Speaker 1 (00:00:00):
Coming up on Art Palace, 

Speaker 2 (00:00:02):
I just found a phrase that says The Strong Warriors braids were long. So it's 

Speaker 1 (00:00:25):
Welcome to Art Palace, produced by Cincinnati Art Museum. This is your host, Russell iig. Here at the Art Palace, we meet cool people and then talk to them about art. Today's cool person is Z McQuaid, editor at Living Language. I don't even know how I should introduce you. 

Speaker 2 (00:00:53):
I have many roles and many, so basically my day job, I work for a company called Living Language and Living Language is an imprint of Penguin Random House, and we basically make self-study materials for you to learn a language. So if you wanted to study Spanish or you wanted to learn French, you would say, I wanted to start from the beginning. And we would have the books and CDs and online courses. So I make those. I'm the editor for Living Language. That's my day job. So I work with languages by day, by night. 

Speaker 1 (00:01:26):
I'm 

Speaker 2 (00:01:26):
That girl. 

Speaker 1 (00:01:27):
Cue saxophone, music Z after hours, after hours 

Speaker 2 (00:01:33):
After hours is very exciting. I primarily lately work on translating Latin and fiction into English. 

Speaker 1 (00:01:42):
Okay. So this is so funny. I realized I know you, but I don't know a lot about what your job is. And I get into these weird pieces where I'm like, okay, so I know you do stuff with Latvian, and I ran into you at the airport coming from Latvia, I think one time. 

Speaker 2 (00:02:00):
That's right. You met me after my sabbatical there. 

Speaker 1 (00:02:03):
But yeah, I didn't know it was mostly fiction. I assumed, 

Speaker 2 (00:02:07):
I 

Speaker 1 (00:02:07):
Don't know why. I just assumed it was 

Speaker 2 (00:02:09):
Technical translation 

Speaker 1 (00:02:11):
Or something like that. I don't know why. 

Speaker 2 (00:02:12):
That's a completely different beast. And I probably could do that if I wanted to earn money. I'm not doing it for the money. There's no money in literary translation, sadly. But no, I consider it my pro bono work. 

Speaker 1 (00:02:24):
I 

Speaker 2 (00:02:24):
Mean, they are paying people, but it's not a lot of money. It's really hard to make a living as a literary translator. But there's a lot of fiction that exists in Latvia that I think needs to exist. The rest of the world needs to see it. So that's what I'm doing. 

Speaker 1 (00:02:37):
So how did you become focused on Latvia? 

Speaker 2 (00:02:40):
Well, when I was 18, 17, 18, when I was in high school, I wanted to become an exchange student. I was heavily involved in A F Ss, and I don't 

Speaker 1 (00:02:48):
Know what that is. 

Speaker 2 (00:02:49):
It's the American Field Service. It started off as I think ambulance drivers who had during World War II or World War I, I'm going to get it wrong. Okay. One of the wars. 

Speaker 1 (00:02:59):
One of those wars, 

Speaker 2 (00:03:00):
A big one, A great one, a big 

Speaker 1 (00:03:03):
War. There was a big war, 

Speaker 2 (00:03:04):
And then there were exchange students basically. So, yeah, I don't know. Actually, I'm going to get it totally wrong. So I'll basically say it had something to do with ambulance drivers in war 

Speaker 1 (00:03:14):
And 

Speaker 2 (00:03:14):
Realizing that cross-cultural exchange was an important part of understanding other cultures and having peace. So they basically started this program called a F Ss American Field Service, where students, usually students in high school would go to other countries and live with families. And so when I was, after I graduated high school, I went and lived in Latvia because basically the form they give you, it has a list of all the countries where they have programs and you check off the ones you want to go to, the definitely you want to go to, the ones you will go to and the ones you don't want to go to. And I basically went down the Eastern European countries. It was like, yes, yes, yes. Because it was 

Speaker 1 (00:03:54):
Why eastern Europe? 

Speaker 2 (00:03:55):
Europe? Well, it was the mid nineties and the Soviet Union had just fallen apart, 

Speaker 1 (00:04:00):
And 

Speaker 2 (00:04:00):
It was kind of hip. Everyone was going to Prague. I don't know if you remember that time. Prague was the hip place to go. And so I was like, yeah, Prague. But not realizing that when I checked, yes, I want to go to Latvia, they're going to be like, oh, she wants to go to Lavia. 

Speaker 1 (00:04:13):
Nobody else probably checked that. Nobody wants to go to Lavia. So 

Speaker 2 (00:04:17):
I checked Lavia and they sent me to Lavia, and I lived with an amazing family. I befriended these punk kids on the street in this square who didn't speak any English. And so basically two weeks in, I told my family, don't speak any English with me. And I had all these friends who didn't speak English. And so I basically was forced to learn the language. 

Speaker 2 (00:04:39):
So that's where I learned it. And then after I left, I decided in order to keep up the language, I'd start reading a lot more. And I kind of naturally started translating books because it was just interesting to me to see how the languages worked. And I was often just looking at words in dictionaries all the time. So yeah, I just started translating. And then an author found me online and was like, I had translated an excerpt from her work, and she had said, do you want to do the whole book? And it was like, yeah, I started doing her book. I worked on her book. And so I translated a short, it's a short novel, but I've translated her name's Inga. 

Speaker 1 (00:05:14):
Wow. So it was just kind of totally happenstance that you wandered into Latvia almost. Yeah, just luck of the draw or luck of the box. Check that exactly. You, that's so funny how I feel like so many people have stories like that though, where just random things that you don't think of as a big choice you're making in your life at a moment really changes things for you and sets a direction, especially when you're younger and you're just like, oh, whatever. I want my whole life ahead of me. 

Speaker 2 (00:05:46):
Well, I have this theory that at 18, wherever you are at 18 kind of determines the rest of your life in a weird way. I mean, it's when you're leaving home, 

Speaker 2 (00:05:55):
And that can be for better or for worse, but I don't know. And it really helped to be thrown into an entirely different culture, completely away from home. And I really had to figure out myself. And so by finding myself in this foreign country, it became who I was in a lot of ways. But yeah, I mean, I've really, really strong relationships with my friends there still. And I was just there in December. I forgot how miserable. It's in the winter, but it gets dark super early. But yeah, it was wonderful. I was there for a translator workshop with, there are other Latin band English translators, and so I was there hanging out with them. 

Speaker 1 (00:06:32):
So then after that, did you take already your interest in language and then did that direct how you approached college or? 

Speaker 2 (00:06:41):
So in college, I majored in sociology, 

Speaker 1 (00:06:44):
Which 

Speaker 2 (00:06:45):
Had nothing to do with anything. I think I wanted to write my thesis on my friends. 

Speaker 1 (00:06:51):
That was your plan was 

Speaker 2 (00:06:53):
Just like, that was my plan. 

Speaker 1 (00:06:54):
I'm going to major in sociology, and then 

Speaker 2 (00:06:56):
I can write a 

Speaker 1 (00:06:56):
Thesis on my friends, 

Speaker 2 (00:06:57):
Because there was no real discipline that suited what I wanted to write. My friends were these hip hop artists and poets and photographers. Like I said, there were these punk rock kids, 

Speaker 1 (00:07:07):
And 

Speaker 2 (00:07:07):
Then they grew up to become these really interesting artists. And so I wanted to write about youth identity in post-Soviet Latvia. And so I wrote this really, really, really bad thesis. And I was also translating at the time, I was translating song lyrics for this thesis. And so I was still working with languages, but I was studying sociology, which I wasn't very good at. And then when I graduated, I had to get a job, and Latian language doesn't really help you get a job, but having it on my resume, when I applied, I wanted to work in publishing. And so I decided to apply to an editorial assistant job at Penguin Random House, and the HR woman saw my resume, saw I had languages on there, and said, oh, we have this language imprint and they need an editorial assistant. And that's where I got my started living language. 

Speaker 1 (00:08:01):
So you've been there for a while. So 

Speaker 2 (00:08:03):
16. Oh, wait, longer than that. 17 years. Since 2000. 

Speaker 1 (00:08:08):
17 

Speaker 2 (00:08:08):
Years 

Speaker 1 (00:08:09):
This 

Speaker 2 (00:08:09):
February. 

Speaker 1 (00:08:09):
That's what I was thinking. I like, yes, that's a long time. 

Speaker 2 (00:08:14):
So yeah, I've worked on a lot. I've probably worked on 25 different languages. 

Speaker 1 (00:08:19):
Wow. 

Speaker 2 (00:08:19):
So 

Speaker 1 (00:08:20):
How fluent are you in multiple languages? I mean, it seems like you probably know a lot about a lot of languages, but I guess how practical does it translate to? 

