Thursday, February 28, 2013

The Linguist’s Calendar: February 28 (w/ February 29 bonus!)

Stamps featuring the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL)
Philippine stamps commemorating
the Summer Institute of Linguistics

February 28 

1759: Pope Clement XIII authorizes Bible translation into various languages.
 
2003: The Philippine postal services release a series of stamps commemorating the Summer Institute of Linguistics.

February 29 
1956: The National Assembly of Pakistan decides that the state languages of Pakistan shall be Urdu and Bengali.

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

The Linguist’s Calendar: February 27

S.I. Hayakawa
February 27
1897: Alfabetarja e gjuhës shqipe, the first school book in Albanian, is published in Istanbul.

1953: A proposal to simplify English spelling passes its first test. by 65 votes to 53, in the British House of Commons. Remarkably, the bill receives support from government and opposition parties. One Conservative supporter is James Pitman, grandson of Isaac Pitman of Pitman Shorthand fame.

1969: It is decided to establish a Division of Linguistics and Language Training at York University in Toronto.

1992: American linguist and politician Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa dies.

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

The Linguist’s Calendar: February 26

Republika Srpska seal
February 26 

1994: A new alphabet for the writing of Karakalpak is adopted.
 
1998: The Constitutional Court of the Republika Srpska in Bosnia-Herzegovina abolishes the 25 June, 1996, law prescribing the Ekavian variety of Serbo-Croatian (the one used in Serbia) in schools, administration, and the media. The Jekavian dialect used by most Bosnian Serbs may now again be used.

Monday, February 25, 2013

The Linguist’s Calendar: February 25

Image:DD_photo_2009.jpg
David Dalby
February 25  

1977: Ebo Hawkson, Ghana’s deputy chairman of the National Commission on Culture, makes a speech in which he urges Africans to make ex-colonial languages their own by not always following European norms.
 
1988: The Canadian Supreme Court concludes that all provincial laws of Saskatchewan are void, having been written in English only, rather than in English and French. A hastily adopted additional bill is necessary in order to restore the validity of Saskatchewan legislation.
 
2000: At the Expolangues exhibition in Paris, David Dalby launches his Linguasphere Register—an Ethnologue-like comprehensive survey of the world’s languages.

Sunday, February 24, 2013

The Linguist’s Calendar: February 24

Shawnee Sun Newspaper, November 1841 (recto)February 24 

1835: The first Indian language monthly of the United States, the Siwinowe Kesibwi (Shawnee Sun), begins publication.

1950: Birth of syntactician and computational linguist G. J. M. Gazdar.

1964: Noam Chomsky begins a series of six weekly lectures at the Christian Gauss Seminars in Criticism at Princeton.
 
2002: The Israeli postal authorities issue a stamp honoring the Ladino, i.e. the Judeo-Spanish language.

Saturday, February 23, 2013

The Linguist’s Calendar: February 23

Kenneth and Evelyn Pike, 1961
Ken and Evelyn Pike
February 23 

1945: Ken and Evelyn Pike have a second daughter.

1948: At the Pakistan Constituent Assembly in Karachi, Dhirendranath Datta argues for the use of Bengali in the assembly alongside English and Urdu. This arouses exceptionally strong feelings among the delegates.

Friday, February 22, 2013

The Linguist’s Calendar: February 22

 
“Jean-François Sudre had a unique thought in 1817: If people of different cultures can appreciate the same music, why not develop music itself into an international language?
“The result, which he called Solresol, enlists the seven familiar notes of the solfeggio scale (do, re, mi …) as phonemes in a vocabulary of 2,600 roots. Related words share initial syllables; for example, doremi means ‘day,’ dorefa ’week,’ doreso ’month,’ and doredo the concept of time itself. Pleasingly, opposites are indicated simply by reversing a word — fala is ‘good,’ and lafa is ‘bad.’
“Sudre developed this in various media: In addition to a syllable, each note was also assigned a number and a color, so that words could be expressed by knocks, blinking lights, signal flags, or bell strikes as well as music.
“’Imagine for a moment a universal language, translatable to colour, melody, writing, touch, hand signals, and endless strings of numbers,’ writes author Paul Collins. ‘Imagine now that this language was taught from birth to be second nature to every speaker, no matter what their primary language. The world would become saturated with hidden meanings. Music would be transformed, with every instrument in the orchestra engaged in simultaneous dialogue. … [T]he beginning of Beethoven’s Fifth seems to talk about ‘Wednesday’ … Needless to say, obsessive fans who already hear secret messages in music would not do their mental stability any favors by learning Solresol.’
“Sudre was hailed as a genius in his lifetime, and he collected awards at world exhibitions in Paris and London, but he died before his first grammar was published. An international society promoted the language until about World War I, but in the end it lost adherents to Esperanto, which was considered easier to learn.”
- Greg Ross, from this post on his site Futility Closet
Jean-François Sudre


February 22
 
1835: Jean-François Sudre again demonstrates his artificial language Solrésol publicly. This time, he silently communicates with blindfolded students in order to demonstrate the language’s usefulness for the deaf-blind.
 
