Non written language

Regenerative Culture Language & Oral Tradition
#1

This may be something that a lot of you are already aware of but i had a little bit of a revelation about it this past week.

I spent last week visiting my friends on the Blood reserve in S. Alberta. There are quite a few people who are fluent in Blackfoot and carry on lengthy conversations in Blackfoot, with the odd English word thrown in that they don’t have a Blackfoot word for.

As I was listening and also seeing examples of the Blackfoot language written down it occurred to me how diferently a language would develop if there was no written form for it.

I was imagining trying to create a written form for a long established language. Just figuring out how to break down what the person said into individual words would be very difficult.

“Sah koo ma pii” translates as “boy” in English. I don’t know what each individual syllable means or if sometimes it might be written as all one word.

Anyway it got me thinkng about our different languages.

#2

I don’t know Blackfoot per se, but I do know that the language family it belongs to tends to work in a beautiful way called ‘verb phrases’. They have no (or very, very few) nouns, so that everything you say involves describing a process - boy = ‘he-childs’, or somesuch. I guess this goes right back to e-primitive.

Certainly writing impacts a language as much as it ‘preserves’ it.

I love that verb-phrase stuff. It just makes for automatic poetry!

What a blessing that some of those Blackfoot still speak their language fluently.

#3

You know I remember these books I read at a young age, where they threw in pictures instead of words and what not (one of those helping to learn to read books), and now I got to thinking of just the opposite, instead of writing all these letters and words, drawing several pictures and seeing a different way to communicate. Obviously this still consists of writing, but, you could do it for fun/challenge in a way, in writing a letter/note to someone. Like a drawing in the sand, to communicate the same idea with a lot less words… etc? Kinda fun to see the effects of deconstructing the language eh?

#4

reminds me of the rebus thing.

#5

Also, somehow this Lichen Oracle seems relevant:

for more: http://www.mineralarts.com/artwork/LichenOracle.html

#6

And also, this fascinating commentary on American Sign Language and a video a (hearing!) signer made that created quite a splash in the signing/Deaf community online.

http://www.deafdc.com/blog/shane-feldman/2007-05-06/deaf-ninja-a-benchmark-for-asl-videos/

Especially note at the end the comments the blogger makes about the well-intended attempt to translate sign into written English!