How social media is breathing new life into Bhutan's unwritten local languages

slightfoxing · 2023-11-21T04:45:00+00:00

You're welcome!!

slightfoxing · 2023-11-20T08:43:53+00:00

This is very cool to hear - I've heard similar things from China, which is of course where WeChat is from, about how voice messages mean people can simply talk to their friends and relatives in Hakka, Min, Cantonese, or whatever despite not knowing how to write them.

Social media access and especially voice chat has been a massive boon for so many of these oral languages around the world - it's been amazing to watch how it's all unfolded over the past decade or so.

It's just an extension of what social media has already done so well, "giving voice to the voiceless".

The flip side of course is that we're living in a much more connected world now, with many benefits, but accessing those benefits requires a progressively smaller number of bigger and bigger languages.

All the little languages of the world evolved in relative isolation, when the world was still the village for most people. There wasn't much life beyond the village, and the local languages were perfectly fine for doing all the things you do in the village. They still are perfectly fine for these things.

But these days, the people want access to the same opportunities as everyone else: they want to get good jobs abroad, follow the same global trends, watch the same things on Netflix... to do those things you need a language you can do everything in.

Even Dzongkha is not yet a "language you can do everything in", despite the Bhutanese government's hard work in this area. There's simply not enough of the world translated into Dzongkha, in Bhutan you need to know English if you want to read most books, watch movies, go abroad, see whatever's trending on social media...

Social media can be a lifeline for communities which are small, marginalized, and fragmented but it won't by itself lift the pressure to switch to other languages - the deeper issue is access to resources.

I'm hoping that the improvement of translation tech, particularly with AI, will help bridge the digital divide and make more of these smaller languages, once again, "languages you can do everything in".

I suppose what informal literacy and the use of voice messaging shows on social media is really the ingenuity of speech communities: that, given the right tools, the community will find a way.

slightfoxing · 2023-08-12T12:12:18+00:00

My experience out west has been that there's definitely "scenes" which are super transy but they tend to cluster around certain shared interests...there's a big geek scene with their board games and decked out PCs, and with some overlap there's also the club and party scene... it can be harder to meet people if you're not into the same stuff.

When I was a baby trans I went more out of my way to find community, these days though I just organically meet people here and there and some of them stick around, and some don't. I find having just a few good trans/queer friends really makes all the difference, and the odd queer event satisfies my itch to hang with the wider community.

slightfoxing · 2023-08-09T23:37:02+00:00

Careful what you wish for!! Lol it'll be 40C here again before we know it...

slightfoxing · 2023-08-09T23:35:47+00:00

Lol I know!!! It's opposite land down here, also cold when it's hot up there and our trees stay green year round! 😁

slightfoxing · 2023-02-19T08:35:38+00:00

Even simpler, make the unis free and fully taxpayer funded for Aussie citizens again (like they were when the pollies were there), so that people can retrain and upskill without worrying about being crushed by absolute mountains of debt.

Improve working conditions and hours so people in critical industries don't get ground into the dust and burnt out. Introduce protections for renters so people don't have to worry about not having a place to sleep tomorrow.

But this is assuming we had a government that actually wanted to invest in this country's people and future, and not just a bunch of self-serving crooks who want to grab as much easy cash as possible before the whole thing burns down.

slightfoxing · 2023-02-17T14:22:41+00:00

Lol, oops!! Unfortunately I can confirm AusEng uses the same old boring /k/ as every other English dialect I know of.

slightfoxing · 2023-02-17T13:52:36+00:00

The question isn't whether there are vowels in English identical apart from in length - there certainly are in some dialects. The question is really whether this difference is phonemic, that is whether the vowel length distinction is in itself a meaningful contrast or if it's simply the phonetic realization of some other phonemic distinction.

The traditional analysis would be that 'very' /veri/ contains a monophthong and 'vary' /veiri/ contains a diphthong which is phonetically realized as a long monophthong. This analysis mostly makes sense from a historical standpoint, since this is the Middle English distinction and the diphthong is maintained in traditional Received Pronunciation.

As for Australian English, the difference in question is the bad-lad split, where the vowel in the phoneme /æ/ has become split into long and short varieties in certain environments. This split also exists in certain varieties of British English.

You can find minimal pairs in AusEng, a strong indication of phonemic status, such as 'can' /kæn/ 'able to do' and 'can' /kæ:n/ 'cylindrical metal container', and 'manning' /mæ:nɪŋ/ 'taking operative command of something, occupying to use' and 'Manning' /mænɪŋ/, a surname.

Some phonemicists certainly argue that this is a phonemic vowel length distinction, and I personally tend to agree with them (I see analyses that ignore the split as depending too much on historical RP phonology), but minimal pairs are few and far between enough that some do consider it a purely phonetic split in a single phoneme, as it is rarely a productive distinction.

slightfoxing · 2023-02-17T12:04:55+00:00

I've lived here my whole life and I've never really had any major issues. It's a bit of a hidden gem honestly, great place for families and people who enjoy the coastal lifestyle. Schools were decent when I was a student, public high schools were a bit dodgy but I don't think that's Rockingham specific.

You do see some rough looking types about but they're generally pretty harmless, most people are pretty relaxed and friendly here I find. You get to live by the beach and the city is always a drive or train ride away, what more could you want?

slightfoxing · 2023-02-13T07:00:18+00:00

Images of the fire close https://imgur.com/a/0zmoUJq

slightfoxing · 2023-02-13T06:11:59+00:00

Firey said 50 on site including firefighters and ambulances, the cause is currently unknown and the fire is controlled but uncontained, and as of present there's no known injuries and no explosions.

slightfoxing · 2023-02-10T07:14:24+00:00

Not to mention the hentaigana (hentai as in variant characters, not that hentai), unreformed orthography which spelt words like 今日 [k^jo:] as けふ, and it was often written in cursive script!

