Thursday, April 27, 2006

A comparative linguist of the thirteenth century

I've been reading Empires of the Word recently, a quite enjoyable and informative history of the world's main languages; it skimps on Arabic to an almost absurd extent, but makes up for this by a truly excellent chapter on Sanskrit. Anyway, one surprise it provides is that, in addition to his better known poetic activities, Dante also wrote a treatise about language, De vulgari eloquentia, in which he comments on the nature of language change, specifically attempting to explain how Latin could have gradually changed into the Romance languages, a concept which his audience apparently found hard to accept:

Nor should what we say appear any more strange than to see a young person grown up, whom we do not see grow up; for what moves gradually is not at all to be recognized by us, and the longer something needs for its change to be recognized the more stable we think it is. So we are not surprised if the opinion of men, who are little distant from brutes, is that a given city has existed always with the same language, since the change in language of a city happens gradually only over a very long succession of time, and the life of men is also, by its very nature, very short. Therefore if over one people the language changes, as has been said, successively over time, and can in no way stand still, it is necessary that it should vary in various ways quite separately from what remains constant, just as customs and dress vary in various ways... (p. 321, Empires of the Word; original available elsewhere)


It's easy to forget just how difficult even the basics of historical linguistics must once have seemed, but texts like these help.

Incidentally, I hope to reestablish my website sometime soon - can anyone recommend a good free/very cheap website hosting service other than Geocities?

Monday, April 24, 2006

Playing Catch-Up

As always, please forgive my typos...

Thursday, April 23, 2006

My goodness how time flies when you’re in a third world country desperately trying to master a foreign language! Let me see if I can get everybody up-to-date.

The trip to Abdul Rahman’s village never happened. When Evan and I went to our director to get a letter to take to the tourist police, he told us that it wasn’t any problem to get permission to go, but the trip would have to be coordinated through a tourist agency and involve a police escort. We decided this would end up costing too much so we decided not to go. It also turned out that the wedding wasn’t at the village after all but here in Sana’a; although, I swear Abdul Rahman said it would take place at his village.

The wedding itself was big. Really big. It was held in a building across from the Sheraton which is rented out for such occasions. According to Abdul Rahman, the building is owned by the husband of his sister (If I remember correctly) but then, according to Abdul Rahman, he is related to half of the people in Sana’a, so I’m never quite certain if he is telling the truth or just trying to impress me. Regardless, it was definitely a big wedding. Unfortunately, I completely forgot to take my camera with me, so you’ll have to settle for a verbal description of the events.

Yemeni weddings, to my untrained eye, appear to consist of a lot of men (the women's party is at a separate location) sitting around drinking cold water and chewing qat – for a long time. There is a lot of singing (this wedding had several musicians that I thought were rather good) and cheek kissing. Then there is some more singing and some more cheek kissing. There are also tons of photos taken and (at least at this wedding) a gentleman with a professional-looking video camera walking around. I think I managed to make it into enough footage to pretty much ruin any wedding memories ;)~

Sheikh Al-Ahmar was not in attendance as he was in Saudi Arabia for medical treatment but one of his sons was there, accompanied by several thuggish looking guards brandishing Kalashnikovs. Fortunately, since I didn’t bring my camera I didn’t tempt fate by asking for a photo. The former Prime Minister, Abdul Aziz Abdul Gani, was also there, in addition to several prominent judges whose names I didn’t bother writing down.

True to the spirit of Yemen, the power went out during part of the wedding for about thirty minutes. In case I didn’t mention it, the power goes off for anywhere from thirty minutes to a couple of hours, several times a week.

Which reminds me, last week, when I was taking my laundry to the cleaners, I heard somebody behind me ask if I spoke English. It was a European family (husband, wife, and two young children) trying to find their way out of Old Sana’a. Since it would have been too hard to explain, I offered to walk them out and on the way the husband was telling me that he was working in Yemen on upgrading the power infrastructure in Yemen. I found that to be amusing as about twenty minutes before I met him the power had gone out and was still out after I got back to my room.

Somebody left the following post, so I’ll try to touch upon that a bit:

“Gary-can you write a little about women in Yemen? Do you have much interaction with the local women? Are they a big presence on the streets, markets, restaurants?”

As to interaction with the local women in Yemen, well, it just doesn’t happen (at least not to me). The most contact I’ve had has been when I’m going through the checkout stand at the Shumaila Hari Supermarket. From what I can tell, Yemeni women go under the veil around twelve or thirteen years of age. Even when I go to Abdul Rahman’s house or when I went to the new student luncheon at the house of one of the instructors, I never saw their wives. I suppose one could try and talk to a random woman on the street but I don’t really think that would be a very good idea.

You may see a Yemeni woman at a restaurant that has taken her veil off to eat, but most restaurants reserve a section for women to eat separately. There are plenty of Yemeni women out and about in the streets but again, they are all veiled. Your best bet would be to find a blog written by a female student and ask them.

Stay tuned for a regaling tale of my trip to Aden!

