Week 3
Word of the Week: ruaa
‘mouth’
(While glancing at an IZ body-parts diagram at the top of a
pile of papers next to my computer, I noticed ruaa, and had an ah-ha
moment. In memorizing the poem Bidxi,
I learned the word ruaangola ‘wide-mouthed,’ but didn’t know which
part of this word was ‘wide’ and which part was ‘mouthed.’ Noticing the word ruaa with an arrow
pointing to a woman’s mouth answered my question!)
Learning Experience
First major success: I am
overwhelmed with this weeks’ task of updating you all on what I have
accomplished in the past few days. There
is too much to report on, so I will try to give you the highlights. Number one, I memorized my first Isthmus
Zapotec poem!!! I can now recite Bidxi
‘Frog’ aloud and write it from memory.
I included this poem in my last blog if you want to look at it. It is only eight lines, but it was a little
more challenging to learn than I expected because I did not have the benefit of
hearing this poem read by the author, Víctor Terán, in the Podcast. I thought that each poem I had printed was
included in the Podcast; but after listening to the Podcast all over again and
numbering the printed copies, I discovered I had 12 poems rather than 10. Bidxi was the only children’s poem of
the bunch, so I guess it would have not sounded right read with a bunch of
poetry about love and lust. Anyways, my
pronunciation probably is terrible at this point, but you have to start
somewhere.
Discovery learning: I learned some
cool grammatical things as I was updating my bibliography. I was in the process of weeding out my
materials when I found a few grammatical gems in Quiegolani Zapotec Syntax by
Cheryl Black (2000). As anyone might
guess, this book is about a Zapotec language other than Isthmus, but Black
provides tidbits of IZ grammar. I
learned that IZ does not use intonation to mark questions or even exclamations,
but rather uses lexical markers. I
always turn to my collection of Terán poems for language examples when I read
something about the grammar in another source.
I was able to find examples of some of the features mentioned by
Black. I observed the required yes/no
marker la at the end of a line in the poems “I Woke with Your Name/Bibaneniáˈ
laluˈ” and “Whirlwind/Yudé cuyaa.”
I also noticed in both poems the marker yaˈ being used at the end
of context questions. It is interesting
that in these two poems a question mark is used with the yes/no marker la, but
does not accompany the content question marker yaˈ. I also noticed in the Podcast poetry readings
that Terán uses a rising intonation at the end of yes/no questions marked with la
and punctuated with a question mark.
(This intonation is consistent with English.) So, is Terán being artistic with his intonation,
or is Black’s data incomplete? One last
mention about markers, I did not see an example of this in any of Terán’s
poems, but xa used at the end of a sentence or utterance provides
emphasis or exclamation.
Searching for a native speaker: A huge part
of my efforts over the past few days, have been in trying to locate in the Los Angeles area (or at least somewhere in California) a native
Isthmus Zapotec speaker. I have
contacted many people who have then referred me to others, and then to others
again. My last contact informed me that
I’d have to go to New Jersey
or possibly Tiajuana to find a community of IZ speakers. This contact also told me that not very many
people migrate from this region of Oaxaca. Perhaps it has a better economy than
most. I do believe it has a good tourism
industry. I am not giving up, though;
even to find just one speaker in this area.
I would really like to get in touch with David Shook, Terán’s poetry
translator. In the meantime, I will
follow up on all of my leads and see where they take me. (Tiajuana isn’t that far…)
IZ Culture: I have been
learning a lot about the Isthmus Zapotec culture. I have watched YouTube videos of a cultural
festival of traditional dancing and singing.
The women’s traditional garments are dresses covered in large, brightly
colored flowers made by needlepoint. I
watched a trailer of a video called “Blossoms of Fire” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MA8MmmrX-6s
that talks with the local women about their role in the community. They are said to have a matriarchal
society. When asked if this is true, the
women would deny it, but then proceed to describe how they are the
administrators, the money handlers, and the deal makers in business. According to them, they don’t have a
matriarchal society because the men work plenty (video shows men farming). I don’t think we are using the same
definition for “matriarchal.” Watch the short
trailer to see what you think. In
researching Isthmus Zapotec culture online, I also came across many articles
and YouTube videos about the Muxhes or gay members of the community. The Zapotec culture does not discriminate
against its gay members, but embraces them, referring to them as the third gender. Many Zapotec mothers wish to have a gay son
because they do not marry and move away, but remain loyal companions to their
mothers to the end of life. The city of Juchitán is known for its
openness to sexuality. One woman said in
a video, “It’s not who you are that matters, but what you do.” A famous saying by former Mexican (zapotee)
president Benito Juárez reflects this attitude of tolerance, “Respect for the
rights of others is peace.”
Found a new language-learning tool: As I said
earlier, I was just going to cover the highlights of my learning experiences
this week, in which I think I have. I
want to mention one more thing. One of
my email contacts today referred me to Juchitán Zapotec Memrise, an online
language-learning course http://www.memrise.com/course/46103/juchitan-zapotec-2/. It is wonderful!!! I only had a short time to play with it
tonight, but it is a little like Rosetta Stone where it shows the learner a
picture with the spoken word, but also includes the orthographic representation
in IZ, which is also known as Juchitán Zapotec, and in Spanish. The goal is to get you to memorize the
vocabulary quickly. The course includes
grammar lessons, too. There are other
languages available on this site, but it looks like it is still in the
developing stages. There was a lot
offered for Mandarin, not much for Middle Eastern languages, though.
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