Ten years ago today, I believe that 19 terrorists (whether they were Al-Qaeda or not) boarded planes and flew them into the World Trade Center Towers 1 and 2, the Pentagon, as well as one failed attack that was brought down in Pennsylvania. Subsequently, the Twin Towers collapsed because of the circumstances that resulted from planes being driven into them. After sustaining critical damage to it’s south side from the collapse of the north tower and after multiple fires broke out on multiple floors, the World Trade Center 7 building collapsed later that day.

On the morning of September 11, 2011, I sat with my class in the high school gym of Logan Elm in Circleville, Ohio where we were taking out class senior photo. The first plane hit during this time. After returning to my senior government class, Mr. Brown, another teacher, ran into our classroom and told us to turn on our tv. As soon as the TV was turned on, I along with my fellow classmates, watched as a second plane hit the World Trade Center.

The day was spent glued to a television. None of the teachers actually had class and we all were in a daze watching the events unfold. I watched as the coverage moved towards the attack on the pentagon and then as each of the Twin Towers fell. At that time and to this day, there is not a doubt in my mind that the events that were portrayed live on that day were false in anyway.

A European friend of mine posted a quote from a Conspiracy Theorist (CT), which made me relive the past 10 years of researching and trying to understand what actually happened on that day. I’m am NOT going to go into detail about what CTs believe and how I think they are all nut jobs. If you are interested in this, you can simply use your own brain, like I have, and do some research, using Google. Just type “9/11 Conspiracy” and “Facts against 9/11 conspiracy”, etc. to find information concerning the events that surround 9/11.

I am not the type of person to watch something as horrific as 9/11 and take it at face value. There were times when I thought maybe there was another explanation for  some of the events on that day, but like any intellectual person, I tried to understand through research and reading BOTH sides of the issue. I’m not a know-it-all and I definitely don’t know much about physics and chemistry to be able to tell you at what temperature steal melts, but I’m a pretty logical person and have learned to distinguish between illogical theories and the more logical ones.

I think the one thing that has made me the angriest today, is that after responding to the Facebook post, I was accused of being ignorant and believing everything I saw on TV on the day of 9/11 and not even given the benefit of the doubt that I may have looked into the matter over the past 10 years. I think this accusation, which wasn’t direct but very indirect, stems from those who live abroad and are not American’s opinions of how we as Americans view the world and events that take place in it.

It was assumed that I, like many other Americans, just put total faith in my government and believed that what was shown live on television was the final story and that there couldn’t be any alternative. In reality, I have read theories about alternatives to what I believe actually happened and have STILL come to the conclusion that what was shown live on 9/11 actually did happen and that the US government didn’t cause or help cause the events of 9/11. Can I be 100% sure? No, but the logical arguments and evidence point to it being very likely, just like the logical arguments and evidence point that there is NO such thing as bigfoot.

The views that my European friend has of the events of 9/11 do not affect my views or opinions of him as a person. I still really like him and am VERY glad I had the chance to meet him. I believe that it isn’t his fault 100% that he believes the way he does. If you believe that there is such a thing as fairness and unbiased media, in ANY country in this world, you are highly mistaken. I did a bit of research about the events of 9/11 in some of the other languages that I speak and many of the articles and segments that I read seemed to favor the conspiracy theories.

Many of them cited things from the movie “Zeitgeist”. This is no different from when I was living in Belgium and everyone went to see “Bowling for Columbine” and had formed strong opinions about my country, after seeing the film. Is this not the same thing that I was being accused of doing? I was accused of taking something at face value and putting all of my energy and strength in defending its words? I think this is a huge problem in humanity and not just among Americans.  Before living in Europe, I thought Europeans were so much more enlightened than Americans and that their education was so much better than ours because they promoted open-mindedness and intellectual inquiry. This ended up not being true, many of the people I met had just as many stereotypes about Americans that they sincerely believed, that many Americans have about them.

Ten years later, I’m still angry. I’m angry that people would rather bicker about what happened than to actually step back and consider WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED! What actually happened? Around 3,000 innocent people lost their lives and more than 6,000 people were injured. Also, the United States came together as one solid country and the city of New York saw thousands of selfless people give and continue to give for days, weeks, months, and even years later.

No matter who did it, it happened. We cannot change history and we cannot change what happened that day, but we can surely move forward and promote understanding and peace so that something like this does not happen again. We can remember everyone who made selfless sacrifices and the unity that we once shared as a country. This isn’t just an attempt to promote understanding between the multiple “theories of 9/11″ camps, but also understanding towards Islam (among other religions) and understanding that terrorist does not equal Muslim and that Muslim does not equal terrorist. It is also to promote understanding between our bipartisan torn country and government that can’t seem to find middle ground on anything!

Recently, through Google+, I came across a site created and maintained by Sai of www.saizai.com. The website is called www.gayhomophobe.com. On this site, Sai lists the number of “days since the last prominent homophobe was caught in a gay sex scandal”. When he mentions “prominent homophobe” he means a politician, leader, pastor, etc. that in the past, has been vocal about being anti-homosexual. Many times the politicians have voted down anything that would give homosexuals in the US equal rights or they have been vocal in denouncing the homosexual lifestyle and calling it “sin”. To the right is Ex-Senator, Larry Craig who was arrested in the Minneapolis St-Paul International Airport for trying to elicit sex in a men’s bathroom back in 2007, which many of you I am sure are aware. His story is one of the most publicized, but there are been many others like him and I am sure there are many like him who still hold a “prominent” role somewhere and continue to spew out their self-hatred rhetoric.

Besides myself being a homosexual, the reason why this sparked my interest was because of my current focus and research in linguistics. As many of you may or may not know, I’ve recently changed my focus from endangered languages to studying the prosodic variation within the different and diverse LGBTQQIA communities. I am currently working on a literature review and proposal to begin the study of my Master’s Thesis at the University of Utah. For my thesis, I want to look at the prosodic variation within both the heterosexual and homosexual Jack Mormon communities, based on their self identification of their gender and sexuality as well as their views on masculinity and femininity.

Much of the research being done in linguistics on what has formally been referred to as “gay speech” has been done on prototypes or stereotypes from the communities. There is a lot of work currently being done on the perception of types of speech that exists in the gay community. I am more interested in how someones speaks, based on how they self identify. It isn’t enough to simply compare the pitch of a gay male to that of a heterosexual female speaker, as “gay male” can stand for many types of people, some of these people, it seems, are homophobes and in the public spotlight.

