Ep 69: The Power of a Name with Alexandra (Sasha) Aikhenvald

What is the power of a name? In this episode, we sit down with Alexandra Aikhenvald, Professor at the Jawun Research Centre at Central Queensland University (Cairns) and an Australian Laureate Fellow. Alexandra shares her extensive fieldwork experiences in north-west Amazonia (Brazil) and the Sepik region of New Guinea, diving into the significance of 'blessing names' within Amazonian cultures and reflecting on the devastating effects of colonial invasion on traditional knowledge.

She also opens up about her personal journey into linguistics, inspired by her experiences of discrimination in the Soviet Union, and highlights the incredible linguistic diversity in Amazonia, where approximately 350 languages are spoken today.

Our conversation explores fascinating topics such as:

• Naming practices and their cultural importance.
• The concept of 'evidentiality' in language.
• The challenges of preserving languages in culturally rich yet unstable regions like Papua New Guinea.

We also discuss Alexandra's book, I Saw the Dog, which underscores the importance of linguistic diversity and why protecting it matters.

This is a thought-provoking episode packed with insights you won’t want to miss!

Links: http://www.aikhenvaldlinguistics.com/; 

https://staff-profiles.cqu.edu.au/home/view/25682

https://www.ae-info.org/ae/Member/Aikhenvald_Alexandra

And here are the links to my popular-type book I saw the dog: how language works. Profile books 2021 -https://profilebooks.com/work/i-saw-the-dog/

https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Alexandra-Aikhenvald-I-Saw-the-Dog-9781781257715

 facebook - https://www.facebook.com/alexandra.aikhenvald.98/

Notes
•Alexandra shares superstitions from Amazonia, like eating crocodile causes forgetfulness
Names and Linguistics in Amazonia(12:37 - 20:56)
•Explanation of 'blessing names' in Amazonian cultures
•Discussion on how colonial invasion affected traditional knowledge
Linguistic Diversity and Personal History(20:56 - 31:05)
•Alexandra's journey into linguistics due to discrimination in Soviet Union
•Estimation of about 350 languages in Amazonia currently
Naming Practices and Language Characteristics(31:07 - 40:42)
•Explanation of multiple naming systems in Amazonian cultures
•Discussion on the importance of kinship terms in languages
Linguistic Fieldwork and Cultural Practices(40:42 - 50:25)
•Explanation of naming practices in Manambu community
•Importance of names as spiritual wealth and land ownership tokens
•Discussion on name debates and their cultural significance
Language Preservation and Challenges(50:25 - 59:23)
•Challenges facing linguistic diversity in Papua New Guinea
Book Discussion and Closing Thoughts(59:23 - 01:09:16)
•Introduction of Alexandra's book 'I Saw the Dog'

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Transcript

Alexandra : 0:00

Foreign.

Vanessa Rogers: 0:09

Welcome, folksy folks. Welcome to Fabric of Folklore. I am Vanessa Y. Rogers, your hostess, and this is the podcast where we unravel the mysteries of folklore. And this is a show not just about exploring folk tales, but also folklore includes languages, traditions, and superstitions as well. For instance, the superstition of walking under a ladder, being unlucky, has origins dating back thousands of years. There are a few key beliefs and theories behind this widespread superstition, and I'm going to talk about just two that I found. But there are numerous accounts. In ancient Egypt, the ladder was considered a sacred symbol representing the Trinity, father, mother, and child, and the connection heaven and earth. And walking under the ladder was thought to disrupt this sacred geometry, leading to bad luck. There's also a gallows association. Ladders were often used in executions by hanging, and walking under a ladder was seen as tempting fate and inviting the noose. The association of the ladder with death and danger contributed to that superstition. And as humans, we are stories telling species. We're constantly seeking meaning. And folklore is one way in which we express what matters to us and what those stories mean to us. When we tell stories, when we sing songs, when we tell jokes, we're passing along a little piece of ourselves to bring joy, to warn, to give advice to the people, to the folk. And this podcast is about exploring what it is to be human, what it is to be part of the folk, and how to be a better human by understanding ourselves and others at a deeper level. So if that's a podcast you want to continue to listen to, make sure you hit that subscribe button, whether you're watching on YouTube or you're listening on your favorite podcasting platform like Spotify, iHeartRadio, or Apple. Make sure you hit that subscribe button so you get notifications on a weekly basis when our podcast drops. We have a fantastic show for you today. Alexandra Eichenwald is a professor at Darwin Research center of Central Queensland University in Karen and Australian Laureate Fellow. She has done extensive fieldwork in northwest Amazonia, Brazil, and in the Sepic region of New guinea, and she has written numerous books and essays on the topic of which we will provide links for in our show notes. And today specifically, we're going to be talking about her work on the magic of names. And so I'm very excited to have you. Alexandra, thank you so much for joining us.

Alexandra : 2:53

Thank you. Yes, and thank you for the introduction and of course, the introduction to superstitions and beliefs, which we learn. And you know, I have learned lots of you can call them superstitions from having lived in various countries. And one sort of warning to our listeners, if they ever come to North Queensland, please make sure you don't eat too much crocodile. Because according to the northwest Amazonians, if you eat crocodile, you forget everything.

Vanessa Rogers: 3:26

Oh my.

Alexandra : 3:28

It seems to be true as well, because once I saw tuna, were hungry, there was not the meat there, so bought some crocodile and believe it or not, we left all our food supplies behind. So were in a bit of a sort of issue when went to a very remote village, which of course is not on Brazilian maps. So that's one of those things. And there are lots of other things, like in the jungle, if you are in the Amazonian jungle at night, do not fry anything because the evil spirit will smell it and come and get you.

Vanessa Rogers: 4:00

Oh, interesting. Yes, I love superstitions. I'm always so curious about different superstitions in different countries. I remember when were in Chile, one of the superstitions was if you drink a hot drink before you go outside in the cold air, your face will freeze. And people were very adamant about not drinking a hot drink before you go outside. And I remember they literally wouldn't let us go outside until like the hot drink had settled down. I always. So I love learning about superstitions in different places.

