Tevfik Esenç & Ubykh: cenaze – begrafenis – begravelse – funeral

TÜRKÇE: Ünlü Kafkas Ubihca dilinin son abidelerinden (konuSan) olan Tevfik Esenç, 7 Ekim 1992 hayatini kaybetti ve son yolculuğuna uğurlandi. Sadece danimarkali Ole Stig Andersen son fotoğraflari Cekebildi. Bu kendince bir ilk ve Tevfik Esenc kendisiyle  beraber ünlü Ubihca dilinin  ( kendine özgü 80 ünsüz sesli olan Ubihca) sonsuza veda etmesi oldu. Türkçe nin 22 ünsüz sesi bulunuyor.

ENGLISH: On the 7th of October 1992, Tevfik Esenç, the last speaker of the famous Caucasian language Ubykh, passed away. He was buried that same day. Ole Stig Andersen from Denmark was there. He was the only one who took pictures. These unique pictures are shown here for the very first time. With his photos, Ole Stig Andersen recorded a special event …

The funeral of a language: The burial of Tevfik Esenç and the Ubykh language

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In June 2018, I (Peter Bakker) interviewed Ole Stig Andersen about the day he attended the funeral of Tevfik Esenç, the last man to allegedly speak the Ubykh language. It was October 7, 1992, 26 years earlier, that the funeral had taken place. In fact, Ole Stig Andersen had wanted to write himself about this funeral of a man and his language for Lingoblog.dk, and he wanted a text in at least three languages: Danish, English, Turkish. The text would have to be published together with the unique pictures he took of the funeral, and that have never been published or shown before.

He wanted to write no fewer than four articles in this connection: about Caucasian languages, about Caucasian

Researchers hiding in fear of GDPR

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GDPR – business or pleasure?

Do you remember GDPR (or, for mnemonic assistance, Gitte and Per)? This is one of three posts on the EU law that everybody feared last year: What did we think it was, what is it, and what effects has it had?

In the weeks before 25 May 2018, I received up to thirty e-mails a day (yes, I have too many accounts at webshops and social media) with similar text: “We are updating our Privacy Policy”.

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… all on occasion of GDPR, EU’s new data law, which Lingoblog has written about here and here.

The many e-mails made me think if I ought to send a similar one out to all of my …

Effects of GDPR

gdpr

GDPR – business or pleasure?

Do you remember GDPR (or, for mnemonic assistance, Gitte and Per)? This is one of three posts on the EU law that everybody feared last year: What did we think it was, what is it, and what effects has it had?

When the EU legislation was announced, many researchers at my department were in doubt of exactly what to do (see also: What is GDPR? A compliance guide) — and after more than a year, still no general practice has emerged.

A survey of among my research colleagues in linguistics show highly individual solutions to the new law. Researchers of social media in particular are frustrated about how to interpret the law when

What is GDPR? A compliance guide

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GDPR – business or pleasure?

Do you remember GDPR (or, for mnemonic assistance, Gitte and Per)? This is one of three posts on the EU law that everybody feared last year: What did we think it was, what is it, and what effects has it had?

As of the 25th of May 2018 the new general data protection regulations came out. The purpose of GDPR is to give people control over their own personal data and give them the power to decide who can use it and when it can be used. The new regulations were written with large corporations in mind, but they also have implications for the academic world, for example when personally sensitive data is used …

Reviving an indigenous language: an interview with Daniel Huircapán

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In August this year I read an article in the Argentinian newspaper Página 12 about the National Conference of Indigenous Languages held in Argentina. Unfortunately, the article was quite lacking in information about the Conference itself and about the linguistic work done by Daniel Huircapán, who was mentioned in the article. I thought this was too bad, because his work sounded very interesting – so I decided to contact him myself by email. On the 3rd of September 2019 I did a Skype interview with Daniel Huircapán who is a member of the Günün a Küna indigenous community in Argentina. He is one among a small group of people (mostly natives) who since 2007 have immersed themselves in the …

The Voynich manuscript: the decipherment of ms. 408

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Last year I was contacted by someone who claimed to have deciphered the Voynich manuscript. This manuscript is one of the big enigmas of medieval history and, for that matter, linguistics. No one has yet been able to decipher it, and many have tried. It is written in a totally unknown script in an unidentified language.

The manuscript is more than 500 years old. It has been publicly available for a century, and now it is also available online. Nobody has been able to translate the manuscript; there have been many proposals, but all have been rejected. People have claimed it could be written in a form of Hebrew, in a Romance language, in an earlier form of Romani, an …