One group of speakers that I would love to study, are closeted homosexuals. I think that by being able to look into their mind and attitudes towards their sexuality and then look at their speech in relation to that would show us a lot about how we as humans use language to identify or try to belong to different categories and groups. This is a very difficult group to study, as there are varying degrees of “closetness” and the IRB may make it difficult to recruit these type of people.

After finding Sai’s website, I’ve begun to think more and more about perhaps looking at the speech of those who were caught in various homosexual scandals after having been known as “anti-gay”. It would be interesting to study their speech before they were outed and after to see if there is any variation. Also, it would be really interesting to throw into the mix, those in the public spotlight (sticking with politicians, religious figures, etc.) who are gay and out.

I’d love to hear your comments about this subject. I welcome any advice from linguists who have done research, using television/public recordings etc. or have done research within the LGBTQQIA communities! I’d love to gain access to as much audio data from those on Sai’s gayhomophobe.com website as well as any prominent people who self-identify as gay and are out. I’m obviously not interested in looking at the speech of say, Elton John or Boy George, but any leads or references you could give me would be excellent! Thanks!

Other than SYLAP, the other really big thing I did was go to Phoenix. A friend of mine, Joy, lives in Phoenix. I met Joy while I was living in Spain. She was an au pair for a German family living in Mallorca and had a car and used to drive me all around the island. Out mutual friend, Hana, from Croatia, whom we also met in Spain, through the website couchsurfing.com, was coming to stay with Joy for a week after having been studying in Cleveland, Ohio and taking a short vacation out west before returning home to Spain (and then Croatia).

In Phoenix, I was staying with a guy I was dating, so it was sort of a 3 birds with one stone sort of trip, where I got to hang out with three very cool people in one location. It was great hanging out and seeing everyone again but I must say that I really do NOT like Phoenix. It was WAY too hot. It was actually unbearably hot. It was about 110-115˚ the whole time I was there and at night it would only get down to like 93˚. It’s so hot and dry in Phoenix that there is no such thing as cold water. Basically, Phoenix has to get it’s water from lakes and reserves that are not near the city, so waterways have been built to bring the water to the city. Because of the heat, the water is warmed and thus from the little waterways into the pipes that bring the water to your house, the water never has time to cool down. When you turn on the faucet, the water runs warm. Want to take a cold shower? Impossible! I am of ancient Nordic/Northern blood. I don’t do well in the heat and love my seasons with cold winters and warm (not boiling) summers.  Other than the unbearable heat, the trip was really fun and it was well needed after working with high school students for six weeks!

I was also able to start looking at some of the literature in the area of my new research interest.  I’ve decided that in order to make myself more marketable for an academic career, I need to broaden my scope of knowledge and spread out into other disciplines. I thought the best way to do this and to keep doing something that really interests me and is very personal to me is to cross over into doing sociolinguistics. More precisely, my new focus is on the LGBTQQ communities. Ever more precisely, I’m interested in prosodic variation within these communities. Prosody is just another way of saying  the rhythm, stress, and intonation of a language. To give an example of how prosody works, consider this sentence: “Do they need people to decorate for the party?”. This sentence can be ambiguous and could be said with two types of intonation and stress, like these examples: (put stress on the all caps word) “Do they need PEOPLE to decorate for the part?” or “Do they need people to DECORATE for the party?”. In the first sentence, the question is asking if they need people to be decorated for the party, compared to the second sentence, which is asking if they need help decorating for the party.

By focusing on prosody, I’m working in very small domain of linguistics as there are not TOO many people (as compared to say, theoretical syntax, phonology, and semantics) working on it. Also, by looking more closely at LGBTQQ issues, I believe that I could find positions in departments such as Women’s Studies, Gender Studies, Sexuality Studies, Sociology, and maybe others. By branching out into this type of research, I may be able to widen the job search to departments at universities and colleges that aren’t just linguistics. My goal, of course, would be to get a position at a pretty good university in a linguistics department and to hopefully be able to work with other departments in offering courses, thus broadening their scope of study.

As of right now, I’m still doing literature reviews and coming up with a possible study to do for my thesis. I’m leaning towards doing interviews on political topics (so as to not give away that I’m really interested in the speech of the interviewee) with Ex-LDS gay and straight individuals. I’m still trying to figure out all the possible variables that the study could include and I’m actually meeting with Dr. Di Paolo on Wednesday and running my ideas by her.

The new semester started last week and I’m going to be pretty busy this semester! I’m taking 12 credit hours, which is the maximum number of credit hours I am able to take. I’m taking Syntax, Semantics, L2 Research Design (which is basically a research design and statistics course), as well as three hours of Thesis Hours. My goal is to begin designing my study so that I can have a proposal to give to my committee as well as have an application to submit to the IRB  (Institutional Review Board) by mid October. If my study is approved by the IRB, I hope to start recruiting participants for my study and have at least half of the 10 people I would like to interview done before the winter break!

I will do my best to keep you all update on my research and my semester! You know how this type of thing goes! I get really busy and my website is the thing that gets neglected first!

So unless you live under a rock and don’t EVER use the internet and when you do you use bling, don’t read the news, don’t have gmail or use any other google products, then you probably have heard of Google’s new project, Google+. Google+ takes your social life and makes it easier to integrate it online. Many are comparing it to Facebook because Facebook is about the closest thing to Google+, but I think that Google+ may just be the NEXT BIG THING and will have people leaving Facebook or at least frequenting it less frequently.

A high school friend of mine is currently working at google and had some invitations when Google opened up the first round of invitations to be sent out, this past Wednesday. I was lucky to be online and get mine from my friend to join Google+. An hour or so later, Google closed the invitations. I’m guessing the next round of invites will open sometime next week after everyone gets back from the long weekend and has time to discuss the feedback that they have been receiving from us initial users of Google+.

My first impression of Google+ was that of confusion. I was a little bit confused as to how it worked. That was easily remedied as I looked around and explored a bit. Google is ALL about making things easy and intuitive. They try to make your life easier and make technology fun, not deceiving and confusing, like some social networking sites I know that hide the privacy disclosures so that people who are not computer savvy have no idea their information is being broadcast to the whole world!

