Participants
| Date |
Team participants |
National participants |
| April 2, 2020 |
Steve |
Kavaluku, Kasi |
Description
Just before we announced which dialect we'd work in Kavaluku and Kasi told me a story that they seemed to think had great significance. They told me about a boy who had been born who was the first to speak in language. The first sounds he uttered were [ɑ] and [i] (these are the same syllables seen in the letter Steve was asked to get an answer from the computer from see Computers as sources of secret talk). Then the boy started naming things and whatever he said became the name for a thing and thus his parents also learned to speak. The Kokoma community shared this story with us over a Wanbel kaikai later on.
Interpretation
I think Kavaluku and Kasi's intention in telling me the story was to convince me that their dialect was the correct dialect for us to learn. There was a distinct feeling of them appealing to this mythology as a reason why their dialect was superior.