American Linguists in Nepal on Nepali, Facebook, and Language Preservation: S7E5

If you've ever wondered what it's like to live and do linguistic research in Kathmandu, Nepal, this episode is for you! Big & White, their podcasting nicknames, are two American Linguists who, until very recently were living in Nepal and creating a rather hilarious audio account of their daily lives on their podcast (the https://bigwhitepodcast.libsyn.com/website (Big & White podcast). Their connection and how they bounce off each other is so much fun to listen to. This is the main reason I became a fan of The Big & White Podcast in the first place and definitely why I asked to interview them for the show. This episode is a part of a podcast pair. How apt. 

Original publication date: February 9, 2021

More: https://linktr.ee/stephfuccio

Transcript

SPEAKER_07 0:00

We also get the amazing, super lucky opportunity to travel out to these really remote areas where these smaller languages are spoken and we get to hang out with the people that speak them and ask them about their language, and it's really fun. It's amazing. Yep.

SPEAKER_03 0:20

I won't be in London dirty jazz.

SPEAKER_08 0:23

Hey there, this is Steph from Stephfuccio.com with another episode of Geopats Language. We are traveling to Nepal today to chat with two American expats who were doing linguistic research in Kathmandu for a few years until very recently. If that sounds familiar, you may have heard the episode on Geopats Podcasting with these same two lovely women. They are from the Big and White Podcast. And I will tell you more about them in a minute, but first I want to share something really exciting with you. There is now a newsletter for all of my creative projects, as well as my creative process and some other behind the scenes information on everything, everything in my pod world and beyond. Everything in my creative world, basically. You can sign up at stefffuccio.com. It's S T P H F U C C I O. This mini episode is part of the conversation that I had with the women behind the Big and White podcast. Because they do linguistic research, we ventured off into a very fun language space in the conversation that felt like it belonged more on Geopet's language than it did on Geopetz Podcasting. In this part of the conversation, we do talk about the Nepali language, their linguistic research, the impact of digital spaces on Nepali and other languages in Nepal. Spoiler, there are many languages in Nepal and many other things. I think you're really going to find this nugget of language joy quite enjoyable to listen to. And if you do listen to this first and haven't heard the Geopats podcasting interview with the big and white women, please go back and uh and dig into that. If you like this or any of the episodes of Geopaths Language and would like to throw us a tip, please feel free to go to the virtual tip jar known as buy me a coffee at buymeacoffee.com forward slash geopaths and buy us a coffee. I love coffee. Actually, there's a Geopaths Coffee podcast also. Did you know that? Alright, alright, alright. That's enough. Let's get to the geeky language conversation with the women from the Big and White podcast. Nepalese is the local language, right? Yeah, you can call it Nepalese or Nepali. Nepali, okay. Do both of you speak Nepali? We do, yes. Okay. Have you ever or would you ever do an episode in Nepali? Absolutely not.

SPEAKER_02 2:47

Oh my gosh. I can just Why? It just opens us up to a level a level of vulnerability that it would be absolutely terrifying. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 2:57

I think well it would be okay. I we would need a Nepali person to do it with us for sure. Like we couldn't just do it ourselves. We're both relatively good with Nepali, but like all day at work, we do all of our work in English when we're in the office. And English is really prevalent in Kemandu specifically. So even with a lot of our Nepali friends, we speak English. So while we function quite well in Nepali, I feel like neither of our fluency levels are quite high enough to not embarrass ourselves completely or to make sense.

SPEAKER_02 3:28

And it also just feels weird too. Like even when we're speaking Nepali like in a group of people or something, and then for everyone to be able to understand, we should continue to speak Nepali to each other. But then you're speaking to this other American. You're like, this is not how we interact with each other. This feels weird. But I will say the only time that we have naturally spoken Nepali together is in Cambodia.

SPEAKER_07 3:54

Because when we had a secret language, we could be like, oh hey, do you see that guy over there with the blue shirt? Yeah. Like no one around us knew what we were saying. It was very useful. That was fun. Yeah. You're right though, about the like talking one language with like specific other people. That feels very weird. Maybe that's why I would want a Nepali to be in on the conversation.