After I got used to it a little, I was really impressed by the simplicity of it all. The layout is very easy on the eyes and not too cluttered. There aren’t any ads trashing up the sidebars and  the theme ties in with all of the other great Google products that I use every single day, like Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Maps, etc.

Google+ is still in its early stages of development and the staff is working on reading everyone’s feedback about problems and issues that they have come across or anything they would like to see implemented. There are six main parts to Google+, which are represented in the image above in this post. These parts are: Circles, Hangouts, Stream, Photos, Profile, and Sparks. Below I will discuss each section and compare it to Facebook and give my opinion on what I would like to see implemented.

Let’s start with “Circles”. Circles is Google+’s version of Facebook Friend Lists, but better! You can create any number of Circles with any theme you want like Friends, Family, Co-Works, Cohorts, Best Friends, Bowling Buddies, Drinking Buddies, etc. You can add contacts to any number of these circles and then you can limit which Circles can see what on your profile, photos, or streams. The best part about Circles is that every individual “Stream” (which I will talk about later), Photo Album, Profile Detail, can be adjusted so that only certain Circles can view them. Every time you update your “Stream” (like Status Updates on Facebook) you can decide who will be able to see that particular update. So if, for example, you are going out to get wasted with your friends and you don’t want your co-workers, family, advisors, or whomever to see it, you can just share it with those circles that you want!

Many people will ask how this is any better than Facebook Friend Lists. Well, Circles is an integrated part of Google+ and not an after-thought like FB Friend Lists are. Most people haven’t taken the time to order their “friends” into a list and if you are like me you have way too many friends to go through and to divide them up by lists. It is a very time consuming process. With Circles, it is as easy as clicking and dragging the person to one of the blue “circles” that you created. Also, when you add people to “follow” them, you must add them to a circle, thus making it easier later to organize your social life. Also, one of the great things about Google+ is that anyone can follow you without you having to follow them. Basically this would be like you being someones friend on FB and they not being yours. The cool thing is that you can limit what the public (those not in any of your circles) can see and if you want to keep your profile completely private from the public, then I’m sure they won’t be following you long!

The next part of Google+ is “Hangouts”. Basically, hangouts is a lot like twitcam.com where you open up a Hangout room and invite people in your circle to come hangout and chat with you. This can be audio/cam chat or just audio or just cam, with typing. When you click the “Hangouts” button and open up a room to chat in, a post is streamed to your “Stream” letting people know in the circles that you specify that you are hanging out and open to chat and gives them the option to join you. This is basically a really great way to implement Skype and other such Webcam/Calling programs into a social networking site. Since there are only a limited number of people on Google+ at the moment, I haven’t really been able to test this part out. Update! I was able to use this feature last night with my friend and a few of his friends. Hangouts is AWESOME!!! There are up to six people in the hangout at one time. When someone speaks, the view changes to their camera. You can share and watch youtube videos right in the chat. If you don’t have a cam or mic, you can still join the conversation by using the chat function. IT was a really great experience and I think this will totally blow other camming programs and obviously Facebook chat out of the water. Did you ever want to hook to of your friends up but never got a chance to have them meet, well now you can with “Hangouts!” Google+ also still gives you the option to chat with your friends, using GoogleTalk. The GoogleTalk chat list is in the left hand sidebar like it is in Gmail, so Gmail users will already be used to using this.

The “Stream” is comparable to your “wall” on Facebook or the “timeline” on Twitter. It is separate from you profile page and displays only those Circles and people in those Circles that you choose to read. Like Facebook, you can upload or link to photos, videos, websites, or display your current location, as well as update your status or say what is on your mind in the Stream. One of the cool things is that you can upload Animated .Gif files, which is impossible to do on FB. In the photo to the left, the image of Michelle Obama is actually a moving animated .gif. Also, like FB, you can comment on someone’s Stream and/or share it as well. Recently, Facebook implemented sharing what you post as your status to certain networks you are in or just to your friends, etc. With Circles, sharing with certain people while leaving others out is so much more intuitive. You can share individual posts with just your family or with everyone in the world, it is always your choice! As a whole, Google+ makes you think about what you are posting before you post it. It makes you think about if a certain person belongs to a particular circle or not and in the end may make you think more deeply about your social connections as a whole. I really enjoy the individual power that one gets with sharing things on Google+, each individual post can be tailored to a certain group. It’s marketing at its best!

The next thing is Photos. This is pretty straight forward and if you already have Picasa, Google’s Web Photo Album service then it is even easier. Photo albums work a lot like Facebook albums. You have control over who sees which photo albums and who can tag you and who cannot. Adding albums or photos to an album couldn’t get easier. When you click on the button to add more photos or to add an album, a window pops up and asks you to drag the photos into the window and it will upload the photos for you automatically. Also, if you are like me and use Picasa, you have Picasa downloaded on your computer. You can make albums in the Picasa program and share them to your online Picasa album, which will be automatically added to you Google+ photo albums. Any photo you share on a Stream is added to a photo album. Sharing your life through pictures just got EASIER!

In your Profile, it displays the posts that you have made, gives an about you page, shows yours photos and videos, your +1s (kind of like the “like” button on FB), and your Google Buss (which I think will die out now that there is Google+). The main about me section is very simple and to the point. It lets you introduce yourself, share links about you, tells your occupation, education, and relationship status, as well as showing where you lived and the people in your Circles and those who have you in their Circle. It is straight to the point and isn’t cluttered by “likes and dislikes” like some dating website. Also, there doesn’t yet seem to be anything similar to “Pages” or “Groups” like in Facebook, but I’m sure Google will come up with something much more superior.

The last main option in Google+ is Sparks. Basically, you can add a thing called a “Spark”, which is kind of like an interest to you and Google will find websites and posts that are related to the spark and file it under the spark name. The closest thing I can compare this to is the hash tags in Twitter. It would be really neat if Google did decide to implement hash tags (#tags) which would link to the spark pages for the different interests. Twitter has been a great way to connect to total strangers through having interests in the same things. It has created great dialogue across many different subjects. I would hope that Google+ could be the same thing, since it does give one the option to share things completely publicly.

