I was going to provide a nice compendium of lots of Bislama words in this entry, but I took all of them from this website by Andrew Gray. Of course, he also wrote a plagiarism article that so moved my heart that I decided not to do it after all. There are a handful of books on the subject too. Namely, this one and this one.
And so concludes this part of the ULWPP! Maybe there'll be some other language to work on soon.
Showing posts with label projects. Show all posts
Showing posts with label projects. Show all posts
Friday, April 27, 2007
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
ULWPP Part 1: Bislama, a Primer
Bislama is one of the official languages of Vanuatu, an island nation in the South Pacific. The language could be described as a pidgin language of English, though it would be more accurate to say that it is "English if English was designed by a bunch of four-year-olds." Please note that I am not trying to insult anyone with that statement. I am actually quite in awe of the ingenuity shown by the native Vanuatuans who designed the language in the first place.
Long long ago, when the Queen's empire was still blossoming, many British explorers (hereafter referred to as "Sea Limeys") travelled the South Pacific, taking over whatever they could find. The rest of the South Pacific was taken over by Dutch and French explorers (hereafter referred to as "Windmill monkeys" and "Associates of that dude with the goatee from The Matrix: Reloaded," respectively). One of the territories the Sea Limeys claimed was Vanuatu, a loosely-organised collection of islands. These islands' inhabitants had very different cultures and very different languages from each other, a result of the minimal inter-island interaction. This became a problem when the Sea Limeys relocated all the Vanuatuans onto a few large islands, regardless of island of origin, and stuck them on a few big sugar plantations. The vast lingual differences proved to be a problem at first: no one could communicate with anyone else. Eventually, however, they began to craft a very simple language based on what they heard from the Sea Limey masters' speaking. This led to a very reduced version of English, one that was simple to learn. Since almost all the words were English cognates, it allowed Vanuatuans to communicate reasonably well with their oppressive Sea Limey overlords as well as with each other.
Oddly enough, they chose to name the language Bislama, from the French words "bêche de mer," meaning "sea cucumber." Why anyone would name their language after a creature who regularly defenestrates itself on purpose is a mystery to me. This also seems odd because bêche de mer is French, not English. While most words came (and still do come) from English, a fair number came from other sources. Here's a breakdown of the sources of Bislama's vocabulary:
Common pirate lingo words include "save," (pronounced suh-vay), which means "to know" and comes from the pirate-lingo word "savvy." Similarly, the word for "child" is "pikanini" which comes from "pickaninny." Please note that words that would be construed as offencive in English, like "pickaninny" and "shit," are used in Bislama as perfectly innocent, legitimate words.
Learn some more basic words next time, in ULWPP Part 2: Bislama sentences!
Long long ago, when the Queen's empire was still blossoming, many British explorers (hereafter referred to as "Sea Limeys") travelled the South Pacific, taking over whatever they could find. The rest of the South Pacific was taken over by Dutch and French explorers (hereafter referred to as "Windmill monkeys" and "Associates of that dude with the goatee from The Matrix: Reloaded," respectively). One of the territories the Sea Limeys claimed was Vanuatu, a loosely-organised collection of islands. These islands' inhabitants had very different cultures and very different languages from each other, a result of the minimal inter-island interaction. This became a problem when the Sea Limeys relocated all the Vanuatuans onto a few large islands, regardless of island of origin, and stuck them on a few big sugar plantations. The vast lingual differences proved to be a problem at first: no one could communicate with anyone else. Eventually, however, they began to craft a very simple language based on what they heard from the Sea Limey masters' speaking. This led to a very reduced version of English, one that was simple to learn. Since almost all the words were English cognates, it allowed Vanuatuans to communicate reasonably well with their oppressive Sea Limey overlords as well as with each other.
Oddly enough, they chose to name the language Bislama, from the French words "bêche de mer," meaning "sea cucumber." Why anyone would name their language after a creature who regularly defenestrates itself on purpose is a mystery to me. This also seems odd because bêche de mer is French, not English. While most words came (and still do come) from English, a fair number came from other sources. Here's a breakdown of the sources of Bislama's vocabulary:
Common pirate lingo words include "save," (pronounced suh-vay), which means "to know" and comes from the pirate-lingo word "savvy." Similarly, the word for "child" is "pikanini" which comes from "pickaninny." Please note that words that would be construed as offencive in English, like "pickaninny" and "shit," are used in Bislama as perfectly innocent, legitimate words.
Learn some more basic words next time, in ULWPP Part 2: Bislama sentences!
Monday, April 23, 2007
The Useless Language Wikipedia Project, Part 0: The Dark Ages of the ULWPP
Man, this is awesome. I'm all set up to teach you guys about a language that I don't speak at all. Talk about the blind leading the blind, eh? Okay, let's begin!
