A Little Birdie Told Me Si Mystery Cache
A Little Birdie Told Me Si
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(micro)
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A mystery cache for those cachers (you know who you are) who asked me for a new type of puzzle. This cache gives a puzzle, a good hike, a bushwhack in somewhat challenging terrain, and a chance at a soaker depending on your approach. Enjoy, but do be careful, please.
The cache is not at the posted coordinates, but, not surprisingly, the degrees portions for the actual cache location are N45 and W075.
Geocaching is, of course, largely about finding geocaches. Over the years, I’ve had the good fortune to cache with literally hundreds of other cachers from Ottawa/Gatineau, and around the world. I’ve noticed that when cachers first spot a hide, they will typically say something like “Got it,” or “Found it.” Other cachers employ more idiosyncratic phrasing, e.g., The Burrow’s “QAPLA’” (Klingon for “success”) and Camo-crazed’s “visual acquisition.” [Well, really - What else would you expect from a Star Trek fan, and a software engineer?]
But I suspect that most of us, as we spot the cache, and before we actually get around to verbalizing anything, have a brief mental flash that corresponds to a sort of internal “Yes!!!” At least, that is, those of us with English as our native tongue. But, you may well ask, what about the many, many cachers worldwide who speak other languages? How do their mental flashes go? Therein lies the essence of this puzzle. Lest any persons reading this cache page think I am claiming any linguistic prowess of my own, let me be properly humble, and quick to correct them, and to give the full credit to Jennifer Runner, her web site “Jennifer’s Language Pages,” http://users.elite.net/runner/jennifers/, and, particularly, one of the subsidiary pages within that site, http://users.elite.net/runner/jennifers/yes.htm, documenting more than 550 words for “yes,” including specification of the words, the languages they appear in, and where they are spoken, along with other information such as the level of formality.
Understandably for such a frequently used concept, a great many of these words for “yes” are short, often only one or two letters long. Unsurprisingly, many different languages use the same words. But, surprising to me, many of these commonalities cross the boundaries of language families, with a given word being used in very different cultures and geographic locations. As a result of these commonalities, barring a variety of accents that I found too challenging to reproduce here, I noted well over one hundred different languages that use elements from a small set of one and two letter words: Da, E, Ee, Ha, He, Ho, Ja, Jo, O, and Si. For example, more than twenty languages worldwide use the word rendered as Ee (again, ignoring a variety of accents). The languages employing elements from just this small set of very short words range across both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, all of the Continents except Antarctica, plus a variety of Islands, major and minor. Illustratively, as just a partial sampling, they include Afrikaans, Arabic, Aromunian. Assyrian, Asturian; Catalan, Chontal, Crow. Czech, Dawan; Faroese, Frisian. Friulian. Galician, Georgian; German. Hakka, Hidatsa, Hindi, Hokkien; Icelandic: Italian. Ixil. Javanese, Kashmiri, Kutenai, Latvian; Luxemburgish. Manchu, Marquesan; Masai, Mazahua. Mingo, Muskogee. Nepali: Ossetian. Papiamentu, Prussian, Rapanui; Russian, Sesotho. Sicilian. Spanish, Sudovian; Tahitan, Totonac: Urdu. (and) Wiyot,
Surprisingly, aside from various pidgin languages, only one (1) language other than English uses the word “Yes.” It’s Ido, an artificial language developed from Esperanto. I was amused to note that at least four (4) different languages employ the favoured response for roll call back in my high school gym class days, “Yo.” And most curiously, one (1) language, used locally within Russia, actually employs, as its word for “Yes,” the word “No.” Go figure.
But more importantly, go and find the cache, and when you log it online, please feel not only free, but strongly encouraged, to use any affirmative of your choice to celebrate your new “Found it” icon.
The cache, when placed, consists of a camo’ed 35 mm film canister, but I hope to replace it with a film canister in a camo’ed birdhouse, one that I won as a prize at a recent Meet & Eat event.
Additional Hints
(No hints available.)
Treasures
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