Overall, I really like Google+ and will probably enjoy it even more once more people start to join. At this point it could go either way, it could totally be a success and run FB into the ground or it could flop and everyone who “hates” change (which is almost everyone on Facebook, since everyone bitches every time FB changes something) will stick with good ol FB. I do know that true loyal Google fans will really enjoy Google+ and it definitely will improve and cannot get any worse! I just hope they keep it simple and don’t try to do too much and add any advertisements! I also cannot wait until they come out with the native app for iPhone as the mobile browser site isn’t all that great as of yet.

If you are interested in an invite to Google+ when they open up invites again, hit me up by using the contact link above or by simply leaving your google e-mail address in the comments section of this post! I’d lost like to hear about your experience with Google+ or if I have made an error in reporting something here, please let me know (just be kind about it, people can be so rude sometimes when correcting other people online).

Dear Colleagues,

The House Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice & Science (CJS) is considering changing the 2012 appropriation to eliminate the Social, Behavioral & Economic Sciences (SBE) directorate at the NSF, which includes the Linguistics Program.  The Consortium of Social Science Associations (COSSA), a coalition to which the LSA belongs supporting Federal funding for the social sciences, is encouraging its members to write to their House Representatives and Senators, urging the House to continue to support the human sciences at NSF.  Having had the privilege of serving recently as one of the Assistant Directors of the NSF, heading up the SBE directorate, I want to endorse COSSA’s request, believing that eliminating SBE would be disastrous for the human sciences in the US and for linguistics in particular.

So the LSA is now encouraging its members to write to their House Representatives and US Senators, ideally before the CJS Subcommittee meeting on 7 July, or before the full House Appropriations Committee meeting on  13 July, and at least before the floor discussion scheduled for the week of 25 July.  You may want to copy Subcommittee Chair Frank Wolf R-VA and Ranking Member Chakah Fattah D-PA and perhaps other members of the Subcommittee (http://www.appropriations.house.gov/Subcommittees/Subcommittee/?IssueID=34794) and Appropriations Committee Chair Harold Rogers (R-KY) and Ranking Member Norm Dicks (D-WA) (http://www.appropriations.house.gov).  You can find contact information for your representative using the “Write Your Representative” feature at https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml, and you will find a list of Senators, sortable by state, at http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm.

We all lead busy lives and if you prefer to send something more or less ready made I suggest something along the lines of the letter available at http://www.lsadc.org/info/NSFSBEletter.pdf.  You may copy and paste the text from this letter (make sure the formatting has copied appropriately) and if you have the opportunity to elaborate and to tell your representatives something about our field, you may want to address one or more of the following points:

a. some of us study language as a branch of biology (biolinguistics), in such a way that the field has become a lead science within the cognitive sciences more broadly and within emerging neuroscience.
b. much work in linguistics feeds work on applied linguistics, which is the basis for the major worldwide industry of second language teaching.
c. with the development of new communication technologies, work in computational linguistics has been playing an increasing role in the development of new technologies as we seek more effective automated techniques of text analysis, including machine translation.
d. work in linguistics has become important in developing therapies for aphasia and language disorders in patients suffering from strokes, Alzheimer’s and other diseases.
e. study of language variation has been instrumental in thwarting the extermination of some endangered languages and in addressing social and political issues in matters of language use.
f. work on the acquisition of language, both first and second language acquisition, has played a leading role in the learning sciences generally.
g. linguists have been funded by directorates such as Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE), Education & Human Resources (EHR) and Engineering, large-scale cross-directorate programs like Cyber-Enabled Discovery and Innovation (CDI), and more focused inter-directorate programs like CreativeIT and Social Computational Systems (SoCS); none of this would happen without SBE and the Linguistics Program.

Support will be particularly valuable if your representatives are from the Republican party.  Furthermore, you might strengthen your argument by pointing to NSF-supported work being conducted at a university in the representative’s area.

David W. Lightfoot, PhD
Past President, Linguistic Society of America
Professor of Linguistics,
Director, Interdisciplinary Program in Cognitive Science,
Director, Communication, Culture & Technology Program, Georgetown University

If you thought that the word to finish the title was “indians”, then you were wrong. Though this post is about cultural sensitivity and racist icons, the finish to the title is actually “taibo”, or as it is known in English, white man.

(Sung to the tune of “1 little, 2 little, 3 little Indians”)

Semme, wahatte’, pahaitte’ taiponee

wattsewitte’ manaikitte’, naahpaitte’ taiponee

taattsewitte’, woosewitte’, swemihankante’ taiponee

sewaahte taipottsinee!!

The lyrics above are from the Shoshone language. Shoshone is spoken by about 3,000 people all over the western United States in the states of Utah, California, Nevada, Wyoming, and Idaho.  The lyrics roughly translate as “One, two, three white people, four, five, six white people, seven, eight, nine white people, ten little white people.” This song was made up by a Native Shoshone speaking linguist, to turn the tables on those who take it for granted that we are disrespectfully counting a large group of people, native to the United States, in a children’s song.

I’ve always considered myself to be culturally sensitive and open to other ideas and cultures. Recently, while working closely with Native American Shoshone youth and elders, I’ve begun to think about the cultural insensitivity that still exists in our American culture still today. I’m sure that somewhere in the US today, some teacher is still singing “10 Little Indians”. I’m also sure that you won’t find people counting “10 Little Blacks” or “10 Little Mexicans”, or even “10 Little Asians”. No, people aren’t doing this because it would be wrong. So why is it ok to count Indians but not whites, blacks, Asians, Mexicans, Irish, etc.?

I attended Logan Elm High School whose mascot is the Brave. They literally have a mascot costume of a leather outfit with beads, etc. and the person who plays the mascot wears a giant “Native American” head, with the two braids and everything. All through high school I never saw anything wrong with this. When I played in the band on Friday nights and we play the Tomahawk Chop Song, I chopped my hand like a tomahawk along with everyone else. I suppose it is because my school is named after a Native American chief that I never saw anything wrong with it.

The problem is there is something wrong with it.  You wouldn’t see a guy wearing a big blond hair blue eyed head and name the school “The fighting White Folk”. Why? Well, because not everyone is blond with blue eyes. Just like not every Native American has black hair that is long and is braided hanging on each side of their head. To many Native American people, war paint, feathers, Native dress, among other things, are sacred and important to them. Sports teams, schools, and universities flaunt these things with “pride”, ignorant to their true meaning.

This issue has been in the news and there are people from both sides. Many of those who continue to support the cultural insensitivity say that it is freedom of speech and “tradition”. On the other hand, there are those who find it racist and down right ignorant to portray a stereotype of a population of the world based on myths and not on facts.