Speaker 2 (00:08:33):
Yeah, fluency is something that, I love it when people say, oh, I'm fluent in five languages. I'm like, are you sure? 

Speaker 1 (00:08:39):
Well, and it's also that idea of fluency is also, I feel like if you've studied another language or I don't know, you realize there's always a level to it, right? 

Speaker 2 (00:08:52):
There's proficiency, and there's fluency for most people who say they're fluent are probably proficient. I would only say, I even hesitate sometimes to say I'm fluent in Latvian, because I still enter some conversations where I struggle 

Speaker 1 (00:09:05):
To 

Speaker 2 (00:09:05):
Find words. And there's some topics. I remember I was trying to explain, my husband's a beekeeper, and I was trying to explain beekeeping to a friend in, I realized I had no vocabulary to talk about the hives. 

Speaker 1 (00:09:18):
But I mean, this is something I encounter on a day-to-day basis because my husband is Brazilian, and even though he has lived here for 10 years, there are still these really esoteric weird words that just don't come up Totally. Like beekeeping. Beekeeping, yeah. So it's funny because even though I would say he is 100% fluent in the fact that he can walk around every day, and like you said, walk into any situation and probably feel comfortable, for the most part, there's still these things, and it's like a lot of times it'll be really specific ingredients or really unusual animals. I remember ferret was one that came up that's like, okay, get out the translator. We got to translate Ferret. Ferret into Portuguese. Portuguese. 

Speaker 2 (00:10:10):
Do you remember what it was? 

Speaker 1 (00:10:11):
No, I don't. I mean, I'm worthless in Portuguese pretty much. Other than, and again, this is the idea too, of I feel like my understanding of languages and how you can have all these different sort of levels that you're at is basically right now, I feel. So if somebody asks me something in Portuguese, I feel like I cannot respond at all in Portuguese. I can understand what they're asking 

Speaker 2 (00:10:39):
Me, but I 

Speaker 1 (00:10:40):
Have no way. But 

Speaker 2 (00:10:40):
That's step one I, 

Speaker 1 (00:10:42):
And 

Speaker 2 (00:10:42):
Everyone always gets really scared. I think they have to be able to speak it perfectly. The second you have a question, but you could probably, if someone asked you what you wanted to eat, you could probably find one word. 

Speaker 1 (00:10:51):
Oh, I'm totally cool ordering. I can order my food. I'm fine in, I feel 

Speaker 2 (00:10:56):
Like, so that's obviously because you have, that was sort of either your interest or your first necessity, and so you were thrown in that deep end, and I bet you were. 

Speaker 1 (00:11:05):
I think I learned food words pretty quickly, and I did a lot of them. I also, maybe I just knew enough French too, still that I retained from high school that there was enough things. But food and animals I remember pretty well. So I'm always joking that I can go to a zoo or a restaurant and sometimes maybe have a conversation with a five-year-old, because all I can say is there is a monkey. 

Speaker 2 (00:11:30):
And sometimes food and animals overlap. That's 

Speaker 1 (00:11:33):
True. 

Speaker 2 (00:11:34):
Although in a lot of languages, the animal in English, we say chicken, it means the thing that's alive and the thing that's on your plate. But in Latvia, for example, it's a totally different word. 

Speaker 1 (00:11:44):
Yes. You 

Speaker 2 (00:11:45):
Would not say there's chicken on your plate. 

Speaker 1 (00:11:46):
That has definitely come up too, because in Portuguese, there's some ones like that as well where we don't say, I'm eating pig. 

Speaker 2 (00:11:55):
Right? You say, well, pork and there are words in English. So you'd say pork and Well, I guess for chicken though, it really is only one 

Speaker 1 (00:12:02):
Word. Yeah, chicken. Yeah. But I feel, and I might be getting this wrong, but I feel like in Portuguese they call the pig a pork. Basically there's a pork, there's a pork. A 

Speaker 2 (00:12:17):
Pork in the pen. That's 

Speaker 1 (00:12:18):
Interesting. So I think that there's, every once in a while, some of those little things come up 

Speaker 2 (00:12:23):
Where 

Speaker 1 (00:12:25):
I feel like we have a lot of words too, for specific different words for baby animals too. That's another one that's just so specific that you don't use all the time 

Speaker 2 (00:12:39):
Unless you're talking to a child or you were reading a children's storybook. Right? Yeah. It's circumstance. 

Speaker 1 (00:12:43):
Yeah. That is funny. Because kids things, you learn all those things when you're younger and then you never use them again. You don't talk about baby kangaroos all the time. 

Speaker 2 (00:12:53):
When I was in Latvia this past time, there was this pen of rabbits, and it was like a Christmas village of rabbits, and they had all these different words for, it was basically the word for the bunny tail. Do we have a specific word for bunny tail in English? I don't think we do 

Speaker 1 (00:13:09):
Just 

Speaker 2 (00:13:09):
Say the bunny tail. So they have a specific word in Latvian, and it was everywhere on this. And I had to ask someone, because 

Speaker 1 (00:13:15):
What is that? 

Speaker 2 (00:13:16):
It's only a word that it's a word that only children would use. So there is no need to, but 

Speaker 1 (00:13:19):
That's another thing too. I feel like we have a lot of collective nouns for things besides all the weird ones. But even just when you're talking about, especially animals, like a herd of this. And I feel like that gets really specific too for somebody learning English. 

Speaker 2 (00:13:39):
Exactly. 

Speaker 1 (00:13:39):
Oh, wait, what? 

Speaker 2 (00:13:41):
Yeah. And so you only learn what you need at any particular, any given point in time. And yeah, it's about exposure. And then the other thing I was going to say to you before is when you were talking about your function in Portuguese, I bet you're better than you realize. I bet if you were thrown really in the deep end and you had to fend for yourself, you would find the inner strength to come up with 

Speaker 1 (00:14:03):
Some words. No, that's also why I feel I'm really inexperienced at speaking Portuguese, because I'm never in a place where I have to. 

Speaker 2 (00:14:12):
Exactly. Immersion is the best way to learn language. 

Speaker 1 (00:14:15):
So because I am basically, it's like, yeah, my skill is what I am doing, which is I'm surrounded by people speaking Portuguese and I'm hearing it, but then it's like it's often easier for my husband to translate for me or something. Exactly. 

Speaker 2 (00:14:33):
And you have that crutch. If that were taken away, you would find a way. 

Speaker 1 (00:14:37):
Yeah. And there's also, there's some self-consciousness too. Of course. You're saying, I found that the person who I would speak to the most, I would try out Portuguese was my seven year old niece, because I felt like she was going to judge me less. Right. 

Speaker 2 (00:14:55):
And you're instantly probably more comfortable and confident when you speak with her. 

Speaker 1 (00:14:59):
Yeah, totally. Even though she was actually the only one who would correct me, 

Speaker 2 (00:15:05):
Some other 

Speaker 1 (00:15:05):
People probably would too. Sometimes I think my mother-in-law would correct me if I said something really confusing to her, just like, wait, what? I have no idea what you're saying. But yeah, kids are so fearless that she would just correct my pronunciation. Just be like, eh, that's 

Speaker 2 (00:15:28):
All you need and person. You need a person you're not afraid to speak around who will correct you. And I speak a different level of language with every single person I speak to because of my comfort level with 'em. If it's a really good friend or my host mother and Lavia, I speak really great 

Speaker 1 (00:15:47):
Both of those people. 

Speaker 2 (00:15:47):
But then if I have to speak in any sort of professional capacity, I'm useless. 

Speaker 1 (00:15:52):
I 

Speaker 2 (00:15:52):
Turn into a puddle because I get so nervous. 

Speaker 1 (00:15:54):
But that's interesting, the different social ways that the language actually changes. And when it's your native language, you just know how to turn that switch and change gears and well, now I'm speaking professional speak, and now I'm speaking casual, laid back speak, and when it has to be a learned behavior, that's tricky. But I also think about that a lot when just thinking about the way we think of it. Reflecting ideas of class is really interesting because it is, I almost think of it class as a script 

Speaker 2 (00:16:32):
You've 

Speaker 1 (00:16:32):
Been given to learn, 

Speaker 2 (00:16:34):
And 

Speaker 1 (00:16:35):
It's like if you show up to perform the wrong script at the wrong time, basically, it's like, oh, you're not, 

Speaker 2 (00:16:45):
You 

Speaker 1 (00:16:45):
Don't belong here. 

Speaker 2 (00:16:46):
Yeah. I mean, people always think that we don't, when you're learning another language, you learn that there's a polite form and an impolite 

Speaker 1 (00:16:52):
Form, 

Speaker 2 (00:16:53):
And people always think, we don't have that in English, but we actually do. It's just a different way of code switching 

Speaker 1 (00:16:58):
Based 

Speaker 2 (00:16:58):
On circumstance. And having the right language for the right situation becomes this really specific skill. And you're either bored, it's a fluency. Are you fluent in class speak? Are you fluent in upper class? 

