[BRIEF NOTE] On Angolan Portuguese

I was surprised to discover, in reading Wikipedia's article on Angolan Portuguese, that the Portuguese language is apparently spoken by most of Angola's population.

In late 20th century, the language became an instrument for independence, has it was perfectly spoken by the African native and political elite, becoming a symbol of national identity unifying the various rival tribes into the same goal, independence. The language is still seen as something that unifies Angola. The Angolan government relies on it because it is a widely spoken, unifying element, as well as being a widely spoken international language. Although Angolans hear a dialect somewhat similar to their own when watching Brazilian soap operas the population still prefers to learn standard Portuguese, just like in Portugal and rest of Africa.

This isn't just Portuguese becoming a widely spoken second language. Rather, as Jacques Leclerc observes at his L'aménagement linguistique dans le monde website, Angolan Portuguese is becoming the dominant first language of Angolans.

Cela dit, les données démolinguistiques sérieuses sur le portugais parlé en Angola ne sont guère fiables. Cependant, toutes les données confirment le fait que, depuis l’indépendance, la «lusophonisation» ou «lusitanisation» a réussi des avancées considérables, particulièrement dans les centres urbains, à un point tel qu’il existe peu d’exemple du genre en Afrique, même dans les anciennes colonies françaises ou britanniques. Comme on le sait, par exemple à Luanda, la capitale qui compte maintenant près de trois millions d’habitants dont un grand nombre de réfugiés des pays voisins (Congo-Kinshasa, Congo-Brazzaville, Namibie, Afrique du Sud, etc.), les Angolais parlant encore les langues bantoues locales demeurent peu nombreux: ou bien ils parlent le portugais s’ils sont des Angolais, ou bien le français ou l’anglais s’ils sont des réfugiés. Selon une étude officielle publiée dans le journal O Público de Luanda en 1995, près 99 % de la population de cette ville serait capable de s’exprimer en portugais (langue maternelle et langue seconde). Il y a une vingtaine d’années, la plupart des enfants de Luanda parlaient le kimbundu lorsqu’ils jouaient dans la rue. Aujourd’hui, plus du tiers des enfants âgés entre six ans et quatorze ans ne parleraient que le portugais ou, du moins, ne connaissent que fort mal la langue de leurs parents. La «dépossession linguistique» est à ce point avancée dans la capitale que pour la plupart des Angolais le portugais est devenu la seule langue véhiculaire utilisée. Il en est ainsi pour les médias, la musique populaire, les livres, etc.

The spread of mass education and mass media in the Portuguese language, along with the disruption inflicted on Angola's rural communities by the long-running civil war and the utility of Portuguese as an ethnically neutral language, might well end up precipitating mass language death in Angola. Angola's commitment to the Community of Portuguese Language Countries and the construction of close links with industrialized Brazil likewise suggests that the Portuguese language in Angola might well become dominant. As Leclerc notes, the Lusophonisation of Angola has been thorough, much more so than in similarly ex-Portuguese Mozambique.

In the 22nd century, might Angola be as thoroughly Lusophone as Ireland is Anglophone? If so, what will this mean for Angolan national identity and Angola's relationships, with the rest of Africa and with the non-African world?

[MUSIC] Garbage, "Only Happy When It Rains"

I'm disappointed in Garbage. 1998's Version 2.0 was fun, with songs like "Special" and "Trick Is to Keep Breathing." Both 2001's Beautifulgarbage and this year'sBleed Like Me left me cold, unmoved by their too-perfect electronica-enhanced alternative rock spectacle.

I do still like Garbage. Even on their later albums, they have some authentically moving songs. Version 2.0, though showing signs of the fatigue that would overtake them later, is still fun seven years later. Their self-titled debut of 1995 remains a brilliant production. "Only Happy When It Rains"? It, too, is a classic.

I'm only happy when it rains
I'm only happy when it's complicated
And though I know you can't appreciate it
I'm only happy when it rains

You know I love it when the news is bad
And why it feels so good to feel so sad
I'm only happy when it rains

Pour your misery down, pour your misery down on me
Pour your misery down, pour your misery down on me

Garbage was assembled in the aftermath of the grunge/alternative explosion of the early 1990s, just one year after Kurt Cobain's suicide. Producer Butch Vig joined together with fellow producers Steve Marker and Duke Erikson to form a band. Looking for a singer, they saw--played for the first time on MTV--the video for Angelfish's "Suffocate Me" and were caught by the lead singer, Shirley Manson. They contacted her, brought her over to their studio and Minneapolis, and began recording.

The band produced a massive hit album and multiple hit singles. "Stupid Girl" was apparently the biggest single off of Garbage, and I do like it, right down to the catchy if depressing chorus ("You stupid girl/You stupid girl/All you had you wasted/All you had you wasted"). "Only Happy When It Rains," though, is distinctive. I remember catching the video for "Only Happy When It Rains" on Muchmusic, seeing Shirley Manson vamping in a decrepit warehouse/art installation as her bandmates smashed instruments, segueing before it cut to her trying to hide from a circle of children dressed, crouching and hiding as the almost-tactile guitars wound the song down. The visuals were spectacular; the song, thankfully, was up to the video's standards.

