 It's my very great pleasure to introduce a lady who really, for all of us here, doesn't need introduction, but we should give a tiny bit of background. So Kakya Chatsu, Kakya graduated a PhD from the University of Essex. And her PhD, she's a true, fully-fledged, card-carrying linguist, her PhD was in computational linguistics, a study of syntactic issues in Greek. And she's done a lot of work in computational linguistics, particularly in the LFG framework. She can weave magic in Greek syntax using the... Exile parser. Exile parser, yeah. Yeah, the Exile parsing program, which actually ultimately came out of research at Xerox Park in Stamford. So if you ever want to see how a computational parser and someone operates, then Kakya can demonstrate that for you. Following graduation, she went on to position at the UK Data Archive, which is based at the University of Essex, and then she joined us here at SOAS in May 2012. So she's basically almost two years now. And working here as the digital content curator in the Endangered Languages Archive. And we were incredibly fortunate to be able to get somebody with the linguistic knowledge, the knowledge of digital curation, of archiving, the broader networking and connections that came through her work at the UK Data Archive, plus the fact that she's a fabulous person and really easy to work with and talk to. And through her work in ELAR, she has had huge amounts of interactions, working with depositors, potential depositors, future depositors, helping them to understand the whole process of curation and getting their materials ready and so on. Anyone who's had any interaction with Kakya will just know how generous a person she is, as well as incredibly knowledgeable in linguistics, linguistic theory, LFG, curation, archiving. And today she's going to share another aspect of her interests and knowledge, and that's a secret language from Greece called Baliarika. Thank you. Thanks for all your kind words, and Peter, and thanks to everyone for coming here. Can you all hear me okay? Good. Can you all see the slides all right? Good. Feel free. I don't have, I won't expect to keep you here for the full hour and a half or hour for that matter. So, if you have any questions as I go along, please interrupt me and raise your hand and I'll be happy to interrupt the actual talk with questions if something comes up. As I will explain, this is all very working progress, so it stems from a discussion I had about six years ago, no, it was more than that, seven, eight years ago with my late grandfather about a mysterious language that he heard somebody was able to speak. So I'll give you a bit of background about my kind of story with this, and that's where my adventures come with this. So, a little bit of background about the language. It is currently an endangered once secret professional language spoken in the villages of Kravara, which is nowadays known as mountainous Nafpaktia, which is central Greece, I don't know if anyone knows where, Nafpaktus or Patrasus used to be called Lepanto, and it doesn't matter, I'll show you them up. So, people, the whole area, I'll try, I'll show you a couple of photos of old pictures of it. It is a place very mountainous, you know, the very kind of Greek way of it being loads of loads and loads of rocks, no soil whatsoever. So the word Kravari used to mean, I don't know if it currently means that's one of the kind of things I'd like to find out and check, it used to mean a rocky, steepen bar in place where nothing actually know, where you have no land that you could actually grow plants on. So, some of the people say actually the name comes from a very old war cry that the populations of the area used to say to other enemies, which means, head me to the head, which means I'm not afraid of you, you can hit me wherever you like. And the karan means in ancient Greek the head, so they used to say, stinkaran varite, karan varite, kravarite, which was the name of the area, kravarites is the name you would call the population of Kravara. They are reportedly, because I'll explain what I mean by reportedly, they were populations that were isolated geographically, so because accessing moving from one village to the other was very difficult and took a long journey. So even though they were very close on the map, the villages I'm going to show you, because they were in different mountainous places, you have to go all the way up and all the way down the mountain to be able to reach the next village and that used to happen sometimes some areas nowadays are even nowadays not accessible by car, so used to be happening by using a donkey or a horse if you were a lucky person. So you can imagine that populations would have to, in the land you couldn't cultivate to produce food, you'd have to fight an alternative source of, and a way to feed your family. So what these people would do, as I will explain in a minute, they would try, they became, they were considered to be really clever and good survivors in whatever climate and whatever circumstance, so they were very resourceful into trying to find ways of either getting money or getting whatever they needed, the family needed to survive. I'm by no means an expert, I'm still exploring the field myself, but a couple of thoughts about secret languages. The literature distinguishes between different types of secret things, that's not supposed to happen, it goes on itself, sorry. I hope it finishes there and doesn't move on to the next slide, no it does. Okay, so let me try and pause that, I'm sorry, pause that, good, so the literature distinguishes between different types of secret languages, so you can have code languages, languages where you for example just replace the word for another, or you add an affix in between and repeatedly, so much like, there's a page in English, a similar one, pig English, pig Latin, thank you, sorry, so pig Latin, you might get other secret languages such as slang, which is what people would use, so slang words are things, words that perhaps within an age group, words that only that particular age group would use, or not necessarily secret ones, but they would be particular to that particular group. jargon is what is defined in literature as being a language of professionals, so academics have academies, they speak a particular language that not everybody understands, quite often as to the barrier of these two groups, the academics and the inter-republic, and you get the Argo or sometimes, it's a language which is again used by a professional group, only that professional group is not necessarily a legal one, so they sometimes get involved into