Alexandra : 4:37

Yes. And of course, you know, you have superstitions and you also have some sort of rules and conventions, for instance, for the use of names. What we find in various areas, it's not really superstition, but it just, you use different names in different contexts and as languages evolve, these contexts change. And sometimes it's. I'm a sort of traditionalist, so I think, my God, what's happening there? But then it's our bread and butter. As linguists and as human beings and as ethnographers, we just observe things changing. So for instance, let's get back. If you want, I can get back straight into names. There is particular set of so called blessing names or names of breath, because you sort of bestow them, the shaman bestows them breathing on you. No hot breath. No, it's just breathing. And these names used to be used only under one set of circumstances in shamanic blessings. Otherwise it would have been, oh, you just don't do that. Or, you know, you white people do it. I mean, that's the worst offense I heard against myself. There are some things, you white people, you do it. I don't want to do it. But then nowadays these blessing names are used in people's signatures, including email addresses. Because most sort of Indians in northwest Amazonia are very email and WhatsApp literate and they sign their names with the blessing names. And so, okay, address me as well by my blessing name. And so that's the way things are changing. They are now. They're still very important, but they're important as identity markers. So takes us straight into what names do and why names are so incredibly important.

Vanessa Rogers: 6:27

And blessing names, I remember reading in your paper that they weren't necessarily secret, but they were sacred and they weren't used frequently. And even some people didn't even know what their own blessing names are were. But now it seems that they're more used frequently.

Alexandra : 6:44

Yes, and that's a very interesting point as well, because back in the old days, which I know from sort of snippets of literature and from what all the people told me, many of them gone now, blessing names were used exclusively by shamans. When shamans come in sort of about five levels of knowledge to say to treat an illness or to just to sort of make sure a person feels all right. But how come? It was actually one of your questions. I mean, like for us, how come you don't know your own name? The point is that the colonial invasion, shall we say, in general, has resulted in the fact that people were separated from their traditions and shamans because they're very vulnerable sort of group of people and very powerful. So the colonial administration, including, I'm sorry to say, some of the religious orders, including Catholics, I have great respect for Catholic, they were not very good back in the 1920s in northwest Amazonia, in Brazil especially, they wanted to eradicate all this and all this heretic sort of stuff. And so shamanic knowledge was dwindling and traditional knowledge was dwindling. There were no blessings. So people had no opportunity to actually use these names. They didn't know them. And so. But now there are two reasons. One, the sort of self awareness of indigenous groups across Amazonia is on the rise, which I just can't say. Can't sort of have enough. What? Don't have enough to say how wonderful it is. People sort of are restoring their indigenous identity. They lost it. They long for empowerment and they really sort of stick to it. So for many people, blessing names are a sort of sign of this is what we are. Because every name is sort of like characteristic of a group. Great. On the other hand, there is unfortunately a bit of a sad side to it. The health care in much of Brazilian northwest Amazonia is, shall we say, not up to scratch. And so I forever receive messages and WhatsApp and Facebook and just talk to people and they say, look, we don't trust Western medicine or we can't afford a doctor, so we go to shaman and we need our names, because otherwise the shamans say, well, it won't take. It's a Brazilian sort of. Yeah, Brazilian, and in this case, Indiana expression. It won't take. It won't work if we don't know the correct name. And what pains me is that sometimes people come back to me and say, well, you've got this book now, it's in Portuguese as well. Before it was only in English, and it has a list of our blessing names. So what's the blessing name for my third son, so that he could recover from his cold? In the US you probably will take something like an aspirin. We take something like Panadol and we're fine, but they can't afford it. And so these names all of a sudden require healing power, because what else would you do? So it just shows you how important the names are. But you see, to investigate the names in northwest Amazonia, mostly with the Italiana people, but other people as well, it took me quite a few years, I'd say maybe about 20 to 30 years just to establish the sets for each group. And they're disputed because some people say one thing, other people say another thing. And also names are given. Took me many years to understand that they're given in order of birth, because again, people wouldn't remember. But it just shows you one thing, that as sort of here we are sort of dealing with, trying to restore languages and cultures, make sure they survive as part of our global competence as humans. And we're facing with obsolescence and loss of knowledge as linguists, all we can do is document things and try and sort of write things up for the academic community, which is what I mostly do, but also for the indigenous community and for the public, whether it works or not, look, it's. You throw it into the dark and often goes.

Vanessa Rogers: 11:08

So going back to the blessing names, who does give them their blessing names if it's not given by their parents, who's in charge of giving them a blessing name?

Alexandra : 11:17

Very good question. Nowadays, I'm told that it's the oldest kind of elder of the family, say, the oldest surviving brother. I was told by a very wonderful Catholic missionary, Father Kazimiro Beksta, who spent, I don't know, maybe 50, 60, 70 years in Northwest Amazonian. He was Lithuanian Catholic priest And he told me that traditionally people would call a shaman and say, shaman of the highest caliber, highest qualification. And the shaman will choose the name from the sort of names of the name of the group, because there is this. A set sort of set. A fixed set of names, about 10 for each, in following the birth order, but not necessarily. So I can tell you about my name. It was sort of. I was just given. All of a sudden, it was the oldest surviving brother of the family who said, look, we will call you Kumadharo. Said, why? Kumadharo means a flying duck. I was not even the oldest female in the family, but the oldest female in the family is the same name. So not supposed to happen. But I was happy. I said, wonderful. I got so happy. But why? Because you fly a lot. I did fly a lot. I fly a lot from Australia to Brazil. It's a bit of a lot. So. Okay, good. But in actual fact, the reason was that I was. In their view, they didn't think about the other female in the family, that I was sort of like an older sister somewhere in a. There is a lot of freedom because. Freedom in nowadays in designation of names, hence the variation, hence messages I got saying, but could you confirm this or that name? I asked. I told the shaman that my middle son is called Tuiri, which is a. I think a tiny little bird, but it. He's still sick, so maybe it's not his name because it hasn't worked. Will say that shaman wasn't competent, but maybe shamans are incompetent.

Vanessa Rogers: 13:30

Right?

Alexandra : 13:32

Well, like doctors, we have to trust them. Otherwise, what do we do?

Vanessa Rogers: 13:36

Yeah, go get a second opinion.

Alexandra : 13:40

Or don't. Because it is a land imbued with sorcery. And so it is. One always keeps to this sort of source of information. One is always precise. And God forbid the shaman learns about something wrong about you and they may exercise sorcery, then one wouldn't get better ever. So, no, it's all these. It's beliefs. And one can laugh about them, but I wouldn't because it's rooted in sort of, you could say folk tales, but it's also rooted in what people believe and what keeps them going, because it is. Well, you could say placebo, but it's very strong.

Vanessa Rogers: 14:20

Mm. Mm. Well, let's go back a little bit. I want to know a little bit about your history and why you got into linguistics. How did. How did you get onto this journey?

