Module 2 Blog Post: Technology and Native Languages

Previously, many Native American languages were used primarily to communicate about the rural environments that the Native American’s were living in; but now, with modern technology and urban settings, many native languages have changed by adapting new words and phrases to describe modern society.

The first thing that stuck out to me while researching how technology has influenced native languages was not that native languages have had to change due to technology; rather, technology has been used to preserve certain native languages. Social media, blog posts, and online dictionaries have all been used in the past decade in some form to help preserve many native languages by gathering those interested in the cause in one place together. For example, I came across a Facebook group called “Lakota Language for Beginners” that has over 23,000 members. Large gatherings of these native speakers (and even non speakers who are still interested in the cause) online creates a sense of community, and allows those who know the language to work with others in preservation efforts.

Marie Wilcox, the last fluent speaker of Wukchumni (a small tribe with 200 members) dedicated much of her life to create the first Wukchimni dictionary by remembering certain words that her grandparent’s spoke to her as a child as an effort to keep the tribe educated on their native language (Bentley). She did this all on her own, with the help of her grandson to create an audio version of the dictionary. In situations like Marie’s, if she had online resources to reach out to others who might have known some Wukchumni words, it is possible that she could have used these resources to help her write her dictionary.

On the “Lakota Language for Beginner’s” Facebook group page, pinned at the top is an extensive post (shared by the groups administration) on how members can contribute to preventing the language from becoming even more “critically endangered” than it already is, through learning. The lessons are beginner level and are completely free, and offered through the Facebook page.

Curious to see how Native American’s use Facebook (and other social media forms) on a usual basis, I clicked on one of the “Lakota Language for Beginner’s” admin’s, Uŋpa Nuŋpa’s, personal Facebook page. Uŋpa is a very active voice in the Native American community when it comes to preserving native traditions and languages. He uses his Facebook page to spread awareness of the importance of learning the Lakota Language. Several other Native Americans are connected with him on Facebook, and I'm sure if I had looked deeper, I could have found many more that were online.

While native Languages have not added new words or phrases based on the influence of technology, the influence of technology has helped preserve several languages and connect speakers across the United States with each other. I never would have though that using technology would have any benefit for Native Americans, but after doing this research my perspective has really changed. 

Works Cited:

Bentley, Andrew. Native American Blog by National Relief Charities, NRCprograms.org. "Two Worlds: Native Language Meets Technology N.p., 27 Mar. 2015. Web. 05 Feb. 2017.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/lakotabeginners/

Module 1 Blog Post: Language Barriers in Life-or-Death situations

Most people don’t think of language as being a dangerous barrier when it comes to life-threatening situations. When I was 4 years old, I was diagnosed with Anaphylaxis’s, meaning that I go into severe shock when I eat foods that I am allergic to, causing my throat to swell shut and making me have to seek immediate emergency medical treatment. Living with something like this has been very scary for both me and my parents, but my parents have also been determined for me to experience a normal life, and share their passion of traveling. The foods that I can’t eat (all nuts, sesame products, and seafood) are easily avoidable, but the fact that I have an allergy has to be communicated to whoever is preparing my food no matter where I go, even if I am traveling and it has to communicated in a language that is other than English.

 I have traveled to many places where non-English speakers are serving my food, such as Mexico, Hawaii, and parts of Europe, and I have had to learn how to communicate how serious my food allergies are in languages that I do not normally speak. I have worked with my allergy doctor, school teachers, and online resources to learn enough of the language to communicate what I need to say at restaurants. It can be hard to not only say the words in the different language, but also communicate the seriousness of the message I am conveying, while not speaking the language fluently. There are also many restaurants even in the US that I have been to where the chefs and wait staff are not English speakers.