criminal activities and that explains why they need a secret language and that's to hide what exactly they're doing. So languages, secret languages as any language is a tool for communicating something to somebody, so the particular and interesting aspect is that it's very close to the particular community, so the community wants to preserve its identity and will use that secret language to exclude outsiders, so knowing the language means that you are a member of the group and that you sometimes just knowing that language means that you're accepted within the group and as far as I have found out, they're usually the same grammatically, so they usually do not present a very interesting syntax, semantically they're very interesting, pragmatically they're very interesting and there are loads of variations in the lexicon, so you will find loads of loans from other languages that they've assimilated and reusing with a different meaning, you might have where it's substituted for something else, so I'll show you some examples, we have the examples, in Boliarica we have an example where the word for letters and sciences is the word for light and so I'll show you some examples, perhaps it's easier to explain and then of course you have, in the case of course of code languages, one way of doing it is to add repeat affixes and either part of the, so the same consonant with another vowel or any variation of that, so some thoughts again about secret in group languages and language endangerment have to do with the fact that secret languages, as I said a particular use of function that of including or excluding that of identity, so when the function no longer exists they are the first ones to go and quite often in the literature it is mentioned that they are the easiest ones to die because it's knowledge you don't want to pass on to outsiders even though the function doesn't exist, so attitudes towards secret languages and their speakers are quite often negative and that goes back to like negative connotations about what this group is doing, so in the case of illegal activities or activities that need to be protected by secret language then that's what happens. Now, back to Boliarica and what I'm talking to you about today, so it is spoken in Greece, that's what Greece is and it's spoken in that particular area of Greece which is central Greece and it's spoken in that's where the area of NAF factors and Patras is just opposite I mentioned a while ago, so the points in the map shows where the variation I'm looking at, so these are all very, the mountains of NAF factors and it's, there are variations of the same secret language or alternative languages for other professions elsewhere, I'm going to mention a couple at the end but I'm not going to be referring to them at all and here is a better map from Google showing the points where I've, through literature review and through speakers I found where it was used to be spoken, so it, who speaks it then, who are the people who use to speak it, this is something I can definitely give you information about, who are the people who speak it nowadays, that's something I'm still looking at, so if you have information by any chance please tell me now. So they are the peddlers of Kravala, so they are the poor, very poor people, they were resourceful as I said, very hard working, when land was not providing enough they became peddlers earning the living trading across the Balkans or immigrating abroad and the secret language was used so that the outsiders could not understand them when they were trading or when they were travelling, so it was purely, sometimes for deceit purposes so they would like steel when they were selling something to you or sometimes it was just to make sure that news about the world or news about their trade was not, or the actual trade itself was not passed on to other people and here are some professions that, well some of them are actually, if not most of them, except for the musicians perhaps, quite a few of these are actually extinct as professions themselves, so that goes back to the function that I mentioned, the fact that we no longer have a wanderer milkman who goes around and gives milk, so there's no trade like that, so there's no need to have the language at all, so we now go to the supermarket and buy milk. Same goes with the Ascrim seller, that's no longer something you would find in the streets of Grace or even in that particular mountainous area. The Yogurt seller, definitely not. Musicians, you would definitely find them, festivals going around from village to village playing music, that's certainly something happening. Barber and Practical Doctor, no way, so by Practical Doctor I mean the dentist, the person who would stitch you up, things like that. And the Peddler seller which is very close to the profile of the people I'm looking at is a person who would have a carriage or some form of cart to push and they would have loads of items there that they would go around in villages and sell. Yes, sorry, I don't know, I think it's beginning of last century, so 1930s, 1920s, but I don't remember because it was a long time ago I came across, but I think it's definitely before, so it was before the Second World War, so 1920s, 1930s. Any other question? Okay, I'll move on. So I've yet to verify that with actual speakers, but the literature mentions that the language could have originated in the 19th century with the aim of keeping the Ottoman Turk masters from understanding their communications during their occupation and oppression, but carried on using it after the area was freed from the Ottomans for different reasons because they wanted to conceal something else, some other activities. Firmur, who's one of the travellers and one of the people who mentioned that language and actually have a dictionary, a vocabulary at the end of the travel book of the language, so it's one of the resources I have used to testify to existence, notes that the locals still called policemen, which is normally in the colloquial slang even nowadays, bazi, which means cups, they used to call them completely different, which is with a completely different word called patelos, in order to communicate unobstructed bio-visual intervention. So he went there in 1957, 1958, so I wrote the book in 1963, so they were still there, they were still speaking the language. So that gets me a little bit, so I think before I move on to attitude, I'll just give you a little bit of background about my own journey into finding out about this language. So as I said, it was something that, so a couple of years ago I was doing my degree in linguistics, Greek