#Kakawa

[from-my-view]

11/29/22

[script-a-world]

Submitted via Google Form:

I have a world in which a lot of words, majority being nouns are never actually translated and thus languages all have common and unaltered loan words. What I mean is like 'chocolate' is always 'chocolate', there's no 'chocolat' 'coklat' 'cokolada' etc... To make it easier, all languages do have a similar alphabet. If this continues on a vast scale, how do languages develop and how understandable are different languages?

Tex: What is your base language? Why is it not another language?

To illustrate a point, here is the etymology of the word chocolate (Wikipedia):

Cocoa, pronounced by the Olmecs as kakawa,[5] dates to 1000 BC or earlier.[5] The word "chocolate" entered the English language from Spanish in about 1600.[6] The word entered Spanish from the word chocolātl in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs. The origin of the Nahuatl word is uncertain, as it does not appear in any early Nahuatl source, where the word for chocolate drink is cacahuatl, "cocoa water". It is possible that the Spaniards coined the word (perhaps in order to avoid caca, a vulgar Spanish word for "faeces") by combining the Yucatec Mayan word chocol, "hot", with the Nahuatl word atl, "water".[7] A widely cited proposal is that the derives from unattested xocolatl meaning "bitter drink" is unsupported; the change from x- to ch- is unexplained, as is the -l-. Another proposed etymology derives it from the word chicolatl, meaning "beaten drink", which may derive from the word for the frothing stick, chicoli.[8] Other scholars reject all these proposals, considering the origin of first element of the name to be unknown.[9] The term "chocolatier", for a chocolate confection maker, is attested from 1888.[10]

To illustrate another point, here is an excerpt for the article on the history of the English language (Wikipedia):

English is a West Germanic language that originated from Ingvaeonic languages brought to Britain in the mid-5th to 7th centuries AD by Anglo-Saxon migrants from what is now northwest Germany, southern Denmark and the Netherlands. The Anglo-Saxons settled in the British Isles from the mid-5th century and came to dominate the bulk of southern Great Britain. Their language originated as a group of Ingvaeonic languages which were spoken by the settlers in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages, displacing the Celtic languages (and, possibly, British Latin) that had previously been dominant. Old English reflected the varied origins of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms established in different parts of Britain. The Late West Saxon dialect eventually became dominant. A significant subsequent influence on the shaping of Old English came from contact with the North Germanic languages spoken by the Scandinavian Vikings who conquered and colonized parts of Britain during the 8th and 9th centuries, which led to much lexical borrowing and grammatical simplification. The Anglian dialects had a greater influence on Middle English.

Linguistics is a large, old, and complex subject. It has a lot of overlap with other sciences, and there are always new things being found out about it. Below is a list of links to help introduce the depth and breadth of languages and their development:

Further Reading

Linguistics (Wikipedia)

Global language system (Wikipedia)

Integrational linguistics (Wikipedia)

Language geography (Wikipedia)

Dialect continuum (Wikipedia)

Sprachbund (Wikipedia)

Writing system (Wikipedia)

List of creators of writing systems (Wikipedia)

Ebonwing: If your world’s languages evolved and changed in a broadly similar way than ours did (independently all over the world, resulting in a great deal of linguistic diversity) this is unrealistic. Pronunciation naturally changes as languages evolve over time; English wasn’t always pronounced the way it is today, either. As a result, a word loaned from another language isn’t going to sound the same way a few hundred years later.

Plus, loan word pronunciation changes are also driven by languages having different phonology from the source language. Japanese loaned chokoretto from chocolate, but it’s really not pronounced the same way. Sometimes even the meanings change in the process; in German, a Handy (loaned from English) is actually a mobile phone.

Of course, if you’re not going for an Earth-like linguistic background, you have more leeway in doing things like this.

Utuabzu: Something you should consider when dealing with multiple languages is that every language has its own phonology - set of sounds - and phonotactics - rules about how sounds can be combined - and these can differ significantly. These differences become particularly clear with loan words, as speakers will alter the word to fit their language’s rules and available sounds, eg: Hawaiian alters Christmas to kalikimaka, because it doesn’t have the sounds ‘r’, ‘s’ or ‘t’ and doesn’t allow consonants to follow consonants or to end a syllable.

