The Mote Archive - Language and Culture

Pak Hashke

You are angry with me. You should be. I have no excuses. Here is my peace offerering. There you can hear wildly different kinds of spoken Swedish. Find the line "Södermanland Uppland". Those two dialects are closest to standard Swedish. Choose "Skåne" to get an idea how sto^3 sounds.

When you select a dialect, the text appears. Then click on the blue link at the top right.

Concerning the Slavic versions of the Edda. Your post has now been wiped out by the Powers. I remember my first thought: the Serbo-Croat version look more compact and powerful.

16. Hashke - 9/12/1999 1:18:59 PM

pelle:

No, in no way am I angry with you. In fact, I made a very complimentary remark to you in your Maputo thread.

Thanks very much for this link. I haven't tried it out yet. My wife needs to use the computer at this very moment.

Mais mais tarde!

17. pellenilsson - 9/12/1999 1:22:44 PM

Hashke

It was in jest. I thank you for the nice compliment in the Maputo thread. And please excuse the errors in my previous. In this thread of all places!

What do you think of the two Edda versions.

18. marjoribanks - 9/12/1999 1:25:38 PM

Pelle, I'll have your edda on a platter if you don't comment on suckling pigs and other things in your Maputo thread.

19. pellenilsson - 9/12/1999 1:28:10 PM

Coming up soon, marj.

20. Hashke - 9/12/1999 9:18:09 PM

pelle:

Tack för den underbar länken! Jag har bokmärkte den för framtids sinnesexercis. Menar du den slavisk jämförelserner? Efter min mening, er det som Navajo-Apache.

Or Spanish-Portugues, where Portuguese has some of the terseness and compactness of Serbo-Croatian in comparison with Russian.

Do you speak the Uppland dialect, or the Södermanland?

21. pellenilsson - 9/13/1999 2:10:55 AM

Hashke

Jag är född i Göteborg på västkusten och bodde där till 1978, så det är den dialekten jag talar. Jag tror inte den finns på länken.

22. pellenilsson - 9/13/1999 4:04:21 AM

Hashke

There are several dialects on that site which I understand very little of, for example the three from Dalarna and the two from Jämtland. Gotland is also a case in point. If you listen to it you will here a completely different "melody" than in the examples I gave.

23. pellenilsson - 9/13/1999 4:05:36 AM

Corrigendum:

If you listen to that one, you will hear ....

24. Hashke - 9/13/1999 3:46:13 PM

pelle:

I'll listen to all of them. I find them fascinating.

It is hard to believe that there are dialects in Sweden which you cannot understand. In the U.S. there are dialects that might be somewhat puzzling, but even those can be readily understood, generally speaking.

25. marjoribanks - 9/13/1999 3:58:41 PM

Pak Hashke,

There are several English dialects I find close to, if not completely, incomprehensible. However, it is rather startling that a small country of, what, seven million people would feature dialects of Swedish incomprehensible for our Maputo diarist.

26. Hashke - 9/13/1999 5:02:18 PM

Pak marrj:

What dialects are difficult for you?

27. ycmeehan - 9/13/1999 5:25:25 PM

Salut, Hashke!
Please, help me. What is the method of taxing in France when a tax is placed on every exchange between buyer and seller. Thank you.

28. Hashke - 9/13/1999 9:16:14 PM

Bon soir, ycmeehan:

I know nothing of the French tax system, but it sounds like a general excise tax of some sort, divinely subsidized to sever one's purse from one's person.

29. Hashke - 9/13/1999 9:17:28 PM

Where is the Host for this thread -- or lacking that, at least the Eucharist?

30. alistairconnor - 9/13/1999 9:23:55 PM

yc - tu parles de la TVA. Taxe sur la Valeur Ajoutee (pardon my French, I don't have the right keyboard driver here)

Ici en Nouvelle-Zelande, c'est la GST (Goods and Services tax, also known as the Gods and Surfaces tax because it is levied on everything under God and everything on a surface).

I was reading a Chinese restaurant menu the other day, it said "All prices include GST". On first glance I misread it as "All prices include MSG".

31. Hashke - 9/13/1999 9:29:25 PM

Et Dan Dillon, oû es tu allé? Tu écris en françcais, je réponds, tu fais chibis. En voilà des façons!

32. Hashke - 9/13/1999 9:31:16 PM

Merde! ...où...

33. alistairconnor - 9/13/1999 9:31:52 PM

Merci Hashké, de me fournir tous ces accents que je peux couper-coller.

34. marjoribanks - 9/13/1999 9:34:07 PM

Pak Hashke,

Sorry, silliness has occupied me.

I'm not sure if they're dialects but I've met many Scots who speak English in a way which makes me have to listen very hard for the meaning, also Trinidadians and Guyanese.

35. Hashke - 9/13/1999 9:43:13 PM

DanDillon:

RaHti fein, ya akhi? Inta katabt bil `arabi, ana gawabt, wa mafish 'agaab. Wallahi, iddunya shaiTani!

36. Hashke - 9/13/1999 9:49:22 PM

marj:

You are absolutely correct! I was thinking of only US dialects.

I saw a Scottish film recently (can't offhand remember the name), done in a kind of subterranean Glascow-speak, which was mud in my ear -- as a matter of fact, it had subtitles here and there!

37. marjoribanks - 9/13/1999 9:53:34 PM

Trainspotting?

Pak Hashke, though it doesn't count there are other examples from island countries, like Mauritius and even Sri Lanka. Once on a bus in Mauritius, I heard two people speaking at length, thought it was some form of Creole, or perhaps even an African language. When I asked them at the end what tongue it was they were taken aback. English!

38. SnowOwl - 9/13/1999 9:58:17 PM

The film you're referring to may have been My Name is Joe which was billed here as being done in Glaswegian English with English subtitles.

39. Hashke - 9/13/1999 10:03:13 PM

alistair:

Moi, je suis bien sûr que tu peux mener à bien l'affaire! Et maintenant un exemple, s'il te plaît.

40. Hashke - 9/13/1999 10:10:49 PM

Snow Owl (Tecolote de Nieve):

That's it!!! Thanks!

41. pellenilsson - 9/14/1999 2:55:20 AM

A word on the Swedish dialects. Most of these recordings were made in the 60's and the people speaking are old. We hear people who aqcuired their dialects at the turn of the century. They are dying now (the dialects) in the sense that the original vocabulary and quirks of grammar are replaced by standard Swedish. But the intonations live on. It is a hobby of mine of trying to place people by their language. I'm quite good at the areas south and north-west of Stockholm, but uncertain at northern dialects.

42. DanDillon - 9/14/1999 8:19:35 AM

Hashke,
Je suis toujours là, mais parfois je me tire pour vivre ma vie non-electronique, tu vois?

Wakha fasheeshk'l, wellakeen shehaja khuSni'n dir!

43. pellenilsson - 9/14/1999 9:57:01 AM

Since nothing much happens here I'd like to hear if anybody has some comments on the word 'just'. I can be used in four senses that I know of:

1. I just have five dollars.

2. I just got five dollars.

3. The sentence was just.

4. That was just about right

My problem is that each of these senses is represented by a different Swedish word, which sometimes confuses me. To anticipate the inevitable request from Hashke I give them here:

1. Bara.
2. Just. (Yes, indeed)
3. Rättvis.
4. Ganska.

2 can also be used as an emphatic affirmative. 'Just det' = 'exactly right'.

Any ideas about why 'just' has so many meanings?

44. stostosto - 9/14/1999 10:01:04 AM

Pelle

Inte just.

45. pellenilsson - 9/14/1999 10:13:56 AM

Good one, sto.

Sto remind me that 'just' has a third use in Swedish (Danish too?), but then the 'j' is pronounced as in French 'juste'. 'En just tackling' means a tackle which is within the rules of the game.

46. pellenilsson - 9/14/1999 10:14:29 AM

Sto reminds me ....

47. Hashke - 9/14/1999 12:02:06 PM

pelle:

There is a subtle difference between 'since not much happens here' and 'not much is happening here'.

What is an example of where something is happening? ;-)

48. Hashke - 9/14/1999 12:09:10 PM

Not so subtle, really.

Ein Gewitter ist im Anzug. Muss mal abhauen.

49. ElliottRW - 9/14/1999 5:04:09 PM

Three cheers!

Angel-Five successfully used "amphibolous" in the censorship thread, message 548.

50. ycmeehan - 9/14/1999 5:13:03 PM

Alistair,
C'est tout à fait ça, la TVA. Merci beaucoup.

Hashke,
Le fisc est trés fort à taxer les citoyens.
A part cela, ça va le boulot? Je viens de commander un de vos livres.

51. Hashke - 9/14/1999 7:13:27 PM

ycmeehan:

On boulonne toujours, et vous?

Quel livre?

52. marjoribanks - 9/14/1999 7:32:46 PM

Pak Hashke,

You haven't been around very much, and you are missed. Hows about a nice story, perhaps a travel piece in the Sanctum?

53. Hashke - 9/14/1999 8:09:14 PM

Thanks marj! A story? I've forgotten how.

I check in a bit now and then, am amazed at the endless discussions about monikers in two (only two?) threads, make little puns and comments, am ignored, not surprisingly --otherwise hastily read here and there, and generally enjoy.

I am proofing and refining the Navajo diacrital marks in 200 pages of copy, a job I hate, but someone has to do it. So, that's where I am these days. I am going to try to get this book out by the end of the year.

54. Hashke - 9/14/1999 8:10:31 PM

...diacritical...

55. ProfEmeritus - 9/14/1999 8:16:00 PM

Pak hashke

I was wondering where you were. I will figure out something to drag you away from diacritical marks, and she won't be one of those nude dancers who sat on my lap in Quezon City.

56. marjoribanks - 9/14/1999 8:18:26 PM

Story! story!

Hello Pak Gurubesar.

Pak Hashke, I don't want to overaccentuate the problem, but you are needed here if this place is to be enjoyable.

57. ScottLoar - 9/14/1999 9:14:20 PM

Hashke, I cannot appreciate the melodrama which seems the very life's blood of so many people here. Reams of chatter on monikers and identities.

58. marjoribanks - 9/14/1999 9:19:04 PM

Some real ugliness too, Loar.

59. ScottLoar - 9/14/1999 9:25:30 PM

Just as I suspected, the etymology of ugly is Anglo-Saxon (Old Norse). "Ugly" is quite an ugly word but powerful by its very sound and brevity. No pretensions about that word. Ugly.

60. Hashke - 9/14/1999 9:42:58 PM

They seem to have been vaccinated with anti-tedium venom.

61. Hashke - 9/14/1999 9:51:20 PM

Scott:

Hässlich, gräslig, ful, feo, vilain, etc. 'Ugly' does have a certain princely heft to it.

62. Hashke - 9/14/1999 9:55:17 PM

Pak Gurubesar:

Come to think of it, we have not seen a lot of you lately, either. Still consulting?

Ah, the lady from Quezon, as light on your lap as heather! Can you expand on that story?

63. marjoribanks - 9/14/1999 9:58:53 PM

Pak Hashke,

Another ugly word, though very expressive especially in architecture, is 'squat'. Squat. even Diddly-Squat. It has a certain heft when spoken aloud.

64. ProfEmeritus - 9/14/1999 11:08:07 PM

Pak hashke

I did tell that whole story on the Economics thread to demonstate that economists and economics can occasionally focus on something interesting. I will see if I can find the reference for you.

65. ProfEmeritus - 9/14/1999 11:20:00 PM

Pak hashke

The story is at post #67 in the Economics thread. There was some amusing following discussion. For example, sto offered to become my assistant in such forays in nightclubs with nude hostesses.

My consulting is on hold while Indonesia sorts out this East Timor business.

66. ProfEmeritus - 9/14/1999 11:41:59 PM

Pak hashke

Now that you have described her as "the lady from Quezon," how about a limerick beginning "There was a lady from Quezon?" Do you think I will be sent to the Playpen for this deviance, or, even worse, will our efforts be sent to Poetry?

67. marjoribanks - 9/14/1999 11:56:22 PM

There was a young lady from Quezon
Who preferred to spend time with no clothes on
Along came Prof E
Who dandled a knee
Video available, under 'soft porn'.

68. cmboyce - 9/15/1999 12:09:31 AM

Nice.

69. cmboyce - 9/15/1999 12:12:21 AM

BTW, the Old Norse word "ugly" derives from (uggr, origin obscure, per AHD) meant "fear".

70. Hashke - 9/15/1999 12:19:39 AM

there was a lady from quezon
who sat about nude as a bone
when she saw profE
she spilled her coffee
and for him she jilted Capone

71. Hashke - 9/15/1999 12:31:54 AM

Pak Gurubesar:

I just read your great story over in Economics.

In the interest of economics, eh?

72. cmboyce - 9/15/1999 12:40:23 AM

And about "just", while I'm at it (it being posting rather than either working (too drunk, anyway) or going to bed (not drunk enough; I believe I'll have a beer):

"Just" derives (again per AHD), via Fr and Latin, from a PIE root meaning "law", and all the uses exampled in Pelle's post can be associated with that realm of human affairs. (Ahem.)

" 1. I just have five dollars.

2. I just got five dollars.

3. The sentence was just.

4. That was just about right "

The third is obviously unadulterated by variant strains of meaning (taking the original meaning, or import, of "law" to be justice). (And this is also the same as stostosto's football usage.)

By extension from the sense "valid", the word also is used to mean "exactly, precisely" (as in "That's just what I mean"), and further extended "at the precise moment" (as in "It is just four o'clock") But note that this phrase might also mean "It's early yet--not even 4:30", which relates to the next extension, by ironic mistatement I guess, in which the word means "by a narrow margin; barely" and thus (I think--all of this is unclear in AHD) "almost; very nearly" or "on the point of" (Pelle's #4; also "I just missed the boat"), and, similarly "only a brief time ago" ("He just left", & Pelle's #2, etc.) or "only a small distance" ("just down the road"). This idea of extremely small variances yields also the meaning "merely", as in Pelle's #1 and such as "I just meant so-and-so".

"Right" has a similar set a variations, I guess. All of this reflects an historical and doubtless abiding inclination to (ironically?) play fast and loose with the idea of justice, perhaps reflecting its evanescent quality in human affairs.

73. Hashke - 9/15/1999 12:43:23 AM

there was a lady from Quezon
who sat about nude as a bone
when she saw profE
she fed him some ghee
which sent him off into the ozone

74. cmboyce - 9/15/1999 12:46:16 AM

Hoo-WHEE! Yer cookin', Hashke!

75. Hashke - 9/15/1999 1:09:53 AM

A justly good tract above cm, seemingly unadulterated by variant strains of brew!

76. Angel-Five - 9/15/1999 1:53:43 AM

There's another Marj story in Web's thread spinning of his limerick, but I didn't want to post it here.

77. Angel-Five - 9/15/1999 1:59:08 AM

Off his limerick.

78. ScottLoar - 9/15/1999 7:56:55 AM

From Quezon she did hail
Lithe, nubile, but oh so frail,
So saw the Prof
as his clothes he did doff
to discover, alas, "she" was a male.

79. ScottLoar - 9/15/1999 7:57:18 AM

From Quezon she did hail
Lithe, nubile, but oh so frail,
So saw the Prof
as his clothes he did doff
to discover, alas, "she" was a male.

80. ScottLoar - 9/15/1999 7:59:00 AM

He thought it so nice
The Prof did it twice
but t'was over
and over and over
that "she" rolled him thrice

81. ScottLoar - 9/15/1999 8:08:14 AM

Though a bit rustled and torn
ProfE was far from forlorn
he'd taken a peep
it made them both squeak
and so of his wallet was the good Prof shorn

82. ScottLoar - 9/15/1999 8:09:14 AM

No offense intended, eh? I blame it all on the perverse inspiration of Hashke.

83. Uzmakk - 9/15/1999 8:35:42 AM

It is a bit ironic that the most powerful hurricane of the century has the appelation of Floyd because a bunch of confused and obsessive feminists wanted to change a tradition that spoke to the power and force that women are capable of exerting. Mother Nature may be unhappy with this development also. Floyd my ass.

84. DanDillon - 9/15/1999 9:22:59 AM

I'd rather not floyd your ass just now, Uzi. Thanks, though.

85. ProfEmeritus - 9/15/1999 9:27:57 AM

It is pronounced "kay'son'.

There was a nude lady from Quezon
Who jumped on my lap for no raison
She whispered in my ear
Saying, darling, have no fear
For you economists seldom stay on.

86. ProfEmeritus - 9/15/1999 9:29:01 AM

It is pronounced "kay'son'.

There was a nude lady from Quezon
Who jumped on my lap for no raison
She whispered in my ear
Saying, darling, have no fear
For you economists seldom stay on.

87. ProfEmeritus - 9/15/1999 9:42:39 AM

After all those excellent attempts by you amateur poets, I felt I had to put my hand to a salacious task, one I never attemped before.

88. Uzmakk - 9/15/1999 9:43:03 AM

Good thing, Dillon.

89. Uzmakk - 9/15/1999 9:57:10 AM

There was a young maid from Madras

Who had a magnificent ass;

.....not rounded and pink,
.....As you probably think--

It was grey, had long ears, and ate grass.

90. DanDillon - 9/15/1999 9:59:12 AM

Now there's an ass I'd like to floyd!

91. ScottLoar - 9/15/1999 10:00:38 AM

Quoth the Prof "I've no experience"
as he dabbled in dalliance
and rather than smirk
he'd rather use ink
and toss off another limerick.

92. Hashke - 9/15/1999 10:27:12 AM

Mein Gott ('gott'? -- German uses upper case for nouns, but someone said he/she is a verb) but those are funny! Great work!

there was a lady from Quezon
who though naked as a stone
sat on Pak GB's lap
Pak, a very smart chap
told his wife the girl was on loan.

93. ProfEmeritus - 9/15/1999 12:53:11 PM

I have just changed my password for my wife's benefit. She was convinced that all my meanderings of the types described were in the interest of scientific research. This reaction is posted in the 10 minutes between my morning bike ride and tennis.

94. Hashke - 9/15/1999 1:21:38 PM

Pak Gurubesar:

Hahaha!!! That is really funny. You didn't...did you?

O that fabled night in Quezon City
where bare tittie made Pak giddy
it turned him quite salacious
and unto his wife fallacious,
saying the tittie was only iddy bittie

I find that these little exercises clear the mind for the more honest work of the day.

95. ycmeehan - 9/15/1999 5:45:17 PM

Hashke,
J'enseigne le français, la première fois que je le fais sans enseigner l'espagnol aussi, dans un lycée.
Le titre du livre est: Navajo Place Names: An observer's Guide.

96. God - 9/15/1999 5:46:16 PM

Isn't that 'and unto his wife felatious'?

97. God - 9/15/1999 5:46:37 PM

Oops, meant fellatious

98. Hashke - 9/15/1999 6:59:15 PM

That would not work, Fella.

99. Hashke - 9/15/1999 7:05:05 PM

ycmeehan:

El enseñar varios idiomas a la misma vez es muy divertido, verdad?

Ojalá que le guste el libro!

100. tmachine - 9/16/1999 12:40:11 PM

could a non-British English speaker tell me if he/she understands what is meant by the word "bovver"? all opinions appreciated

101. ScottLoar - 9/16/1999 12:47:25 PM

Can you give the context, please?

102. tmachine - 9/16/1999 12:50:33 PM

"bovver boy"; or, for instance, "we got into a bit of bovver at the pub"

103. ScottLoar - 9/16/1999 1:04:01 PM

You got me. Definitely not Cockney rhyming.

104. Hashke - 9/16/1999 1:05:45 PM

In Aussie slang, something like a skinhead. Also, a large tough boot. Cockney pronunciation of 'bother'.

105. tmachine - 9/16/1999 1:06:08 PM

no, it isn't rhyming slang. in case it's not clear, i know what it means myself--i was just curious to see if americans had encountered it in any way. so far i'm striking out, i see.

106. marjoribanks - 9/16/1999 1:07:36 PM

Bother, it probably is the transliteration of bother. Way too abstruse for an American magazine, I'd guess.

107. ScottLoar - 9/16/1999 1:07:48 PM

Tmachine, I haven't a clue but am now dying to know. And is it English or a West Indian import?

108. Hashke - 9/16/1999 1:13:33 PM

The definition from the Macquarie Book of Aussie Slang is clear. But why on earth bovver.

109. tmachine - 9/16/1999 1:13:43 PM

oh, it's english and hashke and marj are both right. a bovver boy is basically a football hooligan/skinhead type who likes getting into some "bovver" (i.e., bother, a very mild word for what bovver actually consists of), with a bit of "aggro" and "putting the boot in" thrown in. it is basically a cockney pronunciation--or general uneducated south-of-england. "bovver boots" are those big Dr. Martens that quite mild youngsters all wear nowadays, but originally they were the instrument for "putting the boot in."

110. ScottLoar - 9/16/1999 1:17:44 PM

Ah, "bovver" as in Paki-bashing.

111. Hashke - 9/16/1999 1:22:04 PM

hooligan n. an owl that comes back too often.

112. Hashke - 9/16/1999 1:25:08 PM

Scott:

Which Pak?

113. tmachine - 9/16/1999 1:53:54 PM

yes, Paki-bashing was (don't know if it still is) a favorite pastime of bovver boys

114. Hashke - 9/16/1999 8:09:57 PM

Pak Gurubesar, Loar, Pincher, Irv,

Have you seen this: zhongwen.com

115. ProfEmeritus - 9/16/1999 8:54:10 PM

Pak hashke

What zhongwen.com?

116. Hashke - 9/16/1999 9:30:43 PM

http://zhongwen.com/

117. Hashke - 9/16/1999 9:32:56 PM

Pak Gurubesar:

It will actually stroke by stroke do Chinese characters.

118. ProfEmeritus - 9/16/1999 10:41:34 PM

Pak hashke

Thanks. I finally made the connection. It's a great site; many fun things to do. Their chat room is cute. I wish I knew pinyin well, but I can follow most of their romanization. I would think that this is a good place to learn, as well as refresh, Chinese.

119. Hashke - 9/16/1999 11:00:14 PM

Pak Gurubesar:

Well, I followed instructions on linking to the URL, but no dice. Must have left out some detail or other.

Did you check out the animated strokes of ideographs? Pretty clever, I thought.

This will compliment Heilig's book on kanji. I also see Harbraugh or somesuch has a book on Chinese characters available at amazon.

120. profemeritus - 9/16/1999 11:16:53 PM

Pak hashke

Not yet, but I will investigate it thoroughly. I was negligent and forgot to bookmark the site, but no problem.

121. RustlerPike - 9/17/1999 12:58:27 AM

Hashke msg num=117: what does 'stroke by stroke do' mean? Is it anything like 'monkey say monkey do'?

122. RustlerPike - 9/17/1999 1:19:09 AM

There was a young gal from Quezon
whose mere sight made full-grown men moan
She sat once, bare assed
on a tenured iconoclast
and induced some additional growin'

123. Hashke - 9/17/1999 1:37:29 AM

Pike:

Ma`aseh oman!

124. Hashke - 9/17/1999 1:42:16 AM

Ristler:

For every ideograph there is a prescribed order of stroke from beginning to end, left to right, to progress through the writing of the character.

I'll let the experts refine that description. It's late.

125. Hashke - 9/17/1999 1:58:03 AM

There was a young tenured iconoclast
Who at the nude's charm was fully aghast
When she tousled his hair
He fell off his chair
And resolved to become an ecclesiast.

126. RustlerPike - 9/17/1999 2:02:51 AM

Hash #124:

I was just joshing you about the grammatical construction of that sentence, as you probably realize.

127. pseudoerasmus - 9/17/1999 3:13:04 AM

In reading back in this thread I was surprised no one had taken the perfect opportunity to play with fonts in a manner suited to this thread. Let's see if this works.

ei gar oi monoglwttoi kai oi poluglwttoi euquV tou polemon pausainto kai h eirhnh polun cronon diateloih.

128. CalGal - 9/17/1999 3:16:00 AM

Well, there you are. It's been worrying, what with the news from the front.

129. pseudoerasmus - 9/17/1999 3:16:51 AM

Hey, this is cool! At least on my Netscape the Symbol font (Greek lettering) has appeared successfully. Hellas, no aspiration marks.

It would therefore seem, as long as one had the right fonts installed on the system, one could easily compose and read Mote messages in the thousands of non-Roman fonts available both gratis and commercially. For which purpose, I will be creating --some time next month -- a webpage called "Pseudoerasmus's Guide to Non-Roman Computing", where my fabulous treasure of links to countless download sites for non-Roman fonts will be made available. (I also plan to post information on word-processing, Web-browsing and Web page creation in non-Roman scripts for both Windows and Mac platforms. Note that I'll be stressing the non-Roman scripts I know or am interested in: Greek, Hebrew, Kana, Kanji, the varieties of Cyrillic, and the varieties of Arabic. But using my links any of you could find free fonts in Devanagari, Georgian, Amharic, Tamil, Cherokee, etc.)

In the meantime, let's see what else is possible. Since I doubt any of you have a non-Roman font installed other than Symbol (the standard on Mac and Windows platforms for scientific & mathematical notation), I will compose various messages using a text editor, capture them as graphic images and then load them onto the Mote page.

130. pseudoerasmus - 9/17/1999 3:21:34 AM

In #12 I see that Dillon is showing off. Well, if so, then he ought to do it with more panache:

But instead of resorting to the inadequate expedient of calling you "Hashki", one could simply import the appropriate terminal vowel from Urdu:

Actually, the Arabic letters haa' and Haa' are modified a bit in Urdu (muddled, if you ask me), but I don't feel like fishing for the right bloody symbol on this benighted keyboard.

131. pseudoerasmus - 9/17/1999 3:27:41 AM

A Hebrew readaptation of a verse adapted from Genesis by Alexander Pope for his famous epitaph on Isaac Newton:

A while ago I committed to memory the first six verses of the Bible. But since I never quite figured out how the infernal system of vowels and miscellaneous markers works in this lunatic language, I must leave out all but the easy ones from the above.

132. pseudoerasmus - 9/17/1999 3:32:30 AM

And some Japanese, regarding the Mote:

133. pseudoerasmus - 9/17/1999 3:34:54 AM

Unfortunately, I don't think it's possible -- without some bravura modifications to the Mote code by Alistair Connor -- to input two-byte ASCII characters like kanji directy through the Mote user interface. Nonetheless, it requires very small effort to write kanji on your computer or see Japanese or Chinese pages on the Web.

By the way, I leave it as an exercise for Hashke to translate the bits above.

134. pseudoerasmus - 9/17/1999 3:39:18 AM

Where the hell did the post number of the last message go?

135. CalGal - 9/17/1999 3:40:12 AM

It's above your moniker, for some reason. Did you use any font tags and not close them? If not, it might just be a bug.

136. CalGal - 9/17/1999 3:40:33 AM

HTML tags, not font tags.

137. pseudoerasmus - 9/17/1999 3:42:00 AM

Hashke should know that Japanese teems with shameless punning opportunities. For example, one of the words in the kanji above, seiko (with a long O), could be written in any of the following ways:

(I put the translations in Russian to highlight the widely used Cyrillic font, and I'll let Hashke translate the translations. Imagine, Hashke, no more miserable trans-fucking-literation if you installed Cyrillic fonts.)

In Japanese, the words represented by these seven pairs of characters are pure homophones, i.e., pronounced identically, not even with any variation in stress or pitch among the words. Yet they have totally different meanings. I know there are several other character pairs which also read "seiko", but I hit the wall with these seven.

Loar or PincherMartin can correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Chinese takes homophony to such radical lengths. For there are variations in tone for the sound value of characters in Chinese, yes?

138. pseudoerasmus - 9/17/1999 3:47:22 AM

Hashke, here is a Japanese riddle the answer to which turns on a pun

Agetemo agetemo takaku agaranai mono wa nan desuka?
=
What thing, no matter how high you lift it up, doesn't rise high?

(It's too cumbersome to keep loading images of Japanese text. In a couple of weeks, I will make kana fonts available for you to download, then we can input kana right here in the Mote.)

If you answer this correctly, I will be dumbfounded and will have to worship a graven image of Hashke. I'll be much more impressed than with your ability to improvise in a mere Indo-European language like Swedish.

139. Uzmakk - 9/17/1999 3:47:50 AM

Good Lord. Floyd has passed, I can't sleep, I get up in the middle of the night to see if there are any world wide Moties in the cafe, and who do I run into but pseudoerasmus and CalGal doing some amazing stuff on the Language thread. Welcome back,PE. I thought you had been kidnapped.

140. CalGal - 9/17/1999 3:49:03 AM

pseudoerasmus and CalGal doing some amazing stuff

Hmm. Surely not.

141. Uzmakk - 9/17/1999 4:05:55 AM

Sure, seemed amazing, Cal Gal. Middle of the night, all them foreign letters.

142. pellenilsson - 9/17/1999 4:28:09 AM

Welcome back Pseudo. I hope you will parcel out some juicy travel stories over the next couple of months.

143. DanDillon - 9/17/1999 8:59:20 AM

If I was showing off in my 12, you're chunking pseudosemen in your 130's.

Nice uploads, all the same.

144. ScottLoar - 9/17/1999 9:06:55 AM

I think Pseudoerasmus' first message means "This discussion forum's success is blessed (ordained) by the ancestors".

145. ScottLoar - 9/17/1999 9:14:38 AM

Those seven sets of kanji recounted by Pseudoerasmus if pronounced in Mandarin are not homophonic at all. For example, that for "success" is chung2-gung1, that for "sexual relations" is hsing4-jiao4.

146. ScottLoar - 9/17/1999 9:15:51 AM

Or, "this discussion forum's success is ordained by its ancestor".

147. tmachine - 9/17/1999 10:14:10 AM

pseudo! how great to see you around again. VERY eager to hear about your travels, especially Moscow. meanwhile, what is "polovaya svyaz"? don't have dictionary here at work, know meaning of both words separately but can't for the life of me figure out what they are together.

148. Hashke - 9/17/1999 10:58:36 AM

tmachine:

'polovaya svyaz''= sexual connection, lit.

Privet tebe, pseudo. What an avalanche of languages. I'll work on the Japanese conundrum and furnish one for you.

Back soon.

149. ScottLoar - 9/17/1999 11:07:14 AM

Well, how then does one say "sexual congress" (or it's variant "sexual relations") in Russian?

150. Hashke - 9/17/1999 11:26:39 AM

Pseudo:

The task is to put this into Jicarilla Apache. If you can do this I shall elevate you into the pantheon of great linguistic gods. Of course the solution depends on your acquiring all six of my books, hehe.

Sâ'â naagháí bik'eh hózhô bik'ehgo tádíshááh

Btw, I see that you drew even Quelle Gueule into Language, a not lightly dismissed feat.

151. pseudoerasmus - 9/17/1999 11:28:43 AM

#142. Thanks Pelle. I have so many stories from the last four months, I don't know where to begin. The trouble is how to overcome my reluctance in telling any of the stories. You see, I just got through reading the archived backposts that I had missed during the summer from the Fray's travel and reminiscences threads. Our glorious Hashke has set such a high standard for visual description and lyrical narrative that I feel discouraged and intimidated! Besides, where to post the stories?

Loar, you got everything right about #132 except the verb. The last kanji character of that sentence is "prayer". Isn't it the same in Chinese? The sentence is less optimistic than hopeful: "I pray to the ancestors for the great sucess of this discussion forum".

#145. I'm surprised. "Seiko" is pure "on-yomi", or Chinese reading (or what the Japanese call Chinese reading), meaning that the sound is a Japanese adaptation of the original Chinese sound. I would have expected more similarity, in the same way "chu-goku" and "jung gwo" are cognate.

Hashke, are you going to translate the playful sentences about you, esp. those in Greek and Hebrew, for the crowed here?

152. pseudoerasmus - 9/17/1999 11:29:24 AM

#149

"polovaya svyaz".

153. Hashke - 9/17/1999 11:32:54 AM

Scott:

The same thing, or sexual intercourse.

Did you perchance have a look at the zhongwen site?

154. ScottLoar - 9/17/1999 11:34:23 AM

Just as I thought, given the two characters, and thus my puzzlement that one could understand the Russian words separately but not together.

155. pseudoerasmus - 9/17/1999 11:37:36 AM

Tmachine, it's a high-falutin word for fucking. As for Russia, yes, I have two months' worth of stories from Russia and lots from Moscow.

I'm surprised and a bit turned off by the fact that in skimming through backposts in the international thread, I saw no reference whatever (except for a quick one some 12 hours ago) to what's happening in Russia and instead found only four topics discussed: Indonesia, Hindooooostan, Indonesia and Hindoooostan. Those countries merit discussion, but surely the import of the goings-on in Russia eclipses even the flashily newsworthy events in East Timor. From the Mote's international thread, you'd never know the Russian state is now probably facing the gravest political threat in its short history. Yet what has Marzipranks just asked me to do in his thread? Expatiate on Pakistan! Who cares?! That crisis is pretty much over and done with. And I thought Pakis were obsessed with Hindoooostan, not the other way around.

The aforementioned threat comes not from the bombings themselves, but from the anti-Caucasian hysteria of a populace virgin to urban terrorism. That's all you need in Russia: indiscriminate political violence foisted upon a people already starved for order and stability. Train stations in European Russia are beginning to ape the precautions of Tel Aviv airport; the Moscow milita, hitherto never particularly fussy about their methods, seem to be stopping anybody on the street with dark hair; and there is even talk of martial law and cancellation of elections. My fiancée and I even got a visit at her apartment from the Moscow militia demanding to see "papers" and "rental contract", the visit having been instigated no doubt by those zealous to inform on suspicious folks (like foreigners). Wasn't there a movie with Bruce Willis about all this?

156. ScottLoar - 9/17/1999 11:38:00 AM

Yes, Hashke, I have. I have a software program called Twin Bridge on cd that allows you to write Chinese characters in a variety of calligraphic styles in both simplified and traditional characters, and locates those characters through a number of romanizations or by radical and stroke order. Yet, for ordinary correspondence characters on paper then faxed work fastest.