Alexandra : 14:33

Okay, so basically, yes, it's. It's. I've been in linguistics for A long time. I celebrated what, 40 years since my PhD in June. I was young.

Vanessa Rogers: 14:46

Congratulations.

Alexandra : 14:47

Well, I was 27 then, so. Yeah, but it was a. It was a difficult journey because I was born in obviously like most East European Jews, mainly European Jews. The family comes from the Ukraine. But my sort of parent grandparents moved to Moscow. For them it was like a sort of marketplace to move to. It was a very. The old Soviet Union. Now it's probably worse, but the old Soviet Union is a horrible place. Very racist and especially anti Jewish. And my family, Achenwald family is quite well known because of the great grandfather who was Nabokov's teach in Berlin and various things. But so then he was like an enemy of the people during the Soviet Union, sort of like up until 1989. And so was my grandfather and my father was also Hades, plus a Jewish surname. And I was told by a person, believe it or not, she's still alive, the head of the classics department. Then with this surname I can vow, no way. You can never sort of do classics. What I wanted to do, why I wanted to do classics because my grandparents, my. Yeah, my paternal grandparents, I wanted to live up to them because they did classics. I wanted to do the same, but no way. And so what did I do? I went to. They had a friend who said, sasha, why don't you try and join a sort of like an Olympics? And linguistics and maths. I said, yeah, I went there, got a prize and I thought, it's interesting, linguistics is interesting. They gave us linguistic problems. Then I tried my hand at that and got into the Department of Structural and Applied Linguistics at Moscow State University, where they didn't really mind at that point whether I had a Jewish surname or not. It was by quality because we hadn't examined maths. I mean, maths is not history. You can't sort of invent something. And so started there and basically never looked back. I had great teachers as well. And then I started my certificate working in various languages. First of all Finna Ugric, because I spoke a bit of Estonian and we used to go there every summer. Then I was told, you know, with this surname you would never really. It would be very difficult for you to make it in Finna Ugric studies. All right. Then I sort of turned to all the Anatolian languages, Hittite and various others. And then it so happened that somebody came up to me, he's still around. His name is Militaryov. He's old now, said, look, Sasha, you sort of seem to be kind of finishing of floundering. Maybe you would like to work with Berber languages. And I always, you know, sort of like linguistic minorities who are trognanded. At that point in time it was like late 70s, early 80s Berber people were absolutely trognande by. By the Arabic minorities. And they're incredible languages. Plus, you know, there was this idea there's one Berber language. In actual fact, I'd say there are 50 and they're very different. So got there. Then I got into the Institute of Oriental Studies because there was someone who was really interested in quality rather than in sort of connections. And there I was assigned, believe it or not, to work on modern Hebrew. Why was it so? Because I obviously had a lot of Jewish and you could call Zionist connections. I did do ground. I mean that was very. It would have been exciting if it hadn't been dangerous. Almost got arrested once. Underground forces in modern Hebrew. And so I had to fill in like a questionnaire and the questioner said, which languages do you know? So I sort of said Estonian. Okay, it doesn't matter, right? And then I said biblical Hebrew. I didn't say modern Hebrew because otherwise the head of the department, who was a very staunch sort of party member and stuff would have said, how did you learn this forbidden language? Because it was the language of Israel enemy and Zionism and whatever. So I said Biblical Hebrew. And he said to me then, Biblical Hebrew, you know, in our department there was a department in shit of oriental status. A very kind of pro Soviet and very politically oriented place. Very dangerous. But the department of languages was fine, partly because there were good people there, but not my head of department. He said, so you probably. It won't take you long to learn modern Hebrew. And it sort of stands out. I learned it pretty quickly. He corrected me. He was very clever. He was himself a member of the minority called Tat, which are basically speaking Iranian language. But they divided into two groups, Muslim and Jewish. He was a Jewish tat. He was trying to hide it from us. I had enough friends and were done. A funny thing called Jewish Ethnographical committee. You know, it's all the Soviet Union. So we had to have total underground committee. And they said, you know who your boss is? Shabbatov, He's a Jewish tat. A said, okay. So he knew exactly what I was doing. He was trying to stop me from defending my PhD on verbal languages. But he didn't because there were other people helping but helping me. Good quality people. But the result, I published one gram of modern Hebrew, which seems to be still in use in 1990, published. It was republished in Russia now in 2010. And then I did a gram of biblical Hebrew, which I don't think I will publish. And then as soon as the, you know, as Jews, Jewish surname, were second rate citizens. It's just, I mean, it was really bad. I couldn't immigrate, leaving my parents behind because before the sort of iron curtain kind of lifted because then there was would be no connection and it was just impossible. So as soon as the iron curtain kind of started kind of crumbling, I got a job and Brazil grabbed my son. We went to Brazil because that was the opening I had. So just as soon as I can leave this hellhole, we're off. And in Brazil, well, you know, you can work on Hebrew, but it's a sort of, you know, it's not exactly that, but they're full of absolutely fantastic languages and fantastic peoples and they're all totally trod nanda now a little bit better. But back then it was like 1989. Look, I heard things there in Brazil, like for instance, somebody said, you're working on These indigenous languages. 1 comma in Portuguese is more valuable than all the indigenous languages put together. I thought, okay, so that's what vegetarian. And people would say it now they may think it, but they won't say it.

Vanessa Rogers: 21:42

Right?

Alexandra : 21:43

Not allowed. So I went to Brazil and started my sort of John and Amazonian.

Vanessa Rogers: 21:50

And how many languages do you think that there are in Amazonia?

Alexandra : 21:55

Well, I wrote a book which probably is referred in my bio, called the Languages of Amazon. We would say now that there are about 350 languages. But it's very difficult to count because there are sort of dialect variations. There are some languages which probably don't have any speakers. So are they still counting or not? Are we counting them or not? Originally, when this sort of invasion happened, 1492, if you count from Columbus, 1500. If you count Invasion of Brazil by Pedro Alvaro Cabral, I'd say thousand. And again, there is a problem with how you count languages because, you know, like dialects, you have sort of languages that are very close, almost mutually intelligible. But people feel that they're different. So I would count them in different languages. So maybe I'll come up with 2000 just because you can call it generosity. But it also acknowledges people's attitudes.

Vanessa Rogers: 22:59

Absolutely. And so you were in the Brazilian part of Amazonia and what were the people's names that you were?

