If
you had looked at the Faiwar people fifty years ago, the way they acquired
language differs from today. Fifty
years ago, we were just beginning All-Knowing. Then children were largely ignored until they started to
utter sentences, including the two word sentences. Now, because we have discovered that there is a pattern for
language development, we encourage Childs from birth in the art of
language. We do not distinguish
Childs talk from Adult talk. We
expect them to understand us—it is pertinent to our survival one day. Today, Childs undergo all of the
American phases in pre-linguistic vocalizations. From birth to two months, Childs usually cry reflexively and
can make sounds that normal adults make (coughing, sneezing). Two-Five months Childs will begin
cooing and laughing and developing consonants. From four to six months they babble and begin to play with
their vocalics—they will play with pitch and their speech organs to produce
interesting sounds. From six to 12
months they are usually forming consonants and vowels and they only continue to
advance from this point.
Faiwar
language reflects the Faiwar people through every word they use. When spoken and written, the Faiwar
language is very clear, short, and crisp.
Faiwar people hate to waste time, so their language reflects this norm
of ours. The Faiwar language also
uses words specific to the Faiwar people.
We do not have several names for parts of one’s clothes. We pay little attention to what we wear
and, unless one is a Carer, we do not have several names for our body
parts. Since Faiwar live in a
jungle full of many dangers, they have names specific to their
environment. There are so many
names for plants and trees because Faiwar have to eat them, watch out for them
(some of them will eat you), and create with them. In addition to that, Faiwar respect life and recognize
plants are life. It is important
to appreciate the living, so we must name all that is living. The same goes for the animals we come
across on daily routines. We must
hunt daily to feed our people, and it is important to know the animals in the
jungle. We rarely fish, so our
names for fish and other creatures of water is few. Our classifications of reality are another example of how
our language reflects our culture.
Life is important to us, but we do not have many stages between it and
death. We do have one ritual that
signifies a Child is now an adult.
Other than this, we only see one as dead or alive, and we see one as a
Child, an adult, or an elder if they are alive. If they are dead we might refer to what they once were, but
in death we are all the same. Our
kinship reflects how we value and classify our kinship. We are a people, so we rarely separate
ourselves into smaller clans.
Instead, we may recognize our Parent, and our Child, as well as all
Childs. All Elders are seen as
each of our kin as well. We
definitely do not separate them out from our kinship definitions. The colors our culture uses is green,
turquoise, murky green, red, yellow, black, and gray with darker and lighter
versions among them. Most of our
environment is green, so seeing different shades is extremely relevant for
us. Red is important to see
because we have to hunt and kill, and if we are hurt we need to tend to our
wound. Yellow comes from the sun
and light, while black and gray colors come from shadows which are important
because we are constantly prey to something in the jungle.
A huge metaphor in our culture is
hunting. We use hunting phrases in
every part of our life—such as when Childs play, or someone is angry and tries
different techniques to get back at someone. Hunting is a huge part of daily life and it is necessary for
the Faiwar to survive. For this
reason, we create metaphors of it in our daily lives because it is so important
to us. Food is another
metaphor. Since this is a daily
part of our life, we can refer to food to express how happy or upset we are, or
even how ridiculous someone is being.
Though we need food to survive, we also enjoy food so we use it to
express ourselves though with short and simple expressions. Knowledge and strength are two other
metaphors we use in our language.
Knowledge is much simpler than the American English’s multiple versions
of what knowledge is. For us,
knowledge is a few reflections—one is dumb, one is average, one is smart, one
is genius. Although we have four
simple terms, our people use the terms a lot. When they use this metaphor, it is usually critiquing
something. For example, an Elder
may say that the foreigner is dumb.
Although this may reference our schema of knowledge, we understand that
they really think the person is beneath them, or stupid, or that they do not
like them. This metaphor reflects
how we view knowledge—it is very important to us. Strength is an important metaphor for our culture. Strength and knowledge combined mean
survival to us. Strength is
something admired and revered.
These metaphors are usually positive—we rarely focus on how weak a
person is—though at times someone may use a negative one that looks at
weakness. The hardest metaphor for
foreigners to catch is our metaphor of space. We do not value wasting space, much like how we hate to
waste materials. We use spatial
metaphors to get onto children, to criticize others, and to examine our way of
thinking. For example, we may tell
someone they are being closed minded to acknowledge how well they are doing,
and we may tell someone that the house is larger than life to express how terrible
it is.
Our
language developed from other jungle tribes, though we traveled the farthest
west than our sister languages. We
still have much to study to understand our development, but our language has
changed drastically since our culture moved. When we first moved to our current location, we had less
words for trees and animals. We
came from a smaller part of the jungle that did not have as many living
things. We had to create words for
the animals and plants surrounding us.
Another big change in our culture was the All-Knowing. Once upon a time we did not have an
education place. It took a lot of
discussions among our Faiwar Counsel before they agreed this would be best for
our survival. For this reason, we
had to create terms to reflect knowledge.
As we sent our people out to other cultures, we began to notice how they
brought back new terms in our All-Knowing. These phrases may pop up occasionally among our speech.
