remote living (even the most basic medical care is hours away) and the illnesses and conditions he suffered from while there (and I’m sure the villagers suffered from as well) sounded deeply uncomfortable and debilitating. Not only did I feel a lot of sympathy for the villagers, I’m even more impressed at what it takes to do the work Don Kulick and other anthropologists like him do.

There are also some really painful parts of the book where the villagers’ attitudes towards themselves and the way they live show how racism and colonialist attitudes have penetrated their remote society so deeply. The villagers are convinced that their skin will turn white after death, and they desperately wish to live more like the examples of white folks that they’ve seen pictures of. Those parts hurt to read, and I’m so sorry for how deeply Western culture and Christianity has wounded these folks’ sense of self. It’s all so unnecessary. 

This was a really fascinating book about a way of life that has undergone a lot of change in a very short period of time, and I’m glad I got the chance to journey there via Don Kulick’s research and writing.

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nonfiction

Book Review: Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books by Aaron Lansky

Stephanie3 Comments

Right along with books, I’ve long been obsessed with languages. I learned a bunch of Japanese when I was in grade school, took four years of Spanish and of French and one of German in high school (our school schedule was structured in a way that made this possible), have been through Duolingo’s Norwegian tree five times now, and am currently picking up some Hebrew. The many different Jewish languages fascinate me as well (there are more than just Yiddish and Hebrew!). And where Jewish language and books meet is Aaron Lansky, founder of the Yiddish Book Center and author of Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books (Algonquin Books, 2005). I’ve known about Mr. Lansky since my son was very young and I read him a children’s book about how Mr. Lansky saved Yiddish books, so when I learned that he had written a book for adults, it immediately went onto my list (and my library had an ebook copy!).

As college students learning Yiddish, Aaron Lansky and his classmates had a difficult time finding reading material. New Yiddish books weren’t really being published, and most libraries didn’t have much, if anything, on their shelves. And then he learned the terrible fate of many of the Yiddish books in existence: they were being thrown out. When elderly Yiddish speakers died, their children, who often couldn’t speak or read the language, didn’t know what to do with the books and so they got tossed. Horrified, Mr. Lansky began collecting these books. As more and more books piled up when people learned that he wanted them, he opened the Yiddish Book Center and began racing against time (and weather, and terrible storage conditions) in order to preserve the literary traditions and history of a world that no longer exists.

It wasn’t an easy job. Funding was always an issue. Space was another problem. Vans that broke down, elderly folks who overfed Mr. Lansky and his crew while sharing the stories of their lives and their books (and putting them hours behind schedule!), people who didn’t seem to understand what he was trying to do, trips to pick up books that were downright dangerous, there were a lot of obstacles in the way, but things always seemed to work out, and today, the Yiddish Book Center is an amazing institution that has helped the modern-day study of Yiddish flourish.

This was such a great read. It’s right at the intersection of a bunch of things I care deeply about- books, languages, Judaism- and Mr. Lansky tells the story of his life in a truly engaging way. The Yiddish language has never been dead; it’s still in use today as a living language, though mainly among the more Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) groups, who, in general, don’t engage with the mainly secular literature in the books Mr. Lansky was trying to save (which is why it was so important he collected them; these books are history, culture, linguistics. They’re the legacy of a people who survived some terrible times, but who left behind a rich literary treasure trove). And Yiddish has seen a bit of a resurgence among this current generation of non-Haredi Jews (are there any non-Jews engaging with the language on a widespread basis? I don’t honestly know). There are Yiddish classes in the city near me; the University of Chicago also offers Yiddish courses (my kingdom for a winning lottery ticket so that I could afford to attend!). It makes me happy that non-native speakers are continuing to engage with this beautiful language (to me, it sounds a little like Norwegian, which I think is gorgeous!). (I really love parentheses, if you couldn’t tell. Eesh.)

The people who gave Mr. Lansky their books are deeply moving. So often, they had already lost far too much in their lives; they understood the importance of the books they loved, and they shared their lives and their stories (and their homecooked food!) with the Yiddish Book Center crew. Elderly as they were, many of them went on to help collect books for the Center. You’ll be moved by their stories, their pain, their joy, and their enthusiasm for and dedication to their book collections (seriously, as literary people, we ALL get how important books are! The thought of any books ending up in trash heaps, regardless of whether or not I can read them, makes me scream inside my heart!).