157. ScottLoar - 9/17/1999 11:39:23 AM

And so rather than complaint your insight and experience of recent travel in Russia are needed in International.

158. pseudoerasmus - 9/17/1999 11:40:57 AM

...in its short post-Soviet history...

CMBoyce's prognosis for Russia in the international thread is hyperbolic and overimaginative. The Russian state will do everything to survive, and it will survive. (The Russian Federation is now already a patchwork of quasi-private fiefdoms, with Moscow holding the edges together by a combination of cronyism and helping the local machine thugs rig provincial elections.) The real casualty is the country that will be returned to a Soviet-style authoritarianism but in the context of the kleoptocratic pseudo-capitalism they have got now.

159. marjoribanks - 9/17/1999 11:42:39 AM

Pseuder,

I am eager to hear more about what you began talking about, wrt Russia. But why are you talking about it here? Stop flirting with us and get into it in the Sanctum already.

160. ScottLoar - 9/17/1999 11:43:03 AM

Yes, the last character is indeed chi2, to pray, to beseech, to request.

161. Hashke - 9/17/1999 11:46:26 AM

Pseudo:

cvyaz' -- s myagkim znakom

Yeah, 'twould be great to do it all in cyrillic or whatever. My Japanese, as I have repeatedly said, is practically non-existent.
And my Hebrew and Greek are woefully marginal. Pike can attest to the Hebrew, but I'll give it a shot when I get back from dog hike.

162. Hashke - 9/17/1999 11:48:43 AM

What are you going to do about the Navajo>Apache?

163. ScottLoar - 9/17/1999 11:48:51 AM

Please remember that Mandarin only came about 400 or more years ago, and so the Japanese on-yomi may be that of Ming, Sung, or even Tang dynasty pronunciation. Or so I'm guessing, for although I can identify many characters through Japanese pronunciation some defy any shrewd deduction.

164. Hashke - 9/17/1999 11:50:05 AM

We can't be too tied down to these easily manipulable European and Asian languages, you know.

165. ScottLoar - 9/17/1999 11:50:14 AM

I should say Mandarin only came about 400 or less years ago.

166. Hashke - 9/17/1999 11:51:40 AM

Our glorious Hashke...

Do I sense here a certain gelid condescension?

167. pseudoerasmus - 9/17/1999 11:54:24 AM

#161, Hashke, in the impending Mote era of non-transliteration, why bother with a silly myagki znak in transliteration? As long as you have it in Cyrillic!

I have less Hebrew than you do, surely. In fact, I have none at all other than the ability to sound the symbols without comprehension.

168. ScottLoar - 9/17/1999 11:57:39 AM

Please, switch off the italics.

169. pseudoerasmus - 9/17/1999 11:58:13 AM

#166 --

???

170. theDiva - 9/17/1999 11:59:09 AM

171. ScottLoar - 9/17/1999 11:59:17 AM

Hashke, that means you.

172. theDiva - 9/17/1999 11:59:26 AM

God almighty!

173. pseudoerasmus - 9/17/1999 12:16:25 PM

Hashke, it seems I may have somehow caused offence. On the contrary, I have nothing but awe for your abilities, as the Hebrew sentence will bear out. And in further proof of which, I amplify something mentioned earlier about your travelsnaps and reminiscences:

Your prose skills are unmatched by anybody else in the Fray. The best compliment I could pay you. Your prose reminds me of Flaubert's response to George Sand(?) when she complained that his stories were heartless. He responded by writing that strange, masterly fusion of scientific precision and human warmth, the short story "Un coeur simple".

174. Bubbaette - 9/17/1999 12:19:22 PM

P.E.

Would you really like Diva better in a frog mask?

175. pseudoerasmus - 9/17/1999 12:20:41 PM

Hello, Diva!

176. theDiva - 9/17/1999 12:34:04 PM

swoon!

Dearest PE, I have missed you terribly. I can't tell you what your 'kleoptocratic pseudo-capitalism' has done for me.

177. KuligintheHooligan - 9/17/1999 1:27:36 PM

PE, I asked about that earlier. In the States I had a Greek font with my printer, but here in Namibia I can't find it! I wanted to do the same, post in Greek.

You beat me to it!

178. pseudoerasmus - 9/17/1999 2:11:00 PM

Hashke, I understand what got you miffed. It must have been that "mere Indo-European language" bit. Sorry if the locution was offensive, but it was not so meant in the least. When I realised that the Mote had HTML capability, the first thing I thought of was to amuse you with language samples right here in this thread. Anyway, you've got three non-IE languages (Navajo, Indonesian and Arabic), I have but one.

179. Hashke - 9/17/1999 2:12:16 PM

Over an hour ago when I was moting here with pseudo my dog wrote with his wet nose on the back window the Chinese ideograph for 'let it go, abandon it, Massa' ('fàng', I believe it was), so we took a great hike.

No hawk, no crows -- just a high flying military plane refueling another, a strange sight.

180. pseudoerasmus - 9/17/1999 2:12:57 PM

By the way, it's final: my fiancée and I are moving to Ankara in March 2001 (if it's still standing). We'll be staying for four years. (Her current assignment in Moscow ends October 2000.) Now I'll have to find myself something to do in that city for so long. In the meanwhile I'm thinking of studying Turkish.

Which is good. Having stayed with or met Uighurs, Turkmans, Tatars and Dolgans this summer, I realised that I know nothing at all about Turkic languages, despite my great interest in Altaic peoples in general.

Moreover, I understand that all the Turkic languages are so close to one another that the knowledge of Turkish would give one access to the likes of Azeri or Uzbek in much the same way that the knowledge of Russian enables a modicum of competence in other Slavic languages.

Snirv, any idea how the Turkic peoples spread so far and wide? I mean, we're talking about as far south as the Persian Gulf, as far north as the Arctic Circle, as far west as the Danube, and as far east as Manchuria. In fact, has there been much work on the expansion of the Altaic peoples, comparable to the work on the expansion of Indo-Europeans and Austronesians?

181. pseudoerasmus - 9/17/1999 2:15:42 PM

And how is it that the Tatars and the Bashkirs look Turkish, dine Turkish, look upon Turkey rather than Mongolia as their big brother, and speak a language closer to Turkish than to Mongolian, if they are descended from the Golden Horde Mongols that ruled medieval Russia???

The Kalmyks are also allegedly descended from the Golden Horde. Yet they look Mongoloid, speak a Mongolian language, practise Buddhism, and look to fellow Mongol peoples for fraternity.

Another related question: why is it that the Turkic peoples of Central Asia and Siberia (Turkmens, Kazaks, Uighurs, Uzbeks, Kirghiz, Khakass, Tuvans, Altai, Dolgans, etc.) look either Mongoloid or mixed Mongoloid-Caucasoid, while the western Turkic peoples (Turks, Tatars, Azeris) look Middle Eastern/Caucasoid? Is intermarriage with different peoples to account for the difference, just as the physical differences of Iranians and northern Indians from other Indo-Europeans are to be explained by intermarriage with Dravidians? But then presumably the Anatolian Turks must have at some point looked more like the Turkic peoples of Central Asia, correct? But how can their appearance have been so thoroughly transformed in less than half a millennium?

I asked these very questions to a Polish Altaicist whom I met on the train this summer, but he, a Chuvash specialist, looked at me and thundered, "Those are some of the basic questions Altaicists have been trying to answer for decades!"

182. pseudoerasmus - 9/17/1999 2:17:59 PM

Hashke, why don't you start learning Turkish with me? It will be a great pleasure and honour if you will join me. Then we could compare progress in Arbeit Macht Fray and correct any egregious mistakes either one of us might make.

183. Hashke - 9/17/1999 2:18:00 PM

Pseudo #151:

...for the crowed here...

If I translate all that sTuff it will make us both look like eagle maniacs.

184. pseudoerasmus - 9/17/1999 2:24:07 PM

Have any of you heard about this? The First Americans were Australians.

185. IrvingSnodgrass - 9/17/1999 2:27:01 PM

PE:
The Turkish expansion is a fascinating topic, and one I must admit to little knowledge of. As far as I know, there has been little written on it. I have acquired the Grousset book you recommended a few months back, and look forward to beginning to fill in this gaping hole in my knowledge.

I am enjoying your posts immensely, and would be interested in any speculation you might have concerning the Turkish expansion. I have a feeling that some of the popularly-held beliefs about Turkic groups may be in error, as we discovered not long ago regarding the Azars.

186. Hashke - 9/17/1999 2:29:35 PM

pseudo:

Thank you very much for those very warm remarks! My gosh! And not a single 'idiot'. No, I felt no offence. Just playing around, as usual.

The Hebrew:

And God said, 'Let there be light, let there be hashke', all perfectly pointed. Jeez, pseudo, I am indeed humbled.

You are right. We would be better off with romanized Hebrew. It is extremely difficult to read.

I'll check back on the Greek, and if you want, the Russian. Gotta eat. Ich sterbe vor Hunger.

A Navajo friend just left my house. She said, in English, 'We are going to Albuquerque tomorrow. I'll see you until Wednesday.'

187. IrvingSnodgrass - 9/17/1999 2:32:19 PM

PE:
The close relationship of the Turkic tongues is of course due to their relatively recent expansion. It makes Turkish a very useful tool for communicating with diverse groups in Central Asia. Turkish is a very interesting language, morphologically. If you're interested, I could dig up some information on it. I find it very exciting that you will be learning the language, and look forward to your reports.

188. pseudoerasmus - 9/17/1999 2:34:00 PM

Hashke, in his epitaph on Newton, Pope wrote: "Nature and Nature's laws hid in night:/God said, Let Newton be! and all was light."

I would translate my Hebrew bit as "God said, let there be light, and there was Hashke".

189. marjoribanks - 9/17/1999 2:47:03 PM

Pseuder,

Have you progressed with Devanagiri at all? And do you have a Devanagiri font in your bag of tricks?

190. RustlerPike - 9/17/1999 3:04:35 PM

Haha! Nice, pseuder. But you'd have to write 'hashke' heh-shin-kof-yod. What you wrote is unpronounceable, as the final 'khaf' is either silent or takes an 'a' sound, and is pronounced 'kh' in any case, never 'k'.

191. RustlerPike - 9/17/1999 3:15:24 PM

Or maybe heh-shin-kof-heh. Like the imperative form of 'water' (water those plants - now!!!).

192. Hashke - 9/17/1999 3:30:33 PM

pseudo:

You wrote in Hebrew 'yihyeh 'or veyihyeh-hashke', repeating 'yihyeh' -- 'let there be'. I suppose that one could be liberal enough with it to shift to past tense in the second usage. I am not familiar enough with Hebrew to know the difference. What sayeth Pike?

At any rate, I immensely appreciate your salute!

193. Hashke - 9/17/1999 3:47:26 PM

pseudo:

Turkish? Why not? I'm also interested in Hungarian. I could then write 'Ich sterbe vor Hungarian'.

As it turned out 'Arbeit Macht(e) Fry'.

So, Turkish, kanji, mebbe Hungarian -- what else? Good break from the tedious Navajo font finger exercises.

What the hell, Edmund Wilson was still putzing around in his eighties with Hungarian -- this after his unprecedentedly egregious chutzpa in taking on Nabokov about Vladimir Vladimirovich's translation of 'Onegin'.

Yeah, Turkish. Good idea. Have to czech what's online first and go from there. Bük, bük idea. Have you gotten materials together yet?

194. Hashke - 9/17/1999 3:53:55 PM

Btw, the refueling looked like vozdushnaya polovaya svyaz'.

195. Hashke - 9/17/1999 4:37:41 PM

Now that damned Greek. ;-)) from . This says, more or less:

Okay you monoglots and polyglots, knock off the bullshit scrapping right away and get along in bountiful peace together.

Undoubtably, knowing pseudo somewhat, from a classical source.

196. Hashke - 9/17/1999 4:41:59 PM

Above Greek rendition is from #127. What happened to the MSG NUM linking capability?

197. pseudoerasmus - 9/17/1999 4:55:13 PM

Hashke, the Greek sentence reads: "May the monoglots and the polyglots immediately desist from their war, and may the peace last for a long time." The source for the sentence is no more classical than the Greek composition I was compelled to undertake in my chin-wiping mid-teens. My head is a cache of useless half-baked Greek and Latin sentences that could only have been written by someone aged 16 under the constant shadow of sadistic masters. In fact, I'd say the sentence is a typical specimen from school -- especially if you substituted "whores" & "pimps" for "monoglots" & "polyglots", from an impudent bagatelle I wrote called "The Whores of Corinth Revolt".

198. pseudoerasmus - 9/17/1999 5:03:32 PM

#189, well, the one and only book I took along with me this summer, "Teach Yourself Sanskrit", has gotten a bit more dog-eared than I expected. It's really amazing, when I tackled Hebrew a while back, the attempt was a complete fiasco. Everything about it was unfamiliar and I just didn't have the fortitude to slog through. But Sanskrit is soooooo Indo-European, there is a feeling of familiarity in every aspect of the language, except for the ridiculous (but pretty) script.

As for Devanagari fonts, I have on my hard disk at least several for both Mac & Windows. They are some of the prettiest around, after the Baghdad font showcased above for Arabic. The most beautiful Greek font is Oxford University Press's Porson-Greek-OUP-Two, which is used in the Oxford Classical Series texts.

199. pseudoerasmus - 9/17/1999 5:05:59 PM

By the way, does anyone know of a good internet forum (not a newsgroup or mailing list) in French or German which engages in serious discussion and not chat, without using the the BBS format? I've been looking for a French or German equivalent of the Fray / Suite101 for a little while, but the ones I've found are dead to real debate and the format a discouragement to the sustained exchanges I am fond of. A long ago time ago I tried to contrive a big row at the forums in LeFigaro and Die Welt by making some outrageous statements, but the attempt went nowhere very quickly. (Apart from being told something along the lines of "Monsieur Erasmus, vous n'êtes même pas un liberal mais un fasciste sous le masque de la modernité.)

200. marjoribanks - 9/17/1999 5:07:53 PM

I've never thought Devanagiri is beautiful, partly because my handwriting in it is extremely bad. Worse than my English handwriting. By contrast, I think Tibetan is aesthetically appealing. And printed Bengali has its charms too.

201. Hashke - 9/17/1999 5:11:30 PM

pseudo:

Well, mine was only a pop rendition, but looks like it caught the gist.

There is some online stuff on Turkish, but I'm too beat to tangle with it right now.

Devo tirar uma sesta agora. Até logo.

202. pseudoerasmus - 9/17/1999 5:13:21 PM

Well, Hashke et al., I'll see you all in two weeks.

203. stostosto - 9/17/1999 5:33:26 PM

Hej pseuder
Rart at se dig, gamle sjover!

204. pellenilsson - 9/18/1999 3:16:00 AM

Amazing. A kinder, gentler PE has emerged after the travails in the east. But it is probably a passing phase.

205. pellenilsson - 9/18/1999 3:16:33 AM

And sto: what is sjover?

206. Hashke - 9/18/1999 10:36:14 AM

Ah, pelle, there you are!

'Sjover' = 'sleep', as in 'Jeg sjover som en stein i helle natt'.

;-))

207. DanDillon - 9/18/1999 11:57:35 AM

PE,
Does my 13.8" viewable deceive me, or did you learn modesty and restraint over the summer?

208. RustlerPike - 9/18/1999 12:01:41 PM

Hashke:

I say, first - thanks for the compliment on the limerick (I forgot to say thank you! How will I ever get a job on CNN?!).

As for 'yihyeh': I'm pretty sure the Bible has 'yehi' and 'vayehi' in both places where pe wrote 'yihyeh'. Basically this is the same word in a more archaic, eloquent form. In the first instance it is a imperative/future form - 'let there be', or 'there shall be', and in the second it is a narrative past tense (I assume this is what you mean by the 'second usage').

In Biblical prose, adding the 'and' ('va') to the future tense changes it into a narrative past tense. For example, the third book of the Pentateuch is known as 'Vayikra': 'and he read' or 'and he called', because it begins with that phrase.

209. RustlerPike - 9/18/1999 12:04:18 PM

pelle:

Player 1 - gamle sjover!

210. Hashke - 9/18/1999 1:02:20 PM

Pike:

Thanks for that excellent elucidation! Interesting is that switch to past tense by prefixing 'va'. I'm not sure that that occurs in Arabic.

211. Hashke - 9/18/1999 1:03:34 PM

pelle:

That was supposed to be a Danish-Norwegian pun, but it went over like a lead Walloon.

gamle sjover = game's over

212. ScottLoar - 9/18/1999 1:07:13 PM

Surely that would be leaden Walloon.

213. DanDillon - 9/18/1999 4:09:29 PM

As to the inflected preterit in Arabic, it's not a prefix but a suffix that changes the verb tense. The simple past tense is formed in Arabic by affixing various consonantal forms to the root verb. Is the Hebrew "narrative past tense" analogous to this? Or is what you describe something more akin to the passé simple in French, a verb tense reserved almost solely for literary and artful purposes?

214. Son of god - 9/18/1999 4:18:04 PM

Sanskrit anyone?

karmany evadhikaras te
ma phalesu kadacana

You have a right to perform your prescribed duty, but you are not entitled to the fruits of action.

215. IrvingSnodgrass - 9/18/1999 8:15:46 PM

Ah, the final clue, after clues in the International and Spiritual Issues threads.

I know who "Son of God" is.

Naradar, why don't you use your regular handle here?

216. marjoribanks - 9/18/1999 10:47:46 PM

Naradar,

Where's the quasi-promised 'Concise History of the Tamils'?

217. RustlerPike - 9/19/1999 1:16:12 AM

Dan:

I assume you were asking me that question:

Q: "Or is what you describe something more akin to the passé simple in French, a verb tense reserved almost solely for literary and artful purposes?"

A: It only appears in the Bible, but it appears there a lot, I'd say exclusively -unless the text is quoting someone speaking (I think). Whether this was the common way of evoking the past tense 3,000 years ago or a purely literary tool even then - I know not, though my guess is the latter.

218. RustlerPike - 9/19/1999 1:23:15 AM

Actually, come to think of it, the 'va' in those cases also serves as a regular 'and'. Now, when you're narrating, the 'and' is very common: 'and then he did this, and then she said that' etc.. But in other usages it is less so. For example, there is a famous bit that goes "haratzakhta gam yarashta" - "did you murder and then proceed to inherit" from the Bible, which uses the regular past tense. And yes, I believe it is a quote from someone: maybe Samuel admonishing David about the Uriah affair?

219. God - 9/19/1999 2:01:07 AM

SonofGod/Naradar

Sorry for covering my ass in JJ's Arts and Music thread. I wasn't sure if you weren't somebody who was just here trying to make me look bad. Sorry for that.

You seem to have a very keen mind and aren't afraid to stir up a little trouble. Nice to see someone else like that around here. I hope you keep your new handle.

==):-)

220. joezan - 9/19/1999 2:11:49 AM

They're all the rage in Roswell

222. Hashke - 9/19/1999 11:09:20 AM

Naradar, Son of God:

The Sanscrit is intriguing. Please provide a word-for-word translation if you will. I am interested in seeing what is behind the free version you have provided.

223. Naradar - 9/19/1999 3:03:07 PM

Damn – difficult to get one past you guys.

Irv – my Naradar password is in my home computer. I was at work on a Saturday, wrapped up and decided to lurk in the Mote. Something in the Spiritual folder triggered me off and I indulged under the guise of a new identity. This password thing needs to be solved.

Hashke – I studied Sanskrit in both school and college – Jesuit institutions mind you. Like Pinyin or Wade_Giles I was never taught a way of romanizing Sanskrit. In fact, large portions of the Gita I learned by rote – it is embedded in my psyche. So I literally transcribe the Sanskrit into a form of English. This may not be the lexical way of doing things – the purists would denigrate me. But I have a deep love of Sanskrit – a kind of emotional obsession with it. I am not a scholar – am a mere shisya – another Sanskrit word that combines a sense of servitude coupled with the serious student – of the language.

224. Naradar - 9/19/1999 3:04:00 PM

Here goes –
karmany evadhikaras te
ma phalesu kadacana

karmani – in prescribed duties; eva – certainly; adhikarah – right; te – of you; ma – never; phalesu – in the fruits; kadacana – at any time;

The verse above is perhaps the most quoted from the Bhagavad-Gita. There is a second half

Ma karma-phala hetur bhur
Ma te sango astu akarmanji

Never consider yourself the cause of the results of your actions; and never be attached to not doing your duty

ma – never; karma-phala – in the result of the work; hetuh – cause; bhuh – become; ma – never; te – of you; sangah – attachment; astu – there should be; akarmani - in not doing prescribed duties.

Once again , I reiterate I am a mere aficionado of Sanskrit – NOT a scholar.

The verse above also explains the fatalism of the Hindu.

225. RustlerPike - 9/19/1999 3:22:46 PM

Hashke:

Is this up your alley at all?

226. RustlerPike - 9/19/1999 3:42:28 PM

This is the verse we were discussing. I hope you can see it in Hebrew - you may have to download the fonts they recommend.

227. bloodnfire - 9/19/1999 4:27:36 PM

Rustler. Shalom at Yom Kippur and always. We are discussing a book in the 'Spiritual Issues' thread which compares the Seven Sacraments of the Christian Church, the Seven Chakras of the Hindu, and the ten Safirot of The Tree of Life of 'The Kabballah'.

Could you take a minute to express your understanding of the Kabballah on the Spiritual Issues thread for me. Dantheman, a reform Jew, regards it as less than inspired, I gather.

228. bloodnfire - 9/19/1999 4:28:10 PM

Thanks in advance, RustlerPike.

229. IrvingSnodgrass - 9/19/1999 8:45:57 PM

Naradar:
Please, post more on Sanskrit. I too am a Sanskrit afficianado, but my knowledge of the language is minimal. Some day, given a little time, I would like to undertake serious study of Sanskrit.

230. alistairConnor - 9/19/1999 9:10:48 PM

Glou glou glou. Koff. Ghaspe. Krache. Atchoum

(sounds of Alistair coming up for air in the language thread)

I have nothing of any substance to say... except carry on. Please.

Oh yeah, I did promise Irv that a thread host could define the default font for a thread, and he wanted the phonetic one (ISP? CIA? Something like that). We'll do that soon (say, within a month). In any case, it's about time Irv published some links in that desperately empty butterbar side-dish. For example, to font downloads, dictionaries, Ethnologue stuff, goodness knows.

231. Hashke - 9/19/1999 9:15:10 PM

Naradar:

Thanks for those fine literal translations! I haven't had time yet to check out affinities to other IE languages, but I'm sure that even in those brief examples there are some. 'Te' may be one, 'bhuh' another. What do you think?

There are two Sanscrit books that I am considering, one by Coulson, the other by Egenes. Which do you recommend -- or do you have another preference for a beginner?

232. Hashke - 9/19/1999 9:17:45 PM

Rustler:

I appreciate those links! I've bookmarked them for future reference. I have the passage in an old Hebrew here.

233. pseudoerasmus - 9/19/1999 10:24:04 PM

Well, I guess Hashke didn't want to ask me about it earlier, but I was carrying around the Coulson book this summer, and I thought it quite excellent. (And the book's presentation reminded me very much of Greek and Latin textbooks from school.) But the book's exposition of Devaganari sucks. Try learning the script from some other source first, as I did.

234. Hashke - 9/20/1999 12:17:22 AM

pseudo:

That day was such a busy one for me that I barely had time to post anything. At any rate your comments about Sanscrit turned me on to finding out something about it. I liked your statement about it being soooo comfortably Indo-European, the fact that it was the only book you took along, and that you had lovingly dog-eared it to dust.
All finely-pointed recommendations, in my book.

And then along came Naradar and ignited the after-burner.

In reading back over those posts of a couple of days (daze) ago, I see the terms 'miffed' and 'offence'. Let me again assure you that I was never miffed or offended by any of your comments, but knowing well your capacities for satire, sarcasm, irony, curmudgeonry -- all viable weapons of a creative writer -- I tossed off, purely out of whimsy, the remark about condescension.

The University of Arizona has a site for learning Turkish -- with sound, admittedly basic, but a start. I believe I found it on AltaVista and forgot to bookmark it, typically. Of course you're going to have to saddle up with some much more serious stuff for your assault on Ankara. I'll do my best to keep up with you.

I am very enthusiastic about your invitation to join you in learning
the language, so let us keep in touch about it.

235. Hashke - 9/20/1999 10:26:48 AM

alistair:

Glou Glou Glou. Koff. Ghaspe. Krache. Atchoum

You should see a doc about those knees. And how long have you been smoking?

236. RustlerPike - 9/20/1999 10:30:40 AM

alistair: the crack about work being the curse of the drinking classes was appreciated. Lekhayim!

237. RustlerPike - 9/20/1999 10:32:30 AM

hashke:

Do you know of a book that teaches Kikuyu?

With respect, your mentoree, Rus (I'm at the end of a daylong fast. Sorry. But I'm serious about the Kikuyu book).

238. Hashke - 9/20/1999 10:49:28 AM

Rustler:

Amazon.com has an English-Kikuyu dictionary listed. It is out of print, but they suggest that they can find you a copy.

Yahoo shows a site where you can see and hear a few Kikuyu words. I tried it and it works.

I propose, of course, that if you fail to find a copy anywhere, you and your wife write a book that will teach the language. ;-)

239. marjoribanks - 9/20/1999 10:50:27 AM

Pseuder,

The info I have states that the best way to get from Hyderabad to Trivandrum swiftly is actually to use Bombay as the transit hub. Apparently there are more flights from there. However, I still suggest you use Bangalore or Madras, it should be possible. The question is, where are you leaving India from? The combined price of a Trivandrum-Bombay-Hyderabad air trip for non-Indian passport holders is approximately $450.

Check with a good travel agent. One that specializes in travel in India is Cox and Kings, they have an office in NYC.

240. marjoribanks - 9/20/1999 10:52:45 AM

Further sabotage! The above is supposed to read "Trivandrum to Hyderabad."

241. pellenilsson - 9/20/1999 10:58:37 AM

Good to see you again naradar. You also hinted at the occasional 'ethnographic' observation about how you perceive your Swedish colleagues. That kind of thing is always interesting.

242. marjoribanks - 9/20/1999 11:34:37 AM

Irv,

I only posted that travel thing here because I was being shut out of International. Please feel free to move it.

Naradar,

Don't think I'm going to forget about that project of yours.

243. tmachine - 9/20/1999 2:07:08 PM

Turkic speakers: the Russian Jewish woman who does my nails (we're friendly because she loves the fact that we can speak Russian) emigrated here from Tashkent--she is bilingual in Russian and Uzbek. I was fascinated to discover that she can communicate without a hiccup with the owner of the beauty palace where she works, who emigrated here from Iran. I have been meaning to ask her for some time exactly how close Uzbek and Farsi are.

244. pseudoerasmus - 9/20/1999 2:15:49 PM

Not close at all. In fact, they have absolutely nothing to do with each other. Farsi is an Indo-European language, uzbek a Turkic language. Farsi has more affinities with English than with Uzbek.

Either your Russian Jew is in fact a Bukharan Jew (and therefore a Judeo-Persian speaker), or your Iranian is an Azerbaijani, which ethnicity comprises nearly 25% of Iran's population.

245. pseudoerasmus - 9/20/1999 2:19:15 PM

Your Iranian could also be a Turkman. Most Turkic languages of Central Asia are mutually intelligible to some degree.

246. pseudoerasmus - 9/20/1999 2:30:24 PM

Speaking of which I met a group of Bukharan Jews this summer on the train, who had left the Soviet Union back in the 1970s, settled in Israel and resettled in NY. They claimed there is a Bokharan Jewish community of 50,000 in NY. I find that hard to believe.

247. tmachine - 9/20/1999 2:42:34 PM

what an ignorant slut I am. Actually I think it's v. possible she's a Bukharan Jew, more likely than that the owner is azerbaijani or turkman--but i'm getting my nails done on friday, so I'll ask them both then.

do you have any idea what the pre-70s Soviet Bokharan Jew population was? I don't, but it seems believable that a very high percentage may have emigrated. I know that none of my manicurist's family (if she is in fact a B. Jew) stayed behind, including both sets of grandparents. And if she is one, she is the mother of three B. Jew sons, so she and her husband have done a bit for the population themselves.

248. pseudoerasmus - 9/20/1999 2:48:25 PM

Well, I was going to save the story of my chat with the quartet of Bukharan Jews on the train for when I started posting them later in the international thread. But they did mention that there used to be hundreds of thousands of them in Bukhara, Tashkent and Samarkand, and they emigrated en masse to Israel starting in the late 1970s. Only a couple of thousand are left today, they said. One of them talked about all this with tears in his eyes.

249. RustlerPike - 9/20/1999 2:54:17 PM

pseudo:

Please tell the story and make sure I read it, wherever you tell it. We have a lot of Bokharans here. I don't really know the difference between the Georgians and Bokharans. Are they both from the Caucasian area? How are they different (sorry)?

250. RustlerPike - 9/20/1999 2:54:55 PM

Bukharan.

251. RustlerPike - 9/20/1999 2:57:22 PM

Hash:

Hmmm. Thanks. If you come across something better - pray inform me. It is SUCH a beautiful language.

252. pseudoerasmus - 9/20/1999 3:17:18 PM

I'll elaborate on the Bukahan Jews later (but it's not like I have so much to say). But Georgians and Bukharan Jews have nothing to do with each other. The Silk Road city-states of Central Asia, before the Soviets herded the Turkic nomads into them, were part of the Persian cultural orbit and very much inhabited by Persian speakers. The Jews came with the Persians as scholars, civil servants, mechants and refugees from other lands.

Naturally, the Soviets being Soviets, they gave Samarkand and Bukhara to the Uzbekhs, rather than to the Tajiks, who are the heirs to the Persian civilisation that flourished in Central Asia.

253. pseudoerasmus - 9/20/1999 3:25:17 PM

But there is an Iranian people in the Caucasus called the Ossetians, who have their own republic, North Ossetia. its capital is a typical Russian name though, Vladivkavkaz, or "Lord of the Caucasus".

Among the Ossetians, and elsewhere in the Caucasus, are a Jewish called the "Tats". I don't know anything about the, however. They speak a language related to Persian, just as do the Ossetians.

254. pseudoerasmus - 9/20/1999 3:38:35 PM

Hashke: I'll let you know what book I get. But I have a year and a half before I get to Ankara, and four years there. No rush. Plus I've so many other things to do.

255. tmachine - 9/20/1999 3:54:03 PM

25 years ago, when I was traveling through central Asia and the Caucasus on my university year abroad, my roommate and I had a wonderful bus trip into the foothills of the Pamirs out of Dushanbe, Tadjikstan's capital (a very pleasant place by then Soviet standards--in the evenings one would sit in bowery cafés and sip coffee--sounds banal but incredibly liberating after six months in Soviet Russia, mostly in the winter). Incredible mountain scenery, stunning flowers and huge butterflies everywhere (it was early summer). I didn't realize at the time how close we were to Afghanistan. A Russian friend of mine who'd had big connections ("svyazi" again!) at one time in her life told me of an occasion when she'd flown with some bigwig into a fertile valley near Fergana that was a sort of Middle Eastern oil phenomenon: a cotton boom area, where due to the incredibly productivity of the land, the economy was weirdly disproportionately wealthy and peasants living in tiny villages had huge modern Japanese televisions and washing machines, etc. Have always wondered if it was true or in fact some Soviet urban legend.

256. pseudoerasmus - 9/20/1999 4:31:40 PM

I would not believe anything a Russian says about the Caucasus or "Middle Asia".

Plus, it's highly unlikely your story, given that Tajikistan was the poorest least developed part of the former Soviet Union. And it remains so today. The mountain inhabitants of the Tajiki Pamirs -- all Ismaili Muslims, by the way -- would starve to death if it were not for the food airlifts financed by the Aga Khan.

I've been to all the former Soviet Central Asia save Tajikistan. Its visa regime is the stricest, most absurd in the CIS and Tajikistan probably has the least enlightened govt in the area. And that's saying something.

I'm surprised they let you roam like that in Central Asia during the Soviet times. I know someone who's become something of a guru of independent travelling in the former USSR, and she told me that in the late 80s she was arrested for wandering outside the travel setpieces of Samarkand, Tashkent, Dushanbe, etc.

257. pseudoerasmus - 9/20/1999 4:48:20 PM

Marzipranks: I will be in both Delhi and Trivandrum. I suppose I must opt for the train if the internal flight in question cost so bloody much.

Hindoooostan and China must be two of the very few countries that still discriminate between foreigners and non-foreigners in internal air prices. Even Russia has gotten rid of that nonsense. Air prices are so cheap in Russia it's ridiculous -- not as cheap as during Soviet times, but still ridiculous. The longest nonstop domestic flight in the world -- from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskii to Moscow (or the other way around) cost me all of $150. But such bargains will come to an end soon, since fuel prices in Russia are supposed to quadruple by the end of the year.

258. tmachine - 9/20/1999 4:48:49 PM

Our year-abroad job was working as "style editors" (translation fixers) for Progress, the biggest foreign-language publishers in the Soviet Union. When we took our vacation (a month, part of Progress's agreement with our university department), the KGB rep at Progress--his name was Vadim, and we had to apply to him for every kind of permission to do this and that--simply gave us handwritten internal travel visas with the name of every town we decided we'd like to visit. (We couldn't include places like Sevastopol that were closed to foreigners altogether.) We almost did get in trouble when we took a tiny plane and a bus to get to Khiva, one of the ancient Uzbek desert towns. We had booked a room in the only (disgusting, of course; outside reeking toilets etc.)hotel. When we got there we discovered it was not part of Intourist, the foreigner network. The manager said we couldn't stay there. The last bus out of town had gone. What on earth were we to do? Eventually they put us up in the local youth hostel (it wasn't clear why this was an improvement on keeping us in the hotel, since it wasn't meant for foreigners either), which was quite an experience--an old metskheta turned into a dorm, where we slept on ancient rusted iron bedsteads off the central courtyard and barricaded our room to creep out hordes of creepy little Uzbek boys. we washed at a tap in the courtyard. Khiva was stunning, one-story square mud houses with minarets everywhere and a real wall still around the town.