Speaker 1 (00:17:11):
Absolutely. 

Speaker 2 (00:17:12):
Or business English. And there are a lot of criticisms right now with grammar constructivist who will say the whole thing with your and your, 

Speaker 1 (00:17:23):
Which 

Speaker 2 (00:17:23):
Is a spelling thing that is an auto-correct thing entirely. Or saying there's this new thing now in English where people say, between you and I, which is totally incorrect, but people think it sounds more correct. So they'll say that it's between you and me. But there are all these things that people are doing, and it's obvious that they're trying to fit into a certain situation, and they're either getting it wrong or it's becoming the language because it's, 

Speaker 1 (00:17:49):
It's, or that's really fascinating too, when I've done, and you maybe have done this too, where pronunciation is a really interesting thing, especially of foreign words that have been adopted by English. And you don't know. I know how this word is really pronounced, but there's a certain sort of pretentiousness that you feel like saying it correctly might. And so you have to, and I do think there's a point where you go, well, this is how we say it in English, 

Speaker 2 (00:18:19):
And 

Speaker 1 (00:18:19):
This is okay. 

Speaker 2 (00:18:20):
When you go to a restaurant, the most awkward thing in the world for me is going into a restaurant. Do I say bruschetta or bruta? In Italian, it's bruschetta, but no one says bruschetta in English. You say bruta. Or you say, I'm not going to go to a McDonald's and order a sandwich. When it becomes an English word, it's different. But if I were speaking in French, I'd probably adopt that accent. Yeah, 

Speaker 1 (00:18:47):
Right. Yeah. You're not going to, that's what I mean, those words that are adopted that you're like, how close? 

Speaker 2 (00:18:53):
Niche. Niche. 

Speaker 1 (00:18:55):
It's hard. We have somebody on staff who's really strict about how one pronounces crep. 

Speaker 2 (00:19:01):
Oh, crep 

Speaker 1 (00:19:02):
Instead of crepe. 

Speaker 2 (00:19:03):
And 

Speaker 1 (00:19:04):
It really bothers her to hear people say crepe. But I'm just like, eh, that's how Americans say it. It's fine. 

Speaker 2 (00:19:09):
Yeah. Are they speaking in French about a crep? No. Okay. Well, they can say crepe because 

Speaker 1 (00:19:14):
It's an English word. Exactly. That's how we know it is an English word. Or it's the same thing. If it is like you don't expect somebody to be like, oh, we went and did karaoke this weekend. Exactly. We're going to say we went to karaoke. Right. 

Speaker 2 (00:19:27):
And also, I mean, English is such a mutt of a language. Anyway, that all our words, if we were being really constructivist and really loyal to the original pronunciations, we would be speaking. We would sound like basically ser. 

Speaker 1 (00:19:40):
So I think 

Speaker 2 (00:19:41):
That's kind of what it was like. And it's fine if people want to hang on to certain pronunciations, that makes total sense. But language is fluid as long as you're being understood, it doesn't 

Speaker 1 (00:19:53):
Matter. 

Speaker 2 (00:19:53):
Yeah. 

Speaker 1 (00:19:54):
Yeah. So one thing I keep, we're not talking about, but it's sitting on the table. Oh yeah. You've also dabbled in fictional languages. 

Speaker 2 (00:20:05):
Yes. So edited. I had the fortune to edit a language course on Raki, which is the language of Game of Thrones. George R. Martin created this language for his books, and there were about 26 words or phrases, something like that in the language. 

Speaker 1 (00:20:21):
Yeah, I was going to say, he's not like a Tolkien who goes overboard. I feel like he pretty much, I've heard him say he invents almost like you were talking about necessity. He's very practical. No, I write what I have to write, and then that's it. 

Speaker 2 (00:20:36):
Yeah. He created, and apparently he was very good at what he did create, even though it was a small amount. And then when H B O decided to do the television show, they decided that they wanted to have the draki people speaking and draki, which is wonderful. It's the coolest thing. And they actually ended up hiring David Peterson to flesh out the language. And when you say it's a fictional language, I almost want to take issue with that because 

Speaker 1 (00:21:04):
It's 

Speaker 2 (00:21:05):
An actual language. He made a full grammar 

Speaker 1 (00:21:09):
In actual language inspired by a fictional universe. 

Speaker 2 (00:21:13):
So I mean, as soon as if we were to start speaking a secret Russell and Z language only, that would be a language because we'd be using it. So any language that exists in the world and it's being used, it didn't naturally develop. So that's the only difference. So like you said, it was established in basically it's like a test tube language. So your test tube babies, they're actual babies, they're human beings. 

Speaker 1 (00:21:38):
Is there things about that when somebody, you can tell when somebody is creating it in that test tube that is actually more functional or more practical than sort of the way a language develops over time? 

Speaker 2 (00:21:53):
Probably. I had never thought about that. That's a really interesting thought, just 

Speaker 1 (00:21:56):
Because you can think of how we language kind of mutates 

Speaker 2 (00:22:01):
And 

Speaker 1 (00:22:01):
Is sort of just isn't always simple or practical in a way. Or logical. Or logical, right. 

Speaker 2 (00:22:09):
Well, I think what's interesting is when people who create languages, the really good ones, like David Peterson is a fantastic language creator. He is a really smart guy. And when the good ones, what they do is they take into consideration the entire cultural history of a fictional people. So for example, there's no native dothraki word for book or museum. 

Speaker 1 (00:22:31):
Museum 

Speaker 2 (00:22:32):
Would not have a native dothraki word. They don't 

Speaker 1 (00:22:33):
Have currency either, 

Speaker 2 (00:22:34):
Right? They wouldn't have these words. They'd have borrowings from other languages. So high valerian probably has a word for a museum or book. And so they would borrow that one and probably change the ending or something, and it would become their word. And so same thing in English. I mean the word mathematics and algebra. Algebra comes from Arabic. 

Speaker 2 (00:22:58):
And so it's something that didn't exist until the Arab cultures brought it to us. And so we have that word. So it's the same thing with fictional languages. So the logic depends on the creator and how much attention they put into that. But you're right, that functionality. And the thing is, if it's logical to create a word, he can create a word for whatever he wants to, if it's necessary. I actually have, my name has actually become a root in draki. Really what is so root. So there are different root words. This is going to get really boring. And the root Z means, or Z, it's actually pronounced in death means stable or steadfast, which was really flattered. It made me happy to have that. I'm now part of the Death Iraqi. But yeah, I actually brought the book and I have a post-it note on the colors. I thought we're in a museum. 

Speaker 1 (00:23:53):
Oh yeah, 

Speaker 2 (00:23:54):
We're talking art. So I 

Speaker 1 (00:23:55):
Thought, yeah, this is perfect. 

Speaker 2 (00:23:57):
We're going to do the colors in Dothraki. Do you want to 

Speaker 1 (00:24:00):
Hear them? Absolutely. And 

Speaker 2 (00:24:01):
You have to repeat. So the best thing about learning language, or the most important thing about learning a language is repetition and saying things out loud. And I hope this doesn't mess up your Portuguese studies. 

Speaker 1 (00:24:11):
Sure. I'll be okay. 

Speaker 2 (00:24:13):
So when a word ends in a consonant, the stress falls on the final syllable. And when it's on the bell, it falls on the first syllable or the penultimate sy little. If it's threesy, is 

Speaker 1 (00:24:24):
There a real world language that draki sounds the most? 

Speaker 2 (00:24:28):
So a lot of people say either Arabic or Russian. So when David Peterson was developing sort of the pronunciation guide for this, because when you read it in a book, you read these words and they can be pronounced any way you want them to. But he was visualizing it and he was saying it has to sound harsh. These are sort of people who have lived in a harsh climate and there were people of war. And so you want this really harsh sounding language. I don't know if that was his thought or someone, but so he looked for, sounds like there's a letter that I can't pronounce. It's in Arabic, but it's a guttural al sound. 

Speaker 1 (00:25:04):
Well, I'm thinking the words that already existed in the books probably also kind of linked themselves to those sounds as well, that kind of sound like Russian. Maybe in some ways 

Speaker 2 (00:25:15):
There were words like hush and raki, and the words are really, yeah, they have a lot of guttural throat sounds. 

Speaker 1 (00:25:25):
It's 

Speaker 2 (00:25:26):
Not a very pretty language. And I'm going to sound awful speaking this. So red is eth 

Speaker 1 (00:25:33):
Vieth 

Speaker 2 (00:25:34):
Eth. Yeah, you're good. You have to pronounce it very accurate. 

