Trivia Factors Affecting Speech

[Ryemark Concepcion]

Situation:

Tayana is a young Amazon Indian woman from the North West Amazon Basin. She lives with her husband and children and a number of other families in a longhouse beside the river. The language of her longhouse is Tukuya, which is the language of all the men in this tribe, and the language she uses to talk to her children. She comes from a different tribe and her first language is Desano. She uses Desano to her husband, and he replies in Tukuya.

Analysis:

Women and men do not speak in exactly the same way as each other in any community. As described in any longhouse, the language used by the child's mother is different from her father's language because men must marry outside their own tribe, and each tribe is distinguished by a different language. In this community, women and men speak different languages.

Linguistic Features

There are communities where the language is shared by women and men, but particular linguistic features occur only in the women's speech or only in the men's speech.

1. Word Shape (morphology)

a. Origin: Gros Ventre American Indian Tribe

Trivia: In this community, if a person uses the wrong form for their ***, the older members of the community consider them bisexual.

b. Origin: Bengali

c. Origin: Japan
Women: words prefixed by o- (a marker of polite style)
Men: words are in long form (like of Yana and Chiquita)

d. Origin: Yana (North American Indian) and Chiquita (South American Indian)

2. Vocabulary

a. Origin: Japan