259. tmachine - 9/20/1999 4:50:06 PM

"keep out," not "creep out"

260. pseudoerasmus - 9/20/1999 4:51:31 PM

Even in Iran foreigners aren't charged special rates for air travel. The hour-and-half flight from Mashad to Yazd (in Iran) cost -- incredible -- $10. $10!!! That's still less, per hour, than the Moscow/Petropavlovsk flight.

261. pseudoerasmus - 9/20/1999 4:54:03 PM

Yes, Khiva is stunning. It's one of the "museum cities" that the Soviets created & maintained. They basically cleared out the inhabitants and made the city into an open-air museum.

262. tmachine - 9/20/1999 5:00:10 PM

how charming. What sort of period did they do the clearing out? The town did appear to contain real people when we were there, or were they just Potemkin villagers?

263. pseudoerasmus - 9/20/1999 5:25:33 PM

I don't know if they wholly depopulated the city, but when I was there I was told that the city before the 1940s had several hundred thousand people. I don't think it has more than 30,000 today.

264. WirelessWonder - 9/20/1999 6:09:39 PM

Ycmeehan,
Bonjour, comment allez vous?

265. ycmeehan - 9/20/1999 6:10:24 PM

wirelesswonder,
ça va bien, friend, ça boume

266. ycmeehan - 9/20/1999 6:12:10 PM

Glad to have you aboard finally, wireless.

267. WirelessWonder - 9/20/1999 6:16:27 PM

ycmeehan,
Je suis content de participer a la Mote.

268. ycmeehan - 9/20/1999 6:34:09 PM

Wireless,
Can you get your brother here, or is he too young, do you think?

269. WirelessWonder - 9/20/1999 7:38:26 PM

No, that would be a mistake.

270. alistairConnor - 9/20/1999 9:10:39 PM

Ouah ici : tu recrutes des francophones? Bien! Je vais m'y mettre 1 de ces 4, mais il faudrait organiser un fil dédié à la francopholie.

MerveilleSansFil, sois donc bienvenu(e).

271. pseudoerasmus - 9/20/1999 9:21:15 PM

ycmeehan! T'as survécu à mon absence! ou tu t'es arraché les cheveux?

272. Hashke - 9/21/1999 11:15:31 AM

pseudo:

Fine on the Turkish. I am in a similar time press right now, so at your leisure.

Are you familiar with Egenes work on Sanscrit?

273. marjoribanks - 9/21/1999 11:56:01 AM

Hashke,

That scamp, Pseuder, has taken to referring to me (bhel puri) as balourd pourri in TT. An insult it is, I'm sure, and I get a vague sense of the meaning. But could you translate it adequately for me please?

274. tmachine - 9/21/1999 1:14:26 PM

marj--it means something like "smelly lummox." pourri is "rotten" and balourd is "clumsy." not pe's best effort perhaps

275. pseudoerasmus - 9/21/1999 1:21:02 PM

Well, probably not Tmachine's best effort at translation.

pourri can mean, besides "rotten" (as in fruit), "badly raised", or "spoilt", or "morally corrupted".

276. Hashke - 9/21/1999 1:36:54 PM

'Balourd' is argot for 'idiot', 'twerp', 'twit'. It also classifies something as phony, false, imitation. 'Balourds' are fake identity papers or banknotes.

Conventional use: 'dumbo' or 'gauche'.

None of these appellations apply to Pak marj!!!

277. tmachine - 9/21/1999 2:53:36 PM

whoops, guess I'm the balourd!! not pourri, though, I hope

278. ycmeehan - 9/21/1999 5:10:41 PM

Hashke, Hashke,
Vous avez vu? Mon prof me parle finalement. En plus, il me tutoie. Vous vous rendez compte quel honneur c'est cela?

279. ycmeehan - 9/21/1999 5:19:29 PM

Cher prof,
J'ai passé mon temps á me faire belle, au cas où je vous rencontre un jour. Pour le moment, bien entendu, je suis folle de joie.

280. ycmeehan - 9/21/1999 5:37:26 PM

Alistair,
Merveillesansfil, ça alors, c'est sensationnel.

Dis donc, Merveille et moi connaissons bien le Midi. Il me semble qu'une fois, tu avais dit quelque part que tu connaissais bien la région. Connais-tu autour de Nîmes et Bagnol-sur-Cèze, par hazard?

Et Merveille est un homme. Il a trente-trois ans.

281. ycmeehan - 9/21/1999 5:55:35 PM

Cher prof, a=à. Un peu tard mais la leçon n'est pas perdue, quand même. Vous vous souvenez?

282. Hashke - 9/21/1999 7:06:13 PM

ycmeehan:

Et Merveille est un homme.

Oui, il est l'auteur de Moby Flic.

283. Hashke - 9/21/1999 7:13:09 PM

tmachine:

not pourri, though, I hope

Pas pourri.

284. tmachine - 9/21/1999 11:24:25 PM

hashke: toujours le chevalier sans peur et sans reproche

285. Hashke - 9/22/1999 12:55:06 AM

tmachine:

Merci!

Neither a Bayard, nor a lender be.

--Apologies to Big Bill

He was a verray, parfit gentil knyght.

286. alistairconnor - 9/22/1999 1:21:16 AM

mmmenfin YC, je connais assez peu le midi. Mes terres de prédilection étant la Basse Normandie, la Bourgogne et surtout mon beau departement de Rhone-et-Loire, injustement coupé en deux par la Convention.

(Pardonnez-moi, je n'ai pas trouvé de circonflexe pour l'O limpide du Rhone)

287. alistairconnor - 9/22/1999 1:25:01 AM

Quoique j'ai passé des vacances près de Nîmes l'été dernier mais je suis infichu de retrouver le nom des bleds...

288. tmachine - 9/22/1999 10:26:26 AM

For translators, or people interested in translations, there's a very cheering piece in the arts section of today's NY Times (not, unfortunately, featured on the web site, I just checked): Ben Sonnenberg, arty left-wingish benefactor, commissioned a translation of Stendhal's Chartreuse de Parme (when he found there hadn't been a new one for decades) from the poet Richard Howard. Of course he paid Howard farmore money than most translators usually get from publishers, and they would go over the translation together chapter by chapter as Howard was writing it, a very enjoyable process according to Howard. Sonnenberg gave it to Modern Library to publish, it came out, sold modestly for a short while, and then got fantastic, long reviews in both the New York Review of Books and the Times Book Review. As a result, the book has suddenly been whizzing off the shelves and Modern Library has barely been able to reprint enough to keep up with the demand, in fact apparently you can't find it in a lot of bookstores at the moment for that reason. haven't checked at Amazon but might go and do that now...it made me think about how i haven't read Le Rouge et le noir since I was about 16 and it was time i did it again.

289. alistairConnor - 9/22/1999 10:31:27 AM

Saint-Etienne Vallée Française, ça vous dit quelquechose?

290. tmachine - 9/22/1999 10:44:13 AM

Well, Amazon says Modern Library is indeed out of stock. now I'm feeling instant-gratification-deprived!

291. tmachine - 9/22/1999 10:45:10 AM

hey, alistair, ça me dit quoi? et qu'est-ce que c'est que "bleds"?

292. pseudoerasmus - 9/22/1999 10:52:19 AM

a bled is a tucked away isolated community in the sticks.

293. alistairConnor - 9/22/1999 10:54:32 AM

just a conversation with YCMeehan, I am getting homesick for France again.

294. tmachine - 9/22/1999 11:05:28 AM

thanks for the translation, pe--alistair, will you be moving back sometime?

295. Hashke - 9/22/1999 11:31:46 AM

Some good Russian examples of bled are glush' and aul, gottverlassene Dörfer out in the sticks or the mountains, more remote even than the shtetl. 'Glush'' is related to 'glukhoi', a word of many meanings, including 'deaf', 'out of the way', 'obscure'. 'Aul' sounds Turkic and refers to a remote mountain village.

I am sure that both tmachine and pseudo know those terms. I wonder if 'bled' has any relationship to 'blé' -- 'wheat'.

296. tmachine - 9/22/1999 12:25:54 PM

glush' definitely means in the middle of nowhere, but it's the general area--the boondocks as a whole--rather than a specific village or whatever. Aul--which is a village or hamlet I believe--is Caucasian in derivation, I think--at least I first encountered it in Pushkin's Kavkazskii plennik, although as an exotic word introduced into Russian I suppose it may just as likely be Turkic.

I believe there is actually a place called Bled--I suppose once upon a time it was the back of beyond.

297. ycmeehan - 9/22/1999 5:30:08 PM

Hashke,
I think that 'bled" is an Arabic word. Am I right?298. DanDillon - 9/22/1999 5:42:31 PM

Yes, indeed. bled is an Arabic word meaning "country" or "countryside." It more or less corresponds to the definition PE provided above.

299. ycmeehan - 9/22/1999 5:43:37 PM

A question for you, Prof, please. Is it more correct to say: je suis faché avec vous, or: je suis faché contre vous. I think that the first sentence is correct but I have an argument with another teacher who insists that I am wrong.

300. ycmeehan - 9/22/1999 5:54:05 PM

Dan,
Thanks. I can't imagine where I found this bit of info unless it was in Rivoli, Algeria, one heavenly summer when I was five and rolling in the dirt with the little Arabs next door to my parents' house.

301. ycmeehan - 9/22/1999 6:10:23 PM

Alistair,
I know Saint-Étienne-Des-Sorts, not far from Nîmes, a little bled. There is St-Étienne and it is in the Vallée des Forges. In fact, I have a sword dated 1870, Directoire time, that comes from there and has been documented as genuine. This beautiful piece is not a family"s heirloom, however. The truth is: my husband bought it when he was at the University of Chicago from a French student who had two and wanted to get back home.

302. Hashke - 9/22/1999 7:33:26 PM

The consonants are all there in 'bled', meaning a remote area or place, country. 'Balad', 'bilaad', 'balda', 'baladi' are all common, especially in Egypt. I have never heard the configuration 'bled' as such, nor can I find it written that way in three large dictionaries. Perhaps it is a local pronunciation of either 'balad' or 'bilaad', which is plural of 'balad'.

303. DanDillon - 9/22/1999 11:11:47 PM

hashke,
The bled ycmeehan and I are talking about is most likely a regional variation on the standard pronunciation(s) you offer. More often than not, Maghrebi Arabic syncopates for ease of articulatiuon. Notice she mentions Algeria and I post from a Moroccan p.o.v.

304. alistairconnor - 9/22/1999 11:39:47 PM

oui, TMac, nous retournons au bled au siecle prochain, en avril.

Pas loin de chez nous là-bas, il y a un bled qui s'appelle Pomeys (prononcer: Pomé.)

Eh bien, notre bled à nous, il est encore plus paumé que ça.

305. tmachine - 9/23/1999 12:15:49 AM

Et ton bled, il est plein de bâtards, je crois--et pas seulement à la boulangerie

306. RustlerPike - 9/23/1999 12:38:48 AM

pe:

I knew a Tat girl once but she wouldn't let me touch her tits.

307. bloodnfire - 9/23/1999 6:39:31 AM

RustlerPike. Please take a few minutes to post in the "Spiritual Issues" thread your understanding and opinion of 'The Tree of Life', the Kabballah, would you ? We'd sure appreciate it. Also known as "The Safirot" I believe ? Thanks.

308. pseudoerasmus - 9/23/1999 10:04:03 AM

ycmeehan: There's barely any difference. Although I believe the contre form is perhaps more "correct" and formal, the avec form is probably more common.

309. pseudoerasmus - 9/23/1999 10:10:00 AM

but if you say se fâcher avec, it means something more like "stop being on good terms with".

310. Hashke - 9/23/1999 10:40:21 AM

Dan:

Aiwa, ana ma`ak!

311. DanDillon - 9/23/1999 10:43:32 AM

Na'am asidi. T'barkalla a'aliya!

312. Hashke - 9/23/1999 10:59:42 AM

Dan:

Alf shukr, wa `aleik kamaan!

313. Hashke - 9/23/1999 11:00:26 AM

pseudo:

Hellas, I have no solution for the Japanese riddle you posed.

314. DanDillon - 9/23/1999 11:01:09 AM

No, you kamaan!

315. pseudoerasmus - 9/23/1999 11:03:04 AM

Hashke: The answer to the riddle,

agetemo agetemo agaranai mono wa nandesuka?
[what thing no matter how high you raise it, doesn't rise?]

is tempura, or any other kind of friture.

The answer turns on the pun ageru, which means both "raise" and "fry".

316. pseudoerasmus - 9/23/1999 11:03:20 AM
shit
317. pseudoerasmus - 9/23/1999 11:03:44 AM

double shit

318. marjoribanks - 9/23/1999 11:09:27 AM

Pak Hashke, Pseud,

Wave to Nino Rossi, who is manfully trying to get in here and failing. He can only read, not post.

319. Hashke - 9/23/1999 11:17:38 AM

Hey Nino,

Haimish ponem! Hamotzi lechem min ho'ortets!

320. Hashke - 9/23/1999 11:19:13 AM

pseudo:

Zweimal Scheisse? Wieso?

321. Hashke - 9/23/1999 11:38:58 AM

Dan:

Taba`an, wa `aleiya kamaan! ;-))

322. Hashke - 9/23/1999 1:43:02 PM

pseudo:

When you fry the tempura the tempurature rises, but a rise in the tempura is only tempurary.

323. pseudoerasmus - 9/23/1999 3:12:07 PM

A little warning for Hashke,

324. Hashke - 9/23/1999 3:29:20 PM

pseudo:

Spasibo za vnimaniya, no ya ne boyus'!

Ekh, dorogi...pyl da tu-u-man...kholada trevogi, do stepnoi bu-u-ryan...voron kruzhit...moi drug v trave...ne zhivoi lezhit...
ne khorosho pomnyu...zhalko.

Ty znaesh' etu staruyu pes'nyu?

Ty sam konechno snyal ty cnimku gde-to b rossii, pravil'no?

325. Hashke - 9/23/1999 3:31:58 PM

Damn, gotta get that cyrillic font -- and the Arabic...and...

The Arabic you did was very beautiful!

326. tmachine - 9/23/1999 3:50:56 PM

pe--where did you find the sign? a zoo?

327. pseudoerasmus - 9/23/1999 5:09:25 PM

#324
Hahahahaha. You have lightning fast association in your head. The song "Ekh dorogi" is very well rendered in the 30th (?) anniversay CD from the Yale Russian Chorus. And, yes, I myself took the picture -- outside a village called Ternei, approx. 500 km north of Vladivostok.

#326
Tmachine, the road between Vladivostok and Khabarovsk is dotted with such signs. I seriously doubt there are zoos east of Novosibirsk, and even if there were, they wouldn't be the open-air sort!

#325
To be honest, transliterated Russian gives me a headache. Here are some solutions:

Dr. Berlin's Font Archive.
Summer Institute of Linguistics Font Archive.
Yamada Language Centre font database.
Arabic fonts from Fontographics. The font that I used in this thread came from here -- Baghdad font.

328. pseudoerasmus - 9/23/1999 5:19:32 PM

Hashke, this is right up your alley. My father, who lives in Geneva but still spends probably half the year in Mexico City, told me this following anecdote:

An Argentinian engineer unthinkingly launches into some Buenos Aires slang that the Mexican secretary doesn't understand.

Secretary: ¿Mande?
Engineer: No, not Monday, ahora.

This exchange turns on two cross-lingual puns, a Mex-Spanish/English one and an Arg-Spanish/Mex-Spanish one.

When I heard this story I nearly fell off my seat.

329. Raskolnikov - 9/23/1999 5:26:37 PM

Psuedo: I dont have my Russian dictionary on hand, but that sign seems to be saying "attention, a tiger is on the dear".

I think I am missing another meaning of "doroga". Help? From context, it seems to be saying: "Tiger crossing" or "beware of tigers on the road", but doroga doesn't mean "road", does it?

Its been a *long* time since my last Russian class.

330. pseudoerasmus - 9/23/1999 5:33:34 PM

doroga = road

331. pseudoerasmus - 9/23/1999 5:35:22 PM

you're thinking of dorogoi, as in the french "cher" or Italian "caro".

332. Hashke - 9/23/1999 5:36:08 PM

pseudo:

Haahaha! Good one. 'Mande' is used exclusively around these parts.
Thanks for the font info. See what I can do.

Raskolnikov:

The confusion is between 'doroga' -- 'road', and 'dorogaya' or 'dorogoi' -- 'dear'.

333. pseudoerasmus - 9/23/1999 5:37:47 PM

Hashke, you were aware of the Argentinian meaning of "mande"? How did you come by it?

334. Raskolnikov - 9/23/1999 5:42:50 PM

That possible confusion obviously occurred to me, but I had completely blanked on the word for road being "doroga". That is depressing.

335. ycmeehan - 9/23/1999 5:44:25 PM

Merci beaucoup, Prof.

tmachine: There is also an article in The Talk Of The Town in the Sept. 27 New Yorker issue. Sonnenberg says that this Chartreuse de Parme's translation "will be assigned in schools for the next twenty-five years."

336. Hashke - 9/23/1999 6:08:01 PM

pseudo:

I have heard 'mande?' ('pardon?', 'I beg your pardon?') most of my life here in the southwest US. I was unaware that it is also used in Argentina, but the joke certainly makes sense to me.

Rask:

If it's any consolation, most roads have depressions called 'potholes' in them. Axe us some more.

337. pseudoerasmus - 9/23/1999 6:10:58 PM

Hashke: "Mande" meaning "perdón" is not used in Argentina. In Argentina, mande means "fuck me" in Argentinian Spanish. You didn't think I would offer you something so lame as a mere pun on mande/Monday, did you?

338. Hashke - 9/23/1999 6:15:15 PM

pseudo:

Mande?

339. Hashke - 9/23/1999 6:25:37 PM

pseudo:

Your last comment about 'offering' is funnier than the joke!

340. Hashke - 9/23/1999 6:49:07 PM

Speaking of bled, glush', aul, etc., I just read in 'The New Yorker', in an article about Gabo, the expression 'un pueblucho de mierda'.

341. tmachine - 9/23/1999 11:13:00 PM

ycmeehan: I was so disappointed when amazon was out of stock on Chartreuse de Parme that I immediately bought Le Rouge et le noir and Michael Frayn's new novel Headlong.

Po smolenskoi doroge lesa, lesa, lesa

A wonderful song by Bulat Okudzhava.

342. Stumbo - 9/24/1999 3:31:19 AM

TM: now I've got the tune in my head, but can't remember any more of the lyrics. Thanks a lot.

***

Incidentally, the best English translation of "bled" that I'm aware of is (my apologies) "East Buttfuck." Try it in a sentence, it'll grow on ya.

343. RustlerPike - 9/24/1999 9:10:19 AM

hash:

Is dorogoi at all dorogatory?

344. Rossi - 9/24/1999 10:20:33 AM

I'm in, finally.
Greetings!

345. Rossi - 9/24/1999 10:22:43 AM

Dorogoi is not DOrogatory but it'll cost you anyway :)

346. Hashke - 9/24/1999 10:39:39 AM

Thanks, Stumbo. That was enlightening.

Only if it's a bad road, Pike.

Welcome Rossi! There is a greeting above for you.

347. Rossi - 9/24/1999 11:26:39 AM

{looking above, not seeing any greetings from Hashke}

348. Hashke - 9/24/1999 11:35:43 AM

Rossi:

Ekh, #319. Mir zolen zikh begegnen af simkhes!

349. pseudoerasmus - 9/24/1999 2:28:08 PM

Dillon said in #207

PE, Does my 13.8" viewable deceive me, or did you learn modesty and restraint over the summer?

Of course not. You are still the Sapir-Worfian-Saussurian, PoMo-Lit-Crit-Git-Shit-loving teetotalling virgin.

pellenilsson said in #204,

Amazing. A kinder, gentler PE has emerged after the travails in the east. But it is probably a passing phase.

There is no kinder, gentler PE. I have not changed in the least. You are still a travelling telephone salesman and herring swallower.

350. pseudoerasmus - 9/24/1999 2:43:11 PM

I want to comment on something I read in the archives of the Travel thread of the old Fray. A propos PelleNilsson's failure to learn Arabic in the 14 years of his residence in Arab countries, DanDillon said in #1869:

It sounds to me like you've willed yourself not to learn Arabic more than anything else. I appreciate the nicely enumerated reasons for your not having become fluent, or at least highly proficient, but they seem very much like convenient excuses that have kept you from developing a prowess in loogha aarabiya that you have already honed in the English language.

I completely agree with Dillon. As much as I think Pelle is a swell and first-class fellow, I must say, to have lived in Arab countries for 13 years and not be speaking the language fluently bespeaks a determined lack of interest in learning it.

(1) Marzipranks's defence of Pelle in a subsequent message is part irrelevant, part false: Pelle didn't spend 13 years in Saudi Arabia, where expats are segregated from the locals. Rather, if I recall correctly, he spent the bulk of his time in Jordan, North Africa and Yemen, but mostly in Jordan, where expats are not sheltered from the locals.

351. pseudoerasmus - 9/24/1999 2:44:47 PM

continued

(2) Both Pelle and Marzipranks exaggerate the uselessness of Modern Standard Arabic. Marzipranks even utters the incredible falsehood that one "can practise [Modern Standard Arabic] or use [it] with only your teacher"! The reality is that all educated Arabs can speak Modern Standard Arabic, and even most of the less educated understand it. Why, how else does an educated Moroccan communicate with an educated Iraqi? The point is that given a proficiency in Standard Arabic, one can communicate with all educated Arabs in any country. Moreover, learning Standard Arabic is the gateway to the various national colloquial dialects. SA is also the language of media and most writing in all Arab countries. Surely Pelle would have found the news useful?

(3) Both Pelle and Marzipranks exaggerate the extent to which it's difficult to learn the local dialect. First, according to Pelle himself, his own wife picked up quite a bit of the Jordanian dialect during their residence in Jordan. Moreover, there are countless examples of people learning colloquial Arabic. Dillon learnt his Derija somewhere, did he not? I don't know about the language learning situation in Jordan or in Sweden, but in the USA, the UK, and France, the major dialects of colloquial Arabic -- Derija, Cairene, Levantine -- are taught at universities. When I was an undergraduate, an acquaintance of mine did a 4-year Arabic course which consisted of Standard Arabic in the written curriculum and Cairene in the oral curriculum. An old friend from school in England also went on to do an Arabic course at London's SOAS, where he was instructed in Derija as well as SA. Given sufficient interest and motivation, it is very much possible to receive instruction in both standard & colloquial Arabic somehow.

352. pseudoerasmus - 9/24/1999 2:45:20 PM

continued

Frankly, I still don't understand why at the very least Pelle couldn't be bothered to learn the Arabic script, which is not that difficult. At least street signs and the like would no longer have been ciphers. Did Pelle always pester his Jordanian colleagues to decipher the menu all throughout his seven years in the country? Or did he always eat in hotels?

In my opinion if one has lived in a country for 2 years and has not learnt to speak the language pretty fluently, it's a cause for great shame. The threshold for shame falls to 1 year if the language is Indo-European.

353. marjoribanks - 9/24/1999 2:51:23 PM

The above, gentlemen and ladies, is why I dislike the maintenance of archives.

354. Hashke - 9/24/1999 3:45:22 PM

Pseuder is only expressing affection for all of those mentioned.

355. Hashke - 9/24/1999 3:51:56 PM

tmachine:

I was briefly in Smolensk during the 70s. It struck me as a pleasant, hilly, leafy town -- lazy, peaceful. What must it have been like when the Nasties were trying to churn it into gravel?

Not to speak of Nappy.

356. Hashke - 9/24/1999 4:03:24 PM

pseuder:

A German friend sent some Unicode with Cyrillic, Greek, und eine Menge Sonderzeichen. He says 'das Problem mit Arabisch ist, dass man wegen der Rechts nach Links Geschichte meistens noch einen speziellen Editor braucht, der das verträgt, ich glaube Word kann das noch nicht'.

Was meinst du denn? Ist das richtig? Ich werde mal eine Installation versuchen. Schweitzer hatte Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben, aber ich habe Furcht vor der Installation, weiss der Geier warum. ;-)

357. pseudoerasmus - 9/24/1999 4:19:16 PM

That's both right and wrong. Any wordprocessor which will allow you to vary fonts (and that's all wordprocessors) will work with the Arabic fonts that I linked to yesterday. Those fonts don't just have stand-alone forms of the alphabet, but all initial, medial and final as well. Even ligatures.

But you have to type left to right and reverse them manually. That's a real inconvenience.

However, you can get the favourite wordprocessing programme of those working in non-Roman scripts, Nisus Writer, which will take care of that for you. I even think the latest Word does that too, but I'm not sure. Nisus is something you should own anyway. It's cheap, it's foreign-language-friendly, you must own it.

Ah, yes, the keyboard layout is a bitch to figure out. But you can easily buy $5 Arabic keyboard layouts, even stickers for each key.

358. Hashke - 9/24/1999 5:05:58 PM

pseudo:

Thanks for that info!

359. ScottLoar - 9/24/1999 5:12:14 PM

The Nasties trying to turn Smolensk into gravel? You mean Bonaparte's bonne hommes? Smolensk seems to be one of those places that just get in the way of well travelled armies century after century.

360. ScottLoar - 9/24/1999 5:17:59 PM

To assume that one can speak the local language pretty fluently after a two years' residency (one year for Indo-European languages)is a shameless conceit. Yes, one can speak some form of bazaar lingo, but to express oneself fluently (even with some little eloquence) and attuned to the local sensibilities and history takes far more than a year or two's casual bantering in my opinion. Bereft of a bed dictionary it takes even longer than formal study. But Hashke, you've more experience than any in this matter, what's your opinion?

361. pseudoerasmus - 9/24/1999 5:23:46 PM

Ok, several years, then. The actual number doesn't seem all that important. The point is 13 years is more than ample.

But I disagree. A year is really sufficient for an Anglophone to speak a Germanic or a Romance or a Slavic language at a much higher level than mere "bazaar lingo".

Anyway, I said "pretty fluently", not with the carefree grace of a native.

362. pseudoerasmus - 9/24/1999 5:28:28 PM

I base my comments, not on "conceit", but on the experience of many people who have had to learn to speak foreign languages within a year's time. Peace Corps volunteers and foreign service officials, for example, routinely study language(s) for a year (two for difficult ones) and are forced to function in the foreign environment thereafter. Success comes in varying degrees, but in every instance it's more than just a proficiency in "bazaar lingo". I especially saw a lot of it this summer, and I must say I've new found respect for these people.

363. pseudoerasmus - 9/24/1999 5:43:58 PM

I would define "fluent" as being able to communicate your intended meaning spontaneously, with little premeditation, but not necesarily to express every desired nuance, or every kind of thought you can possibly express in your own native language, or to be able to traffick in all the eloquence and linguistic subtleties available to a native. I don't mean near-parity with a native.

364. ScottLoar - 9/24/1999 6:23:58 PM

I agree that a year's intensive study of a foreign language allows a proficiency in a number of subjects (I myself knew religious who could proselytize in Mandarin after a year's study albeit illiterate), but intensive study is not the same as residing in country, burdened with other affairs, and only casually encountering the language. Six week's study of Vietnamese allowed me to gain the lowest possible scored proficiency in the military's language examination, but I daresay even that would be beyond the ability of anyone stationed in Vietnam (Foreign Service included) yet denied formal study. I could speak some Mandarin easily within a year's time, yet serious conversation based on topical events was beyond me. A year's formal study in the language is serious preparation, a year's residency is not.

365. pseudoerasmus - 9/24/1999 6:50:50 PM

#364, Loar, perhaps I didn't make the last three messages very clear, but I didn't mean to argue that a year's study alone or a year's residence alone is sufficient to acquire a basic fluency in a foreign language. Note that in my #352, I said: "In my opinion if one has lived in a country for 2 years and has not learnt to speak the language pretty fluently, it's a cause for great shame." I assume there that one has the opportunity for formal study in addition to local immersion.

I brought up Peace Corps volunteers and FSOs because most of them do achieve fluency after a year of study at home and another year after working in the local country. For example, this summer, I met one of the security officers at the British embassy in Moscow. He didn't speak a word of any foreign language the year before he arrived in Moscow. But when I met him -- less than a year after his arrival -- his Russian was quite excellent, not useful in discoursing about the Great Chain of Being, perhaps, but more than enough to negotiate the harrowing bureaucracy of Moscow and drink vodka with the toughs of the city's milita. I think his experience is not unique but quite valid generally.

I think generalisations based on learning Chinese or Japanese go awry, for these two languages are sui generis, in that anybody learning them is encumbered by the laborious process of acquiring ideographs. And let's face it, to achieve an adult-level fluency, rather than a peurile one, you need to be able to read texts meant for adults.

366. pseudoerasmus - 9/24/1999 7:04:44 PM

But I guess the ultimate point is that a couple of years of residence are ample time both for formal study & local immersion.

367. pseudoerasmus - 9/24/1999 7:07:03 PM

All adults need formal study to speak a foreign language anyway. Only children can pick up foreign languages without formal instruction and through osmosis & immersion.

368. Hashke - 9/24/1999 7:40:36 PM

Depends on the language, and the learner. One would speak a helluva lot more Spanish in a year than weedy Vietnamese, Finnish, or Navajo. In Spanish, for example, one could within a year of study discourse upon the Great Shame of Being, but one's Navajo would sound like the bizarre lingual glokking of a hair-beaked grackle, and the intellectual content like that of a new-born armadillo.

369. pseudoerasmus - 9/24/1999 7:48:10 PM

Well, yes, of course, it does depend on the language.

But all this isn't a matter of opinion. I propound my view as empirical reality, that most people can learn to speak most languages pretty fluently with a year's study and a year's residence in the relevant country.

370. pseudoerasmus - 9/24/1999 7:50:05 PM

...most Indo-European languages...

at the very outset my threshold was lower for IE languages.

371. Hashke - 9/24/1999 7:55:54 PM

Right. I agree with you, but the key word is 'most'. Probably (another key word) Joe Fud down at the Puebluchodemierda JiffyLube
couldn't cut it.

372. pseudoerasmus - 9/24/1999 8:36:33 PM

Another little warning for Hashke:

This Rosetta stone reads "strictly observe the traffic regulations".

373. Hashke - 9/24/1999 9:25:34 PM

Wow, beautiful shot. Sosyot glaza, as they say in Pskov.

Where exactly is this? I dig the lonely aspect and the road is 'tatarskay doroga'. Leading kuda?

374. pseudoerasmus - 9/24/1999 9:28:35 PM

Oh, I forgot to mention, I didn't take this photo, it's a postcard I bought.

You can't guess where it is?

375. pseudoerasmus - 9/24/1999 9:29:50 PM

But I did see this very sign on the road.

376. pseudoerasmus - 9/24/1999 9:39:37 PM

It's on the road leading to Urumqi from the south. I made this & the tiger road sign the main decoration on my redesigned homepage.

377. Hashke - 9/24/1999 10:14:20 PM

Correction: 'tatarskaya'

I can identify the ideographs for 'observe traffic regulations', but not for 'strictly'. And the other language, I take it, is probably Uighur. The first line of the unpointed Arabic script reads 'qaatanaash qaa'id muska', más o menos.

378. ScottLoar - 9/24/1999 10:18:17 PM

Yes, yes, yes, a year's study then a year's experience will carry you very far in language... or in almost any field of competency save occasional understanding like this. I took your initial premise to be a year's residency in a place and bang! you've got the run-of-the-mill Indo-European language down and if two years bang! bang! there goes the average exotic tongue.

Your translation of the road warning from Chinese has a superfluous "the".

379. ScottLoar - 9/24/1999 10:22:44 PM

The first two characters (top line reading left to right) mean "strictly", the first character simplified.

380. Hashke - 9/24/1999 10:44:24 PM

Scott:

I assume that they must. I just haven't yet found them yet in the dictionaries I have recently acquired.

381. pseudoerasmus - 9/24/1999 10:49:45 PM

Loar: You're really getting good at HTML.

Hashke: In Japanese, the first character would be

Of course, the syntax of the whole sentence would be different in Japanese.

382. Hashke - 9/24/1999 10:51:36 PM

pelle:

How does 'skröna' strike you as an equivalent of the English idiomatic expression 'a cock and bull story'? Or 'rövarhistoria'?
'Skröna' must come from 'skryter', 'skröt', eh? Can you think of anything closer?

Something like Indonesian 'omong kosong' -- 'empty talk'. The Navajos say 'hane' t'óó ndiilyáhí áhilní' -- literally, 'story just the one picked out of the air it is told'.

383. CalGal - 9/24/1999 10:53:42 PM

Irv,

In about 10 hours, the links on the front are going away--at least some of them are. I'm requesting that the links be moved to the appropriate thread. Ethnologue should probably move here, don't you think? And any others you want. Just giving you heads up.

384. Hashke - 9/24/1999 10:56:25 PM

pseudo:

Damn, that is pretty!

I installed Unicode, have it in Word, have Baltic, Turkish, Greek, and Cyrillic -- but cannot get the bloody things to key. I can, as you have seen, do the conventional marks by using Alt and numbers on the far right keyboard, but no dice on the Cyrillic. For example Alt + 192, which should give me Cyrillic 'A' gives me +. Govno!

385. pseudoerasmus - 9/24/1999 11:02:37 PM

Hashke:

character charts for Unicode.

386. RustlerPike - 9/25/1999 12:50:14 AM

Zwei Chinesen mit ein kontrabass, sassen auf dem strasse und erzählen sich was...

387. RustlerPike - 9/25/1999 12:57:56 AM

hashke:

Posted by one 'ABK' in response to my query at www.kikuyu.com:

"To my partners who have expressed an interest in learning the language. I've done a little research and hve come up with some info. I've been in touch with a fellow at MSU who has studied the language and suggests the following: 1. Get a good grammer book. He suggests we NOT use those published by Benson or Leakey. They are both very confusing and the style of Gikuyu is outdated. There is a good grammer book out by John Chenge title somthing like "Elementary Grammer of Gikuyu". 2. Get a good accompaniement; TKK Primers by Fred Kago is good for basics. I'm working on where to get copies of both of these. 3. Try to get around somone who speaks fluently. It is a tonal language.