Speaker 1 (00:25:36):
Yo, Seth. That's why I'm going to become a go rocky as I say it, and take on the character. Make yourself 

Speaker 2 (00:25:42):
Bigger and more intimidating. 

Speaker 1 (00:25:45):
Yes. But also with a lot of smoky eye makeup 

Speaker 2 (00:25:49):
And a ponytail, we should be wearing 

Speaker 1 (00:25:50):
Our ponytail 

Speaker 2 (00:25:53):
Or braids. They have, 

Speaker 1 (00:25:54):
Yeah. Long braid. 

Speaker 2 (00:25:55):
There's a cultural significance to that apparently. 

Speaker 1 (00:25:57):
Well, yeah. It's for if you've, you know? Yes, yes. Well, I've read all of 'em. You have a braid until you grow your hair out, until I think you lose a battle and then you have to cut it. 

Speaker 2 (00:26:10):
Yeah. 

Speaker 1 (00:26:11):
So 

Speaker 2 (00:26:11):
Sometimes you're, yeah, they cut it off. They take the braids, their enemy. 

Speaker 1 (00:26:14):
Yes, yes. That's right. So basically the longer your hair, the more successful in battle you've been. 

Speaker 2 (00:26:22):
Yes, exactly. I was going to try to find, oh, here we go. I just found a phrase that says The strong warriors braids were long, it's, 

Speaker 1 (00:26:37):
What's the last word, ish? I 

Speaker 2 (00:26:40):
Think that that's the verb. It is anival verb. This is really dull stuff. Let's go back to colors. Colors, 

Speaker 1 (00:26:47):
Colors, colors. They're pretty and easy. 

Speaker 2 (00:26:50):
So yellow is vel 

Speaker 1 (00:26:52):
Veto. 

Speaker 2 (00:26:53):
And I can't roll my Rs. So if you can roll your Rs, you can 

Speaker 1 (00:26:56):
Do, do you roll? So you roll the last R velt. 

Speaker 2 (00:26:58):
Yes. But I can't do that. 

Speaker 1 (00:26:59):
Veto very 

Speaker 2 (00:27:00):
Good. 

Speaker 1 (00:27:00):
Okay. 

Speaker 2 (00:27:01):
And green is dahan 

Speaker 1 (00:27:04):
Dahan. 

Speaker 2 (00:27:05):
So 

Speaker 1 (00:27:05):
The two C two pronounced both A 

Speaker 2 (00:27:07):
Yes. 

Speaker 1 (00:27:07):
Dahan. 

Speaker 2 (00:27:08):
You're so good at this. 

Speaker 1 (00:27:11):
You should 

Speaker 2 (00:27:12):
Skip Portuguese and forest. 

Speaker 1 (00:27:14):
Different be so much more practical. 

Speaker 2 (00:27:18):
Blue is purple is 

Speaker 1 (00:27:24):
Re, 

Speaker 2 (00:27:25):
And there's probably a rolled R there too, but I can't 

Speaker 1 (00:27:28):
Probably, 

Speaker 2 (00:27:28):
Yeah, so 

Speaker 1 (00:27:28):
Like a soft roll, like just like one. 

Speaker 2 (00:27:33):
This is my biggest speech impediment. It is not being able to roll my R. Yeah, so many languages have it. 

Speaker 1 (00:27:37):
Yeah. 

Speaker 2 (00:27:38):
Pink, which I don't, I guess, yeah, flesh is kind of pink. 

Speaker 1 (00:27:42):
It doesn't seem like a color. The rocky would be into 

Speaker 2 (00:27:45):
Exactly. Vin, 

Speaker 1 (00:27:48):
Wait, what is it? 

Speaker 2 (00:27:49):
They vin? Yeah. So it's like purple is raven and pink is they 

Speaker 1 (00:27:56):
Related. Okay. 

Speaker 2 (00:27:57):
Black is kaka 

Speaker 1 (00:28:00):
Kaga 

Speaker 2 (00:28:01):
White. So this has the letter, I can't pronounce very well. It's got this ural sound. So it's, it's not a, huh? It's put your tongue way the, yeah. Sounds so awful. It's almost like you're swallowing it. 

Speaker 1 (00:28:17):
Yes. Ska. Ska. 

Speaker 2 (00:28:22):
Let's hope we never have to talk about anything white. 

Speaker 1 (00:28:25):
Okay. So this reminds me now of trying to teach my mother-in-law English words. And so you quickly realize what are seemingly really simple English words that are the first words you learn as a kid, 

Speaker 2 (00:28:40):
But 

Speaker 1 (00:28:40):
You've been saying them all your life, but now you're like, these are the ones you learned to spell. So one of the hardest words, I think for probably a lot of people to learn in English is girl. 

Speaker 2 (00:28:52):
Oh yeah, yeah. Because it's really sound. It's the RL is totally swallowed. 

Speaker 1 (00:28:57):
She was struggling with that so much. And even just, I think the order of the letters was one of those things where just doesn't make sense. It's like when we see a word that starts with PT 

Speaker 2 (00:29:09):
And 

Speaker 1 (00:29:09):
We're like, what? 

Speaker 2 (00:29:10):
Even 

Speaker 1 (00:29:10):
Though we can say helicopter, we can say when it's in the middle of the word, but when you put it at the front, it's like, what? And it's like that kind of thing. So she just could not, G I R L just made no sense to her. So she would reorder it in her head and she would say, and then we'd be like, no, no, no, girl. And then she would start making fun of us. We would like girl making all the, basically that swallowing sound like girl, my 

Speaker 2 (00:29:39):
Husband's British. And so he would say go, I can't do it. I can't do a British accent. But he would say, go. 

Speaker 1 (00:29:45):
Go. 

Speaker 2 (00:29:46):
So it might be easier for her to just do the British pronunciation. 

Speaker 1 (00:29:49):
Oh, Johnny has such, now I'm talking about your head. Listen, like spouse talk. Welcome to spouse, talk with Anne and Russell. Where are we talking about? But yeah, Johnny has such, I was watching, I don't know if I ever told him this, but I was watching the seven up series of documentaries. 

Speaker 2 (00:30:06):
There's the kid from Liver, 

Speaker 1 (00:30:06):
The kid from Liverpool, and his cadence is just like John. He's like, 

Speaker 2 (00:30:15):
I love how whenever people try to imitate my husband, they basically do Ringo Star, which is similar, but 

Speaker 1 (00:30:23):
Yeah, I mean there is that thing where they're the most famous river pss, so you just kind of go to that, I guess. Exactly. But there's that, it is sing-songy cadence of it goes up and down. It's like so sorry. Now my invitation is just making sound, not even saying words. 

Speaker 2 (00:30:46):
That's basically what he sounds, he's like the Charlie Brown teacher. 

Speaker 1 (00:30:50):
Yeah. He doesn't say anything for real, just because. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. 

Speaker 2 (00:30:55):
No, but So you speak Drei now? 

Speaker 1 (00:30:56):
I speak at least. Do 

Speaker 2 (00:30:57):
You remember any of it? 

Speaker 1 (00:30:58):
None. No other, wait, no. 

Speaker 2 (00:31:00):
I'll test you. 

Speaker 1 (00:31:01):
No, I don't remember any of them. But that wasn't enough. I said them once. 

Speaker 2 (00:31:05):
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You have to repeat it over and over and over. 

Speaker 1 (00:31:08):
You have to repeat it. And 

Speaker 2 (00:31:10):
The only problem with DII is you can't really get practical experience. You can't travel to 

Speaker 1 (00:31:17):
Vice doth rock. Is that a place? I can't even remember if that's 

Speaker 2 (00:31:20):
A, that's the capital city. 

Speaker 1 (00:31:21):
Okay. 

Speaker 2 (00:31:22):
Alright. 

Speaker 1 (00:31:23):
See, I'm like, that's a thing, right? 

Speaker 2 (00:31:25):
Yeah, exactly. You 

Speaker 1 (00:31:26):
Have to cross 

Speaker 2 (00:31:27):
Travel there in your mind, 

Speaker 1 (00:31:30):
Practice with yourself. 

Speaker 2 (00:31:31):
No, but I mean it's been, yeah, it's so weird. I don't differentiate. Now when I've conjugated Raki verb, it's the same as conjugating a French verb. There's absolutely no difference in my head. So they're all useful to their different degree. But yeah. 

Speaker 1 (00:31:49):
So I wonder if has this course been used for actors at all, or it came after the fact? 

Speaker 2 (00:31:58):
They have a script. I don't know for fact, but I don't think they're actually learning the language. I 

Speaker 1 (00:32:05):
Think they just have to just get those lines out. And 

Speaker 2 (00:32:07):
I think that's the case. If you're doing, I don't even know, but I'm sure there, there was some sort of movie where someone had to speak Spanish. Oh, will Ferrell. There was some movie where he 

Speaker 1 (00:32:19):
In Spanish. Yeah. Did the movie. The whole movie was in Spanish. 

