Babel: The multilingual, multicultural online journal and community of arts and ideas

Rosetta Project

The Disk surface shown here, meant to be a guide to the contents, is etched with a central image of the earth and a message written in eight major world languages: “Languages of the World: This is an archive of over 1,000 human languages assembled in the year 02002 C.E. Magnify 1,000 times to find over 15,000 pages of language documentation.” The text begins at eye-readable scale and spirals down to nano-scale. This tapered ring of languages is intended to maximize the number of people that will be able to read something immediately upon picking up the Disk, as well as implying the directions for using it—‘get a magnifier and there is more.’

On the reverse side of the disk from the globe graphic are 15,000 microetched pages of language documentation. Since each page is a physical rather than digital image, there is no platform or format dependency. Reading the Disk requires only optical magnification. Each page is .019 inches, or half a millimeter, across. This is about equal in width to 5 human hairs, and can be read with a 500X microscope (individual pages are clearly visible with 100X magnification).

- rosettaproject.org.

“We hatched a plan to produce a 3-inch non-corroding disk which contained at least 1,000 translations of Genesis and other linguistic information about each language.”

How could a society think in terms of centuries unless there was a reliable way to transmit and store its knowledge over centuries? This puzzle was the focus of a conference hosted by Long Now in 1998, dedicated to technical solutions for Managing Digital Continuity. At this meeting Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive suggested a new technology developed by Los Alamos labs, and commercialized by the Norsam company, as a solution for long term digital storage. Norsam promised to micro-etch 350,000 pages of information onto a 3-inch nickel disk with an estimated lifespan of 2,000 -10,000 years.

Might it be possible to etch an entire library onto a set of disks? It might be worth trying. All we needed was a finite data set that a society might want to have backed up.

During a Long Now field trip to a southwest archaeological site, the idea of a modern Rosetta Stone came up — a backup of human languages that future generations might cherish. At a winter retreat in 1999, Long Now board member Doug Carlston suggested that for the parallel common text of this modern Rosetta Stone we should use the book of Genesis, since it was most likely already translated into all languages already. We hatched a plan to produce a 3-inch non-corroding disk which contained at least 1,000 translations of Genesis and other linguistic information about each language.

Following the archiving principle of LOCKS (Lots of Copies Keep ‘em Safe) we would replicate the disk promiscuously and distribute them around the world with built in magnifiers. This project in long term thinking would do two things: it would showcase this new long-term storage technology, and it would give the world a minimal backup of human languages.

This business side of the disk is pure nickel. Picking it up you would not be aware there were 13,500 pages of linguistic gold hiding on it. The nickel is deposited on an etched silicon disk. In effect the Rosetta disk is a nickel cast of a micro-etch silicon mold. When the disk is held at the right angle the grid array of the pages form a slight diffraction rainbow. You need a 750-power optical microscope to read the pages.

… The Rosetta disk is not digital. The pages are analog “human-readable” scans of scripts, text, and diagrams. Among the 13,500 scanned pages are 1,500 different language versions of Genesis 1-3, a universal list of the words common for each language, pronunciation guides and so on. Some of the key indexing meta-data for each language section (such as the standard linguistic code number for that language) are displayed in a machine-readable font (OCRb) so that a smart microscope could guide you through this analog trove.

- Kevin Kelly @ kk.org: Link.

Via Slashdot.

The Long Now Foundation:

The Long Now Foundation was established in 01996* to develop the Clock and Library projects, as well as to become the seed of a very long term cultural institution. The Long Now Foundation hopes to provide counterpoint to today’s “faster/cheaper” mind set and promote “slower/better” thinking. We hope to creatively foster responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years.

~ Karl Jones

“Wordle is a toy for generating ‘word clouds’ from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.”

Link to Wordle.

Via Design Observer.

~ Karl Jones

“State officials formally adopted … ‘Dine Bizaad Binahoo’ahh,’ or ‘Rediscovering the Navajo Language,’ this week in Santa Fe.”

In the Navajo language, there’s no one word that translates into “go” — it’s more like a sentence.

“There are so many ways of ‘going,’” said Evangeline Parsons Yazzie, a Navajo professor at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. “It states who is going, how many of us are going, where are we going. So the tense, the adverb, the subject, the number of people, all of that is tied up in one little tiny verb.”

Those verbs are part of what makes the Navajo language one of the most difficult to learn, she said. Yazzie is hopeful a book she recently wrote will provide a user-friendly way for New Mexico students to learn not only the language but the culture of a tribe that long has tied the two elements.

State officials formally adopted Yazzie’s book, “Dine Bizaad Binahoo’ahh,” or “Rediscovering the Navajo Language,” this week in Santa Fe. While other books on Navajo language exist, state officials say New Mexico is the first to adopt a Navajo textbook for use in the public education system.

- Felicia Fonseca @ Associated Press: Link.

~ Karl Jones

[lang_en]What language do oysters speak? Oyster, of course!

If you want to learn a real language, for example Frysian (yeah, I didn’t know that was a real language either–it’s the second language of the Netherlands, behind Dutch, and is spoken by some 500,000 people), eduFire is the place to learn it.