This doesn’t even account for the problems of trying to use a single script for all languages. Different languages have different rules about what sounds are distinct enough to differentiate words. For instance, English has a relatively limited number of vowels, but other Germanic languages have more, which they write using additional letters, eg. å, ä, æ, â, ø, ö, ü, etc. Some languages, like Icelandic, even have additional consonant letters - þ and ð - because it’s necessary to clearly distinguish those sounds. Then there are languages that aren’t generally written with roman script, like Hindi, which needs to clearly distinguish aspirated consonants, or Chinese languages, which need to account for lexical tone*. If you want a script that can depict all the many, many possible sounds of human language, you’re going to end up with something like the International Phonetic Alphabet, which is far too unwieldy to be used to write any single language, and even linguists don’t generally use unless they’re describing the sounds of a language. Especially because most languages will consider multiple sounds to be equivalent and interchangeable that IPA uses distinct characters for, because different languages will lump together different sets of sounds and usually omit many of them entirely. (Eg, Standard English dialects lack the voiced glottal fricative 

Much of the time, it’s just going to be easier to use a purpose-made script that can actually depict the language accurately, and even when that doesn’t happen, the borrowed script is likely to be altered and evolve over time to accommodate the needs of its users. Roman, Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, Hebrew, Armenian, Georgian and the vast Brahmic family of scripts are all derived from a common ancestor, Proto-Canaanite, and have mutated and evolved over the course of 3500 years to suit the languages that use them.

This further complicates loan words, as they then need to be altered for the script, because not all scripts have equivalent characters, eg Japanese hiragana ら is most often realised as /ɾa/ or /la/ which to English speakers sounds like ‘ra’ or ‘la’, but to Japanese speakers are considered the same sound.

A further complication also comes from grammar, as many languages have rules that alter words based on their role in a sentence or the surrounding words. A common way to do this is with morphemes - units of language that have independent meaning but cannot appear on their own, eg. suffixes and prefixes (together with infixes, which get shoved inside the root, and circumfixes, which get split and tacked either side of the root, these are called affixes) like ‘-s’, ‘-ed’, ‘re-’, ‘pro-’, ‘anti-’, etc. - these are attached to the root, the base word, to convey additional information. 

Agglutinative languages (like Finnish or Inuktitut) add multiple affixes to indicate case and number of nominals,, while fusional languages (like German or Russian) use one affix to express both. Polysynthetic languages (like Algonquian languages) frequently and extensively alter both to convey a lot of information. Other languages, most famously Welsh, alter the sound of a word based on the words immediately around them (mutation).

All these factors are going to make what you want here really difficult to achieve. If you are determined to have this, you probably need all the languages in your world to have a relatively recent common ancestor that had a well established literary standard and standardised orthography. By recent I mean very recent. The Romance languages have been diverging for over 2000 years (Cicero was complaining about the Sardinian dialect of Vulgar Latin in the 1st Century BCE), while the entire Indo-European language family - containing languages from Icelandic to Sinhala and the first languages of approximately 46% of the global population - is estimated to have been diverging for about 6000-10,000 years, depending on the theory. Our species, Homo sapiens, is over 300,000 years old, so this isn’t very long in comparison.

*lexical tone is one of two main tone systems, the other being prosodic tone. Lexical tone means that individual words have a tone that impacts their semantic meaning, while prosodic tone is carried across multiple words and conveys pragmatic meaning. This difference is why native speakers of lexical tone languages (like Mandarin or Zapotecan languages) can often sound oddly flat when speaking prosodic tone languages (like English). The roman alphabet was not created to deal with lexical tone and Vietnamese gives an excellent example of how much it needs to be altered to depict tones.

Blue: Natural languages change for so many different reasons; some of the big contributing factors are technological and cultural changes. The farther apart they are geographically, the harder it is to maintain the homogeneity. One would think that the advance of modern technology, such as the internet, would smooth out the differences, but it does not appear to be the case (see Wikipedia’s article on ELF) 

Language has a socioeconomic, cultural, and religious (e.g.: sacred language) significance. It can be a status symbol: French was adopted at various courts across Europe and became the distinguishing feature of aristocracy. People are often very reluctant to part with their native language, because it means giving up a part of their identity. If it's an artificial language imposed on different communities, why would they accept it and refuse their own language? If this situation developed naturally, how did it happen?

