I would like to direct everyone to this Pulitzer Prize winning news-series: “Above the Law.”
It documents the unbelievable abuses and corruption in the Russian legal system. You will be shocked.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Monday, April 18, 2011
Language
Noam Chomsky’s linguistic theories have been assailed by none other than Dr. Quentin Atkinson (and Michael Dunn)! As many readers of my blog know, my name is Miles Quentin Atkinson. But that’s immaterial. What’s interesting is that the field of linguistics may face its first major paradigm shift since Chomsky turned the field on its head back in the 50’s and 60’s.
This is interesting to me for a number of reasons. Firstly, it knocks a hole in my image of Chomsky as an impenetrable fortress of intellect. Chomsky, aside from being a linguist, is the torchbearer of modern anarchism. It’s not that I necessarily agree with all of Chomsky’s politics, but I’ve said “I guess I have to be an anarchist because I don’t think I could ever beat Chomsky in a debate.” That’s probably still true, but the man’s shining white visage has been tarnished.
I’m only sort of joking.
More important is the challenge that Dr. Atkinson’s and Dr. Dunn’s papers offer to mainstream linguistic theory. To summarize, Chomsky says that humans are naturally programmed to learn language and that there is a universal grammatical structure underlying all chitchat. Just as our organs develop according to some genetic blueprint as we age, Chomsky says that our ability to learn language develops similarly. That’s a very simplistic summation, but then again, I have a very surface understanding of the topic; don’t cite my summary.
Atkinson’s paper traces languages as a function of the distance from Africa from which it originated and the number of “phonemes” that the language contains. Africa is where humanity finds its origins and “the farther you get from that continent, the less diverse, genetically speaking, people are.” The same is true of languages. Phonemes are the single sounds that distinguish one word from another: f, d, b, and s in fad, dad, bad, sad. Atkinson found that the farther away a language originated from Africa, the fewer phonemes it had. In other words, the farther away from Africa a language developed, the less diversity in sound it contained.
Dunn used computer modeling to find that almost no grammatical uniformity can be found across language groups.
Basically, this challenges Chomsky’s theory of innate language and suggests that languages are shaped much more by culture and other things that we humans create rather than genetics.
Maybe I was being too ambitious in trying to explain all of that since I don’t really know very much about it. But, it leads me to my next point, and what was going to be my main point before my thoughts turned tangential: Russian language and language in general.
I love the Russian language and I intend to become fluent in it, or at least decent. I’ve progressed more slowly than I would have liked in learning the language since I’ve been here, mainly because most of the Russians I know speak English. Recently though I’ve become friends with someone who speaks no English, and that has been good from a language-learning point of view.
Learning another language has got me thinking about my mother tongue and its great dialectical diversity, quirkiness, and structure. I’ve never thought of the different accents and regional characteristics of English as separate dialects, but there is enough variation between the speech of rural Southern black people and English speakers in India, for instance, so that the two are not mutually intelligible.
I use the example of Southern black dialect because I am familiar with it. It is interesting to note the grammatical structure of this dialect and how it often drops or misuses standard English verb conjugation: the present tense of a verb is often substituted for past tense or sometimes the past-perfect tense is used instead of past (“he had told me,” or “he tell me” instead of “he told me”) Also, as Johnson (the Economist’s language blog) pointed out in a recent post, the possessive “s” is often dropped so that “Michael’s sister” becomes “Michael sister.” Really, for the purpose of intelligible communication, the possessive ‘s is an unnecessary addendum.
Also of interest is the heavy use of intonation in this dialect. It is always fun to listen to black folk talk excitedly as their pitch flies up and down, stress is shifted around, and certain words are elongated.
Listen to the people speak in this video: If you don’t want to watch it, it’s about a teacher who is trying to get young black kids to speak proper English (“say ask instead of ax.”)
I don’t really see the difference between black “ebonics” and any other type of dialect. I mean, the Cockney and “deep South” dialects are just as incorrect in a strict grammatical sense. I do think it is important to know proper English, but I also think that our dialects are something to be respected and preserved. Just to note, many of my black friends switch back and forth between more standard English and the Southern black dialect depending on who they’re talking to.
