On The Topic Of Toilets

On thing I'm really struggling with at the moment is that the Nepali word for 'urine' is 'pisab' and the verb 'to urinate' is 'pisab garnu' (lit. to make urine).

'Pisab' is sufficiently innocuous to pop up in every day conversation, and when we were on the bus the equivalent to the driver shouting 'toilet break!' is to shout 'pisab garne!' I find it very difficult to use this word, as it's too similar to the much more taboo 'piss,' and I can't keep a straight face when anyone else uses it.

Unfortunately, I don't know if the Nepali word 'pisab' and the English word 'piss' are etymologically related. English and Nepali are both in the massive Indo-European language family, although at opposite ends of it, so the words could possibly be congate (ie from the same origin), but just as likely they could not. There is a big, beautiful Nepali Etymological Dictionary I could check, but I'm not allowed to buy it because I have too many books already.

In The Field

The flying visit to the country, although brief, was sufficiently action filled. I spent two hours going up the side of a mountain in the back of a jeep with 5 other people, 80 kgs of salt and sugar, 30 liters of cooking oil and 2 live chickens, I ate something that disagreed rather violently with me (really, it could have been anything) and I also got vomited on by an old woman on the bus trip home.

But apart from collecting hilarious and/or nauseating anecdotes (which on some fieldworkers' scale all go towards me being a better linguist) I was also there to collect some data, meet some people and check out exactly what was going on regarding K. in the area it's from.

To be honest, things looked pretty grim. Most of the people I spoke to used very little K. with their children, who had only a passive competency in the language. Many families had moved to other parts of Nepal, or overseas of work, or only the husband had. One village that apparently used to have over 50 families now has four. It struck me that maybe the speech community I'm working with isn't thriving, or even slowly dying, but already moribund (ie. it's not being passed on). Language death always makes me sad, although others write more articulately on the complexities and issues surrounding it much better than I ever will. The best introductions are David Crystal's 'Language Death' and Nick Evans' 'Dying Words'.

So there I was, feeling despondent, when a bunch of kids came up behind us and started pointing out the 'white woman'. Normally I try and ignore such prattle, as I'm enculturated to not point at people and make reference to their skin colour, and it generally makes me uncomfortable that I am such a freak here for being luminous under flashlight. Then I realised the kids were actually talking in K. (as I've said before, my passive competency is often better than I know). I've never been so excited to have a conversation about how white I am - 'white hands, white hair' I replied to them (as I said, I'm not very good at speaking). They headed off to their village higher up the hill. That children are choosing this language to interact with their peers, even when they're educated in Nepali, is an excellent sign of language vitality.

I would have loved to follow them, or visit their village the next day, but my stomach decided to put those plans on hold until next year

To The Country!!

In posts across previous weeks I have made tentative references to my impending trip to the countryside to visit K. speakers living in the area that they come from. It has taken me til now, two weeks before my field trip comes to an end, to finally make my way out there.

This has not been due to any unwillingness, or laziness, on my behalf, but due to political instability in Nepal. The opposition party in the National Parliament were preventing anything from happening, and decided to attempt the population to rise up in the name of 'Civilian Supremacy'. During the weeks of political unrest we never did quite find out what that rhetoric meant.

I haven't bothered writing about it until now for a few reasons. Firstly, I didn't want to to concern anyone unnecessarily, which kind of flows on to point two, which is that it felt so surreal and never really affected our daily lives. This was rather hard for me to deal with, as - on one hand - the whole thing was majorly messing up my plans to get out of Ktm, and - on the other hand - my life kept ticking along like nothing was the problem. The 'bandah' days, where everything shuts down as a sing of solidarity, didn't really touch my little area, and the larger protests happened on the southern end of the city.

But, as mysteriously as the whole drama arose, it has dissipated again, and I'm now taking a trip out of the valley. It is shorter than I would have liked, and it's coming so late in things that I won't really get a chance to process or confirm any data that I get, but it is certainly better than not going at all.

So, if I can't find an webbage in my journeys for the next week I'm afraid the anecdotes will have to wait until I return home on Friday.

When A Language Isn't... The Sequal

Yesterday, I did something that I wanted to do since before I came to Nepal, and something that I had no intention of doing the whole time I was here...

The thing I wanted to do, was visit a K. speaker. A while ago, I mentioned that I wasn't actually working on the language that I thought I was, but in fact a language that had exactly the same socio-linguistic features, just that the speakers lived about 200 km further West (http://lozguistics.blogspot.com/2009/10/when-language-isnt-language.html).

This gentleman, however, speaks the language that I was originally interested in. And so, after a lot of time organising to meet, I took a cab out to the KTM vally fringe for an afternoon. It was great talking to N. about his language, and noting the similarities and differences in his and A. attitudes towards their respective languages. Also, having done a short wordlist with him, I can also compare some things on a linguistic level.

