Dialect is a tabletop roleplaying game about an isolated community, their language, and what it means for that language to be lost. It’s a GM-less game for 3-5 people that runs in 3-4 hours.
The game’s core spark comes from gradually building up elements of language among players, who gain fluency in their own dialect
over the course of play. Words are built off of the fundamental traits
of the community, the pivotal events that have defined their lives, and
how they respond to a changing world. Players use the language and
explore both their characters and the world by asking what this new
language really means to them. A new word is made, the language grows,
and the community is tightened.
From age to age, the Isolation changes and we see those changes reflected in the language.
In the end, you’ll define how the language dies and what happens to the Isolation. Players take away both the story they’ve told together and this new language.
The mechanics look interesting, and they’ve got conlang rockstar David J. Peterson (@dedalvs) on board, so that’s encouraging. I’ll admit I’ve been sitting back on this one a bit. I’ve found the promo for the game a little to heavy on the language death theme (see the Twitter thread that starts here). It was nice of co-creator Kathryn Hymes to drop by in my feed and let me know that it is *possible* for the language you create to be maintained - just like many minority languages have been and continue to be - although I still find focusing on the metaphor of language death reasserts it as the dominant narrative or inevitable outcome (both in game and in real life). (also, remember folks, although language and culture loss are deeply interlinked, it is possible to maintain one even if both aren’t transmitted).
There’s an interview with the creators on the Talk the Talk podcast. As of writing this they have smashed their funding goal, with a couple of weeks still to go. I’ve chipped in for a PDF set, and look forward to finding a few hours and a few people to play this with.
Phonemica: Recording and mapping linguistic diversity in China
We see a lot of language mapping for the USA and Europe, but Phonemica aims to provide a place to share recordings of the language varieties of China. There is a lot of linguistic diversity across China - both within the Sinitic language, which as often known as the dialects of Chinese, and also other languages.
The website allows recordings to be uploaded and then transcribed and translated. There are hundreds of recordings with geographical information.
From the ‘about’ section of the website:
Phonemica 乡音苑 is a collection of stories in
local vernaculars. The stories are contributed by our users, who
record, upload and transcribe regional lore: nursery rhymes and
childhood games, preparation of specialty foods, humorous anecdotes,
local history, and much more.
Our goal is to bring to a wider audience,
through language and stories, the unique customs, beliefs and history of
each village and each neighborhood, archiving the audio for future
generations. We believe that each language and dialect is a priceless
cultural treasure embedding history, social customs – the knowledge of a
people.
If you have a friend or relative who is a
good storyteller, please register (it’s free!), record their stories,
and upload. You can also help by transcribing and translating stories.
Again, just register, go to a recording in a dialect you understand, and
click on the transcript below to transcribe. Phonemica is a community
project that depends on its users and we need your help to grow!
Although it started as a platform for Chinese varieties, Phonemica is now open to non-Sinitic
languages. You can hear languages from the Tibeto-Burman, Tai-Kadai and Austronesian families well as a wide range of Sinitic languages.
my teacher says “all self improvement is doomed, because all self improvement begins in self loathing.”
Here is what she means: if you try to get into a yoga pose for the first time and you are intent on doing it perfectly, the body itself will prevent you. you may try to straighten your leg, only to find that this brings your pelvis out of a square position. or you may find that you try to strain forward to reach your toes, only to bring the belly away from the thighs and shorten the spine– making you further from your goal the more you reach for it.
the body makes these adjustments to prevent you from injury. your muscles could not take the strain of doing something perfectly the first time. if you were to push through these adjustments and insist on forcing the leg straight, forcing the pelvis square, forcing your hands to your toes, you would likely get hurt. but the body is wise and good. and if we listen to it we will not get hurt.
the mind is the same as the body and so it is also wise and good. if you are not practiced enough to hold your discomfort, the mind will find ways to protect you from pain: the mind will deflect blame onto others, the mind will project, the mind will justify you in your behavior. the mind does all these things not because it is bad, but because it is wise; because the mind, like the body, knows it cannot take the strain of doing something perfectly the first time it is asked to.
you cannot improve yourself on a set timeline. you cannot say: i will be a better person in six months to a year. you have to trust your body-mind to be your teacher, and trust that it knows the correct pace at which you can heal.
when you allow yourself to be as you are, and to take care of the body-mind you have, to nourish your needs as they are (instead of as what you want them to be), to allow yourself to exist without applying force, you will organically get better. the instinctive things you do to protect yourself from malnourishment and and from shame and from fear and from vulnerability and from wounds and from the past will fall away on their own. because you won’t need protection anymore.
Good intentions don’t excuse hurting someone, making someone uncomfortable, or upsetting someone. It’s totally possible to mean well and still really screw up.
Lingthusiasm Episode 12: Sounds you can’t hear - Babies, accents, and phonemes
Why does it always sound slightly off when someone tries to imitate your accent? Why do tiny children learning your second language already sound better than you, even though you’ve been learning it longer than they’ve been alive? What does it mean for there to be sounds you can’t hear?
In Episode 12 of Lingthusiasm, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch explore the fundamental linguistic insight at the heart of all these questions: the phoneme. We also talk about how to bore babies (for science!), how sounds appear and disappear in a language, and how to retain our sense of wonder when the /t/ you hear doesn’t match up with the /t/ I hear.