The Russians here who are fluent in English often mention how difficult it is to understand certain English speakers. Some have mentioned how poorly the Dutch speak English, or how Indians make lots of grammatical errors. For my friends who have spent time in America, a lot of them talk about their troubles with talking to black folks. Even I am hard to understand! But, that’s mostly because I talk very quickly and have a hard time enunciating syllables when I am eager to share a thought.
What most of the Russians seem to agree about is that Canadians are the easiest to understand. I’m not sure why.
There are a lot of quirks in our language that the Russians have opened my eyes to. Contextually driven “phrasal verbs” present a major challenge to non-native speakers. For instance, how would one deduce the meaning of a phrase like “let’s hang out?” Hang out of what? Why would we want to do that?
When we “put off” work or “get over” the flu, what are we doing? Only a native speaker would know.
One of my friends asked me: “why do you say ‘he was beaten up,’ instead of ‘he was beaten’?” They mean the exact same thing, so why do we add the “up?” I told him I had no idea.
Almost every English speaking Russian makes the same kind of grammar mistakes. The most common mistake is simple word order confusion. They will say “tell us what is it,” instead of “tell us what it is,” for example.
There are certain sounds that are unique to English. The most difficult for the Russians are the “th” sound in thick, and the “w” sound in well. I just read that “th” is a sound found exclusively in the languages of the European fringe (Iceland, England, Spain, Greece, and Denmark). Interestingly, the “th” sound seems to only appear in areas where a majority of people carry the O-blood type gene.
Unfortunately, the Latin script is not so comprehensive as to include all of the sounds that we use, and for many words there is no obvious pronunciation. I’ve heard one of our Russian friends pronouncing “muscles” with a hard ‘c,’ like “muskels.” Or he will say “charger” with a hard ‘g’.
Many logical mistakes are made. I remember my friend Vasily was telling me that a man I had just talked with was a “nuclear physician” in the Soviet Union. A nuclear physician? Oh, he meant a nuclear physicist.
Russians use English words in ways that we wouldn’t; I assume this is just transposing Russian slang and colloquialisms into English because they certainly didn’t pick them up from English-language mass media or native speakers. When looking for affirmation, they will ask “is it normal,” where we would say “is that alright?” They use “legendary” as the highest endorsement, where we would say “awesome!” Many beginners will look up English phrases that end up sounding very out of place when spoken in a broken accent: instead of “thank you,” they’ll say “don’t mention it,” “not at all,” or “my pleasure.”
I’m sure I sound silly when I use the Russian slang that I’ve been taught. I certainly get laughs when I use words like “ништяк” (nishtyak) or “отстой,” (otstoy) which translate roughly to “that’s sick/cool” and “that sucks.”
Language is one of those marvels of human existence and that’s all there is to it.
This is interesting to me for a number of reasons. Firstly, it knocks a hole in my image of Chomsky as an impenetrable fortress of intellect. Chomsky, aside from being a linguist, is the torchbearer of modern anarchism. It’s not that I necessarily agree with all of Chomsky’s politics, but I’ve said “I guess I have to be an anarchist because I don’t think I could ever beat Chomsky in a debate.” That’s probably still true, but the man’s shining white visage has been tarnished.
I’m only sort of joking.
More important is the challenge that Dr. Atkinson’s and Dr. Dunn’s papers offer to mainstream linguistic theory. To summarize, Chomsky says that humans are naturally programmed to learn language and that there is a universal grammatical structure underlying all chitchat. Just as our organs develop according to some genetic blueprint as we age, Chomsky says that our ability to learn language develops similarly. That’s a very simplistic summation, but then again, I have a very surface understanding of the topic; don’t cite my summary.
Atkinson’s paper traces languages as a function of the distance from Africa from which it originated and the number of “phonemes” that the language contains. Africa is where humanity finds its origins and “the farther you get from that continent, the less diverse, genetically speaking, people are.” The same is true of languages. Phonemes are the single sounds that distinguish one word from another: f, d, b, and s in fad, dad, bad, sad. Atkinson found that the farther away a language originated from Africa, the fewer phonemes it had. In other words, the farther away from Africa a language developed, the less diversity in sound it contained.
