Oyez! Oyez! Oyez!

I thought about Bill McKissack last evening while Mrs. RWP and I were watching one of those television programs that deal with apprehending criminals and bringing them to justice in the courts of the United States. There are many such programs. Some of them are dramatized series with actors working from scripts (Law and Order in its many variations, CSI in its many variations). Some of them are so-called “reality shows” that don’t employ actors at all but use footage of actual police interviews and courtroom proceedings. The First 48, American Justice, 48 Hours/Hard Evidence, and Dateline (to name a few) spring to mind. There are also scads of faux court shows (binding arbitration, really) on weekday afternoon television that have been presided over by the likes of Judge Judy, Judge Joe Brown, Judge Mathis, Judge Hatchett, Judge Alex, Judge Jeanine Pirro, Judge Marilyn Milian, and before her, Judge Jerry, and before him, Judge Ed Koch, and before him, going all the way back to the dawn of time, Judge Joseph A. Wapner.

Bill McKissack, a man in his sixties when I was bidding goodbye to forty-something, was my boss’s boss in the big corporation. The sad end to his story is that on the very day we presented him with a “book of memories” at his retirement party, he went home, looked at some of the pictures with his wife, decided to lie down for a nap before dinner, and never woke up. You could say that his work was his life. But I digress.

Mr. McKissack would wander the aisles sometimes and engage us peons in casual conversation. Just to be friendly. Just to prove he was still “one of the guys.” Plus I think it could get rather lonely in the big office up front with the windows. Anyway, one day the conversation turned to our court system because someone in the group had received a summons to serve on jury duty.

“I remember the first time I was called for jury duty,” Bill said.
“I was just old enough to vote and still living with my parents in Jackson, Tennessee.”

When the judge asked the prospective jurors whether any of them had formed an opinion about the case, Bill (who knew nothing at all about the case) piped up, “I think he’s guilty.”

Since the proper answer would have been “No, Your Honor,” the surprised judge asked Bill, “Why do you think this man is guilty before you have been presented with any evidence?”

“Well,” said Bill, “the police don’t just go around arresting people for no reason.”

The judge looked at him sternly and said, “Young man, I see that you do not understand our system of jurisprudence,” and excused Bill from the panel.

We all had a hearty laugh, Bill McKissack went back to his office, and life returned to normal in the big corporation.

In our system of jurisprudence, by the way, a person is presumed to be innocent of any crime with which he or she has been accused until evidence has been presented in a court of law and it is determined, usually by an impartial jury of one’s peers, that he or she is guilty of the crime “beyond a reasonable doubt” (in a criminal case) or “by a preponderance of the evidence” (in a civil case) .

Somewhere, Raymond (Dustin Hoffman) is saying to Charlie (Tom Cruise), "Eight minutes till Wapner."

I know how Raymond felt.

Speaking of speaking in tongues...

Once again Mrs. RWP and I find ourselves in Alabamistan for a few days visiting our daughter’s family. So far we have found no BMDs (Banjos of Mass Destruction), but we are keeping our eyes open.

Natives here are divided into two colorful flocks with two distinct calls. One group say “Roll, Tide!” for no apparent reason and the other group say “War Eagle!” almost constantly.

Aside from those fascinating characteristics, Alabamian is not an easy language to understand at times. One must be alert always to the possibility that the natives are speaking in a secret code to mislead the outsider about the very real threat BMDs pose to our way of life.

Example 1: Ah had a raht nahss tahm last Frahdy naht.

Example 2: Chick at awl?**

Example 3: She kayn’t cookda save her lahf. Wah, she don't eebm know howda bawl wawda.

In this respect, Alabamians are similar to the inhabitants of Richmond, Virginia, and Charleston, South Carolina, who go into raptures over "the buds that wobble in the sprang."

Travel is so broadening.

**Hint: Heard only at full-service gasoline stations.

In which the author indulges his penchant for facts that others may find either extremely fascinating or boring beyond words.

This post is about speaking in tongues. Wait, it’s not what you think.

I found a list recently of the languages of the world ranked by number of native speakers. Other lists exist with other numbers, plus there is a lot of disputing about what a language is and what a dialect is, the numbers are all just estimates anyway, and I’m not at all sure that the figures are current, but let’s just keep it simple and go with this list. Here’s what I learned:

Nine languages have more than 100,000,000 native speakers each. The largest by far is Mandarin (845,000,000), followed by Spanish (329,000,000), English (328,000,000), Hindi/Urdu (242,000,000), Arabic (221,000,000), Bengali (181,000,000), Portuguese (178,000,000), Russian (144,000,000), and Japanese (122,000,000). If you’re keeping count, that accounts for 2,590,000,000 persons, or about one-third of Earth’s population.

If your favorite hasn’t shown up yet, keep reading.