linguistics, University of Athens. So it was then that, so when I had, it was my first year as an undergraduate, my granddad asked me, what is it that you're doing there? So I explained to him what it is that I was doing there, and he said to me, you know what, I know of a language, or I don't know if it is a language, that when I was very young, people used to talk about it as being a language that only a particular group of people used to know. So do you want me to find more about it? And I said, yeah, sure, if you have anything that I can work with, or if you can show me something, then I can do something with it. So he found one of his friends and colleagues, friends rather than colleagues, and he sent us back four pages of A5 with loads of words, quite a few of them were swear words, as was quite often the case with some of these secret languages. But it was amazing to see that the words that I got were, as I said, either I could sort of understand why they would call something as what they called. So there was a resemblance to some equivalent Greek words, but the, it was completely different, the meaning of the actual Greek word was completely different. And then some of it was completely, completely, you know, totally different. So I tried to ask around in my university and see, you know, have you heard of that language? They said no, we haven't heard anything about it. So I carried on, moved on, came here and did a Masters. 2007 or 2006 I went to, I think it was the Relative Clauses Conference in Cambridge, back in 2007. So I met Geoff Horrocks, who's one of the big guys in Greek linguistics. So he asked me, I asked him, do you know anything about this dialect at all? And he said no, I haven't heard anything about it. But why don't you ask the University of Patras, they have a centre of dialect studies there. Now, just to make, it took a long story short, no one knew anything about it. So it was just me and my grandad knowing about it. And perhaps this is the other person who's had given me this list of words. 2009, some very old manuscripts, back from 1915, from a very old linguist called Manolis Trientafilides, who is one of the founders of Greek linguistics in Greece, was digitised. So he had four pages of A4 in very old paper. He had word lists of that language. So he had mentioned, I'm going to show you in a minute the picture, he had a list, so he had the Boliarica in one list, he had the Greek equivalent and he had the German one as well. So because that was the language of the philologists at the time. I think it is the case right now as well, so whoever does ancient Greek or Latin, quite a few of the literature is in German. So that was my first kind of bright moment of saying, yes, I'm not crazy, it still exists. Here is somebody who says that it exists, it's there. So let's go on and try and find out more about it. So that's my little journey, up to now. So back to this little bit, just quoting a couple of things about the attitudes to speakers reported in the literature. They had developed the reputation, Marin 2008 says, among other Greeks for sharp dealing because any visitor from outside the area was suddenly plunged into a neighborhood in the middle of Greece where people seem to be speaking his language. So it sounded like Greek, right? But where he could not make a head or tail of what they were saying. So then that was done on purpose. Excuse my appease on the mic. Current status, as I've said, of the language, very endangered and extinct. Very few speakers remain at the moment. I know of only one person in Greece who's researched them, who's alive. And also, I know of two speakers that I've tracked down that are both in the early 80s and scattered all over Greece. So one is in Athens, another one is in Thessaloniki. So some studies into language. I also have some mentions in the literature and quite a few information from Traveller. So people going around in Greece in the 1950s, 1940s and writing about it. And then the other problem is that all populations have settled in since the 1940s and they're scattered all over Greece and abroad. So it's quite difficult to track down. So it's word of mouth. And also the fact that people that are willing to help are usually the people that know my family and who I am. And that's why they agree to tell me about it. So here is what the word lists look like. So this is a printout of like a screenshot of what the manuscripts look like. I have a link at the end of the presentation if people would like to go and have a look. It's free online now, it's a PDF. So that was my moment of joy. So there's two word lists. You can see that. Yes, it's here. In great script. And then the second one is the one annotated with German translations as well as with some social linguistic circumstances that the guy, Manolistri, definitely this sort of found out when he was visiting the villages. This is the person I mentioned. Manolistri, definitely this was a linguist and major representative of the Demotic movement in education in Greece who compiled a comprehensive grammar of the modern Greek language of this even nowadays taught in schools. If you don't know what the Demotic movement is feel free to ask me afterwards. I'm not going to go into this. In the literature I have found, as I said, these word lists as well as an article he wrote with somebody else in 1915 where he mentions that the language that the Craveritas Berger speak especially in the villages of Perista and Percos which are the islands I'm focusing in they were kept among the manuscript collections of the Institute for Modern Greek Studies and as I said they were digitised fairly recently. Oh, 2006, sorry, not 2009. Second point of reference was Patrick Lake Firmos Adventures books, travel books. He was a Briton who spent many years travelling around Europe and Greece and he visited the region in the 1950s and at that point there were local people who were using this dictionary this vocabulary but they didn't necessarily know why or what that was. So he recorded as much of the language as he could in his book and as he mentions it would be a shame if this curious, secret language should vanish and record it. And I have, I don't know, can you see the letters? I'll read through it and excuse my probably horrible boliareka at this point. So, question pointing to my eyes what are these? Tamathia, which means the eyes. Diflia, Othia, the last plainly slav from Otsi and this pointing to my head to Kefali, the head Koka, Karoni and these waving my hands Taheria, Tzogrania which means the Tzogrania it's the tool that you use when you dig Oh, fuck, I don't know the