Speaker 2 (00:32:21):
Yeah. So basically, I doubt he spent a lot of time to learn Spanish fluently. Before he did that, he probably just had a script and learned his lines the same way. You would learn your lines in English and learn what, so I think they have what they mean. They have the pronunciation and then the actors just learn them 

Speaker 1 (00:32:37):
That they don't have to learn much about the grammar of it or 

Speaker 2 (00:32:40):
Anything. Right, exactly. 

Speaker 1 (00:32:41):
Yeah. 

Speaker 2 (00:32:42):
But I know a lot of people who are actually actively studying draki. 

Speaker 1 (00:32:45):
Really? 

Speaker 2 (00:32:45):
Yeah. Yeah. It's very cool. 

Speaker 1 (00:32:47):
Nice. 

Speaker 2 (00:32:47):
Yeah. 

Speaker 1 (00:32:48):
Well, we can go look at some art now. 

Speaker 2 (00:32:49):
Awesome. I'm so excited about this part. As soon as you said we get to go look at art and a museum after hours, it's like, this is like, what is it? The mixed up files of 

Speaker 1 (00:33:00):
Mrs. Basically Frank. Frank Weiler. 

Speaker 2 (00:33:02):
Was that the museum one they went to? They go to the natural. Oh, the Met. Yeah. This is really cool. Okay. I'm already really excited to talk about this because I'm already seeing patterns and I would, anyway, 

Speaker 1 (00:33:24):
We're recording now. We're recording. So yeah, so you can, 

Speaker 2 (00:33:26):
Do you want to say what we're looking at? 

Speaker 1 (00:33:28):
Yeah, we are looking at slab with standard inscription of Aser Nasser Paul too. 

Speaker 2 (00:33:35):
That would be my 

Speaker 1 (00:33:36):
Guess to the second, I'm guessing. Yeah. Aser Nasser, Paul 

Speaker 2 (00:33:39):
As Nasser, I, I'm pronouncing everything Draki now. I feel like 

Speaker 1 (00:33:45):
This feels kind of like Draki when I think of the, well, 

Speaker 2 (00:33:48):
It's from Iraq, which in fact the name Iraq has that gal. 

Speaker 1 (00:33:52):
Yeah, 

Speaker 2 (00:33:52):
So that's 

Speaker 1 (00:33:53):
Iraq. 

Speaker 2 (00:33:54):
Yeah. 

Speaker 1 (00:33:56):
So you say Iraq the same way where you swallow? 

Speaker 2 (00:33:58):
I did not study Arabic. 

Speaker 1 (00:34:00):
Okay, okay. Talking 

Speaker 2 (00:34:01):
About admitting things, we don't know. I did not study Arabic, but I think it's a guttural cue sound. It's not Iraq, 

Speaker 1 (00:34:09):
It's rock. So basically we are looking at, it's a piece of stone, but it is all text. And the text is Nia form. And this is, as far as I know, one of the first forms of writing, 

Speaker 2 (00:34:27):
Right? This 

Speaker 1 (00:34:28):
Is, 

Speaker 2 (00:34:29):
They call it proto writing, I think. So it's sort of when they, I think hieroglyphics, 

Speaker 1 (00:34:36):
Hieroglyphs 

Speaker 2 (00:34:36):
Are the same. And yeah, I don't know a lot about proto writing, but I think the development of writing systems is such a different conversation to the development of languages. 

Speaker 1 (00:34:48):
Why? What makes them different? 

Speaker 2 (00:34:49):
Well, people can speak languages for years and years and years before ever needing to write anything down. So the writing system then becomes, how do you translate the words I'm saying into a physical thing? 

Speaker 2 (00:35:03):
To me that's just insane. And there's so many different ways of doing it. This one, I think it reminds me of Korean, actually. It doesn't look necessarily like Korean, but it says it's syllabic. And Korean actually is my favorite writing system. It's called Hung. And they have an alphabet, but then they put the alphabets together and syllables and the alphabet. The letters also represent the shape of the mouth, the lips, tongue and teeth. So I can't remember a good word. The letter that's like the K in Korea, it looks like your tongue at the roof of your mouth. 

Speaker 1 (00:35:42):
Oh. 

Speaker 2 (00:35:45):
What's curious to me is how did they decide that this etching would represent this sound? And it sounds like they put together, they would put together two sounds into a syllable, whereas other writing systems like Chinese has nothing to do with the sound. It has to do with the word itself. So Chinese, when you're reading Chinese, each symbol, each is an ideogram. And they have, I believe, and 

Speaker 1 (00:36:11):
I 

Speaker 2 (00:36:11):
Haven't studied Chinese either myself, but basically a Chinese character represents an idea, not a sound. 

Speaker 1 (00:36:19):
And 

Speaker 2 (00:36:19):
This, I think it's saying it represents a syllable. So it's the sound. So yeah, when you write, do you want to represent the sound or the idea? 

Speaker 1 (00:36:27):
And 

Speaker 2 (00:36:27):
How do people interpret the writing? 

Speaker 1 (00:36:29):
I didn't realize Korean was so different than Chinese in that way. 

Speaker 2 (00:36:33):
Oh, it's completely different. That's 

Speaker 1 (00:36:34):
So interesting. 

Speaker 2 (00:36:35):
And it was 

Speaker 1 (00:36:36):
Because Japanese more like Chinese. So 

Speaker 2 (00:36:39):
Japanese is interesting. They have three writing systems. So they combine to write in Japanese. So you have hiragana, which is an alphabet, 

Speaker 1 (00:36:48):
Katana, 

Speaker 2 (00:36:48):
Which is also an alphabet, but it's used mostly to write foreign words. And then you have kanji, which are the Chinese symbols that they use. 

Speaker 1 (00:36:56):
And that's the hardest one to learn, right, because it's like each symbol 

Speaker 2 (00:37:00):
Corresponds 

Speaker 1 (00:37:00):
To an idea. 

Speaker 2 (00:37:01):
Exactly. So it's borrowed from Chinese, but they use it in combination, so in conjunction. So they'll use a kanji, basically. They use it usually for things and verbs and ideas. And then for the grammar, they'll use hiragana. And then if they're talking about baseball, they'll use katana. 

Speaker 1 (00:37:21):
So 

Speaker 2 (00:37:22):
Japanese is actually complex, but when students are learning it, they tend to start with just the most simple. And 

Speaker 1 (00:37:28):
You 

Speaker 2 (00:37:28):
Can still write anything in hiragana and Japanese will be able to read it. 

Speaker 1 (00:37:32):
When we had a show of Chinese arts a few years ago called Realm of the Immortals, we had the title in Chinese, and our curator was telling us that the character for immortal is basically a combination of man and mountain. 

Speaker 2 (00:37:50):
Yes. 

Speaker 1 (00:37:51):
Which is such a cool idea. There's such a poetry to the idea of the way these ideas combine, 

Speaker 2 (00:37:57):
Right? Chinese has radicals, and you'll see them repeat in the pictograms, basically the letters. So basically you'll see the radical for water will appear at a lot of things that have to do with water. So I don't know exactly how it works, but I know that they all have elements of different words built together into this one image. That's a word. It's really fascinating. This is interesting, and I love trying to find the patterns. So if you were trying to decipher this, you'd sort of look for the patterns. I mean, it's code breaking basically. If you came across this and had no idea what it said, which I'm sure when people first found it, they had no idea. You'd sort of look for the, so there's those three dash lines, and you'd start to find them, and you'd have to sort of, I don't even know how they would do this. It's amazing. You would have no key to, I mean, was there a key that they used? I don't know. It's just amazing 

Speaker 1 (00:38:58):
To, I don't know much about how they, it's everyone knows the story of the Rosetta Stone for hieroglyphics, but I don't know which 

Speaker 2 (00:39:03):
Is our competitor, but we won't mention 

Speaker 1 (00:39:06):
It's okay. I'm speaking of the ancient stone, not the company Ancient stone. Exactly. Which just 

Speaker 2 (00:39:11):
Wonderful. 

Speaker 1 (00:39:13):
But yeah, 

Speaker 2 (00:39:14):
I 

Speaker 1 (00:39:15):
Don't know about Nia. How would you figure this out? 

Speaker 2 (00:39:19):
Yeah, I wish. I'm going to have to go read it more on Kuni, and I would love to actually learn how to read it and come back here and just read this. 