1913: Death of Ferdinand de Saussure.
 
1999: The Bulgarian government recognizes Macedonian as a language in its own right, rather than a mere dialect of Bulgarian.

Thursday, February 21, 2013

The Linguist’s Calendar: February 21

Cherokee Phoenix newspaperFebruary 21

In November 1999, this day was declared by the United Nations as the official “International Mother Language Day” to be celebrated worldwide. The day is chosen in honor of the Language martyrs” of Bangladesh, and has been celebrated locally since 1953, the first anniversary of their death.
 
1828: Cherokee Phoenix, the first newspaper printed in an American Indian language, begins publishing.
 

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

The Linguist’s Calendar: February 20

Slovak government parliament building
February 20

2001: The Slovak government signs the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages.
 
2006: The University of Venda in South Africa’s Limpopo province opens a Tshivenda Language Research and Development Center.

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

The Linguist’s Calendar: February 19

August Schleicher


February 19

1821: Birth of August Schleicher, the man behind the Stammbaumtheorie.
 
1888: Otto Jespersen receives a letter from Vilhelm Thomsen, who suggests that Jespersen should concentrate on English language and literature.
 
2001: In New Delhi, the internet provider Rediff announces that it is now able to handle no less than eleven Indian languages.

Monday, February 18, 2013

The Linguist’s Calendar: February 18


The Global Language Monitor
February 18

2006: Anticipation rises in the media, as English is about to receive its one millionth word. At least, that is, if you’re prepared to trust the US-based Global Language Monitor. According to their count, English contains, as of this day, 986,120 words (“plus or minus a handful”). In contrast, the company reports that there are ”fewer than 100,000 words” in French.

Sunday, February 17, 2013

The Linguist’s Calendar: February 17

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e2/Mesrop_Mashtots_by_Francesco_Majotto.jpg
Saint Mesrop Mashtots
February 17
 
440: Death of Saint Mesrop Mashtots, the monk who is accredited with having invented the Armenian script and helped establish Armenia’s golden age of Christian literature.
 
2004: Opening of the Punjab Mother Language Festival 2004 in Delapur, a “festival to celebrate linguistic diversity and rich literary and cultural heritage of the Punjab.”

Saturday, February 16, 2013

The Linguist’s Calendar: February 16

Sheikh Mujib-ur Rahman
February 16

1795: American congress decides to publish federal statutes in English only, rather than, as had been proposed, in both English and German. It is this vote which is believed to have given rise to the legend of German nearly becoming the official language of the United States.
 
1952: Sheikh Mujib-ur-Rahman starts a hunger strike in support of the demand of Bengali being made the state language of East Pakistan.

Friday, February 15, 2013

The Linguist’s Calendar: February 15

Friedrich August Wolf


February 15 
 
1759: The German classical philologist Friedrich August Wolf is born.
 
1878: In a paper presented to the Philological Society in London, Rev W. E. Cousins decisively demonstrates the Austronesian affinities of Malagasy.

Thursday, February 14, 2013

The Linguist’s Calendar: February 14

Picture of Louis the German
Louis the German
February 14  

842: Charles the Bald and Louis the German swear the Oaths of Strasbourg, thereby producing what are usually considered to be the first texts in these two languages.

1941: Benjamin Lee Whorf submits his article “Languages and Logic” to Technological Review.

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

The Linguist’s Calendar: February 13



February 13 

1834: As the first issue of Ka Lama Hawaii leaves the printers, Hawaiian joins the group of languages in which newspapers are published.

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

The Linguist’s Calendar: February 12

Booth working on ARC1
Andrew Booth
February 12  

1948: Andrew Booth sends his first report on his work on machine translation to the Rockefeller Foundation from which he receives his funding.
 
1998: Alija Izetbegovic appeals to Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Constitutional Court of to abolish the articles declaring only Bosnian and Croatian official in the Federation and only Serbian in the Republika Srpska.

