Jul. 26th, 2002 01:01 pm
(no subject)
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muckefuckWell, I suppose it's no surprise that no one's taken me up on my translation offer yet, given that I practically promised to post any results for public inspection. Fortunately, it's not like I lack for linguistic gems to tickle my fancy. My depth of ignorance about my supposed field of expertise just amazes me sometimes.
For instance, if I asked you what language most Bangladeshis in Britain speak, what would you say? Bengali, right? (Just say "Right!") I would have, too--until about ten this morning, when I stumbled across an article on education in Sylheti for the 95% of British Bangladeshis for whom this is a first language. You could say--and many people would, since the distinction is inherently subjective--that Sylheti is just a Bengali dialect, but that's not the point: I go out of my way to collect goofy little linguistic autonomy movements (ask me about Romontsch!) and yet I hadn't suspected there was anything of the sort among British Bangladeshis, much less a network of websites (e.g. www.sylheti.org) and a traditional literature in its own peculiar script going back at least 200 years. This isn't like discovering that there's a magazine for Kurdish Yezidis in Germany (Dengê Êzîdiyan, for those of you who must know). I knew there were Kurds in Germany, I knew a tiny minority of Kurds worldwide were Yezidis, and I could've guessed that they'd be overrepresented in Germany, since they're persecuted in their homeland. But when I first saw the glottonym "Sylheti", my first guess was that it was a minor Amerindian language.
It's this kind of happy discovery that makes solipsism seem decidedly untenable. I mean, if all of this is in my head, wherefore the devotion to amassing such numbing detail? If it were chiefly in my areas of interest, maybe then I could explain it (though I'd still wonder how I managed to start out knowing so little of it), but it's in absolutely everything. Nothing, in any area of investigation, is as simple as it seems at first glance.
Which comes as a great comfort, because it means that any time something looks dully homogenous, I can rest assured that's a product of not knowing much about it. For the longest time, I was basically uninterested in the culture of the thousands of Mexicans living around me. Then one day it occurred to me that they must be every bit as regionally distinct as the denizens of any other sizable country. Ever since, I've been meaning to learn more about the subethnic distinctions so that I'll stop seeing just a mass of Mexicans and, instead, a panoply of yucatecos, poblanos, oaxaqueños, chihuahuenses, etc. (I'm still trying to figure out what the adjective is for Aguascalientes.)
For instance, if I asked you what language most Bangladeshis in Britain speak, what would you say? Bengali, right? (Just say "Right!") I would have, too--until about ten this morning, when I stumbled across an article on education in Sylheti for the 95% of British Bangladeshis for whom this is a first language. You could say--and many people would, since the distinction is inherently subjective--that Sylheti is just a Bengali dialect, but that's not the point: I go out of my way to collect goofy little linguistic autonomy movements (ask me about Romontsch!) and yet I hadn't suspected there was anything of the sort among British Bangladeshis, much less a network of websites (e.g. www.sylheti.org) and a traditional literature in its own peculiar script going back at least 200 years. This isn't like discovering that there's a magazine for Kurdish Yezidis in Germany (Dengê Êzîdiyan, for those of you who must know). I knew there were Kurds in Germany, I knew a tiny minority of Kurds worldwide were Yezidis, and I could've guessed that they'd be overrepresented in Germany, since they're persecuted in their homeland. But when I first saw the glottonym "Sylheti", my first guess was that it was a minor Amerindian language.
It's this kind of happy discovery that makes solipsism seem decidedly untenable. I mean, if all of this is in my head, wherefore the devotion to amassing such numbing detail? If it were chiefly in my areas of interest, maybe then I could explain it (though I'd still wonder how I managed to start out knowing so little of it), but it's in absolutely everything. Nothing, in any area of investigation, is as simple as it seems at first glance.
Which comes as a great comfort, because it means that any time something looks dully homogenous, I can rest assured that's a product of not knowing much about it. For the longest time, I was basically uninterested in the culture of the thousands of Mexicans living around me. Then one day it occurred to me that they must be every bit as regionally distinct as the denizens of any other sizable country. Ever since, I've been meaning to learn more about the subethnic distinctions so that I'll stop seeing just a mass of Mexicans and, instead, a panoply of yucatecos, poblanos, oaxaqueños, chihuahuenses, etc. (I'm still trying to figure out what the adjective is for Aguascalientes.)