Below I have listed two different translations of what I would typically have to say if I was in a restaurant environment in a different country. I’m using Spanish and French as examples, because they are the two main languages that I have had to use in different countries. The differences between the two phrases are the emphasis on the allergy that I have, in Spanish the word used to do this is “muy” and in French is its “trés”. Putting in an adjective such as muy or tres (both translating into “very”), is one strategy I have learned in order to communicate my point of how serious my allergies are.

Spanish:

I am allergic to nuts- soy alergico a las nueces

I am severely allergic to nuts- Soy muy alérgico a las nueces

French:

I am allergic to nuts- Je suis allergique aux noix

I am severly allergic to nuts-Je suis très allergique aux noix

Knowing how to communicate a serious medical conditions in another language is an important life-skill for anyone who is interested in traveling to new places. I personally try not to view languages as a "barrier" because knowing different languages can provide endless opportunities. Learning how to convey my condition in other languages has just added to the knowledge that I have of the language and made me closer to those who speaking it. 

Module 4 Blog Post: Accents in Early Childhood

In this week's module, Amy briefly discussed the acquisition of accents in the very early stages of childhood. This blog post is meant as a short exposition behind the development of these accents, and how this process might function. This just happened to be something I found interesting during the lecture, and I'm hoping that after expanding upon it a bit you do as well. - AJ

In a lab at the University of Washington in Seattle, a six month old child sits atop his mother's lap, listening to a series of sounds spoken towards him.

"La, la, la, la, ra-"

There. The signal he was waiting for. He turns his head to face a black box, a cube of one way mirrors hiding a stuffed bear from view. If he timed his turn just right, the box will light up, and much to his delight, he will get to see the bear beat on a drum and put on a little dance.

This odd display is an experiment in linguistics, the brainchild of Dr. Patricia Kuhl, Professor and Co-Director of the UW Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences. For years, she has been studying the mechanisms by which babies much too young to speak on their own may be imprinted with the markers typical of their primary household language. Her process for doing so is fairly straightforward; train the subjects of her study to turn their heads for a reward (the little drumming bear) when they hear a sound that is different from those that came immediately before it. Hypothetically, this should be a simple task for a child who is still in the crucial region of development relating to accent and understanding the basic patterns of what is to become their primary language, and it should be much more difficult for a child who has passed this point and whose primary language does not differentiate between the sounds.

Take for example the comparative performance between American and Japanese infants tasked with identifying the difference between an English 'r' and 'l' sound, as mentioned at the opening of this post. Dr. Kuhl and her colleagues found that these children had a nearly identical ability to differentiate these sounds at ages 6-8 months. By 10-12 months, American infants had improved upon this ability, while Japanese infants showed a sharp decline in performance when tasked with telling the two sounds apart.

Dr. Kuhl theorizes that infants, though not yet capable of fully realized speech, are still very much engaged with the languages they are exposed to on a regular basis. She suggests that they are actively filtering the sounds they hear, taking stock of the frequency at which they are spoken and adapting to better recognize frequently used sounds in their primary household language. With this in mind, a secondary experiment was launched, wherein American infants with English as a primary household language were exposed to Mandarin during the critical period between the ranges of 6-8 and 10-12 months of age. When the American infants were exposed to Mandarin-specific sounds, they performed just as well in identifying them as did Taiwanese infants with Mandarin as their primary household language.

For more detailed information on this set of experiments, I recommend you click here to watch Dr. Kuhl's 2010 TEDx talk, where she discusses the information I have summarized above, and goes onto mention the potential applications of medical imaging in identifying the formation of accents and language patterns.

Dr. Kuhl's research into the topic is far from the only foray into developing theories regarding the formation of language patterns in early infancy, but it is certainly one of the most interesting ones. Some evidence, including a 2009 publication in the journal Current Biology, suggest a meaningful correlation between the patterns of a baby's cry and the primary language of the mother, suggesting that language learning may, to some extent, begin in the womb.