Monday, February 11, 2013

The Linguist’s Calendar: February 11

N'Djamena, Chad
February 11 

1943: The Swedish School Teachers’ Written Language Committee suggests a spelling reform, which is met by stiff public opposition.
 
1992: A 12-day sociolinguistic survey is begun in a number of villages in central Chad by SIL and the Institut Supérieur des Sciences et de l’Education.

Sunday, February 10, 2013

The Linguist’s Calendar: February 10

Timothy Evans (pictured around 18 years of age)
Timothy Evans


February 10  

1965: After examining linguistic evidence, British authorities conclude that Timothy Evans’ murder confession was probably a fake, and a year later, pardoned him. This was 15 years too late; Evans was hanged in 1950.

Saturday, February 9, 2013

The Linguist’s Calendar: February 9

February 9

2000: The Taiwanese minister of education declares that the study of minority languages shall be obligatory in Taiwanese schools from the following year.
 

Friday, February 8, 2013

The Linguist’s Calendar: February 8

George_lakoff
George Lakoff
February 8

1864: Beginning this day, lectures are regularly given at the Société de Linguistique de Paris.
 
1973: In an article entitled “Deep language” in the New York Review of Books, George Lakoff attacks Noam Chomsky.
 
2002: A new PhD program in linguistics, available from the autumn of this year, is approved by the Gallaudet University Board of Trustees. This university is unique in having a sign language as its main medium of teaching.

Thursday, February 7, 2013

The Linguist’s Calendar: February 7

Dr. Katz
Jerrold Katz
February 7

1639: Work on the French Academy’s Dictionnaire de la Langue Françoyse begins.
 
1987: Riots erupt in South Korea after the death in of Park Chong-Choi, who was suffocated during police interrogation. Park studied linguistics at the Seoul National University.
 
2002: Jerrold Katz dies from bladder cancer in New York at the age of 69.
 
2006: Publication of the first dictionary of Angolan Sign.

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

The Linguist’s Calendar: February 6

http://www.stevebriers.co.uk/picts/sbrierscls.jpg
Steve Briers
February 6
 
1927: Estonian national broadcasting corporation Eesti Raadio transmits its first program in Esperanto.
 
1928: Nikolai Trubetzkoy presents his first paper at the Prague Linguistics Circle. It is entitled “Alphabet und Lautsystem”.
 
1990: Welshman Steve Briers, the world’s fastest backwards talker, accomplishes a backward recital of the lyrics of the Queen album “A Night At The Opera” in 9 minutes and 58.44 seconds.

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

The Linguist’s Calendar: February 5

Quang Phuc Dong
February 5
 
1835: The French music journal Le Pianiste is delighted about Jean-François Sudre’s creation of Solrésol, an international auxiliary language based on music. In the journal, Sudre is hailed as the Gutenberg of his day.
 
1967: Quang Phuc Dong of the “South Hanoi Institute of Technology” (S H I T), alias Jim McCawley, submits the final version of "English Sentences Without Overt Grammatical Subjects" to a Festschrift devoted to—Jim McCawley. The paper is a study of the syntax of the word "fuck," and includes some memorable example sentences.



2003: The Russian Duma passes a law which outlaws the use of foreign words “where suitable Russian ones exist”.

Sunday, February 3, 2013

The Linguist’s Calendar: February 3

George Miller

February 3

1920: Birth of George Miller.

2001: Student Benjamin Varner is found dead at Gallaudet University in Washington, The arrested murderer Joseph Mesa blames his action on voices in his head. Being deaf, however, these were not literally speaking voices, but glove-clad hands urging Mesa to kill—in American Sign.

Saturday, February 2, 2013

The Linguist’s Calendar: February 2

Sotiris Bletsas
February 2  

1786: William Jones delivers his famous Third Anniversary Discourse as president of the Asiatick Society of Bengal. It is here that he makes public his ideas about Latin, Greek, Gothic, and other European languages being genetically related to Sanskrit and Persian.
 
1887: The USA prohibits the use of Native American languages in schools .
 
2001: Sotiris Bletsas is given a 15-month suspended jail sentence by a court in Athens after having distributed a leaflet claiming that there exist linguistic minorities in Greece.

Friday, February 1, 2013

The Linguist’s Calendar: February 1

Koasati Grammar,Geoffrey Kimball

February 1

1991: A new Koasati Grammar by Geoffrey Kimball is published by University of Nebraska Press.