Saturday, April 22, 2006

Free online American Indian linguistics papers

- and if that's not a title to draw the crowds, I don't know what is :) I found this handy Kansas University site while researching my Siouan reduplication essay, which is currently growing at an out of control pace (thanks partly to the help of Siouan List); just a few of the highlights are articles on:

Salinan
Esselen
Inga
Karankawa
Opata, Eudeve
proto-Algonquian
proto-Algic
proto-Algic
proto-Algic
proto-Siouan "one"
proto-Muskogean
Klamath-Sahaptian correspondences

Oh, and while I'm posting links, a couple of non-linguistic links for your perusal - some undeservedly obscure news stories:
Bouteflika back in hospital
Central African Republic
The Israel Lobby

Monday, April 17, 2006

Insult to Injury

Since coming to Yemen to study, I have been focusing more and more news about Yemen (makes sense huh?). A couple weeks ago I ran across an article predicting that Sana'a will have depleted its water resevoirs within a decade.

This was followed up by an article by Sarah Phillips, which also paints a gloomy picture for Yemen. As a note of caution, Sarah was wrong in her comment that Sheikh Al-Ahmar said he was leaving Yemen to President Saleh and his sons per a subsequent statement by Sheik al-Ahmar specifically denying that such a thing was said. So what I am saying is that other parts of her article may be inaccurate also, but I really can't say as I'm not a fact checker.

Having said that I did ask my teacher about the current relations between northern and southern Yemen and he seemed to think they were fine. Not that I would normally expect a to hear bad things from a Yemeni about Yemen, but my teacher does seem willing to voice contrary opinions. For example, when asked about President Saleh's son, my instructor was less than flattering. He also was willing to say that three for Sheikh al-Ahmar's four sons (I think that's what he said) were not so nice. Regardless, in my non-doctoral candidate opinion, I think this article may have been a little spiced up.

So for those of you interested in reading about a possibly bleak future...

(from www.ecoisp.com, by Lester R. Brown - shamelessly excerpted by me)

"We are consuming water that belongs to future generations. In some countries, the fall of water tables is dramatic. In Yemen, a country of 19 million, the water table under most of the country is falling by roughly two meters (6.5 feet) a year as water use far exceeds the sustainable yield of aquifers. World Bank official Christopher Ward observes that "groundwater is being mined at such a rate that parts of the rural economy could disappear within a generation."
In the basin where the capital, Sana'a, is located and where the water table is falling six meters (nearly 20 feet) per year, the aquifer will be depleted by the end of this decade. In the search for water, the Yemeni government has drilled test wells in the basin that are two kilometers (1.2 miles) deep, depths normally associated with the oil industry, but they have failed to find water. Yemen must soon decide whether to bring water to Sana'a, possibly from coastal desalting plants, or to relocate the capital. "

(Please note that this isn't the article I originally read regarding Yemen's water shortage for Yemen but since I can't find that article and there is no shortage of articles on Yemen's water crisis both past and present, it will do.)

And article #2...

http://www.merip.org/mero/mero.html
Foreboding About the Future in Yemen
Sarah Phillips
April 3, 2006

(Sarah Phillips is a doctoral candidate in political science at the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies of the Australian National University in Canberra.)

Within days of Yemeni President Ali Abdallah Salih’s departure in January to Germany for medical care, the regime’s next most prominent personality, Sheikh Abdallah bin Hussein al-Ahmar, left for Saudi Arabia. At the Sanaa airport, al-Ahmar, speaker of the Yemeni parliament, head of Islah, the country’s most popular opposition party, and paramount sheikh of Yemen’s most influential tribal confederation, pointedly announced that he was “leaving [Yemen] to Ali Abdallah Salih and his sons,” according to a source close to his family. Al-Ahmar’s words signaled that the alliance between him and the president, the cornerstone of the political status quo for nearly three decades, is close to coming undone. “He is smart,” says one local analyst. “He sees the regime’s problems and knows when to start to move independently.”

Some Yemenis believe that the real reason behind the sheikh’s departure was to seek treatment for a life-threatening illness. Others believe that by so conspicuously detaching himself from the president, he is pursuing his own aspirations to leadership. Whatever the truth of the matter, al-Ahmar’s apparent break with the president has contributed to a palpable sense of foreboding about the future in Yemen.

TWO STEPS FORWARD, HOW MANY BACK?
In the early 1990s, Yemen was buzzing with optimism. The long-desired dream of unification between the former North and South had been achieved, oil revenues were increasing and the dramatic political reforms enacted by the new government had Yemen pegged as a vibrant transitional democracy.

A decade and a half later, living standards have plummeted, oil and water are fast running out and the armed rebellion that Salih had initially expected to put down in under a week has entered its eighteenth month with little sign of fully abating. Corruption has also reached dizzying heights. While it is difficult to quantify, statistics published by the World Bank indicate a dramatic upward trend in the last few years, while Yemen was ranked 112th (with the least corrupt country in first place) in Transparency International’s 2005 Corruption Perception Index. Anecdotal evidence also abounds. For example, the man appointed to head the state’s anti-corruption body, the Central Organization for Control and Auditing (COCA), was given the post while awaiting trial for fraud allegedly committed during his previous tenure in government. After then being fired again for major fraud while running COCA, he was appointed to head the Judicial Inspection Board to ensure the integrity of judges.