Alexandra : 23:10

Well, basically I had a job in the south, a place called Florianopolis, which is beautiful, it has 44 beaches. But wasn't too much linguistics there then. But it so happened, because I talked to other sort of Brazilian linguists and they said, well, around Florianopolis, you have to pick Guarani languages. Like, you know, there's a novel. Guarani don't go there, because it's all for us. Born Brazilians. I was naturalized. Okay. And so what sort of. It turned out that the area where there was just almost like nothing. There are no linguists except missionaries, was this very remote place between Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela. So I went there and I worked with quite a few languages there. First I started with the language lovely Hohodeno, Bani, Rosana, a language called Barrel. This language is probably extinct because I don't think there are any speakers left. A language called Huaraquena, which has a few speakers, about 14, I think, last time we looked. And my main language, Tariana, which is spoken on the Vaubas river, and it's sort of live in Brazil, but they have lots of contacts in Colombia. And this is the language when people sometimes ask me, well, how many languages do you speak? Well, I speak Thalian almost every day because we communicate with the speakers. And depending on the time of the day, I speak because we have about, what, 15 hours difference. So, yeah, we can't really maintain dialogue all the time. Yeah. So Tariana is now the main one. But then there are always. Tarian belongs to the Arawak family, which is the biggest in Amazonia or in South America, I would say. And they're also in contact. They intermarried with speakers of Tukanon languages. So those. I understand. There is one I sort of understand a bit. I can speak. So. Yeah, so if you. But it is mostly and all its varieties that seems to be sort of taking the center stage now.

Vanessa Rogers: 25:17

And when you say all sorts of varieties, is it because there's different groups of people who speak that language and they. They live apart or are they living together and they have a variety?

Alexandra : 25:29

Well, both. It's a very good question because you have three sub. Well, Dalian used to have like maybe eight sub clans, about. Shall we say, about five of them? No, I'd say if it's eight. Yes. About five of them completely lost their language because of the Mishm. Because of just moving into bigger, big settlements. Three sub clans had different varieties, and actually they still preserve them. So those varieties. But within the same community, you have differences between older people and younger people. And you have. Well, I just. When I Talk, depending on who I talk to. So you have different forms, sometimes different expressions of both. Makes it interesting. I mean, makes it something that you get thinking, is it the same in our languages? It obviously is because you won't speak English in the same way to say your boss or your supervisor and someone who is sort of cleaning the streets and barks at you. So you would obviously use different lexicon.

Vanessa Rogers: 26:38

And the languages that have completely been eradicated. Is it because the people are no longer there, or is it because they've taken on other languages or what's happening in those instances?

Alexandra : 26:52

Look, I think it's both. Oftentimes it was the people who were too belligerent for their own good. I'm not. I don't want to criticize them. There is a group, you know, well, the city of Manaos, which is the capital of Brazilia, of Amazon, or the state of Amazon, Brazil. It is named after a very powerful group called Manao. They were incredibly belligerent. They didn't want to hear anything of the Soviet invasions they were fighting. But, you know, they didn't have the guns. And so they were eradicated. There are no descendants left. We have some documents which are incredibly interesting. But what do you do? For many other languages, people just abandoned them because of. People were, in a way forced to abandon them because they were forced migrations. There were like tendencies whereby men would go out to work outside, women stay at home. And women think that maybe it's better for my children to learn a majority language, not their own language. Or if mother and father speak different languages, as was the case for the Daliana, because that's how it is in the area. Women would teach them their own language and not father's language, Father somewhere else. And so. And also oftentimes children would be taken away from their parents in the boarding schools. And then in the boarding schools, forget about all this sort of devilish. Don't say devilish multilingualism, Please just speak one language, whatever language the missionaries chose. And it's a story that, you know, like repeats itself in every part of the world. In Canada, in the United States. And as a result we sort of have this incredible depletion. So language. Like I mentioned, the language Barre. If you go to Amazonia, you will have God knows what. You will have a soft drink called Guarana, which is quite nice, called Barre. And you will have a beauty contact contest called Barre. But there are. I don't think there are any people who speak the language. There are probably some who still remember a Few words because of all these factors that conspired in such a way that all the speakers of Umau say 99%, you can never say all of Barre now speak, either speak a local, sort of missionary installed common language lingua franca, or just Portuguese. Local Portuguese, which is also local. Portuguese is the most incredible language as well, compared to what they speak in Sao Paulo. But it's not the ancestral language. Result is we sort of linguists try and prepare linguistic materials and dictionaries and grammars. And the problem is what language we do it in. If we do it in English, we get grants and, you know, things like that. If we do it in, say, Portuguese, then people in the English speaking world have no idea what's happening.

Vanessa Rogers: 29:51

Right.

Alexandra : 29:52

Maybe the Indians would sort of take, you know, it sort of would in a way be an incentive for them to relearn the languages. So do both. This is why it's hard.

Vanessa Rogers: 30:06

I mean, I'm thinking personally of I'm from Texas, I'm from Central Texas, but, you know, just a little bit further south Texas is on the border of Mexico. And a lot of people in South Texas, they speak a very mixture, a strong mixture of both English and Spanish together. So they'll, you know, half the sentence will be in English and half the sentence will be in Spanish. And so it's not really, you know, I don't even know if how a linguist would work with that in those type of areas. And I would imagine that would be the case. And a lot of your instances, especially since there's so many different languages they're having to interact with because they're not speaking one language, what does a linguist do in those instances?

Alexandra : 30:53

Well, there are lots of sort of theories on how to work with that. There was a linguist who actually even wrote a paper. Why is it so that I start in English? Yeah, so it's a sort of like a blended language. I encountered one language like that in when we left our food behind after crocodile in a remote village in Santa Teresinha in the Amazon in Brazil, where people sort of like freely switch between tariana and baniwag, which is very closely related. So you really have to trace each of them. You just try and describe it as a separate language and make sure that you sort of trace the etymology of everything and see how it goes, see the dynamics of it, as it were. Now, for the Kalyana, because they live in such a sort of multilingual environment. You know what? They do not mix languages. God forbid you use a word from. From a neighboring Turkana language or God forbid you use a Portuguese word. So if you want to use a Portuguese word because there is no word there, how do you say computer? It's hard. It's a way. There is a way. That's about five words. So you want to say it quickly. Then you introduce it like a sort of permission in white man's language computadora, then it's fine. So people deal with these things in different ways. But language mixing. Oh, it's what dogs do. Okay, fine, so you don't want to be like a dog. Fine. Then just keep your languages separate. Only words, right? Words separate in terms of glamour. Grammatical categories just are shared. Like house on fire, which again, for us linguists, it's very fascinating. Yeah, again, it's quite difficult in certain ways.

