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Done well: WALS Online
Note: An updated version of this review has been published in eLanguage on July 15th, 2008. A common dashboard sticker in Ghanaian taxi’s has it that “If it must be done, it must be done well”, where ‘done well’ cleverly doubles as a brand name. This is largely irrelevant except by way of introducing WALS… ᐅ keep reading
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Waza waza
waza waza, Gomi 1989:193 · © 1989 I came across this lovely Japanese ideophone in my own copy of Gomi’s Illustrated Dictionary,1 and I’m sharing it waza waza just for you to enjoy. References Gomi, Taro. 1989. An Illustrated Dictionary of Japanese Onomatopoeic Expressions. Transl. by J. Turrent. Tokyo: Japan Times. Thanks to Mami Maruko… ᐅ keep reading
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Fieldwork snippet: What ideophones do
A while ago I spent some time with a language assistant to work through a list of the Siwu ideophones I collected so far. There were some interesting metalinguistic comments on the function of ideophones. Here are three representative exchanges. ᐅ keep reading
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Fieldwork snippet: What is the difference between these words?
Hello from the field! I’m currently on a five-week trip to Kawu in the beautiful Volta Region, eastern Ghana (see the picture to the right), hence the irregular posting schedule. In line with my main business here, I will share some notes on doing fieldwork. MD What about gligli? SA Gligli is ‘round’ MD But… ᐅ keep reading
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Fresh wild melon and meat full of gravy: food texture verbs in G|ui (Khoisan)
Today’s dish of expressive vocabulary is particularly tasty. It comes from G|ui, a Khoisan language of Botswana.1 To Africanists, expressive words from Khoisan languages are of special interest because Khoisan has been claimed on various occasions to lack ideophones, otherwise thought to be one of those linguistic traits that characterize Africa as a linguistic area… ᐅ keep reading
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Do you know this feeling?
What better way to compensate for the overload of text in the previous posts than with some excellent illustrations of Japanese gitaigo? I have recently been looking at Taro Gomi’s delightful Illustrated Dictionary of Japanese Onomatopoeic Expressions, featuring cartoon-like depictions of almost 200 Japanese sound-symbolic words used to evoke certain sensations, feelings, and sensory perceptions. ᐅ keep reading
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Pfisterer on Akpafu, 1904 (part II)
Today’s posting brings you the second part of Pfisterer’s 1904 article (see the previous posting for details on the context and provenance of this piece of missionary writing). This part gives us information on religious beliefs; myths of origin; the afterlife and reincarnation; so-called ‘fetishes’ (kùɣɔ/àɣɔ in Siwu) and how they are to be served… ᐅ keep reading
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Pfisterer on Akpafu, 1904 (part I)
One of the goals of The Ideophone, besides functioning as a sounding board for ideas on expressivity and sound symbolism in African languages, is to make available sources on Siwu and other GTM languages which are otherwise hard to come by. This posting is the first in a series furthering that goal. Below you will… ᐅ keep reading
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The etymology of Zotero
If you’ve read yesterday’s post (Zotero, an Endnote alternative) or come across Zotero elsewhere, you may have been wondering about its name. I believe most Anglophones pronounce the word [ˌzɔˈtɛɹoʊ] (zoh-TER-o), but the term itself actually derives from the Albanian verb zotëro-j [zɔtərɔj] ‘master, acquire’.1 The final -j marks the 1st person indicative (the regular… ᐅ keep reading
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Zotero, an Endnote alternative
I wasn’t planning to make this a software weblog, but I’ll make an exception for Zotero because I think fellow researchers will find it an interesting tool. Zotero [ˌzɔˈtɛɹoʊ] is a free piece of software that lives in your browser, helping you to ‘collect, manage and cite your research sources’ in all sorts of beautiful… ᐅ keep reading
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‘Remnants of some ancient tribal idiom’: deciphering the oldest Siwu to appear in print
Having been a small and quite isolated language for centuries, Siwu was relatively late to attract attention from outsiders. Europeans in search for gold to buy and people to enslave for the most part stayed near the coast. Halfway the nineteenth century, German firms (looking for cheap land) and missionary organizations (looking for converts) started… ᐅ keep reading
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On the history of the term ‘ideophone’
(Note: Looking for a modern definition of the term? Check out “‘Ideophone’ as a comparative concept” (2019). That chapter supplies the following: Ideophone. Member of an open lexical class of marked words that depict sensory imagery. It provides evidence and arguments for the cross-linguistic utility of this definition.) A common term for expressive vocabulary in… ᐅ keep reading
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Expressive verbs in Tuareg
Some years ago I was following a course by Maarten Kossmann on Tuareg (Tamasheq, Tamajeq, Tamahaq). It was thoroughly enjoyable. After the first lecture we were all alotted a letter of the great Dictionnaire Touareg — Français1 (a consonant, obviously), and for the remainder of the course these 15 to 40 dictionary pages would form… ᐅ keep reading
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We need Simpler Syntax, but we can do without a Grammar of the Gaps
Recently I picked up Simpler Syntax in the library. It is a good read on a very complex topic, and I’m afraid that in this posting I am not going to do justice to the full breadth of the book. These are just some doubts that crept up while reading it. Simpler Syntax, as far… ᐅ keep reading
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w00t chosen ‘word of 2007’
Languagehat’s news flash on w00t (chosen as the Merriam-Webster’s Word of ’07) piqued my interest. A quote: There’s a lot of “l33t speak” I don’t care for, but I’ve always liked w00t; there’s something primally yawpish about it, and I’m glad to see it get this recognition. Now, I have no idea what ‘yawpish’ is,… ᐅ keep reading
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Early sources on African ideophones, part I: Schlegel on Ewe, 1857
This is the first post in a series. Featured philologist of today is Joh. Bernhard Schlegel, for providing us with precious data on ideophones (expressives) in nineteenth-century Ewe, a Kwa language of southeastern Ghana. But since this is the first post on ideophones here, let’s first try to answer the obvious question: what are ideophones,… ᐅ keep reading
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Gender-based folk etymologies for the name Akpafu
Akpafu is a term used by the Ewe of Ghana to refer to the Mawu people, their language (Siwu), and their land (Kawu). The Mawu also use it for themselves when talking to outsiders. So far, I have heard two Mawu folk etymologies explaining the origin of this name. The interesting thing is that one… ᐅ keep reading
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Introducing Siwu
Siwu is a minority language spoken in the mountainous central part of the Volta Region, Ghana. The language and the people have received only the scarcest attention from linguists and ethnographers alike, and one of the purposes of this website will be to report on research that is currently being carried out to rectify this… ᐅ keep reading
Sounding out ideas on language, vivid sensory words, and iconicity