Exasperated by such developments, the foreign donors on whom the Yemeni government depends have begun to withdraw their assistance. In 2004, the government was chastised by the World Bank for its rising corruption and warned that they could not rely on the Bank’s continued support if genuine reforms were not implemented. The Bank issued a report stating that “Yemen is clearly slipping into a worst-case scenario” of economic performance. In 2005, the World Bank delivered on its threat and reduced an upcoming loan package by 34 percent (from $420 million over three years to $280 million), citing lack of transparency and good governance. This reduction is combined with a loss of income from the International Monetary Fund, which has been withholding $300 million in concessional finance since 2002, due to the government’s failure to comply with its prescribed structural adjustment package. The Yemeni state is almost completely dependent on sources of income over which it exercises no direct control. Together, oil and donor money constitute at least 85 percent of government revenue. As oil begins to dry up and frustrated donors reduce their aid commitments, the government’s options contract correspondingly.

The Economist Intelligence Unit estimates that Yemen’s gross domestic product growth for 2006 will be around 2.5 percent -- insufficient to keep pace with population growth (around 3.5 percent per year), let alone meet the World Bank target of 8 percent required for sustained development. The fact that this slump is occurring in the middle of a prolonged oil price spike further indicates the level of corruption and mismanagement that is the backdrop to the political challenges facing the Yemeni regime. Oil revenue probably makes up some 75 percent of the country’s budget and, failing the unlikely discovery of substantial new deposits, the World Bank estimates that Yemen’s reserves will be negligible by 2012. This date is ten years earlier than was previously thought and represents the natural limit of the current order. Before total depletion, however, oil exports will drop significantly; they are likely to be halved within just three years. While an appeal for foreign and domestic investment to spur other industries could help reduce Yemen’s dependence on oil money, investors have been scared away by the corruption that, time and time again, has lined the pockets of the military and tribal elite.

DISSENT WIDENS
While democratization remains popular, Yemenis no longer seriously discuss it as a short-term possibility. The prospect of state failure has increasingly taken democracy’s place as the subject of speculation at private gatherings across the country, where Yemenis often speak as if collapse were a foregone conclusion. People attached to the regime no longer necessarily shy away from such topics either, one estimating that “around 90 percent” of his colleagues give voice to grim expectations for the future: “Five years ago, it was probably only 30 percent.” In a country that until recently harbored real expectations of decentralized power, hopes for a reprieve from crisis are now being pinned on the linchpin of any autocratic system: the will of the executive.

It is hard to overstate the urgency of Yemen’s situation. In July 2005, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Failed States Index placed Yemen as the country eighth most at risk of disintegration. By this count, Yemen was deemed less stable than war-torn and impoverished Afghanistan, and only marginally more so than Iraq and Somalia, a judgment that was seized upon with an attitude of “I told you so” in Sanaa’s political circles. Anger on the streets is obvious and has been directed at the president himself (as opposed to the usual faceless “government”). In the July 2005 riots over the reduction of fuel subsidies, tens and possibly hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of the capital, some shouting “la Sanhan ba‘d al-yawm” (no Sanhan -- President Salih’s tribe -- after today) and that Salih was the enemy of God. These chants were certainly the most open display of antipathy for the person of the president in Yemen for quite some time. Protesters also burned Salih’s photo on the street and, in an apparent first, many of the demonstrators attempted to reach his heavily guarded residence.

Resentment of unification in the former South has reached levels unseen since the 1994 civil war. Even the victors in that conflict, the northern elite, have been quoted nervously acknowledging the rising southern discontent. Sheikh Abd al-Majid al-Zindani, a popular and powerful Sunni cleric from the North who railed against the South in the leadup to the civil war, was quoted by the Yemeni weekly al-Wasat newspaper in June 2005 as telling President Salih that “if there were a referendum in the South today on the union, they would all vote against it.” Southerners believe that corruption, biased government hiring policies and unlawful confiscation of land by the northern-led regime are taking what is rightfully theirs. Many are becoming less reserved about stating their desire for separation from the northern-dominated regime, an aspiration encouraged by Saudi Arabia the last time around. “We like to be called Hadramis, not Yemenis. Yemen is shamal (to the north),” commented one businessman in the oil-rich eastern province of Hadramawt. With about 80 percent of Yemen’s remaining oil in the former South (the majority of which is in Hadramawt), secession is a prospect that would all but starve the people of the densely populated northwestern areas. As demonstrated in 1994, the northern-dominated regime would not shrink from a fight to maintain this valuable territory.
Then there is the messy armed uprising centered in and around the northern governorate of Saada. “This is the biggest challenge in North Yemen since [Salih] came to power” in 1978, comments a well-informed official. One of Salih’s clearest talents since taking office has been his ability to stay above the fray in local tribal conflicts, in the time-worn tradition of divide et impera. This time he is caught squarely between two groups that once provided his regime with its greatest support: the northern tribes and northern Zaydi religious leaders. The uprising is led by the al-Huthis, a sayyid family (one claiming descent from the Prophet Muhammad) invoking a Zaydi discourse of just rule and supported by armed followers -- many of whom are religious students. The movement is arguably all the more dangerous because of its basis in religious doctrine and the Zaydi political tradition, which considers the overthrow of an unjust ruler to be religiously acceptable. However, also competing in the mix are the tribes of Saada that are fighting the government, the tribes that Salih is paying to fight on the government’s behalf and the (also largely tribal) military. The propensity of tribal fighters to sell their loyalties to the highest bidder, and the readiness of military leaders to facilitate this practice for a cut, are pulling the president deeper into a guerrilla-style conflict than he could have intended.
Accurate figures are still impossible to obtain, but the same well-informed official stated in January 2006 that there were “not less than 20,000” government troops deployed in the vicinity of Saada, and that the army was losing an average of ten to 15 soldiers per day. Fatalities on the other side are even less clear, but are unlikely to be less than those suffered by government forces. If this official’s estimate is correct, then an average of 600-900 people are being killed in the fighting each month. There are also indications that some of the support for the insurgents is coming from outside of Saada, from those who are ideologically opposed to the rebels’ religious motivations but who sympathize with their broader critique of the government. The government has tried to link the movement to support obtained from Iran, but with little success. “The big thing is that the government does not know how they are supported and who is arming [the al-Huthi rebels],” observed the official. “They are totally confused. It is probably coming from both [domestic and foreign sources]. How did they get these arms when they are under siege? There are Yemenis supporting them from within Yemen…. There are supporters throughout the country…[from a] wider opposition: the South, the poor and the enemies of the system.” In late January, two key leaders of the rebellion escaped from one of Yemen’s highest security prisons. “This was no ordinary prison,” he noted. The security of such high-value prisoners would not have been left to underlings, and the escape could not have been carried out in complete secrecy. This incident does not necessarily point to broad support within the system for the insurgents, but it does underline the regime’s uncertainty about the nature of their enemy and the fact that questions about their right to rule are perceived to be coming from many corners.