spade, sorry thank you, the spade so spades for the hands, right? The manas that you sound inexistent in Greek with these that's why I'm saying I probably do not pronounce that correctly right now and that yenia, which means the beard pointing to Father Andrew's bird so he was a priest of the place Maratho, which is fennel a foot, how do you call a foot? Topothi, which is in Greek, right? Vazo, he said Mustaki, the moustache Zuki, so the duke, right? The duke has a moustache so the moustache is called the duke or duke Dor, sorry, that was Greek Dor, Porta, which is Dor in Greek Chapraca, which is the Boliarica one so interestingly I know a couple of these I can get why they are called like that but it would be interesting to see where the actual how they, where it comes from so it is very different in its own respect as a language so this is the person alive I mentioned a while ago so Tuknidas, he's a researcher in the Academy of Sciences and Athens so he's one of the very few people who have done linguistic work on it so they've taken the data and done some field work to collect some words and vocabulary and he has a paper where he looks at verbs and roots, verbal roots so the most recent mention it looks at productive roots and suffixes, compounds words that change the meaning in the plural and of course he mentions that the verbal nouns of the secret language of the Cravoritas, Beggars and Petlers are relevant to natural needs, money and something that you can't see because it's taken away so it's natural needs, money and other things but the issue is that it's very limited in its vocabulary because it's a particular need so they only had he claims vocabulary for the stuff that was interesting and relevant to what they were doing so one of the questions that I was asked is why should we care, it's long dead and gone no one's using it anymore probably and those who do or know something about it are too ashamed or too afraid to say anything about it so I find it particularly fascinating as some of you in this room might also do it's a language, the language is a mixture of Demotic Greek so modern Greek has nowadays spoken or as it once used to be spoken and it learns from languages spoken in the areas that come into contact over the years so Turkish, Bulgarian, Slavic as well as Ancient Greek and I want to speak words so I'll show you in a minute the word for goat and you tell me if that reminds you something so the culture and the customs of its speakers will be lost within the next generation if they're not lost already so most of the peddlers have settled in since after the 1940s and the remaining speakers are all in the late 70s and 80s as I said and loads of the professions which was the function of the language are now gone and it is also a very interesting example of how changes in socio-cultural and economic factors may influence language contact and result in language endangerment so it is very interesting to me to find out how they heard about these songs if they were isolated in the mountains so how far up or how far down could they go or how could they have heard about these words and incorporated them into the dictionary so there's quite a few work to be done with respect to how these populations moved the geographical spread and so on and so forth and here are some examples I hope it won't move on on its own if it does I'll move it back so again with my horrible Bulyarika pronunciation because I'm not a native speaker of Bulyarika and I haven't heard it being spoken so bokla which is hair it's very very close to the Demotic Greek for bokla which means curly curl, the curl of hair here's an interesting one platanofila which in Greek means plain tree leaves, it stands for paper money platanofila is one obvious link that we can see there kutiu is the house in Bulyarika kutii in modern Greek is a box so the genitive case of that is kutiu so why and as to why it is like that it's an interesting thing to look at fotiri or futiri drachma which used to be like euro it's a very ancient coin light, fos in Greek so why, I don't know but it's interesting the futiri do drachmas so you can actually have a compound of the currency there so twice gyona which is the mountain very close to Athens is Athens so they were referring to the city using the mountain that was close to it hyna which is the goose in modern Greek stands for a thousand drachmas and that's a word, I don't know if it's a word that was firstly used in that dialect or not but it's a word that has passed on to our current slang so people would use it to refer to thousand bucks or euros usually thousand drachmas back in the days, I don't know if they would use it for euros nowadays foterá so it's the letters and the sciences and again, fos is the light and interestingly you have a word that looks very close to the money to mean the letters so foterí and foterá to denote the two lachanidi I don't know if it's pronounced like that or not would be the knife where lachanidi in Greek is the cabbage now why would you do that? I don't know but that's the beauty of it I guess carvouni is the train carvouni in modern Greek is coal so the train uses coal so you would refer to it a slightly different way velazura, that's the example I mentioned about is the flock of seep and goats and velazur in Greek is bleat, so bear, bear or ba-ba as sheep do in the UK so you can see that the sound becomes a word and that the word gets an affix attached and becomes plural it means the whole flock so that's from the modic Greek let's have a look at other words eskia bez is the peloponies so it's the area like central Greece underneath some people say in literature does that come from Turkish eski to mean old so it's old land other one, other examples ingotina means the person who's married so gotina excuse my Slavic pronunciation or gotina, Nadia you might be able to help I'm not sure, it might be some kind of old Slavic maybe, but gotina means cool, okay so it's a gentleman according to the firmware 1963 that's what it means but as I said I don't know any of these languages so it would be worth, it's another PGT what people say, so it's another thing I'd like to look into, try and work with somebody who knows these languages and see if these links are indeed there gotimeno, married so the first one is for the female, so it's got the ah which is the female affix at the end the second one, gotimeno is for neutral, so for kids so gotopulo, not gotopulo which is chicken in Greek, gotopulo is the son, or the young gentleman so the affix pulo in Greek is, it denotes somebody who's the son, so like Steven's son or son of somebody so like