There are also English/Gikuyu and Gikuyu/English dictionaries out there. It just a matter of finding them. I know Oxford University has them on hand. There are also courses offered at Univ of Bos and Univ of Wisonsin. Also Amazon.com has a grammer book in stock but I don't know how good it is. Let's try to keep each other informed.

Monyaka. Getire ondo wa ndereri. Thaai! (Good Luck. Nothing is impossible. Peace!)."

388. RustlerPike - 9/25/1999 1:01:02 AM

hashke:

You can ask to delete #338 if you wish.

389. Bobkat717 - 9/25/1999 3:48:06 AM

Many ex-pats hang out only with co-ex-pats and speak together, socialize, hunt and fish, in their own language. No need to learn the local language. Even after 20 years in the host country.

Peace Corps (100 years ago or so) provided excellent language training, tested periodically, and assigned FS proficiency grades.

Who picked the name "Mote"? Is it like someting you get in your eye, impeding vison between your eye and the horizon? Speck? Of what? Knowlege?

390. Bobkat717 - 9/25/1999 3:53:44 AM

Irving Snodgrass:
Do we have to have the cutesies "Cast Your Mote" and "Check for Dust"? Something more standard would do. Like "Send your Post", "Post Now", "Review Your Post". Cuteness wears dim after a while.

391. Angel-Five - 9/25/1999 3:55:59 AM

clif?

nah. couldn't be.

392. Angel-Five - 9/25/1999 3:57:10 AM

Well, I agree with that, anyway. It's nauseating.

393. CalGal - 9/25/1999 4:07:22 AM

Bobkat,

Irv isn't really involved with the design of this site. And we generally don't have forum design discussions in the Language thread. We're odd that way. If you want your comments heard, with no guarantees, you might want to try the appropriate thread.

394. Angel-Five - 9/25/1999 4:11:39 AM

three guesses who came up with the buttons?

395. pellenilsson - 9/25/1999 4:19:14 AM

For those really interested in writing Arabic: there is (of course) an Arabic version of Windows which can handle all MS software. It is poosible to shift between English and Arabic in the same document.

396. pellenilsson - 9/25/1999 4:48:09 AM

Hashke

How does 'skröna' strike you as an equivalent of the English idiomatic expression 'a cock and bull story'? Or 'rövarhistoria'? 'Skröna' must come from 'skryter', 'skröt', eh? Can you think of anything closer?

'Skröna' and 'rövarhistoria' are in a way synonomous but 'rövarhistoria' can have a negative meaning depending on the context.

'Skröna' must indeed be related to 'skryta' with the sense of 'enlarging the factual circumstances'. I don't know the precise sense of 'cock and bull story' so I cannot comment on that. 'Skröna' can be a completely made-up fantastic tale. I think a short story in the South American 'fantastic realism' tradition can be called a 'skröna'. I also think that PE's forthcoming travel stories will be 'skrönor', in the sense tha the will focus on the exciting, the absurd and the funny and maybe embellish a little and add some little detail here and there. No outright lies, mind you, just 'enhancements'.

397. pseudoerasmus - 9/25/1999 5:39:16 AM

Well, Pellenilsson, if you were to get out of that hotel of yours and see Mozambique rather than talk about it, or do something other than get drunk with albinos, you too might find some unembellished excitements in your life.

398. pellenilsson - 9/25/1999 6:24:33 AM

PE

I don't know what you are talking about.

399. pseudoerasmus - 9/25/1999 6:26:28 AM

Oh, Hashke, soon at my homepage there'll be a section on the different varieties of Arabic script, including an explanation of the differences between the Uighur and the standard Arabic alphabets. One of the "exciting, the absurd and the funny" activities I engaged in while in the Xinjiang region of China was to investigate the Uighur script.

400. Spudboy - 9/25/1999 7:55:06 AM

News item of interest:

PM-Obit-Menges,0160
Linguist Karl H. Menges dies at 91
VIENNA, Austria (AP) — German linguist Karl H. Menges, who gained international recognition as an expert in Central Asian and Turkic languages, has died, the Austria Press Agency reported. He was 91.

When only 19 years old, Menges was one of the first Westerners to penetrate into the barely accessible Volga and Caucasus regions in the former Soviet Union.

He graduated from the University of Berlin in 1932, then moved to Czechoslovakia to escape the Nazi dictatorship. He later relocated to Turkey.

In 1940, he began teaching Altaic languages — a group including 30 Turkic, five Mongol and six Tungusic subgroups — at Columbia University in New York. He stayed at the university for 36 years.

Later, in 1976, he moved to Austria to become a professor at the University of Vienna.

Menges, who died in Vienna on Monday, is survived by his son, Constantine C. Menges, and one grandson.

401. pellenilsson - 9/25/1999 7:59:51 AM

spudboy

Nice to see you around. Off topic: I've been cut off from my normal e-mail for five weeks now. Did you ever get that book?

402. ScottLoar - 9/25/1999 8:40:30 AM

Hashke, take that kanji offered up in post #381, take away the intial three strokes and replace them with the mouth radical side by side, and you'll have the orthodox Chinese character for "strict". So, the character "strict" comprises two mouth radicals (no. 30) side by side, surmounting the cliff radical (no.27) which encloses the character for "to dare, to presume, to venture".

All of which inspires me to load my software and see if I can't start writing Chinese in this forum.

403. pseudoerasmus - 9/25/1999 11:37:06 AM

Hashke, a quiz. What language is this?

404. PsychProf - 9/25/1999 11:44:18 AM

PE...welcome back...

HOCKEY TALK

405. Hashke - 9/25/1999 12:07:53 PM

pseuder:

Reference quiz, weiss der Geier wer, was, wie, wo, wieso --but could be Chukchi, Chechen, Dargwa, Avar, Kabardian. There are so many languages in the Caucasian family -- and a few in the Paleosiberian group --that use Cyrillic. And I see only one word in that Kyrillische bouillabaisse that could possibly be Russian: 'dar', and I'm sure that it ain't.

406. Hashke - 9/25/1999 12:11:11 PM

Pike:

Very interesting about the availability of other texts. You have a whole country and language there in your beautiful wife. What an opportunity to master the language! Lemme know when you find the books.

I thought #338 was quite humorous, but had no reaction.

407. Hashke - 9/25/1999 12:17:21 PM

pelle:

Thanks! A cock and bull story is a 'tall tale', the origin of which may be some kind of account of the two animals.

'Rövar' is 'robber'. I can understand how 'rövarhistoria' might be considered an unbelievable tale.

408. Hashke - 9/25/1999 12:19:42 PM

pseuder:

I went last night to the gates of your website, but I was tired and had forgotten my shades, so I didn't go in. I had surgery on both eyes in June and July and both orbs are still sensitive to that much light. ;-)

409. pseudoerasmus - 9/25/1999 12:25:33 PM

Hashke, you might be interested in taking a look at the Mote Cafe. I initially meant to post those images here, but I inadvertently put them there, and so I continued there.

As for the #403, later today I might work up a really tantalising clue. In the meanwhile, the sentence is taken from a newspaper I found lying about on the seat in the Moscow metro. I wouldn't have picked it up if I were Chukchi! This is a pretty good hint, actually: I'm far more likely to have been curious about this language than any of the ones you named.

410. Hashke - 9/25/1999 12:29:15 PM

ScottLoar:

Thank you for that elucidation! I have just acquired 'Remembering the Kanji', a great book, and Harbaugh's 'Chinese Characters and Geneology' -- a real beauty, I think, for only ten bucks at amazon.com. Pincher told me of the first, the second I learned of from zhongwen.com, the publisher.

Which reminds me. Coincidental to Raskolnikov's depression with the 'doroga' affair, I just happened to see the ideograph for 'depressed' -- doors with a heart within. Could you or pseudo toss that up for viewing here? Also, at the same time, I came across the kanji for 'exhalation', represented, as I remember, by a road with a dip in it.

411. Hashke - 9/25/1999 12:36:48 PM

Where the devil are Pak Gurubesar and Irv? I miss both of them. They always provide so much depth and richness to this thread.

I'm wondering if I might draw their fire by writing an ungrammatical Indonesian sentence or two...hmmmm...

412. Hashke - 9/25/1999 12:39:47 PM

pseuder:

I am producing Cyrillic in Word, but not keying with anything like the numbers on the charts you provided. However, I can't yet type it in here, more's the pity. And when I try to copy and paste the result is rubble. There's got to be an easier way.

413. Hashke - 9/25/1999 1:01:22 PM

Pak Gurubesar and Irv:

Dimana Anda? Kita menunggu dengan kamu rumahdi kami.

414. ScottLoar - 9/25/1999 1:16:39 PM

Hashke, a view at the technical questions I've posed will reveal I need a website to transfer characters drafter on my software, and so I'm a man without character for now. But, yes, the character - an ideograph this time - for depressed, melancholy, mournful or sorrowful is a pair of doors enclosing the heart. By extension, that same character means "to cover", or "stultifying" both literally and figuratively.

Your road with a skip has passed right over me without a bump.

415. Hashke - 9/25/1999 1:22:07 PM

You are undoubtably referring to Musil's Der Mann Ohne Eigenschaften, but that could never be applied to you!

416. ScottLoar - 9/25/1999 1:27:06 PM

Sorry, Hashke, if it was intended for me it was wasted, as I haven't a clue to what the topic's about.

417. Hashke - 9/25/1999 1:36:52 PM

Scott:

Musil's novel The Man Without Qualities.

418. ScottLoar - 9/25/1999 1:38:33 PM

Ah, an estimation rough and tough.

419. ProfEmeritus - 9/25/1999 2:31:50 PM

Pak hashke

Tidak tau dimana Irv. Saya sendiri sekarang tidak ada apa apa bicara dengan Pak. Nanti saja.

420. ProfEmeritus - 9/25/1999 2:34:29 PM

Pak hashke

I am sure you realize you have the "di" at the wrong end of rumah. Is this how you were trying to elicit a response?

421. ProfEmeritus - 9/25/1999 2:37:48 PM

Pak hashke

I went back and looked at 413 again. Did you mean tamu rather than kamu? I will be interested to see what Irv has to say about that sentence.

422. Hashke - 9/25/1999 4:28:48 PM

Pak Gurubesar:

I deliberately wrote ungrammatical sentences to attract your and Irv's attention.

It has been a long time since we have seen you in these parts. See #411 above. In Navajo '-di' is an enclitic meaning 'at' and it follows the noun, just the opposite from Indonesian.

Waktu sekarang aku harus menangkap ikan yang lain!

423. pseudoerasmus - 9/25/1999 5:01:22 PM

Hashke, #412

No matter. Type some Cyrillic text in Word and copy & paste what you call the rubble again into the Mote input box. Then click to post. The reason it's looking awfully devalued on your screen is because Word and your browser have different character-encoding environments. So, change your browser's character encoding under the View menu to one of Unicode (or sometimes it's called UTF-8 or Universal Alphabet). That should work. If not, try one of the four Cyrillic encodings. This is what Russian newspapers over the internet do, and have their readers do, when viewing in Cyrillic.

A different method, one which doesn't involve fiddling with character encodings and which requires no more than having the right font installed on your system, is the very procedure I followed in message #127.

ei gar oi monoglwttoi kai oi poluglwttoi euquV tou polemon pausainto kai h eirhnh polun cronon diateloih.

Except for the spaces before & after the brackets, this is what I typed into the Mote input box to produce the text (not graphic image) of the Greek.

Download this font and install it on your system; then you should be able to see the following text in perfect Cyrillic:

Z jxtym vyjuj yfckf;lf.cm kfgfnm kj[fyre- yj ntgthm z ckbirjv ecnfk- xnj, ghjljk;fnm c ;tyjq Lbkkjyf=

Unfortunately, I can't do Unicode inputting on the machine I'm using now, I can only read it, so....

424. pseudoerasmus - 9/25/1999 5:17:34 PM

Loar, you too. You could use your TwinBridge Chinese editor to produce Chinese text, cut & paste directly into the Mote input box, and then change the character setting under the View menu of your browser to one of the several Chinese settings.

Unfortunately, in your particular case, you may be the only person to be able to view your masterpiece, because few others here have the requisite fonts from TwinBridge. I use Osaka, and I doubt any of you have that. If the readers of Chinese/Japanese characters could all get mutually viewable fonts, then we could have a kanji party.

425. pseudoerasmus - 9/25/1999 5:20:00 PM

I wonder you all can see this page

http://www.mainichi.co.jp/news/selection/news04.html

correctly by fiddling with the encoding.

426. PincherMartin - 9/25/1999 5:39:29 PM

§Ú «Ü °ª ¿³

427. PincherMartin - 9/25/1999 5:46:23 PM

§Ú «Ü °ª ¿³

428. CalGal - 9/25/1999 5:52:05 PM

What--you think we didn't hear you the first time?

Hiya.

429. PincherMartin - 9/25/1999 5:59:25 PM

PseudoErasmus --

This are the characters in traditional form in your photo:ÄY ®æ ´L ¦u ¥æ ³q ³W «h

430. PincherMartin - 9/25/1999 6:00:23 PM

CalGal --

Hi

This is absolutely amazing that I can use Chinese in the Mote.

431. Dusty - 9/25/1999 6:02:30 PM

PincherMartin

Nice to see you, but if you can ee Chinese, tell me how you are doing it.

PE, see my message in Technical, if you want to see what that page looks like with Chinese encoding.

432. PincherMartin - 9/25/1999 6:03:33 PM

PE --

If I wanted to compare the Kanji to the simplified Chinese form to the tradititonal Chinese form, could I do it in the same post?

433. PincherMartin - 9/25/1999 6:07:00 PM

Dusty --

My view box at the top of the page has a section called "encoding". When I click on encoding, I have several options which include two different Chinese options (Chinese traditional -- also called Big 5 -- and Chinese simplified) as well as numerous other languages such as Japanese, Hebrew, Korean, Thai, Turkish, and something called Unicode (not to mention many other languages).

434. Dusty - 9/25/1999 6:09:49 PM

Pincher, yes, your characters look Chinese when I switch to Chinese Simplified encoding, but I didn't realize you were doing that. I thought you were seeing it without changing the encoding.

435. PincherMartin - 9/25/1999 6:14:29 PM

No, I had to change the encoding.

But I'm curious: you can actually see my traditional characters when you look through the simplified form? I have to try this.

436. Dusty - 9/25/1999 6:15:43 PM

PincherMartin

Hmmm, I trust you are using Netscape?

I can see your characters as Chinese when I switch to Chinese Simplified in IE. In Netscape, my choices are (inter alia)Traditional Chinese (big 5), Traditional Chinese (EUC=TW), and Simplified Chinese (GB2312). Under each of those choices, I fail to see the Chinese characters.

437. pseudoerasmus - 9/25/1999 6:17:44 PM

Pincher, your #426 & 427 come out looking on my browser as gibberish katakana.

I don't see any of your Chinese characters at all.

#431, I see all Japanese pages on the Web without problem. Anyway, the Mainichi site does not come out fully correct in simplified Chinese encoding.

#433, see above. That's what I was trying to explain here and in the technical thread.

438. PincherMartin - 9/25/1999 6:18:03 PM

Dusty -

Actually, I'm using IE. Is there a difference?

439. pseudoerasmus - 9/25/1999 6:19:07 PM

It seems that most of us are kanji solipsists. We can see our own output, but others can't.....

440. pseudoerasmus - 9/25/1999 6:19:32 PM

Internet explorer positively SUCKS at Chinese/Japanese encoding.

441. pseudoerasmus - 9/25/1999 6:20:12 PM

Pincher, do you know the name of the font you're using?

442. pseudoerasmus - 9/25/1999 6:20:51 PM

Pincher, please take a look at the Mote cafe. You might be interested.

443. PincherMartin - 9/25/1999 6:29:37 PM

PE --

I'm using Big 5 Chinese traditional.

I can see your Kanji just fine, by the way.

444. pseudoerasmus - 9/25/1999 6:34:03 PM

Big 5 Chinese Traditional is not a font, but the encoding setting. Everyone has that.

445. PincherMartin - 9/25/1999 6:35:17 PM

Times Roman

446. PincherMartin - 9/25/1999 6:37:01 PM

The software I'm using to transfer my Chinese to the Mote is twinbridges 4.98.

447. pseudoerasmus - 9/25/1999 6:38:48 PM

tell me whether you can view this under any of the Cyrillic encodings:

ÔÙ ÍÏÖÅÛØ ×ÉÄÅÔØ ÍÅÎÑ?

448. PincherMartin - 9/25/1999 6:44:18 PM

PE --

It looks the best under Cyrillic (K018R), but there was Cyrillic (K018U) that I was not able to view through without a ten minute download, so perhaps that is better. Under 18R, one of the cyrillic letters looks suspiciously ugly (like a symbol rather than a letter)

449. PincherMartin - 9/25/1999 6:45:59 PM

The others (Cyrillic windows, Cyrillic DOS, Cyrillic ISO) all look pretty shitty

450. pseudoerasmus - 9/25/1999 6:48:05 PM

Well, most Cyrillic fonts are pretty shitty, so that's the reason.

451. pseudoerasmus - 9/25/1999 6:50:02 PM

Now, if you can see this Farsi text, I'd be shocked:

Õ‘ÀÈÝ”È‘÷ÝÕŒÈ

452. PincherMartin - 9/25/1999 6:59:34 PM

Unfortunately, I don't have Farsi. I do have Thai, Vietnamese, Arabic, Baltic, Hebrew, Korean and Turkish, though. Why no South Asian scripts or Farsi, I don't know.

453. pseudoerasmus - 9/25/1999 7:05:33 PM

Pincher, can you read this kanji/katakana/hiragana combination?

¥Ô¥ó¥Á¥ã¡¼£‹¤ó¡¢º¡¤Î»ú¡¡ÆÉ¤á¤Þ£‹¤«?

454. pseudoerasmus - 9/25/1999 7:08:53 PM

The katakana are a bit messed up in #453, but the best appearance is Japanese (EUC) in Internet Explorer.

455. pseudoerasmus - 9/25/1999 7:09:34 PM

It's totally messed up in Netscape, whatever the encoding.

456. PincherMartin - 9/25/1999 7:15:44 PM

It looks kind of funky, but I think it says "Binchaa-san: This Kanji, can you read it?"

457. PincherMartin - 9/25/1999 7:18:16 PM

By the way, it looks the best in Japanese (EUC). Japanese auto-select and shift-JIS are entirely unreadable.

Some of EUC is unreadable as well, but at least I could guess at the meaning.

458. pseudoerasmus - 9/25/1999 7:18:53 PM

it should read, Pinchaa-kun, can you read this writing (ji)?

kun is the equivalent of san, except much less formal, connoting equality and acquaintanceship.

459. PincherMartin - 9/25/1999 7:19:09 PM

I see now that you already told me this was the case (in message #453)

460. PincherMartin - 9/25/1999 7:19:33 PM

correction: (in message #454)

461. PincherMartin - 9/25/1999 7:25:35 PM

I see (ji), that's all.

I guessed at "san" from the last half of it's hiragana (I'd forgotten about the possibility of "kun" ). The first part of the hiragana for "kun" is just a dot, as is the symbol right before "ka" at the end of the sentence,

But the first katakana is "bi", not "pi", according to my browser.

462. pseudoerasmus - 9/25/1999 7:30:16 PM

I don't know why Loar hasn't tried out his characters. At the very least you two should be able to view each other's output.

463. PincherMartin - 9/25/1999 7:41:54 PM

PE --

Regarding Loar: ¥L ¥i ¯à «Ü ¦£ °µ ¨ä ¥¦ ªº ¨Æ ±¡

464. PincherMartin - 9/25/1999 7:43:21 PM

PE -- §A ¬Ý ±o À´ ½X ?

465. pseudoerasmus - 9/25/1999 7:48:41 PM

Pincher, if you have Arabic encodings, you should be able to see Farsi, because that's how I see it. Let me try Arabic. I really don't know any Arabic, but here is a rudimentary sentence:

äêÓ åêÏÇæ ÇääÙÈ åÒÏÍåÇ

Plus here is the encoded version of the Russian sentence from #423. This should be easily viewable under one of the Cyrillic encodings.

Ÿ î÷åíü ìíîãà íàñëàæäà*ñü ëàïàòü ëîiàíêó, íî òåïå*ü ß ñëèøêîì óñòàë, ÷òîá ï*îäîëæàòü ñ æåíîé „èëëîíà.

Note, two character encodings can't be seen simultaneously, I don't think. So you have to reset the characters under the View menu twice.

466. PincherMartin - 9/25/1999 7:53:42 PM

PE --

I can't even see your rudimentary Arabic under my Arabic encoding, let alone Farsi.

The Cyrillic looks okay, but like the Japanese, there seem to be some parts missing.

This is curious. Why would it be so uneven and incomplete for some languages and not others (I haven't had a problem yet with my Chinese, for example).

467. PincherMartin - 9/25/1999 7:54:55 PM

And, yes, I did reset.

Can you make out all of my Chinese characters? (In other words, even if you don't understand them, can you at least tell they are characters?)

468. pseudoerasmus - 9/25/1999 7:57:43 PM

Well, the Cyrillic above came out brutal except in IE's Cyrillic (Windows) encoding. But there are still some fuckups. Here is a differently encoded Cyrillic text:

¨Áî÷åíü ì÷îãûÁíàéËàæäàïïü ëàïàéú ëîëÀíêó, íî éãïåèú ÿ éËèøêî÷ÁêÑé¸õÍ ìÒîá ïðîäîëæàéú ñ æåíîñÁÄèëëîíÿ

469. pseudoerasmus - 9/25/1999 7:58:39 PM

I can't see any of your Chinese or Japanese output. Period.

470. PincherMartin - 9/25/1999 8:00:27 PM

Well, that's fucked up.

What good is it if only I can see it.

471. Hashke - 9/25/1999 8:01:13 PM

pseuder:

No.

472. PincherMartin - 9/25/1999 8:01:40 PM

By the way, I haven't tried any Japanese output. Only Chinese in traditional characters

473. pseudoerasmus - 9/25/1999 8:02:59 PM

Well, my Russian sentence in two Cyrillic encodings come out Cyrillic alright, but total gibberish nonetheless!

The sentence I've been writing in Russian under different formats is:

Ya ochen' mnogo naslazhdayuc' lapat' lokhanku, no teper' ya slishkom ustal, chtob prodolzhat' s zhinoi Dillona.

474. pseudoerasmus - 9/25/1999 8:04:35 PM

Pincher, if you produced traditional Chinese characters, I would most likely understand them in Japanese without problem. But I don't see any characters at all in your messages, just gibberish.

475. PincherMartin - 9/25/1999 8:06:19 PM

Does my message #463 look like this:

¥L ¥i ¯à «Ü ¦£ °µ ¨ä ¥¦ ªº ¨Æ ±¡

476. pseudoerasmus - 9/25/1999 8:08:04 PM

Well, the encoded Arabic above should look like this:

477. PincherMartin - 9/25/1999 8:09:07 PM

Regarding your #474: make sure you try them in Big 5, just in case there is some difference.

478. pseudoerasmus - 9/25/1999 8:21:13 PM

Oh, I see, I forgot about the Chinese encodings. Let me try in both Netscape & IE.

479. Hashke - 9/25/1999 8:21:14 PM

ÆAôû

480. PincherMartin - 9/25/1999 8:23:29 PM

What language, Hashke?

481. Hashke - 9/25/1999 8:24:20 PM

The year 2000 should bring some improvements.

482. pseudoerasmus - 9/25/1999 8:35:32 PM

Pincher, I've tried all the Chinese encodings in two browsers, and your output is mostly clear, but there's some gibberish:

1 -- ta (other)
2 -- ka (possibility, approval)
3 -- no (ability -- the character for Noh drama as well)
4 -- not used in Japanese, as far as I know
5 -- bo (busy)
6, 7, 8 -- gibberish
9 -- teki (purpose, target)
10 -- ji (event, affair)
11 -- jo (emotion)

The sentence is definitely not Japanese.

483. pseudoerasmus - 9/25/1999 8:35:33 PM

484. pseudoerasmus - 9/25/1999 8:36:21 PM

Hashke, the easiest at this point is to download common fonts. did you download Cyrillic?

485. Hashke - 9/25/1999 8:42:51 PM

pseuder:

You mean in #423? No, I've been fiddling in Word. Only part of the C. alphabet is even accessible. I have to leave now, so later -- or tamale.

What you say you did to produce the Greek is amazing. Mebbe that'll work for Cyrillic. You actually just typed "symbol" in that particular part of the code?

486. pseudoerasmus - 9/25/1999 8:44:40 PM

Yes! If you had the cyrillic font installed, you could also just do ....text.... and be done with it!

487. pseudoerasmus - 9/25/1999 8:45:30 PM

We all have the Symbol font preinstalled in our systems, Mac or Windows, because that's industry standard. Cyrillic is something you must download & add on yourself. As with the Arabic fonts. I've been telling you this for a while now!

488. PincherMartin - 9/25/1999 8:46:32 PM

PE --

You appear able to understand only part of Chinese on your browser, and I only part of Japanese on my browser. Why?

The sentence reads: He [Scott Loar] is probably busy with other things.

Literally:

#1 = he

#2 & #3 = (compound) maybe, perhaps

#4 = very

#5 = busy

#6 = do(ing)

#7 & #8 & #9 = (compound) other

#10 & #11 = (compound) things

You did pretty well with many of the meanings. If you ever decide to study Chinese, it should be a snap for you to learn how to read it, as it is for many people who already have a good reading comprehesion of Japanese

489. PincherMartin - 9/25/1999 8:49:57 PM

I've got to get out of here -- let me know if you discover anything new.

490. pseudoerasmus - 9/25/1999 8:54:25 PM

Hashke is too much a gentleman to translate # 473.

491. pseudoerasmus - 9/25/1999 8:56:19 PM

PincherMartin: "Good reading comprehension of Japanese"? Please, I read serious books in Japanese.

492. pseudoerasmus - 9/25/1999 9:05:34 PM

Just what happened to Snirvgrass? If you're reading, Irving, how about adding the links in #327 to the butterscotch bar?

493. PincherMartin - 9/25/1999 9:29:48 PM

PE --

I made no guesses as to your level of Japanese other than to assume you already had a good reading comprehension. If you read serious books in Japanese (or even unserious ones), then the task of learning Chinese is that much easier for you. Contrary to what Michael Robinson said in TT, Japanese students and foreigners with at least an intermediate level of Japanese (three years or so) pick up Chinese much more quickly than the rest of us (the Japanese do have trouble speaking it however). Since you read serious books in Japanese, I would bet you could be reading a Chinese newspaper in less than six months if you wanted to -- assuming your focus was on Chinese and little else. After all, Chinese grammer is fairly easy to master.

Speaking accurate Chinese (whether Mandarin or other "dialects") would require more work, however.

(Now, I'm really gone.)

494. pseudoerasmus - 9/25/1999 10:07:27 PM

PincherMartin: I began kanji study at age six, at first with my mother, then later in Japan under the tutelage of sadistic instructors at summer jyuku. I was reading stuff in kana even earlier.

495. pseudoerasmus - 9/25/1999 10:08:15 PM

I don't mean to offend Sinologists, but I have less than zero interest in Han China and Han Chinese.

496. ProfEmeritus - 9/25/1999 10:48:38 PM

One can learn Chinese in one year if enough time is devoted to its study and if the incentives are adequate. I studied Chinese (Mandarin, some Cantonese and some other minor dialogues) for one year during World War II. I also learned about 1000 characters, enough to read a newspaper.

The incentives were great. At the beginning of the year's study, a group of 100 students were told that we would either learn at an adequate pace to function as Chinese-English interpreters in one year or be washed out of the course and sent to the infantry as replacements. We were also told that only half would complete the course of study, with 25% to be washed out after 3 months and another 25% at the end of 6 months. Believe me, we worked our asses off.

When I finished the year, i was sent to the air corps to serve as an interpreter. I was given a month's additional training to learn technical aircraft and related terminology. I was then assigned to translate extemporaneously lectures by English speaking instructors. I was required to live with Chinese airmen 24 hours a day, eating, sleeping and socializing.

Ahter several months I had learned enough of the technical subjects to do the teaching in Mandarin myself so the instructors could be sent off to other duties.

The conclusion is that, given the right conditions, one year of training is enough to become fluent in a difficult language like Chinese and in addition to learn enough written Chinese to read
simple manuals and related materials.

497. ProfEmeritus - 9/25/1999 11:09:10 PM

In 496 make that dialects, not dialogues.

498. IrvingSnodgrass - 9/26/1999 12:44:18 AM

Sorry I haven't had time to spend in this thread. My very limited Mote time has been spent in the International thread. I'm back now, and hope to have a little time to spend here.

I'll start adding links. All suggestions are welcome.

Hashke (413):
Sudah jelas bagiku kalimatmu sengaja dibuat rancu.

PE:
Wrt the earlier discussion on learning languages... It depends on the language, as Hashké pointed out. Some languages are laughably easy to learn, like Indonesian.

If a foreigner here doesn't have a working knowledge of the language in a few weeks and reasonable fluency within six months (without formal study), I write him/her off as a wretched monolingual. I've seen people carrying on extended conversations within a week.

Just last month the wife of a friend (the original wretched monolingual, in fact) visited Indonesia for the first time. She had a working knowledge of the language within one day merely by looking at a lousy phrasebook. The WM himself was still struggling to say "thank you" instead of "got rice."

I recently met an American who has lived here for a year who was interested in buying a piece of land I'm selling. I turned him down when I discovered he hadn't bothered to learn any Indonesian during his stay here. There's no excuse.

499. pellenilsson - 9/26/1999 2:18:28 AM

Hashke

'Rövar' is 'robber'. I can understand how 'rövarhistoria' might be
considered an unbelievable tale.

No, 'rövar' is plural of 'röv' which means 'ass' (not the animal).

Robber is 'rövare'. The 'e' gets lost when you tack another word onto it.

500. IrvingSnodgrass - 9/26/1999 5:29:37 AM

I'v made a start on adding links. I have a few more in my bookmarks which I'll add later, and I encourage any and all suggestions.

501. Stumbo - 9/26/1999 5:48:41 AM

Suggestion: stop referring to yourself in the third person, and lose the Irish accent.

502. pellenilsson - 9/26/1999 5:55:43 AM

> > > > > > > > > > > > > > >

bail	bale
????	dale
fail	????
????	gale
hail	hale
jail	????
????	????
????	????
mail	male
nail	????
pail	pale
????	????
rail	????
sail	sale
tail	tale
vail	vale

This is a table exercise prompted by a spelling mistake. It was much easier to make a table than I thought. I made Word macros for the opening and ending tags (< > and < / >) which I ended with a backspace so the cursor ends up inside the tag when the macro executes. Then I typed out the first row, made copy and paste n times and replaced 'bail' and 'bale' with the other words.

Are there any words I have missed?

503. Stumbo - 9/26/1999 6:07:18 AM

You forgot "Quayle," the worst spelling mistake of 'em all.

504. pellenilsson - 9/26/1999 6:47:23 AM

Hahaha. I thought about 'quail' but I only want four-letter words.

505. pellenilsson - 9/26/1999 8:32:13 AM

Any loggerheaded, fat-kidneyed skainsmates around today?

506. Hashke - 9/26/1999 1:49:05 PM

Here is a site that is more interesting and of wider sweep than the present link to Native American Languages. You might consider it for your links section.

The Society for the Study of the Indigenous
Languages of the Americas

About the Society - General information about SSILA and its activities
SSILA Bulletin - Monthly email bulletin with announcements of upcoming meetings, job openings, and other important news.
Journal Contents - A comprehensive listing of articles on American Indian Languages in more than 100 journals (1988-present). [not currently functioning.]

Dissertation & Thesis Index - Abstracts of over 200 dissertations and theses on American Indian languages and related topics (1988-present). [not currently functioning.]
Book Announcements - A searchable database of more than 650 books, including abstracts and ordering information. [not currently functioning.]
Learning Aids - A catalogue of language learning materials available for North American Indian languages.
Internet Resources - Links to organizations, publishers, academic departments, archives, and language specific sites
Upcoming Events - Information on upcoming conferences and meetings of interest to SSILA members
Contact SSILA - How to join SSILA, address, link to email, and other contact information.
SSILA Directory - Membership list including name, address and email. [not currently functioning.]

Thank you for your patience as we try to return this site to full functionality.

Maintained by
Autumn Bouck
Server by TRC

Sponsored by the Native American Language Center at UC Davis

507. IrvingSnodgrass - 9/26/1999 1:51:26 PM

Hashké:
Sounds great. Do you have the url?

508. Hashke - 9/26/1999 1:56:04 PM

pseuder:

The link in #423 doesn't work for me. The bar is stuck at less than halfway.

Nadoyelo mne eto govno do okhuyenie.

509. Hashke - 9/26/1999 1:57:40 PM

Yeah Irv, take a look at it at Yahoo -- search ssila -- quicker than I can do a link.

510. Hashke - 9/26/1999 1:58:20 PM

Yeah Irv, take a look at it at Yahoo -- search ssila -- quicker than I can do a link.

511. pseudoerasmus - 9/26/1999 2:15:01 PM

Hashke: It's do okhuyeniya. Kakoe govno? Fonts?

I think the link in #423 only appears not to be working: it's a direct download link. Your system is probably downloading. If not, then just go directly to Dr. Berlin's Font Archives and look under Cyrillic.

512. Hashke - 9/26/1999 2:26:20 PM

Right, genitive after 'do'. A mere typo. Tit for tat on the myagki znak, eh?

513. pseudoerasmus - 9/26/1999 2:29:49 PM

Nurse the wounds you deliver unto others!

514. Hashke - 9/26/1999 2:31:41 PM

pseuder:

I see a lot of Cyrillic fonts over in Berlin. Which is likely to work?

515. pseudoerasmus - 9/26/1999 2:35:17 PM

I think all of the following contain the same fonts, but in different format & size bundles.

cyrilic.zip
cyrilic2.zip
cyrfonts.zip
cyrttf.zip

516. Hashke - 9/26/1999 2:36:00 PM

Wound for woulnd, stripe for stripe...