The regime’s response to the Saada rebellion has demonstrated just how forcefully it is prepared to counter direct threats to its dominance. But, in doing so, the regime is also demonstrating its ultimate weakness, given the enormous toll on the military and the erosion of the regime’s traditional support base of northern tribal and religious leaders. Moreover, the Huthi rebellion has probably revealed to the opposition, and perhaps to those with radical inclinations, that the regime’s coercive power is not as insurmountable as once imagined. If a movement that began as 1,000-3,000 angry citizens can tie down a government that, according to the estimates of officials, spends up to 40 percent of its budget on security, what could a more concerted effort achieve? This prospect has been debated in a number of qat chews (social gatherings where plant leaves are chewed for their mild stimulant effect) attended by Sanaa’s politically active and aware.

AN UNCERTAIN ALLY
While there is no relationship between the Shiite al-Huthi movement and militant Salafi Sunnis in Yemen, the inability of the government to end the conflict in Saada may be emboldening the latter, whose daring moves of late suggest growing confidence. In early February, 23 suspected terrorists broke out of a high-security prison in Sanaa. (Three and possibly more have been recaptured.) The most famous escapee was Jamal al-Badawi, the alleged architect of the USS Cole bombing in 2000, in which 17 US naval personnel were killed. The official story has it that the detainees used broomsticks and sharpened spoons to tunnel a considerable distance to a nearby mosque. It is inconceivable that such an elaborate escape could have been executed without the acquiescence of well-placed members of the Political Security Organization (PSO), the domestic intelligence agency that answers directly to Salih. The United States shares this view. Newsweek quoted a US official who described the content of a classified embassy cable: “One thing is certain: PSO insiders must have been involved.”

As a key partner in US anti-terrorism efforts, the Yemeni government has been treading very carefully since the USS Cole attack, seeking to appease both the US and the network of militants and their sympathizers, who include members of the military and security apparatus. Since 2003, there has been a fragile truce between the government and members of the umbrella group Qa‘idat al-Jihad fi al-Yemen (Base of Jihad in Yemen), which includes the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army and the al-Qaeda Sympathizers. Under this agreement, a number of militants were released from jail and, according to the September 25, 2003 Yemen Times, assurances were made that the government would “terminate its military cooperation with the US.” US pressure has also been intense and, accordingly, the government has swung between promises and counter-promises. The prison break is a symptom of this delicate and awkward balance. Anything that escalates the standoff with the Salafis is potentially very dangerous. The February “escape” points to three possibilities: the breakout was staged to prevent the detainees from implicating others; it is to pave the way for further militant operations; or it is simply a show of strength by the radicals. None of these possibilities bodes well for Yemen’s already diminished stability -- and the US has taken notice.

In January 2005, the House of Representatives passed a resolution including Yemen on a list of Arab countries whose “political and economic liberalization efforts” could “serve as a model” for the region. In November, however, Salih was told in Washington that his promises of reform were no longer sufficient. In a rather uncharacteristic message to a partner in the “war on terror,” top US officials criticized the regime’s failure to deliver on promised reforms and recommended the president quickly do more, lest he lose Washington’s support in Yemen’s 2006 presidential election. One US diplomat says privately: “Our policy in Yemen has really shifted in the last six months.” Another was reported in US News & World Report to have said: “We’re not going to give [the Yemeni government] a pass anymore.”
Two well-placed Yemeni observers report that Salih was shocked by the directness of the message he received in Washington, though his closest advisers counsel him that he need not be alarmed, since the US does not understand the dynamics of Yemeni politics. In the event, there have been no reform initiatives from the president since November other than a reshuffling of the cabinet and a promise to release 627 al-Huthi supporters from prison.
Stepped-up US pressure on Yemen to turn over al-Zindani for allegedly supplying arms and funds to al-Qaeda is another indicator of waning patience. Al-Zindani has been on the Treasury Department list as a “specially designated global terrorist” since February 2004, and his location in Yemen is well-known. The drive to have him extradited began in earnest following the February prison break, however, and was coupled with a letter to Salih from President George W. Bush, who used the missive to air his doubts about Yemen’s “commitment to the war on terrorism.”