It is hardly surprising, then, that something so deeply ingrained in a person's speech from their earliest days would be so difficult to re-learn when learning a second language. Certainly, as the aforementioned study and the common sense of most would find reasonable, there is some allowance for fluency in the two or more languages spoken by an individual born into a multilingual household. After this critical period, however, it is less and less likely that a native speaker of one language will be able to easily make distinctions between sounds in another language that to them are the same. In our first year, we learn what to hear when we listen to our primary language spoken aloud; after our brains trim some of the fat from the first year of stimuli, we also learn what not to hear. This is what gives our dialects and idiolects their unique flavor and song, from our first year through the rest of our lives.


Works Cited:

Hopkin, Christopher, and Karen Hopkin. Babies Already Have an Accent. Scientific American. http://www.scientificamerican.com. Accessed February 8, 2017.

Kiester Jr., Edwin. 2001. Accents Are Forever. Smithsonian Magazine. Accessed February 7, 2017.

Kuhl, Patricia K. 2010. The Linguistic Genius of Babies. TEDxRainier, Seattle. October 2010. Lecture. Accessed February 8, 2017

Module 3 Blog Post: The Anzick Child/The Kennewick Man- Courtney Frisch and Alex Hawk

The Anzick Child

Discovery:

The name Anzick comes from Sarah Anzick who was only two years old when construction workers accidentally  found the skeleton on her family's property near Southern Montana in 1968. She grew up to become a genome researcher, and was a member of the group that analyzed the skeleton's DNA. The skeleton has been estimated to be one to two years old, and scientists have also concluded that it was a boy.

Scientific Exploration:

Scientists began to conduct thorough DNA tests on the skeleton to see if they could get more information on how people initially migrated to America. They conducted a deep analysis of the skeleton's DNA from Mitochondrial DNA analysis,, Nuclear DNA analysis and Y-chromosome analysis.

When conducting a nuclear DNA analysis on the skeleton, which is finding DNA inside of each cell's nucleus, it’s genome patterns were significantly more similar to that of Native Americans from Central and South America than with Native American populations from North America.

Implications:

Since the DNA analysis links the Anzick child to a heritage of Native Americans from Central and South America, it rejects the Solutrean Hypothesis, a scientific theory that settlers traveled to America from the Southeast European Sea. The findings support that people came to America from Asia, specifically the Bering Strait a landmass that connected Asia to America, but is now covered with water.

In addition to scientific discovery, these findings could also help tribes that wish to reclaim ancient American skeletons such as Kennewick Man. Reclaiming this artifact would be a monstrous win for Native Americans.

Ethical standpoint:

Sarah Anzick was having a moral dilemma about what to do with the skeleton. She worried that if they reburied the sacred artifact that it would destroy the DNA and data. But she also believed that it was important that the skeleton was reburied out of respect for their ancestors.

The Kennewick Man

Discovery:

Two college students located in Kennewick, Washington in the Summer of 1996 discovered The Kennewick Man. The Kennewick Man is noted to be one of the most important human skeletons ever found in North America. The college students came across a skull floating in the Columbia River and that was the first discovery of the Kennewick Man. After calling the police and various archeologists, the professionals were able to dig out almost an entire skeleton.

Scientific Exploration:

Scientists expected this skeleton to belong to either a Native American, early pioneer or early trapper. To their surprise, after lots of testing it was proven that this skeleton was not Native American, an early pioneer or early trapper but a prehistoric paleoamerican man. This skeleton ended up being more than 9,000 years old! This was a huge scientific tool for archaeologists and scientists. “No fewer than 48 authors and 17 researchers, photographers and editors contributed to the 680-page Kennewick Man: The Scientific Investigation of an Ancient American Skeleton” (Preston).