Outwitting History left me in awe of everything Aaron Lansky has accomplished. He saw a problem- a whole culture and history being erased- and dedicated his life to solving it. And in return, scholars of Yiddish visit and contact his center every day. The Center sends Yiddish books all around the world, and Yiddish literature was the first to be digitized. He has done the world a massive service by preserving so many books, and though I don’t speak the language (though at some point, I’d like to learn some!), I’m deeply grateful to him for the books he and his crew have rescued. Imagine what the world would have missed out on had all those books been lost forever.

Visit the website of the Yiddish Book Center here.

nonfiction

Book Review: Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell

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I was reading over at Hey Alma a few weeks ago when an article leapt out at me: Jews Probably Won’t Join Your Cult by Emily Burack, all about the new book, Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell (Harper Wave, 2021). The article was great, the book sounded fascinating, and lo and behold, my library had a copy on order! I put my name on the list, and got the email that my book was in this week- of course when I already had like six books sitting at home waiting for me. As is almost always the case. Everything comes in at once. It’s a good problem to have, isn’t it?

Amanda Montell’s father grew up in Synanon, the addiction-recovery-program-turned-cult of the 1970’s, so she grew up hearing stories of cult life. But it was her background as a linguist that had her considering what makes and keeps these groups- not all of them religious- together, and the answer to that is language. Each group has its own lingo, yet they all use similar linguistic techniques to pull followers in, establish themselves as a moral (or otherwise) authority, maintain said authority and bypass certain followers’ inner warning system, and preserve the control they hold over their followers’ lives. From Scientology to Jonestown to MLMs to CrossFit to the cult of Trump, what these groups have in common is the way they use language as a means of groupthink and control, and Ms. Montell illustrates this beautifully in a book that, while academic, never strays toward the dry. This is fascinating reading.

From group-specific vocabulary to thought-terminating clichés (once you learn what these are, you’ll hear them everywhere, just as Ms. Montell warns), the language techniques used by these groups- some of which are straight-up cults, others which only tap dance on the border of cultish- follow similar patterns. That message you get from that girl you went to high school with (“Hey girl! LOVE your posts! You have such a great energy. I have the BEST opportunity for you, if you want to make some money staying at home with your kids IN YOUR PAJAMAS! Who wouldn’t love that, right???”), the fitness guru yelling at you from the screen of your Peloton, and that all-smiles dude in the suit who wants to have a chat with you about where you’re going to spend eternity all use similar tactics. They may not sound the same, they may not have the same end goal, but they’re cut from the same cloth. Listen closely, and the language they use is all similarly cultish.

I’ve read a lot of books that dissect language use over the years, and Cultish is probably at the top of that list in terms of ease of read and enjoyability. Ms. Montell delves into well-known death cults, such as Jonestown and Heaven’s Gate, but she also tackles newer groups such as Peloton, SoulCycle, CrossFit, and various MLMS- groups that, while they aren’t exactly full-on cults, at least make a lot of people vaguely uncomfortable and inspire their devotees to never, ever shut up about them. (Seriously. The MLM people, amirite???)

If you like learning about language usage, you’ll enjoy this book. If you’re interested in cults and groups that inspire their members to near-cultish devotion, you’ll enjoy this book. And if you’re interested in both things, this is definitely one you won’t want to miss. (“Hey girl! I have got a book you’re going to LOVE!”)

Visit Amanda Montell’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.

nonfiction

Book Review: What’s Your Pronoun?: Beyond He and She by Dennis Baron

Stephanie1 Comment

“What’s your pronoun?”

She/her/hers. They/them. He/them. Xie/hir.

Pronouns are popping up all over: in social media bios, in our screennames on our nine million daily Zoom calls, in applications and various forms we’re asked to fill out (I just wrote out my pronouns in a volunteer application about fifteen minutes ago. LOVE that they asked). Odds are you’ve come across at least one person who uses what is thought of as a non-traditional pronoun; I know several in person and many more online who do. But is this really a new phenomenon? Not at all, says Dennis Baron in his study of the subject, What’s Your Pronoun?: Beyond He and She (Liveright, 2020). This went on my list as soon as I learned about its existence; I’m a bit of a language nerd, so the subject interested me, but I’m also interested in being the best ally I can, so I knew I needed to learn more.