Dunn used computer modeling to find that almost no grammatical uniformity can be found across language groups.
Basically, this challenges Chomsky’s theory of innate language and suggests that languages are shaped much more by culture and other things that we humans create rather than genetics.
Maybe I was being too ambitious in trying to explain all of that since I don’t really know very much about it. But, it leads me to my next point, and what was going to be my main point before my thoughts turned tangential: Russian language and language in general.
I love the Russian language and I intend to become fluent in it, or at least decent. I’ve progressed more slowly than I would have liked in learning the language since I’ve been here, mainly because most of the Russians I know speak English. Recently though I’ve become friends with someone who speaks no English, and that has been good from a language-learning point of view.
Learning another language has got me thinking about my mother tongue and its great dialectical diversity, quirkiness, and structure. I’ve never thought of the different accents and regional characteristics of English as separate dialects, but there is enough variation between the speech of rural Southern black people and English speakers in India, for instance, so that the two are not mutually intelligible.
I use the example of Southern black dialect because I am familiar with it. It is interesting to note the grammatical structure of this dialect and how it often drops or misuses standard English verb conjugation: the present tense of a verb is often substituted for past tense or sometimes the past-perfect tense is used instead of past (“he had told me,” or “he tell me” instead of “he told me”) Also, as Johnson (the Economist’s language blog) pointed out in a recent post, the possessive “s” is often dropped so that “Michael’s sister” becomes “Michael sister.” Really, for the purpose of intelligible communication, the possessive ‘s is an unnecessary addendum.
Also of interest is the heavy use of intonation in this dialect. It is always fun to listen to black folk talk excitedly as their pitch flies up and down, stress is shifted around, and certain words are elongated.
Listen to the people speak in this video: If you don’t want to watch it, it’s about a teacher who is trying to get young black kids to speak proper English (“say ask instead of ax.”)
I don’t really see the difference between black “ebonics” and any other type of dialect. I mean, the Cockney and “deep South” dialects are just as incorrect in a strict grammatical sense. I do think it is important to know proper English, but I also think that our dialects are something to be respected and preserved. Just to note, many of my black friends switch back and forth between more standard English and the Southern black dialect depending on who they’re talking to.
The Russians here who are fluent in English often mention how difficult it is to understand certain English speakers. Some have mentioned how poorly the Dutch speak English, or how Indians make lots of grammatical errors. For my friends who have spent time in America, a lot of them talk about their troubles with talking to black folks. Even I am hard to understand! But, that’s mostly because I talk very quickly and have a hard time enunciating syllables when I am eager to share a thought.
What most of the Russians seem to agree about is that Canadians are the easiest to understand. I’m not sure why.
There are a lot of quirks in our language that the Russians have opened my eyes to. Contextually driven “phrasal verbs” present a major challenge to non-native speakers. For instance, how would one deduce the meaning of a phrase like “let’s hang out?” Hang out of what? Why would we want to do that?
When we “put off” work or “get over” the flu, what are we doing? Only a native speaker would know.
One of my friends asked me: “why do you say ‘he was beaten up,’ instead of ‘he was beaten’?” They mean the exact same thing, so why do we add the “up?” I told him I had no idea.
Almost every English speaking Russian makes the same kind of grammar mistakes. The most common mistake is simple word order confusion. They will say “tell us what is it,” instead of “tell us what it is,” for example.
There are certain sounds that are unique to English. The most difficult for the Russians are the “th” sound in thick, and the “w” sound in well. I just read that “th” is a sound found exclusively in the languages of the European fringe (Iceland, England, Spain, Greece, and Denmark). Interestingly, the “th” sound seems to only appear in areas where a majority of people carry the O-blood type gene.
Unfortunately, the Latin script is not so comprehensive as to include all of the sounds that we use, and for many words there is no obvious pronunciation. I’ve heard one of our Russian friends pronouncing “muscles” with a hard ‘c,’ like “muskels.” Or he will say “charger” with a hard ‘g’.
Many logical mistakes are made. I remember my friend Vasily was telling me that a man I had just talked with was a “nuclear physician” in the Soviet Union. A nuclear physician? Oh, he meant a nuclear physicist.