Speaker 1 (00:39:27):
You think you could? Oh 

Speaker 2 (00:39:29):
Yeah. Well, I mean, wouldn't be able to. I'd have to learn what the syllables meant and everything. But I mean, that's part of what, once you figured out what everything said, you could come, I mean, when I was in high school, I taught myself the lic alphabet, 

Speaker 1 (00:39:42):
And I 

Speaker 2 (00:39:43):
Used to write my name in lic. And you just, once you learn the alphabet, it's pretty easy to figure out what it's saying. And then you go back and translate. And I mean, I shouldn't say it's easy to learn uniform, but it doesn't look that complex. It's repetitive, and I love it. It's really cool. 

Speaker 1 (00:40:02):
What's interesting is it's based on wedge shapes and clay, but this one is stone, so they're already mimicking. It's kind of cool. I feel like it's a step removed from the initial process of writing in clay. Writing 

Speaker 2 (00:40:17):
In clay. Yeah, it's temporary. And it says something about how this was in a palace room C of the palace complex. 

Speaker 1 (00:40:24):
So I think this panel of text and then this relief sculpture here, were both from the same palace. 

Speaker 2 (00:40:33):
Oh, cool. So yeah, it's like what did they want to be so permanent to put into stone? And it was based on clay writing. 

Speaker 1 (00:40:39):
Clay 

Speaker 2 (00:40:39):
Writing. So, well, 

Speaker 1 (00:40:40):
I think it wasn't, and I'm just reading labels that I think it was sort of listing accomplishments of the king, basically, 

Speaker 2 (00:40:50):
You trying to said something about listing the people who are involved and then what they did. 

Speaker 1 (00:40:54):
Yeah. So it's kind of practical information, I think. 

Speaker 2 (00:40:58):
Yeah. But yeah, it's interesting. Then you come over here and now, because we're used to looking at script, I'm looking for patterns, but I mean, it's the same type of thing. We're seeing patterns, but they're not words. 

Speaker 1 (00:41:11):
It's cool. I love these reliefs, these old, I mean, they're so ancient. We're talking 870 BC and it's so crazy close to 3000 years ago. And so to me, I look at this and I'm like, oh, it's so modern feeling just because the way it's so abstracted. 

Speaker 2 (00:41:35):
Yeah. I mean it looks almost art deco. 

Speaker 1 (00:41:38):
Yeah. Well, all this very ornate, intricate detail that's kind of, I 

Speaker 2 (00:41:42):
Love the sort of snail shell spiral of his beard in the ends of his hair. 

Speaker 1 (00:41:47):
Yeah, the wavy hair there. Definitely. That's so cool. And all these feathers, and it's just so stylized, I guess a popular idea. I think if you talk to most people about what they assume the trajectory of art is that sort of modernism and abstraction is something that comes later, but it's really something that we kind of go in and out of. And even into varying degrees, different cultures can kind of go back and forth. And especially western art, where you have moments going from the classical art of Greece and Rome. And then when you move into medieval art and it gets actually more abstract when there's sort, it's almost more spiritual or connected to ideas more, it gets more abstracted and less physical about people. 

Speaker 2 (00:42:48):
So 

Speaker 1 (00:42:48):
It's interesting to see how that can be very symbolic in these ways, I think. 

Speaker 2 (00:42:55):
Yeah. Yeah. It's like why did they abstract certain things and then make other things very like his nose looks like a nose. 

Speaker 1 (00:43:02):
Yeah. Right. Yeah. Certain things. And that's also, it's interesting to think about how people draw. Sometimes they write in a way, if I asked a kid or an adult who doesn't have drawing training to draw a face, 

Speaker 2 (00:43:21):
What 

Speaker 1 (00:43:21):
They would do is they would draw the various symbols they have for these parts of a face and put them in the right order to resemble a face. Whereas they're not necessarily looking at a person and trying to capture a likeness, but they're saying, well, this is a symbol for an eyeball. This is a symbol for a nose. This is a symbol for an another eye. This is a mouth. And kids, especially as they develop, they draw very symbolically, and this is a person and it's just a sphere basically. And then they start growing legs and arms off that sphere. But it's very interesting. It develops like a language. 

Speaker 2 (00:43:59):
Well, and drawing something and making a piece of art is trying to convey an idea, which is what language does. So art is a language, in my opinion. 

Speaker 1 (00:44:10):
It's 

Speaker 2 (00:44:10):
A way of communicating an idea to someone else, either putting a permanent, trying to put something permanent around an abstract thought. So yeah, what do you leave really literal and what do you make more abstract? What's the important part to leave literal? It's a different way of communicating. 

Speaker 1 (00:44:32):
Well, and it makes me think too of the way, sometimes we think of pictures as cross-cultural, but they're not always, there are certain images that translate to ideas in one culture that doesn't translate into others 

Speaker 2 (00:44:47):
Well, and when you learn a language, you have to learn the culture because if you're not learning the culture, you're not fully understanding the application of the language. So it's the same thing. You can't understand a piece of art entirely without understanding the culture behind it. 

Speaker 1 (00:44:59):
Yeah. I'm thinking of if you ever pick up a Japanese comic and you're not used to it, you're just like, wait. They use different, especially comics, if you think about all of the sort of shortcuts we use to show emotions and things, and they use little symbols. So when they're showing somebody is sleeping, they have a snot bubble coming out of their nose. 

Speaker 2 (00:45:23):
Oh, that's so weird. 

Speaker 1 (00:45:24):
Yeah. So 

Speaker 2 (00:45:24):
It's the Z's. 

Speaker 1 (00:45:25):
Exactly. Instead of Zs, they'll show a snot bubble coming out of the nose for sleeping or 

Speaker 2 (00:45:31):
Tired. I wonder what that comes from. I'm going to have to ask my Japanese friend where that comes from. That's really fascinating. 

Speaker 1 (00:45:36):
Yeah. So yeah, it's like, 

Speaker 2 (00:45:39):
I'm sorry, I'm whispering the nature of being in a museum, but nobody's 

Speaker 1 (00:45:43):
Here. 

Speaker 2 (00:45:43):
Okay, so I can talk loudly. Yeah, it would 

Speaker 1 (00:45:45):
Be better actually. Sorry, because I'm probably going to have to turn you up on everything. I'm just going to be like, 

Speaker 2 (00:45:51):
Okay, I'll talk louder anyway. 

Speaker 1 (00:45:53):
Yeah, no, I was like, guess what? I'm holding the mic 

Speaker 2 (00:45:55):
Bay next to you. I know. Now I'll talk louder. So yeah, the Z's are in. That's really fascinating. So it's just difficult. I 

Speaker 1 (00:46:02):
Don't know. I can't remember if they have anything else. I don't know if they do also do a sound kind of thing, like a z I can't remember. But I've definitely seen the snot bubble and there's some other ones, just the way they draw. I feel like sweat and stuff too is a little more, there's an iconography to the way sweat is drawn to show stress, not necessarily meant to be real actual sweat. So this is stress sweat I'm showing a person is nervous right now. 

Speaker 2 (00:46:38):
Yeah. It's that I love that it's translating a cultural idea into a written or visual piece. That's just a fascinating way of looking at art and language. 

Speaker 1 (00:46:53):
Yeah, we can walk around, see if there's anything else in here we want to talk about. We, 

Speaker 2 (00:46:59):
I've not been in this room, I don't think. 

Speaker 1 (00:47:02):
Well, it's been here for a while. I know. Maybe 

Speaker 2 (00:47:03):
I've been here. 

Speaker 1 (00:47:04):
It actually, it's funny because we're literally right off the front main entrance, but it is kind of one of the least visited parts of the museum because when you come in, you go straight, 

Speaker 2 (00:47:14):
You go straight right 

Speaker 1 (00:47:14):
Back. 

Speaker 2 (00:47:15):
So this is just off to the side. Off the front. 

Speaker 1 (00:47:17):
Yeah. If you went right, instead of going straight, you would be in this room. 

Speaker 2 (00:47:20):
Oh, cool. So everybody go Right. This is a cool room. 

Speaker 1 (00:47:24):
It's got some 

Speaker 2 (00:47:24):
Old stuff. 

Speaker 1 (00:47:25):
Yeah. It's a place where people probably don't visit as much. So we're looking at some old Persian art. Actually now we're over just on the other side of the doorway. And again, I love that it has that same really stylized. So 

Speaker 2 (00:47:44):
Yeah, I mean you look at sort of what they're holding and you wonder what the significance is of the objects they're holding. That I'm sure when someone saw this on the wall of a palace, they knew exactly what that meant. 

Speaker 1 (00:47:58):
Yeah. 

Speaker 2 (00:47:59):
They knew it meant like maybe, is this an anteater she's holding? 

Speaker 1 (00:48:02):
No, it's a wine skin. Oh, a wine 

Speaker 2 (00:48:04):
Skin. Okay. Which 

Speaker 1 (00:48:05):
Is crazy. That's so much wine, right? It's a 

Speaker 2 (00:48:07):
Lot of wine. 