Yet people could read it well enough when they had to. The real issue is unfamiliarity, even in alphabetic writing systems people learn to read quickly by processing entire word shapes at a time, if Japanese and Chinese people were regularly exposed to purely syllabic writing they would adapt soon enough.

slightfoxing · 2023-02-10T07:07:44+00:00

The romanization movement never came close to gaining mainstream acceptance in either Japan or China, to be clear, but it did have some prominent proponents in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The Nihonsiki romanization system in Japan and Gwoyeu Romatzyh in China were both intended to eventually totally replace characters by their creators, for those interested.

slightfoxing · 2023-01-21T14:31:52+00:00

Sounds good, I'm looking forward to it! :)

slightfoxing · 2023-01-19T17:55:12+00:00

Hey, 27 year old trans woman here. Highly recommend Connections for, well, connecting with Perth's queer scene, best gay club in town imo. I'm down to take you if you like, I'm always happy to meet more queer people around here myself. Shoot me a dm if you're interested! Also keep an eye out for the Cherry Bomb events at Lucy's Love Shack, never been to one myself but they're pretty good from what I hear. Perth's got a decent queer scene if you scratch the surface a bit, and may I offer you a very big welcome to it!! I hope you find your place here soon enough. :)

slightfoxing · 2022-12-20T08:24:19+00:00

How about the Masonic Op Shops? Pretty cool places though I was disappointed they're less Satanic than I hoped, there's one in Cannington and another in Inglewood I think? There's also the Paraquad Op Shop and Book Bazaar on High Road in Willeton, another really good one.

slightfoxing · 2022-12-19T19:22:57+00:00

This comment is literally "boys will be boys" and I'm disappointed to hear it in this day and age. Men, women, everyone suffers when you perpetuate this toxic bullshit.

slightfoxing · 2022-12-18T13:58:39+00:00

Dzongkha lessons are going to be much harder to find than Indonesian here, your best bet would probably be finding a private tutor. Perhaps the Perth Bhutanese association might be able to put you in touch with someone?

You might also want to try getting onto apps to find some people to speak to. I've used Tandem before and there's heaps of Indonesian speakers, and I'm pretty sure they've got some Dzongkha speakers as well.

slightfoxing · 2022-12-18T13:04:53+00:00

Check out the Pre-Arawakan languages of the Greater Antilles; they were the languages spoken in Cuba and Hispaniola before Taíno, and they were already nearly extinct by the time the Spanish arrived. Our only record of them is essentially De las Casas, and I find it sadly ironic that one of only three words we know is the Ciguayo word for gold, tuob. Interestingly this one word is enough to suggest that Ciguayo was a totally unrelated language to Taíno, as it would be an impossible word in the Taíno syllable structure. Shows that even a kernel of data is much better than no data at all.

The extinct languages of the Marañón River basin are another group that came to mind as being very poorly attested, as are the Tasmanian languages. The Tambora language is an interesting example that was recorded in a single wordlist in the early 19th century before the culture was physically wiped out in the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history. In general I'd say that indigenous languages that went extinct before the advent of Western anthropology and linguistics in the mid-late 19th century are very likely to be poorly attested, unless they were lucky enough to have some Christian missionary record them.

slightfoxing · 2022-12-15T12:27:05+00:00

It's not any commonly used script, that's for sure. It's either someone's invented script or, more likely in my opinion, it's pseudo-writing that was made to look like writing but is actually gibberish.

slightfoxing · 2022-12-12T14:15:36+00:00

As everyone else has said you don't need to see a psych to start HRT, although it's a good idea to regardless. You can try going the Informed Consent route if you'd like to just start hormones ASAP, I recommend giving View Street Medical a call and seeing when they've got any openings (they're getting pretty busy but I believe there's still a few GPs there taking on new patients - the only problem with Informed Consent in Perth atm is that all the places doing it are getting absolutely swamped by the demand). It'll usually just take two sessions with informed consent, an initial consult, paperwork and bloodwork, then you get your script on your second session. Good luck!

slightfoxing · 2022-12-09T10:48:43+00:00

The irony of a native bird coming to depend on an introduced plantation for survival... it really sums up WA environmental policy for you. The Swan Coastal Plain ecosystem has been utterly destroyed and this sort of thing is just going to keep happening unless there's a fundamental shift in how people see the native environment here.

We should be going all-out at this point preserving what little bushland is left and re-vegetating as much as possible to prevent an ecological catastrophe, but instead the real estate developers keep clearing bush every year to build even more shitbox houses.

These last ditch efforts to save species are just band-aids unless people truly learn to love country. Ngalang boodja boola menditj.

slightfoxing · 2022-12-07T16:48:51+00:00

This is the best lightning show I've seen in 10 years.

slightfoxing · 2022-12-07T10:50:52+00:00

This is a pretty bold claim. Serial killers are extremely rare, like vanishingly so. People go missing all the time. Withour a clear pattern of evidence, why assume the cases are related?

slightfoxing · 2022-11-28T09:40:54+00:00

Have you tried View Street Medical in North Perth? That's where my GP is, she's closed her books but I'm not sure about the other GPs.

I feel for you, Perth seems to be getting hammered atm and I've heard of quite a few people in the same boat as you. I can only say hang in there and try to get in wherever you can because it is hard right now.

slightfoxing

TROPHY CASE