Arabic has al I think and Maletsko is the child and Maletskas, who is the so us is a very productive affix to mean somebody who does something, is a teacher so the person who looks after the teacher they're sort of the children Verdilis is the father Verdilo is his mother and then some interesting ones I think are from either Bulgarian or Russian so Cielo or Cielo is the village and the Bulgarian or perhaps the Russian as well is Cielo, so it's the village so you see, I'm pronouncing it in the wrong way probably, because you know you get that rather than that, yeah Cielo so Turkuva is a church Turkuva is the church in Bulgarian or is it in Russian as well? Turkuva close enough, so I'm looking at you Nadja but I know that you are a native speaker so any questions about anything that's on this table or should I just move on and here are some verbs so they use the so the Evo, Iso, Ao, Ano, Ano, Ino, Ado and Azo are very productive verb affixes or suffixes in Greek so you attach it to nouns and adjectives to form verbs so here are some examples I'll pronounce them horribly Anisevo, I grow angry Karchevo, I hit Siorevo, I get drunk So Sior used to be a way that he would refer sometimes to the gentlemen so I don't know why that would be Manizo, I steal Tsumizo, I kill Sarafizo, I understand Glavizo, I run Banizo, I understand here's another word that has entered our current last slang, vocabulary that means I look at something that's really nice in the way that a man looks at a woman or a woman looks at a man or the other way around so Kranezi reigns and that that first term goes back to Kraneion, which is the head and we call Kraneutopos which means the place the head of the place is the place with loads of stones so here's another possible way of interpreting that Fotal goes back to Fotari and other words we talked about so I know I see a look out for and moving on to Pantelada, which is the one before the last I talk nonsense and to Mechazo which means I sleep so before I move on to some information about what I intend to do in the future are there any questions or any useful observations or remarks, yes Just from the word list Yes, so this data comes from the word list and to Kranez analysis of verbs so he had access to some word lists that I can't find at the moment so he reports that literature in there so I've got these verbs as a combination of what he presents and the combination of the word lists that information comes from the word list that my knowledge student definitely this has as well as information from the Fomor, the the vocabulary that he has in his book at the end Fomor, the traveler person Sorry, Peter Two questions You said you've got four or five or six pages and notes from your father's friend Is that consistent It is They have loads of swear words that I didn't want to include it in this presentation I don't know I'd like to test to first make sure that they're but apart from that it is consistent and I've also found out since then that So Knidas was the person I'm referencing here for these verbs has since gone and done some more field work on another variant of Bollarica spoken in another place not in Nafbaktos very close by but not the same so that's another point of investigation only to look at see whether it's the same language or whether it's different The second question is the British guy that you mentioned He only died three years ago Did you have a chance to No No, I didn't I know that he has a third book that he will be published by a member of his family his editor will be publishing I know also that he has archives he has like notes manuscripts that he like notes that he took well he was up in the field so that's something that I need to also pursue and find out so that would be really interesting if I can find more material about the time that he went there so in the 1950s and some notes he did because I'm assuming if he's presented just his dialogue he'll have many more that he recorded in terms of information he seemed throughout his narration and he wanted to record now he has a dictionary like a word list at the end but it would be worth looking at whether that's the end of it or that he had any more material so thanks Anything else You mentioned Father Andrew Yes who knew the language apparently So he was a priest apparently in the 19th he got to learn the language is it just simply because he lived there or he wasn't that in that how would he I don't think I can answer that I don't know but I think you were very right so he wasn't a peddler I mean he used to live there so he used to live there in the area so there is a point where from the language so the group did not necessarily include only the people travelling also included the people back home in the families that's again an assumption from the information I've been gathering in the literature but your question is a very valid one so if we claim that that was a trade trade particular language then how come the priest of the village knew about it Yes the priest always knows everything the priest and the teacher apparently these are the best people to get started with when you're looking at doing fieldwork in Greece then they would get you very well connected with loads of people and they were very well respected in the community but also one of the assumptions or one of the points things I need to look into is that at some point I mean in the 1950s it was very late in the whole story I'm talking about so there was a point where from just very close group it became perhaps the language of everybody in the village or everybody knew words of it because they wanted to hide from the police or they wanted to hide the secrets from other villages or but all of that is just as I said I have no facts these are just things that I can only infer from what I'm looking at in literature so it would be interesting to see what and how much people remember about it so okay anything else any other questions I'll just move on very quickly then to that bit so as I've presented to you today the bulk of data and facts I have is historical anecdotal and it's quite a lot of it is inference using different resources to pull down and see what was the reality and what happened so some data are being held by the Athens Academy so that's what my archiving let's say research then the next point to do some archiving research archival research would be to go and look into that the archives of Patrick for more as Peter said it was a very good idea which thanks very much I'll follow up so I'm currently in touch with two speakers mainly I expect nothing really so I'm looking forward to interviewing them what