English is seriously lacking in a common-gender pronoun. What’s commonly used is they/them, but grammar fascists have long had their issues with that. (Insert eyeroll.) This isn’t a new problem. Dennis Baron points out that what we think of as ‘alternative’ pronoun use in the US goes back to the 1780’s, and that’s only how far back we’ve been able to dig up written sources. And singular ‘they,’ as in ‘I saw someone at your house, but they ran off when they saw me’ has been in use since 1376, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. If you’re looking for a book to convince a family member that your pronoun use isn’t just some modern-day fancy, this will help you clarify points and back up your argument. (Not that you should have to; your choices about your identity and how you want to be addressed are valid regardless.)

While at times this book is a bit of an information dump, it’s interesting and informative, and it’s written in a jaunty, fun style that doesn’t exhaust the brain to take it all in. The struggle to use English in a way that suits our needs in terms of identity has been going on for a long time, and it’s chock-full to the brim with whiny, tantrum-throwing men who gasped as though someone had kicked their puppy when it was suggested that maybe women didn’t enjoy being referred to as the generic he (as in, ‘If a guest doesn’t enjoy steamed fish, he is welcome to order something else off the menu’). “Men in power accepted the generic masculine only when it didn’t require them to give up too much,” Mr. Baron states, and then presents this to the reader in example after infuriating example (He meant men in terms of rights, like who could vote, but it meant men AND women in terms of punishment. SUPER CONVENIENT, RIGHT?!!?!?? *ragescream*).

Language changes. Uses change. New words crop up. If you don’t think that’s true, try explaining the sentence ‘I downloaded the browser extension, but then my modem disconnected and I bluescreened’ to someone from 1950. What is eternal is respect and how we treat each other, and though it may take some practice to use pronouns that you aren’t necessarily familiar with, if you can remember to use a woman’s new last name when she gets married and changes it to her husband’s, you can also remember to refer to your friend’s kid or your co-worker as ‘them’ or ‘hir’ when you speak about them. It’s not hard, and it’s not new.

Dennis Baron has really shed a lot of light on how far back the struggle for a gender-neutral pronoun goes. I had no idea that ze, for example, traces back to 1864. And one of the most fascinating quotes I found in the book refers to ‘em, as in “The dogs are missing! We need to find ‘em!”:

‘…the informal ‘em, so common in speech, is not a reduced form of them, but a holdover from the old plural object form hem, with unpronounced h.’

Fascinating! I never knew that!

Lots of history and information and men throwing fits because they didn’t want to share society with women (seriously, dudes, get over it. Who raised you???), but you’ll learn a lot about the English language and its use throughout history. It’s really true that everything old is new again in terms of pronoun use. 😊

Visit Dennis Baron’s blog here.

Follow him on Twitter here.

anthology · fiction · nonfiction

Book Review: How Yiddish Changed America and How America Changed Yiddish, edited by Ilan Stavans and Josh Lambert

Stephanie1 Comment

So, I was a weird kid. (I’m sure you’re shocked.) I became fascinated with foreign languages on a Brownies field trip to the library at age seven (somewhere I was already intimately familiar with!). The librarian took us on a tour of the children’s section, pointing out where the fiction section was, and then letting us know what the nonfiction section held. She pointed out the foreign language section and I was immediately intrigued. ‘There are other languages???’ I remember thinking. A copy of a learn-to-speak-French book came home with me that day (the very first French sentence I ever learned to say: Où sont les toilettes? Super useful!), and I’ve been fascinated ever since, digging briefly into Japanese as a tween before studying Spanish, French, and German in high school, studying French in college (and marrying a native speaker!), dabbling in sign language here and there throughout my life, and picking up Norwegian as an adult. All this to say that a copy of Leo Rosten’s The Joys of Yiddish came home with me from the library when I was around eleven or twelve, which may have seemed weird if I had opened with that, but now that you know my history, eh, maybe not so much. I’ve always thought Yiddish was a cool language, and so I was glad my library had a copy of How Yiddish Changed America and How America Changed Yiddish, edited Ilan Stavans and Josh Lambert (Restless Books, 2020).

This 500+ page anthology is a quilt, a little bit of everything for the Yiddish-curious reader. Essays, interviews, poetry, short stories, excerpts from novels. There are discussions of modern-day Yiddish, trips back to the shtetls that haven’t existed for decades, glimpses of a way of life long gone, and both optimism and pain. There are stories of shame and devastation, but also of triumph, of Aaron Lansky’s rescuing of millions of Yiddish books, of poetry so beautiful that I only wish it were better known (Emily Dickinson, eat your heart out!). If one format doesn’t interest you, the next piece will likely be entirely different, which makes for a really interesting read.