ABSENCE OF LAW, ABSENCE OF WILL
Challenges to the economy, to national unity and to the legitimacy of the regime are linked to the toleration (some say the encouragement) of corruption by Yemen’s leadership and the absence of the rule of law. Both problems could be reduced in scale -- and quite quickly -- if the political will to do so existed. Corruption is not as entrenched as one might think, and Yemenis often recall the sense of shame that was attached to petty corruption until fairly recently. It gathered pace in the oil era that began in the mid-1980s, as the state gained the upper hand over the informal economy.

So, too, has the ineffectual legal system been a serious obstacle to development only since state power has become relatively centralized. Despite constitutional requirements to the contrary, the executive controls the state’s legal institutions. President Salih holds the chairmanship of the Supreme Judicial Council, seat of sole authority to appoint judges and prosecutors and to adjudicate challenges to election results. The centralization of government has created significant ambiguity over who -- the state or the local tribe -- exercises rightful control over territory and natural resources, as well as over who has the “right” to use violence. In the gaps grow patron-client relationships between the regime and military and tribal leaders, allowing the regime to preside over a divided society while also widening the divisions. The presence of traditional norms need not inhibit political development, but when they are manipulated as a means of distributing favors to a select few, they pose a major obstacle. In Yemen, that manipulation is simultaneously undermining both the traditional system and the state system that might replace it.

In such an unstable environment, local predictions are that the presidential and local elections scheduled for September 2006 will be a flashpoint, as frustrations at the country’s diminishing options boil over. Two opposition programs for reform reflect the deepening sense of crisis.
The Joint Meeting Party (JMP), a six-party coalition including Islah, the largest and best-organized opposition party, has yet to announce a candidate for president or to state unequivocally that they will do so. In an act that continues to taint their credibility, Islah nominated Salih as its own candidate in the 1999 presidential race. Nevertheless, the JMP’s “Document on National and Political Reform” lays bare many of the problems confronting the Yemeni state: “There are no more fantasies in the minds of Yemenis about the catastrophe that is waiting for them…. Total reform is the only choice.” Among other things, the document calls for the peaceful rotation of power, respect for the law and the constitution, the prevention of corruption, greater limitations on the role of the military and security apparatus, civil service reforms, greater popular empowerment and a functioning parliamentary system.
Leaving aside the question of whether the JMP knows how to achieve these reforms, the document’s power, and probably the reason behind the regime’s accusations of treason and conspiracy, lies in its articulation of a split between the opposition, particularly Islah, and the ruling party. This is a significant step, considering Islah’s historical place within the regime’s patronage network, and one that could mark the willingness of the popular Islamist party to oppose the government more coherently. This potential can only be enhanced by al-Ahmar’s recent departure to Saudi Arabia. Al-Ahmar has long functioned as Islah’s protective umbrella, shielding them from the regime, in part, by preventing them from pushing too far with political demands. His airport announcement that he was leaving Yemen to Salih and his sons had an air of strategic abdication to it, giving Islah the green light to play a more daring political game.
The other, still to be announced program is that of Sumayya Ali Raja. Raja was the first person to declare presidential candidacy from within Yemen and also the first female to enter the contest. Her platform, according to her political adviser Abd al-Ghani al-Iryani, focuses on those reforms that could conceivably be enacted quickly. Moving democratic ideals to the back burner, the program calls for immediate presidential intervention to reverse the rapidly deteriorating conditions that Yemen faces. For instance, the program suggests that the greatest drain on Yemen’s resources is the misuse of heavily subsidized diesel, mainly through smuggling but also through power generation. The program states that only one third of the 2.9 billion liters of diesel imported annually (costing around 25 percent of the national budget) are used for their intended purpose. Removing the subsidy, Raja’s platform suggests, would redistribute a vast amount of the national budget away from Yemen’s well-connected smugglers. Some of the savings could then be used to compensate smaller farmers who use subsidized diesel to power water pumps, and some to grant small salary increases to cover the difference in consumer costs for others. The program also calls for greater presidential involvement in preventing the theft of land, judicial independence along the lines of the Egyptian system and “equal opportunity and sufficient pay” within the civil service, a measure that would require only implementation of current laws but which, if achieved, would effectively fight the endemic corruption of civil servants forced to accept unacceptably low wages.

The JMP’s program hinges on a shift first in Yemen’s political institutions, while Raja’s program hinges on a shift first in political will. If observers are right that Salih has the election sewn up, the real question is whether the regime will listen to outside suggestions or whether they are so content in their historical dominance that they are blind to what has become plain to so many Yemeni citizens.