SPEAKER_02 4:17

We do like use Nepali though. Like it we have segments where we'll say, let's talk about this Nepali phrase and what it means and like break it down and how you use that and stuff like that. But that yeah, that's pretty short and it's still a little bit scary to me because I'm like, um no, whatever Nepali listeners is gonna go in and be like, um, excuse me, you use the dental tuh, and it was supposed to be retroflex aspirated tuh. Like, you know. It hasn't happened fast. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_08 4:51

And humor is really hard to get across in other languages. Like humor seems to be really, really tied to people's first language or most used language, and that you guys are so funny and so bantery with each other that would probably be a little bit delayed, maybe.

SPEAKER_07 5:08

That's true. Well, it might be funny for a different reason. Like people might laugh at us instead of with us.

SPEAKER_02 5:13

Which we're fine with. Yeah, that's true. Put ourselves out there.

SPEAKER_07 5:17

I did find when I was studying abroad in South America. People thought I was really funny. And I think it was because my humor was so new to them. Like to me, it was like, oh, these are the jokes that my friends make together all the time that are vaguely funny, but we're also used to it that it's like whatever. But to them, it was like so novel. It seemed like I was this amazing, visionary, creative, humorous person.

SPEAKER_08 5:43

And share only what you're willing or able to share. But what kind of linguistic studies do you do out in the field?

SPEAKER_07 5:49

Oh, we'll talk about our work all day. We love it. So both of us do the same job, which is linguistic field research. Essentially, we are finding out about the language situation, ecology map of uh the smaller languages of Nepal. So, for example, I just got assigned a project that is in one specific area. We know that there are people who all speak somewhat similarly, but we have no idea like where the boundaries are there. Like, can people in this district understand people in this other district? If we were to write their language down, would they both be able to use the same books, or would they need to have different projects, different alphabets, that kind of thing? Yeah, so we spend a lot of time in the office, but we also get the amazing, super lucky opportunity to travel out to these really remote areas where these smaller languages are spoken, and we get to hang out with the people that speak them and ask them about their language, and it's really fun. It's amazing, yeah.

SPEAKER_08 7:05

I'm gonna pop in here real quick with two quick language announcements to try to help you with your language learning process. One is for German and two is for any language. So, one, German, German uncovered. You've heard me talk about German Uncovered course before, and I'm back talking about it because it is a fantastic course. I haven't finished it yet, in full disclosure. I think I stopped at about chapter seven or eight when we had to leave Germany due to visa issues, not due to anything nefarious. But I will hop on the bandwagon once I get my life in order, which could take a little while. This is 2020 plus, not just 2021, but I'll get there. Anyway, point being, German Uncovered is a fantastic course. The whole point of this course is that it's story-based. You've got a 20-chapter story of these teenagers going to Germany to experience the language and the culture, and there is a bit of mystery and intrigue in the story as well. You've got everything online, you've got videos that talk about the cognates to help you transfer your knowledge of English over to German. You've got videos on grammar, vocabulary, oh, and so much more, and so much more. And so you're following the story and you're getting motivated, and it's so easy to get motivated by the the movement of the story itself, and it kind of it honestly, even just in seven or eight chapters, I felt myself getting pulled into the story and forgetting the grammar and doing things perfectly and just wanting to know what happens at the end of the story. German Uncovered is the name of the course. I'll have an affiliate link for you in the show notes, as well as on stefffuccio.com forward slash Geopaths Language. The second announcement is from Online Language Exchange, and they're going to tell you all about it themselves.

SPEAKER_00 8:55

Hi everyone. Join us at the Online Language Exchange. We host events for language learners to practice and improve their target language with native speakers. The events are well structured, fun, friendly, and great for conversational practice. You are placed in small groups of two to six people. You speak ten minutes of your language, ten minutes of your target language, then you move to a different group with new people. We usually have over one hundred and thirty participants attending from all over the world, with languages including English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Arabic, Mandarin, Russian, Irish, and sometimes more, depending on who participates on the day. All levels are welcome to join. There is no admission fee, but participants can contribute if they wish. So if you're looking to practice your target language in real conversations with real people, join our online language learning community. The event takes place every Wednesday. For more information on time zones, how to connect, check out our Facebook and Insta pages at online language exchange.

SPEAKER_08 9:56

So hopefully these two tools will help you with your own language learning process. Now, let's get back to geeking out with language with the women from the Big and White Podcast.