Speaker 1 (00:48:08):
I know, I I saw that earlier. Just wine skin. That is a ton of wine. 

Speaker 2 (00:48:15):
They must have had fun in Persia. 

Speaker 1 (00:48:17):
I know. I mean, you kind of imagine like it immediately makes you think, well, this is obviously somewhere royal. 

Speaker 2 (00:48:23):
Right, exactly. 

Speaker 1 (00:48:24):
The only people who would probably have access to this much wine. You have to be important. 

Speaker 2 (00:48:30):
I mean, you could think maybe this was the same way when you go to a store and you see a bottle of wine on it to get wine there. I mean, I don't know that that's what this was, but that's what I mean. People would know that that's not an anter. They would know that it's a wine skin 

Speaker 1 (00:48:43):
And 

Speaker 2 (00:48:44):
They would have an instant reaction to, they would just know what that person is doing. So this is as much a symbol as the unifor. Only that's showing much more detail and specificity than this is, you can interpret maybe she's taking the wine to someone, maybe she's stealing the wine. I dunno. There could be interpretations. 

Speaker 1 (00:49:06):
I love this one so much because of the lines 

Speaker 2 (00:49:11):
In her costume. Is it a she? I assume it's a she, but it could be a he. 

Speaker 1 (00:49:15):
I think of it as a he, but I actually don't know why I think that either. That's 

Speaker 2 (00:49:21):
Interesting. Yeah. 

Speaker 1 (00:49:22):
I mean there's not a lot of, 

Speaker 2 (00:49:23):
It's probably he 

Speaker 1 (00:49:25):
Isn't 

Speaker 2 (00:49:26):
Carrying 

Speaker 1 (00:49:26):
A lot of signs either way. 

Speaker 2 (00:49:27):
Isn't a heavy bag of wine. 

Speaker 1 (00:49:29):
Probably if you were from this culture in four 80 bbc, it would be obvious to you because the dress would be, the dress would mean one thing or the other, 

Speaker 2 (00:49:39):
Probably the way the lines are. It's a really beautiful depiction of the way the fabric is hanging in this really hard piece of stone. 

Speaker 1 (00:49:49):
Yeah, that's what I think I'm thinking about is lines are such a, I don't know, they feel like such a two D thing. So it's like this kind of line work I expect in ink on paper almost. So to see it and to be both, it's straddling this weird line between three D two D that you can kind of see it both at the same time, which is just kind of cool. Whereas even the pieces next to it, while they're very graphic in that same simplified forms, they don't have so much reliance online in the same way as this one does. 

Speaker 2 (00:50:32):
Yeah. It's really cool the way even the fabric of his or her hat and headdresses. 

Speaker 1 (00:50:38):
Yeah. Well, and I think they leave even say that wine skin, they don't give it a lot of sense of volume. So they leave it so flat that you just think of it as a shape, as a flat shape. It's really cool. 

Speaker 2 (00:50:52):
Yeah. 

Speaker 1 (00:50:53):
I dunno if there's, it's 

Speaker 2 (00:50:53):
So funny to think that this is something that someone would've passed every day of their life, maybe even. And would they have stood here and talked about it the way we are? 

Speaker 1 (00:51:03):
Yeah, probably not. I mean maybe. I dunno. It's hard to know. Like 

Speaker 2 (00:51:07):
I said, yeah, they probably just had an idea of what it was somewhat. I 

Speaker 1 (00:51:09):
Just always, when I look at things, I know this is so basic, but when I look at stuff like this in the last piece, and I think that one was four 80 bc, the other was, what was it, 800 BC or something? 

Speaker 2 (00:51:24):
Yes. Yeah. 

Speaker 1 (00:51:24):
It's so funny if you think about that too, talking about a difference of almost 400 years in my mind I'm like, oh, these are around the same time period. But 

Speaker 2 (00:51:34):
If you were like, that's Renaissance, right? 

Speaker 1 (00:51:36):
If we were just like, oh, it happened 400 years ago, you were not just be like, oh, it's roughly the same time period. So it's so funny to, once you're past a certain point, you start to be like, ah, it's all the same, but you're like, no, those are 400 years of difference. I know. That's 

Speaker 2 (00:51:50):
Crazy. 

Speaker 1 (00:51:50):
Yeah. It's our psychotic figure that we have. It's in the ancient wing and I can't remember, it's like, it's maybe like 2000 something bc So you're like, okay, imagine the birth of Christ now. We are actually closer to this event in time 

Speaker 2 (00:52:13):
Than 

Speaker 1 (00:52:14):
This sculpture was. Yeah, 

Speaker 2 (00:52:15):
Exactly. 

Speaker 1 (00:52:16):
You just think like, oh, it was a long time ago. And it's like, no, no. 

Speaker 2 (00:52:19):
Think about how long. Yeah. 

Speaker 1 (00:52:21):
It's so nuts. So 

Speaker 2 (00:52:23):
I 

Speaker 1 (00:52:23):
Also just think, oh my gosh, a human being made this long ago. I know. And it's still around. That's so crazy to me. I can't get over that very basic part of ancient art is like it's here. Well, 

Speaker 2 (00:52:35):
It makes me think, will the pottery teapot I made for my dad in third grade be discovered by someone 

Speaker 1 (00:52:43):
Pottery? I mean, these are stones. So it kind of makes a lot of sense. But yeah, ancient pottery is crazy like that. And we have some in this room with us, but the fact that it survives is so amazing, so fragile. I know it's something that feels designed to break. 

Speaker 2 (00:52:59):
And then also what will people, maybe that was just some piece of pottery that someone made for their dad in 

Speaker 1 (00:53:05):
School 

Speaker 2 (00:53:06):
And we're interpreting this entire culture around that one sliver of remnants. 

Speaker 1 (00:53:12):
Yeah, sure. You never, with this kind of things, you always have an incomplete picture. So yeah, you do worry. What artifacts are we leaving behind that we'll be judged for? 

Speaker 2 (00:53:22):
Exactly. Be careful what you make. It could be in a museum in 2,400 years from now. Is that how long ago that is? Yeah. 2,500 years. 

Speaker 1 (00:53:34):
I'll let you do the math. I went to art 

Speaker 2 (00:53:36):
School. Yeah. Language. People aren't so good at math. Math 

Speaker 1 (00:53:40):
Either. No. We 

Speaker 2 (00:53:41):
Deal with words. No numbers. Who is good at math? Mathematicians. 

Speaker 1 (00:53:46):
Science people. 

Speaker 2 (00:53:47):
Science people. 

Speaker 1 (00:53:48):
Yeah. 

Speaker 2 (00:53:50):
Wow. I love that. Fat horse. 

Speaker 1 (00:53:52):
I love, okay, we can talk about this. We talk about the fat horse. We can totally talk about this fat horse and a 

Speaker 2 (00:54:01):
Skinny cow. 

Speaker 1 (00:54:02):
Yeah, it's 

Speaker 2 (00:54:03):
Opposite. 

Speaker 1 (00:54:04):
Exactly. I love it Took me a while to realize I feel like somebody had a very good time putting these two together because it's so funny that they're is skinny cow and fat horse. You would not expect these two need talking about comics. These two need a cartoon show, right? 

Speaker 2 (00:54:21):
A picture of fat horse and skin. Now 

Speaker 1 (00:54:23):
Also this totally horse, every time I see it, I start cracking up. I think of the Bugs Bunny. What's Opera doc? When he's like bru Hilda coming down on that really fat horse. 

Speaker 2 (00:54:36):
Yeah. I can barely walk. 

Speaker 1 (00:54:37):
Yes. It makes me think of that fat horse with pink. I feel like it's like a white horse with pink mane or it's so ridiculous 

Speaker 2 (00:54:46):
Looking. None of this horse is going to get you very far over any kind of hill. And that cow is not going to give you a good hamburger. Oh, sorry. That's so mean. I should maybe say milk, 

Speaker 1 (00:54:58):
Something 

Speaker 2 (00:54:58):
Like that. I don't know. Sorry. Vegans. 

Speaker 1 (00:55:03):
Cow. I think it's a boy cow. 

Speaker 2 (00:55:05):
It's a calf. So it's a young, I mean, I don't know. I'm 

Speaker 1 (00:55:08):
Just looking under there and I 

Speaker 2 (00:55:09):
Think, oh yeah, it's a boy cow. Right? It's definitely a boy cow. We can't tell the horse. 

Speaker 1 (00:55:15):
Yeah. Horses. 

Speaker 2 (00:55:16):
We're trying to gender too much. I don't know why I'm gendering all these objects there. They could be anything. 