Russians use English words in ways that we wouldn’t; I assume this is just transposing Russian slang and colloquialisms into English because they certainly didn’t pick them up from English-language mass media or native speakers. When looking for affirmation, they will ask “is it normal,” where we would say “is that alright?” They use “legendary” as the highest endorsement, where we would say “awesome!” Many beginners will look up English phrases that end up sounding very out of place when spoken in a broken accent: instead of “thank you,” they’ll say “don’t mention it,” “not at all,” or “my pleasure.”
I’m sure I sound silly when I use the Russian slang that I’ve been taught. I certainly get laughs when I use words like “ништяк” (nishtyak) or “отстой,” (otstoy) which translate roughly to “that’s sick/cool” and “that sucks.”
Language is one of those marvels of human existence and that’s all there is to it.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Unjustified Optimism?
*I wrote this about a month ago, and I think my opinion has changed since. Another blog to follow.
I may be overstepping my boundaries and making assumptions that are beyond my knowledge in writing what I am about to write, but I am an observer and these are my observations.
When it comes to political life, most Russians have a pessimistic streak and a general attitude of hopelessness, which is invariably self-fulfilling. Granted, I hail from the upper-middle class in “the land of the free”, so my outlook on political life is likely to be a bit sunnier than that of the general world population. Still, I believe in the efficacy of peoples, even peoples inured to corruption and mismanagement at the highest administrative levels.
Vladimir Putin, the prime minister of Russia, is often charged with holding dictatorial power. This may be the case, and there are certainly shady things that have happened on his watch, but I don’t think that he is the main problem. Corruption is widespread in Russia and it takes many forms. From the lowliest power monger to the highest officials, the practice of greasing palms is pervasive.
Corruption is always the product of a poorly structured bureaucracy, and in the case of Russia, it is a legacy of the Soviet system, which was notorious for its lack of accountability. Perhaps the mindset that fermented in the days of despotism under forced conformity when dissent carried a death penalty still lingers in the Russian subconscious; perhaps a society used to a strong authoritarian will always want for that paternalistic power.
But, even in Soviet times there were plenty of dissenting voices and they became muffled less as time went on and the Soviet Union liberalized. Dissent under Stalin was not tolerated, but things lightened up a lot under Khrushchev and certainly under Gorbachev. There is a general human tendency to resist oppression and the voices of people like Pasternak, Akhmatova, and Solzhenitsyn still found expression in spite of Soviet censorship (in later years anyway). As far as I know, which is not very much, there is not much serious talk inside the country about the problems of modern Russia, at least not talk with the purpose of bringing about change. What is going on?
Maybe there is a fear factor, what with the suspicious deaths of Anna Politkovskaya, shot in an elevator, and Alexander Litvinenko, poisoned with radioactive material in London. The recent decision to extend the prison sentence on trumped up charges of oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky who funded anti-Putin campaigns, does not instill trust in the legal system. Not to mention the two reporters who were savagely beaten a few months ago after they covered a controversial highway construction story.
It may be the case that many Russians think fatalistically, but fatalism is not “ingrained” in Russian culture as many claim. Recall, if you will, that Russia was the scene of the most dramatic and comprehensive political movement of the twentieth century, if not the history of civilization. It was here that a centuries old imperial system was toppled and with it the nascent roots of international capital in the country. An entirely new societal structure was adopted. Of course, we can see now that this was a misguided attempt, but it was not an attempt made by complacent fatalists. The mood of the time, 1905-1917, was of hope. 1905 brought the first signs of change: a semi-representative Duma and a constitution. February 1917 brought the end of dynastic Russia. October, unfortunately, brought the Bolsheviks. Still, the civil war that followed was fueled by ideology and a hope of establishing a better Russia.
What Russia needs is a change in attitude. My Russian friend said this about change in Russia: “you can’t turn shit into candy.”
That may be true, but you aren’t dealing with shit, you are dealing with a country; a country with one of the most vibrant and diverse cultures on the planet that values education. It is a country that has produced some of the most brilliant artists, authors, and scientists in history and which has tremendous potential for growth. All it takes to create change is a shift in attitude. From that, everything else will follow.
