Ethnologue: the World Economy and Dying Languages (color me stunned!)

Well, color me stunned. A website has seriously just shifted my world view.

I somehow found myself researching the Ainu people. How this happened, I really don't think I could say. Oh, mystery solved thanks to technology--ever since I turned on the function to type Japanese, I've been wondering what Ainu is. There's a keyboard for hiragana, romaji, katakana... and Ainu. So I looked it up and then spent a good 45 minutes reading, looking, and listening to stuff on the internet. Then, I come to find out that their language is dying, which is never a happy thing to hear. And then I come across this website referenced, I think, on Wikipedia called Ethnologue.

Ethnologue is made up of contributions from linguists all over the world, who help to create a global picture of how many languages are spoken, how many people are speaking them, and their level of vitality (if they're thriving, endangered, etc.).

So I pull up the page with rankings of the world's languages, starting with the ones that have the most speakers. Naturally, being a big-headed American, I was raised with little emphasis on learning another language because everyone speaks English already. So imagine my surprise when English is not at the top of the list. Guess who is.

CHINA.

How are more of us not learning Chinese? 1,197 million (i.e., over 1 billion) people speak Chinese. Of course, this is including all the dialects. I know some Chinese dialects are more widely understood than others, but this can't be any different than English and all its dialects and pidgin forms.

How many people speak English, you might ask? 335 million.

WHAT THE HELL.

Seriously?

For every English speaker, there are 3 1/2 Chinese speakers.

No wonder we feel threatened!

But seriously, how are more of us not learning Chinese? WHY are more of us not learning Chinese? What gives?

Okay, so moving on, English is obviously the second language on the list, right? I mean, the Chinese thing threw me for a loop, but we are, obviously, as the world's superpower, at least second on the list.

Goes to read #2.

Spanish?!

I ask again, WHAT THE HELL?!?!??!?!

How are more of us not learning Spanish? I mean, SERIOUSLY.

In case you think I'm going to fool you again, saying that #3 is actually Tibetan or something, it really is English. We may have scores of millions less speakers than China, but where Chinese is spoken in "only" 33 countries, English is spoken in over 100.

So, moving on down the list, I found further surprises. Naturally, in my Indo-European world-view, I presumed that French, Italian, etc. would be at least in the top 10. Not a chance. Here, for your information, are the 24 languages with over 50 million first-language speakers:

1. Chinese
2. Spanish
3. English
4. Hindi
5. Arabic
6. Portuguese
7. Bengali
8. Russian
9. Japanese
10. Javanese
11. German
12. Lahnda
13. Telegu
14. Marathi
15. Tamil
16. French
17. Vietnamese
18. Korean
19. Urdu
20. Italian
21. Malay
22. Persian
23. Turkish
24. Oriya

Are you surprised? I don't even know what some of these are. I have literally never heard of them. Apparently, Lahnda (which my browser is trying to spell correct to Landau), is spoken in Pakistan, as is Urdu. Bengali is spoken in Bangladesh (and three other countries, apparently). Telegu, Marathi, Tamil, and Oriya are all spoken in India. How, in our expanded worldview, have all of these escaped our (my) gaze? I don't know what to make of this information.

Of course, our world view has less to do with people than it does with money (ain't that the truth). So, for your reference, here are the top 24 economies (U.N., 2012). Let's see how they match up.

1. United States
2. China
3. Japan
4. Germany
5. France
6. Brazil
7. United Kingdom
8. Russia
9. Italy
10. India
11. Canada
12. Australia
13. Spain
14. Mexico
15. South Korea
16. Indonesia
17. Turkey
18. Netherlands
19. Saudi Arabia
20. Switzerland
21. Iran
22. Sweden
23. Norway
24. Poland

The Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, and Poland, are the five not represented. Then again, it is my understanding that most of these countries have many people who are at least bilingual.

What do you make of all this information? Were you surprised by anything on either list?

Getting back to Ainu, Ethnologue considers it "nearly extinct."

Now, let me tell you a quick story to explain why I'm not sure if I should feel sad about this.

I grew up loving grammar and spelling. I was not the most intense grammatical police you've ever heard of, but I certainly shared my knowledge. I also studied Shakespeare, though, and I loved tinkering with it to see how it worked--what was similar to modern English, what had changed and why, etc. So eventually, toward the end of high school, I realized that language is a living, breathing thing. It's important to have a system so that language is universally understood and credible, but I also think it's beautiful how language can transform, regenerate, create, etc. I'm not saying it doesn't bother me when people don't use apostrophes or when capital letters don't get their time to shine, but I've also begun to make my peace with the process.