Vanessa Rogers: 32:51

I would imagine that would be very hard. So one of the reasons I was really fascinated with this topic of the magic of names is I love to read fantasy novels. And one of the recurring themes in fantasy novels is the power of names that names hold. If you know someone's true name, you hold a specific power over that person. So a lot of times people won't reveal their true name so that they won't be able to have be controlled by someone else. And I was just curious from a linguist perspective and someone who specifically looks at names, if you see this in a lot of different cultures or where you think fantasy novelists are borrowing this idea.

Alexandra : 33:41

Look, fantasy novelists are probably quite, well, sort of well heeled in, you can probably say folk tales or legends of the time past. So if you remember the Egyptian language legend of Ra and Isis, the goddess Isis, a female goddess. So it's female empowerment, you could say, acquires the powers equal to the sun God after she'd learned the real name of Ra, which we are not supposed to pronounce in the Hebrew tradition, you are not supposed to pronounce the name of our Lord. So you say it some other way. And you are not well if you say it and the God doesn't get very happy and something bad might happen. So it's sort of almost in our Western tradition, you could say the fact that you know something about a person, if you know their name. And so that's where fantasy novelists get it from. And in terms of power, the power of name for the Amazonian people, I think for the. I had a very wonderful teacher, she's dead now. Of Bani, who just said, look, I'll tell you my name, my real name, but please don't tell anyone, because then they may do harm. Not that they will have power over me, but they may do something wrong. I kept it secret and I never told anyone until such time as I met someone else, also Hukhodna woman, also totally wonderful, who gave me her email address. And her email address had this name in. So it means that things are democratization of language. Things are sort of. They're evolving, they're losing power. And in the civic area, because this is another sort of place where names are unbelievably important. If you know someone's name, there are lots of names. There are patron names, matronames. If you know the real patronyms, you do have power over the person. And if you know their matron names, you can be, as one of the speakers said, you can be nice to them. In actual fact, nice is nice, but it's also protective. So if I address you by your mother's name, it means that, well, something. Maybe you're a bit sick and I was just trying to protect you from the spirits who are, of course, roaming everywhere. So you have these protective powers of names themselves. And of course they, I'm sure, crime novelists. So I'm not a crime novelist as well, but science fiction novelists would jump at it because there is something there that is not, well, you could say, not rational. For those people, you know, like chemists or mathematicians, they'll say everything has to be evidence based. I don't know how it can be evidence based, but it's based on something.

Vanessa Rogers: 36:28

Something, yeah. So let's go back to the group in Amazonia. Tatiana. Is that how you said it?

Alexandra : 36:37

Tatiana. T A R I A N A. Tatiana.

Vanessa Rogers: 36:43

And they are given, I believe, when I was reading a Portuguese name to start. Is that right?

Alexandra : 36:50

Absolutely. They have to be baptized. It's a very strongly sort of Catholic area. And being the Brazilian bureaucracy, they all have birth certificates, and their birth certificates have year, which doesn't have to be the year of birth. It's okay. And they have to have a Portuguese name. And Portuguese names are used sometimes. Well, actually, the longer I work with them, the more they're used to refer to people. So for instance, I had one of my first teacher was called. He's dead now, Graciliano. So people would refer to him as Gara. It's a short name, but he had a blessing name as well. Men also had head. I don't know if they still do nicknames. And these nicknames sometimes were offensive. So somebody would call, would Be called like a water rat. This man is dead now. But he was very good. And for Graciliano, because were so close and everyone was a bit scared with him. He was basically the oldest brother. I never learned the nickname. I asked and said because you don't want to offend the person. Why you don't want to offend the person. One thing is because you don't and also because then you don't know what powers he may have. He. He may unleash some sort of sorcerer or shamanic type powers onto you. So, yeah.

Vanessa Rogers: 38:20

So how many names is that? So they have like a Portuguese name and then they're given how many names.

Alexandra : 38:27

I would say if it's a man, you'll have a Portuguese name which gets shortened. So you can have say, two shortened, not in a way that is common for certain of in Brazil. Like for instance, Ismael will be my year and Graciliano Gara. And well, I suppose Livia would be Oli. So that's okay. That's normal Brazilian. So 2. Then you have a blessing name which is never shortened or anything. You have a surname which is in your sort of birth certificate. And then if you are a man, you have a nickname and. Yeah. Name of animal or something that may not be nice enough to sort of Stephen mentioned to someone else. People just don't know their nicknames. I'm just. I've been writing a paper. A very lovely man was called Mouse's Tail or Rat's Tail. Why rats? He's big. He's bigger than. I mean, anyway, he's quite sort of substantial. Why red Stale? Nobody can. I mean, maybe there is a reason, but the reason gets sort of lost. And these nicknames are given at birth and they kind of are there now. Other than these, say five names, what else is happening? Like we would say, I'd say, vanessa, come here. Or you'd say, alexandra, come here, go away. But in the traditional communication system, which is still considered the correct one, you don't do that because everyone is related to anyone. So if I sort of talk to you, I consider you my relative. I'll say my younger sister. I'll say my relative. I'll say noidu, younger sister. You'll say to me, no, Pai, older sister. And I even recorded the story by spontaneous story by my sort of younger uncle, my father's younger brother, because I'm adopted in the community. His name is Leonardo Brito. And he recorded the story saying, well, you know, this white woman, she Came from down south. She's good, you know, but she respects us. She doesn't say to me, Leo. She says, my uncle. So you have six ways of sort of addressing a person, referring to a person, which is, look, it makes up for a very interesting sort of communication and very nuanced.

Vanessa Rogers: 40:59

Absolutely. I taught English in South Korea, and one of the things that the Westerners were kind of taken aback at was that were always asked what our age was, which in Western communication is not a common thing. We're not going to go up to someone and ask them what their age is. But it was important in Korea because they needed that information to know how to address you. And they didn't address us white folk or people from other countries in this way, but it was just part of their culture. So if someone was older than them, they would always say older sister, and the older person would refer to them as their name. So they needed to know that hierarchy. And I remember it took me a long time before I figured that out as to why were always being asked what our age was, because that was just kind of not normal for us to hear. And I don't like answering how old I am, but it was necessary information for them in order to understand how to address each other. So I think that's just what I thought of when you were talking about they refer to each other as how they're related and that's integral to their communication patterns.

