User talk:Pakkichipps

Welcome to Wiktionary. This is a better place to discuss problems with the website. Eclecticology 21:17, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

confusing at best

Hi, well, I have no clue what I am doing! I am hoping this can be the start, but it could be made more user-friendly. I see you are trying to work on rewriting Chinese in Roman characters. That would be a big mistake! I know it is possible, just as it is possible to write out the sounds of First Nations languages with IPA or roman letters. The problem here is in the polysynthetic structure of the languages. These languages are fluid - they can be changed at will, parts added and taken away, in order to create an accurate "picture" of what is being spoken of. To take a fluid, or should I call it a non-linear, language and conform it to a linear alphabet, you lose the very heart and soul of the language. I mean, it can be done - but you lose too much! The best writing system for First Nations languages might well be pictographs - please do not think pictographic languages are simple, they are far more complex than Indo-European languages; thereby killing them by engraving them in inflexible stone. Just my opinion. The beauty of the pictograms is that it can be used across dialectical barriers, as it could be used to cross dialectical barriers within First Nations language families, or at least sub-families. This would be extremely useful in the creation of teaching programs.

I remember I had a professor in linguistics, during my B.A., who was yelling at my late cousin (who was an "informant" - how I hate the use of that term in linguistics!). I stood by the door; the professor was yelling, "Why can't you people ever say the same word the same way!" There was no question mark. He was venting his frustration because our language didn't fit his language pattern. He was a brilliant linguist, but he could have learned a lot by asking why it was said differently the next time. He would have found out about a very important part of our language. Once you have told someone something once, if you have to repeat it, you have to add a piece to the word stating that you have already told the person that before. Instead, he lost the respect of our family.

We can write sounds down, as it sounds now, but it is important that in order to record the important information of how the language works, we need to consult more with the speakers of those languages. If the "words" are written down, as my example with the Diitidaht word, Ch'iiqwalh, that translates to Dog, loses all the meaning and history of the word. It is also NOT a word, but a sentence, and in order to put it into a dictionary, it will appear out of context and not as used in the language. Let me illustrate with an easier example:

Let us assume that someone wants us to give them the word for house. Most likely they will get the word, ba'as. Okay, so now they have a word for house; however, the meaning is not clear! ba- means to bite. -'as means flat ground, soil. So, it means to bite the soil. Okay - house, cool! Nooooo, that is not the word for house! That is the word used for a house on flat soil! So, what if the house is on sandy soil, or a beach? Well, the word for house would be ba'is. If the house was built on a rocky shore, it would now be ba'aaw. But just like in English, where the word house would not usually stand alone - except in television series names, or where it is the reply to a question (without a?) it does not stand alone in Diitidaht either. So, just in making a dictionary, one is not helping to keep the language alive unless each part is explained, and examples of how the word actually can be used. If pictograms were used, there could be one pictogram, perhaps ^ or < that denotes the piece ba-, so now we get the picture of biting - an open mouth. We can store that. If we make another, for example .... denoting sand, and = denoting ground, and perhaps oo denoting rocky ground - now you have a picture of each part in your head. So now, if you hear someone say, 'ba'asiilhibtsitsX' you would get a little bit of an idea that it was about a house (it means I built a house for you); but if you saw the word, ba'ilhtik you wouldn't associate that with house, nor should you! But if you see the picture of ^ or < and know that means bite, if you know the other parts of the "word", you would get an idea that it meant, "what is that on your nose?"

You see, the root of every "word" (remember sentence) has a shape or a movement in that shape. The pieces you add to these roots complete the picture. There are no nouns nor verbs in Diitidaht, yet they exist and are used all the time, they just don't exist the same way they exist in English. A distant English example would be the word for step - it can be an action or a noun, a stair, etc. It relies on context and the rest of the words to help the listener to determine what is being spoken about. In Diitidaht, every "word" or sentence is like that.

I love our language, and I am sad that we can't get money for a program to allow the elders and parents to start a "language nest" where both parents and babies learn the language, the babies as their first language, and the parents as the language they will communicate with the baby in - that is the only way we can save the language. The government has only put money into the making of dictionaries - and strangely enough, someone from another country, instead of using our local fully qualified linguists. The dictionary is the epitaph on our language's gravestone! It is too beautiful to be lost forever!

Pakkichipps 22:35, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

You raise all sorts of interesting and challenging points. The government funding parameters for language transmission reflect a rather antiquated model based on the Classics. I have yet to meet a baby who has read through a grammar book.

Romanizing Chinese should not mean that we should have stand alone texts in Romanized script. Pinyin is the official Chinese romanization, and it is an asset for bridging the linguistic gap. It was an improvement over the work of the 19th century linguists. I was perhaps more concerned with the simplification of Chinese script. The traditional script had a strong pictorial element that made texts written more than 2000 years ago still understandable today.

Polysynthesis, or making it up as you go, is completely alien to the scientific Aristotelian mind. My first suggestion would be to avoid applying traditional names for Ditidaht entries. Using a term like "morpheme" may be more neutral. The structure could develop from there. Eclecticology 07:53, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Polysynthetic languages, in linguistics, are languages made up of many small parts to create a whole - very complex, and very old. I don't like the name given to this type of language, but there it is. What are you referring to when you speak of avoiding applying traditional names for Diitidaht entries? There are simply languages that do not entirely fit under the scientific linguistic method. Babies in language nests do not learn to read at all. They learn the real language - the oral language! There are many benefits to the retention of oral language - and when the written languages came about, there were many concerns about the damage to languages. It is in my dissertation. With oral languages, there is a huge development of memory! How many brilliant people do you know (including you) who cannot remember something important because they lost a scrap of paper? That does not happen in oral languages! The memory is developed to an incredible extent, and the details are exact. I am not speaking as a linguist, but as a person belonging to a family where the Elders had grown up as oral speakers and books. I could ask them who had a potlatch at a certain time 50 years ago - in separate rooms, and they would be able to tell me who gave what to whom, and whose potlatch it was. There would be no discrepancy. Memory was used to store incredible detail about everything! I was actually sad that I had been taught to read and write early, instead of learning to retain everything. Later I could have learned to read and write. The treasure of having a sharp memory like that at 100 years of age! Wow!

If you hate writing and think that writing damages languages (!), why do you want to include Ditidaht words here? Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV 03:02, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

By traditional names I meant terms like "verb" or "noun" which would put the language into foreign boxes. Eclecticology 08:09, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Possible approach

You may also want to start the page Wiktionary:About Ditidaht or even a similar page about the language group. The purpose of these pages is to explain the way the language works. See Category:Wiktionary:Language considerations for a list of such pages. Eclecticology 08:19, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

I guess because, with only about 5 fluent speakers left in one village, maybe very few in other places, I just wanted to talk about what a beautiful language it is and how unique it is. I have been working on a database with thousands of words and phrases with thousands more to go. I have been including voice clips of the pronunciation, and I hope I will live long enough to include stories - recorded (I have been gathering them and family songs for many years - and most are gone now). I just don't want the language to die without a struggle! They are teaching it now, to the older students, at the highschool in Nitinaht, but it needs to become a mother-tongue again. With television and movies, it won't interfere with their later learning of English. If you are at all interested in this, you can go to my webpage, chamasart.weebly.com as have my dissertation for download for free there, along with other books. Not advertising, it is just there. Pakkichipps 04:11, 14 February 2012 (UTC)