CHAT: language flags

Hey.

My son, Michael, came up with the Tepa "flag" for me. About nine
months ago he was drawing people that looked something like:

               .     .
               -------
        .     .   |
        -------   |
           |      |  .     .
           |      |  -------
           |      |     |
           |      |     |
            \     |     |
             \    |    /
              \   |   /
               \  |  /
                \ | /
                 \|/

(the stems were a bit more curved)

This represents our family; I'm the big one in the middle, my
wife is on the left, and Michael is on the right (Robert hadn't
been born yet). Each figure represents a person's eyes and mouth
atop their body. For him the most salient thing about being a
person was apparently the ability to see and speak. I thought it
had a nice "petroglyph" flavor, so I decided to adopt this as an
informal symbol for the speakers of Tepa, who after all are from
the petroglyph-rich red-rock country of southeastern Utah.

Dirk

--
Dirk Elzinga
dirk.elzinga@m.cc.utah.edu