Alexandra : 42:20

Yes. And also, look, I. Well, it's not a very politically correct thing to say, but I think the more distinctions languages make, the more superior, the more sort of the better they are superior. So it's really good to make all these distinctions. All older sister, younger sister, and especially for grandparents, whether it's maternal grandparents or paternal grandparents. At the Javan Research center, our director of the center is Professor Edwin Miller, who is a member of the Djirbo Nation in North Queensland. And my partner, Professor Bob Dickson, has been working with the Djirba language and culture for like, I don't know, say, 60, more than 60 years. And so Adrian is dirt. And Bob wants to know how to address Adrian. Bob has been adopted into the system whereby he's Adrian's mother, brother. But he had to ask seven times exactly like your South Korean friends, whether Adrian's mother, who is now deceased, Irene, whether she was younger than what year she was born, whether she was younger. Turns out she was two months younger than Bob. Took a long time to understand it. But again, it also creates a mutual understanding and just a Bit of a bigger bond between people because, you know, so the more you know about each other, the more you like each other or the more you protect each other. So I think it all gives you sort of more cohesive community. So I think so.

Vanessa Rogers: 43:56

One of the things that you said in your paper that I found interesting was in many ways minority out of the way. Languages can be more expressive, more efficient, and perhaps overall better than familiar European ones. Can you elaborate on that?

Alexandra : 44:12

Yes, well, one thing of course is terms for kinship. When I tell people stories, because there are lots of stories to tell about maternal grandfather and paternal grandfather. And I always have to say, well, you know, this one is maternal grandfather. Oh, it's all a mouthful in the language. Like, say, Manambo from the Sipic or dirbo from around here. Just have one term. So I say, look, my mbambai, which is my maternal grandparent grandfather in this case, or my ngual. Okay, fine, everyone knows it's paternal. So in that way it just gives you again, more structure and lots of other things also sort of like how people talk. Now that's my sort of, in a way, my hobby horse. It is a phenomenon called evidentiality, when you absolutely, in every sentence you have to say how you know things. So information source, you mark your information. It just has to be there. If you admit that people say, if they don't like this person is mad or is not unreliable. If they sort of like you say, well, you know, a little bit stupid. So you have to say whether you saw something or you heard or smelled it, or whether it's inferred based on like, oh my God, it has rained. Inferred because I can see the traces of the water on the ground. Or you assume it because that's what happens all the time. Somebody tells you, says tariana system and around the place. And it actually shapes your communication in a very good way. It doesn't make you totally honest because you can always manipulate things if you want to, but you have to be precise. And it's actually a feature. There's lots of literature on that saying. One of the founding fathers of modern linguistics, Trans Boss, said, well, wouldn't it be wonderful how politicians actually have to specify how they know things? Probably would be wonderful. It would make them think a little bit more, saying, I saw this. And then somebody says, comes in and said, did you really this Hawaiian immigrants eating get. You saw this, Right. Okay. So it creates an extra dimension. This is why I think these languages which have this phenomenon. Great. So in English you Can do it if you want, but you have to do it sort of with a. With length expressions that. Yeah. Voters. Before people stop voting for Trump. So anyway.

Vanessa Rogers: 46:41

Interesting.

Alexandra : 46:43

Yeah. Well, that's one. And then there are others. There's gender, and there is just some sort of. You know how you can say instead of saying I did this or that in vain, there's a tiny little part suffix or form on a verb, and it now it tells you that you didn't get the results. So again, instead of being incredibly lengthy and verbose, it's just very concise. And of course, there are other sort of ways in which these little bits get reinterpreted. It's very funny, this one. In vain. It makes no sense in English. But when people say, I should ask them, are you all right? I mean, I really mean it. And they say, yeah, we're all right. Kind of. Instead of saying kind of, they say, we are. Right. Right. In vain. And at some point, I asked one of the spirit. I didn't really ask. I said in vain. The suffrage. Yeah. Yeah. It's just because the evil spirit wouldn't know and he wouldn't attack us. Okay, thank you. It was a protective mechanism, but just one little bit, which you miss it. And the whole thing. So many of these languages just let you say things without saying too much. Makes sense.

Vanessa Rogers: 47:56

Mm. Now, there was a really interesting characteristic of this, these people, that they weren't allowed to marry someone that spoke their same language.

Alexandra : 48:10

Can you.

Vanessa Rogers: 48:11

Can you talk about this? Because to me, that just sounds so crazy because it would be so hard to. I mean, I guess these people are used to having these multilingual conversations, so it's. It's more normalized for them, but for me, that just seems, like completely out of left field.

Alexandra : 48:29

Yeah. Well, it is a sort of law or rule across the whole kind of a PES area, which is a tributary of the Rio Negro, which is a tributary of the Amazon, that you don't marry someone who belongs to the same language group. How you count is what. What language group your father belongs to. So, for instance, a Dariana will not. Somebody whose father was Dariana would not marry someone whose father was Dariana, but they may marry someone whose mother was Tariana. Mother doesn't count. And so for us. For us in that area, because I sort of consider myself, like, part of it, because speak the language every day, it is saying mother's mother tongue makes no sense because it's father's language that counts. And so there are all sorts of etiquette Principles. So I would speak English to you because it's your father's language, right? And I would speak. Maybe if I were a proper person, I would have spoken Yiddish to my grandparents because that was their father's language and all these things like that. And people who do not adhere to these rules are considered like dogs. And say, these people, you know, they marry someone who belongs to the same language group. They're like dogs. Okay, all right. So what about white people? White people are like dogs. Okay, all right. They have all these sort of, you know, gadgets, and they're rich, but they're like dogs. But it's also a kind of compensation for the colonial oppression, which of course, you understand. Understand. It's actually good fun. But it doesn't work across the board because, like, once there was a French anthropologist in the field, and I spoke French to her and said, why are you speaking French to her? You're hiding something. I said, no, no. Dominic is her father's language. No, don't do that. You're hiding something. So there is that as well. What happens when languages get lost? Like many to come? People speak Tucano. They speak. I said, well, so you don't speak your father's language to this person who's also Tariana? Well, we lost our language. We're poor little things. Okay, we're poor little things. Let's learn it back. And the language is being taught at school. Not that the school has a lot of funds, but at least there is sort of desire to restore this whole thing. So. Yeah, but it's. It's good fun, actually, because, well, it sometimes works. So when my husband rang me up, my partner rang me up. I was in a sort of local mission center, spoke English to him, and they said that Ariana said, what did you speak? I said, well, you know, it's his father's language. Maybe it's all right, it's okay.