SPEAKER_02 10:16

So the way that we're working in Nepal is that we each have research visas through one of the local universities. Um, and so that's usually one or two year project. So we say, hey, we're interested in studying this specific language, and here is the things that I want to find out about this language. You know, maybe yeah, who is still speaking it? Are the kids still speaking it as a first language? Is only the grandparents speaking it, those kind of questions. And so we get permission from the university and we get to work in coordination with their linguistics department as well. So we're not hopefully like our goal is not to work in isolation. No, absolutely. Um, but to be adding to academia within Nepal.

unknown 11:00

Yep.

SPEAKER_07 11:00

And hopefully the information that we get can help those who would like to help the people who speak these languages uh write their language down or document their language for future generations. Our work also informs the list of all the world's languages where they're spoken and you know, how many dialects they have. And it also helps the government have a good understanding of what languages are in their own country. I have a very geeky question.

SPEAKER_08 11:28

I love looking at what the internet does to our language, like Gretchen McCulloch's because internet book and David Kristol's analysis of like mobile language and that kind of thing. I geek out on that stuff hard. Do you guys focus at all on the technical side of what happens to Nepali when people are using it on their devices?

SPEAKER_07 11:49

Uh our research focus is the smaller or less used, or not less used, but smaller population uh languages of Nepal. So we haven't done any research ourselves on Nepali. But it is interesting just to see it kind of as lay people, you know, how people text each other, whatever. And we also do try to find out whether people who speak smaller languages are using the internet too. And that's always fun to see. Like one group that I worked with a couple years ago, they have a super active Facebook group for their language, and they do all the posts in their local language, and they, you know, post news about their group, what's happening, or if there's an article written in their language in a local newspaper, they'll post that. And yeah, that's really fun to see.

SPEAKER_02 12:37

Yeah, it's really cool. Like the group that I'm working with right now, it's very low vitality language, meaning that barely any kids are still learning it and only grandparents are speaking it. Sometimes not even the grandparents, but in some of the communities, and it's very widespread across the country too. But we found out that some of the youth from another district, like we're talking like two days of driving, not far geographically, but two days of driving to get to this village. And we said, Yeah, I didn't grow up speaking this language, but I'm really interested in it. And so I went on Facebook and I found other people who are in my ethnic group who speak the language, and I friended them, and I, you know, I've been chatting with them and asking them how they speak the language and comparing it to how like my grandmother speaks the language. And I went, you know, I found out about language preservation events happening in this other area, and I went there and met people. So it's really amazing, like the networking capabilities of Facebook, even. Right, absolutely.

SPEAKER_07 13:41

And another cool thing that social media has helped with is that people who maybe don't have an official writing system for their language are basically kind of creating an unofficial sort of collaborative literacy, like crowdsourced alphabet, I guess you could say. Where it's like instead of having an official, okay, this is how we spell our word, here's our dictionary that you know, some scholars sat down and decided. They're just kind of negotiating it as they go along and are practicing and working together. And yeah, so it's really empowering to people who maybe don't have the linguistic tools to create some official rules for their writing their language, they can do it through social media. How many languages are there in Nepal? Around 120, maybe more. Yeah. In a population of 30 million people in a country the size of what, Tennessee? Yeah. The state, if people are familiar with that.

SPEAKER_08 14:42

Wow. So is it because of the geographical boundaries that you do? Do you think that there's so many different languages?

SPEAKER_07 14:48

Yeah, there's m several factors. One is that Nepal is smushed between China and India. So there's a bunch of languages that are more influenced from India, and then a bunch that are more from Tibet. But a really big factor is the Himalayan mountains. So there's all these, you know, little valleys and areas that are super hard to reach. And so the people in those areas tend to have their own dialects and languages because over time they just evolve separately from everything around them.

SPEAKER_08 15:18

Okay, so the grants that you get are one to two years. So do you just keep going back with different research projects?

SPEAKER_07 15:24

Basically.

SPEAKER_08 15:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_07 15:26

Yeah. Yeah, I've been here almost six years, and White has been here three years. Yep. There's still work to be done. Yeah. Still working like it is.

SPEAKER_08 15:37

Do you think you'll be there for quite a long time from now?

SPEAKER_07 15:41

I mean, my personality type is afraid of commitment, so I'm not gonna answer that.

SPEAKER_02 15:46

Yeah, it is hard. I think that we love living in Nepal. We actually just talked about this in a recent episode, didn't we? Yeah. Yeah. We love Nepal. We love living here, but there's of course, as you know as an expat, like so many challenges too. So you kind of have to hold all of your plans loosely. Like maybe even if we wanted to live here multiple more years, we we don't know exactly what kind of work will be left for us after our next projects, or what the you know, visa situation will be like, or what will happen at home with our families. So we're kind of open to whatever at this point. Yeah, very true.