The University of Utah’s logo is the block U with two feathers hanging off of a circle around the U. Sports teams are known as Utes, which is the name of the largest tribe in Utah as well as where Utah derived its name. Before they had “Swoop” the red-tailed hawk, they originally had an “American Indian” and they used the term “redskins” interchangeably with “Utes”.  In 1972, the university discontinued the term “redskins” and started to only use the term “Ute”, which the Ute tribes have given consent to use. Even after this, before Swoop, “The Crimson Warrior” used to ride onto the field on a horse, wearing indian clothing.

Using Native Americans as mascots and logos should be abolished in the US. The Cleveland Indians and Atlanta Braves should have to change their names. My high school, along with many other high schools and colleges in the United states, should change their mascot and or names. Using icons that are stereotypes of a culture shouldn’t be used out of context and people should educate themselves on the meaning and uses of certain cultural icons and objects. Alternatives to those logos and mascots that are in place shouldn’t be difficult to find. If the Ute tribe was to ever revoke their decision to let the University of Utah use their name, it could easy change its mascot over to the Utah Fighting Bees, after all, Utah is the Beehive state!

One other note I wanted to make was that many groups in the US would be offended if a generic stereotype of their race, sexuality, gender, or culture were used as a mascot or logo for a university, high school, sports team, etc. Though I can think of one group who wouldn’t mind being a mascot, “The Fighting Queens” (and the mascot would be a big ol drag queen). I think you would have more people who do not belong to this community opposing this than the actual community itself!

By the way, the photo above is “Princess Tiger Lily” from the filmed stage production of “Peter Pan” that was made back in the 60s. If she isn’t the whitest “Indian” I’ve ever seen. (NB- I can’t call her a Native American, because she lives in Neverland). When I was a child, I would watch this movie and dance with the scene as depicted in the video below. In those days I was innocent and didn’t know what cultural insensitivity was!

Click on the image to play video

One would think that since this post is titled, “Madame Egbert”, that it would include a photo of Madame Egbert. Unfortunately, the only photo I have of her here in Salt Lake City is one that is about 8 years old and is a scanned image of her, which is pasted to one of the pages of my scrap book from my year abroad in Belgium. The photo to the right encompasses so much meaning and is directly linked to Mme (Madame) Egbert.

Mme Egbert was my high school French teacher. The thing is, she was more than a teacher to me. She was a mentor, an inspiration, and guide for so many things that have happened in my life. In the photo to the right, I’m wearing my “Cercle Français” t-shirt, which was the t-shirt for the French club, of which I was president my senior year. The photo was taken at the Rotary Youth Exchange Program Orientation at Otterbein College in July of 2002, the year I graduated. A month after this photo was taken, I was on a plane to spend a year abroad in Belgium where I learned to improve the French I had learned from Mme Egbert during my high school years. It is because of her encouragement and advice that I even was able to be empowered to start the Rotary application in the first place and complete it, encouraging my parents to let me do this.

Mme Egbert recently retired this year from my high school, Logan Elm, which is located in the cornfields (literally) of Pickaway County, Ohio.  I knew she was planning on retiring soon as I had just visited her this past Christmas. I didn’t think that soon meant at the end of the school year. I got the news from a family friend that lives in Circleville and I had extremely mixed emotions about Mme Egbert’s deciding to retire!

My first emotion was extremely sad. I then became extremely proud and happy that she had made it to this milestone in her life. It’s a wonderful accomplishment to have had such a successful career as she has had and finally come to the end of it. Thinking upon my experience of teaching high school aged kids, for a measly year, I was glad for her. High school students are NOT easy to teach and the baggage that comes with each one is extremely difficult to handle when we ourselves are just mere human beings. To have taught for a long as she has, she deserves the break.

Though I was elated that Mme Egbert finally “a pris sa retaite” (retired), I still felt extremely sad, not for her, but for Logan Elm and for future students who would not get the opportunity to experience the greatest teacher I have ever had. This is saying A LOT because I have had a lot of very wonderful teachers and professors. In my search for a photo of her, I contacted her daughter, Melinda, on Facebook. As I wrote Melinda explaining why I wanted a photo of her mom, I began to tear up and then to uncontrollably sob. Just thinking about it now makes me all teary eyed.  Some people may think this is ridiculous, but I think this just goes to show how much of an impact Mme Egbert had on my life and not only on my life but so many other students who came into contact with her throughout her years of teaching.

I started high school French 1 my freshman year in 1998. I didn’t know what to expect. At this point, I was trying to learn German on my own and already had a sense that I liked languages more than the average person. French quickly became my favorite class.  I studied French after I finished my homework to try to increase my vocabulary and knowledge of verbs and their forms. I was excited when French period came and since Logan Elm had just started block scheduling I wasn’t able to take French the second semester of that year. Even though I wasn’t taking the class, I still went and talked to Mme Egbert about language, my current classes, any struggles I was having. Sometimes I felt that I was such a nuisance.

Mme Egbert was unlike many other teachers and I suppose it was because of the subject she taught. She knew what to do to teach us French. After attending a seminar on total physical response, the curriculum in her class changed and she really embraced the new method and there was NO WAY that you were going into class without coming out knowing something. Her class was very active and motivating, no one could slack off and EVERYONE had to participate.

She never picked favorites. Though I may just be one of the most enthusiastic students she ever taught, she never treated me any different than anyone else. If you want evidence of this, ask me how many “payes-moi” I received. Not only was she a great teacher, but she is a great person. She was very compassionate when she needed to be and strict and straight forward when the situation called for that. She listened to her students, she asked for their opinions and constantly improved things, based on the feedback she got.

Some days, she realized that what we needed as a class was not to learn French. We needed to sit and talk about an issue that was affecting the class as a whole. She is extremely wise in giving advice and her world experience and knowledge about things beyond her domain make her someone that you almost always want to return to when in need of some advice.

She is extremely talented and good at what she dedicates herself to do. For these reasons and the many others that I have listed above, it makes me sad that Logan Elm is losing Mme Egbert. What’s more, is that future students don’t even know what they are missing in a teacher. Language has become so important in my life. I’m currently pursuing a Master’s degree in linguistics and starting next year hope to begin my doctorate studies. If it weren’t for Mme Egbert’s love for teaching and for her love of language, especially French, I do not think I would be where I am today. I fed off of her passion and within myself I found a passion.