Vanessa Rogers: 51:21

And he. I'm assuming he doesn't speak their language?

Alexandra : 51:25

No, not at all. No.

Vanessa Rogers: 51:29

So let's talk a little bit. And then you went to Papua New guinea, right?

Alexandra : 51:33

Yes, yes.

Vanessa Rogers: 51:34

What took you there?

Alexandra : 51:36

Well, I moved out of Brazil in 1994. I got a senior research fellowship from the Australian Research Council, and I started working on genders, you know, with like an industry of 3 genders. But they are only in sort of pronouns. But in many languages, you only. Germany, you have three genders that people complain about. In French, you have two. In some languages you have like, many more, like 10 or 12 Bantu languages and I heard about Papua New guinea languages which would have genders associated with shapes. So everything that's feminine would be around and everything that's mentioned, masculine would be long and vertical. So obviously there are some sort of phallic explanation or whatever there are. But I thought it would be interesting to just see what, how this language works. And it so happened that my sister, now adopted sister, now she's deceased, unfortunately. Pauline Lucky was in Canberra where I was and I invited her to. It was a field methods course first run by Alan Ramsey. So I sat in and then we continued working. And she speaks, spoke exactly that language. She took me to the village. I thought, I thought I learned a lot of. She taught me heaps. I learned a lot of anthropological information, all sorts of cultural information, how to behave, how not to behave from her. And of course I was lucky in this case. There was a still is, I think he exists, Simon Harrison, an absolutely wonderful anthropologist who worked in that area before I got adopted into the same clan as Pauline. Pauline asked me how old I was. Exactly like your Korean people. So I was her younger sister. Once I was her younger sister, I acquired a whole plethora, a whole network of relatives. Look. And I still talk to them maybe about once a week. And it is spoken in three villages. Well, they're poor and they suffer. It's very earthquake problem. They had a 7.6 on Richter scale, an earthquake. But two months ago houses got destroyed. So it's really terrible. Papua New guinea is a country which some people call a failed state, which you're probably right. You cannot really send any money. I send them foreign credits. Brazil, I can send money. And so we talk and watch and it is a very sort of lively and ongoing work together. But it's a community where the language is spoken on a day to day basis. And so it's totally fascinating. And the community where you are valued by the number of names you are given because your names are your riches. It's almost like a sort of token of land ownership, token of belonging to a family, token of being valued. So Pauline, I think had nine names. That's what I thought in her eulogy when she died, I think there were 11. So there probably were names she forgot to mention or maybe there was just the circumstances don't come up. So yeah, I only have two. I was very kind of. It gives you a sense of satisfaction. I wouldn't call it pride, but when I was given my second name I thought it's almost like I'm a normal human Being now, you get sort of sucked into the ambiance of the community you are in and you get these feelings, oh, my God, I've got another name.

Vanessa Rogers: 55:07

So the more names you have, the more spiritual wealth. Is that what it is that you have?

Alexandra : 55:13

Yes. The more names you have, the more sort of associations with the paternal clan or maternal clan you have. And names are also tokens of land ownership because some names are associated with locations. And also people who give you names have a special relation. So it's almost like, to you. And it's almost like a sort of extended network. So, like, Pauline was my major name giver and I tried to do everything for her as much as I could. Of course, being Papua New guinea, we couldn't save medical stuff. Wasn't great, but it just gives you grounding in the. In life. But the most sort of. The most fascinating thing, one of the most fascinating things about the Manamu community is that, well, what about. These names belong to each clan? So they thought, write their name, identify you as a member of a club. What about if a member of a different club comes and uses your name? Stealing? So then people organize a name debate. I was at one. It lasted for about eight hours. Traditionally, they would last for five days. And being a white woman, I'm sort of not a woman, not a man. I'm in between. So I was allowed to sit with men and witnesses. It's incredible because people sort of say, this is our name, because. And then they list 14 ancestors, or one listed. One listed, I think about 20. I was trying to write it down. I was not very comfortable recording to prove that this is our name. And then they sort of, at the end, they all got together and they sort of divided names and gave one name to one group and the other group, not to upset them, gave them some other. Another name. Similar, but a most fascinating story, which I didn't witness, but Simon Harrison wrote at the beginning of his book on stealing people's names, which is the ethnography of the Manambo missionaries came, and they came about 1957 or 8, and they started telling the story of the Genesis to the Papuan community and to Malambo community. I said, you know, at the beginning there was this man called Adam. And somebody raised his hand and said, wait a minute, you stole our name is our name. So the missionary ran away, then come back for a while, went to another village. So those things, that's something that's really very much alive. But I'm saying it's alive for traditional people. But younger people, of course, who especially those who try and sort of get jobs outside the village. There are people, I've seen children who don't know their names, who ask mom, what's my name again? Okay, right. And sometimes Auntie Sassa, what's my name? Okay, that's your name. So it's it. There is a bit of a kind of loss and deterioration simply because all the traditional patterns are partly falling into this year. And just try hope that this will be restored somehow. But sometimes the hope is false because if you remember in your list of questions you asked me about Don Kulik's work in or how far Don Kulik's village, Gapon used to be very far. It's river. His village used to be mouth of the river. The Manampun. Other villages I worked in are in the middle of the Sepic river. So midstream now Gapon village existed. Was great. Was. It's a very interesting language. In 2018, as I think I've just checked on Wikipedia, it was dismantled because of the violence. So people dispersed. So what it does to languages you can imagine and culture and to tradition. So because of the violence, because of the fact that it looks like traditional patterns go, but the new patterns, like the new patterns of control do not. Either they don't exist or they don't help. God knows what's going to happen. All we can do is so to document what there was and give it back to people and then hopefully something nice will happen.

Vanessa Rogers: 59:35

But the situation in Papua New guinea is. You were calling it a failed state. In part that's because. Because it's so poverty stricken or why is that?