Thirteen languages have between 50,000,000 and 100,000,000 native speakers each. They are German (90,300,000), Javanese (84,600,000), Punjabi (78,300,000), Wu (77,200,000), Telugu (69,800,000), Marathi (68,100,000), Vietnamese (68,600,000), French (67,800,000), Korean (66,300,000), Tamil (65,700,000), Italian (61,700,000), Turkish (61,000,000), and Cantonese/Yue (55,500,000).

The world doesn’t seem quite so Eurocentric now, does it? Still looking for your favorite? Let us forge ahead.

Languages with between 25,000,000 and 50,000,000 native speakers each include Tagalog (including Filipino) (48,900,000), Gujarati (46,500,000), Min (46,200,000), Maithili (45,000,000), Polish (40,000,000), Ukrainian (39,400,000), Malay (39,100,000), Bhojpuri (38,500,000), Xiang (36,000,000), Malayalam (35,700,000), Kannada (35,400,000), Sunda (34,000,000), Burmese (32,300,000), Oriya (31,700,000), Persian (31,300,000), Berber (30,000,000), and Hakka (30,000,000).

I have never heard of some of these languages.

Languages with between 10,000,000 and 25,000,000 native speakers each are Hausa (24,200,000), Romanian (23,400,000), Bahasa Indonesian (23,200,000), Dutch (21,700,000), Azerbaijani (21,600,000), Gan (21,000,000), Thai (20,300,000), and on down the line through Yoruba, Sindhi, Uzbek, Igbo, Saraiki, Amharic, Nepali, Serbo-Croatian, Kurdish, Cebuano, Assamese, Malagasy, Hungarian, Zhuang, Madurese, Sinhalese, Greek, Fula/Fulfulde, Czech, Shona, and Oromo.

I’m exhausted, and we’ve named only 67 of the world’s languages.

Here’s a startling fact: Sixty-seven is approximately 1% of the number of languages spoken in the world (I found three figures, 6700, 6900, and a range of “from 6000 to 7000” languages). Two hundred to 250 languages have over a million speakers each. Ninety per cent of the world’s languages are spoken by fewer than 100,000 speakers each.

“So what?” you ask. (I can hear you asking it.)

The United Nations was organized in 1945. Fifty-one countries were represented at the first general session in 1946. Today, 192 countries are members of the United Nations. Six “official” languages are used in the U.N.'s intergovernmental meetings and documents: Arabic, Chinese, English French, Russian, and Spanish. (Originally there were five. Arabic was added in 1973.)

One of the rules is that the Secretary-General of the U.N. cannot originate from one of the five “permanent” Security Council member states (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America). Since 1945, there have been eight Secretaries-General of the U.N.: Trygve Lie of Norway, Dag Hammarskjöld of Sweden, U Thant of Burma (now Myanmar), Kurt Waldheim of Austria, Javier Pérez de Cuéllar of Peru, Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt, Kofi Annan of Ghana, and the current Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon of South Korea.

Not a Hindi/Urdu, Arabic, Bengali, Portuguese, or Japanese speaker in the bunch.

So here’s what: A lot of people must feel under-represented at best and ignored at worst. In other words, a lot of people are far worse off than you, in ways I have not enumerated and that many of us cannot begin to understand.

Now for the speaking in tongues part:

Kwitcherbellyachin.

Where is a lillypution when you really need one?

In my mini-series of Columbus Day posts (there were two, here and here), I wrote that North and South America were named after an Italian, Amerigo Vespucci, but the new lands could just as easily have been called North and South Vespucci. Reader Pat (an Arkansas stamper) commented that Vespuccians sounds like little green men from a distant planet. Then reader David Barlow of Manti/Ephraim/Tooele (pick one), Utah, said (and I quote):

“i met a vespuccian once attt the zoo in slc>>>>he wasn’t at all green buthad a yellow hat with candy sprinkles all over it:::::::says he was there to take all my mopney but a lillypution was at my side and he woouldn’t let this character touch me>>>>just sayin” [Editor’s note. slc is Salt Lake City. All spelling, capitalization, punctuation, spacing, and special characters courtesy of David Barlow. --RWP]

This style of communication is known in the trade, at least west of the Mississippi, as “putzifiying” and I fervently hope it doesn’t catch on.

Nevertheless, his comment put me in mind of Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift. If it didn’t put you in mind of that, I simply do not understand how your mind works.

Here’s an outline of the travels of the fictional Dr. Lemuel Gulliver:

Part I: A Voyage to Lilliput
Part II: A Voyage to Brobdingnag
Part III: A Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg, Glubbdubdrib, and Japan
Part IV: A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms

So I'm not disputing that Mr. Barlow may have seen a vespuccian, but what he had by his side was not a lillypution but a Lilliputian. Or possibly a leprechaun. I’m just sayin’....