Implications/Ethical Standpoint:

Although the discovery of the Kennewick Man was one of the most important skeletal discoveries in all of North America, it also brought up some legal issues. Many Native Americans claimed that The Kennewick Man was an ancestor of theirs and that his remains should be buried. Under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (Nagpra) they claimed that the bones of the Kennewick man should be buried. In contrast, a group of anthropologists wanting the skeleton for research argued that the features of the skeleton were not similar enough to the people of the local Native American tribes and actually resembled European features and some shared features the the Ainu in Japan and Polynesians. The anthropologists ended up winning a legal bid in 2004  that gave them permission to study the skeleton.  Much later, there were more tests done and it was restated that “We can conclude very clearly he is most clearly related to contemporary Native Americans” (Morelle).  The Kennewick man is currently in The Burke Museum. The museum will continue to care for the skeleton until the transfer of it to the tribes for burial.

Works Cited:

Balter, Michael. "Native Americans Descend From Ancient Montana Boy." Science | AAAS. N.p., 12

Jan. 2016. Web. 29 Jan. 2017.

Fountain, Amy. "The Peopling of the Americas." Module Three. Tucson. 29 Jan. 2017. Lecture.

Morelle, Rebecca. "DNA Reignites Kennewick Man Debate." BBC News. BBC, 18 June 2015. Web.

05 Feb. 2017

Preston, Douglas. "The Kennewick Man Finally Freed to Share His Secrets." Smithsonian.com.

Smithsonian Institution, Sept. 2014. Web. 05 Feb. 2017.

Module 2 Blog Post: Linguistics Language Glossary- Courtney Frisch and Alexandra Hawk

Linguistics Language Glossary

1. Linguistics: The study of language.
2. Morpheme: the smallest meaningful part of a word
3. Prefix: Units that are added to the beginning of a word, giving it a new meaning
4. Suffix: Units that are added to the end of a word, giving it a new meaning
5. Root: the base of a word in which prefixes and suffixes are added to
6. Variety: a way of using language that can be defined based on some set of common properties
7. Dialect: a variety whose features are associated with a group of speakers
8. Regional dialect: the features are associated with a geographic areas
9. Social dialect (sociolect): the features are associated with a cultural category
10. Idiolect: the features are associated with an individual speaker
11. Phonetics: the study of the physical properties of speech sounds  
12. Phenology: the study of language specific organization of speech sounds
13. Morphology: the study of how words are formed, and the the organization of words
14. Syntax: the study of how we organize words into sentences
15. Semantics: the study of meaning in language
16. Noun: a word that is a person, place, or thing
    1. Ex. cat
17. Adjective: a word that describes or clarifies a noun
    1. Ex. a fuzzy cat
18. Adverb: a word describing or modifying a verb
    1. Ex. quickly ran
19. Verb: an action word
    1. Ex. Run
20. Metalanguage: The language used to discuss language
21. Metaphor: A figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action that is not literally applicable
22. Onomastics: The linguistic study of names, both personal and place names.
23. Synchronic: A reference to a point of time in a language. Can be present but doesn't have to be.
24. Taxonomic: A reference to linguistics in which the main aim is to list and classify features and phenomena.
25. Zoosemiotics: The investigation of communications systems used by animals.
26. Alphabet: A system of units intended to represent the sounds of a language in writing.
27. Alveolar: A classification of sounds which are formed at the alveolar ridge. The alveolar ridge is the bone plate behind the upper teeth.
    1. Ex. “T”, “D”, “S” sound
28. Alveolo-palatal: A classification of sounds that are formed with the hard palate as a passive articulator.
29. Bilabial: Any sound produced using both lips.
    1. Ex. Palm
30. Dental: A place of articulation characterised by the tip of the tongue being held against the back of the upper teeth.
    1. Ex. “T”, “D” sound
31. Diphthong: A vowel which is articulated with a change in tongue position between the beginning and end.
    1. Ex. “Ai” sound
32. Fricative: A type of sound which is characterised by air passing a constriction somewhere between the glottis and the lips.
    1. Ex. “X”, “S”, “F” sound
33. Nasal: A sound which is produced by opening the nasal cavity.
34. Phone: Any human sounds that has not been classified in the phonology of a language.
35. Plosive: A sound which is produced with a complete blockage of the pulmonic airstream.
    1. Ex. “P”, “T”, “K” sounds
36. Rhythm: all the patterns of strong and weak syllables in a language.
37. Segment: A unit of speech which is identifiable and separate from others.
38. Stress: The acoustic prominence of a syllable in a word.
39. Voiced: Spoken with simultaneous vibration of the vocal folds.
40. Voiceless: Spoken without the vocal folds vibrating.