I’m one of the 419 tutors on the site teaching English, and the number is growing daily.

Head over there to pick up a new language or to brush up on that Spanish you studied 10 years ago in high school.

I’m studying Oyster, so if you can recommend a good tutor…

~Janelle Renée[/lang_en]

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Rome: It’s beautiful and it’s not. Kinda like everything else in life.

“La prossima fermata è Roma Termini.”

I moved to Italy to live at the end of September last year. I lived in Brescia (a medium-sized city in Northern Italy) until March 1, when I moved to Siena.

(I am once again back in Brescia, but that’s a story I’m going to save for another day.)

I picked up some vocabulary during those first five months in Italy, but it wasn’t until I started attending an Italian class for immigrants in Siena that I really started learning the language.

Now, finally!, I understand much of what is being said either to me or around me. The language no longer sounds foreign or like pretty sounds flowing forth from people’s mouths. Although I’m more motivated to learn the language–because it finally seems like an achievable goal to converse fluently–the glossy veneer of the nonsensical musical sounds has dulled. I don’t know, there’s something about understanding when somebody complains about the weather (or conversely, the ease in which I can complain about it) that makes any language sound less romantic.

Shiny glossy veneers are so overrated. Don’t you think? I mean, a veneer is just a thin expensive sheet of wood (or metal) with layers upon layers of unusually toxic clear varnish. If it wasn’t for the common cheap material beneath (like pine or regular mild steel), the veneer would have nothing to attach itself to.

And I’ve always preferred the look of a dull, used or aged finish anyway…and now that I’ve exhausted my analogy I’m finished with this post.

But one more thing before I go to bed on this hot summer night: it is nice to know that you can simply listen to the conductor to know when your next stop is and not have the nervous wondering of whether you’ve missed it or have yet to arrive.

Arrivederci a dopo.

~Janelle Renée[/lang_en]

[lang_en]Good Morning!  Pax et Bonum.  My name is Gardenia C. Hung.  I am a returning writer for the Tower of Babel since 1998.  On the tenth anniversary, in 2008, I have been invited to contribute as an author to the Babel Blog and continue to help building the Tower of Babel Online Journal Multilingual and Multicultural efforts in English, Spanish, French and/or Portuguese.  It is a great celebration to join you with the Tower of Babel in 2008.  I am very glad to work with the Babel team to continue on-line journal communications.

The Windy City known as Chicago is my writing inspiration–the city by Lake Michigan with ethnicity, multicultural, and multilingual peoples.  However, Lilac Town is where I live, as a resident homeowner and U.S. citizen, in the Village of Lombard, in the County of DuPage, in Illinois, United States of America.  I write freelance as an author for feature articles, upon request, as a Communications Media Arts consultant on behalf of Communications, Languages & Culture, Inc.

Anyone who has Evidentiary Legal proof of wrongdoing against the Hung Family and Lombard real estate property at 502 S. Westmore-Meyers Road and Washington Blvd., should address this information to Judge Bonnie M. Wheaton, in care of Circuit Court Clerk Chris Kachiroubas, at the 18th Judicial Circuit Court, 505 North County Farm Road, Wheaton, Illinois  60187, USA, before or on Monday, August 4, 2008, 1:30 p.m., Room 2007.  I am requesting your cooperation and legal support in this court evidentiary hearing. Please help me preserve the Lombard Historic Brick Bungalow owned by the Hung Family in the Village of Lombard, Du Page County, Illinois, USA.

–Gardenia Hung

http://www.preservehistoricestate.zoomshare.com

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“Shih” is an insightful, elegant kind of knowledge from Chinese into American English

–Howard Rheingold, They Have a Word for It

This article fosters an awareness of cross-cultural issues inherent in language communication through our perception of the world, non-verbally or verbally whenever we speak, listen, read, and write. Language communication offers cross-cultural insights and knowledge about speakers of English and other languages. We can communicate non-verbally through gestures without any sounds or verbally using symbols as words to form phrases and express our thoughts. Thus, we can explore a closer cross-cultural understanding of speakers of English and other languages whenever we exchange a cross-cultural perception through language communication by examples used in encounters, conversation or through readings.

• How does one perceive a culture as a language communicator?
• To what extent do culture and environment influence a language?
• Or does a language prescribe how one perceives the world?
• How does the acquisition and knowledge of languages open new words to people across cultures?

In order to understand a cross-cultural perception of the world, we must be aware of the fields of Anthropology and Ethnography and how these influence our cultural perception and understanding of language interaction. Anthropology and Ethnography are both scientific disciplines. While Anthropology studies the origins of man, physical and cultural development, biological, social customs, and the beliefs of humankind, Ethnography describes the varieties and characteristics of language use within a cultural group and derives into ethnolinguistics and psycholinguistics. So, Anthropology helps us to understand a perception of culture and Ethnography analyzes language use within the context of a cultural group.

“How Does One Perceive a Culture as a Language Communicator?”