And the thing I didn't want to do? Well, when I rocked up in the cab, N.'s son was waiting for me, with his motorbike. And so we took a quick spin along the quiet country back roads. Once I got over worrying about having my brains dashed out and wasting three months of work (oh, and the rest of my life too I guess), it was almost enjoyable.

Yummy

It doesn't matter how many times I eat out in Nepal (and trust me, it's quiet a lot) whenever I see 'buff meat' on the menu I instantly think they have a butcher hooking them up with the remains of gym junkies rather than buffalo.

Vocabulous, pt 2.

The cool thing about long, sprawling freestyle narratives is that all kinds of fun things pop up. Today I learnt a verb that meant 'to crack someone's resolve' - ie, their resolve not to drink. I also learnt that the verb used to mean that someone's hands were tied is the same verb as 'choke', so their hands were literally choked.

I'll let you try and work these amusing pieces of vobabulary into your own story.

A Day In The Life...

A while ago my friend the Frog wrote a post about how his routine in a new city has all the hallmarks of his old routine back home ( http://largefrog.wordpress.com/2009/11/03/the-routine/ ). My life very quickly fell into a routine here, albeit somewhat different from home. As it's the day off for the week and I'm not following my normal routine I thought I'd give you a run down of my very dull days.

05:00 wake up - my early morning starts have reached a new level of earliness here. At the start it was because Jet lag made it convenient. But really, most of Nepal is in bed by ten so it's been easy to just kind of go with the general population. I make myself muesli, and do some work.

6:30 leave for A.'s - I think most linguists prefer their collaborators to come to them, but the half hour walk gets me out of the house for a bit. I like the sights and sounds (not necessarily the smells) of my daily walk.

7:00 - 9:00 - Session at A.'s. This involves a cup of sweet black tea at the start, and a cup of milky tea with biscuits at the end. Somewhere in between all the sugar we do linguistics.

9:00 - 10:00 - I wander home, occasionally stopping past an internet cafe, or the local dairy to buy some yoghurt.

10:00 - 16:00 - This part of the day passes in a blur, in which I feel like I spend a lot of time doing a lot of work and not getting very far. Lunch is often a strung out series of snacks. Have become very fond of packet soup, apples, and rivita with peanut butter.

16:00 - 17:00 - Nepali class. Although this is fairly sporadic as my teacher can be a bit vague sometimes and so can I.

17:00 - 20:00 - At some point I'll have dinner, often with S. in Thamel, or at my friend's house. Our place has no kitchen, except for an electric kettle, so there isn't a lot that gets made at our house except beverages.

20:00 - Pick up a book, or just vague out, until about nine o'clock when I get myself ready for bed, fall asleep and then start it all again.

I didn't promise it was an exciting routine...

Get Me A Dream Analyst!

To add to my list of things to cry 'woe' about; First, I sat on my glasses, and now they are getting their revenge by sitting wonky on my face. Second, I have a cold and and my face is stuffed with snot - when A. sympathised with me today she used the Nepali verb that's also used for cry, I think saying that one's nose is crying is much more poetic. Third, S. and I are having a tiff with out house cleaner over money and garbage removal. Dealing with surly house cleaners is not something I generally have to do in my life.

On a linguistic good note, last night I had the first dream where I recall speaking Nepali. For long winded and inexplicable reasons, someone was trying feed my mother chicken, and I turned to them and said in Nepali "she's vegetarian". Yup, that was the extent of it. I think my cold has made my head go funny.

That Feeling In My Stomach...

There's less than thre weeks to go until it's time for me to pack up the audio-recorder and call and end to this adventure. In that time I have to get to the country-side, visit another consultant in a village near Kathmandu, attend a conference, finish transcribing the video I recorded and tidy up what loose ends I can find.

I can no longer tell whether the feeling in the bottom of my stomach is the mild food poisoning that's been plaguing me since I arrived or the thought of everything there is still to do...

Yaks In The Jungle With Gastric

No language is an island, and every language is constantly borrowing words and constructions from it's neighbours. Well, that is the speakers borrow them, and then they become part of the language.

This is something I have been reminded of time and time again while here. I've had Nepali people ask me what the English words were for 'load shedding'(ie enforced blackouts) and 'gastric'(stomach upset) - they were rather confused when I said they were the English words.

It's happened the other way as well - during sessions one of the words for forest was 'jungle'- a word that, like us, they have borrowed from their Indian neighbours, and, of course, the word for 'yak' is 'yak' - in this case we're the ones that did the borrowing from Tibetan.

Word borrowing can be a useful record of how languages interact and share. It's also fun to see what words get borrowed.