517. Hashke - 9/26/1999 2:37:25 PM

See, typos are plagling me today!

Okay, I'll do it.

518. pseudoerasmus - 9/26/1999 2:37:56 PM

Which I shall return to the dirt from whence it came.

519. Hashke - 9/26/1999 2:57:03 PM

Huddled in dirt the reasoning engine lies...

Dr. Berlin is also Hashke unfriendly. The links click and die, the world stops spinning, the computers blink off. I'll go back to your link, hit it, have lunch, come back --and if it's still sitting there unloaded I'll...I'll...I'll......

520. Hashke - 9/26/1999 2:57:51 PM

Did you like SSILA, Irv?

521. Hashke - 9/26/1999 4:15:49 PM

pseuder:

Well, an hour or so later and no dice. I'll try something in the by and by. Would you mind posting that kanji for 'depressed' -- you know, the doors and the heart? It'll make me feel better.

522. pseudoerasmus - 9/26/1999 7:46:30 PM

523. Hashke - 9/26/1999 8:35:42 PM

Perfect, pseudo. Thank you!

524. IrvingSnodgrass - 9/26/1999 8:47:13 PM

Hashké:
Check out the latest addition to the links list.

525. Hashke - 9/26/1999 9:35:21 PM

Great, Irv! What is your impression of the site?

526. IrvingSnodgrass - 9/26/1999 9:41:04 PM

There's a lot of interesting stuff there, Hashké. I'll have to find some time to browse it.

527. pseudoerasmus - 9/26/1999 9:49:02 PM

Why Tocharian? And why an Urdu dictionary? Why the Icelandic phrase page?

I too am compiling my best links in ethnology & comp linguistics. I have zillions gathered over the years but my bookmarks are so disorganised I don't feel discouraged from the task of separating the wheat from the chaff.

528. pseudoerasmus - 9/26/1999 9:50:48 PM

...I feel discouraged...

529. Hashke - 9/26/1999 9:54:29 PM

pseuder:

Quiz. What language?

klohi zis thotoria marta pido vastei basta
veinan aran in daranthoa vasti staboos
xohedonas daxtassi vaanetos inthi trigonoxo
a staboos xohetthihi dazimaihi beiliihi
inthi rexxorixoa kazareihi xohetthihi toeihithi
dazohonnihi inthi vastima
daxtas kratheheihi inthi ardannoa poxxonnihi a
imarnaihi

530. pseudoerasmus - 9/26/1999 9:57:32 PM

Etruscan.

531. pseudoerasmus - 9/26/1999 9:58:25 PM

or one of the pre-Latin Italic languages.

532. IrvingSnodgrass - 9/26/1999 9:58:27 PM

PE:
Those were links I had in my bookmarks from previous discussions. I see the links list as a starting point, and plan to add more as people suggest them and I have time to find them.

533. Hashke - 9/26/1999 10:04:48 PM

pseudo:

Good, but which one. There were a few.

534. ScottLoar - 9/26/1999 10:17:21 PM

Whoa! That character shown in #522 is that for "grief, lamentation, tragedy", pronounced bei1 in Mandarin. That is not the character for "depressed" I recounted in detail by description and definition.

535. ScottLoar - 9/26/1999 10:18:23 PM

Your "perfect" #523, Hashke, is misplaced.

536. pseudoerasmus - 9/26/1999 10:24:58 PM

well, i don't know what Loar recounted "in detail by description and definition", but the character I produced is the very one for "sorrow" in Japanese. It does contain the heart, and it does contain the same radical as found in the character for door.

537. ScottLoar - 9/26/1999 10:32:42 PM

No,no,no,no,no! The radical for door is quite distinct; you've recounted a quite different radical all together. Please. Please. Return to your dictionary, seek out the door radical enclosing a heart and compare it with what you've presented. And we were not talking about sorrow! There is a world of difference between "depressed" and "sorrow" just as there is between the characters for each.

538. pseudoerasmus - 9/26/1999 10:35:49 PM

Loar: Economise with your no's. And pay closer attention to words. I said: "it does contain the same radical as found in the character for door". Notice that is altogether different from saying "I found the radical for door".

539. pseudoerasmus - 9/26/1999 10:37:49 PM

And I had rather thought there were but a few acres of difference between depressed & sorrow.

540. ScottLoar - 9/26/1999 10:38:13 PM

If you don't know what I'm talking about then read post #414 dated 25/09/99, but even so, the door radical (number 169) is radically different from that radical meaning "wrong (how appropriate!), bad, negative, etc." (number 175) to which you've subscribed.

541. ScottLoar - 9/26/1999 10:39:27 PM

It does not contain the same radical as that found in door.

542. pseudoerasmus - 9/26/1999 10:40:58 PM

And I had rather thought there were but a few acres of difference between depressed & sorrow.

543. PincherMartin - 9/26/1999 10:41:17 PM

´e -- PE, if you switch your encoding over to Big Five, this is the character that Scott Loar is speaking of:

It means melancholy, depressed, bored, etc. when it is pronounced with a fourth tone; when spoken with a first tone, it roughly means oppressive (as in the weather) or muffled (as in a sound).

544. ScottLoar - 9/26/1999 10:43:36 PM

Pincher, the character pronounced men4 does not change tone to 1st tone to mean stultifying, oppressed or muffled, at least not in colloquial speech.

545. PincherMartin - 9/26/1999 10:44:28 PM

There are several characters that can roughly mean "depressed", including the first one that PE link to.

546. Hashke - 9/26/1999 10:44:32 PM

Scott:

My eyeballs are as yet unadjusted to the minutiae of the kanji. Is the only difference the outside borders on the 'doors'?

547. Hashke - 9/26/1999 10:45:37 PM

pseudo:

Are you asking him to economize on the Japanese 'no' or the English one?

548. PincherMartin - 9/26/1999 10:45:44 PM

Then both my mainland and Taiwan dictionaries are incorrect.

549. ScottLoar - 9/26/1999 10:47:32 PM

Pincher, I had recounted enough detail about men that it cannot possibly be confused with bei, nor are the two characters interchangable.

550. PincherMartin - 9/26/1999 10:48:36 PM

Scott Loar --

I haven't seen your remarks. Where can they be found?

551. ScottLoar - 9/26/1999 10:49:25 PM

Pincher, I said colloquial speech, and if you doubt me try it out in the streets using men 4th tone for "stuffy".

552. ScottLoar - 9/26/1999 10:50:15 PM

Then use men 1st tone and see the reactions.

553. ScottLoar - 9/26/1999 10:50:45 PM

Look to post #414.

554. Hashke - 9/26/1999 10:51:17 PM

Hey, Pincher, good to see you again. I thought you had flown the coup.

I show 'yùmèn' as a pronunciation for 'depressed'.

555. ScottLoar - 9/26/1999 10:52:28 PM

Hashke, again, the two characters are grossly different. One contains the radical for door, the other contains the radical for wrong. These radicals are as different as right and wrong.

556. pseudoerasmus - 9/26/1999 10:52:39 PM

Well, here is the character for "door"

and the bit above is the door radical. The character for "sorrow" I produced in #522 is a combination of "heart" and "bad, wrong", the latter being also found in the character for "door".

557. Hashke - 9/26/1999 10:54:29 PM

pseudo:

As in 'ano hito no kokoro wa chisai'?

558. Hashke - 9/26/1999 10:56:48 PM

Scott:

Are there separate kanji for right chamber and left chamber?

559. ScottLoar - 9/26/1999 10:57:22 PM

No. Please, look at the radical for door. Look into your dictionary for radicals, those having 8 strokes.

560. pseudoerasmus - 9/26/1999 10:57:35 PM

Oh, yes, Pincher, I now see. In Japanese that would be the "mon bushu" or "gate radical". Loar was just using Chinese terminology.

561. ScottLoar - 9/26/1999 10:58:34 PM

Pincher, can you please present the character and radical for door?

562. pseudoerasmus - 9/26/1999 10:59:48 PM

The top portion of the character in #556 is the door radical in Japanese. You're thinking of the gate radical, which I will produce shortly. Your number 169 and number this and number that are meaningless to me. I don't have your foreigner references. My references are Japanese.

563. ScottLoar - 9/26/1999 10:59:50 PM

Okay, gate radical then. Now, take that gate, put a heart in it, and you've got severe depression man!

564. ScottLoar - 9/26/1999 11:01:47 PM

My references to the radical number were not for your edification, Pseudoerasmus, a task beyond me for sure, but addressed to Pincher and Hashke who have proper Chinese language dictionaries. Or get thee to the Morihashi.

565. pseudoerasmus - 9/26/1999 11:03:07 PM

The character Loar is referring to and Pincher produced does not exist in Japanese, as far as I know.

Here is what in Japanese would be the "gate" radical:

566. pseudoerasmus - 9/26/1999 11:05:59 PM

The character Loar is referring to and Pincher produced does not exist in Japanese, as far as I know.

Here is what in Japanese would be the "gate" radical:

567. pseudoerasmus - 9/26/1999 11:07:22 PM

Well, as far as Japanese is concerned, the character I initially gave in #522 is perfectly correct. Loar should stop presuming to speak for Japanese.

568. ScottLoar - 9/26/1999 11:08:33 PM

Hashke, if we accept Pseudoerasmus' assertion as true fact, then you can understand why knowing kanji allows you precious little understanding of Chinese. Again, some of the kanji forms are warped, far removed from their Chinese antecedents, and with proportionate change in meaning and usage in modern Japanese.

569. PincherMartin - 9/26/1999 11:10:09 PM

Scott Loar --

I shall ask one of my Chinese friends tomorrow, but when all three of my dictionairies tell me one thing, I'm inclined to go that direction. The three include the Far East Chinese-English Dictionary, The Pinyin Chinese-English Dictionary and The New Lin Yutang Chinese-English Dictionary. All make the same distinction as I first described it. The character with a first tone has the meaning of stultifying, and when used with the fourth tone means depressed.

I lived in Taiwan, where many of the Taiwanese as you know, butcher the hell out of the tones, so going to the street in this case is of little use for me.

Your #414 does not differentiate between the meaning of bei and men. Please tell me how they can not roughly (which were my original words) have the same meaning as well as a couple of other characters (such as ju sang for example)

570. ScottLoar - 9/26/1999 11:10:51 PM

I don't presume to speak for the friggin' Japanese or their interpreter here Pseudoerasmus. I pointedly addressed Hashke's mention of a door over a heart.

571. ScottLoar - 9/26/1999 11:12:33 PM

I acclaim Pseudoerasmus the hierophant of the Japanese mysteries here.

572. Hashke - 9/26/1999 11:14:01 PM

Shheesh, did my 'kokoro' Wortspiel go by pseudo?

573. Hashke - 9/26/1999 11:15:45 PM

Scott:

#568 That's what makes it all so interesting.

574. pseudoerasmus - 9/26/1999 11:18:37 PM

The character Loar is referring to may still exist in Japanese, but I'm sure it's considered obscure today. The word "depression" or "depressed" certainly does not use it.

575. ScottLoar - 9/26/1999 11:18:55 PM

I've got the Far East Chinese-English Dictionary, pg. 500, listing men 1st and 2nd tones as you describe, although Wade-Giles makes no such difference. Still, you use your dictionary pronounciation with whomever you want (try your teacher for example) and see the reaction. I insist my understanding and usage is correct, reinforced daily.

576. pseudoerasmus - 9/26/1999 11:22:28 PM

#573

I think he exaggerates. A few dissimilar characters, and bang! (to use the typical Loar HTML sally), knowledge of Japanese kanji affords you precious little understanding of Chinese. Of course, we have the testimony of Pincher Martin -- who has studied both Japanese and Chinese -- to the contrary. The differences in character forms, diction and syntax still allow more than "precious little" understanding (as that Uighur/Mandarin sign attests).

577. ScottLoar - 9/26/1999 11:24:28 PM

Pincher, one commonly uses the word men4 to describe weather or emotion as in stuffy, boring, stultifying, depressed, and just the single word will do. Bei1 is almost always part of a compound, as in the words for drama, or tragedy, or cruelty. Is this what you were asking me to differentiate by your #569?

578. ScottLoar - 9/26/1999 11:25:27 PM

579. ScottLoar - 9/26/1999 11:26:12 PM

I hope I've turned the italics off.

580. ScottLoar - 9/26/1999 11:29:14 PM

Oh shit! This is a profitless exercise. Pseudoerasmus, my study of Japanese, rudimentary as all hell, still confirms that knowledge of Japanese kanji very often misserves you in knowing Chinese.

581. CalGal - 9/26/1999 11:31:15 PM

582. CalGal - 9/26/1999 11:31:27 PM

Now?

583. ScottLoar - 9/26/1999 11:33:13 PM

Yes, now it is righted.

584. pseudoerasmus - 9/26/1999 11:34:40 PM

Look, Loar, no one says that you can read a Chinese text fluently by knowing Japanese kanji. But a Japanese has a lot more understanding of Chinese text than "precious little".

"Oh shit! This is a profitless exercise. Pseudoerasmus, my study of Japanese, rudimentary as all hell, still confirms that knowledge of Japanese kanji very often misserves you in knowing Chinese."

I don't see how knowing Chinese but not Japanese you could have discovered this. What you might credibly say is that the knowledge of Chinese misserves one in reading Japanese text.

Hashke: I really think the problems presented by the differences in character forms & usage amount to little more than, say, the problems caused by faux amis (false cognates) between languages.

585. pseudoerasmus - 9/26/1999 11:35:44 PM

rephrase

Hashke: I really think the differences in character forms & usage present not much more problems than faux amis (false cognates) between languages.

586. pseudoerasmus - 9/26/1999 11:39:56 PM

Hashke, I did notice your Wortspiel in # 557, but I'm not sure what the play was supposed to be on. The character for "heart" is also pronounced "kokoro", but it doesn't mean "mind" in the way you seem to think it does. It means more like "spirit" or "feeling". Alma or âme is a good translation of "kokoro".

587. PincherMartin - 9/26/1999 11:41:28 PM

According to my small Japanese-English/English-Japanese dictionary, the Kanji used in the Japanese word for "depressed" is ochikondeiru, which f used as a character in Chinese roughly means "to fall" or "to lose" in its most common denotation. Here it is below (using the Big 5 encoder)

¸¨

The Japanese word for "depression" is given as yuu'utsu, meaning "despondence", and is used in Chinese for "sad", "pensive", "mournful", or "grieved", and is shown below:

¼~

588. pseudoerasmus - 9/26/1999 11:47:10 PM

Pincher, #587

You don't use the first character for depression in the sense of dejection, grief, etc. The second one is right.

589. PincherMartin - 9/26/1999 11:50:13 PM

PE --

You don't use that character in ochikomu, as in "feel depressed"?

590. pseudoerasmus - 9/26/1999 11:59:57 PM

Maybe in an older Japanese. This I say because words like "to be calm" (ochitsuku) or "be still" do use the character for "fall".

591. Hashke - 9/27/1999 12:05:35 AM

pseudo:

I was messing with both 'no' ("economise") and 'kokoro'.

592. Hashke - 9/27/1999 12:06:58 AM

hierophant: n. an ad by an out-of-work pachyderm.

593. PincherMartin - 9/27/1999 3:13:20 AM

Scott Loar --

I've got the Far East Chinese-English Dictionary, pg. 500, listing men 1st and 2nd tones as you describe, although Wade-Giles makes no such difference. Still, you use your dictionary pronounciation with whomever you want (try your teacher for example) and see the reaction. I insist my understanding and usage is correct, reinforced daily.

Well, I'm sorry we had to get in this argument. Using the wrong tone with a Chinese sound is a very common mistake for non-Chinese, even those who speak great Chinese. I certainly don't think it's a reflection of a person's Chinese that he makes these mistakes. I make them all the time, and my spoken Chinese is the best aspect of my Chinese.

I have a friend, who writes occassionally for the South China Morning Post, and appears on one of the Chinese TV stations in Taiwan as a regular speaker on a host of issues (on CTBT, I believe). He has lived for over nine years in Taiwan, and has a M.A. from Zheng Zhi Da Xue (the Political University in Mucha, just outside of Taipei) in Mainland Studies. His Chinese is outstanding, probably the best of any foreigner I've ever heard. But even he makes mistakes with his tones. He can write some of the most obscure characters you would ever dream of wanting to know, but sometimes even now, he will say a particular tone incorrectly.

Sometimes, even native speakers (not those who were raised speaking Taiwanese in the house) will incorrectly identify a particular tone with a certain sound, and then when called on it, will say something to the effect of, "I know how to say it; I just had forgotten what tone it was."

I don't have a teacher so I'll have to rely on friends and girlfriends. I'll give my girlfriend in Taiwan a call, and ask her.

594. PincherMartin - 9/27/1999 3:24:54 AM

Scott Loar --

Pincher, one commonly uses the word men4 to describe weather or emotion as in stuffy, boring, stultifying, depressed, and just the single word will do. Bei1 is almost always part of a compound, as in the words for drama, or tragedy, or cruelty. Is this what you were asking me to differentiate by your #569?

Yes, exactly. When I want to say in Chinese that I'm depressed, I say Wo3 Hen3 Ju3Sang4, as in (Far-Eastern Usage) "I'm crestfallen, discouraged, despondent, etc." This was a phrase I learned early in my language training.

PE -- If you're interested to know what the characters are for that last Chinese phrase above, here they are:

§Ú «Ü ªq ³à

595. PincherMartin - 9/27/1999 3:48:11 AM

Scott Loar --

Well, a partial mea culpa. I just got off the phone with my girlfriend in Taiwan. Here is what she said about the men1/men4 controversy.

Scott Loar :Pincher, the character pronounced men4 does not change tone to 1st tone to mean stultifying, oppressed or muffled, at least not in colloquial speech

She says that rather than your definition, it is the exact opposite. Most of the time, regardless of the meaning, men1 is used instead of men4. Exceptions to this are men4 men bu2 le4, in which case, it is clearly fourth tone for the first men.

But she adds, there is considerable flexibility as to their pronunications across these two definitions of men

But she also admits there might be some exceptions depending on the usage (she mentioned that there might be a difference in the tones between adverbial usages and adjectival usages), and she promised me she would do some more research.

596. ScottLoar - 9/27/1999 6:00:35 AM

PincherMartin I have read your comments.

597. Hashke - 9/27/1999 9:35:16 AM

pseuder:

How come you keep explaing what faux amis means? I was not borne yestiday, you know.

598. pseudoerasmus - 9/27/1999 9:43:15 AM

Hashke: I did it not for your benefit, of course; I did it for the benefit of the wretched bilinguals in the gallery.

But of course I knew your question was not meant seriously, but just in case....

599. Hashke - 9/27/1999 9:45:14 AM

hierophant n. A ponderous ecclesiastical necromancer who has the glyph of gab.

600. tmachine - 9/27/1999 8:10:12 PM

pe: had my nails done on Friday and asked the manicurist from Uzbekistan (with whom I chat in Russian) how come she could communicate with the Iranian salon owner. your guess was on the money: she is indeed a Bukharan Jew and thus speaks Farsi--she also calls it Tajik. Just to add another wrinkle, the salon owner is in fact an Iranian Jew.

pelle: I know it's a while ago, but you could add "kale" to your table. Also "wale." what about "ale" and "ail"?

was that strange "pre-Latin Italic language" passage something like Maltese?

601. pseudoerasmus - 9/27/1999 9:13:10 PM

Tmachine: So, does she offer you zelyonii chai (or zelyoiy chay, however you bloody transliterate it, Hashke's turned a bit fastidious about this lately, you know)? If not, then you're not getting the full Middle Asian treatment!

Farsi and Tajik are not really the same thing, though they are mutually intelligible to a limited degree.

Maltese is a Semitic language, whose closest relative is Arabic.

There are so many Italic languages -- Oscan, Faliscan, Etruscan, Cancun, etc. God knows which one Hashke picked up somewhere. Of course the dead giveaway was the unusual concentration of theta's, which Hashke sneakily gave us in Roman.

602. pseudoerasmus - 9/27/1999 9:13:58 PM

...zelyoniy...

603. pseudoerasmus - 9/27/1999 9:14:42 PM

Of course the green tea these Middle Asians serve you isn't green. It's brown.

604. pseudoerasmus - 9/27/1999 9:27:34 PM

605. Hashke - 9/27/1999 10:18:03 PM

Hehehe...

606. Hashke - 9/27/1999 10:38:50 PM

Pseuder:

Your lack of response to the puns in #1547 & 1548 im inneren Heiligtum is beginning to hint, as time continues to go by, of no comprendo (can it be?). Moi, je m'en doute. I suddenly thought of the connections while hiking with Lobo and came back to post for your amusement.

Given that they are in Russian, tmachine can certainly handle 'em.

I love that map! Zelyoniy? Mozhet byt'.

'Tsyplyonok zelyoniy...net, net...zhareniy, tsyplyonok vareniy, tsyplyonok tozhe khochet zhit'...

607. Hashke - 9/27/1999 10:43:36 PM

...pasporta nety, davai gazetu, gazety net poidyom v tyurmu...itd...

608. pseudoerasmus - 9/27/1999 11:01:58 PM

Sorry, Hashke, I did not catch your literary references. The only thing I caught was your saying "poslednii" instead of "poslednoe", but I didn't want to say anything lest the tit-for-tat nitpicking spiral toward MAD! I didn't catch your Japanese puns either.

Puns are wasted on me, Hashke. I sympathise with Bourbon policy. And yes, the last three Bourbons were infamous for their love of bel esprit.

609. RickNelson - 9/27/1999 11:28:37 PM

Hashké,

Yet, the puns are not a waist nor to thin to gasp and throw around.

610. Hashke - 9/28/1999 12:37:14 AM

pseuder:

I can't possibly believe that puns are lost on you. This is VERY strange. You have always been the first to catch on to the most obscure translingual puns and return your own in kind. Did someone whop you on the head during your Batutaian journeys? Hmmm...damn I hate to explain those puns without giving you another shot -- and tmachine, of course. Damn!

Btw, 'kalambur' is masculine, so I think it's gotta be 'poslednii', no?

611. Hashke - 9/28/1999 12:40:22 AM

Rick:

Not too thin a waist to gasp?

612. pseudoerasmus - 9/28/1999 1:32:35 AM

Oh, how silly of me! The defence of the chess player!

613. Hashke - 9/28/1999 1:37:14 AM

YES!!! YEAH!!! YPA!!!

Let's hear it for pseudo! Now the Russian title, please.

And the following post is a real give-away.

614. Hashke - 9/28/1999 1:38:50 AM

YPA!!!

615. pseudoerasmus - 9/28/1999 1:39:10 AM

Yes, I guess you're right about the gender of "kalambur". I guess I get casual with gender in Russian (though less so, under current constraints, with Russian gender) and say whatever the hell that occurs to me.

Here is another riddle, this time requiring you to work around a translingual pun between two languages (neither English) that you know:

What capital city is both a peaceful gift and a house of lard?

616. pseudoerasmus - 9/28/1999 1:42:49 AM

zaschita Luzhina, yes?

617. pseudoerasmus - 9/28/1999 1:44:02 AM

It may be a hint to call this riddle a contre-péterie of puns (rather than sounds).

618. pseudoerasmus - 9/28/1999 1:44:50 AM

contrepètrie

in case the police were alert.

619. Hashke - 9/28/1999 1:45:42 AM

pseuder:

I'm pickled tink that you got it!

Now, what about the give-away second post #1548, which, if you had looked at it closely, would have provided instant clarity.

I'm bushed and gotta crash. I'll work out your puzzle in the morning.

620. Hashke - 9/28/1999 1:47:49 AM

Yes, using Luzhin as a fence for 'illyuzii' -- not too far-fetched, I hope.

621. Hashke - 9/28/1999 3:07:33 AM

pseudo:

Dar es Salaam

Boy, you sure know how to keep a guy awake! A play on Russian and Arabic 'dar', Arabic 'salaam', and Italian 'salami'.

Cool. Buona notte!

622. Stumbo - 9/28/1999 3:35:51 AM

Bwana naughty to you, too.

What is Casey Martin's favorite programming language?

623. pseudoerasmus - 9/28/1999 9:53:14 AM

Actually, I used "lard" in the riddle not because of "salami" but because of the Russian word salo (which in addition to being simple lard is also a pork fact "delicacy" beloved by Russians & Ukrainians). The riddle really should have been:

What capital city is both a peaceful gift and a house with a larder?

624. pseudoerasmus - 9/28/1999 9:53:59 AM

pork fat

625. Hashke - 9/28/1999 10:58:04 AM

Salami is full of lard (well, fat), too.

You are still doing end runs around the second word play that accompanies 'zashchita illyuzii'.

I am very interested in your remark in bhel's bheliwick about 1000 characters being sufficient to read a Japanese newspaper. Would you mind listing those? Just kidding, but I am definitely intrigued.

626. Hashke - 9/28/1999 10:58:56 AM

Stumbo:

Irv the golfer should be able to answer that one.

627. pseudoerasmus - 9/28/1999 11:03:06 AM

There's a second wordplay?

The only other reference I thought you might have made was to Vera in the word for "probably".

628. Hashke - 9/28/1999 11:03:52 AM

Yeah, those bloody Russian adjectival endings. I rush them, too. And German is even worse with the 'der, die, das Problem' -- articles as well as adjectives to think about.

629. Hashke - 9/28/1999 11:07:10 AM

Pseudo:

Yes, in #1548. You gained twenty yards on that end-around alone!

No, hadn't thought of Vera, N.'s wife.

630. pseudoerasmus - 9/28/1999 11:08:47 AM

Oh, no, German declensions were beaten into me at school when I was very young. My memories of childhood are replete with linguistic sadism of one kind or another.

631. pseudoerasmus - 9/28/1999 11:08:49 AM

Oh, no, German declensions were beaten into me at school when I was very young. My memories of childhood are replete with linguistic sadism of one kind or another.

632. pseudoerasmus - 9/28/1999 11:10:05 AM

Anyway, as I later discovered, German declensions are for sissies. They're nothing like those in Greek and Latin.

633. Hashke - 9/28/1999 11:15:25 AM

Quite true. What is the story with Sanscrit grammar? I want to look into it.

634. pseudoerasmus - 9/28/1999 11:15:33 AM

All I can see is na bok = Nabokov, but I thought we'd already covered that by reference to Luzhin.

635. Hashke - 9/28/1999 11:20:33 AM

Bingo!

N.'s work is full of such word play.

Puzzle:

What ridiculously common Yiddish expression refers to what ridiculously famous painting? This is a hashkean translingual special.

636. Hashke - 9/28/1999 11:28:50 AM

The 'na bok' was only substantiating. There will probably never be another opportunity to use it.

637. pseudoerasmus - 9/28/1999 11:35:02 AM

For the complete linguistic neophyte, the declensions in Sanskrit are every bit as tedious as those in Latin and Greek. For someone with Greek and Latin, they're just a matter of memory.

Actually, I find the wordplay in Nabokov excessive. You get paranoid that you might be missing some of the verbal hijinks while you're reading the text.

Ada => ardor => ax da! => Hades
Van Veen => Vladimir Vladimirovich
Van Veen => Ivan => Don Juan
Veen => ween => something Nabokov thinks he does so well!
Van and Ada => the epic of Van

638. Stumbo - 9/28/1999 11:53:44 AM

... "Ada," of course, being the answer to #622.

639. pseudoerasmus - 9/28/1999 12:00:19 PM

#625

Well, I don't know whether you're interested more in Japanese or in Chinese, but when it comes to Japanese, Japan's Ministry of Education has conveniently classified the Chinese characters used in Japanese into those to be learnt in elementary school (881 characters), those to be learnt by the end of high school (1945 characters, or Joyo Kanji), and the rest.

Trivia: The 45 out of the 1945 in the Joyo Kanji represent characters added to the original list of 1900. This was necessary because when the post-war character reform "abolished" these 45, millions of Japanese were officially deprived of their last names....

640. Hashke - 9/28/1999 1:18:48 PM

I'm actually interested in soaking up some of both. I'll probably get the book you linked to yesterday.

641. Hashke - 9/28/1999 1:24:49 PM

Mandarin gurus:

The expression 'an old hand' is, in Navajo, yee dííts'in -- he/she is hardened ripened with it. Checking my Mandarin dictionary I find shóuliàn -- ripe in practice, training?. Does this seem a suitable equivalent for English 'an old hand'?

642. Rossi - 9/28/1999 5:03:19 PM

Hashke:

"Yeah, those bloody Russian adjectival endings"

ughum!

As in " Lyudmila byla krasivEE vsekh v PedagogicheskOM Institute. Leonid lezhal na chitayushchEI gazetu Lyudmile i zheval sochnOE, zheltO-zelenOE yabloko"?

643. Hashke - 9/28/1999 7:38:05 PM

Nino:

Bozhe moi, chto eto takoe?

I left out a line of the 'tsyplyonok':

...evo poimali, arestovali, vyveli pasport yavlyavit', pasporta netu, davai gazetu, gazety net, poidyom v tyurmu...

Prompted by 'zelyoniy' which became 'zhyoltiy' which led to 'tsyplyonok', a song I often heard sung too many years ago by sozzled Russian friends of mine.

644. ProfEmeritus - 9/28/1999 8:18:54 PM

Pak hashke

I think "old hand" as a translation for shooulian (my romanization) would be a possibility but stretching it a bit. The common word for old hand is just like in English, old plus hand (lao shoou).

645. DanDillon - 9/28/1999 9:42:53 PM

Some "old hand" once taught me Tao Te Ching. I should've listened.

646. tmachine - 9/28/1999 9:44:13 PM

Lyudmila vzyala ot nevo yabloko i sama nachala zhevat'. —Slushai, ona skazala kakim-to strannym tonom. Ya beremenna.

647. Hashke - 9/28/1999 11:03:55 PM

Pak Gurubesar:

Thanks for that statement. I was interested in the similarity of the Navajo and the Mandarin expressions, both having the possibility of being translated out to the more mundane 'experienced'.

Interesting that the kanji for 'old' seems to be a person whose hair is changing color.

I hugely enjoyed your post #496 with your attestation that Mandarin can be learned within a year given the learner and the circumstances.
You proved it by doing it, but you are an unusual student of languages. Your description of your experiences in hands-on with the
language was fascinating!

I've been meaning to tell you that, but am just now getting to it.

648. tmachine - 9/29/1999 11:02:22 AM

If you haven't seen it, run out and get this week's New Yorker and read the article by Tom Reiss called "The Man from the East"--a simply fascinating story about a very larger-than-life man who (under the name Essad Bey) wrote a lot of books the best known of which is a novel called Ali and Nino, which I now must read. He was straight out of a John Buchan novel. marvelous.

649. ProfEmeritus - 9/29/1999 3:37:37 PM

Pak hashke

I learned the language so fast to avoid being cannon fodder in the Italian campaign which is where the washouts went. Thanks for the kind words.

I understand what you were trying to point out about shooulian, and I think you are right.

650. Rossi - 9/29/1999 3:55:16 PM

Hashke:
"...evo poimali, arestovali, vyveli pasport yavlyavit', pasporta netu,
davai gazetu, gazety net, poidyom v tyurmu"

That's wonderful you know such an old song :) Couple of corrections -

it's "veleli passport pred''yavit'". Notice double apostrophe - denotes "tverdyi znak", whereas a single one is the "myagkii znak".

651. Rossi - 9/29/1999 3:59:38 PM

Tmachine:

"Lyudmila vzyala ot nevo yabloko i sama nachala zhevat'. —Slushai,
ona skazala kakim-to strannym tonom. Ya beremenna."

Should be, as would be commonly used "Lyudmila ZABRALA (ili OTNYALA) u nego yabloko i stala est'(ili zhevat') ego sama"

Apart from that, don't you feel we're subconsciously plagiarizing the story of Adam & Eve? :)))

652. Hashke - 9/29/1999 4:47:12 PM

Rossi:

Thanks! Now I think I remember: 'pasport PREDyavit'...

This was many, many zakuskis ago!

Do you know all of this song, a lampoon on the Soviet system?

653. Hashke - 9/29/1999 4:50:42 PM

oops, PRED"yavit'

654. Hashke - 9/29/1999 4:52:06 PM

Adam bük, bük adam.

655. tmachine - 9/29/1999 7:38:23 PM

thanks for the fixes, Rossi. I see what you mean about Adam and Eve. but where is the snake?

656. Rossi - 9/30/1999 12:20:31 PM

tmachine:

The serpent is away on a business trip to the Isle of Man

657. Rossi - 9/30/1999 12:36:49 PM

Hashke:

Nahh, I don't know the whole song just a couple of "couplets" :)
I think the song had a Linux-like quality to it in that one could add one's own stanzas. For example:

"Tsyplyonok Hashke, pristal k Natashke
Tsyplyonok hochet s devkoi zhit'
Natashka vstala, zad pochesala
I Hashke stala govorit'

Akh, bednyi Hashka, Amerikashka
Mne tak s toboyu khorosho
No ty poimi menya, s tvoim-to imenem
U papy s mamoi budet shok"

:))

658. pseudoerasmus - 9/30/1999 8:22:59 PM

Hashke:

Earlier I asked you to guess which language this was:

And I promised you a tantalising hint. Here it is. The first six words of the above could be legitimately rewritten thus:

By the way, if the language in question had been a Caucasian language, it would have been full of bizarre additions to the Cyrillic alphabet as well as funny diacritical marks to reflect the fantastic number of phonemes in the Caucasian language family.

659. pseudoerasmus - 9/30/1999 8:24:31 PM

I'm guessing on the Arabic script transliteration according the conventions of a related language.

660. pseudoerasmus - 9/30/1999 8:26:45 PM

Rossi:

Dlya menya zagadka. Pochemu ty otvechaesh' na moi zamechaniya na ital'yanskom yazyke, a prenebregaesh' ikh na russkom yazyke? Nado pisat' lyubovnoe pis'mo tol'ko po-ital'yanski?

661. Stumbo - 9/30/1999 10:24:30 PM

Glagol "prenebregat'" -- ne perekhodnyi. Prenebregat' chem-to.