Module 1 Blog Post: Learning a Second Language- Courtney Frisch and Alexandra Hawk

Alex:

When I was eight years old, I moved to Germany. I did not speak any German at all, luckily I went to an international school where the all students spoke English, and while they were in English class I was in a classroom with other American Students learning German. It was pretty easy for me to learn the language because I was surrounded by other children speaking the language. I became nearly fluent in the language, but now eleven years later I am sad to admit that I can barely speak the language.

I went to Austria over winter break with a German family, and at first I had could barely comprehend what they were saying, but as the week went on I got more and more comfortable with the language. I was able to hold short conversations, but I had to pause and ask what a few words were in English. Since I was fluent in the language, I feel that I can pick it up more easily than when I had to learn Spanish in school.

Courtney:

It has always been a goal of mine to become fluent in another language. I think it is so valuable to be able to communicate with others who aren’t able to speak english. My future career goal is to be a nurse. If someone is sick or injured and can’t speak english, I think that it is important that there is someone there to communicated with them or be able to  translate to another doctor or nurse.

I have declared a spanish minor and I am in my last semester of my minor. The reason that I chose a spanish minor was so that I could become fluent in spanish and use it in my career. Unfortunately, in my last semester of this curriculum I could not say that I am fluent. I can read and write very well and with correct grammar. Many students who speak spanish at home (immersion) and enroll in spanish grammar classes are fluent in spanish but can’t read and write with correct grammar.  I find it very interesting to compare the two ways of learning a language. There are definitely both pros and cons to both learning a language in a classroom setting that emphasizes grammar and learning a language by exposure/immersion while focusing on communication.

I think both ways of learning a language are important and teach different types of valuable skills. I am planning to go abroad to Spain this summer and stay with a host family so that I can fully expose myself to spanish and become fluent. This way I will have the grammar aspect from my minor but also the fluency from exposure. I think that both of these aspects are necessary for learning any language completely. 

Alex and Courtney:

We wanted to look into the topic of learning a second language in the context in which the learning occurs in a stigmatized minority language community that’s bilingual with the surrounding majority language. This context can relate to the situation mentioned above regarding non-english speakers visiting the hospital in the United States. It is so important that someone who is in need of medical help can receive that help by communicating with doctors. It is difficult to learn a second language when all other speakers around you are familiar with the language. It also can hinder learning due to feelings of discouragement and insecurity. It is important that there are bilingual individuals to translate and teach in an English community.

We found an article online titled “The Best and Fastest Way to Learn Another Language”. It is about the best ways to learn a language. The article's main point was that in school we learn a language by pure memorization, which is not the best way to learn it. The best way is through immersion. When a baby first learns to speak they do so by listening to the language all of the time. Some teachers try to mimic this by having the students only speak the language being learned in the classroom. But this is only for a few hours a week. The article shows that language as far as communication should be learned by immersion. On another note, we do feel that grammar should be learned in a classroom setting. Babies learn to communicate in their homes through immersion but they learn how to spell, write sentences and add punctuation through english classes in school. This is shown through how everyone learns their first language and it should be repeated when trying to learn a second language. Both aspects are necessary to truly understand the language.    

Article :

https://medium.com/@cscalfani/the-best-and-fastest-way-to-learn-another-language-2d8202086ea0#.upq5iqlwq

Works Cited:

Scalfani, Charles. "The Best and Fastest Way to Learn Another Language." Medium. N.p., 28

              Aug. 2016. Web. 29 Jan. 2017.