Alexandra : 59:47

Well, poverty stricken is one, but also because of, you know, Papua New guinea is the whole island of New guinea is the locals. The most incredible linguistic diversity is there even sort of like normal sites, maybe even Wikipedia says it's like 1,800 to 1,000 languages. And people refer to Papua New guinea as a land of thousand voices. How many languages? Maybe 800, maybe a thousand and one. It's a sort of open question, but a lot. It probably wasn't really fit to be one country because there is lots of cultural differences and people fight all the time and they fight for wealth, they fight for votes. If there's votes voting, they fight against the sort of white influence. Now there is little white influence. And so every day I open sort of some particular sites or I just sort of open an online newspaper. One talk and there is a ethnic conflict flaring up in the highlands. There is an ethnic conflict flaring up in the Sipica Chile. And there is an ethnic conflict flaring up somewhere else as of the islands surrounding New guinea island were safe. No, they're not. Because there was, there were like outbursts against Chinese store owners. But if you don't have Chinese stoners, who's going to sell your food? And so it's all sort of like the state is not in the position to control it, to support people enough to stop it. So maybe this is why social scientists call it a failed state. But anyway. And of course it does impact the life of everyday people. Perhaps not in very remote villages, but in towns and in sort of biggish settlements. Manambu villages are big enough for them to be impacted. So people import beer, get drunk and you can imagine what happens now. Or drugs. Because interestingly, unlike in Amazonia, there didn't used to be any sort of like traditional alcoholic type drinks interesting. But in Amazonia. Here in Amazonia it's called Kashir, sort of. It's a different story. But here you do have all this. Oh yeah, no, I saw people drunk on that and it was horrible. But as a result, New guinea is actually a dangerous place to be even. I mean, for instance, I go there, It's. I go alone. I'm a woman, I'm small, I can't even swim. But they will protect me and they will surround me because I'm sort of almost one of them. But even then I don't wear any jewelry, forget about all that. And I make sure that I'm just sort of, you know, I look poor and if I have any money it's stashed away in such a way nobody will see it. So it's a whole art of sort of making sure you don't get robbed. So it didn't happen to me.

Vanessa Rogers: 1:02:59

Now, before we started our conversation, before we started recording, we talked a little bit about a book that you wrote for people who might be in. Interested in learning more about languages. Can you tell us about the. I think you called it I Saw the Dog.

Alexandra : 1:03:15

Yes, yes. And why was it called I Saw the Dog? I'll tell you. It's because in most interesting languages you have to say how you see, how you know things. I Saw the Dog was a reaction in a village when somebody rushed into the village, into the house early in the morning saying, jaguar ate up a dog. Visual. I saw the dog. Or once you saw the dog being eaten, then really it's a big sort of kerfuffle let's go and hide or something. And on another occasion, somebody said, well, I just. It was hearsay. I Hearsay. Nobody pays attention. This is why it's called I Saw the Dog. But you need to see the Kabbal Senjuka, because it has a little trick to it. Yes. And that's a book which sort of covers a few interesting, in my view, issues. First of all, what's the language and why the language is important? How to tell apart difficult a language in the dialect. Why on earth is it not the case that, you know, it's a language, hasn't been written down, it's not a language. So it's almost a myth that. Well, now people do not really speak. Say it much. When I first arrived in Australia, I was shocked slightly by the wife of the vice of then Vice Chancellor, Dean Terrell, who came up to me at some DU. And I was, you know, I was probably 35 and she's, you know, like a wife of boss. I said, oh, here you are, your linguist, you'll work on this Mumbu Jumbo dialects. I thought, my God. All right. So now she wouldn't say. Oh, I don't know what she would say. She's probably in her 90s now. But people may think what they want, but they don't say it. Then they did, and it's somewhere in people's mind. So that's one chapter. Then I talk about things, interesting things, like gender, how in some languages, like a manambo, everything that's small and brown and very sorry, not important is feminine. Everything that's big and long and important is masculine. And so you sort of play with these things. They were sitting at a sort of window once again in Canberra. Look at the Parliament House. And Pauline would say, yeah, Parliament House, yes, it is masculine because it's important enough. And then sort of she said, yeah, big ban in England. Yeah, yeah, it's sort of big. It's important enough. But Buckingham palace is not that important. It's feminine. So, all right, okay. So that thing and then about information source, then about how languages are similar, why they're similar, and then about how some languages seem to be surviving well and other languages, as were talking about it, are on the way to extinction and what linguists can do. So there is a story of Barre, the language of the sort of Guarana drink and beauty contest in Amazonia, and some pictures. So unfortunately, I'm very sorry, pictures are black and white, but one can always exercise one's imagination to.

Vanessa Rogers: 1:06:13

And we will definitely provide the link to that book in our show notes. But what is the overall message of I Saw the Dog? Is it just so people that can understand what linguists do and how linguists are trying to save languages or what do you feel like is at the heart of that book?

Alexandra : 1:06:31

Well, I thought that sort of to show people how exciting language is, desire, how important it is to make sure that we preserve this linguistic diversity is one thing, but also we appreciate it that we don't sort of say, are these, you know, this sounds like English? Just forget it. Why doesn't everyone speak English well? Why doesn't everyone just eat whatever it is a Yorkshire pudding and forget about all the other things? For same reason. Because then you sort of lose this global competence and you impoverish yourself. That's the main message. And also what else we might need to know about languages to make things even more exciting? Why languages share words? Does it mean that they come from the same source? Or maybe it means that they've been together for a long time or something like that. So, yeah, so that's the main message. It's not a big book. It's only about what, 200 pages?

Vanessa Rogers: 1:07:31

Well, that sounds wonderful. Is there any lasting thoughts that you want to give to our listeners before we leave?

Alexandra : 1:07:40

Thank you. I would just like to thank you for this opportunity and also to reiterate the message that languages are part of our global competence as humans. In order to continue as humans, we really need to do everything we can to just valorize them to make sure that languages and their speakers, minority people, feel appreciated. That's all things.

Vanessa Rogers: 1:08:05

Well, thank you so much for joining us. This is such a pleasure.

Alexandra : 1:08:08

Same here. Thank you.

Vanessa Rogers: 1:08:10

And thank you folksy folks for joining us on this linguist magic of names episode. What did you learn today? What do you feel? Do names have powers? And we love to hear from you. And like I said before, all of her links will be on our show notes. So you can go to our website, www.fabricoffolklore.com and all of the links to her paper and also to her book, numerous books you can find there. Like I said before, subscribing to the show is very helpful. Sharing the episode, sharing the show with your best friend, with your mother is incredibly helpful for any podcast like ourselves so that we can continue to give the information that you are enjoying. Thanks so much for joining us and unraveling the mysteries of folklore once again. I'm Vanessa Irad. Vanessa Y. Rogers. And until next time, keep the folk alive.

Alexandra : 1:09:15

Thanks.