Friday, April 14, 2006

Ibn Hazm on conlanging (and other stuff)

Having established the divine origin of language to his own satisfaction, Ibn Hazm goes on to discuss the vexed question of what language Adam spoke, and concludes - sensibly enough - that there is no way to be certain. However, he figures it must have been "the most complete of all languages, and the most clearly expressive, and the least ambiguous, and the most concise, and the one with the most various names for all various nameable things in the world" since, having been bestowed by God directly, it must naturally have been the most perfect.

He also decides that it almost surely must have been the ancestor of all modern languages, because it was not inconceivable but extremely improbable that anyone would have decided to waste so much time and effort as to "invent a new language, which would be an enormous effort for no reason; such meddling would not be undertaken by any intelligent person... [its inventor would be] a person busying himself with what does not benefit him and neglecting what concerns him", and even if this did happen, it was even less likely that the inventor would be in a position to impose his language on any community. He specifically considers the "Esperanto" case of a multilingual kingdom adopting a common lingua franca, and argues that "it would be easier for him [the king] to make them learn one of those languages that they used to speak, or his own language; this would be easier and more plausible than the invention of a new language afresh."

He concludes by tersely stating that "Some people imagine that their own language is the best of all languages; this is meaningless" and justifying it theologically and logically.

I like this guy. Makes me wonder what other early linguists had to say...

Ibn Hazm on language endangerment and the origin of language

I've been reading more of chapter 4 of the 11th-century work Ihkam Ibn Hazm - "On how languages come into being, whether by (divine) construction or establishment of convention" - and it's great. I found his description of how a language becomes endangered particularly compelling:

So when a community's state is destroyed, and their enemy gains power over them, and they are kept busy with fear and need and ignominy and serving their foes, then the death of their spirits is guaranteed - and that may cause their language to disappear, and their lineages and history to be forgotten, and their sciences to perish. This is both observed in reality and deduced through a priori reasoning. (Arabic begins: وأما من تلفت دولتهم...)‍


The main topic of the chapter is, of course, the origin of language. He argues that language must have been taught to man by God, because he argues that the three other possibilities that he considers - mutual agreement on a convention, instinct, or the influence of geography - are logically impossible. His argument on instinct is the most interesting: if language were an instinct, then we would all speak the same language. Chomsky, of course, inverts this: since language is an instinct, we all do speak the same language (modulo trivial details of vocabulary and parameters.) On mutual agreement, he notes that it is impossible that a languageless community could agree on a language; how would they have explained to each other what each word was supposed to mean? The idea that each place causes its inhabitants to speak a particular language - advanced as an explanation for linguistic diversity - he rejects as absurd, since any one place can, and generally does, have a variety of languages spoken in it.

I plan to describe more of the chapter later - his comments on conlanging are particularly amusing...

Thursday, April 13, 2006

Pictures of Wadi Dahir

Friday, April 07, 2006

Gah! The rain is really pouring down at the mo, accompanied by an orchestra of thunder and lighting – a Yemeni version of Fantasia without Mickey Mouse. I know the sa’ilah will have to be flooded even higher than in the last photo I posted but I’m afraid it will be too dark to take a decent photo before the rain has stopped and I can get out there.

The rains have also caused severe flooding in areas south of Sana’a causing 25 deaths as of last time I checked.

I’ve posted some pictures of my trip to the Imam’s Palace in Wadi Dahir. Most of the trees you will see in the photos should be a combination of fruit and qat trees.

I’ll touch on this weekend’s wedding/village trip soon (BTW, the weekend here is Thursday and Friday).


This is the Imam's palace



A view from the top of the Imam's palace

Yet another picture from atop of the Imam's palace


View #3 from atop the Imam's palace


This is a picture of a mafraj (Please note that this is a rather nice mafraj)

Sunday, April 9, 2006

A comparative linguist of the 11th century

Ibn Hazm (994-1064) was a polymathic intellectual of Cordoba, equally well-known for his poetry and his religious commentary. Less well-known are his opinions on Semitic linguistics, which turn out to have been rather impressive. In the quote below, he demonstrates a clearer understanding of the process of historical change than Ibn Quraysh, who seems to have seen the mutual similarities as as resulting as much or more from intermixture than from common ancestry, although both ultimately succumb to the temptation of explaining linguistic family trees in terms of religiously given genealogies. As near as I can translate it off the cuff, he said:

...What we have settled on and determined to be certain is that Syriac and Hebrew and Arabic - that is the language of Mudar and Rabia (ie Arabic as we know it), not the language of Himyar (ie Old South Arabian) - are one language that changed with the migrations of its people, so that it was ground up... For, when a town's people live near another people, their language changes in a manner clear to anyone who considers the issue, and we find that the masses have changed the pronunciation of Arabic significantly, to the point that it is so distant from the original as to be like a different language, so we find them saying `iinab for `inab (grape), and 'asTuuT for sawT (whip), and thalathdaa for thalaathatu danaaniir (three dinars), and when a Berber becomes Arabized and wants to say shajarah (tree) he says sajarah, and when a Galician becomes Arabized he replaces `ayn and Haa with haa, so he says muhammad when he means to say muHammad, and such things are frequent. So whoever ponders on Arabic, Hebrew, and Syriac will become certain that their difference is of the type we have described, through changes in people's pronunciation through the passage of time and the difference of countries and the bordering of other nations, and that they are in origin a single language. Having established that, Syriac is the ancestor of both Arabic and Hebrew, and to be more precise, the first to speak this Arabic was Ishmael, upon him be peace, for it is the language of his sons, and Hebrew is the language of Isaac and his sons, and Syriac is without doubt the language of Abraham, blessings and peace be upon him and upon our prophet. (Ihkam Ibn Hazm; see Wikisource for original text, beginning الذي وقفنا عليه وعلمناه يقينا أن السريانية والعبرانية والعربية...)