This is why I don't know how to feel about languages dying. Ainu, for instance, has nothing to do with me. I'm not exactly about to start learning Ainu in addition to Japanese (and all the other languages I want to get back to). And Gaelic, which has been dying for a while, should I care? Some of "my people" come from that region, so maybe I should try to learn it. Or maybe it doesn't matter.

Do you feel connection to or emotion about dying languages? Do you feel like we should save them? Have you tried to learn one? Leave your comments below!

Learning the Kana (#1)

So I can only blog about intro-type stuff in regards to Japanese because I am still in the early stages of learning. But it has been well over a year since I learned the kana, so I can tell you a thing or two.

What are kana, anyway?

Kana are two "alphabets" (or "syllabaries") used in Japanese. They can write out any Japanese word, so these are the building blocks to reading and writing. The two kana are hiragana and katakana. Each are made up of ~about~ 46 characters each. Every sound in Japanese (except n/m) ends in a vowel. For instance, there's ka, ki, ku, ke, and ko. Each of the syllabaries, hiragana and katakana, have exactly the same sounds. But uses for either alphabet differ from one another.

Katakana
I'm being a little cavalier here in putting katakana first. No reason, though it's the slightly more interesting of the two. Katakana is usually likened to our use of italics in the West. We use them for animal names (e.g., tyrannosaurus rex), sound effects (e.g., Pop! Pop!), putting emphasis on a word (e.g., "Wait, you said you want to learn Japanese?"), and foreign words (e.g., "Now, Sam, learning Japanese is not exactly de rigeur."), among others. In this way, katakana is used.

Hiragana
Is for everything else. It's for any native Japanese language. This entry is awfully bare, so let me add a tidbit: when you're looking for reading material to practice your comprehension, if you find something with kanji in it (the more complicated-looking characters), make sure they have "furigana." Furigana are little hiragana characters next to the kanji to you can read them and look up their meanings.

How to get started

I know I put katakana first in the blog, so this is the price I pay for being cavalier. When you're learning the kana, I would start with hiragana. Put it this way: when foreigners are learning English, do they start with sound effects or foreign words? No. Hiragana is the more used of the two. And lucky you, you can master both of these in a couple weeks if you really put your nose to the grindstone.

Write the characters

Familiarize yourself. Spend some time with each character. Pick a system that works for you. Do all the K sounds first, or all the ones that end in "o." Or do all the ones you think are cute or funny. Personalize your process, but connect with each character.

Read the characters

I got a Sailor Moon manga from the library (with furigana, yes) and spent many hours sounding my way through it like a toddler. You may get the strange sensation that you can read it, but you have no idea what you're saying. You're not alone. However, when you finally find a word you know, it will feel so good. I remember reading "to...mo...da...tomodachi... tomodachi!! FRIEND!" I was very excited.

Write the characters again
This is where rote repetition came in handy for me. And this is where you get another insight into... well, you'll see.

I was very bored at work, and it was a slow night. I was alone at my job, so I decided to practice my katakana (by the way, I carried around a copy of the hiragana and katakana for WEEKS to review, since I kept forgetting them). Since katakana are used for foreign words... I really have little explanation for this. The syllabaries have every sound in the Japanese combination, so you can easily write out, say, English in basically a Japanese accent. So I wrote out the lyrics to "Shorty Got Low."

ショーティ・ゴト・ゼム・アップルボットム・ジーンズ
ザ・ブツ・ウィス・ザ・ファー
ザ・ホール・クラーブ・ワズ・ルーキング・アト・ハー
シ・ヒト・ザ・フロア
ネクスト・シング・ユー・ノ
ショティ・ゴト・ロ・ロ・ロ・ロ・ロ・ロ・ロ・ロ

Shooti goto zemu appuru bottomu jiinzu
Za bootsu wisu za faa
Za whoru kurabu wazu rukingu ato haa
She hito za furoa
Nekusuto shingu yuu no
Shoti goto ro ro ro ro ro ro ro ro

I was already giggling to myself, but I about died when I got to the "ro ro ro" part, and I kid you not, I still think of that every time I write the ロ character. So make it fun for yourself! Report back with your progress :)