they remember of the culture and what they remember of the people and the language I'm hoping to record some tradition practices so people would describe to me what the practices were what where and how they were using this language and also looking forward to any history because people love to tell stories about the past or stories they've heard from their grandfathers so I'm looking forward to see what they have to say and I have established some links but I am looking forward to establishing even more so to be blunt enough but maybe when it comes to extinct languages maybe it is but I'd like to try and get as many as possible and I've received interest from the local library in the area enough University of Patras is the closest one and the research group there to host the data and make them available to the local international scientific community I haven't added ELA to that but of course that goes without saying right so if I get some data one of the first places to deposit to would be the archive I work for so I'm hoping to have like put all these words lists together including the swear words I try to get an idea of who its speakers are nowadays like try and get a profile or try and get some information about where they are and if there are any because maybe there aren't any only past people who remember it rather than people who speak it and how well of course they know the language or not and try and raise awareness I haven't added that but try and raise awareness of the fact that knowing that language or being a descendant of these people is not necessarily something you should be shameful of it's something that you should be proud of as part of your cultural heritage part of who you are and what you're doing nowadays so some other trade languages I'm just listing four, there are about ten I've found mentioned in literature with very little research on them, very little vocabulary or word lists on them but nonetheless so which is the language of somebody we can't see of somebody we can't see no we can't see sorry something there I'll find it afterwards I'll let you know so that's all from me thanks very much for listening and I'm really open to questions particularly interesting knowing if you've heard of any similar circumstances or examples of secret languages in other parts of the world not necessarily in Greece and any kind of experience you might have with other communities thank you very much for your attention Peter two comments one called language spoken in Spain called which apparently had a similar origin I believe they were fish of people they used to shout across the markets to each other how much they were charging for things and so on with this special vocabulary embedded within Portuguese or Spanish anyway somewhat surprisingly to me they managed to convince Dolbes to give them 300,000 euros to do research on this and they had actually had a conference recently did you go was it the one you went to maybe not you is that the one you went to no there was a big sort of European languages festival and so on Aberny went to I knew one of you guys and it's all built to me again don't quote me turn the camera off it's built on a scaffold of something similar to what you're describing I believe but they've got such enormous identity issues tied up with it that it's now been presented as if it was this whole language etc from the descriptions I've seen there's a lot of metaphorical things and lots of similarities in ways in which you describe so if you have a look at Mendeleco it would be something to look at the second comment is one was a paper that was published a couple of years ago Julia probably knows the reference better than me and the title is something like don't show your ass cheeks to us essentially it was about a group in Mexico where the language is highly highly endangered and the only times when people use it is when they talk about the tourists wandering around the street where they're feties and their genes and showing their ass cheeks to the people so the language is used and preserved in environments when specifically when they want to talk about these foreigners and outsiders and tourists and when the linguist who was interested in working on this was talking about publishing the community was absolutely against any idea of publishing or distributing anything about this particular language because that would have then opened up the possibility that they were actually talking about these people and talking negatively about them so all the swear words and all the negative stuff that you talked about is it possible that you shouldn't be publishing that material precisely because it is the swear words and the negative material that if there were community members who had a relationship to that stuff would actually think no the rest of the world shouldn't know about that because then all the Greeks will come along and they'll start using the terms talking to us or they'll know that this is what we're using I think that's a very valid point I'm not sure what the circumstances are with respect to Bulyareka whether there are any speakers left whether there are some speakers it is a problem for uninitiated people to know about them but it raises a very interesting question as to why and how much and is it for Cabra so if the secret language was used nowadays then I guess your point is very valid so you wouldn't publish something that would put the whole community so you'll make the secret language useless it wouldn't be secret anymore can we just do that all the time? yeah I know isn't it of course you want to research it of course you want to publish papers of course you would like to have your data in an archive but if we're using it as a secret one you'd better not do anything like that because you know I need to invent new words now to be able to describe things there's a kind of broader issue which I think some Aboriginal communities in Australia for example have argued that they don't want any of the material on their languages on the internet even material that is digitised and available for download in other places they don't want to have it and not tagged as belonging to their language or whatever because it's the one remaining last thing that they've got retained from their history the bits and pieces of heritage and so on that hasn't been taken away from them I mean that's a particular political, ideological and political position to take which some communities have done so but lots of linguists are completely blind and oblivious to this and you know they go ahead and publish all of their stuff I think with secret languages you're