What’s that You Say?

One of my Favorite things to do on an evening, is sit, needles in hand while Andrew Zimmern, Anthony Bordain or any of the other Travel Channel hosts, whisk me away to some far off climb.  I am a terrible traveler, always becoming ill even before I leave, and so as the saying goes, I have become an armchair traveler. As a result of my “travels,”  I have discovered that there are cultures and languages all over the world that even in our modern realm of technical advances, we will never come to know or indeed have an opportunity to understand even a glimmer. 

For example, in a little community in the Nation of Columbia there is language that is spoken by less then 3,000 people.  Palenquero  is the name of the Language and according to the reporter:

Palenquero is thought to be the only Spanish-based Creole language in Latin America. But its grammar is so different that Spanish speakers can understand almost nothing of it. Its closest relative may be Papiamento, spoken on the Caribbean islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao, which draws largely from Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch, linguists say.

 

Then there is the Basque Language.  Ahhh  the people of Basque, or Euskal Herria, as they call their country, is nestled between Spain and France and is controlled by both of those countries.  I liken it to Alaska in that it is a refuge for the outcast, the extreme a people who fit no known norm. I had the opportunity to live among a group of Basque that had immigrated to America awhile back and was a little surprised at how at home I felt among them.  The people I met were mainly shepherds, I know that  historically they have been shepherds, huntmans, trademen and all around gypsy’s, however I am not sure what they do today.  Their language is remarkable though and according to one site:

Just as no one is sure about the origins of the Basques themselves, linguists are not in agreement over the origins of Euskara, the Basque language, either. (In Basque, the word euskara is not capitalized, but when using it in English, it is customary to capitalize it, just as we capitalize the names of other languages.) Although there are theories (none of them proven beyond a doubt) that Basque is related to other languages (such as the Georgian family of languages in the Caucasus, or the Berber language family of Africa, or even the Quechua language of Latin America). So far, the only thing most experts agree on is that Euskara is in a language family by itself. That is, it is not related to any other language in the world. It is, therefore, not an Indo-European language (the large group to which English, French, Spanish, and Russian belong). 

http://planetrjl.tripod.com/LaFraughName/id6.html

 

And Finally I need to mention Hungary and the Hungarian people.  Like the Basque they are related to the gypsies.  My brother lived there in Buda and Pest (what we call Budapest) for two years and he informed me that 90% of the people he encountered were gypsy, orginating from one tribe or another.  And, like the Basque, their language is also hard to classify: 

 

For long it has been believed that Hungarian belongs to the Ugric branch of the Uralic language family based on a relatively large number of words (~300-400) of Finno-Ugric origin in the language. Hungarian, like other Finno-Ugric languages is agglutinative, which means word meanings are modified by adding different and multiple endings or suffixes to the words, rather than using prefixes like, for example, in English. On the other hand, several linguists believe that Hungarian is related to Turkic, rather than to Finno-Ugric languages. Turkic languages are also agglutinative, but they are classified into the Altaic language family. They form a sister group with the Finno-Ugric language family, and supposedly both groups originated from the same Ural-Altaic proto-language, although this idea has also been challanged.

Others try to relate Hungarian to Sumerian, a language that was spoken in the Middle-East some nine thousand years ago. These ideas have been rejected by scientists for several reasons. The most important of these is the claim that most similarities are only superficial and that these words are not genetically related (i.e. not coming from the same ancestral words). The claimed similarities are mostly based on transcriptions of words, and not on actual phonetics of how those words were pronounced. Nevertheless, it is an undeniable fact that an ancient segment of Hungarian that has been preserved mainly in child songs, lullabies and verses, shows some degree of similarity to Sumerian. Many linguists, however, regard these old remains of an “ancient language” as of unknown origin.

– About the Hungarian Language

I found the following clip on youtube and thought ya’ll would love to see Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” in Hungarian:

I bring these three examples up because they remind me that there are still mysteries and uniqueness out in the world today.  As time passes one can become immured to this world, feeling that there really isn’t anything new to discover or understand.  But the more I reach outside myself, the more I understand how little I know or see in my little corner of the world.  In places like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles you can walk down one street and feel immersed in Mexico and the next you are in Italy, Greece, Jerusalem or China.  This is wonderful, astounding and encouraging but let us always remember that there are so many more people and cultures out there for us to discover.  It is estimated that there are over 3,000 languages and cultures in the world today.  Sadly many of them are dyeing out, not unlike Latin. Let us become explorers in our own back yards and reach beyond the norm to discover the extraordinary people of our world.

 

In My Universe

Lots, and lots of things have gone on here in ole AK.  My father decided that his lawn needed to be completly redone, so the whole crew, and friends, came over on Memorial weekend and we ripped up weeds, bouldars and spread two truck fulls of soil over the grand 5,000 square feet of lawn he prides in. It was gruelling but truly a lot of fun what with the grandkids building pyramids from the bricks, a satifying round of “rip that twenty year old tree from the ground” and more mud, sweat and groans then found in any Supurbowl.

The following day was my little Brothers birthday and since he isn’t anymore keen on cake then I am he decided that homemade donuts were the order of the day.  we started making them at 1pm and finally had our first taste at around 8 that night.  I have a new found respect for Bakery chefs now.

This last weekend I had a grand adventure, but since I did not have my camera with me and so must wait on the mercy of a friend to send me the pics, I will in turn, make you wait until next week to the whole sordid tale.

On My Needles

I had so much going on this last week that I didn’t seem to have enough time to knit, yet somehow I managed to get half way done with my grandmothers lace scarf, design and execute a hat for my niece, knit up another inch or two on my brothers vest and start a pair of toe up socks.  So really even when it seems like my energy is too divided between my loves, I still manage to appease the knitting gods.