I may be overstepping my boundaries and making assumptions that are beyond my knowledge in writing what I am about to write, but I am an observer and these are my observations.
When it comes to political life, most Russians have a pessimistic streak and a general attitude of hopelessness, which is invariably self-fulfilling. Granted, I hail from the upper-middle class in “the land of the free”, so my outlook on political life is likely to be a bit sunnier than that of the general world population. Still, I believe in the efficacy of peoples, even peoples inured to corruption and mismanagement at the highest administrative levels.
Vladimir Putin, the prime minister of Russia, is often charged with holding dictatorial power. This may be the case, and there are certainly shady things that have happened on his watch, but I don’t think that he is the main problem. Corruption is widespread in Russia and it takes many forms. From the lowliest power monger to the highest officials, the practice of greasing palms is pervasive.
Corruption is always the product of a poorly structured bureaucracy, and in the case of Russia, it is a legacy of the Soviet system, which was notorious for its lack of accountability. Perhaps the mindset that fermented in the days of despotism under forced conformity when dissent carried a death penalty still lingers in the Russian subconscious; perhaps a society used to a strong authoritarian will always want for that paternalistic power.
But, even in Soviet times there were plenty of dissenting voices and they became muffled less as time went on and the Soviet Union liberalized. Dissent under Stalin was not tolerated, but things lightened up a lot under Khrushchev and certainly under Gorbachev. There is a general human tendency to resist oppression and the voices of people like Pasternak, Akhmatova, and Solzhenitsyn still found expression in spite of Soviet censorship (in later years anyway). As far as I know, which is not very much, there is not much serious talk inside the country about the problems of modern Russia, at least not talk with the purpose of bringing about change. What is going on?
Maybe there is a fear factor, what with the suspicious deaths of Anna Politkovskaya, shot in an elevator, and Alexander Litvinenko, poisoned with radioactive material in London. The recent decision to extend the prison sentence on trumped up charges of oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky who funded anti-Putin campaigns, does not instill trust in the legal system. Not to mention the two reporters who were savagely beaten a few months ago after they covered a controversial highway construction story.
It may be the case that many Russians think fatalistically, but fatalism is not “ingrained” in Russian culture as many claim. Recall, if you will, that Russia was the scene of the most dramatic and comprehensive political movement of the twentieth century, if not the history of civilization. It was here that a centuries old imperial system was toppled and with it the nascent roots of international capital in the country. An entirely new societal structure was adopted. Of course, we can see now that this was a misguided attempt, but it was not an attempt made by complacent fatalists. The mood of the time, 1905-1917, was of hope. 1905 brought the first signs of change: a semi-representative Duma and a constitution. February 1917 brought the end of dynastic Russia. October, unfortunately, brought the Bolsheviks. Still, the civil war that followed was fueled by ideology and a hope of establishing a better Russia.
What Russia needs is a change in attitude. My Russian friend said this about change in Russia: “you can’t turn shit into candy.”
That may be true, but you aren’t dealing with shit, you are dealing with a country; a country with one of the most vibrant and diverse cultures on the planet that values education. It is a country that has produced some of the most brilliant artists, authors, and scientists in history and which has tremendous potential for growth. All it takes to create change is a shift in attitude. From that, everything else will follow.
Saturday, April 2, 2011
VDNKh
Today I went on another of my solitary walking tours of Moscow to get some exercise and allow some thoughts to brew. I’ve begun reading my second work by Solzhenitsyn- “The Gulag Archipelago”- and already I sense the tremendous impact it will have in the formulation of my political compass. You see, Solzhenitsyn is the foremost chronicler of the abuses in the GULAG labor camps, and he describes the abuse with such harrowing specificity as to churn up rabid indignation in the most imperturbable and morally relativist of individuals. So you can just imagine my reaction!
Walking around the VDNK (ВДНХ) today I was filled by a desire to desecrate the “temples of the proletariat” built to the glory of a bastardized ideology that was the driving force behind the unspeakable treatment of millions at the hands of the bastards who became so unthinkingly consumed by it!
