Saturday, April 29, 2006

10-ICAL papers

Hi folks, as you can guess by my absence, I've been extremely busy with school and work. I am in my last quarter of community college and am taking two demanding psychology courses and another anthropology course. They're very fascinating! I graduate with Associate in Arts and Sciences degree in just 48 days. I'm excited - especially since I don't have to worry about homework and tests for a while. And I can finally concentrate on learning Russian. ;-)

In February, I submitted my transfer application to the University of Washington in Seattle so I can begin getting my degrees in linguistics (and possibly anthropology, though that's up in the air still). If I get accepted and if the financial situation is good, then I will be a UW Husky with junior standing this fall. I won't find out until June or July if I become accepted, which is rather annoying because I can't stand the uncertainty. Argh! So wish me luck.

Back in January, the Linguistic Society of the Philippines and SIL International hosted The Tenth International Conference on Austronesian Languages (10-ICAL)at Puerto Princesa in Palawan.

I, unfortunately, was not able to make it there but many other linguists well-known to me in Philippine & Austronesian linguistics were in attendance like Lawrence Reid, David Zorc, Andrew Pawley, Loren Billings, Michael Forman, Bob Blust, Hsiu-chuan Liao, John Wolff, Paz Buenaventura Naylor, and many others.

As someone who didn't attend, I found the webpage where they collected all the papers presented at the conference to be extremely useful. They are accessible at http://www.sil.org/asia/philippines/ical/papers.html

There is so much to read and they cover a great variety of Philippine languages and other Austronesian languages. So far I have read Pangilinan's paper on Kapampangan orthography, Liao's presentation of dual pronouns in Philippine languages, McFarland's paper on deictic pronouns, and Zabolotnaya's paper about Philippine linguistics in Russia.

So that's it for now. When I have time, I'll do a review of Carl Rubino & Hsiu-chuan Liao's Current Issues in Philippine Anthropology: Parangal kay Lawrence A. Reid that I've been meaning to do.

5 comments:

jp 吉平 said...

Hey Christopher,

I was a linguistics major! And I'm a Spanish teacher! And I'm in Seattle! Sheesh!

Unknown said...

pnice blog..

Anonymous said...

Hello.

Your blog is fantastic.

I am a 4th year Broadcasting student from the University of the Philippines Diliman, and am thinking of developing the Kapampangan mass media industry (especially film and tv) in Pampanga, in the pursuit of preserving our own language and making the Kapampangans love their own language (people from Angeles City actually prefer to speak Tagalog and some schools don't allow students to speak the vernacular in school).

I personally can't read Kapampangan as fluent as i can do in English and Tagalog. Even Francais.

I acquired this Kapampangan Bible form the Spanish period and i can't understand most of it (i only base on context clues).

I also am a freelance stage writer and i am currently writing two plays, "Atin Cu Pung Singsing" (a story about the history of pampanga and how names of places such as sexmoan were coined) and "Uyan Na Ing Lahar," one about the infamous Pinatubo catastrophe.

Can you recomment books on Pampanga/Kapampangan?

tnx and more power!\

-www.lagsh.com

Anonymous said...

Hi there,
I was lucky enough to get to 10ICAL in Puerto Princesa in January. It was a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to the next one. I've put up a post about it with photos here: http://perezsez.blogspot.com/2006/02/tenth-intellectual-chatfest-about.html
Enjoy!

Anonymous said...

Hello Christopher. I went to a bar in Timog where journalists hang out and have met linguist professors in UP, but failed to mention this to them because the alcohol took us to a different avenue of conversation. I am physician who grew up in Dupax del Sur, Nueva Vizcaya. This town, which has the most population of Isinays among three towns is unique to the dying dialect that is Isinay. My rough estimate in Dupax del Sur alone is probably less than 700 speakers, and they are mostly 30 y/o and above. My native dialect is Ilocano. As a kid, i spoke Ilocano with my parents but outside the house I spoke Isinay with my friends. At 10 years old, my family and I emigrated to the US. After 15 years outside the Philippines, I come back to my beloved Dupax and found that all the kids were speaking Tagalog. Even my nephews were speaking Tagalog in a town that I left 15 years prior, was barely able to speak any dialect other than Ilocano and Isinay. The Isinay dialect is literally taking its last breath. I found your site by googling language preservation. How, if possible -as I am ignorant to the undertakings of this matter- does a dying dialect get preserved? Please help. This is probably one of the purest dialects in the Philippines that has no Spanish barbarisms. Thank you for any of your suggestions.