662. Stumbo - 9/30/1999 10:27:47 PM

BTW, #657 is quite well done.

663. pseudoerasmus - 9/30/1999 10:50:46 PM

really?

...a prenebregaesh' imi ...

664. Stumbo - 9/30/1999 10:59:05 PM

How much of your vacation was spent in Russia, Pseudo? I'm quite impressed, actually.

665. pseudoerasmus - 9/30/1999 11:03:41 PM

This summer I was in Russia for two months, but that was my sixth visit in five years. I don't think my Russian is any better now than before, actually.

666. Stumbo - 9/30/1999 11:20:54 PM

I don't think I saw you show it off too much, before. Like I said -- pretty damn good for an n-th language (whatever n might be).

My Russian has been holding steady, but only due to the fact that over half of my current co-workers speak it. I haven't been back there in 20 years, now.

On the other hand, I had a very humiliating experience this summer, when I dropped by Hull (long and boring story) and suddenly discovered that I could no longer speak French at a rate of more than roughly 30 words per minute (!). And it's only been 14 years since I was perfectly fluent in that.

I predict I'll be down to WM status (at least, speaking-wise) within 10 years or so. Bleah.

667. CalGal - 9/30/1999 11:23:48 PM

Lordy, are they importing Russians into Boston now, too? Things must be looking up.

668. Stumbo - 9/30/1999 11:34:42 PM

Right. So, in case of any major dispute with Russia, we'll all end up in the harbor.

The Silicon Valley companies must be importing their fair share, too, though, I would guess. (I think there are at least two daily Russian newspapers based in Calif., as a matter of fact; well, certainly at least one. But this may be more due to 3rd-wave -- i.e., '70s -- immigration.)

669. CalGal - 9/30/1999 11:38:08 PM

The Silicon Valley companies must be importing their fair share, too, though, I would guess.

Well, yes. That was, oddly enough, why I included the "too" in my sentence. We apparently exhausted India's ability to produce programmers and moved onto Russia. Definitely first wave, just off the boat. I wonder what country is next, once we increase our H1-B(?) visa limit again.

670. Hashke - 9/30/1999 11:45:54 PM

Rossi #657:

Ochen' khorosho sdelanno! Das iz geven a mekhaieh! Di emmesh shoireh. Ya khotel by ot vsevo serdtsa pozdravit' tebya s etim uspekhom, i ya tozhe by khotel podnyat' bokal za tboyo zdorov'ye!

671. Hashke - 9/30/1999 11:53:35 PM

Well, pseuder, there are large numbers of speakers of both Azerbaijani and Turkmen. Those languages are spoken and written in both Russia, Iran, and Afghanistan. I don't think that it is Uighur because it doesn't sound like the stuff on your sign, and would they use Cyrillic? I'll guess at the first two mentioned above. I have studied neither, so who nose?

Btw, what about the puzzle I gave you about the ridiculously common Yiddish expression cluing a ridiculously notorious painting?

672. Stumbo - 9/30/1999 11:53:40 PM

My company has some branch offices (I'm talking about development ones, not sales) in India, but none in Russia. Apparently, Russians can't be trusted to actually do any work unless they're over here, and being closely watched.

673. Hashke - 9/30/1999 11:56:11 PM

...BOTH Russia, Iran, and Afghanistan???

It has been a long day.

674. CalGal - 9/30/1999 11:59:31 PM

Yeah, I just finished a stint at a startup a while back, and most of the people there were Russian. Often quite bright, but much babysitting was necessary if they were new. I suppose this is due to the obvious reasons.

And yes, this was never a problem with Indians. My big complaint there was that they are all vegetarians, and it's a drag finding restaurants where we can all eat.

675. Stumbo - 10/1/1999 12:16:13 AM

Where were those British imperialists when we needed them?!

Then again, the subcontinentals were building stone high-rises while we were carving idols out of wood, so maybe not even the Brits could've helped much.

676. pseudoerasmus - 10/1/1999 5:20:39 AM

Stumbo: Are you from Hull? If you're from there or nearby, surely you've heard the joke about the taxi driver? A passenger in a hurry gets in a taxi and asks to be rushed to Hull. When the carefree driver misses the exit on the highway, the passenger cries "Tu manques Hull, tu manques Hull!"

677. pseudoerasmus - 10/1/1999 5:23:25 AM

Stumbo: V detstve nyanya byla russkaya emigrantka (po familii Lyapunov) ot Leningrada. Moy otets, kotoryy khotel provodit' opyt na mne, ckazal ey, chtoby ona co mnoy govorila tol'ko po-russki. Poetomy ya provodil massu vremeni v obschestve nyani, eyo muzha, i ikh druzey. Dazhe v pervyy raz v zhizni ya poproboval russkuyu kukhnyu y nyani (vklyuchaya to protivnoe govnetso salo). Kogda mne byli 12 let, roditeli otpraveli menya v shkoly-internat. Potom ya tak redko vidal nyanyu, chto ya nachal podzabyt' russkiy yazyk. No ya prodolzhal chitat'. Segodnya y menya khoroshiy aktsent i dovol'no bolshoy zapas slov, no nikogda ne izuchiv russkoy grammatiki, ya vsegda delayu grammaticheskie oshibki. Vo vremya pervogo posescheniya Rossii (prezhde chem obraschal' bol'she vnimaniya na grammatiky), kto-to ckazal, shto ya govoril po-russki kak negramotnyy!

678. pseudoerasmus - 10/1/1999 5:29:00 AM

Hashke: If it were Azeri or Turkmen, the passage would sound a lot like the Uighur, since all the Turkic languages are pretty close to one another.

The answer is Tajik. The giveaway is the horizontal marker on an initial alif in the Arabic version of the passage, for that's used in the Perso-Arabic script, not the Turko-Arabic script. If not, the "shash" should also have been a big clue.

A translation (improvised with my Farsi dictionary): "He thought that even though he has been studying in the city for six months, he still hasn't seen all the streets and squares."

As for your Yiddish riddle, I don't think I know a single Yiddish expression. Where would I ever have heard them?

679. pseudoerasmus - 10/1/1999 5:35:03 AM

Hmmm. I just thought of something a propos that topic which constantly rears its irrelevant head in the language thread: the increasingly frequent use of the third person plural pronoun in colloquial English to refer to an indefinite noun ("everybody") or even a singular common noun. Such as I did above. (Where would I have heard them [a Yiddish expression]?") I think I understand why it happens: the "them" is standing in for some kind of indefinite reference pronoun, like the French "en" or Italian "ne". If the reference had been "the Yiddish expression", I would surely have used the pronoun "it". But because the indefinite pronoun was used, I unconsciously groped for the English equivalent of "en" or "ne".

680. pellenilsson - 10/1/1999 5:35:10 AM

Hashke

Time for a Scandinavian exercise. This is Danish, a quote from Søren Kierkegaard:

Schopenhauer er charmerende, fortræffelig, uforlignelig i sin rammende Grovhed.

What is your think? (As a Jordanian colleague used to say.)

681. pseudoerasmus - 10/1/1999 5:36:40 AM

The languages that are or have been written in all three Roman, Cyrillic and modified Arabic scripts include:

Tajik
Azerbaijani (which also uses Roman)
Uzbekh
Uighur (which also uses Roman)
Turkmen (which also uses Roman)
Kirghiz

I don't think Kazakh was ever a written language before the Russians rounded up the nomads from the steppe.

Trivia question: name two European languages that have been written extensively in the Arabic script.

682. RustlerPike - 10/1/1999 5:54:20 AM

Hashke:

nu - to Hopper's "New York Deli"?

geh shlufen - to Picasso's "Guernica"?

meshiginer - to Turner's "Lake Michigan"?

alte kaker - to Warhol's portrait of Elvis?

683. RustlerPike - 10/1/1999 6:00:48 AM

a shikse - the Mona Lisa?

drei mir nisht im kopf -Pollocks #137?

potz - Van Gogh's "Flowers in a Pot"?

goyim - "American Gothic"?

684. pellenilsson - 10/1/1999 6:28:15 AM

PE

I would guess Spanish and the Sicilian variant of Italian.

685. DanDillon - 10/1/1999 8:38:23 AM

pe #679
In your unconscious groping, you skipped right over the very likely possibility of "Where would I ever have heard one [a Yiddish expression]?"

686. pseudoerasmus - 10/1/1999 9:37:28 AM

Pelle: Spanish (or Mozarabic, which was basically Spanish) is correct. Sicilian is wrong. I can't believe you haven't gotten the other one.

Dillon: Oops! My example was wrong, but I think the principle may still be right.

687. Ronski - 10/1/1999 9:42:12 AM

Albanian?

688. pseudoerasmus - 10/1/1999 9:46:22 AM

Well, while I'm sure someone managed to write some Albanian in the Turko-Arabic script, I don't think the language had produced much writing before the 20th century -- when it was written in Roman characters.

689. Hashke - 10/1/1999 10:06:59 AM

pseuder:

Very interesting. I don't think I know a single Tajik expression. How would I ever have known them?

Your account in #677 reminds me of yet another verse from Onegin. What might it be?

You should do all Russian in Cyrillic now that you have the capability. Saves one the eye strain of reading the lumpy romanization.

690. Rossi - 10/1/1999 10:10:49 AM

Hashke:
Thank you. Eto bylo napisano tebe na pamyat' :)

691. Rossi - 10/1/1999 10:12:31 AM

pseudo:

Mozhno konechno pisat' lyubovnye pis'ma i po-russki, no u menya net privychki pisat' lyubovnye pis'ma mal'chikam :)

692. Rossi - 10/1/1999 10:12:39 AM

pseudo:

Mozhno konechno pisat' lyubovnye pis'ma i po-russki, no u menya net privychki pisat' lyubovnye pis'ma mal'chikam :)

693. pseudoerasmus - 10/1/1999 10:13:12 AM

Hashke: I was thinking that Tajik, as a variant of Persian, would have contained some IE and Arabic cognates you might have recognised.

I really don't know what verse you might be thinking of from Onegin.

Well, if some of you had Cyrillic fonts installed, I might do that. Otherwise, it's too tedious to write anything more than a sentence and capture it as a graphic image.

694. Hashke - 10/1/1999 10:14:21 AM

pelle:

I think I grasp the meaning at first glance, but only a guess. The only word that is really unfamiliar is 'uforignelig'. 'Schopenhauer is charming, excellent, unforgettable(?), in his striking coarseness'.

Kierkegaard was the name of the balloon which crash-landed with a careless pilot and me and was totalled. We were unscathed.

You want more 'think', or does that do it? I'm sure that my version is somewhat off track.

695. Hashke - 10/1/1999 10:15:41 AM

Rustler:

Those are hilariously ingenious -- as usual! Clue: the painting is Spanish.

696. DanDillon - 10/1/1999 10:17:10 AM

pe,
I've been trying to extract from your post the principle you highlight but have run into a considerable amount of difficulty. Not as eay as it first seems. (Perhaps I'm trying too hard, either failing to recognize its simplicity or to simultaneously couple it with other known generative rules.) I was able to get only as far as the notion that an indefinite pronoun (or "some kind of indefinite reference pronoun") is replaceable by the third person object pronoun. Is that it? Would you kindly explain it further or differently if I've completely missed the mark? I'd like to discuss it.

All,
There are certain problems with English grammar that seem simply insurmountable. For instance, can anyone break these two sentences down into their functional constituent parts? In other words, what function does each word or phrase play in each individual sentence? Transformational grammar attempts to reconcile these differences.

Nell is easy to please.
Nell is eager to please.

While the difference in meaning between them is apparent, the lexical/syntactic relationship that begets those meanings is not.

697. Rossi - 10/1/1999 10:22:59 AM

CalGal:

I'd lived in the Boston area for 20 years. The number of Russians in Eastern Mass. grew from about 12,000 to about 40,000, during
1988-96. I'll bet it's at least 50,000-60,000 now.
Route 128 and beyond is filled with Russian programmers.

The need to baby them stems from their partially socialist, partially ethnic work habits. It is generally difficult for a Russian to be like robotic-electrified Americans on the job. But when necessary, and if he likes you, a Russian is likely to give you his body and soul - something Americans would never do. On the other hand, it seems stupid to "rvat' zhopu" (to bust one's ass) to fulfill someone's dreams of riches. When these dreams of riches don't pan out, or when there's a need to slim down, the would-be-entrepreneur wouldn't give a rat's ass about firing his Russian or any other programmers, many of whom have familues to feed.

698. Rossi - 10/1/1999 10:27:09 AM

Rustler Pike:

I'll betcha you're from Ukraine or thereabouts. Your Yiddish is definitely South Ukrainian. Especially "meshIginer" and "pOtz".
And its "alter kaker". "alte" is pronounced by Americans (which confuses me - I thought you were speaking Ukarainian Yiddish before)

699. Rossi - 10/1/1999 10:27:10 AM

700. Hashke - 10/1/1999 10:46:53 AM

pseudo:

Sud'ba Evgeniya xranila:
Sperva Madame za nim khodila,
Potom Monsieur yeyo smenil.
Rebyonok byl rezov, no mil.

Monsierur L'Abbé frantsuz ybogii,
Chtob ne izmuchilos' ditya,
Uchil evo vsemy shutya
Ne dokuchal moral'yu strogoi,
Slegka za shalosti branil
I v Letnii sad gulyat' vodil.

701. tmachine - 10/1/1999 11:07:24 AM

pe: re your message 679: but in the context, you could very well have said "any" or "one" and made your meaning perfectly clear. it seems to me that the commoner problem with words like "everybody" is the natural desire to use "them" or "they" as corresponding pronouns (instead of "he," "one," or "he or she").

on Tuesday I'm starting a Yiddish course!!! I've been bashing my brain out trying to figure out the Spanish painting riddle to absolutely no avail.

Las Meninas--mamaloschen?

702. Rossi - 10/1/1999 12:11:50 PM

Hashke:

I had goosebumps while reading your Onegin stanzas.
Pushkin is a genius beyond any other. What cadence and especially the beautifuly clean endings the stanzas. Unbelievable.

703. tmachine - 10/1/1999 1:40:47 PM

Lyublyu tebya, petra tvoren'e, / lyublyu tvoi strogii, stroinyi vid, / Nevy derzhavnoe techenie / beregovoi yeyo granit

from Mednyi Vsadnik, the first Pushkin poem I ever read. The astounding thing is going to P'burg and realizing that one can actually look at the same granite and river he saw.

704. CalGal - 10/1/1999 2:25:04 PM

Rossi,

The need to baby them stems from their partially socialist, partially ethnic work habits.

Yes, that's what I meant by "the obvious".

But when necessary, and if he likes you, a Russian is likely to give you his body and soul - something Americans would never do.On the other hand, it seems stupid to "rvat' zhopu" (to bust one's ass) to fulfill someone's dreams of riches. When these dreams of riches don't pan out, or when there's a need to slim down, the would-be-entrepreneur wouldn't give a rat's ass about firing his Russian or any other programmers, many of whom have familues to feed.

I don't know about Americans as a whole, but since we are speaking of a specific industry (high tech), your comment illustrates many of the reasons why Russians don't seem to be integrating successfully.

High tech people don't, in general, care about "liking". We expect to bust our ass to fulfill "our" dreams of riches-the fact that other people get rich is just incidental. And yes, we expect to fire or get get fired when things go badly. Despite our families. There is always another job.

I imagine jobs and work have different expectations in Russia? They aren't catching on too quickly.

Indians tend to work out much better--their attitudes seem closer to ours. I've noticed a number of startups that are headed by Indians and staffed almost entirely by H1-B(?) workers. (I always forget the exact letters of that visa.) Exodus is a prime example.

This should be interesting to watch in the next few years. BTW, this really isn't language related. Apologies to Irv. If you have any other comments, I suppose Sci/Tech? Or Current Events.

705. tmachine - 10/1/1999 3:25:43 PM

re Russians giving you their body and soul: I've also found the converse, which is that Russians can be deeply hurt--to the point of breaking off a friendship--if they feel that you were in a position where you should have given THEM body and soul and did not. In general, serious friendships with Russians are serious business

706. Hashke - 10/1/1999 4:00:27 PM

tmachine:

Congratulations on the Yiddish course? What text will you use?

Your 'mame-loshen' is very funny, but not the answer. Another clue:
One of the words in the Yiddish is 'nakhes'.

707. Rossi - 10/1/1999 4:15:28 PM

tmachine:
very true, albeit not with the Russians who've lived in the US for a while. They un-learn about friendships here. Friendship has a different meaning in the US, as we know.

708. CalGal - 10/1/1999 4:18:51 PM

I don't know if Americans have a different meaning for friendship. I just think we have more categories.

709. pseudoerasmus - 10/1/1999 4:23:43 PM

Tmachine: This July, Moscow experienced a little media brouhaha over the question, are Russians valuing friendship less? TV talk shows and newspaper columnists were agog for a whole week on this question, with guest experts and "social critics" and other babblers with a flair the French call médiatique.

710. tmachine - 10/1/1999 4:28:45 PM

rossi:

I think you're right. there's an allusion to that (albeit in reference to the French) in a piece by Adam Gopnik in the New Yorker this week. he talks about the fact that relationships in France are unavoidable, and you have to spend a lot of time each day just maintaining politeness with everyone from the dry cleaner to café waiters, and canceling a lunch at the last minute, which no one thinks anything much of in New York, would be a matter of painful diplomacy in Paris. This isn't quite the same thing as the Russian friendships we're talking about--but the American attitude that he's talking about, the attitude to how to be friends, is definitely the same

711. Rossi - 10/1/1999 4:28:53 PM

Cal Gal:

Yeah, more categories, like in a supermarket. The whole of American life is structured like a supermarket.
With all due respect, vast majority o Americans have no idea what real friendship is.

712. tmachine - 10/1/1999 4:32:21 PM

hashke: I don't know what the text is--will find out tuesday night. now i'm trying to figure out how nakhes could sound Spanish

713. tmachine - 10/1/1999 4:37:14 PM

pe: that's interesting. it has occurred to me to wonder whether the end of living under totalitarianism might have a parallel effect on Russians' behavior to its impact on Russian literature--which for a while at least has gone through a sort of empty, directionless phase, so conditioned until now to existing under repression and reacting to it. many of my strong friendships in Russia were conducted under at least a vague threat of danger.

714. CalGal - 10/1/1999 4:38:53 PM

With all due respect, vast majority o Americans have no idea what real friendship is.

Apparently very little respect is due. But we make far better programmers.

Really, one would think that those deep, European, emotional entanglements would easily win out over our shallow and facile relationships. And yet you say that immigrants who leave their homelands for our hostile and unfriendly shores end up adopting our ways?

I wish they'd adopt our work ethic while they were at it.

715. Hashke - 10/1/1999 5:14:05 PM

tmachine:

The painting is Spanish. The puzzle is trilingual, so 'nakhes' might be a near-homophone in another language. Oi vei!

716. stostosto - 10/1/1999 5:27:45 PM

hashke #680

Schopenhauer er charmerende, fortræffelig, uforlignelig i sin rammende Grovhed.

I am hurt. Hurt. Deeply. How can you ask Pelle this???

717. Hashke - 10/1/1999 5:31:27 PM

stosto:

Nonono! Read back again. Pelle asked ME! I based my answer on the Swedish and Norwegian I know. I am ignorant of Danish. Did I come close?

718. stostosto - 10/1/1999 5:35:55 PM

hashke:

Schopenhauer er charmerende, fortræffelig, uforlignelig i sin rammende Grovhed.

'Schopenhauer is charming, excellent, unforgettable(?), in his striking coarseness'.

'...charming, excellent (admirable), incomparable, in his striking (pertinent, incisive) coarseness (rudeness).'

719. stostosto - 10/1/1999 5:40:50 PM

Yes, hashke, you came very close as you can see. (And, yes, I cheated, using a dictionary).

Oh, and Pelle asked you. Sorry.

I was aware that he brought a Schopenhauer biography with him to Mozambique (the weirdo), as he let us know this in his Maputo thread. But is it a biography written by Kierkegaard? Or does it simply quote Kierkegaard - in Danish?

720. Hashke - 10/1/1999 7:04:23 PM

stostosto:

Pelle just threw that one into the pot and mysteriously disappeared. You really know as much about it all as I do. The Kierkegaard that I knew was devoured by a tree. Very existential.

721. pellenilsson - 10/2/1999 2:19:10 AM

Hashke -- #694

uforlignelig = uncomparable, matchless.

Kierkegaard liked S. because the latter was very rude about Hegel and his philosophy.

722. pellenilsson - 10/2/1999 2:26:46 AM

Hashke and sto

My above was posted before I saw your later posts. I used 'uncomparable', sto 'incomparable'. Are both correct?

The Kierkegaard cite turned up in a discussion about Schopenhauer's influence on later philosophers.

723. Nostradamus - 10/2/1999 2:46:59 AM

Is self-masturbatory redundant? I saw Cal use it in Spiritual Issues earlier this week.

724. CalGal - 10/2/1999 3:04:42 AM

Actually, it was this morning. Your thread isn't moving that slowly. And yes, it is redundant, although that was just a happy accident. Elliot had thrown several adjectives at me and I accordioned them back at him. See his post right before mine.

725. Stumbo - 10/2/1999 3:11:08 AM

Pseudo, #676:

Did you just make that up on the spot? If so, not bad. But I've always heard the Québecois pronounce it "olle," not "ulle."

726. pseudoerasmus - 10/2/1999 4:54:03 PM

The Yakuza strikes?

727. marjoribanks - 10/2/1999 4:57:08 PM

Pelle,

There's no such word as "uncomparable." Sto's version is correct.

728. Hashke - 10/2/1999 9:50:51 PM

pelle:

It is good to see that Danish on the screen! I have heard that S. and Hegel did haggle a great deal. And Hegel was a hail fellow well met, according to my sources.

So you took along that tome to Maputo for a little light reading against the cigarettes running short and wearing real shoes to dinner?

729. pseudoerasmus - 10/3/1999 12:26:17 AM

Here's a map which should put a smile on Irving's face even on a day Bali might be burning:

730. IrvingSnodgrass - 10/3/1999 12:53:20 AM

PE:
Great map... where did you find it? It does indeed bring a smile to my face, although the only thing burning in Bali is the sun, which is vicious today.

731. Hashke - 10/3/1999 1:37:42 PM

Rossi:

The whole of American life is structured like a supermarket.

You mean we just go through life aisling away our time among the cereal criminals, suffering short shelf-life, being milked out of our moolah at the final check-out?

732. Hashke - 10/3/1999 1:41:44 PM

tmachine, Pike, et al:

Okay, another clue in the 'nakhes' affair. The super ridiculously common Yiddish expression is 'goyishe nakhes'.

Perhaps pelle could throw the spectacular painting onto this thread.

733. pseudoerasmus - 10/3/1999 1:47:43 PM

The Naked Maja?

734. Hashke - 10/3/1999 1:54:09 PM

pseuder:

Yes, La Maja Desnuda. I gnu you would get it sooner or later.

But what exactly is the word play involved?

735. pseudoerasmus - 10/3/1999 2:10:20 PM

Where on earth do you live that "goyishe nakhes" is a "super ridiculously common expression"?

I thought the wordplay was on "naked" and "nakhes". I have no idea what the latter means.

736. Hashke - 10/3/1999 2:11:25 PM

My post at 11:54 does not show up in the Language heading.

737. Hashke - 10/3/1999 2:17:13 PM

Damn, pseuder, I've heard it most of my life -- in eastern environments, in Europe, even out here in the glush'.

'Naches' means 'pleasures, delights'. 'Goyishe nakhes' -- 'gentile pleasures'.

No, not 'naked'. That's a bit too remote in terms of homophony.

Take it from there, kawanku.

738. pseudoerasmus - 10/3/1999 2:20:39 PM

739. marjoribanks - 10/3/1999 2:30:47 PM

Pak Hashke,

I prefer to think that you meant 'nakhes'= knockers.

Goyish knockers. It's perfect.

740. marjoribanks - 10/3/1999 2:32:42 PM

Or Goya-ish knockers, that's a pun I can embrace.

741. marjoribanks - 10/3/1999 2:41:52 PM

Pak Hashke,

You'd have to be a boob not to figure that out. Make a clean breast about that phrase.

742. IrvingSnodgrass - 10/3/1999 2:58:46 PM

PE:
Nice photo of the mosque. You can reduce the large size of the file in a photo editor (the easiest I've found is Graphic Converter). Even keeping the high resolution (300 dpi), it can be reduced quite a bit:

743. IrvingSnodgrass - 10/3/1999 3:00:08 PM

My version is 65k, as opposed to the 346k original.

744. Hashke - 10/3/1999 3:04:36 PM

Pak marj:

Great! Right on with Goya's knockers, Goya-ish knockers! I thought the puzzle would be a real teat, but it was more like pulling teeth.

745. Hashke - 10/3/1999 3:07:54 PM

pseudo:

Wow, what a gorgeous shot of the dome!

Btw, is it your beautiful wide-body map that is screwing up my Language screen? It's bleeding from both flanks and the 'Home' and 'Go to top' commands have disappeared.

746. pseudoerasmus - 10/3/1999 3:13:47 PM

Hashke: A trilingual pun riddle. (I enjoy making them up more than answering them....)

Where in Europe does Cinderella look after big cats?

747. Hashke - 10/3/1999 3:16:25 PM

Also, all of the links are gone from this page. Anybody else have the same problem?

748. pseudoerasmus - 10/3/1999 3:18:53 PM

I've deleted the Austronesian map, so that Hashke's problem would be solved.

749. pseudoerasmus - 10/3/1999 3:19:16 PM

I've deleted the Austronesian map, so that Hashke's problem would be solved.

750. Hashke - 10/3/1999 3:25:39 PM

pseuder:

Probably Italy -- and the big cats refer to the poet Leopardi -- non è vero?

751. Hashke - 10/3/1999 3:27:39 PM

Thanks for the double deletion.

I enjoy making up the puzzles more than solving, too. The 'nakhes' bit was an original hashke.

752. pseudoerasmus - 10/3/1999 3:27:44 PM

Sorry. This riddle works more like my Dar-es-Salaam puzzle that kept you awake half the night!

753. pseudoerasmus - 10/3/1999 3:28:24 PM

But it's not a pseudo-contrepètrie.

754. Hashke - 10/3/1999 10:32:03 PM

Your big cats riddle is causing some chatgrin. Any tantalizing hints?

Gato go now. Koshka later.

755. pseudoerasmus - 10/3/1999 11:24:01 PM

OK, a hint. Although I called it a trilingual pun, you could actually solve the riddle using a single language. Just think of a way of saying "look after a big cat" in a Romance language. The source of the superfluous pun in the other two languages should then become obvious.

756. Rossi - 10/4/1999 12:23:30 PM

Cal Gal:

Adopting "your ways" as a cold necessity. Your work ethic cannot be adopted without a cultural transformation. Because of America being not a country but one vast business entity, social relations have necessarily been modified, discarded, or otherwise culturally transformed so as not to impede the real business of this country, which, as we all know, is business.

Virtually every adult immigrant is a cultural schizophrenic for the rest of his life. You, ought to exercise more humility, for had immigrants to the US known what this is REALLY like, I'll bet more than half wouldn't have come. Blame, American propaganda and myths about its "standard of living". Secondly, if you allow so many immigrants in then you probably have the economic necessity and, I suspect, the need to maintain your illusion of superiority. Be thankful that they come and do your dirty work to begin with. You can shove your "work ethic" you know where.

757. Rossi - 10/4/1999 12:27:25 PM

Hashke:
There's a nice Yiddishism among Jewish men professing an above-average levels of virility.

" A giter tukhes ist oitzer nakhes"

Need translation ? :)

758. marjoribanks - 10/4/1999 12:37:12 PM

Rossi,

I tend to agree with some of the substance of your remarks on immigrants in the US. I first came here at 13, by the way.

But I can't really fathom the vehemence of your unhappiness. We leave some things behind when we migrate, many good and some bad. It's impossible to retain everything we miss, and even more impossible to shape the realities here into something they are not. I do not think that virtually every adult immigrant is a "cultural schizophrenic", or if he/she is there are huge variances from person to person. To some, this schizophrenia is debilitating and anguished. To the majority, I'd say, it is a shadow in the back of the mind which only emerges under very few circumstances to bemuse/amuse.

I also firmly disagree that " had immigrants to the US known what this is REALLY like, I'll bet more than half wouldn't have come." This may have been the case a century or more ago. But it is not the case now. First of all, information, realistic information, about the US is now widely available to would-be immigrants. Secondly, word of mouth plays a strong role in the decision of most immigrants to the US even today. This word-of-mouth information is generally reliable and comes from family members or community members.

But most importantly, I don't think this country is that bad for immigrants in general, and migration is particularly not as wrenching as you make it out to be for immigrants who retain/maintain strong community/ethnic ties to their homelands and the other members of their migrant community. So, they reap the economic benefits and educational opportunities available in this new home, and many of the benefits of understanding, support and comradeship they had back home.

759. marjoribanks - 10/4/1999 12:57:57 PM

The thing most sorely lacking for most immigrants, I think, is comprehension of their identities/background/history from Americans in general. It gets extremely wearying to have to explain everything to everybody. I tried, in my first flush of emigrant enthusiasm, to do just that. But it's fruitless and thankless, and doesn't work in the first place. So this is where the "cultural schizophrenia" comes in.

760. Rossi - 10/4/1999 2:16:21 PM

761. pseudoerasmus - 10/4/1999 2:17:41 PM

Hashke: The pun in question is Italian-French-Russian.

762. CalGal - 10/4/1999 2:18:52 PM

Rossi,

It is entirely possible that your post contains the silliest series of statements I've yet seen here in the Mote. Hardly worth bothering with, really.

On the plus side, I am immensely cheered. You are more incoherent than I am! PseudoErasmus, take note.

763. Rossi - 10/4/1999 2:19:35 PM

OOOOPS?

764. marjoribanks - 10/4/1999 2:46:51 PM

I don't find Rossi's now-repeated post in the least bit incoherent.

765. Rossi - 10/4/1999 2:50:59 PM

marjoribanks:

I disagree that today reliable information is available to would-be emigrants. For one thing, the US is unlike any other country in the world, in terms of social life. Another thing is there are about 58 different USAs, with contained in the USA. Thirdly, this country is rigidly separated, physically and culturally, by economic classes. So, perceptions of a 32 y.o. Indian programmer who came here with money and nearly perfect English, and lives in Princeton, NJ is quite different to that of a 55 y.o. Russian classical musician who ekes out a miserable living, performing for Brighton Beach mafiosi wannabes.

Both write letters home and both might as well be writing about different planets. So, the letters, it turns out, are not very reliable source of information. Neither is American propaganda machine, via books, radio, and TV. Because of narrow segmentation of all aspects of American life - you will never get a coherent picture of life or work here. The country has no single face or code of values, other than those that promote the cycle of "hard work" and accumulation of stuff.

In Poland, the dark term "exploitation" for example, evoked visions of workers chained to their sewing machines - none of that was found here. Coming from a fairly developed, educated European country, it's difficult to be happy and quite content i the US.

But if you just try to regain part of what you've lost of your old country in Europe -forget your American ambitions for a minute - you often quickly find that what's was normal and readily available "there" is considered quite special and expensive here and has been "appropriated" for the "elite", to which, of course, you don't
belong. If you're content to compare, for the rest of your life, your state with that of hundreds of millions starving people all over the world then, of course, America is quite an improvement.

766. marjoribanks - 10/4/1999 3:06:50 PM

Rossi,

Again, I find a lot of sense in what you are saying.

On the other hand, I cant really agree with " the US is unlike any other country in the world, in terms of social life". Superficially this is true, but the cycle of extremely hard work for seemingly minimal reward is the lot of most people in most countries. Think of Japan, let alone most developing countries.

I also am not sure whether too many people come to this country any more with illusions. At least, very very few people I know do. The vast majority are well informed, and are making the difficult and sometimes painful decision to migrate after carefully assessing the costs and the benefits from this fairly drastic move.

"Coming from a fairly developed, educated European country, it's difficult to be happy and quite content i the US."

That's probably quite true. I'm married to someone who grew up in the UK and she and her family and expat-friends here gripe unceasingly and annoyingly vociferously. But then, why is this city packed to the gills with Europeans? They're giving up some things, but surely they are doing so voluntarily, with the prospect of gaining other things?

"you often quickly find that what's was normal and readily available "there" is considered quite special and expensive here and has been "appropriated" for the "elite", to which, of course, you don't
belong."

Interesting. But what are these things? I can only think of, maybe, country houses. But surely the relative lack of availability of these is counteracted by ease and afforadability of travel internally and externally.

767. pseudoerasmus - 10/4/1999 3:16:49 PM

"Think of Japan, let alone most developing countries."

That is the lot of Japanese salarymen, mid-level executives, not of the entire populace.

768. Rossi - 10/4/1999 3:35:42 PM

marjoriebanks:

"Interesting. But what are these things? I can only think of, maybe, country houses"

OK, here's my , very partial list:

secluded beaches
safe, affordable day care centers
quality education
clean, civilized cities
opera/ballet
unlimited healthcare
well-designed clothes from places other than China or Malaysia.
families with kids promenading on the streets
dating beautiful women
spontanneous picnics, hikes, fishing and forest fires with friends
(if you do the above you'll wind up as tresspassers of someone's "private property"
tasty, all natural fruits & vegetables
tasty, hormone and chemical-free meat
unplanned visits of or with friends and neighbors
ability to just approach a woman on the street, start talking and, hope to get her interested in you (in America, you're likely to get arrested for harassment for this)
Owning a roof over one's head - in America it's not an "inalienable" right.

Lemme think of more, later

769. marjoribanks - 10/4/1999 3:36:56 PM

The point I was making is, surely most Japanese who live in cities (and Rossi is always talking about urbanites really) do not enjoy a "lifestyle" superior (by Rossi's criteria) to most urbanites in the USA. Hard work, long hours, rat-race pressures, less than ideal family life, cramped housing, no less of an obsession with accumulating "stuff", the exact same kind of barrage of commercial come-ons, etc. Not to mention the fact that migrants to that country are likely to be even more alienated from the mainstream as immigrants in the USA.