Perception can be described as primarily known to be dual and more in the 21^st century: that is to say, sensory, extra-sensory, hypersensory, non-sensory, and beyond the senses.

Sensory perception is an awareness of any stimuli through the known senses, that is sight (visual), hearing (auditory), taste (gustatory), touch (tactile), and smell (olfactory).

Extra-sensory perception is an awareness of any stimuli beyond the known senses through telepathy, “mind reading”, clairvoyance, precognition, listening, psycho-spiritual sensing, psychokinesis, “minding”, dreams, other psychic phenomena, hypnosis, hypnopaedia, trances, meditation, astral projection through out-of-body experience, drugs and otherwise.

Hypersensory perception is an extreme awareness and sensitivity to any stimuli described before.

Non-sensory is an unconscious state where the senses have been numbed and only vital signs of life remain without consciousness.

Perception beyond the known senses is not easy to describe though it is intuitively known to exist as an awareness.

We can perceive a culture through various modes in language communication as the “awareness” of a group and its expression in a non-verbal way, verbal, written or through visual imaging and otherwise, by which we exchange information. It is during this dynamic process that cross-cultural perception takes place. Cross-cultural perception develops when we become aware of sensory, extra-sensory, hypersensory, non-sensory, and beyond the senses stimuli across cultures and contexts, through observation, experience, exposure, interaction, exchanges within an environmental context, point in time, here and now—a fluctuation across cultures becomes cross-cultural transcendence.

Whenever we engage in the process of identifying with another beyond ordinary or common experience, feelings, emotions, thought or belief, spiritually, psychically, sexually, culturally, and linguistically—across time, space, and physical presence—within a cultural context, then we experience cross-cultural transcendence, that is to say, “You Are Me; I Am You”. The Transcendental Processes take place in a mutual exchange.

In the 21^st Century, we can fluctuate and move easily across cultures and contexts, perceptions, worldviews, and states of mind, transcendentally, “You Are Me; I Am You”—through the known senses and beyond… while we acquire a cross-cultural perception of the world through language communication.

One’s life in the United States of America, in the Windy City of Chicago, acquires a Cross-Cultural Perception of the World Through Language Communication, thanks to people like Mayor Richard M. Daley.

– Gardenia C. Hung

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[lang_en]To Be “Hapa” or Not to Be “Hapa”: What to Name Mixed Asian Americans?

Preface: I have been struggling for several years with this apparently un-resolvable issue: what to do about “Hapa”? I finally decided I had to start writing about it, had to start engaging the dialog. The essays and talks I have been giving on this issue represent my commitment to be fully involved in this dialog, this journey, no matter where it might take us.

Asian American Studies was founded by student and community activists in the Bay Area who proposed the revolutionary idea that positionality—how people are situated within, on the edges of, and in opposition to various kinds of groupings is a valid perspective from which to shape analysis, scholarship, and critical inquiry. The positionality of mixed race and mixed heritage Asian Americans became more solidly located within Asian American communities at least partially through the naming of them/us as a coherent, identifiable group through the use of the Native Hawaiian term “Hapa.” “Asian American” itself is a term of collective identity that grew out of a political movement—before 1968, one was “Oriental” or Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, or Korean. Asian American as a term provides a space in which these diverse ethnic communities can come together—but it also creates it’s own sense of identity—what Yen Le Espiritu calls “Asian American pan-ethnicity.” As opposed to ethnic-specific terms like the Filipino “mestizo” or the Japanese “haafu,” “Hapa” is a word that specifically situates mixed Asian Americans within this pan-ethnic Asian American community. “Hapa” also provides the important function of giving mixed Asian Americans a safe space. Growing controversies over the use of the Native Hawaiian word “hapa” to identify mixed race Asian Americans could possibly destabilize this unifying identity—or could provide an interesting opportunity to push out the boundaries we may have drawn around ourselves in the process of coming together.

~Wei Ming Dariotis[/lang_en]

Don Osborn posts on his African Languages mailing list on a program which helps Africans assimilate in the US.

- Rudy Carrera.

This post is from the Xinhua News Agency of China, and was noted by Luigi Kapaj, who is owed thanks for posting this on a Mongol newsgroup:

April 03, 2008

Mongolia issues dictionary for “Secret History of the Mongols”
A total of 200 copies of a dictionary for “Secret History of the Mongols”
were published recently in Ulan Bator, capital of Mongolia.

“Secret History of the Mongols,” believed to be completed in the 13th
century, recorded the history of the formation, evolution and growth of the
Mongolian ethnic group in a time span of about 500 years, including the
glorious era of Genghis Khan.

Professor B. Sumyabaatar, a Mongolian linguist from Mongolia’s Institute of
Literature and Language, spent five years compiling the dictionary.

Sumyabaatar said the dictionary collected 8144 words from “Secret History of
the Mongols” in contemporary Mongolian and Latin and it is easy for ordinary
readers to use.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO) listed “Secret History of the Mongols” as a world famous literary
masterpiece in 1989.

Source: Xinhua

- Rudy Carrera.