The Micronesian Dialects and The Overnight Voyage gave us a great idea about what impact of overnight voyage has brought to the development of the Micronesian language. I totally agreed with author’s opinion about if the islands separated by a single voyage night at sea, their language will be mutually intelligible. The maximum distance is 100 miles in Micronesia. It based on the sales technology at that time. People during that time are mostly non-senior voyager. Nowadays, because of the recent dispersal of population, language can be mutually intelligible between areas in s greater distance.
Hopefully, the link I found below will give you general idea of Federated States of Micronesia. http://www.fsmgov.org/info/index.html . From the educational perspective, the illiteracy rate is still very high. According to 2000 Census, there are 12.3% people aged 25 and over without any schooling. As everybody knows, education is very important to the development of the area. Everything has pros and cons. It is possible for education to promote the dialects intelligible and also education can make the local dialect disappear. Like in Hawaii, Hawaiian language is the verge of extinction. So people in Micronesia should pay attention to preserve their dialects.
Because of technique problem, I post it late. Sorry about that, folks.
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The article was interesting. He makes a case of languages and people being able to comprehend each other within a certain traveling distance (1 day's trip approx. 100 miles or less). The illustration depicts the islands and its corresponding 100 miles radii which links it to other islands in the near vicinity with whom they can communicate with. In regards to Chenying's post, the latter paragraph I couldn't quite understand it, but I think she is referring to education being a core need for any society to understand their history and to preserve their culture.
ReplyDeleteThe way Marck describes language in the Pacific is quiet interesting by limiting the language similarities of the pacific to around 100 miles, or about 1 day's trip. The map of Micronesia shows the approximate distance between the small islands where languages could be similar and understood by the nearby islands. I found this article very interesting in the evolution of languages in the Pacific.
ReplyDeleteI found the article interesting in that people only tend to be able to understand languages of islands within a day or roughly 100 miles. I found the illistration of the islands and its 100 mile radius of corrisponding languages interesting. The spread and evolution of the austronesian language is amazing given distance and natural barriers that the natives had to overcome.
ReplyDeleteThis article was very short but Marck was able to convey his point about the island chains and how languages are connected when a voyage is made in 1 day, or 100 miles. This was an interesting answer to the question of language diversity that I have never been introduced to before reading this article. I believe that there is a certain truth to this evidence because islands such as the Hawaiian Islands may vary in language complexities but the people of each island are still, for the most part, able to understand each other. Therefore, Marck generally says that the further away people are from each other, the less they usually understand.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that most islands were only separated by 100 miles or less is further proof that languages were shared by many groups of people. This also explains many of the linguistic similarities that many Micronesian islands have with one another through the concept of the dialect chain. In terms of education and literacy, this could potentially be good or bad for the languages of the Micronesian region. Sometimes, the introduction of literacy can mean the extinction of a language, as demonstrated in the Besnier article.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to correlate the 100 miles/overnight voyage with meals, if I may - people are unwilling to travel farther than having to plan meals to take on a trip on a daily basis. For the majority of people on the trip, they could simply sleep the night away and know that by the next day, they'd be on land again and able to eat, and if they got hungry during the voyage they could simply take out a snack on the way. While 100 miles may be a limitation of the sailing technology of the day, think about our own methods of transportation, and how far we usually travel. Trips requiring eating on the journey seem to be much less frequent than quick trips to and fro, and while that may be because of the the size of our islands and constrained in where we can go easily and cheaply, commutes from suburbs to the city in more spread out areas are much more in a time frame of not going hungry by the time one gets to work.
ReplyDeleteThis article corresponds to Ritsuko's Kikusawa's idea of dialects chains. Marck pointed out that people who travel within a 100-mile radii (overnight voyage), generally have linguistic similarities and are mutually intelligible. Kikusawa's article explains dialect chains and illustrates how island A and B would be similar and mutually intelligible, then island A and island D. Dialects at the ends of the chain rarely communicate with each other, so therefore are like separate languages. Kikusawa’s illustration of dialect chains shows further evidence that people that travel a 100 mile distance have language similarities. I feel that Marck’s rule also applies for the Hawaiian islands because each neighbor island have similarities, but there are still language differences in the pronunciation of certain words, their usage of slang, and a different variation of island dialects throughout the chain.
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