Lingua franca – "common language". Some of the historical examples are Akkadian, Koine Greek, and Latin; more recent ones are English, French, and Arabic. The spread of linguae francae is often associated with the colonial efforts to establish the language of the colonizer as the primary language of communication, but it is not always so: Tupi (Brazil) and Classical Maori (New Zealand) were adopted by the colonizing population. A lot of linguae francae were adopted and stayed dominant to facilitate trade most and foremost. 

Due to the cultural and economic hegemony, English is arguably the lingua franca of the world. One of the reasons why English is the dominant language of international communication is the expansion of the British Empire. In Russia, lingua franca is (obviously) Russian, but there are many native languages across the country that are officially recognized and taught at schools in their respective regions; Russian also serves as a lingua franca in many post-Soviet countries. In the Americas, there are obviously native languages that are very far removed from English and Spanish. In all these examples, native languages are used alongside the common languages: the lexicon and grammar of the native languages perseveres.

There is also such a thing as an auxiliary language - the kind of language that's been artificially constructed to aid communication internationally (esperanto) or for a more limited group (Interslavic). Esperanto is the only one that is relatively well-known and widely used; none of auxiliary languages have ever become widely spread though. That might change one day, but then the question becomes: will they stay the same across the globe, or will they also see regional changes?

It's theoretically possible for a language to exist in a time capsule if it's used by a small isolated community that doesn't see much change; but even then, there's a possibility of phonetic shifts over the years. 

Let's for a second imagine that it did happen to a degree, but only with nouns.

Here we run into another issue that would hinder understanding: a lot of human languages view verbs rather than nouns as a central feature of a sentence. On a larger scale, verbs convey the relationships between nouns and actions you perform with an object: “I ate chocolate” and “I bought chocolate” are two very different things, and just knowing the word "chocolate" tells you nothing about the meaning of the sentence in general.

[tokwattoge]

sa tinagal tagal ko sa tumblr ha, ito yung pinakamadaming beses na nakatanggap ako ng anonymous thanks guys pinapasaya niyo yung 14 year old me kahit bash pa yan. Tanda ko dati ako lang nag aannoynymous sa sarili ko kasi wala naman pumapansin sakin ang kakawa lang HAHAHA

Baka ganun talaga baka daw madepress ako non pag di ko kinaya ihandle.

Di na ako basta basta tinatablan ngayon guys, medyo madami na din ako pinagdaanan hindi na ako mabilis madown ngayon. Bago niyo pa ako ibash, nauna ko na ibash ang sarili ko haha! I’ve learned to love and forgive myself sana kayo din :*

[chocolateytruth]

Chocolatey Beginnnings

Do you think an object such as food could shape a whole group of people around it or do the people shape the food into what it needs to be? Figuratively, yes, people shape food into what they want it to become, but in a way for chocolate it was different in Mesoamerica. Chocolate is made from the seeds of the Theobroma cacao tree, named by a botanist in the 1750s, Carl Linnaeus, who created the modern system of naming living organisms- binomial nomenclature. Theobroma in Latin means “the foods of the gods” while the word cacao was taken from the native peoples in Mesoamerica, but linguists have issues tracing which group and where the word originated from in Mesoamerica. Amongst historical linguists they are in between two groups of native people: the Olmec language, mixe-zoquean, calling cacao, “kakaw(a)” and the Aztec or Mexica language related to contemporary Nahuatl calling cacao, “kakawa-ti.” These variations in the words from quite different Native civilizations from different time periods show that cacao had definitely originated from Mesoamerica, but that cacao had a long history that could have been passed throughout Mesoamerica through trade and the meeting and mixing of many people. Through the Olmecs and the Mayans, we could observe the symbolism of cacao held in the two distinct cultures and how the symbolism of cacao had transformed when it came into contact with the Mayans.

