Content Creator Megan and Editor Ruby are here today with two unrelated topics: legend Dot-Marie Jones, and reduplication in Austronesian languages.

Here we go with Megan:

Today we’re talking about the super-cool Dot-Marie Jones. If you’d like to see this story as a video, click here to watch our TikTok! You may recognize her as Lizzie McGuire’s gym teacher, or more iconically as Coach Beiste on “Glee.” In addition to her acting career, she competed in the 1988 and 1992 Olympic trials for shot put, and she’s also a 15-time world arm wrestling champion! I know there’s a scene in “Glee” where Coach Beiste challenges someone to an arm wrestle, but for the life of me I can’t find the clip.

I did find a 1994 “LA Times” interview, where a 30-year old Dot said “I was 19 years old and I was at a festival with a friend and she said I should enter the arm-wrestling competition, So I thought, ‘What the heck’ I did it because I liked the trophy. But I didn’t know what I was doing.” She won this competition, and then entered another and another.

In 1992, she appeared on an “American Gladiators”-style show called “Knights and Warriors,” where she portrayed “Lady Battleaxe.” Don’t worry, you can find full episodes of the show on YouTube.

More recently, her talents were showcased in the 2020 movie “Golden Arm,” a comedy about a baker who trains for the Ladies Arm Wrestling Championship prize. [Ed note: this is not, as I first assumed, the Quibi series “The Golden Arm,” in which Rachel Brosnahan has a literal arm made of gold. — Ruby]

You can honor Dot-Marie and Coach Beiste all throughout January at our “Glee” theme nights!

And now for an abrupt change of pace! Editor Ruby here to respond to a reader inquiry. Our favorite reader, Ross (sorry to the rest of you, but he writes us the most charming emails), asked for any insight into why so many words from Oceania have doubled syllables, à la humuhumunukunukuāpua'a, mata-mata, aye-aye, Pago-Pago. I am excited to give some insight!!

The phenomenon of doubling is called “reduplication” in linguistics. English has it lightly in the form of emphatic reduplication, through contrastive stress reduplication. Think: “Do you like like him?” “It’s a house, but it’s not a house house.” (We also have “schm-” reduplication, like “fancy-schmancy” or “job-schmob,” which is borrowed from Yiddish.) But in other languages, reduplication can serve a ton of functions! Just a few examples: in some languages, reduplication is used to create plurals, indicate that something is bigger, indicate that something is more intense, decline a noun, or conjugate a verb.

There’s some very cool things reduplication can do. In Halkomelem, a language from the west coast of North America, reduplication is used to create a “dispositional” aspect, so the verb meaning “to capsize” becomes “likely to capsize” when duplicated. In Tzʼutujil, a Mayan language, partial reduplication works like “ish” does in English — “red” becomes “reddish” and “water” becomes “watery” through reduplication. Many languages use reduplication to mean something happens habitually, frequently, or continually. (For Spanish speakers, think about the difference between “ella estaba aquí” — “she used to be here” or “she was always here” — and “ella estuvo aquí” — “she was here at a specific time.”) For example, in Swahili, “piga” means “to strike” but “pigapiga” means “to strike repeatedly.”

So let’s return to Ross’ question: why is this so common in words from the Pacific and its islands? Reduplication is very common among the Austronesian language family, which includes Javanese, Hawaiian, Tagalog, Indonesian, Malagasy, and Māori among its members. Linguistics as a field generally shies away from trying to find reasons why languages are how they are, as 1) there’s a history of using language origin stories to be racist as hell, and 2) it’s not something you can observe and do science about. The Linguistic Society of Paris actually banned papers on the origin of language in 1866 because it was not a productive area of study. So why do Austronesian languages tend towards this pattern? Not something that’s investigated, on the whole. But let’s dig into the specific words Ross emailed about, and what reduplication is doing for them.

Humuhumunukunukuāpua'a: Also known as the reef triggerfish, this is the state fish of Hawai’i. The full word translates as “small triggerfish with a snout that is blunt and pig-like,” and it breaks down like this: “humu” means triggerfish, and reduplicating it as “humuhumu” means “small triggerfish.” (That’s called “diminution.”) “Nuku” means “snout,” so “nukunuku” means “small snout.” We’re out of the reduplication zone, but “ā” means “like” and “pua'a” means “pig.” Easy!
Mata-mata: There’s actually several phrases like this around the world and I’m not 100% which one Ross was referring to. The turtle is actually South American, so I think it’s most likely we’re looking at the town of Matamata, New Zealand. (Although if he meant the slang term for the police, it’s from the Malay “mata-mata,” meaning “eyes” — that’s a pluralizing reduplication.) Matamata, the town, is near the set for Hobbiton. The New Zealand government’s website says it means “headland,” but not why. The Māori dictionary says the same, but that it can also mean “extreme point,” “summit,” or “source of a river.” I looked up just “mata” to see if I can figure it out — there are a lot of different meanings, but since the macron (that’s the line over some vowels, meaning they’re long) is meaningful, I’m just looking at the unmarked definitions. I think it’s most likely this is connected to the third definition on that page — “point” or “surface.” (Would be cool if it was “spell” or “uncooked” but I think that’s unlikely.) My guess is this is an intensifying reduplication: not just a point, but a point point. If you speak Māori please let me know!
Aye-aye: Aye-ayes are a type of lemur. Like all lemurs, they are endemic to Madagascar, which means their name is from Malagasy, one of the coolest languages. (This newsletter is so long already but Malagasy is one of the only languages globally to have Verb-Object-Subject order, so “ate the man the tiger” instead of “the tiger ate the man.”) Back to the aye-aye! A European explorer had some cute story about how he came up with the name, but the very similar “hai hai” is widespread across Madagascar among Malagasy speakers, so that seems unlikely. It is possible that it comes from “heh heh,” which would mean “I don’t know,” a way of avoiding saying the name of a feared animal. I’m at a bit of a dead-end on finding “heh” or “heh heh” in any dictionary, as the Malagasy dictionary I found isn’t giving me much. (If true, this would be the same as how the word for “bear” in most northern European languages means “the brown one,” because they thought saying the true name of the bear would summon it.) Other people think it’s meant to mimic the animal’s cry. Wherever the name comes from, you can sure buy a cute shirt we made with one on it.
Pago-Pago: This is the capital of American Samoa. Fun fact: “g” in Samoan is pronounced like an “ng,” so you say something closer to “Pango-Pango.” I found this interesting page about how to pronounce Pago-Pago, which frustratingly says nothing about its etymology. (It seems like the etymology of “Samoa” they give is mashing up two possible theories for the silliest answer, so I’m not sure I’d trust them if they had one.) If you speak Samoan, please let me know more!