No, wait, we can't begin yet. I have to explain what the Useless Language Wikipedia Project is. The ULWPP is a project that I started to help inflate the article count on low-article-count Wikipediae. It began when I saw the Dzongkha Wikipedia. It claimed to have 14 articles, but 12 of them were spam, one was a random list of cities and things in Bhutan, and the other was the actual main page. This was sad, so I found some online resources and began to glark basic spelling and syntax. I then proceeded to write two brief Wikipedia entries: here and here.
That was sort of exciting, but frankly, Dzongkha is one of the suckiest languages ever. About half of the letters written are silent, remnants of the tonal Tibetan language from which Dzongkha evolved. It's also horribly painful to write in; seeing as it's written using the Tibetan alphabet, I had to take a character map and copy-paste letters and diacritics (all the vowels are written above or below the consonants, except for "a" which is unwritten and implied) one by one. It was lame and I then decided to move on to an easier low-article-count Wikipedia.
Enter the Marshallese Wikipedia. I was really excited about this one, because it was Roman alphabet-based (albeit with some funky diacritics, like an n with a macron, n̄). To top it off, Marshallese is an extremely laid-back language, a byproduct of it being unwritten for so many centuries. Words can pretty much go in any order in a sentence and the listener will be able to understand the gist of your message. There is no one spelling for any word, either. For example, the word for "hello" can be spelt as "yokwe," "jokwe," "iokwe," "jiokwe," or any of numerous other spellings. My Marshallese glee, however, was short-lived; I had only written one article before I discovered an even easier language's Wikipedia to mess with: Bislama.
I wrote a giant and pretty cool history of Bislama here, but you'll get to read it later, when I make ULWPP Part 1: A Bislama Primer! Stay tuned!
I want to actually make ULWPP a legitimate Wikiproject, like Wikiproject:Biography, but I'm pretty inept when it comes to Wikipolitics and I don't know how to go about doing this. Similarly, I'd like to become an administrator for Dzongkha or Marshallese or Bislama because these wikipediae don't have any adminstrators, and consequently lie ripe for vandalism. Alas, my Wikipolitical ineptitude stops me here too. I need some ULWPP diplomats. Also, we need to change the name. I sincerely doubt that Bhutanese people, Marshallese people, and Vanuatuans appreciate their languages being labelled "useless."
...Even if it is true.
No, wait, we can't begin yet. I have to explain what the Useless Language Wikipedia Project is. The ULWPP is a project that I started to help inflate the article count on low-article-count Wikipediae. It began when I saw the Dzongkha Wikipedia. It claimed to have 14 articles, but 12 of them were spam, one was a random list of cities and things in Bhutan, and the other was the actual main page. This was sad, so I found some online resources and began to glark basic spelling and syntax. I then proceeded to write two brief Wikipedia entries: here and here.
That was sort of exciting, but frankly, Dzongkha is one of the suckiest languages ever. About half of the letters written are silent, remnants of the tonal Tibetan language from which Dzongkha evolved. It's also horribly painful to write in; seeing as it's written using the Tibetan alphabet, I had to take a character map and copy-paste letters and diacritics (all the vowels are written above or below the consonants, except for "a" which is unwritten and implied) one by one. It was lame and I then decided to move on to an easier low-article-count Wikipedia.
Enter the Marshallese Wikipedia. I was really excited about this one, because it was Roman alphabet-based (albeit with some funky diacritics, like an n with a macron, n̄). To top it off, Marshallese is an extremely laid-back language, a byproduct of it being unwritten for so many centuries. Words can pretty much go in any order in a sentence and the listener will be able to understand the gist of your message. There is no one spelling for any word, either. For example, the word for "hello" can be spelt as "yokwe," "jokwe," "iokwe," "jiokwe," or any of numerous other spellings. My Marshallese glee, however, was short-lived; I had only written one article before I discovered an even easier language's Wikipedia to mess with: Bislama.
I wrote a giant and pretty cool history of Bislama here, but you'll get to read it later, when I make ULWPP Part 1: A Bislama Primer! Stay tuned!
I want to actually make ULWPP a legitimate Wikiproject, like Wikiproject:Biography, but I'm pretty inept when it comes to Wikipolitics and I don't know how to go about doing this. Similarly, I'd like to become an administrator for Dzongkha or Marshallese or Bislama because these wikipediae don't have any adminstrators, and consequently lie ripe for vandalism. Alas, my Wikipolitical ineptitude stops me here too. I need some ULWPP diplomats. Also, we need to change the name. I sincerely doubt that Bhutanese people, Marshallese people, and Vanuatuans appreciate their languages being labelled "useless."
...Even if it is true.
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