The major similarity between the Olmecs and the Mayans is how cacao was held to be a particularly important part in spiritual thought. The Olmecs included cacao in their burial rituals and Archeologists found pottery that has traces of cacao on the plate that were found in a supposed Olmec burial site. The Mayans as well as believe that their people should be buried with cacao so, their spirits may have some cacao to offer to gods. With the meaning came a deep belief that cacao is the food of the gods and that if you had cacao with you when you died, you would have an offering to give to the gods and move on to your eternal resting place. With these beliefs, many people wanted to have cacao with them. Another belief that showed to be fairly similar between these civilizations would be telling stories onto pottery. Most of the accounts we are able to retrieve are through the pottery that have been uncovered in archeological searches of the areas where Natives people have resided. Some of the other accounts are through Codexis, but the best way to know that the pottery found is for chocolate is the glyph that could be seen on numerous amounts of pottery. It said that the earliest evidence of cacao for the Mayan dates back from pottery that belongs to the preclassic period, 2000 BCE-250 CE, located in Belize. Archaeologists believe the pot found in an elite’s burial site could possibly be from 600 BCE, which depicted the cacao glyph, ka-ka-w. The cacao glyph consists of three signs: a fish preceded by a comb-like sign that represents the fin of a fish followed by a last sign that refers to the sign of corn. You can see this glyph of cacao shown on all the pottery placed in the image grouping above. Other pottery like the Popul Vuh, depicts the gods they believe to have significance in their lives such as maize god. The pottery reveals that cacao is used to create humankind which reveals the connection between cacao as an important sustenance in this society as well as the connection to the gods. This is especially important because the Natives placed cacao as an important food commodity that is used in a lot dealing in their daily lives.

The materialistic side where the origins of cacao are seen from the Mayans in the societal classes and where cacao was held in the class system. In the Mayan civilization cacao is held by those who were fortunate enough to have a lot of it in stock in their homes. With this very obvious interest in cacao that is being shown off by the Mayans through pottery to tell their story, we can even see scenes of gatherings that are possibly by the elites who could afford such events as well depicts the elites sharing their wealth with the people that are serving them or lower in their societies standards. This depiction of cacao to be able to share with their people shows how the people can be seen as almost equals and that they are human in comparison to what we will see soon by the Europeans to show that they treat others differently.

The transformation of chocolate can be seen mostly through the depictions of cacao onto pottery, telling the stories of their daily lives, but also why cacao was important in their daily lives. In a way, spiritual ideologies played a key reason cacao was held at such a high importance to the civilizations. The transformation of the bringing together of cultures marks how chocolate transformed Mesoamerica. Spiritual ideologies brought chocolate to a higher standard than that of other goods such as gold. To the Europeans, they sought gold to be the most important commodity, but cacao was the most important ingredient that would have brought the most riches more than gold would have ever.

Bibliography

Lecture

Edgar, Blake. The Power of Chocolate. Archaeology, Vol. 63, No. 6. pp. 20-25.

[hotshot9]

I got to visit Santa Fe with my parents this weekend. And I am so tired but it's the best kind of tired because this has been the most awesome trip.

We went to the New Mexico History Museum, the Palace of the Governors, and the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture. We visited the most life changing chocolate shop, Kakawa Chocolate - they have several different chocolate elixirs that are so good and the most delicious truffles. We've also eaten at four magnificent restaurants - Tia Sophia's, Harry's Roadhouse, the Museum Hill Cafe, and the Plaza Cafe Downtown (which is the oldest restaurant in Santa Fe).

We've walked so much and seen so much and learned so much (and eaten so much!), all in the most beautiful city. I almost don't want to go home tomorrow.

[plumed-serpent]

He walked her to the kitchen. It was empty only a brown like ball of paste rest on a wooden flat plate. “This is was I wanted you to try KaKaWa. It’s rich and sweet.” He stood by the table, carefully picked up the dish that held the chocolate paste.

“You’ll love it I guarantee.” He grime offering her the sweet treat. He couldn’t wait to see her expression.

The day arrived. He was content to be able to see her once again and spend more time with her. He hopes she enjoys the game as much as he does.

He showed up a little early at the same spot where he last dropped her off. Only what he had to do now wait for her to show up. He hoped nothing interfere with her plans.

@askshuri

[filipeanut]

New year and new art coming up.

Just posted a sneak peak of new artwork on my Patreon. From new client work to Mayan civilization, and champorado.