I'm only happy when it rains
I feel good when things are going wrong
I only listen to the sad, sad songs
I'm only happy when it rains

I only smile in the dark
My only comfort is the night gone black
I didn't accidentally tell you that
I'm only happy when it rains

You'll get the message by the time I'm through
When I complain about me and you
I'm only happy when it rains

I've skimmed bits of Break, Blow, Burn already. I'd heard about her chapter on Sylvia Plath's incendiary "Daddy", and I wasn't disappointed. Paglia starts her analysis by calling the poem "garish, sarcastic, and profane," marrying the "personal to the political against the violent backdrop of modern history," a "rollicking nursery rhyme recast as a horror movie" (167). She ends her analysis by suggesting that Plath's peers lie not in the realm of modern poetry but rather in the realm of popular music, with Plath as the "first female rocker" with her "sneering sardonicism and piercing propulsiveness" (176).

Would I claim Shirley Manson as one of Plath's successors? Why not? Apart from the coincidence noted by The Independent that many of Manson's early songs, including "Only Happy When It Rains," were inspired by her own struggle with depression, and noting that in the song's performance Shirley Manson sets into her lyrics just two or three seconds after the song begins, her lyrics are poetic in their wordplay, exaggerating as they do the gloom commonly held to be an integral part of the alternative music scene. It's impossible to avoid the contradictions involved in "I'm only happy when it rains/I'm only happy when it's complicated/And though I know you can't appreciate it/I'm only happy when it rains." Too, the passive-aggressiveness of "I didn't accidentally tell you that/I'm only happy when it rains"--Manson's insistence that she wants the listener to know this, that she isn't telling just anyone--is delivered in the form of a confidence to someone who's concerned and, perhaps, is now too deeply implicated to save himself.

Pour your misery down (Pour your misery down) x 8

You can keep me company
As long as you don't care

I'm only happy when it rains
You wanna hear about my new obsession?
I'm riding high upon a deep depression
I'm only happy when it rains (Pour some misery down on me)

I'm only happy when it rains (Pour some misery down on me) x 4

The lyrics of "Only Happy When It Rains" aren't as conscious as the Plath's "Daddy." They don't offer up any kind of solution to the crisis, and while there's a suggestion that the singer is seeking out causes for depression ("Pour some misery down on me") her motives aren't expounded upon. There is, in Manson's lyrics, only the certainty that she'll continue to despair and that the listener won't be able to avoid hearing all about her "new obsession." But then, it's a four-minute pop song: It doesn't have to do that. It just has to exist and please the listener with its hummable melodies and enjoyably complex lyrics. And it does.

[BRIEF NOTE] Anderson Cooper

The Tin Man has linked to New York Magazine's profile of CNN reporter Anderson Cooper. The question of Cooper's sexual orientation--is he or isn't he?--was raised by the interviewee, and parried as follows.

When I bring up the sexuality issue with Cooper, he says, “You know, I understand why people might be interested. But I just don’t talk about my personal life. It’s a decision I made a long time ago, before I ever even knew anyone would be interested in my personal life. The whole thing about being a reporter is that you’re supposed to be an observer and to be able to adapt with any group you’re in, and I don’t want to do anything that threatens that."

In the comments, someone--likely accurately--calls this "the gayest answer I've ever heard." Elsewhere in the Tin Man's comments, there's a minor flamewar over whether not outing himself is defensible on privacy grounds or whether it's a sign that he's in the closet. Myself, while I do think that it would be nice if Cooper came out (assuming that he is, in fact, gay or bi), I'm lost as to the question of whether there's such a compelling need for him to be officially out. So long as if one's not actively homophobic, and if everyone actually knows what's going on, what's the big rush?

[NON BLOG] Coffee Note

I now know better, with my lowered tolerance and all, than to have a cup of coffee at 11 o'clock. No sleep, also, headache. This caffeinated normality is a bit scary; I feel as if coffee's to me what Kryptonite is to Superman.

[BRIEF NOTE] New Orleans' Fate

Jack Shafer's Slate article "Don't Refloat" makes a superficially unobjectionable case for the abandonment of New Orleans, or at least of the majority of the city's territories, on the grounds that the old city was dysfunctional and that without human intervention most of the city would be underwater. I'm only half-convinced by the former--are things really so dysfunctional as to mandate the city's abandonment?--and left entirely cold by the latter. A decidedly populous chunk of the Netherlands would be underwater absent human intervention; I don't see the Dutch evacuating Amsterdam for higher grounds, perhaps in Utrecht, any time soon.

It comes down to whether or not Americans, like the Dutch, are interested in making the investments needed to preserve environmentally vulnerable areas of their country. If they are, fine; if they aren't, fine. Deciding to abandon these vulnerable areas when you've got an environmentally relatively stable continental landmass might even be a legitimate policy decision. I just wish I saw fewer proponents of New Orleans' abandonment talking about the indefensibility of the city's position. It's not, if you're competent.

[LINK] Darque Dungeon

ianmcdonald has just discovered Jack Chick. I sympathize with him--at first reading, the Chick tracts are impressive. If you do manage to learn to appreciate them as camp, mind, they can be funny. One does have to be fairly high on irony for this to work.

There are--let's say--mashups and remixes of his work out there. Take his "Dark Dungeons".



In this tract, Chick explores the well-known phenomenon of young people who, after they are enticed into role-playing games, are caught in a downward spiral of Satanism and suicide that can end only when they embrace Jesus Christ.



Bogart Shwadchuck's Darque Dungeon begins at a similar place.



Thereafter, it diverges.

[NON BLOG] The Weather

Just now, a co-worker said that Toronto has been enjoying a Mediterranean climate since May. "Will we even have winter?"

[LINK] Russian Islam

Over at the French-language site Caucaz, there's an interesting survey of Islam in Russia. At least 11 million Russians are of Muslim background, quite possibly many more, and the relatively higher Muslim fertility rate and immigration from the southern tier of the former Soviet Union is feeding this population growth. Already, there may be more Muslims living in Moscow than in Paris or London.