I’ll never forget one day when I was sitting in Mme Egbert’s classroom at the computer, during her prep period. I asked her if she had ever had a student like me, someone who loved languages as much as I did.  She sat and thought for a second and said that she had certainly had good French students and ambitious ones, but that I was her gift. She said that she thought that at least once in every teacher’s lifetime, a student came along that was so passionate about the subject that they taught that they became that teacher’s gift.

I’d like to say to you Mme Egbert, that the gift goes both ways. I think that at least once, in every student’s lifetime, a teacher comes along that is their gift. You were my gift and the only way I know how to repay you for what you have done for me is to continue my education and my passion for language so that I may be able to create future “Mme Egberts”.

The combination of my love for language and Mme Egbert’s passion for teaching changed my life forever. Plus being married to the Pumpkin Man is an added bonus! My niece and nephew adore him!

Congratulations Mme Egbert on your accomplishments and enjoy your LONG and well deserved retirement. I hope you get the chance to visit France again and use your wonderful French! Take Tom with you, I think he would enjoy a “pain au chocolat” or two!

Newe taikwappeh, or ‘Shoshoni and Goshute’ are dialects of Central Numic, which is a part of the Uto-Aztecan family, spoken by around 3,000 people today. It is highly endangered as very few children are learning it to fluency and most of the fluent speakers are over the age of 50 years old.

Two years ago, a PhD candidate in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Utah, Katherine Matsumoto-Gray, began a program she called “Shoshone-Goshute Youth Language Apprenticeship Program”. The idea was presented in a term paper that she wrote for a course on endangered language conservation and revitalization, taught by Dr. Lyle Campbell.  The idea came from a science program that Katherine participated in Wyoming when she was in high school. The idea of the program is to hire 10 Shoshone/Goshute high school students or graduates to come to the University of Utah to work as language revitalization apprentices and interns on the Shoshone Project, as well as take beginning Shoshone courses, taught by a tribal member, Bryan Hudson. Below I will describe in detail the parts of the program.

SYLAP runs for six weeks from mid June to the end of July. For all three years, the students have stayed in an old officer’s house in historic Fort Douglas on the University of Utah Campus.  There are 10 SYLAP participants, which range from high school sophomores to recent high school graduates. Two RAs are hired to live in the house with the participants and throughout the week the apprentices are expected to work throughout the day on different projects, lead my internship directors, as well as take the Shoshone Language course and participate in different activities and talks from different entities from the university. The program is funded by the Barrick Gold Corportation, which grants money to Dr. Di Paolo in the effort to help conserve and revitalize the Shoshone Language.

Not only are the participants exposed to their language and how to help conserve and revitalize it, but they are also introduced to university and what it is like to attend a university and live on campus. Overall, the experience is a great way to help promote the issue of language endangerment and death to a generation that must do something or their heritage language WILL die.

Logistics

Ten Shoshone and Goshute high school students come to the University of Utah for six weeks and stay in a house in Fort Douglas. Their room is paid for and they are provided a meal plan to eat at the local Heritage Commons in Fort Douglas. They are then paid a stipend for working as interns during the six weeks and their course and registration fees for the Shoshone Course are covered.

Course

The Shoshone course curriculum for the summer program is a high school Shoshone curriculum that is adapted to fit the timeline of the six week program. It was developed by Jelena Markovic and Bryan Hudson, and the second year curriculum has recently been adapted from the high school curriculum by Sarah Braden. This year, there is a second course to be offered to five previous SYLAP participants, two of which are the RAs for this summer and three, which will be working on various projects throughout the summer while taking the second course in the Shoshone Language course series. The courses are both introductions to the Shoshone Language. The course is taught in immersion and students are exposed to language and culture, which they can relate to in their everyday lives.

Internship

Each year there are about three projects on which the participants work. Starting 2009, the participants worked on illustrating and creating story books that came from recordings in the Wick R. Miller Collection. These stories are traditional Shoshone and Goshute stories that have been told for centuries. The participants work closely with tribal elders who speak the language fluently and natively. The story books were a repeated project during last year’s SYLAP and this year, the participants will be working on making children’s learning books, focusing on colors, numbers, and the alphabet etc. We are in the process with working with the University of Utah Press who has said that they will publish two of the books, created in SYLAP, per year.

The tribal elders have also helped in another project, which has been done the past two years and which will be continued this year, a Shoshone Talking Dictionary. Using a program called, Lexique Pro, the participants compile a dictionary by recording the elders and making a dictionary where people can see how the word is spelled (in the Wick R. Miller orthography) and also hear how it is pronounced. Since there are many dialects of Shoshone, elders from all over the Great Basin and Southern Idaho are used to show the dialect variation. Just a short not on orthography. There are two major orthographies for Shoshone, the Miller Orthography and the Idaho State University orthography. Here is the word “Shoshone Language” in both orthographies: Miller- newe taikwappeh, ISU- newe daigwape. The Miller orthography is more phonemic and the ISU orthography is more phonetic.

A claymation was made the first year of SYLAP called, “Frog and Coyote”. The participants created the sets and the clay characters and were in charge of filming the film.  Tamrika Khvtisiashvili helped in producing the short little film as well as editing the audio and video portions.

This year, the third project that the participants will be working on is language presentations for the Shoshonean Language Reunion to be held during July 11th through the 14th in Elko, Nevada. Since there are 10 participants, the participants are broke up into groups of two for all projects. Each of the five groups will prepare a presentation about a particular part of SYLAP and then present it at the Shoshonean Language Reunion.

Development

Different departments around the university are invited to come and talk one night a week for one hour so that we may better introduce the participants to the University of Utah and to university altogether. Departments such as High School Recruitment, College Advising, Student Wellness, The American Indian Resource Center, and Financial Aid, come to talk to the participants about university life, drug and alcohol prevention & education, possible grants, scholarships, fellowships, and loans that are available to Native American and minority students. Many of the SYLAP participants go on to college or university.

Book and Journaling

During the six weeks, the participants are expected to read “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” by Sherman Alexie. Once a week, they meet with the RAs for about an hour to discuss the book and how it speaks to experiences they have had in life. They also are given a journal in their welcome packet that they are urged to write in. The journal gives the participants to reflect on their life and their experience during SYLAP and to look deeper within themselves and to help them reflect on their part in  the big picture of language conservation and revitalization.