My attention was originally drawn to this remarkable quote by an article by Ahmad Shahlan, in a rather strange Libyan book fusing pan-Arab nationalism with Semitic philology, at-Tanawwu` wal-Wahdah fi l-lahajaati l-`uruubiyyati l-qadiimati, which probably merits a post in its own right at some point.

Saturday, April 8, 2006

Two new blogs

A new blog by a British born and bred, with mixed iraqi-iranian background.
Eisa Ali, in his blog: Pray 4 Iraq, focuses on Iraq, Islam, and issues affecting the whole world everyday.

Also: Zappy -34 year old Male living in Baghdad who loves Marmite, Sea food, hates Green Veggies and stupid questions- started a blog called: Where Date Palms grow:
This is my first Post "on this Blog" the occasion is simply the 7th of April, a new beginning for me, see.. Three years ago I was nearly killed with all my family when we were shelled on this same day in 2003 but that's a different story altogether, you can call me Zappy!, I live in Baghdad, Iraq. And this is where I express myself...


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Total; 198

More from Qatar

I'm here on holiday in Qatar for a while yet, and it's been great. However, I recently heard (at second-hand) a story I just have to share... Apparently, a teacher came across a kid in her second grade class who somehow hadn't learned to talk. After enquiries, it emerged that the child's parents weren't home much. The father wasn't interested in interacting with babies, and the mother was out working and socializing pretty much all the time. So, of course, the kid was being brought up by the maid... and they had strictly forbidden her from talking to their children, for fear the kids might pick up an uncouth accent or, even worse, a different language!

This may make more sense if you consider the frankly bizarre demographics of this country, one of the world's richest and most multicultural. Of the 576,000 inhabitants over the age of 15, only 110,000 are Qataris (who are well subsidized by the legal requirement of Qatari majority ownership of any businesses formed here, and by the oil money); the rest are expatriates from all over the world (in just these couple of weeks, I've heard or seen Arabic, English, Urdu, Malayalam, Persian, Chinese, Turkish, and Swahili used here). While the Qatari population has a more or less 50:50 sex ratio, the non-Qatari population is 77% male. Among the Qataris, more than twice as many women as men make it through university; male drop-out rates are consistently higher, even in primary school (!) It will be interesting to see how the country copes with this over the coming years.

Wednesday, April 5, 2006

Stranger Than Fiction

Friday, March 31, 2006

So, last weekend’s trip to Abdul Rahman’s village never actually happened. Sure, we started off on our journey, but since we didn’t have, no kidding, permission from the tourist police we were turned around at the first checkpoint. We instead decided to head off to see the Imam’s palace, Dar al-Hajir, in Wadi Dhahir (I think).

The “palace” is deceptively big inside and it made for an enjoyable, if tiring, diversion from our original goal. On the way back it was decided that we would have dinner at his uncle’s house.

This was my first dinner at a Yemeni’s house and man oh man it didn’t disappoint. I’m pretty easy going and I can double-dip a chip with the best of them, but it is difficult to show a lot of enthusiasm when you are sitting on the floor with four other people who think nothing of using their hands to tear off a piece of shared chicken, grabbing some shared rice and mashing it all together before putting it in their mouth.

The house of Abdul Rahman is located in Old Sana’a, very close to the school. The building itself is about 150 years old and looked it too. Even worse than the dinner was my trip to the bathroom; let’s say it’s a shoes required sort of trip. I experienced a moment of sheer terror as I slipped and almost fell.

Surprising, it was a western toilet but it would take an obscene amount of money for me to have actually sat on it. The two rather vicious spiders I saw didn’t help either. And for a frame of reference, I consider all spiders I see to be vicious. Just in case you were wondering, there was no toilet tissue but there was a bucket of water/cup next to the toilet. And that, my friends, is why it is considered impolite to pass food with your left hand…

Abdul Rahman assured us it was no problem if Evan and I wanted to stay the night, but I tactfully explained to him that I just didn’t feel comfortable unless I was sleeping in my own bed. Although that is pretty much a true statement, I would have told any lie I could have thought up in order to keep from sleeping in the same house as that toilet.

Today, Evan and I headed off for the Shumaila Hari super market to stock up on essentials. I am no longer eating Fruit Loops for breakfast and have instead switched to Trix. Before we went to Shumaila Hari, we decided to lunch at… drum roll please… Kentucky Fried Chicken. That’s right my friends. I ordered up three pieces of the Colonel’s finest and chowed down. Thank you Colonel, thank you.

Tuesday, April 4, 2006

Day By Day

A new Iraqi blog by Saif Al-Yassen.
I made this blog to talk about my soul "BAGHDAD", Baghdad is my country where i borned in it so i like to talk on every thing happend and will happen bad or good specially these days. but i will not make it news paper i will add every thing nice and funny.................. good luck for me.


