Unlocking the secret sounds of language

Tue May 9 19:50:42 UTC 2006

Great example,I like that one!
Hey Scott you're a good teacher!
Mia,
 you reminded me of something that happened in the 80s
when my wife and I lived on the Navajo Res. for 8 years
 ...how one word said it all...

My Navajo brother and I had been riding out by Ganado Lake checking on
cows, when off in the distance, we saw a familiar old Ford Mustang make a
turn and cross the cattle guard to our place. Carol, my wife was teaching at
Ganado Primary School so no one was home. Daniel and I nudged our horses
into  a comfortable lope.
It was Gus a Comanche friend coming for a visit, whose girlfriend was also a
teacher at the school there in Ganado in '81. He probably was coming to
inspect my new milk-goat i'd told him about.
I bought her from Pastor Musgrove who was president of the mission school at
Cornfields. When I went to pick her up, I'd asked him if he had learned any
Navajo in all his years here on the rez. He told me that he would not let
kids even speak Navajo there at the mission school. His idea of school was
to educate students so that they would leave the reservation and get good
money making jobs in Phoenix or Albuquerque. I noticed the more he spoke,
the more his Navajo housekeeper started slamming things as she was dusting
and looking agitated...but that was a few days ago and I bought the goat.
We rode up. The first thing i noticed was the gate to the pen was ajar and
the goat was gone! I dismounted and headed for the pen, noticing sheep
tracks
all over the place...and in the sandy soil were the clear footprints of an
adult that led right into the pen! Someone had stolen my goat!
I was furious and I had a good notion who it was. When we had first moved to
that old stone house I'd found a guy and his girlfriend sitting beneath the
windmill that supplied the water to our house. They were splashing their hot
feet in the tank to cool off while out herding sheep. They seemed suprised
that we drank that water.
Well, Gus and Daniel decided they'd track the sheep, while I rode straight
towards his "family camp". I dug my heels in the horse,  flew over the sandy
hills ,lunging across the washes, slapping past the sagebrush and
pinions...I was a warrior, and I had fire in my veins!
 I paid good money for that goat. I paid 70 dollars, the exact amount I had
just pawned my wedding ring for. I never wore it anyway and
figured a goat was alot more practical and Carol didn't mind.
The more I raced the more furious I became. I was young and ready for war!
 I came over a rise and past the empty sheep pens and rode straight up to
the hogan where cedar smoke was curling from the stove pipe. Culturally it
was rude to walk up and start knocking on a door, but i was mad, I knocked,
and an old grandmother came to the door. My Navajo wasn't that great, but I
said Yah'at'eeh shi mah  ...uhh...  shi t'lizi jadii usteen!
I greeted her and told her my t'lizi jadii "goat-antelope",(Navajo word for
milk-goat) was missing. It was an old word and she looked suprised that a
non-Navajo was now using it.
I heard some dogs barking someone was coming behind the hogan so I left her
and got back on the horse and went to meet 'the thief'. He came walking up
alone kinda slowly and i rode up charging, "Did you steal my goat?!"
"No..."He sounded insulted," I didn't steal your goat!"
But i had the evidence! "I saw your tracks all over and even in the pen!"
He was upset,"that goat kept jumping on the fence crying when he saw the
sheep, and he just pushed the gate open. So I grabbed her horns and put him
back in and shut the gate...but he kept doing that, all the time! Then when
I took the sheep away over the hill...here he comes, running again!"
So i just let her stay with the sheep. I was going to bring him back in the
pick-up tonight, when i put the sheep in our pen.
(Navajo is not gender specific..."his, her" ...so a traditional speaking the
foreign english sometimes will use both terms in the same sentence)
I felt like a deflated balloon because I knew he was telling the truth...and
I was the fool here now. Oh yeah...why else would his tracks be INSIDE the
pen? We went together to find the sheep and there was Gus and Daniel with
the goat on a rope. They had tried to chase her home but it would not leave
the herd. She was still fighting! We untied her and let her run with the
angoras and sheep.
That evening I drove up to the hogan.  They  had her tied up and
she was calmly waiting outside. I was invited in. The whole family was
watching quietly in the dim light of the kerosene lamp.
I apologized and thanked them for taking care of it...As i was heading for
the door the old grandma spoke with a twinkle in her eye,
 "t'lizii jaadi" (goat-antelope)
 we all laughed 
But her word was more than just a little playful tease,
it was a way of erasing tension that might linger
Between any of us...and it was a peace that stayed.

Richard

On 5/9/06 9:12 AM, "Scott DeLancey" <delancey at UOREGON.EDU> wrote:

> On Tue, 9 May 2006, Richard Smith wrote:
> 
>> I'm no linguist so I have a question.
>> Does the "lack" of a word for something mean it does not exist for a people?
>> I know where my "knee" is...but because the place behind the knee is unnamed
>> (except for some surgeons lingo) Does that place not exist?
> 
> Lack of a word means that the concept isn't something speakers of the
> language talk about much.  Your knee is something you need to talk about--
> it gets bumped, you kneel on it, you break things over it, you use it
> to nudge doors open--but the back of the knee isn't something that comes
> up much in conversation, so there's no need for a word for it (as you
> say, unless you're an orthopedic surgeon of some such).
> 
> For example--in a Himalayan language I'm studying I recently came across
> a word that means 'the feeling you have when you're on a crew or team
> and somebody else keeps slacking off and not pulling their weight'.
> Now, this, I'm sure, is a feeling we're all familiar with.  But can you
> think of a word for it?  We don't have one. English, compared with a lot
> of other languages, doesn't have a lot of vocabulary for feelings.  Why?
> Well, it's not something we talk about.  In fact, it's *notoriously*
> something we don't talk about, it's one of the things that speakers of
> other languages often comment on about English.
>      Notice we do have ways of talking about the situation, but they're
> all about that guy.  I've got plenty of names to call him (goof-off,
> goldbrick, slacker) and ways to refer to what he's doing (not pulling
> his weight, slacking off), but in English I don't have a word for how
> the situation makes me feel, because in English feelings aren't something
> we talk about.
> 
> Scott DeLancey
> Department of Linguistics
> 1290 University of Oregon
> Eugene, OR 97403-1290, USA
> 
> delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu
> http://www.uoregon.edu/~delancey/prohp.html