Language in Literature
Numbers
Languages and Geography
Scripts
California
100
One fairy tale from this language has been titled Der Froschkönig oder der eiserne Heinrich ‘the Frog Prince; or the iron Henry.’ In one version of this story, the titular frog-prince is freed from his curse and transformed back into a human after a princess throws him against a wall. Other fairy tales from this language have become popular in America, albeit often with alterations to render them more palatable for children. Some of the most famous of these are Aschenputtel ‘Cinderella,’ Rumpelstiltskin,’ and ‘Rapunzel.’ Many of these stories were collected by the Brothers Grimm.
German
100
In many Germanic languages, the words for eleven and twelve do not pattern with the rest of the ‘teens. (E.g. German elf (11), zwölf (12), dreizehn (13), vierzehn (14), …) If a language generalized this pattern, using multiples and powers of twelve to name other numbers (just as we use multiples and powers of ten in English), that language would be said to have this numbering system.
Duodecimal
100
The northern part of this peninsula is home to the last pre-Indo-European language of Europe (i.e. spoken in Europe before the proliferation of Indo-European languages.)
Iberia
100
The diäeresis is a mostly obsolete diacritic in English writing, where it denotes a syllable break. It should not be confused with this other diacritic used when writing German, Turkish, Estonian, etc., which denotes a fronted vowel.
Umlaut
100
The most widely spoken language in California other than English is Spanish. According to a definitely-out-of-date source on Wikipedia from 2010, about what percentage of Californians claim Spanish as their native language? Round to the nearest 10 percent.
28.46%
200
The name of the protagonist of an epic poem originally rendered in this language has been suggested to derive from the Roman title of Caesar. This epic poem is གླིང་གེ་སར །, or the ‘Epic of King Gesar.’ This language is composed of a multitude of mutually unintelligible varieties spoken from Baltistan in northern Pakistan to Qinghai in western China. The classical form of this language is often associated with a particular branch of Buddhism related to, but distinct from East-Asian Mahayana traditions, as well as the indigenous religious tradition of Bön.
Tibetan
200
The Sumerians often used this numerical base in measurements, which has ultimately been inherited into the English systems for measuring time, angles, and coordinates (think seconds and minutes!)
Base 60, sexagesimal
200
This island in the southern Pacific Ocean is home to more than 800 languages, which makes it arguably the most linguistically diverse place in the world. A lingua franca used across it is the English-based creole Tok Pisin.
New Guinea
200
Before the twentieth century, languages as diverse as Malay, Swahili, and Ottoman Turkish were written in adaptations of this writing system.
Arabic
200
Armenian is the 6th most widely spoken non-English language in California (tied with Farsi) (according to an out-of-date source on Wikipedia from 2010). In fact, the plurality of Armenian-Americans reside in what Californian city? This city is also home to a prominent Koreatown.
Los Angeles
300
An epic poem written in this language retells the Ramayana with the incorporation of buddhist themes as well as characters and plot points not present in the Sanskrit original. One of these is the tale of Suvannamaccha, who impedes Hanuman’s attempt to build a bridge to Lanka. This poem is called រាមកេរ្តិ៍ , Reamker, or ‘Glory of Rama’ in the language in which it was written, and its stories are depicted in reliefs on the buildings at អង្គរវត្ ‘City of Temples’ Angkor Wat.
Khmer
300
一万二 (literally one ten-thousand two) can be interpreted as two different numbers, depending on whether it is taken to be Mandarin or Japanese. Give either with its respective language.
12000 in Mandarin; 10002 in Japanese
300
This island in Asia is the home to a variety of basal Austronesian languages (basal = branched off earliest), such as Atayal, Seediq, and Paiwan.
Taiwan
300
Up until the 20th century, the overwhelming majority of formal texts in Vietnam were written in Classical Chinese, or Hán văn. However, Chinese characters were also adapted under this name to write Vietnamese as well.
Chữ Nôm
300
This Ohlone language is native to the East Bay. Although it has been extinct since the mid-twentieth century, like many other indigenous languages, it is currently undergoing a revival.
Chochenyo
400
In a creation myth from this language, The first modern humans, Áltsé hastiin ‘First Man’ and Áltsé asdzáá ‘First Woman’ were created by the Haashch’ééh dine’é or ‘holy people’ in the fourth world from two ears of corn. Afterwards, First Man and First Woman begat five sets of twins , the first of whom were nádleeh, or neither-male-nor-female (Zolbrod 1984). This language is the most widely spoken indigenous American language north of Mexico, with 170,000 speakers accounted for in a 2015 census.
Navajo
400
In China, just as the numbers 1-5 can be conveyed by raising the respective number of fingers on a single hand, 6-9 can be conveyed on a single hand as well. What number is depicted here?
6
400
This region of Africa has seen an explosion in the number of indigenous scripts since the latter half of the 20th century. Some of the most well known of these scripts include Adlam, which transcribes Fulani, and N’ko, which can be used to write the Manding languages.
West Africa
400
Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics (CAS) is an instance of an Abugida, or an alphabetic writing system in which consonants receive main glyphs, whereas vowels are represented in some other way. This is how they are represented in CAS.
By rotating the consonantal glyph
400
Other than the ambiguous ‘Chinese,’ this is the most widely spoken Asian language in California. In 2014, the government of San Francisco mandated that city services must be communicated in this language alongside English, Spanish, and ‘Chinese.’
Tagalog
500
A novel written in this language satirizes dictatorship in postcolonial Africa in its depiction of the imaginary Free Republic of Aburĩria. This novel was Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Mũrogi wa Kagogo, or ‘the Wizard of the Crow.’ This language is a Bantu language spoken in central Kenya and, having 8.1 million speakers (2019 census), is the most widely natively spoken language in the country.
Kikuyu
500
Observe the following numbers in Classical Nahuatl: ōme ‘two,’ mācuilli ‘five,’ màtlāctli ‘ten,’ cem-pōhualli ‘twenty.’
42 in Nahuatl is ‘ōm-pōhualli om-ōme.’ How would you say 105?
You have 15 seconds.
mācuil-pōhualli om-mācuilli (be lenient…)
500
Speakers of this language inhabited Newfoundland up until the 19th century. As such, it has been speculated that the Americans encountered by norse explorers around 1000 CE could have been speakers of this language or their ancestors. One of its last documented speakers was Shanawdithit, who passed away in 1829.
Beothuk
500
One strategy adopted by many logographies to represent abstract concepts is by writing them instead with a glyph used for a similarly pronounced word. For instance, in Chinese, the glyph 足 originally depicts a scorpion and was correspondingly used to represent the word meaning ‘scorpion.’ However, it was later borrowed to represent the homophonic word meaning ‘ten-thousand,’ which is the meaning that survives to this day. What is this procedure called?
Rebus Principle
500
Linguistics!! Before /ŋ/ (the ng in bang), /æ/ (the ‘short a’ in bang) moves in this direction. (Not sure? If you’re Californian, compare how the vowel sounds in bang and bat for yourself! Do they differ?)
/æ/ raises/becomes more closed