Fun Activities

Since every day is filled with work, class, studying, journaling, reading, and self-development, we try to provide breaks during the week and on the weekends that help build a tighter bond among the group as well as let them relax and have fun. Some of these activities include: playing volleyball, laser tag, laser light show, trip to the movies, bowling, trip to the mall, trip to a state park, trip to a theme and water park, hiking trip, museum visits, soccer games, minor league baseball games, seeing a musical or play, as well as hanging out at the house and watching movies and playing board games!

The program has been a success in the past two years and has really done a lot of good for the communities. This year will be another great year and I look forward to being a bigger part of it than I already have, organizing and coordinating it. Those with whom I working, Katherine, Bryan, Sarah, Miranda, Jen, Dr. Di Paolo, Stephanie, Sam, and the MANY MANY others, have been wonderful so far and I look forward to a great six weeks with them.

If you are interested in learning more about the Center for American Indian languages or the Shoshoni Project at the University of Utah please go to the following link: http://cail.utah.edu.

I’ve been part of the World Wide Web for a long time. At least since I was 12 years old. Back in the day, I felt like the only person in the world who liked languages as much as I did. That was until I started high school French, my freshman year of high school. In 1998 I found Jennifer Wagner’s (of http://www.ielanguages.com) AOL site for learning French. I believe the web address was http://www.aol.com/chicolynn or something of the sort. She posted French lessons on her website. Her lessons came from what she was learning in her French courses in high school. As a language enthusiast, I wanted to learn as much as possible about the language I was taking in high school, French. I used Jennie’s web sources extensively and used to print out her guides and would take them home and study them! I was always well ahead of everyone else in my French class.

At that time I never in my wildest dreams would have thought that I would be native-like in French nor would I be able to speak any other languages fluently. Did Jennifer Wagner get me there? No? Did she help? Yes. Was it her lessons that got me to that point? No, but they sure did help! I believe it was the simple fact of knowing that there was someone else out there that was just like me and that they were doing something about their goals and dreams. Jennifer has inspired me on many occasions and I have nothing but the highest respect for her and completely support her in her endeavors to inspire others and help them on their language learning journey!

Over the past few years I have followed many language learning blogs here and there, that I found were different from Jennie’s, which claim that their method is the best way to learn a language! I’m not going to be petty and name these blogs or say anything specific about them. I feel that the content, if read as a whole, speaks for itself and that the attitudes and demeanor of the bloggers behind the blogs speak loads as to their true goals.

Personally, I find many of these bloggers arrogant. Their arrogance definitely shines through during the many comments and discussions that appear on the posts of the individual blogs. Many of them seem to be ignorant about real life situations and what is truly possible for people. Some of these bloggers have decided that their method is SO good that they should write books and guides and sell them for absolutely ridiculous prices. Basically, these people are making money off of telling people how learning a language worked best for them.

One other thing that really peeves me about these “language learners” is their total disregard for the field of linguistics and of linguists. Some of the comments that have been made about linguists and the field of linguistics is totally uninformed and down right ignorant. Many of their “tips” and “methods” for learning language go against theories that have been proven to be quite positive in the field of second language acquisition.

Why am I so annoyed? Well, it’s simple. WE ARE NOT YOU! We do not live the same life as you do. We do not have the same opportunities as you do. We do not make the same amount of money as you do. Some of us have families and jobs where we cannot “immerse” ourselves in a culture for three or more months at a time. A big majority really just can’t up and leave and live in a place where the language is spoken.

Many of your tips for language learning cannot work for the grand majority. Some of your methods don’t work for everyone. Stop trying to tell people that they will be able to learn a language if they do exactly as you do because we simple just can’t. I have the utmost respect for people who put importance on language and culture and especially trying to learn about a new culture or learn a new language, but your arrogance and ignorance in thinking that people can learn language exactly as  you have is complete bullshit.

I believe that many people DO benefit from your websites because of the same reason Jennifer Wagner’s website helped me in the past. They know they are not alone and they get inspiration and set goals for themselves to continue on even though they know they will never be able to learn the language in the exact same way as you.

I’m sorry to rant and rave about this, but it is something I’ve been holding back on for a while. I tried to be vague on purpose as to not call anyone out. If you are reading this and you feel the same way about many of the language blogs that you have seen and are still struggling to get anywhere in a second (or third or fourth or fifth, etc.) language, look for my upcoming series: “How to REALLY Learn Languages” where I will tell you what the latest research in Second Language Acquisition shows to be the best methods in learning languages.

I will also share my experience in language learning so that you can know my background, but remember, what worked for me, may not work for you and WILL NOT work for others, just because of personal and life circumstances. In no way am I trying to make money off of this. There will not be a future book published by me that I will try to sell to you.  Like Jennie, I believe in keeping things simple and low cost, meaning free. Besides, when you move to another country, people don’t charge you to talk to them in their native language, do they?

Please comment and share with me your online language learning experiences!

My friend’s supervisor informed my friend that she should begin pronouncing her ‘c’ and ‘z’ as they do in the  Carribean/Americas. This is absolutely absurd! That would be like asking someone from Scotland who had a British accent to start talking like an American. First of all, there is no such thing as a “British” accent nor “American” accent. There are many dialects and accents within both Great Britain and the United States. Would it be fair for us to ask a French exchange student who lived in the heart of Brooklyn to speak like a Texan when visiting or living in Texas?  Should Portuguese speakers ask Brazilian Portuguese speakers to speak like they do in Portugal?

Dialects are obviously not constrained only to sounds (accents), but also to vocabulary, prosody (i.e. intonation, stress, etc.), idioms, expressions, etc. For example, in Castillian Spanish the verb ‘coger’ means ‘to take’ or ‘to have’, in the sense of ‘having a drink’. In many of the other dialects of Spanish, this same word meas ‘to fuck’. The word ‘fag’ in American English has the pejorative meaning of ‘someone who is a homosexual’ whereas in Great Britain and Ireland it simply means ‘cigarette’.