I was expecting something different, however; I had thought this was more a book about Yiddish and not just occasionally about Yiddish and then a lot of Yiddish-writing-translated-to-English. That’s not a bad thing, just different than what I was expecting. I was also expecting it to be entirely nonfiction, instead of including a lot of fiction and poetry. Again, not bad, just different.

It was also fun to see familiar faces in the book. I’ve known about Aaron Lansky for ages; his book is on my TBR and I’m very much looking forward to reading it. I’ve read Ilan Stavans before; Resurrecting Hebrew is a fascinating look on how the Hebrew language was brought back from being almost solely a textual language to the fully functional national language of Israel. And while reading the introduction, which spoke of how translated pieces were included in this anthology, I thought, “Hmmm, I wonder…” and I flipped through the index in the back. And sure enough, the wife of one of the rabbis who taught my Intro to Judaism class has a translated piece in the book! She’s a Yiddish professor. Small world, eh? 😊

Even if you’re not super interested in languages or Yiddish as a language, this book almost has the feel of reading a magazine, with all of its different pieces and formats. Reading it kept me engaged throughout its 512 pages, which is no easy feat!

Follow Ilan Stavans on Twitter here.

nonfiction

In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build a Perfect Language- Arika Okrent

Stephanie1 Comment

I was around eight or so when I got the bright idea that I was going to invent a language. I thought I was pretty darn clever until I opened the dictionary to A and started making up words, which I wrote down on a piece of paper. Halfway down the page, I realized that there were an awful lot of existing words that I never used, and to come up with new words for all of them- and memorize them!- would be…difficult. And not exactly fun, because what’s the point of making up a language that I wasn’t sure I could memorize? Chastened and humbled, I abandoned my language creation and went off to do whatever it was that eight year-old me did, probably play outside in the yard or (surprise) read a book. It was this memory that led me to select In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build a Perfect Language by Arika Okrent (Spiegel & Grau, 2009) for the 2020 PopSugar Reading Challenge prompt for a book with a made-up language. Maybe I could figure out where my eight year-old self had gone wrong. 😉

Languages are complicated; in all their quirks of grammar and pronunciation, their exceptions to the rules and bizarre, untranslatable idioms, they arise to meet the needs of their speakers. Modern eras have seen the rise of constructed languages- conlangs, as they’re known- or languages purposefully and non-naturally created by a single or multiple human beings. Throughout the book, Ms. Okrent takes the reader on a tour through many of the better known conlangs, such as Klingon, Loglan (and Lojban), Blissymbols, Láadan, and probably the most well-known and most successful (for what that’s worth) conlang, Esperanto.

While the book does occasionally wander into drier territory for readers who aren’t major linguistics nerds (and I say that with deep respect and affection for linguistic nerds, because language is frickin’ cool), where it really shines is in telling the human stories behind the invented languages. Language creators, as it turns out, are a messy bunch. Drama- so much drama- anger, romance, quarrels and bickering, lawsuits, there are veritable soap operas surrounding the creation of just about every conlang, and it’s obvious Ms. Okrent is just as into these personal stories as she is the languages themselves. I very much appreciated when she became part of the story, reporting on her experiences at Esperanto and Klingon conferences; never having attended one of these conferences myself, it was interesting to see what another language enthusiast found useful- and irritating!- about them.

To be honest, while I did enjoy this, I don’t know that I would have finished it if it weren’t for the challenge. It often got little more academic than I would have normally felt up to at this time in my life, but that’s just a personal thing and shouldn’t reflect on anyone else’s opinion of the book. My brain is just pretty full from other things right now. I am glad, however, that I did finish it. It answered a lot of questions I’ve always had about the how and why of the failure, for the most part, of that perfect invented universal language. If you’ve ever wondered why we can’t all just have one single language so we can all speak to each other and finally achieve world peace, give this book a try, because you might walk away with your curiosity finally satisfied as well. 🙂

Have you ever thought about invented languages? Tried to learn one? Wished you could speak Klingon or Esperanto? (Duolingo has them both: Klingon, Esperanto) I admit to some curiosity towards Esperanto, but I’m kind of full up on languages right now…

Visit Arika Okrent’s website here.