LIVESHOW: Exciting news! We’re having a liveshow on Saturday, September 23rd in Montreal. It’s at 8pm (doors), 8:30 (start) at Argo Bookshop, 1915 Ste-Catherine W. The show is free, with snacks by donation, but please register via Eventbrite so we have enough chairs and snacks for all!
This month’s Patreon bonus was about linguistic research, and how to do it when you don’t have a university or a research budget, as nominated and voted on by our patrons. You can get access to it and previous bonuses about language games, hypercorrection, swearing, teaching yourself linguistics, and explaining
linguistics to employers by supporting Lingthusiasm on Patreon.
Here are the links mentioned in this episode and more about phonemes:
You can help keep Lingthusiasm advertising-free by supporting our Patreon. Being a patron gives you access to bonus content and lets you help decide on Lingthusiasm topics.
Lingthusiasm is on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. Email us at lingthusiasm [at] gmail [dot] com
Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our producer is Claire Gawne and our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles. Recorded on September 4 2017.
If your Monday is high amplitude sucking here is some linguistics to get you through.
I have this friend who was a freshman when I was a senior in undergrad and he’s a tiny bit socially awkward and once I got a text from him that just said “I just learned the hard way that thunder thighs isn’t a compliment.”
A lot of my colleagues complain that ‘students these days’ don’t know how to send good emails. Email is a genre of writing, and it’s a genre of writing that some students don’t get much practice at before starting university. I’ve taken to including a three minute summary of how to email at the start of each subject. I got the idea to do so from my colleague, Katharine Firth, who has blogged about how it is important to teach these skills.
Because it’s the start of the academic year in the northern hemisphere I thought I’d share my 3 minute guide to email. Good email skills aren’t just useful at university though - these skills can also be used in any professional context that you have to use email, or send requests.
Learning to send good emails makes your teachers happy, it will make your future colleagues happy. A good email is polite, but doesn’t need to be full of unnecessary “I hope you are well… etc.”. It requires you to think about what the other person needs to know. As a student you may only get a few emails from the university every day, but staff often feel overwhelmed by the number of emails they have to reply to. The more direct and easy to reply to your email is, the better.
Email is a genre. Being a linguist means becoming critically aware of how genres use particular language. Look at what language people use in emails to you. How are people addressed? What sign-offs do people use? Does the lecturer for the always include the class subject code in the email subject line? Using your genre analysis skills can help you be better at email!
Lauren’s 3 minute guide to email
Emails should be:
Relevant
Concise
Polite
Before sending the email, think for a moment:
Have you read the subject handbook?
Would it be easier to talk about
this in person?
Here’s a template. Remember, different places have different conventions for how to address teaching staff at a university. Australia is quite informal, a ‘Dear Lauren’ will suffice. In other places, such as the USA, ‘Dr. Gawne’ might be more appropriate.
Subject: [subject code and a tl;dr summary]
Dear [name],
Straight to the point but polite [e.g. Sorry I missed class last week, I was ill]
Any additional relevant information [e.g. I’ve listened to the lecture and don’t have any questions at this time/I have this question, let me know if it would be easier to meet at discuss it],
were you in a bad mood when you looked at eleri's post? because it clearly wasn't saying 'gaining weight is bad, guys, and you haven't, and you should never do so'. it was just trying to help people keep perspective within a disorder based on distorted body image. a disorder that, in itself, is against gaining weight. nobody needs your unhelpful sidecomments about 'fatphobic pseudorecovery' when that's not what it is at all. you just sound bitter.
Disagreeing with someone’s point doesn’t make me bitter or unhappy. I think that the whole “You’re not fat!” narrative is not only unhelpful, it’s harmful. That’s nothing against Eleri or anyone else struggling. It’s just as much a message to myself. I just think we, as a culture, need to move past this inherent fatphobia that unfortunately is often perpetuated under the guise of body positivity or self love.
People are always in such a rush to misinterpret conversation and criticism as hate on this site and make it into some big dramatic thing and it’s exhausting
Lmao honestly if these people could hear how often I state my disagreement with my boyfriend or my parents or my friends or my brother - my literal favorite people in the world - they’d apparently think I hate all of them.
It’s possible to disagree with someone and talk about your opinion without being angry or disliking them for stating a different opinion.
the most important thing to me ever is bi kids knowing that it’s ok to be 10% attracted to women and 90% attracted to men or 10% attracted to men and 90% attracted to women and still feeling ok to identify as bi, and still feeling like their identity is valid, and still feeling like they can lead fulfilling lives with both (or other) genders. like that’s just so fricking important.
I’m a bi adult and you know what? I needed this. Thank you.
it’s also important to remember that it can be a fluid % like sometimes it’ll be 50/50 some times 10/90 and then drift into a 45/65 or even 2/98 and it’s still okay. It’s just where you are at that time in your life.
Or sometimes, even defining it with numbers doesn’t make sense or doesn’t feel right, and that’s okay too ❤️
Also, you don’t stop being bi if you’re monogamous. It’s okay. You haven’t decided on anything but who you’re currently with.