We
express mood by our interactions with others. If we are upset or want to be alone, we are alone. If we are happy and want to be among
our own, we smile and join in the celebrations. We are able to express our mood and emotions through
physical traits. We rarely express
them through language, with the exception being our metaphors. It is easier to walk up to someone you
are mad at, and to punch them to make them understand your frustration. Since our people easily forgive each
other and instantly assume they did something wrong (or most people do) we
rarely have communication problems dealing with mood and emotions. Our beliefs are expressed entirely
through language. We believe that
life is important and should be respected. We recognize all life by naming it with language.
Our
proxemics may differ greatly from Earth proxemics. We value our space and hate to waste it. For this reason, our proxemics require
little space in between people. We
do not modify our body in any way.
Honestly, I do not think we would care either way if someone chose to
modify their body since we rarely pay attention to it. We do not desire to waste materials on
the body in such a manner as to modify it. We use a significant amount of gestures. We have to use gestures when we are out
hunting, and we beckon to each other a lot when among our Faiwar people. Facial
expressions are encouraged. They
help us to understand each other when one is upset or happy. We also encourage eye contact. Though we do not like to fight among
each other, we love to challenge.
Eye contact can be seen as a challenge, as well as a confident and
assertive Faiwar.
Some
neologisms that exist among Faiwar include: Trappy, Cutback, and Tripe. Trappy is a term used to describe a person who makes the
other person in a relationship with them upset all of time, as if they are in a
cage. For this reason, we use the
term Trap (to capture) and make it a new word to describe a person. A cutback is a completely invented word
to express a person who just goes in circles or repeats themself. A tripe was originally a type of tree
whose leaves were smoked among young people. Now, this term describes young Faiwar who are going in a bad
direction.
Faiwar
people do like to play sports and to compete. We play Coulpack—it is sort of like soccer, but we have a
different number of players in a different round of spots. We can actually accommodate to whatever number we
want—including an odd number. We
do not mind having the odds stacked against us in sports. This gives us a moment of extra pride
if we win. We also play a lot of
educational games—for those who are into learning. These games use one’s wit and knowledge.
One
of our semantic domains includes weaponry. Among weaponry we have swords, bows and arrows, knives,
maces, and spears. These weapons
break down into even smaller semantic domains to describe different kinds of
each. My culture uses weaponry a
lot to defend ourselves and to hunt.
Having these different weapons shows how fierce we can be when we are
defending and also when we are hunting.
Another semantic domain of my people is the weather. In this domain we have rainy, sunny,
humid, and storm. The weather is important because it determines how we hunt, and it can affect our survival. Another semantic
domain we have is to describe types of people, almost a gender domain though
not necessarily. This domain
includes Faiwar, birthing Faiwar, Giving Birth Faiwar, and Lactating
Faiwar. All genders and all people
are considered Faiwar (at least if they are of our people). The birthing Faiwar is specific to the
biological sex that can birth, and it is used only for when a Faiwar is
pregnant. The Giving Birth Faiwar
is a similar word to the birthing Faiwar except that they are literally having
their Child. The Lactating Faiwar
is again a specific biological sex who, after Giving Birth they begin to need
to feed their Child. The only
reason we distinguish sex in this way is because we needed to recognize when
one was having a child. These
terms, with the exception of Faiwar, do not include all members of the same sex
since some Faiwar refuse to have Childs.
It only describes people in certain phases. We have a semantic domain for kin as well: Elder, Parent, and Child. All Elders are considered kin, but
Parent and Child can describe the literal biological relationship between a
Parents and Childs. Childs can
also refer to all Childs in our community since we raise our community as
one. We do not recognize other
kinship terms in our community—we believe we are all family and that it is
unnecessary to separate ourselves into even smaller units for fear this will
cause us to break apart and stop supporting each other. We also use age as a semantic
domain. In this domain, we only
acknowledge Child, Adult, and Elder as different ages levels. A Child is from birth to 15 years of
age. At 15, the Child becomes an
Adult. The only age description
that varies as far as what the age is is Elder. Elder is not just an age term to signify one who is older and
can no longer care for themselves.
Elder also refers to anyone of any age who cannot care for themselves. Rarely do we have a Child or younger
Adult who becomes an Elder, but we have had a few cases of this. This is an important domain that
exposes how we view age in our community.
We only recognize three different age distinctions because these tell us
when one is still too young to really participate, when one is too old to
participate, and when one is expected to participate.
My culture does not recognize gender, with
the exception of sex during reproductive processes described earlier. We also do not categorize race or
class. For us, we are a
community. We do what we love or
are interested in for the betterment of our people. We share what we have, and we do not have reasons to create
class or racial distinctions. We
do not pay enough attention to our bodies to really focus on our skin colors to
distinguish race either. As far as
sexuality, there are words to describe when one is in a relationship or a
casual hook up, but we do not really have terminology for sexuality. The sexuality domain would require us
to recognize different genders, which we hardly do. For this reason, it is easier to just acknowledge when one
is in a relationship. We do not
frown on Faiwar who have relationships with their same biological partner.