even more an issue and maybe there isn't a community that can respond to it but it's worth thinking seriously absolutely responsibility, responsibility of research thank you first, then David and Candide Lydia thanks for presentation there's also a secret language in the area where I work it's used by the herbalists who are experts about plants it has to do with calling on the spirit of the plant so it's a specific name that they use when they want to ask for special powers from the plant when they go to harvest it and being a secret language and having so much power they obviously wouldn't want it published and available but outsiders can learn it if they go through the initiation process and then also information about the language would be shared so they could say well you know this particular plant does have a secret name and it is a similar it's a word in the language but it's not the same as the word that other people use for this plant, you know they can say things about it without necessarily giving away the secret itself and that's one way to think and learn to work with people but I need to talk with them more about it's a very good, it's a positive way of taking so so you can't publish my data but unless or you can't learn it unless you're in an initiated person so not necessarily they don't sound like a very so they are a very close society but they seem to be open not particular, some of them are particularly gender specific or they might be whether you come from, so you have to be born in this village for example in your case it's not, so that's wonderful wonderful, thanks very much Lydia for that David, thank you I was thinking along lines similar to what Peter was talking about especially since you pointed out so eloquently the the relationship between the very instrumental function of the language and its continuous it made me think about a paper I just read about digital recatriation of Cherokee formulas I think they were called especially incantations by medicine men where Cherokee community members had quite a bit of controversy where some people said yes there's part of our heritage but other people argued well if these have their potency by being secret then these things should not be disseminated for example by archives but maybe it's not just archives or linguists I heard Julia say some of that linguists do this all the time there's a case a colleague has told me about Polari which is like secret language here in the UK which apparently was sort of all but destroyed when homosexuality became legal and much of the language became used in mainstream media like movies so the function its secret function was removed and the language all but destroyed so it does raise the spectre of us this document is actually destroying the language destroying the potential function I think that's a very valid point David it goes back to what I need to say about responsibility and it sort of clashes with our need to know more because as a researchers we want to find out about the world that surrounds us so we want to document and document and pass on the information to the next generation but everything should happen according to communities wishes I guess so try and talk to them and see what they want out of it so very valid thanks very much David Candide I wanted to ask you I wasn't exactly clear how secret this because I wonder these people they were some of them were settled and some of them were Kedlin was it the whole village would go off nowadays well my research shows that the information I found out it used to be nomadic in the early 20th century 1910-1910-1920s it was nomadic so they moved around and sold things around in villages after that so up until the 1950s they had started to settle in in different places have a house have perhaps land not necessarily in that particular area elsewhere as well so there were villages there were villages yes yes there were villages that they were spoken they would travel to visit those villages the other way around they would start from these areas and go out and visit areas so they were from these villages they would speak it among their peers and among the families sometimes later on as I said to Nadia before but they would travel what they wanted to travel outside and I don't know how far away from their home they would travel but knowing words like the words they have in like the loan words for example would mean that they would have to travel away from they would have to go at least up until you know north-grays and do you have any indication of the same or the same that no so you don't know if it's just sort of different localization or no I'm afraid not so I don't I am still in the very baby stage of trying to find out instances of words of that language I had time establishing it as an existing as a dialect they used to be spoken and so at the moment what I'm aiming for is to try and get as much vocabulary and perhaps some narrations from remembers about what these people used to be like because I've got third party perspectives but not community perspectives about who these people are and what they think of themselves so thanks for the question Lutz yes thank you I think what is interesting here is that is from a general perspective the relation between secret languages and trade languages because they don't necessarily coincide but in your case too and and the the social linguistic impact of the trade language is different I guess from west African context and you have blacksmith languages and that's the distinct trade language goes from the past part into some and it's very very secretive but there is a real sense of also the magic and the unknown the work with fire but there is also social distance but it's not looking down like what you have in your case I guess and on the other hand lots of secret languages I related to you so it's age group defined rather than trade that's very alive and very active there's stuff in the shengs typical stuff in Kenya and in those cases they just come along and document and then publish them and then the young people could be back up some more yes there I think documentation of the issue because it's much faster than academic publication can have linguistic is cool yes it is exciting doesn't this also serve as a reassurance for the young generation that their language now has a status of being recognized by linguists so it adds up to the prestige I guess it does in a funny way because it's the wrong people it's good now academic is up to all alright okay interesting cool what's the name of the language again sorry sheng in east Africa any capital city you mentioned like