Speaker 1 (00:55:21):
It is kind of funny though. There's also a practical reason of, you don't generally make little skinny things out of clay 

Speaker 2 (00:55:30):
Because 

Speaker 1 (00:55:31):
They don't laugh. They 

Speaker 2 (00:55:32):
Break. They 

Speaker 1 (00:55:33):
Break when they draw. So 

Speaker 2 (00:55:34):
It's a practical fat, 

Speaker 1 (00:55:34):
It kind of practical because it clay lends itself to sort of chunkier forms and sort of the way when you're making something and it has to dry, I mean for this, it looks like it probably they would've let it dry standing like this. I was going to say, you can sometimes turn it upside down, but 

Speaker 2 (00:55:56):
Well, and also it's supposed to hold something, so if you want it to hold more than a horse's body, right, 

Speaker 1 (00:56:02):
Right. Yeah. You need the volume. The 

Speaker 2 (00:56:04):
Volume. I mean the shape itself looks almost bell shaped with a convex end. So it's like, yeah, you, that's what a vessel would look like. And then they said, let's put a horse's head on it. 

Speaker 1 (00:56:15):
Yeah, sure. 

Speaker 2 (00:56:15):
It'd be cute. 

Speaker 1 (00:56:16):
Yeah. Yeah. And with bronze, it's like you can make those skinny long forms and it 

Speaker 2 (00:56:23):
Doesn't. Right. So it's the material. 

Speaker 1 (00:56:24):
Yeah. You can do that. And I guess also mean bronze is more expensive than clay too, so you maybe don't want to use as much of it. I don't know. I mean, 

Speaker 2 (00:56:34):
Wait, sorry, I'm just reading. This is circa 22,400 B c E. 

Speaker 1 (00:56:40):
Yes. 

Speaker 2 (00:56:42):
So this is super old. 

Speaker 1 (00:56:44):
Yes. Yeah. That's about as old as the piece we were just talking about where I was saying this is a piece that Yeah, we are closer right now to the birth of Christ in time than this is 

Speaker 2 (00:56:54):
To the birth of Christ. 

Speaker 1 (00:56:55):
Yes. This is farther in. Yeah. And 

Speaker 2 (00:56:57):
This to me, it's so weird. It looks almost like mid 20th century, doesn't it? Look mid 20th century to you. I could see this being, I dunno, it looks newer to me than the fat horse. 

Speaker 1 (00:57:09):
Yeah. 

Speaker 2 (00:57:09):
I'm fascinated by this piece. I think that's really cool. 

Speaker 1 (00:57:11):
Again, kind of just keep saying everything stylized. 

Speaker 2 (00:57:15):
Yeah. 

Speaker 1 (00:57:16):
So yeah, 

Speaker 2 (00:57:17):
I love this. I would put that in my house. I won't take it from here 

Speaker 1 (00:57:20):
Though. Okay, that's good. I've never really noticed how crazy long its tail is. And 

Speaker 2 (00:57:27):
What's that all about? It's almost like a rot iron spiral. 

Speaker 1 (00:57:29):
Yeah. 

Speaker 2 (00:57:31):
I love that. I'm glad we talked about the Fat For and Skinny Cow. 

Speaker 1 (00:57:36):
So now we've walked across to the opposite side of the room and we're now looking at Sherin receives the portrait of Kuru. I 

Speaker 2 (00:57:44):
Would say Ra 

Speaker 1 (00:57:46):
Ra. Yeah. I was actually 

Speaker 2 (00:57:48):
Ra, 

Speaker 1 (00:57:48):
I'm not sure my brain was reordering those letters to make sense of them for me. 

Speaker 2 (00:57:52):
Well, and this is, I mean, this is a good example of when we render things in English from another language, there are standards for Transliterations. So this is whoever decided that that's how it would sound in English. 

Speaker 1 (00:58:06):
So 

Speaker 2 (00:58:06):
It's really hard to convey in English what another language sounds like. So I would pronounce that ra, but I don't know. Right. 

Speaker 1 (00:58:15):
But that would be your educated guess. 

Speaker 2 (00:58:17):
The reason is because below it says Hamsa, which I know is Hamsa. 

Speaker 1 (00:58:20):
Yeah. 

Speaker 2 (00:58:21):
So I would say Ra, but I dunno. 

Speaker 1 (00:58:25):
I'll trust you. Yeah. 

Speaker 2 (00:58:27):
It's Farsi probably because it's from Iran. 

Speaker 1 (00:58:30):
Iran, yeah. 

Speaker 2 (00:58:31):
I do not read this language, but it's so pretty though. I mean, that's the thing. You can look at a language you don't know and it might as well be art. It might as well be a brush stroke. So it's almost more beautiful when you don't understand it 

Speaker 1 (00:58:50):
Well. Yeah. And it doesn't have any of, it's not tied down to the meaning, 

Speaker 2 (00:58:54):
Right? It exactly, 

Speaker 1 (00:58:55):
Yeah. You can't just appreciate it in it. Yeah. I 

Speaker 2 (00:58:56):
Say it's not that it's more beautiful, just as you can interpret and intuit different things from it 

Speaker 1 (00:59:02):
Without 

Speaker 2 (00:59:02):
Knowing the actual meaning of the world. Yeah. 

Speaker 1 (00:59:04):
It's not, 

Speaker 2 (00:59:04):
This could be, let's see, it's, well, I don't know how to talk about that. I mean, yeah, this could be Peter the Rabbit or something, right? Yeah. You dunno. This is also our dustier pours molten lead down the throat of Hoft v's. Worm. 

Speaker 1 (00:59:23):
Whoa. I really wish I could read this now. Me 

Speaker 2 (00:59:27):
Too. 

Speaker 1 (00:59:28):
I've never seen that title. 

Speaker 2 (00:59:29):
So here's what we have to do. We have to learn Farsi so we can come back and read this page. 

Speaker 1 (00:59:36):
We do have a docent who speaks Farsi. 

Speaker 2 (00:59:38):
You do? Yes. That's amazing. 

Speaker 1 (00:59:40):
Yep. 

Speaker 2 (00:59:40):
So I should come and find your docents. 

Speaker 1 (00:59:43):
Yeah, we'll call Zora up and get her to come. Perfect. 

Speaker 2 (00:59:45):
That sounds like a really cool story. Translate. This is the early pages of Dune or something. Frank Herbert was actually just translating from 

Speaker 1 (00:59:57):
Last, I am trying to remember if this is the first time Dune has come up on this podcast, and I think it is. But I feel like I talk about Dune pretty often. 

Speaker 2 (01:00:04):
Well, there's first in 

Speaker 1 (01:00:05):
My regular life, first time, but I'm so, I'm glad. Yeah. 

Speaker 2 (01:00:09):
I want to know all about Hof. Todd's worm 

Speaker 1 (01:00:13):
Lead down the throat 

Speaker 2 (01:00:14):
Of This is cool. 

Speaker 1 (01:00:15):
And speaking of, I'm going to 

Speaker 2 (01:00:16):
Come back. And 

Speaker 1 (01:00:17):
This Rocky stuff that's also like molten, like 

Speaker 2 (01:00:20):
Molten, 

Speaker 1 (01:00:21):
Molten led. Like just like the, 

Speaker 2 (01:00:22):
That's a torture. 

Speaker 1 (01:00:23):
The molten crown of, 

Speaker 2 (01:00:26):
Or maybe they were doing that to preserve it somehow. I don't know. I don't even know what H pod's worm is. That's really cool. This is really dark. We need more on this little layout. 

Speaker 1 (01:00:37):
Yeah, we definitely need more information on Hoft, bods, 

Speaker 2 (01:00:42):
Worms, worm. That's a really hard one to say. Hoft. 

Speaker 1 (01:00:46):
Yeah. Thank you for listening to Art Palace. We hope you'll come visit the Cincinnati Art Museum and have conversations about the art yourself. General admission to the museum is always free, and we also offer free parking. Special exhibitions on view right now are the poetry of place, William Clifft, Linda Connor, and Michael Kenna. The book of only Enoch and the Jackleg Testament. Part one, Jack and Eve and employed a staff art exhibition and opening on February 11th are dressed to kill Japanese arms and armor and transcending reality. The woodcuts of Kosaka Gaji. Don't miss Art after Dark Queen City Royals on January 27th from five to 9:00 PM you can enjoy music from Wilder. Make your own crown before you strike a pose at the Shakespeare selfie. Stand from Cincinnati Shakespeare Company and eat and drink like a king with wines and cheese for purchase from Cork opolis. For program reservations and more information, visit cincinnati art museum.org. You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and even Snapchat. Our theme song is Efron Music by Balal. Be sure to rate and review us on iTunes, like user BSS Jones who says Russell is a natural, really appreciate his energy, smarts, and humor. 

Speaker 1 (01:02:16):
I swear that is not my mother. I'm Russell Iig and this has been Art Palace produced by the Cincinnati Art Museum.