770. marjoribanks - 10/4/1999 3:57:47 PM

Rossi,

A nice list of some of the pleasures in life. But surely most of them are just as available if not more available in this country than any European country you'd care to name. I'll take the UK as a particular example.

1)secluded beaches - USA wins, if only because the coastline is so huge. Have you been to Maine, or the Carolinas?
2)safe, affordable day care centers - I've yet to find a country where this is available widely. Certainly not the UK. draw.
3) quality education - draw, perhaps edge to the USA because it's more accessible
4)clean, civilized cities - judgement call. US cities are generally very clean, the civilized bit is up to taste.
5)opera/ballet - NYC beats all comers. There are more top-notch orchestras in this country (not opera/ballet I know) than any other.
6)unlimited healthcare - edge to Europe, no doubt.
7) well-designed clothes from places other than China or Malaysia- come on Rossi. Have you shopped in France or the UK recently? The USA is at least on par in styles available, and wins on prices.
8)families with kids promenading on the streets- eh, this one is a draw. Family "outings" in the USA tend to be focussed on certain things only.
9) dating beautiful women - draw, IMO. It's always equally easy/difficult, except of course in Brazil where it's almost compulsory.
10) spontaneous picnics, hikes, fishing and forest fires with friends - draw. except for the forest fire stuff which is a crime. The National Parks are one of the finest features of this country, btw.

771. marjoribanks - 10/4/1999 3:58:21 PM

11)tasty, all natural fruits & vegetables - Europe in general wins on this one. These are available here but you have to look and then pay a premium. Have you been to the Union Sq Greenmarket btw?
12)tasty, hormone and chemical-free meat - see above.
13)unplanned visits of or with friends and neighbors - not American, it's true. Some people like it that way, though.
14)ability to just approach a woman on the street, start talking and, hope to get her interested in you (in America, you're likely to get arrested for harassment for this) - Nino, while you put it in a charming way, it's easier to pick up women in the USA (IMO) than in virtually any other country.
15)Owning a roof over one's head - in America it's not an "inalienable" right - Yet more Americans own their houses/residences than any other country I can think of off-hand. Where, by the way, is it an established "inalienable right"?

772. Rossi - 10/4/1999 3:59:26 PM

marjoribanks:

My criteria for material comfort are simple: a large enough, light space of my own, with enough room for a family of 4 and occasional visitors and entertainment of guests. Located in a relatively safe environment,
and surrounded with a sufficient number of trees and manageable amount of noise. This is only a part of high quality life, as i understand it. Is this too much to ask? Why can't I just work and be able to live like this? Why do I have to get into a 30 -year morgage cabal of buying an oversize doghouse - American style home, somewhere in the boonies, and waste my free time on driving back and forth, mowing the lawn and removing dead raccoons? This is the "American Dream"??? PFFFT!!!

The rest of high quality life is composed of entirely something else.
Keep your Ford Explorer and your lawn mower and give me a library of 2,000 books stacked into 12 beautiful, birchwood bookcases reaching all the way to the ceiling, and occupying an entire room.
Youknowwhatahmean?

773. marjoribanks - 10/4/1999 4:10:03 PM

Rossi,

Who's holding you back from living exactly as you put it above? However, homeownership does come with some responsibilities. If you don't want to mow your lawn, do what most everyone else does - pay a Mexican or some Central American to do it. The space you describe, the shelves you describe, even the books you describe are all cheaper here, and probably more easily available too.

I don't get it. Where is it easier to get exactly what you want than in these USA?

774. Rossi - 10/4/1999 4:49:07 PM

marjoriebanks:

Everytime I wound up on a beach it's either pay for parking and spit sand from some kids feet out of your mouth all day long, or get
chased away from some guy's private beach. Been from Maine to Florida and found far fewer acceptable beaches than in tiny Israel.
Besides what does it mean, "private beach"???? It's G-d's creation for all, aint it?

day care centers: free or nominal fee, safe and very well supervised.
Available in Germany, Switzerland, all of Scandinavia, Benelux countries. Was universally available in the former Eastern Bloc.

Quality education is rare and expensive. I don't know what you mean by quality, perhaps education expenditures per capita in a given community, but if you observed today's American high school kids, you would've understood that they're unable to make simple calculations in their head, take percentages, manipulate fractions - all the 3d grade stuff in any European school. When I calculate for them 8.25% New York tax in my head, they're absolutely amazed.

clean & civilized cities. C'mon your assertion about US cities borders on disingenuous :))

opera/ballet/classical concert - whan was the last time you were able to get decent tickets in NYC for quality performers, for less than $120/per???
Well, I don't buy Mozart's Greatest Hits for $9.99 and I don't attend just any classical performance. It matters to me whether it's Chile National Symphony with a Gonzales conducting or Boston Symphony with Ozawa. Trust me, if it's worth hearing - it's beyond reach of most.

well-designed clothes. Paris is expensive, true, yet everyone's ellegant and cool. I found great threads throughout Europe. I try to buy as much as possible in Italy and Israel -beautifuly designed, well-made and inexpensive clothing. 3 yers ago I bought a shearling in Edinburgh for $400, which would cost in US at least $2,000.

So, we disagree again :)

775. Rossi - 10/4/1999 4:58:35 PM

marjoriebanks:

I DON'T WANT to mow the goddamn lawn, I like tall grass.
Responsibilities to whom? My neighbors? they don't know my name. They won't give a rat's ass about me because I'm weird - I don't own a basketball ring above the garage, just a bunch of books. This is MY property, I paid MY money for it, I should be able to grow a jungle on it, if I want to.

Besides, to own a large enough space in any half-decent city in the US, safe enough for a normal family of four - we're talking about $2-3 million, we're talknig about another $25,000 in taxes and maintenance, we're talking about another $10-$15K/year to send a
kid to a half-decent school. We're talking about a serious executive-level income - hardly a province of the majority in the US.

Alternatives: move to Palookaville, TN???

776. pseudoerasmus - 10/4/1999 6:00:29 PM

Marzipranks:

Your take on (5) -- opera, ballet & classical music -- is nonsense. New York classical music performances are expensive and second-rate, if less bound to tradition than in Europe. In Europe, especially Germany and Austria, musical fare is cheap and of very very high quality.

Your assertion on (15) is false also -- the Americans do NOT have the highest homeownership rates in the world. That's just myth.

777. pseudoerasmus - 10/4/1999 6:02:32 PM

Rossi, you said somewhere that you have lived in the USA for 25 years? Surely you must have the option to move. Why haven't you? I ask this question not in the hostile way the Americans generally ask critics of the USA, but out of genuine puzzlement. I don't plan on being in the USA any longer than it takes to get my degree.

778. marjoribanks - 10/4/1999 6:20:13 PM

Well, I'm no diligent fan of opera/ballet or Western classical music. I haven't seen the any of them live since my mother dragged me to one performance of each annually, and that was when I was a teenager. Opera in Central Park I like, but that's perhaps only because I can wear shorts, drink beer, and get in free.

But this argument is getting a bit silly. First we're talking about 'Europe vesrus America' and now it's the best of individual countries versus the whole USA. Maybe two cities in Austria provide superior Western classical stuff than NYC. Maybe Switzerland has better health coverage. I think the premise is starting to become unfair and unrealistic because you're comparing these pockets of Europe to the whole of the US.

BTW, if you're talking about music in general, especially the things I like like jazz, L. American music of all types, reggae and even Indian classical music, the variety of high-quality options on a day to day basis is staggering and easily accessible. Most certainly in NYC this musical fare is "cheap and of very very high quality." I've lived and pursued these tastes in Paris, London and to a lesser extent, Rome. NYC's offerings, in quality and variety, are exponentially superior to these cities. I do grant that, in turn, the radio stations in these cities are far superior to those in this city and country.

On homeownership, please tell us the global figures. I last saw them years ago. I also didn't make the outright statement that the USA has the highest rate. I said I couldn't think of any country with higher numbers offhand.

779. pseudoerasmus - 10/4/1999 6:30:21 PM

#778

I'm not interceding in the larger argument between you and Rossi. I'm just commenting on what I know first-hand about the availability of high-quality, cheap performances of classical music in certain countries.

"Maybe two cities in Austria provide superior Western classical stuff than NYC."

Nonsense. Total nonsense. Virtually every city in Germany, Austria and Switzerland offers high-quality subsidised musical performances. The average far surpasses the offerings at BAM and leaves the Stalinist Mausoleum called Lincoln Centre in the dust.

As for homeownership rates, I have them tucked away on my HD somewhere, but I have to look harder. At least six European countries have higher homeownership rates than the USA. The sq. footage owned is much lower than in the USA, however.

780. Hashke - 10/4/1999 7:26:46 PM

pseuder:

prender cura d'un gatto grosso
curare un gatto grande
occuparsi d'una gatta grossa
badare a un gattopardo (leone, etc.)
sorvegliare un gatto ampio
custodire d'un gatto enorme

Sorry, no bells are ringing -- except in my ears. I am making no connections here. Main kop iz a pustoye mesto.

I'm dying to know the solution -- and it had better be good, kawanku.

781. pseudoerasmus - 10/4/1999 7:37:45 PM

The riddle: "Where in Europe does Cinderella look after big cats?"

Cinderella = little ash or cinder (viz. Aschenputtel)
gar' = char or ash (Russian)
garder des lions => look after lions

Thus, Gare de Lyon, a train station in Paris.

782. Hashke - 10/4/1999 8:02:15 PM

Yob tvoyu...!

That WAS good!

I made an ash of myself.

783. alistairconnor - 10/4/1999 9:19:12 PM

This "Being an immigrant" theme deserves a thread of its own. I'm an immigrant myself (though temporarily expatriated to my country of origin), and I've often wondered, not what draws people to the USA, but what keeps them there...

784. DanDillon - 10/4/1999 10:00:14 PM

This "Being an immigrant" theme deserves a thread of its own.

Yes. Perhaps a subthread in Int'l. Call it The American Ream. Whatever it becomes, move it quickly, so we can return to the business and pleasure of language.

785. marjoribanks - 10/4/1999 10:33:57 PM

"The American Ream"

Very good, Dan. Very witty indeed.

786. Stumbo - 10/5/1999 4:23:48 AM

Pseudo, #781:

1) How did Italian come into this?

2) Actually, "gar'" is a smell, or atmosphere, created by burning -- not anything as tangible as ashes.

However, in the same vein:

Do people only sleep with fat cats because they need the money? Provide an argument to support this claim.

787. pseudoerasmus - 10/5/1999 4:40:22 AM

Yes, I was wrong on gar' = ash, but I also said "cinder". And I thought gar' besides meaning "something burning" also meant "char" or "cinder" or "something incompletely burnt".

788. Stumbo - 10/5/1999 4:47:58 AM

That would be "ogarok" (chego-to; usually of a candle, if not specified).

789. Rossi - 10/5/1999 12:10:53 PM

Pseudoerasmus:
Why do I stay here?
Let's see. For the first 10-12 years I was giving US benefit of my doubt. I was younger too. The following 8 years or so I was busy getting in and out of marriages and establishing my career credentials and clientele. In the last 5-6 years, I've had the time to think, read, travel and realize a few things about myself and my surroundings.
The reasons I'm still here are several:

Certain roots have been put down and several very precious people are here.
My parents are here and getting older - it's my duty, as a son, a civilized "mensh", a European, to be near them.

My particular occupation doesn't exist in most countries.

Having experienced a very painful emigration and acculturation in a harsh, cold, unforgiving place like America - I have no appetite to repeat even a much milder version elsewhere. Especially since I'm no longer 18, or even 30.

I'll probably retire either in Italy or Israel - that is if we, as a planet, survive this long.

790. marjoribanks - 10/5/1999 12:16:57 PM

Rossi,

Why not write polemical memoirs of your anguish-laden acculturation to this country? Then sell these to publishers around the world. You'll educate the unwary potential emigrants, perhaps you'll be able to buy that 3 million dollar house, and then you can retire wherever you like. I, a solution provider, find this a good solution to your "predicament."

791. Rossi - 10/5/1999 12:29:41 PM

marjoriebanks:

Pseudo is right, you know. Quality performances of classical music are rare in New York and US, and are VERY expensive. See, in America, many people are involved in classical music but there's no tradition of greatness, virtuosity, discipline. As we say - there's no School, as in Europe. The worst thing is that there's an acute shortage of qualified pedagogs in the US, teachers that develop the whole musical persona, not just musical technician. There have been more of those, immigrants from Europe's two wars -teachers from Russia, Poland, Germany, Italy, Hungary, Austria, etc., but most of them are either very frail now or dead. BTW, their impact was felt when a young American came out of nowhere to win the Chaikovsky "Konkurs" in 1960. His teacher was a Russian woman.
In fact, I would say there's a lack of pedagogs and support for them in every aspect of American learning, not just music.

Same story with ballet and other classical arts. It's mediocrity by design. Now, as far as jazz, you're right, there's nothing better than NYC or US for that. However, look at the way you treat your representative of American traditional art - aren't you ashamed?
People like Oscar Peterson, late Joe Pass, Ron Carter, Marvin Smitty Smith, Dennis Chambers, Kenny Barron, and Mingus, Rollins, 'Trane, Mongomery and hudreds of other greats before them , are revered in Europe and Japan and will easily fill a stadium. Here, they have to supplement their living by playing at places like the Sweet Basil or Regattabar, before audiences who listen to jazz not because they understand it but because they imagine it to be part of a sophisticated lifestyle. Sure, it's our find, but I feel it's denigrading to them. Talented jazz musicians ought to be supported by taxes and their music should be part of American curricula everywhere.

792. Dusty - 10/5/1999 12:31:04 PM

Uh... is this the language thread?

793. Rossi - 10/5/1999 12:37:27 PM

marjoriebanks:

"Why not write polemical memoirs of your anguish-laden acculturation to this country? Then sell these to publishers around the world."

THAT would be an American thing to do, wouldn't it?
Well, dear, perhaps you could yourself appear on Jenny Jones or Montel Williams, or even Jerry Springer, and confess your naughty
thoughts to their voyueristic audiences.

Fortunately, I'm not in the habit of selling my integrity and my private life for money.

794. marjoribanks - 10/5/1999 12:48:50 PM

Rossi,

" Talented jazz musicians ought to be supported by taxes and their music should be part of American curricula everywhere."

I could not agree more. I consider the mistreatment of this great, uniquely American, art form is scandalous.

As for the memoirs, I was teasing you. However, I don't think writing a memoir is necessarily "selling" your "integrity and private life for money."

795. marjoribanks - 10/5/1999 12:53:44 PM

Should I set up a sub-thread for this discussion? Votes?

Rossi, would you like to host/lead a sub-thread for a week or two (or longer) on Immigration, perhaps with an emphasis on migration to the US?

Perhaps the language mavens are unhappy at this intrusion. I think it's worth continuing, perhaps with a new start.

796. IrvingSnodgrass - 10/5/1999 1:04:43 PM

I don't mind this intrusion at all. It isn't as if there is a heavy discussion going on here.

I'd like to see a Rossi-hosted subthread on immigration. I'll even link it to this thread.

I've found the comments here on immigrants in the USA very interesting (and somewhat in tune with my own experiences), but then again, I'm not from an interesting country, according to Rossi, so I suppose it doesn't take much to interest me.

797. marjoribanks - 10/5/1999 1:11:54 PM

It's up to Rossi, then.

Rossi,

Several people are interested in the discussion you have initiated. But this thread is probably the wrong place for it. Give the word, and we'll continue it in a sub-thread linked from here and the Int'l Sanctum.

Irv,

Rossi wanted to talk about women, apparently. I'd highly appreciate an extended discussion of Int'l women in his sub-thread.

798. marjoribanks - 10/5/1999 1:14:26 PM

Irv,

If I set up the sub-thread, should we move the posts over? I can copy them if you like.

BTW, thank you for allowing this digression in the Language thread.

799. Dusty - 10/5/1999 1:19:32 PM

I enjoyed the discussion, and had to bite my tongue to avoid chiming in. I think it belongs in International, or in a subthread of International.

800. IrvingSnodgrass - 10/5/1999 1:28:55 PM

Sure, Marj. Move over any posts you'd like to start the sub-thread. I think the immigrant's view of the USA is a fascinating topic. The int'l women topic leaves me cold, however.

801. Rossi - 10/5/1999 3:49:31 PM

marjorie:
I'm glad we agree on Jazz. As far as autobiography, I don't think I'm such an important persona to impose my life story on others. Besides, my story, I'm sure, is shared by millions of others.

As to subthreading this to something else - I don't see why.
Why does this have to be narrow specialization, like everything else in this country? Why can't we mix carrots and crackers?
We can imagine this thread as a tree trunk (LANGUAGE), with various related topics as branches. Why not?
If you imply that I hog the forum, just say so, and I'll stop.

802. pellenilsson - 10/5/1999 4:37:56 PM

Rossi

As you yourself note this is the Language thread. Nobody objects to the occasional disgression but if we are going to have a serious disussion about immigration and immigrants it obviously does not belong here.

You have been offered a sub-thread. Why not rise to the challenge?

803. pellenilsson - 10/5/1999 4:38:36 PM

... digression ...

804. Rossi - 10/5/1999 4:45:08 PM

pellenillson:
I'm afraid to spend more time on it than i should :)

805. ycmeehan - 10/5/1999 6:33:31 PM

Marj,
I hope that you set up a sub-thread for this discussion. Maybe Rossi could expound for our edification on the experiences that prompted him to describe the United States as a "harsh, cold, unforgiving place".

806. marjoribanks - 10/5/1999 6:46:24 PM

Hokay,

Rossi's sub-thread, entitled 'Coming to America' is operational. Right now only as a sub-thread off International, later linked to more places.

Take it away Signore Rossi.

807. Hashke - 10/5/1999 7:48:02 PM

Us peeple in the languij thread are friendly. Sheeet fire and save matches, it don't make us no never mind about another agrussion here.

808. pseudoerasmus - 10/5/1999 8:47:17 PM

809. Hashke - 10/5/1999 10:10:46 PM

Heilige Scheisse, pseuder, where did you get this Yiddish poster with the highly stylized Hebrew font, as if normal H. were not difficult enough -- dated Berlin, 1926. Fascinating!

Literally, 'For health, for long life, is mother's milk (mama's milk is the way to go)'.

This is real 'mame-loshn'.

You have heard of 'mame-loshn' I take it, even though 'nakhes' was a bit of a stretch? ;-)

Btw, I checked into your travels earlier. Great work! Keep it up!

810. Hashke - 10/5/1999 10:29:04 PM

And to think that the Jew-baiting Nazi Schweinehunde would make sure that there would be no long lives for those moms, or for the kids born that year and the decade or so after.

811. DanDillon - 10/5/1999 10:34:35 PM

Wonderful image. The language thread continues to be a colorful place!

812. Hashke - 10/5/1999 10:48:19 PM

...for long life (years -- 'yoren')...

813. tmachine - 10/5/1999 11:59:53 PM

started yiddish course this evening. Our textbook is Sheva Zucker's (I think), published by Workmen's Circle in NYC (haven't got it yet). I can say "Dus is a benkel" and "Ich heyss Tamara." I've practiced writing alef through zayen. Seit gesundt!

814. Stumbo - 10/6/1999 12:24:53 AM

Still no takers for my lil' ril' in #786? Come on, folks. It's French/Russian, too, and much easier than Pseudo's. (I think.)

815. Hashke - 10/6/1999 1:30:36 AM

Stumbo:

Well they could do it for the 'tugoi koshelyok'(koshka), or because they like to roll in 'chasha' (chats-chats).

This puzzle is causing me a lot of chagrin (chats grands).

'Les richards' (riche(s)), 'les rupins', 'les gros', all argot for 'fat cats', 'bol'shaya shishka' (chiche, chiasse) -- may have remote possibilities, mais maintenant il faut aller faire dodo.

816. Stumbo - 10/6/1999 3:49:11 AM

Hashke:

The pun is certainly more accurate than "koshelyok / koshka"; and it also requires looking past an idiomatic "surface reading" to a more literal interpretation (or, in this case, translation.)

It relies, as well, upon a colloquial term for "to sleep with" (in one of the above-mentioned languages) which is sorta kinda recent; I'm not sure exactly how recent. (I can't find it in my dated-1952 dictionary -- but that might be due to prudery on the part of the compilers, rather than the linguistic reality of the time.)

817. bloodnfire - 10/6/1999 7:29:44 AM

Rossi. Your #768. I emigrated from England to America in 1958. I have been very happy here, and all the things you mentioned as being delightful I have found. I am most grateful to be an American, and am embarrassed by those 'Brits' referred to by Marjoribanks, who constantly complain about America. They don't have to like it, but they don't have to stay either !! Well, perhaps Mrs. Marjoribanks does :-)

818. Hashke - 10/6/1999 9:46:02 AM

Stumbo:

I thought the 'koshka' and 'chasha' connections pretty damned good -- although in your opinion far afield -- and worthy of an alternative solution.

This puzzle is a bit convoluted, no?

819. Hashke - 10/6/1999 9:50:50 AM

pseuder:

What is the Spanish word for the person who suddenly runs from the stands, jumps into the arena and, with his shirt, takes on the bull with a crude faena or two.

No, not 'idiot'.

820. pellenilsson - 10/6/1999 10:02:18 AM

Hashke

This sign is found in innumerable places in Stockholm.

Stå till höger.
Gå till vänster.

Where do you think?

I'm logging out now but I'll be back in a few hours.

821. RustlerPike - 10/6/1999 10:16:54 AM

Rossi:

'a good ass is our comfort'?

822. RustlerPike - 10/6/1999 10:21:59 AM

Oh, OK. I'm told it means 'a treasure of pleasure'. Excellent. What a wonderful language.

823. Hashke - 10/6/1999 11:04:11 AM

pelle:

At a quick glance they appear to be traffic signs: 'stay to the right' and 'go left', 'go to the left'???

824. Rossi - 10/6/1999 11:41:59 AM

Rustler Pike:

It loosely means "A nice behind (presumably woman's) is also some kind of happiness "

The intonation with which it's normally pronounced is like many yiddishisms, as if continuing a previously interrupted thought or a conversation with oneself. You know, as observed in the frequent Jewish habit of constant questioning, rationalizing and practical philosophizing. So, it's as if one's rationalizing interest in a plain-looking woman with an appetizing behind....a giter tukhes ist oitzer nakhes.

825. Rossi - 10/6/1999 11:50:37 AM

bloodnfire:

If you wrap yourself in that Old Glory too many times, you're gonna have to take it to the dry cleaners eventually. That would look weird, wouldn't it?

I've met only two happy English guys in America, the founders of Vanson Leather Co. I used to work for them at the very beginning of their business, in Boston, in the mid-1970s. Now, of course, they're one of the largest manufacturers of specialty leather clothing, much of it for motorcycle and racing car crowd or tough-guy wannabes. Guess what, having made millions, they've bought properties in England and all but returned there. I don't know what all this means. All I know is that I'm very suspicious of adamant expressions of patriotism.

826. Hashke - 10/6/1999 12:19:22 PM

tmachine:

I know that you'll do well with the Yiddish.

I have Uriel Weinreich's old 'College Yiddish', which is falling apart in my hands.

827. pellenilsson - 10/6/1999 1:27:57 PM

Hashke

At a quick glance they appear to be traffic signs: 'stay to the right' and 'go left', 'go to the left'???

Yes, but 'stand' rather than 'stay' and 'walk' rather than 'go'. The question was; where are those signs?

828. marjoribanks - 10/6/1999 1:31:54 PM

On escalators, obviously.

829. Hashke - 10/6/1999 1:36:09 PM

pelle:

Two-seater outhouses?

830. Hashke - 10/6/1999 2:16:53 PM

pseuder:

The Spanish expression I am looking for in #819 is an actual word in use. No se trata de un jueguito de palabritas, sino de un superaficionado.

831. Stumbo - 10/6/1999 2:28:14 PM

Hashke:

No, not convoluted at all. To spell it out:

We need a phrase that means "one who sleeps with fat cats" in language A, and sounds reasonably similar to a phrase in language B that indicates a need for money.

832. pellenilsson - 10/6/1999 3:05:52 PM

marj is right.

833. Dusty - 10/6/1999 4:31:44 PM

Could I prevail on some of you multi-linguists to help out a poor mono-linguist? I am giving a speech in Rome to Germans, and I thought I would at least translate the agenda into Italian and German.
Could someone tell me if the following would pass the laugh test?
(FYI, DFA is an abbreviation, FIRM is a product. SRI is a division name)

Introduction to DFA
Introduzione a DFA
Einleitung in eine DFA

Who is Falcon?
Chi è falco?
Wer ist Falke?

Technical Review
Revisione Di Techical
Zusammenfassung Techical

What is DFA and Why the Need?
Che cosa è DFA e perchè il bisogno?
Was ist DFA und warum die Notwendigkeit?

SRI’s FIRM™ Process
Processo Di SRI's Firm™
Prozeß SRI's Firm™

Leveraging Swiss Re Core Competencies
Competenze Svizzere Di Nucleo Di Riassicurazione Di Leveraging
Rückversicherung-KernKompetenzen Der Aufnahme von Fremdmitteln Schweizer

834. tmachine - 10/6/1999 5:28:05 PM

hashke: the dictionary our teacher recommended is Weinrich's. one interesting thing I discovered is that there are parts of American Yiddish that have been, er, Americanized. So it's ok to say "Mach auf der Winder" instead of "das Fenster"! and a verb has been invented to correspond to the English verb "like." it's something like (don't know how to transliterate) "ich g'leich" instead of "ich hab (hob?) gern" etc. fascinating.

835. Rossi - 10/6/1999 5:41:28 PM

tmachine:

You speak Russian don't you? Here's a joke about bastardization of Yiddish (if such a thing is possible).

In the Soviet Court of Law:

Judge:
"Svidetel'nitsa Rabinovich. Vy poluchili copiyu dokumenta o predvaritel'nom sledstvii podsudimogo?"

Mme. Rabinovich:
"Vus??? Nit fershteyn"

Judge (again):
"Svidetel'nitsa Rabinovich...vy poluchili kopiyu...etc."

Mme. Rabinovich: "Vus? Nit fershteyn"

Judge:
"V zale suda kto-to est' chtoby perevesti Gr. Rabainovich?"

A little Jewish guy raises his hand. Judge: "Please do"

Little Jewish Guy: " Bubeleh, vy der poluchili der kopiyu der dokumenta der predvaritel'nogo der sledstviya?"

Mme. Rabinovich: "Yoh!"

And another one. When I was 6, I asked my Jewish grandmother what the Yiddish word for "velocipede" was. Without batting an eyelash she replied, "Der Velocipede". :)

836. tmachine - 10/6/1999 6:59:10 PM

I love that! but did the judge really say "Please do"? just kidding.

of course, Russians in America also use American vocabulary constantly. Some is understandable--words like "grin-kard"--but many also have a tendency to Russianize words that there is already a Russian equivalent for, like "lanchevat'" for eating lunch.

837. Stumbo - 10/7/1999 2:00:50 AM

TM:

Well, there is no exact equivalent. Lunch is more than "poldnik," but less than "obed."

838. Stumbo - 10/7/1999 2:12:01 AM

BTW, since nobody seems to care anymore, here's the answer to my silly riddle:

In French, a person who sleeps with fat cats could (if we interpret "sleeps with" idiomatically, and "fat cats" literally) be called a "baise-gros-chats." Which, of course, sounds like the Russian "bez grosha," meaning "penniless."

839. RustlerPike - 10/7/1999 2:15:18 AM

OK Rossi. I missed your original post about your roots. Can you direct me there? Is Rossi your name and is it a Jewish name?

840. Hashke - 10/7/1999 11:54:53 AM

Dusty:

You have passed the laugh test. They will laugh.

841. Hashke - 10/7/1999 12:17:37 PM

Dusty:

But let 'em laugh, otherwise you will be treated to an avalanche of German and Italian after your speech.

Well, okay. I assume that by 'introduction' you mean 'presentation', so I would say 'eine Vorstellung von DFA', and even that doesn't sound right to me. The Italian is ok.

Revisione tecnica
technische Revision

Leave the name Falcon as is, no 'falco', or 'Falke'.

Processo di...
...Firmsprozess (Lordy, what a mess!)

I wouldn't touch this Leverage stuff with a ten-foot Czech.

Good luck, Dusty!

842. Hashke - 10/7/1999 12:28:27 PM

Stumbo:

Sorry I stumbled. Good one, but the opacity of the 'baise-gros-chat' would stumb anyone, attested to by the fact that I was the only one who stuck his neck out. 'Fat cat' is idiomatic, so there are specific French argot equivalents.

I'll try to come up with something to get even with you. I notice that pseudo is still hiding, camouflaging himself with his travel tales.

843. pellenilsson - 10/7/1999 1:05:09 PM

Dusty

This is my contribution.

Introduction to DFA
Einführung zum DFA
(This assumes that DFA is an English acronym and that I remember correctly when I think that foreign words take on the neutral.)

Who is Falcon?
Wer ist Falke?
Not understood. Is Falcon a person? If so why translate a proper name? If not, 'wer' is not appropriate.

Technical Review
Technische Zusammenfassung oder Zusammenfassung der Technik
(Assuming that 'review' means a rather brief exposition of the technical issues involved.)

What is DFA and Why the Need?
Was ist DFA und warum ist es notwendig?
(But here you must be aware that 'notwendig' implies a mandatory requirement which 'need' does not necessarily do. Wenn etwas notwendig ist, muss mann es ja unbedingt anzuschaffen, nicht wahr?)

SRI’s FIRM™ Process
Der Prozeß Firm™ des SRIs
(Assuming that we are talking about a process called FIRM belonging to an outfit called SRI.)

Leveraging Swiss Re Core Competencies
Rückversicherung-KernKompetenzen Der Aufnahme von Fremdmitteln Schweizer

Not at all understood (the English, I mean). What are you talking about?

844. Hashke - 10/7/1999 3:35:34 PM

The words 'Einführung' or 'Einleitung' here are bothersome, sounding more like the intro to a book. 'Introduction' in this case seems to mean something like 'explanation of'. How about 'Eine Erläuterung der Grundsätzen des FDA' --'An explanation of the principles of the FDA'? How would you do it in Swedish, pelle?

...muss man es...anschaffen.

...muss man versuchen, es anzuschaffen... ;-)

845. Hashke - 10/7/1999 3:41:12 PM

A common Spanish term for the crazed aficionado who plummets onto a playing field (corrida included) and inserts himself into the action by tackling, blocking, performing risky faenas, and so forth, is '(un)espontáneo'.

846. Hashke - 10/7/1999 3:42:27 PM

pelle:

I think that Dusty has already bagged out and spoken the speech. Is that laughter I hear?

847. pseudoerasmus - 10/7/1999 4:00:50 PM

I've sort of stopped reading most threads because of the burdens of my own thread plus real-life ones, but belatedly here I am.

There is nothing "bothersome" about Einführung in this context. If it's an introduction to some subject or topic in a speech, then it's perfectly correct.

#845
I had never heard of the term.

848. Hashke - 10/7/1999 4:05:33 PM

'Einführung' looks, feels, and walks sort of caterpillarish.

Where did you come by the fine Yiddish poster, pseuder?

849. pseudoerasmus - 10/7/1999 4:09:39 PM

While I like Stumbo's pun, I agree with Hashke that it was a bit opaque. What threw me off was this business about literal translation of "sleep with fat cats". I realise now that Stumbo made this proviso a couple of times, but I still kept on thinking of idiomatic ways of saying it which might also pun with "need for money".

850. pseudoerasmus - 10/7/1999 4:10:03 PM

#848

No, it doesn't. It's perfectly correct and idiomatic.

851. pellenilsson - 10/7/1999 4:10:14 PM

Einführung.

The Swedish is - surprisingly - 'introduktion'.

852. Dusty - 10/7/1999 4:10:25 PM

Nope, haven't left yet. Thanks for the input.

853. pseudoerasmus - 10/7/1999 4:11:17 PM

The Yiddish poster I found on some Jewish website along with a dozen other posters onced used in Russia and the Ukraine. You can get the URL under view source.

854. Dusty - 10/7/1999 4:11:39 PM

Falcon is the name of our company (sort of). I should not have translated it.

855. pellenilsson - 10/7/1999 4:13:26 PM

But Dusty, I'm curious.

Leveraging Swiss Re Core Competencies .

What does it mean?

856. ScottLoar - 10/7/1999 4:39:32 PM

Hashke, at 13 or so I saw on VHS the very incarnation of un espontaneo. El Cordobes was just nearing his prime and immediately before his entering the corrida in Mexico City un espontaneo jumped from the stands and into the ring, waving his jacket as a cape. The bull was Cinco del Oro, a beast, and after a single pass Cinco del Oro understood to lean inward and gored that man from chin to chine. Los piquederos managed to separate the two but El Cordobes entered slow and sober because as everyone in the corrida understood - Cinco del Oro understood the game. I have never seen a better bullfight. I will never see a better bullfight. I saw El Cordobes fight Cinco del Oro. I shall never forget this.

857. ScottLoar - 10/7/1999 4:42:48 PM

Corrigendum: los picadores

It's been a long while since high school Spanish.

858. Hashke - 10/7/1999 4:47:16 PM

pseudo:

'Einführung' is, I agree, usable there. Mine is merely a subjective reaction, perhaps subconsciously to the hint of 'Führer' tucked within.

859. pseudoerasmus - 10/7/1999 4:56:08 PM

Hashke

http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/yivo/posters.html

860. Hashke - 10/7/1999 5:08:29 PM

Scott:

Vivan los espontáneos!

I am attracted and repelled by the corrida de toros. But as someone said, one must respect the integrity of the tragedy. It is not a sport.

I have seen corridas in Spain and Mexico, and I must say that the paso doble, the colors, the crowds, the graceful faenas are exhilarating. But the sight of the magnificent toro, having received the benediction of the estocada, his gleaming blood-slick shoulders sprouting plumed, barbed banderillas -- the sight of him going to his front knees and spurting, spraying, disgorging his life blood from his mouth and nostrils out into the sand gives me pause.