London in London and Julia as well it's a related question perhaps I don't understand whether we know if this language was spoken to children because some of the perhaps one you gave if I understood the correct before you are allowed before you are allowed so I wonder about the implication for language acquisition I have no information I'm afraid again all the mentions I have is of people who could trade people who could work but at the time 15 year old or 14 year old 13 year old was old enough to work so it is a very interesting aspect to look into was it something that was very similar to what Lydia mentioned was something that there was an initiation process was it something that people learned to use because they were living in that particular area or was it something that they were taught to teach each other or on the way to when they were going yeah absolutely yes just a bit of a practical question go back to your project where are you actually going to do interviewing and when can you expect more oh thank you I had scheduled I was hoping I hadn't scheduled anything I was hoping to do some documentation I didn't do much but I'm hoping that next time I go to Greece which is in Easter I will have arranged some kind of meeting with especially the guy who lives close to me and Athens and try and look at what they think about it and hopefully get some more links with other people around Greece but it's a very good question very good to sit down so it's not on camera so I'm committed to it yes David I'm just kind of dreaming and brainstorming about your talk and I was thinking about some of the consequences for revitalization or perhaps what we were talking before about the function being related to the survival so maybe it could be documented but only secretly or shared with the right circle I was thinking about the way you put it so strongly the function of the language related to its survival what sort of interesting scenarios that would put for a revitalization yeah that would be that would be very interesting so if I don't know if you would revitalize it then I don't know you wouldn't recreate the function if there's no way you can do that given the Greek economy you might have no you wouldn't no you wouldn't it's not that bad so but what you could do though is recreate the sense of belonging to a group so it could be the language that the group the group sees talks with because there are loads of the residents the people who used to live in this village allow all over the world so you could recreate the need to belong to a group from all over the world using social media or technologies and then get them to use that language for learn it or as a way to belong to that group reclaim the Rokadro heritage but you first need to make them proud of it and tell them what it is certainly I wouldn't want to recreate if I were ever to do that I wouldn't recreate the function in the same way it used to be in the 40s and 50s so it's a very good point though thanks Trudia has a question I just want to know about the overlap between a particular language with a particular function and a particular dialect a particular village or area because you said they spoke it in their village and then went out is it just the dialect of the village which they take with them and then when they're not at home they can use it as a secret language as one does that's very interesting I hadn't thought that way around certainly the language with the same name is mentioned as being spoken by other kinds of trade so Bollarica is also the name of a dialect spoken in D'Fristos which is again central Greece but a bit more northern but it is a very interesting point so was it just what they used to be so was it just the language of the village or like the dialect of the village and then they just used it to understand that turned out to be a secret because nobody else could understand it because they were speaking in a different dialect I don't know the answer but it's a very good question thanks Julia I guess also I'll ask you something afterwards I don't want to take time from this but I might ask you something afterwards if you will be there for the drinks so it's a very valid point thank you anyone else but do they describe it themselves as a secret? I don't know as I said I have sources from third parties like literature review and people who went there and met these communities but I have no account of the communities themselves it is reported as being a secret one because they used it for the trade so that no one else could understand them but whether they are the same people define it as a secret one I don't know what were the trades of the speaker and the members that you come to know about nowadays what were their trades the three people that you it wouldn't be them doing the trade it would be their dad or granddad so they used to be sellers so they would go around and sell stuff photographers was also something very common so they would go around and take pictures and sell them but the person I don't I think he's been living in Athens for at least after he was 5 or 6 years old so if not before that so yep how much time do we have we'll work here for time David David I come from the third biggest Greek city in the world Melbourne and I'm aware that well it's a phenomenally fine many places almost whole villages move to other cities and often follow in the footsteps of the fellow villagers I wonder if you looked into the possibility that perhaps it might be a whole cohorts of people from specific villages of interest have moved to the US or Australia Melbourne or other places where lots of Greek immigrants I went and checked with Australia but I've checked with the United States so I know there is a community centre or community group of people that have emigrated back in the 1940s and 50s from Greece to there so they have the same surname as my granddad so quite a few people have managed to track my Facebook as well as why they have like sites where they talk about the village and what they remember about it so certainly that's a very good another good source to try and find out people but remember or know something about it. Thanks David Just imagine there's a bunch of guys in a coffee shop in Chicago talking myself Let's thank Kakiya for her really interesting talk Thanks very much for your feedback and comments as well Despite what she said to me at the beginning we've actually had a really interesting discussion and lots of questions also issues have come up so if you want to continue talking to Kakiya about this or other topics we are going to go to the Institute of Education and join us