Go pay him a visit.

new; 1
total; 196

Sunday, April 2, 2006

Update

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Please excuse my ramblings...

By my calculations, took me approximately three weeks to fall into a rut. It goes something like this… Wake, Eat, Study, Eat, Class, Internet Café, Eat, Study, Sleep. It is my own personal opinion that forty-nine weeks of that isn’t going to cut the mustard, so I’ve made it a priority to try and shake up the routine every so often. I manage do this with varying degrees of success.

About this time last week, when my stomach was feeling rather “delicate”, Evan suggested a break from traditional Yemeni food so we planned on going to the Syrian restaurant. After agreeing to meet him at the internet café later that night, I headed out from the school happy in the knowledge that I was going to eat that night’s dinner with utensils instead of my hands.

But of course, that isn’t what happened, is it? By mutual agreement, Evan went to the mafraj (the common room for social gatherings, etc) to see if any of the other students wanted to go. He was able to recruit Aaron and Aussie Girl, but Aaron wanted to go to the fish souq (market) for dinner that night.

To be honest, dinner at the fish souq was tasty and enjoyable, even if I did have to eat with my hands. How it works is rather bizarre. First we stopped at a fish souq and bought our fish. Then we took the fish next door to a restaurant where they cooked it up in sort of a stew. The stew comes with a huge slab of flatbread. You tear off pieces of the flatbread and use it to scoop up the stew right out of the pot.

If you have problems with the concept of “shared” food, then this probably isn’t the dinner for you. Still, it’s was yummy and ended up only costing each of us about $2.50. I’m sure you’ll be happy to hear that I made it to the Syrian restaurant the next day :)~

I had heard from one of the other students that is here with the American Institute for Yemeni Studies that there was, no kidding, a bowling alley here in Sana’a.

“It” Ladies and Gentlemen, is FUN CITY, a cultural Chernobyl on the outskirts of Sana’a. It’s not quite Neverland Ranch and there is no Jesus Juice but they do have quite a few amusement park rides, a “southern” fried chicken restaurant, and… a bowling alley with pool tables!

It was Aussie Girl’s last night in Sana’a last Monday so six of us students got together and headed out there. It costs about $2.50 to get an entrance ticket to the bowling alley (which comes with a free game of bowling) and each game thereafter is about $0.50.

The day before we went bowling, I ran into a Yemeni gentleman that I had met at a wedding party my second day here. I had totally forgotten his face and his name, but he hadn’t forgotten mine. I incorrectly guessed his name to be Mohammed (which, by the way, is usually a safe bet) but he didn’t seem to mind.

Long story short, I spent the next three hours exhausting my Arabic vocabulary trying to be witty and interesting, which is hard for me to do in English, much less Arabic.

His name is Abdul Rahman. By the end of our talk I was invited to his village for the weekend (which is about 150 miles north of Sana’a). I managed to convince Evan (which wasn’t very hard) to join me.

While at Abdul Rahman's house, we were invited to wedding of one of Abdul Rahman’s cousins, so the following weekend, Evan and I are heading back to the village.

Evan is rather excited about going to the wedding. This is because Sheikh al-Ahmar is supposed to be there. If Evan is correct, Sheikh al-Ahmar is the leader of the Islah political party here in Yemen. He also has the dubious distinction of being a man the USA has asked be arrested by the Yemeni government and not allowed to leave Yemen. Of course it is our goal to try and get a photo-op with him.

In honor of being invited to such an auspicious event, Evan and I have decided to bedeck ourselves in full Yemeni garb, to include the jambiya (a decorative knife that all the men wear). There may be photos…

Saturday, April 1, 2006

Naxi in Qatar

Yesterday I watched an excellent Chinese documentary called E-Ya Village at the Al-Jazeera TV Production Festival in Doha. It covered aspects of this isolated Sichuan Naxi mountain village's daily life, but focused mainly on their religion, covering what they did for naming, coming of age, mourning, New Year, various sacrifices...

The film was full of (subtitled) Naxi dialog, but what I found most linguistically interesting was the writing system. As everybody should know :), Naxi has a complex pictographic writing system of some antiquity, called Dongba after the priests of their religion. In the film, no secular books or newspapers featured, and the few signs (at the clinic's entrance) were written in Chinese; but Dongba was used several times, always in a religious context. In particular, its most obvious "practical" use was for prayer flags put up in mourning contexts: whenever these flap in the wind, the wind is said to carry the words written on them, sections of the Naxi holy book, to the realm of the dead. It suggests a functional interpretation of the Dongba writing system as one intended essentially, not for communication with the living, but for communication with the spirit world. This has suggestive if not exact parallels - consider Mandaic's traditional functions, for instance. But obviously one would want to see more than just a film to analyze the issue!

The festival, incidentally, was very international, with numerous Persian, Chinese, Latin American, and French films as well as the Arabic ones. Unfortunately, they were let down by insufficient subtitling: non-Arabic films were subtitled only in English, if at all, while Arabic films were not subtitled, substantially restricting the audience for both. Hopefully next year they'll try to remedy this.