When living in Belgium, I learned to speak French the way the Belgians spoke it.  There are a  few minor pronunciation differences between Belgian French and the standard French or ‘Parisian French’, but the main difference is lexically (vocabulary). In Belgium they say septante for 70 and nonante for 90, while in standard French they use soixante-dix (60-10) and quatrevingt-dix (80-10). For meals, they use déjeuner (which literally means breakfast), dîner, and souper, while in standard French the meals are petit-déjeuner, déjeuner, and dîner. In standard French the word for mayor is ‘maire’, while in Belgium it it ‘bourgmestres’, which comes from the Flemish word, ‘burgemeester’.

When I lived in France, I continued to speak the French that I had acquired in Belgium. When you learn a language by immersion (living in a place where the language is spoken) it is much easier to learn a particular dialect. It’s almost impossible to not learn the particular dialect spoken in the area in which you are immersed. It’s a bit like when you start to slightly pick up a different accent of your native language after having moved to a new place and living there for a while. There were a few times when speaking a different dialect caused confusion. One example was when I was telling one of the principals in one of the schools where I taught that I was unable to work Friday mornings at his school. I was using the Belgian construction ‘ne pas savoir’, which literally means ‘not knowing’ but in Belgian French means ‘unable to’. I should have used the ‘ne pas pouvoir’, which in standard French does mean ‘unable to’. My principal kept telling me to find out and let him know and I was confused as I continued telling him that I knew that I couldn’t, or ‘je sais déjà que je ne saurai pas!’ (“I know already that I will not be able to”).

It annoyed my students in France that I didn’t count like them, but I think it’s important for people, especially children, to be exposed to differences in the world.

When I moved to Spain and lived in Mallorca, not only was I learning Castillian Spanish, but also Mallorcan Catalan, which is pretty different from the standard Catalan spoken in Catalonia. For example. the word for “I am” in Mallorcan is ‘som’ and in standard Catalan, it is ‘sóc’. Mallorcan doesn’t have a ‘o’ ending in the first person singular of verbs, where as Catalan does (e.g. I trave- viatj M. viatjo C.). Also the articles for ‘the’ are different. In Mallorcan the masculine article for ‘the’ is ‘es’, in Catalan it is ‘el’. The feminine article for ‘the’ is ‘sa’ in Mallorcan and in Catalan it is ‘la’. Mallorcans in general are used to how Catalans and Valencians speak when they come to Mallorca. If I had learned Catalan while living in Barcelona and went to live in Mallorca, the Mallorcans would not have said anything about my Catalan, it’s mutually intelligible (just like Castillian Spanish is mutually intelligible with Mexican Spanish, Argentinian Spanish, etc.). Would it be fair for speakers of standard Catalan to tell me to speak like them JUST because their language is the standard form? What is a standard form? Ask any American what the standard form of American English is and they will most likely say it is their own, except for those who speak a dialect that has been marginalized (i.e. southern dialect).

In education, it is completely subjective as to which dialect someone will be exposed to. If I were to become a high school Spanish teacher, my students would probably learn Castillian Spanish. Those who were exposed to Mexican Spanish through courses in university or exchange programs will most likely teach the Spanish they know best, Mexican Spanish. In most of Europe they learn British English. I was told by my co-teachers in both France and Spain that I should try to use the British vocabulary over the American vocabulary. That was completely insane as I had NEVER used glockenspiel (xylophone) in my entire life, nor referred to my underwear as pants. I had absolutely NO problem in them learning British English. If they were to learn their British English to fluency, we would be able to comprehend one another. I did, however, have a problem using words and constructions (‘I have got’ instead of just ‘I have’) in my native language that I NEVER used! It is unfair for anyone to discriminate against a dialect.

In most cases in education, a more standard dialect or more recognizable dialect is taught. This is to aid in making students understood by a greater population of speakers of a particular language. One very good example would be Arabic. Arabic is said to be a language with many dialects, when in fact these dialects are actually so different from each other that they are mutually unintelligible. Discussion in Arabic Sociolinguistics continues to debate Modern Standard Arabic and the colloquial ‘dialects’. A person from Jordan, speaking Arabic, will find it difficult to almost impossible to understand someone speaking ‘Arabic’ from Morocco. Even if they both speak MSA (Modern Standard Arabic) there will be problems in communication. In most universities and education programs that teach Arabic, the dialect taught is Egyptian. Egypt is like Hollywood in the Arab world, in the sense that it is the top producer of films and a lot of the media is based in Egypt. It makes sense that if you wanted to be able to communicate to the rest of the Arab world, you would want to learn a dialect that more people are exposed to.

I think that some people believe that just because we learned a second language (or in many cases acquired it) that it should be easy to adapt to a new dialect or accent in the same language. They are correct in assuming that it is EASIER for a 2nd language speaker than for a native speaker, but is it really necessary?

I suppose it really depends on how one identifies with the culture of the language speakers. Dialects make up identities and identities have their own dialects. Look at Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin. They are now considered separate languages but were once identified as one language, called Serbo-Croatian. In reality, these ‘languages’ are actually dialects, though you find that most universities, if they offer one of these languages it is Croatian (Serbo-Croatian). This doesn’t mean that if you go to Bosnia and acquire Bosnian that you will not be able to communicate with those living in Serbia, Croatia, or Montenegro.

I do suppose that some people may choose to live in a certain part of the world because of their cultural connection with this particular area or for other reasons. I also think that some people may choose to favor one dialect of a language than another. People ALWAYS have strong feelings about ‘dialects’ even though many can’t even define what one is!

It isn’t impossible for someone to be multi-dialectal in a second language. I suppose that if you spent time living in France and then some time living in French-speaking Québec, you could go back and forth switching your dialect and accent, though I do think it is easier to speak Parisian French in Québec and be tolerated and accepted than it would be to go to France speaking Québecois French (especially as a second language speaker). Though I think this is possible, I don’t see why it is necessary. I have strong connections to the places and cultures where I learned to speak French, Catalan, Spanish, (English), and Flemish. I do not think it is fair of anyone to ask that I change my accent or dialect for any of those languages.

I suppose that I should tell you that my friend that I mentioned earlier is a speech pathologist/therapist and it seems that she will be using Spanish in her career as a speech pathologist/therapist. Her supervisor said that her accent could hinder subjects’ (patients?) pronunciation. My response to this is, WHO CARES! I know a woman who had a speech impediment when she was younger and her speech therapist was from Boston. To this day, this lady sounds like she is from Boston. She has lived her WHOLE life in Coschocton, Ohio, which is actually near the part of Ohio that is rumored to speak the “Standard Dialect” of American English.