Become a Patron to see more of my art & study behind the scenes.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/new-year-new-for-33076878

[bronwynburnett]

[hechoamanofr]

Si tu es comme nous, ta période préférée arrive bientôt... 😻 celle du chocolat 🍫 !! . Et ça tombe bien... on retrouve encore le #mexique 🇲🇽 et les Olmèques, ses habitants en 1500 av. JC, qui utilisaient déjà le "kakawa" pour leur cérémonies religieuses et comme médicament ! . Aujourd'hui, ce chocolat d’origine est disponible chez @choc.hola 🤩 Les prêtres en buvaient tellement que cela les mettaient en transe 🧠 Alors attention à ne pas abuser malgré le #confinement 🤪 . L'histoire du chocolat est à découvrir sur www.hechoamano.fr La boutique Choc-Hola en ligne est accessible sur www.choc-hola.com et en physique à #nantes . . #chocolat #hechoamano #chocolate #olmeques #tradition #paques #easter #maya #histoire #kakawa #belize #guatemala #venezuela #gourmandise #mexico #mexicantradition https://www.instagram.com/p/B-l2w1MKeYF/?igshid=1bsbeekkmvxo0

[rebel-girl-queen-of-my-world]

Enjoying a tiny cup of heaven at @kakawachocolatehouse in Salem. If you stop by, try the Tzul blend for a perfect semisweet chocolate with notes of cinnamon and caramel. I wanna try a traditional Mesoamerican blend next time! #chocolate #hotchocolate #foodporn #food #salem #foodanddrink #chocolatehouse #drinkingchocolate #delicious #sweets #mesoamerican #salemmassachusetts #kakawa #cacao #massachusetts #essexstreet https://www.instagram.com/p/B37X4WyH4Tb/?igshid=zdhq8khnoy9u

[positivelycarey]

GUYS. Kakawa is AMAZING. If you ever go to Santa Fe, PLEASE pay them a visit. You won’t regret it.

We have one bag left of their “Tsul” spicy drinking chocolate, and we have been saving it for a rainy day because we don’t want it to be gone.

10/10 would recommend.

Roxy please enlighten me about spicy desserts

Oh I just made a comment somewhere that I believe any type of food can be made spicy and that includes desserts. The green chile apple pie thing isny something I've actually had myself but it is a thing. I do like me some red chile on dark chocolate caramels though. And it isnt a dessert but I LOVE red chile mochas.

Actually, from what I understand, chocolate has a long history of being made spicy. In Santa Fe theres a place called Kakawa where you can get drinking chocolate that's been spiced up in both senses of the phrase. It's super good and I highly recommend it. If you arent a fan of the spicy mesoamerican blends, they have european inspired mixtures as well.

I would also think that making some spicy honey would make for a good glaze or sauce or something.

If anyone would like to add on please do bc I know my knowledge is lacking.

[twocorndogs]

New Mex with the Ladies by jennifer yin Via Flickr: pueblo pups initiating stilted play session

[gonnacookthat]

I am not a chocoholic...

#OntheBlog: I am not a #chocoholic. At least, I wasn't... #chocolate #Kakawa #SantaFe #NewMexico #foodtravel #travel

NOTE: This post is not sponsored. I wasn’t given any free product. I just really had a lightbulb moment at this little shop. They were incredibly warm, welcoming, and generous with their time and knowledge, and I wanted to share my experience.

I have never considered myself a chocoholic. Therefore, beyond what little bit we learned during my semester in Latin Cuisine at culinary school, I’d never…

[luxebeat]

Bishop’s Lodge melds luxury with authenticity for an enchanting respite

Bishop’s Lodge melds luxury with authenticity for an enchanting respite

The wait is over. After a $75 million restoration, Bishop’s Lodge, now an Auberge Resort, has reopened its doors and the excitement is palpable. Situated on 317 acres bordering the Santa Fe National Forest, this famed New Mexico property offers a crafted approach to luxury, imbued with a southwestern aesthetic.  The resort has a storied history dating back to the 1860s when Bishop Jean Baptiste…

[modernviga]

Kakawa, Santa Fe

[thesweetbreezes]

Visited Kakawa Chocolate House downtown Santa Fe for a flight of chocolate elixirs!