SPEAKER_07 16:25

Very true. I think part of the decision, too, for me is like the fabric of your life can change so quickly. You know, I have a great community here right now. I love all the friends that I have, but like half of them left last year while I was gone. And you know, another the other half could leave this year, and suddenly I maybe wouldn't like living in Kathmandu quite as much as you want. So, yeah, that's another factor, I think.

SPEAKER_02 16:51

Nepal has an interesting expat culture, I think, from my limited experience from other countries, because Nepal is so small. And after the Civil War happened, when did it end? Like twin the late 90s. Yeah, 20 years ago. During the Civil War, every all of the foreigners moved into Kathmandu from the villages that they had been living in, and then after the Civil War, nobody really moved back out of Kathmandu. And Kathmandu is like it's not the only city, but it's definitely like the main place where expats live. So we tend to just kind of be all smushed together. Yeah. So you can have a huge community, and then, like Big said, within the span of a month, everyone is gone, which definitely happened to me after my first year. I had an amazing group of friends, and then everybody left, and I was like, what? This is unexpected.

SPEAKER_07 17:40

And then she decided, okay, I guess I'll be friends with you now, Big.

SPEAKER_02 17:44

Yeah. I had to give it up. I fought it for too long. The real origin story comes out.

SPEAKER_06 17:53

It's true.

SPEAKER_02 17:55

Fine, I'll be depressed for four months, and then we can be friends.

SPEAKER_08 18:01

That's a huge turnover. From half to all of your friends leaving in one year is a huge expat turnover.

SPEAKER_07 18:06

Yeah. I mean, the thing is, it's all kind of comes down to luck, right? Like two of the people that left uh last year that I was close friends with had each lived here for nine years. You know, it's it's not like there's a big turnover of no one lives here more than six months except for us. It's just sometimes you get unlucky, you know. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:32

I won't take it on the dirty job.

SPEAKER_08 18:35

Thank you so much to the women from the Big and White Podcast for coming on the show almost a year ago and for having this conversation and for having such an amazing podcast. Now, I mentioned in the Geopets podcasting episode that they have since left Nepal, actually really recently, I think it was about a month ago, and returned to the US for an indeterminate period of time. Because once you've been an expat for a few years, it's really hard to say I'm back for good. It's hard not to keep being overseas. But that's a completely different podcast that I don't make. You can follow their journey re-acclimating to the US on their Instagram account, and that information will be in the show notes for you. If you did like this episode, the episode that they were on on Geopaths Podcasting, or both, please do consider going over to Pod Chaser, P-O-D-C-H-A-S-E-R, and giving us a review. Type a little something to let us know why you liked it. Even just one or two sentences makes the world of difference for people who are thinking about listening to the podcast but aren't quite sure if they want to. We really appreciate that. A link will be in the show notes for you that you can just click on and go over and review the show. So thank you so much for that. Also, thank you to Damon Castillo for the music that we have used in this and all of the Geopets Podcast Network podcasts. You can find him at Damoncastillo.com. Finally, thank you very much to Online Language Exchange for including us in their language world and helping us pass on information to help your language learning experience be a more personable, enjoyable one. Until next time, thank you so much. And why not? Tschüss, Sajien, goodbye, adios, ciao, and so on. More soon.

SPEAKER_04 20:38

Every day, working in rolling streets. Big enough garbage, every day, stand up, deal with food. Big enough garbage, garbage, do the yard, take a crash, and my garbage, very big, garbage. I can't speak.

SPEAKER_03 21:21

I won't put it up to it.

SPEAKER_04 21:32

Take your feet out of the party. Feel your butt now on step. Take in your party. You're the free. Now my heart is gonna do party. Everything makes me think of the stick. Make them back and be a bigger.

SPEAKER_03 22:08

Jesus made a mess of me that I won't take another dirty job.

SPEAKER_05 22:46

Made a mess in me. Oh no. This made a mess in me. Oh no. Made a mess in me. I won't want to go.

unknown 23:03

Made a mess in me.

SPEAKER_05 23:10

Oh no. I won't. I won't.

SPEAKER_03 23:24

I won't.

SPEAKER_01 24:40

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