Getting ahead of myself. The VDNK was a permanent exhibition center for each of the Soviet Socialist Republics (the SSR in USSR) built in 1939 under papa Stalin. In the enormous outdoor complex are magnificent exhibition halls, built like temples, where cultural displays from each of the republics were maintained. Each building has its own unique architectural design but is covered with communist iconography that not-so-subtly suggests the subordinate status of regional culture to global worker’s solidarity.
Today, the cultural exhibits are long gone, replaced with little vendor stalls like the ones we have outside of my apartment building. Inside the Belorussian building there was a purveyor of toothpaste, blow-dryers, and floor-mats. Each of the buildings is full of vendors hawking everything from fancy televisions and high-grade video cameras, to prop swords, hookahs, cookware, and faux-fur.
Strange to see the hand-drawn signs and splintered plywood “storefronts” underneath the intricate plaster medallions on the ceiling. Stepping through the threshold framed by magnificent marble columns and archways and into the hectic bazaar feels much like going to a flea market in the Lincoln Memorial. Really, imagine all of the monuments in Washington D.C. being overtaken by the peddlers in New York’s Chinatown. Counterfeit watches on sale at the WWII memorial; food stands blocking the names on the Vietnam memorial; a big banner advertisement hanging on the Washington monument.
Although initially taken aback by this, it dawned on me that there could be no greater triumph of the noble forces of liberalism over the petulant rottenness that inspired the construction of these halls! Sure, the booths are a bit tacky and out of place, but can you imagine the look on Stalin’s face if he knew that his grand monument to communist unity was being used in this manner? I can think of no greater desecration of his vision. Sure, Khrushchev did a number on Stalin’s reputation when he dismantled the cult of personality, but nothing like this. It makes you want to go stomp on the old bastard’s grave near the Kremlin and joyfully scream:
“You lose, you’ve lost! Everything that you thought good has been dismantled; your memory has been defecated upon by history; you are an object of contempt! Good riddance!”
Walking around the VDNK (ВДНХ) today I was filled by a desire to desecrate the “temples of the proletariat” built to the glory of a bastardized ideology that was the driving force behind the unspeakable treatment of millions at the hands of the bastards who became so unthinkingly consumed by it!
Getting ahead of myself. The VDNK was a permanent exhibition center for each of the Soviet Socialist Republics (the SSR in USSR) built in 1939 under papa Stalin. In the enormous outdoor complex are magnificent exhibition halls, built like temples, where cultural displays from each of the republics were maintained. Each building has its own unique architectural design but is covered with communist iconography that not-so-subtly suggests the subordinate status of regional culture to global worker’s solidarity.
Today, the cultural exhibits are long gone, replaced with little vendor stalls like the ones we have outside of my apartment building. Inside the Belorussian building there was a purveyor of toothpaste, blow-dryers, and floor-mats. Each of the buildings is full of vendors hawking everything from fancy televisions and high-grade video cameras, to prop swords, hookahs, cookware, and faux-fur.
Strange to see the hand-drawn signs and splintered plywood “storefronts” underneath the intricate plaster medallions on the ceiling. Stepping through the threshold framed by magnificent marble columns and archways and into the hectic bazaar feels much like going to a flea market in the Lincoln Memorial. Really, imagine all of the monuments in Washington D.C. being overtaken by the peddlers in New York’s Chinatown. Counterfeit watches on sale at the WWII memorial; food stands blocking the names on the Vietnam memorial; a big banner advertisement hanging on the Washington monument.
Although initially taken aback by this, it dawned on me that there could be no greater triumph of the noble forces of liberalism over the petulant rottenness that inspired the construction of these halls! Sure, the booths are a bit tacky and out of place, but can you imagine the look on Stalin’s face if he knew that his grand monument to communist unity was being used in this manner? I can think of no greater desecration of his vision. Sure, Khrushchev did a number on Stalin’s reputation when he dismantled the cult of personality, but nothing like this. It makes you want to go stomp on the old bastard’s grave near the Kremlin and joyfully scream:
“You lose, you’ve lost! Everything that you thought good has been dismantled; your memory has been defecated upon by history; you are an object of contempt! Good riddance!”
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