You can read elsewhere about what Gulliver encountered in Lilliput, Brobdingnag, Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg, Glubbdubdrib, and the Country of the Houyhnhnms. The country that sticks out like a sore thumb in the list above is Japan.

Swift wrote that after reaching Japan, Gulliver asked the Emperor “to excuse my performing the ceremony imposed upon my countrymen of trampling upon the crucifix,” which the Emperor granted.

Say what?

Yes, you read that correctly. Swift was referring to a Japanese custom that began in Nagasaki in 1629. Suspected Christians were required to step on a likeness of Jesus or Mary in order to prove they were not members of that outlawed religion. Executions of people who refused to abandon their faith took place in Nagasaki, where some were dumped into a volcano. The practice was abandoned in 1856 at ports that had been opened to foreigners, but use of fumi-e (Japanese: 踏み絵, fumi ‘stepping-on’ + e ‘picture’) remained in use in other areas of Japan until Christian teaching was placed under formal protection during the Meiji period (1868 - 1912). You can read more about fumi-e here.

This lillypution has his shillelagh at the ready to help me fend off any over-eager Japanese person in the neighborhood who didn’t get the memo.

I wonder as I wander out under the sky.

It doesn’t make me lie awake at night or anything like that, but sometimes I wonder why there is “British spelling” and “American spelling.” Why isn't there just “spelling”?

Why do we have -or where they have -our (as in honour, colour, and favourite). Why do we have -er where they have -re (as in centre and theatre). Why do we have maneuver and they have manoeuvre? That last one is a double whammy, spelling-wise. Why do they add two extra letters at the end of the word program and spell it programme? Or did we drop the letters on this side of the pond?

Pronunciation causes more head scratching. Someone is obviously putting the em-PHA-sis on the wrong sy-LLA-ble, but who? Take the word debris. We say duh-BREE and they say DEB-ree. We say LAB-ruh-tory and they say luh-BOR-a-tree. We say SKED-jil and they say SHED-yule. As I recall, Julie Andrews could have DAHNCED all night. Nobody in the U.S. dahnces, all night or otherwise.

Americans, being Americans, think everyone else talks funny, but rarely consider that other speakers of English think the Americans are the funny ones. England had the English language long before America was even discovered, so should we defer to them? The Canadians, the South Africans, the Australians, the New Zealanders (hi, Katherine!), the Scots, and the Irish all have their particular variations of the mother tongue. And within every country there are regional and local accents as well.

Speaking of wondering, it’s a wonder we can understand each other at all. But as long as we do, let’s hope all’s well that ends well.

Three guesses how this post ends, and the first two don’t count.

Equal time for the Vikings

While repeating, “Christopher Columbus did not discover America. Christopher Columbus did not discover America,” read this.

Then spend a little time gazing at this painting, Leiv Eriksson oppdager Amerika (Leif Erikson discovers America) by Christian Krogh (1893):

(click on the painting and it will get larger)

Perhaps no one will ever know who really oppdagered Amerika, er, America.

But while the Vikings may have won the battle, the Italians eventually won the war. The new land was not called Vinland for long. Eventually North and South America were named after another Italian, Amerigo Vespucci.

Thank God for small favors. We could have ended up as North Vespucci and South Vespucci.

I saw three ships come sailing in...

Today is the former Columbus Day in the United States, commemorating the day in 1492 when an Italian explorer named Christopher Columbus or Cristoforo Columbo or Cristóbal Colón (pick one) stopped sailing the ocean blue long enough to step foot on a tiny island in the Bahamas and claim the entire Western Hemisphere for Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain. Thanks to President Lyndon Baines Johnson and the Uniform Monday Holiday Act of 1968, however, the annual parade in New York City was held yesterday instead so that all employees of the Federal Government could enjoy a three-day weekend. Wouldn’t want to get the unions upset.

Notable Italians at this year’s parade included Carl Paladino (Republican candidate for governor), Andrew Cuomo (Democratic candidate for governor), and Joe DioGuardi (Republican candidate for U.S. Senate). The grand marshall this year was Maria Bartiromo, the CNBC anchor who makes a lot of people forget all about the stock market.

There didn’t seem to be a single McDougal or O’Shaughnessy or O’Riley in the bunch.

In a couple of weeks Mrs. RWP and I are going to watch two of our grandchildren perform in a ballet called Pinocchio. It probably won’t look like this:

Or even this:

But I’m sure it’s going to be interesting.

Pinocchio and his father, Geppetto, were Italian too. In the Disney version, even the cat was named Figaro, not to be confused with The Barber of Seville by Rossini.

To end our Columbus Day tribute to that funny boot-shaped country sticking out into the Mediterranean, let’s listen to Maria Callas, another old Italian, sing something about how she doesn’t like the pasta.