861. Dusty - 10/7/1999 5:16:48 PM

pellenilsson

Good question.

At one level, it is one of those business-speak terms that everyone knows, nods knowingly when you hear it, but doesn't really know what the hell you mean by it.
But what we mean by it is this:
Several different divisions of our company have varying strengths or areas of expertise (competencies). If each one of us (separately) contacts our clients and tries to persuade them to buy our services, we will achieve some measure of success. But if we work together, we can achieve more success than if we each try to push our area of expertise.

If it sounds like I am defining the word, "synergy" well, that word has been overused, and some people are shying away from it, so this is another way to send a similar message without using the verboten word.

862. Hashke - 10/7/1999 5:18:20 PM

Scott:

Cinco del Oro a las cinco de la tarde!

863. Hashke - 10/7/1999 5:20:02 PM

pseudo:

Thanks for the URL!

864. pellenilsson - 10/7/1999 5:25:47 PM

Dusty

OK, so leverage is instead of synergy. But I still don't understand.

Leveraging Swiss Re Core Competencies .

What does 'Leveraging Swiss' mean? And what is that 'Re' doing in there?

I'm not nitpicking. I, too, need to be a jour with management speak.

865. ycmeehan - 10/7/1999 5:36:48 PM

Haske,
Ich habe nicht ihr Buch noch. Wissen sie warum?
Best Beachtugen

866. ycmeehan - 10/7/1999 5:42:29 PM

Lo siento. Sé que su nombre es Hashke

867. Hashke - 10/7/1999 7:22:26 PM

ycmeehan:

Weiss der verfluchte Geier nicht, warum Sie das Buch noch nicht bekommen haben. Wann und woher haben Sie es bestellt? Von der Verlagsanstalt (Norton/Audio-Forum) oder von amazon? Die Nummer des Herausgebers ist 1-800-243-1234. Rufen Sie ihm mal an, bitte, und machen Sie ihm die Hölle heiss.

868. Hashke - 10/7/1999 7:33:03 PM

ycmeehan:

A mí no me importa ni papa lo que me llame Usted, y por cierto me puede tutear!

;-))

869. ilyavinarsky - 10/7/1999 9:05:53 PM

First visit to this forum. Little language, much of The World According to El Nino.

870. Hashke - 10/7/1999 9:20:19 PM

Okay, ilyavinarsky, give us your version of much language.

Btw, it's 'el Niño', unless you're talking about Rossi, who doesn't bother with the tilde.

871. ilyavinarsky - 10/7/1999 9:32:26 PM

Sizhu u rastopertogo okna.

Tam zvyozdy ponatykany, i mesiats prishpandoren.

Vizhu - muzh skatilsya s gorki,

V gorokhovom pal'tE,

S soplyoyu na gube.

"Ne khotItsia l' Vam proytItsia

Tam, gde mel'nitsa vertItsia,

Gde fontanchik shpendelit,

I lepestrichestvo gorit?

Ne khotItsia - kak khotItsia",

Rukavom sopEl' podtyor,

I na mel'nitsu popyor.

872. pellenilsson - 10/8/1999 2:01:27 AM

ilyavinarsky

Welcome!

873. Uzmakk - 10/8/1999 8:36:38 AM

1688New Thread and Features Pellenilsson:

As my daddy is fond of pointing out, the expression used to be "The proof of the pudding is in the eating." This makes sense. "The proof is in the pudding."???? The proof isn't in the fucking pudding. What is in there? A smoking gun? Diary pages? A passport and itinerary? Ofcourse, we cannot blame Pellenilsson for picking up his English idioms from English speaking idiots.

874. Hashke - 10/8/1999 10:59:58 AM

#867

Tippenfehler: Rufen Sie ihn mal an...

875. Hashke - 10/8/1999 11:04:22 AM

Ilya:

Suum cuique. Y menya murashki begayut na shpinye...he, he...

876. Rossi - 10/8/1999 11:14:44 AM

Hashke:
Eto ne murashki. Eto voshki Hashki :)))

877. Rossi - 10/8/1999 11:15:15 AM

Ilya:

Ne moroch'te mne golovu s el Nino :)

878. Rossi - 10/8/1999 11:25:31 AM

RustlerPike:

My background is basically, Polish-Jewish on father's side, and Russian/Hungarian/Italian on mother's. Maternal grandpa came from the Italian part of Trieste (now Italy)to Ukraine to build communism, as did paternal one, but from Galicia-Ruthenia. Both died fighting the Nazis, with the Red Army, in 1942 and 1944.

879. Hashke - 10/8/1999 12:01:38 PM

Rossi:

'Voshki' -- smeshno!

Did you see the great Yiddish poster back at #808?

880. Rossi - 10/8/1999 1:28:31 PM

Hashke:

NO, didn't get THAT far back. What's it say? :))

881. Hashke - 10/8/1999 2:28:41 PM

Rossi:

Use the back arrows or type number in window in upper right to get to #808.

882. pellenilsson - 10/8/1999 2:48:36 PM

Hashke

Guess the language!

U'ei't-r givv mii e gudd dräm ov brän'di änd händ mi e fönni peip-r.

883. pellenilsson - 10/8/1999 2:52:04 PM

Uzmakk

I felt there was something wrong when I wrote it down. What popped up was "the proof of the recipe is in the pudding" but I knew 'recipe' shouldn't be there and then it went as it went (Swedish idiom).

884. Hashke - 10/8/1999 3:31:09 PM

pelle:

English, written in Scandanavian transliteration.

885. pellenilsson - 10/8/1999 3:58:39 PM

Hashke

Damn. You cannot be fooled for an instant.

For the less perceptive the underlying English reads:

"Waiter, give me a good dram of brandy and a funny paper."

886. tmachine - 10/8/1999 4:37:06 PM

pelle: what brand of English speaker would produce your curious command?

"dram" is essentially Scots usage in the context--but of course no self-respecting Scotsperson would ever drink anything but scotch. "a funny paper"? unless this is a sarcastic reference to the Daily Telegraph, it is not usage anywhere in the U.K. and is an error in the U.S. where comic strips have been known as "the funny papers" plural. But to compound the error, "the funny papers" is also very hokey and old-fashioned, I don't think anyone under 30 would even know what it was referring to now.

so your sentence is written in Scandinavian-ese in both sense and physical style.

887. Rossi - 10/8/1999 4:53:20 PM

Hashkeleh:

nice poster, thanks. I saved it

888. Uzmakk - 10/8/1999 6:01:52 PM

883Pelle:

Your usage, if I recall, was perfect. Its just that the expression used to make sense, the meaning was clear. It has been shortened, still means the same thing, but no longer makes sense. Or not as much sense.

889. pellenilsson - 10/8/1999 6:07:23 PM

tmachine

That quote was from a 1921 Travel Guide to The British Isles which I stumbled over at the library looking for something else. You thought it was contemporary? That Swedes here and now need that kind of stuff? That's funny.

890. ycmeehan - 10/8/1999 6:09:08 PM

Vielen Dank, Herr Hashke,
Ich habe von amazon bestellt. Ich soll die Nummer des herausgehers anrufen.

Nunca presumaría llamarle papa. Si a Ud. no le importa, preferiría llamarle mi mejor amigo en la Mote. Con razón o sin ella, lo que se dice sobre las mujeres francesas es la verdad. En consecuencia, hay muchas cosas que podría enseñarle cuando Ud. desea.:)

891. tmachine - 10/8/1999 6:10:15 PM

I didn't really know what it meant. I just assumed it was some manufactured nonsense sentence. Now I get it--it's the Swedish equivalent of "Innkeeper, my postilion has been struck by lightning."

892. ycmeehan - 10/8/1999 6:45:35 PM

Cher Hashke,
Mon allemand est terrible, il a été toujours rudimentaire mais quand même! Je perds mon espagnol mais je retrouve mon français, ce qui est une consolation.

Malheureusement, je ne suis pas aussi douée en langues que vous, Alistair, Dan, Pelle, Rossi, Tmachine, mon prof, et bien d'autres. J'enseigne le français cette année, la première fois que je le fais depuis longtemps, dans une école secondaire.

J'allais prendre une année ou deux de congé pour m'occuper de certaines affaires de famille mais à la dernière minute, ce boulot s'est présenté et je n'ai pas pu résister tellement cela m'emmerder de penser en espagnol ou en anglais quand je voulais parler français. Cet été, j'ai bien amusé la famille avec mes erreurs.

Bien à vous.

893. RustlerPike - 10/9/1999 12:14:48 PM

pelle: that's so swede of you, thanks!!!

894. RustlerPike - 10/9/1999 12:20:45 PM

This just in: Michael Jackson is considering converting to Judaism!!! What a shame - all those nose jobs for nothing!!!

895. DanDillon - 10/10/1999 10:40:17 AM

The funny papers are alive and well in the lexicon of those under 30. Teenagers might have a problem placing the phrase, however. But tmachine is right to mention that it is a bit hokey. Nowadays, those particular pages, in full color or not, are referred to as the "comics." Some still may call them the "funnies" -- my favorite part of the newspaper, by the way. (Why I read the NYT, I'll never know!)

896. RustlerPike - 10/10/1999 11:50:07 AM

Rossi:

Great yikhus, especially the fighting the Nazis part. I think technically you may have a hard time getting Israeli citizenship though - they go by matrilineal descent.

897. Hashke - 10/11/1999 11:17:42 AM

ycmeehan:

Nunca presumaría llamarle papa.

Eso me hace muy chiste y por supuesto merece una carcajada! Ud. sabe muy bien que yo no le sugerí que me llamara 'papa'. Otro ejemplo de su bel esprit!

898. Hashke - 10/11/1999 11:20:23 AM

Rustleleh:

Interesting that the Hebrew word 'yikhUS' (yikhoos) shows up in Yiddish with the same spelling, but is pronounced 'yikhes'.

899. Rossi - 10/11/1999 11:35:49 AM

Rustler:

Thyat's been taken care of :)). My mom's convertd to Judaism years ago :)

900. Rossi - 10/11/1999 12:16:00 PM

Michael Jackson? Jewish?
He's already black, why does he also wanna be a Jew?????
Geez, people create unnecessary problems for themselves

901. Rossi - 10/11/1999 12:16:55 PM

Michael Jackson? Jewish?
He's already black, why does he also wanna be a Jew?????
Geez, people create unnecessary problems for themselves

902. tmachine - 10/11/1999 12:18:56 PM

somebody on Howard Stern said "He'll have to have a reverse operation to make his nose bigger again now"

903. Rossi - 10/11/1999 2:10:32 PM

Just imagining Michael Jackson chanting "Baruch ata edonoi, eloheynu Melekh.......etc.", interrupted by his high-pitched "ooo" and grabbing his crotch....oy, it keeps me laughing all day...

904. Rossi - 10/11/1999 2:14:37 PM

What's next, "Rachel Katz is not my lover, she's just a girl who says that I'm the one..."????

905. Rossi - 10/11/1999 2:30:55 PM

how abot some Yiddish rap by Michael Jackson? Here's an example:

OK. 4/4, in staccato voce: accents on 2nd and 5th 16th note in each half measure:

"Die Rebbitzin gib mir, a loch in kop, yeah
Ich kannisht glaub, dus ist Mit-woch, nu
Der Bruder sagst zu mir, "Vey'z Mir, Ge-vahlt"
Ich will zu schtuppen aber hob_ich_kein_geld"

906. Hashke - 10/11/1999 3:17:15 PM

M. Jackson iz a gefilte kishkeh.

907. Rossi - 10/11/1999 3:37:09 PM

From the parody rap due "Two Live Jew" (circa 1990):

#1 Jew: "Do you know, just what kind a cigarettes, our Rabbi smokes?"

#2 Jew: "No, what kind does he smoke?"

#1 Jew: "Our Rabbi smokes GEFILTERED cigarettes"

#2 Jew: "Hahahahahahhahahaha"

908. Rossi - 10/11/1999 3:37:12 PM

909. Rossi - 10/11/1999 3:37:43 PM

910. PelleNilsson - 10/11/1999 4:29:00 PM

Although Rossi does his best to fill up space this thread is dying. And the host has not been visible for the last six days.

What to do?

911. ScottLoar - 10/11/1999 5:13:37 PM

Set yourself into a comfortable chair (I prefer Windsors), light a cheroot or mild cigar (I prefer Dutch), take a measure of Scotch over ice (I prefer Macallan) and set store in something else other than such ridiculous concern over the state of this thread.

912. PelleNilsson - 10/11/1999 5:21:06 PM

Scott

Very good advice (except for the ice).

But why is concern ridiculous?

913. ScottLoar - 10/11/1999 6:10:07 PM

Because you surely must have weightier matters to consider.

Also, just one cube of ice in the Scotch, and let it melt until the glass sweats.

914. Rossi - 10/11/1999 6:13:58 PM

I don't intend to fill this space - it posts same thing 3 times by itself :(

As a matter of drink, I think I'll go home, rent some Fellinis and have myself some Makers Mark bourbon straight, with ice-cold Gerolsteiner on a side.

915. Hashke - 10/11/1999 6:31:14 PM

Rossi:

Was soll geshtolen zeyn?

916. Hashke - 10/11/1999 6:39:28 PM

pelle:

You are up very late fretting over much adieu about nutting. Take Loar's advice, belly up to some kanji with some sudoriferous usquebaugh, and cheroot the works.

917. Hashke - 10/11/1999 6:40:42 PM

Rossi:

While you are at it you should also rent Truefoe's 'Cheroot the Piano Player'.

918. lou - 10/11/1999 7:11:48 PM

OK, quick question. Can anyone give me some examples of words that have two meanings, one with a positive connotation, and one with a negative connotation?

919. lou - 10/11/1999 7:26:08 PM

In short, good examples of homographs?

920. lou - 10/11/1999 7:28:08 PM

Or rather homonyms?

921. Hashke - 10/11/1999 7:32:30 PM

Pak Gurubesar or Irv:

Is jalan bagaimanapun juga a reasonable equivalent for the English idiom not for love or money? The English dates to before 971 a.d., btw. How about tak biar dibujuk atau diupahi?

922. Hashke - 10/11/1999 7:35:47 PM

lou:

A word like 'fine', where it is used both sarcastically as well as positively, as in 'that's just fine!' Intonation in Anguish Languish is all-important.

923. IrvingSnodgrass - 10/11/1999 8:00:53 PM

lou:
One category of words which fit what you are looking for are those words known as "Janus words" -- words which have two opposite meanings. Some common examples are sanction and cleave. There are others.

Hashké:
tak biar dibujuk atau diupahi is a much better fit for "not for love or money." It might translate as "not for urging or pay." jalan bagaimanapun juga is more like "by hook or by crook."

924. stinky - 10/11/1999 9:09:12 PM

918-sterile

925. wabbit - 10/11/1999 9:18:35 PM

lou,

Ever listen to CarTalk?

926. lou - 10/12/1999 7:22:35 AM

Thanks.

927. Rossi - 10/12/1999 12:11:15 PM

lou:

"homosexual"
"Jew"
"Chinese Food"
"cholesterol" (thre's a "good" kind and a "bad" one)

928. Hashke - 10/12/1999 12:53:55 PM

Thanks Irv!

929. RustlerPike - 10/13/1999 12:51:25 AM

Rossi:

Good! I hope it was a well documented Orthodox conversion. In any case, I'm hoping the secular part of Israel will eventually come into its own and denude the Orthodoxy of its powers. My kids aren't considered Jewish either, and I could care less.

930. DanDillon - 10/13/1999 8:16:04 AM

I reread Virginia Woolf's essay "Craftsmanship" last night and was reminded of her mastery in prose. Coming back to the piece a second time (it's actually a broadcast from 20 April 1937) also revealed a diminished appreciation for its message. What I saw the first time 'round I failed to see the second.

There is at least one idea from it worth sharing here:
"Look again at the dictionary. There beyond a doubt lie plays more lovely than Antony and Cleopatra; poems more lovely than Ode to a Nightengale; novels beside which Pride and Prejudice or David Copperfield are the crude bunglings of amateurs. It is only a question of finding the right words and puting them in the right order."

931. ScottLoar - 10/13/1999 10:36:23 AM

DanDillon, I very much like that quote and have copied it down.

932. Rossi - 10/13/1999 1:33:07 PM

Rustler Pike:
My personal definition of Jewish isn't when some fanatic defines you as. Jewish is when you're preoccupied with practicing mitzvah every day instead of being preoccupied with not using the electric shaver on Saturday. Jewish is when you break some sheygets'kneecaps for calling you a "kike" or a "yid", not being sheepish and scared. Jewish is when you serve in the Israeli army and not hide in the Yeshiva.

I do hope, the civilized Israelis will see to it that separation of state and religion is achieved in a profoundly meaningful way.

933. PelleNilsson - 10/13/1999 2:02:20 PM

Rossi

I another thread you asked me about changes in Swedish farming policy in 1956. I forgot to answer, which I am sorry for, but I have since looked the matter up.

As in all Western countries Swedish farming was, and is, heavily regulated. The matter at hand was, and is, to arrive at a pricing structure that on the one hand does not rip off the consumers, and, on the other ensures a decent living for the farmers. In the early fifties the problem was acute because of inflation and other dislocations caused by the Korean war. There were also lingering effects of WW2. The solution arrived at was to define a "Type Farm", of about 50 acres, and to set prices so that the farmer's income was roughly the same as that of an industrial worker.

I'm not surprised to learn that there was an American book on the subject, because the problem must have been similar there.

My profound apologies to the host for this outrageously off-topic post.

934. IrvingSnodgrass - 10/13/1999 2:13:35 PM

Pelle:
If I could think of a place to put it, I'd move your post. But, as punishment, you owe us one of your fine language-related posts.

935. PelleNilsson - 10/13/1999 2:29:13 PM

Irv

Thanks for your indulgence. I don't have any "fine language-related post" at hand right now, but I do have a quote I read today, which you and others can have a go at.

The world's products are exchanged as never before, and with increasing transportation comes increasing knowledge and larger trade. We travel greater distances in a shorter space of time, and with more ease, than was ever dreamed of. The same important news is read, though in different languages, the same day in all the world. Isolation is no longer possible. No nation can longer be indifferent to any other.

Said by a prominent American.

936. tmachine - 10/13/1999 3:17:19 PM

Teddy Roosevelt?

Woodrow Wilson?

FDR?

937. CalGal - 10/13/1999 3:22:36 PM

Well, McKinley said "Isolation is no longer possible or desirable."

This looks more recent: I'll guess Clinton.

938. PelleNilsson - 10/13/1999 3:34:41 PM

No, it's not Clinton and it's not recent.

939. CalGal - 10/13/1999 3:36:10 PM

Well, then it's a misquote of McKinley, as I said in the last post.

940. IrvingSnodgrass - 10/13/1999 3:37:44 PM

Why does "prominent American" have to equal "president"?

941. CalGal - 10/13/1999 3:39:20 PM

It doesn't. McKinley just happened to have made the comment about isolation. I thought the quote--since it wasn't accurate--must have been an update. Being that McKinley is a rather obscure President, my first guess was another president.

942. PelleNilsson - 10/13/1999 3:43:52 PM

Yes it's McKinley, but it could very well have been said today, which goes to show that the difference between then and now might be smaller than we like to think.

I don't know if it is a misquote. I plucked it from Richard Reeves's column in Tuesday's IHT.

943. cmboyce - 10/13/1999 3:43:59 PM

Shouldn't there be an "any" in that last sentence?

I'll go with CalGal's reasoning and guess McKinley, or perhaps his appropriating heir, TR, as more likely to have been quoted.

944. PelleNilsson - 10/13/1999 5:38:38 PM

Copied from Suggestions:

1891. ScottLoar - 10/13/99 9:21:58 PM
Each of us has his interests in history. My own is Iroquois-Huron
relations, 1630-1720. That may appear rather too broad to some but
it is important that one review the later period and note the
consequence

Scott

I note with interest "... that one review ...". I believe that is the subjunctive form. I would certainly have written "... that one should review...", but your phrase is more compact and, therefore, better. I'm unsure about usage. Any hints?

945. pseudoerasmus - 10/13/1999 5:50:07 PM

Irving, I demand that Pelle's post be deleted immediately. Lest he conclude that this be hostility, I say, would that he were more jolly!

946. CalGal - 10/13/1999 5:53:28 PM

Pelle,

Adding the "should" sounds wrong, although it might be one of those technically correct usages that just are never used.

947. pseudoerasmus - 10/13/1999 5:54:32 PM

Hashke: Do you know that at TT there are at least 10 Russophones? You've got the cool Uke Ilya V, the ultimate Homo Sovieticus nomine italico, a Russian woman fond of Milosevic, another fond of muscular contraction and osculation, a wryly mordant Armenian from Haistan who knows more about the Caucasus than any human alive, a former Peace Corps volunteer in Kazakstan, some teacher in Vladivostok, and maybe several others.

948. PelleNilsson - 10/13/1999 5:55:50 PM

CalGal

I now that the 'should' sounds wrong, that's why I'm asking for guidance.

949. CalGal - 10/13/1999 5:57:02 PM

Lordy, that was more mangled than usual.

"...that one should review..." doesn't sound right. It may be technically accurate. I don't think most people would use it, though.

950. pseudoerasmus - 10/13/1999 5:58:22 PM

Pelle, it's pretty simple: the subjunctive usage is disappearing from English. Just don't use it. I will, however, continue.

951. CalGal - 10/13/1999 5:59:32 PM

Pelle,

Crosspost.

Actually, now that I think of it, it may even be incorrect.

952. pseudoerasmus - 10/13/1999 6:01:55 PM

If the independent clause expresses a command, an obligation, or a desire, then the verb in the subordinate clause starting with that can be in the subjunctive mode.

953. pseudoerasmus - 10/13/1999 6:02:40 PM

"should" would not be correct in that sentence, or at least it would change the meaning slightly.

954. PelleNilsson - 10/13/1999 6:04:48 PM

PE

Very good.

955. CalGal - 10/13/1999 6:05:54 PM

Yes, that's what I am thinking.

It is almost Runyon talk, that fake tough gentility that gangsters use.

"It is important dat you shud review dis cause da Boss, he don't like it when people don't do like he sez."

956. Hashke - 10/13/1999 11:23:02 PM

pseuder #947:

You once said 'puns are lost on me' -- but here you are coolly handing us several keen witticisms. Do Uncle (the Uke) Ilya and the boa contractionist (the sphincter arose?) know each other?

If so, there could be a ukelear osculation.

957. pseudoerasmus - 10/14/1999 1:10:05 AM

Hashke, my engine only takes osculants.

958. Hashke - 10/14/1999 1:21:02 AM

pseuder:

I think there's a new oscule of thought about that.

959. Hashke - 10/14/1999 1:22:40 AM

pseuder:

I have looked superficially into the Turkish. Piece of cake. All it takes is a positive atatürk.

960. Hashke - 10/14/1999 1:25:40 AM

By the way, how can you stay up all night and write all day? Very impressive. It makes me tired to think about it, so I'm now gonna fare some dodo.

961. pseudoerasmus - 10/14/1999 1:47:46 AM

Hashke: Tu oscules les mouches!

#960, I have a severe case of insomnia. It probably has something to do with my long student career... In an attempt to finish it soon, I work on my dissertation at any time of the day or night, serendipitously. I go swimming for an hour each day, yet even after such exertions I can't sleep more than a few winks.

962. Stumbo - 10/14/1999 2:03:41 AM

Trust me, Pseudo, it doesn't necessarily end on graduation night.

963. CalGal - 10/14/1999 2:20:52 AM

Actually, the Mote has 6 confirmed insomniacs and one that I would bet money on being as well. I wonder if there's a correlation?

964. Stumbo - 10/14/1999 2:52:05 AM

Between...?

965. CalGal - 10/14/1999 2:59:58 AM

Nothing profound. Just wondering if insomniacs find more productivity/contact/occupation online.

For example, I used to just read or zone out--maybe watch a movie--when I couldn't sleep. Now I'll be online--and I don't mean just forum posting. I may read, write, code, whatever. The books I read are more substantive, which is not so much because I hang out with all you erudite 'uns, but because I find things I'm interested in online and start to read up on them.

I've felt far more...productive? probably not the right word for someone who feels she's accomplished an organizational feat if she gets her bills paid monthly. But as if I am better using the time that other people use for sleeping.

966. Stumbo - 10/14/1999 3:33:46 AM

Well, of course insomniacs find (relatively) more useful stuff online than normal people do -- simply because going online is just about the only option, after 2 a.m.

Then again, the fact that the 'Net facilitates insomnia isn't automatically a good thing, in the long run.

ObLanguage: only 4 days left to vote in PCWC 105.

967. CalGal - 10/14/1999 3:36:28 AM

I don't think it facilitates it. I think it just provides more options when it occurs. It's not like we're saying "Jeez, nothing to do. May as well nod off."

968. SpenceMirrlees - 10/14/1999 3:43:35 AM

Based on this sample it would seem there is some correlation between insomnia and education; I thought maybe that's what CalGal meant.

I can think of plenty of things to do after 2 am that don't involve the net.

Sadly, while that looks like an innuendo, all those things are school-related. The Mrs. is long since sleeping by this time of night.

969. Stumbo - 10/14/1999 3:45:12 AM

Well, I used to say that at least half the time, CG, and it would work at least occasionally. Now, it never does.

Not to mention that, say, reading a book can be achieved in a reclining position, which can naturally segue into sleep. Net-surfing, on the other hand, requires sitting up (unless one goes to the trouble of installing some kind of retractable desk over one's bed), which tends to keep one, well, up.

970. Stumbo - 10/14/1999 3:49:20 AM

SM:

But the 'Net things (generally) give one more instant gratification. They're more right-here-right-now. To an easily-distracted boob like myself, that's too much to pass up.

971. Schehezarade - 10/14/1999 10:33:52 AM

If I'm suffering from insomnia, usually watching television (the most terrible shows play late at night) and/or reading an old text book puts me to sleep right away. If it's a nervous insomnia, usually I shouldn't go to sleeep because the nervousness is resulting from either my procrastination, or anxiety because I have something I *should* do instead of sleep.

972. Hashke - 10/14/1999 11:25:14 AM

pseuder #961:

After 'serendipitous' work on the dissertation there's nothing like a serene dip in the pool.

973. CalGal - 10/14/1999 12:11:27 PM

Scheherezade,

It is possible we think of insomnia differently; I quite often don't sleep for days at a time.

Spence,

You're still in school, so I suppose it is yet to be seen whether the insomnia is fed by school work or the other way round.

974. Schehezarade - 10/14/1999 1:15:16 PM

CalGal

Days at a time? You must not require that much sleep normally. Anything less than 5 hours and I'm not functioning properly. The 7-10 hrs zone works best for me. What's the longest you've gone without sleep?

975. cmboyce - 10/14/1999 2:29:52 PM

"Days at a time" without sleep sounds pathological. You had that checked out?

976. CalGal - 10/14/1999 2:46:15 PM

I've gone 2 days at a time with no sleep fairly regularly. Most of the time, though, I will go 4-6 days with a total of 10 hours, or something like that. I confess I think of 2 hours a day as equivalent to "no" sleep, so I apologize if that confused you. For me, a long sleep is 4-5 hours, which I try to get at least twice a week, but often don't. Periodically, I will sleep a day away.

977. PelleNilsson - 10/15/1999 3:37:32 AM

From time to time we have discussed the various variants of Arabic. Here is the beginning of an interesting article in the Jordan Times newspaper.

Arabic, Arabic and Arabic; which to choose?
Dr. Ahmad Y. Majdoubeh

HOW MANY Arabic languages do we have? Oh, what do you mean? — there is only one Arabic language. Well, not exactly. There are at least three.

Linguists, and all individuals seriously concerned with Arabic, identify three levels of it: A) classical Arabic (alfusha), the written and spoken language of very formal occasions; B) colloquial Arabic (amiyyah), the language spoken at home, among intimate friends and in the street; and C) what has recently come to be called middle Arabic (alwusta or alwaseeta), half A and half B. Some speak of two levels of A: One extremely formal and lofty, the other less so called modern standard Arabic.

These three levels of Arabic pose a problem more to the speaker than to the writer. In writing, we distinguish essentially between two versions of Arabic: Classical Arabic, with strict emphasis placed on correctness and usage of the unadulterated idiom used by the forefathers; and modern standard Arabic, the written language of the press and the media, immensely more liberal and less obsessed with correctness and un-adulteration.

978. PelleNilsson - 10/15/1999 3:38:35 AM

The real dilemma which both learners and speakers of Arabic face is with speaking Arabic. Classical Arabic (level A) is beyond the reach of the comfortable majority. For one thing, very few people in our native world of Arabic have a mastery of it. For another, most of those who speak it tend to do so so slowly, cautiously and uncomfortably that neither they nor their listeners have the patience to speak or listen long. Thirdly, classical Arabic does not seem to help its speaker much in emotional situations. Try to speak classical Arabic when you are provoked, angry or excited. Fourthly, classical Arabic is elitist, spoken only on formal occasions. Try to speak classical Arabic in a grocery store, to a taxi driver or to a civil servant.

979. PelleNilsson - 10/15/1999 3:41:47 AM

Obviously, it is still Dr. Majdoubeh who speaks in #978, not PelleNilsson.

980. DanDillon - 10/15/1999 8:13:54 AM

An oversimplification of the sociolinguistic variants to be sure, but what can one expect from a Middle Eastern daily?

981. Hashke - 10/15/1999 11:30:29 AM

pelle:

The fellaah will read very little of anything, der Mann ohne Eigenschaften in the streets of Cairo will peruse 'al 'ahraam' but not Mahfouz -- and the scholar will often attempt everything. In cafes one sees well-dressed businessmen noisily trying to speak allugha alfuSHa through spittings of watermelon seeds -- this done while glancing from side to side for appreciative signs from the great unwashed that they are making an impression with their use of the classical language.

I read a story by Mahfouz last night. He uses a mixture of classical, modern standard, and more comfortable colloquial.

982. RustlerPike - 10/15/1999 11:38:46 AM

Nice fellahs, the Egyptians, doncha think?

983. PelleNilsson - 10/15/1999 1:17:38 PM

Hashke

I read the Sugar Street trilogy by Mahfouz a couple of years ago, in translation of course. I thought then that his Arabic must be a mixture of high and low, and I'm happy to see it confirmed.

984. PelleNilsson - 10/15/1999 1:20:43 PM

Dan

An oversimplification of the sociolinguistic variants to be sure, but what can one expect from a Middle Eastern daily?

So can we expect to be favoured soon by your more erudite and scholarly analysis of the subject at hand?

985. DanDillon - 10/15/1999 1:59:01 PM

Sure. Right after I return from my weekend o' merrymaking in Los Angeles.

986. Hashke - 10/15/1999 1:59:18 PM

pelle:

I like your bracing and humorous reactions. I don't see the dour and humorless Swede in there.

987. Hashke - 10/15/1999 2:01:30 PM

Pikeleh:

That was good fellaahghs!

988. PelleNilsson - 10/15/1999 2:09:45 PM

Hashke

Thank you. He was never there in IRL. Here he was, and is, occasionally. But I'm working on it.

989. Hashke - 10/16/1999 10:40:58 AM

pelle:

Your Maputo diaries were so good, of such pelle-verité quality that you should consider doing the Stockholm diaries. Mebbe you could create a young pellean Doppelgänger, à la Morris, to revisit your boyhood, of which we saw little or nothing in the old Remembrances thread.

Hmmmm?

990. PelleNilsson - 10/16/1999 4:40:18 PM

Hashke

We'll have to see about that. My childhood was not a particularly happy one.

In the meantime a genuine German word, the name of a law passed in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern:

"Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz"

991. Hashke - 10/16/1999 4:53:41 PM

'beeflabelingmonitoringassignmenrecordinglaw'

992. Hashke - 10/16/1999 4:54:35 PM

...assignment...

993. PelleNilsson - 10/16/1999 4:56:18 PM

'nötkreatursetiketteringskontrollanvisningsöverlåtelselagen'

994. Hashke - 10/16/1999 8:30:49 PM

'cattlelabelingcontroldirectivetransferlaw'

995. Stumbo - 10/17/1999 3:23:28 AM

"Mekkamuselmannenmassenmenchenmoerdermohrenmuttermarmormonumentenmacher"

Identify the quote.

996. PelleNilsson - 10/17/1999 4:13:11 AM

What do you mean by identify? The source?

997. Stumbo - 10/17/1999 4:19:39 AM

Yes.

998. PelleNilsson - 10/17/1999 4:53:00 AM

A stone carver's business card?

But I must admit that "mohrenmutter" stumbs me.

999. Stumbo - 10/17/1999 6:06:13 AM

Source = actual piece of published writing in which this string of characters appeared.

1000. Stumbo - 10/17/1999 6:08:13 AM

Small hint: it was mostly in English.

1001. PelleNilsson - 10/17/1999 6:14:40 AM

Still stumboed, but congrats to the millennial!

1002. Stumbo - 10/17/1999 6:23:36 AM

The millennial thanks you. ;-)

1003. Hashke - 10/17/1999 10:07:50 AM

Finnegans Weg?

1004. RustlerPike - 10/17/1999 5:05:19 PM

I think I recognize 'mass murder' and 'musselmannen' in there. Is this about someone who made monuments to mass murder?

1005. RustlerPike - 10/17/1999 5:14:35 PM

And while we're on the subject - here's a horrid little poster from the otherwise wonderful collection PE found earlier this month.

1006. pseudoerasmus - 10/17/1999 9:59:31 PM

Â Ìàâçîëåå, ãäå ëåæèøü òû íåò ñâîáîäíûõ ìåñò,
À íà ïëîùàä* èãðàåò äóõîâîé îðêåñòð,
Ïî áðóùàòêå åäóò òàíêè, òûàãà÷è èäóò,
Òâîè áðåííûå îñòàíêè ñâóàòî ñòåðåãóò...

1007. Hashke - 10/17/1999 11:49:21 PM

pseuder:

Shouldn't that verb at the end of the first line be...'ìåñè'?

1008. Hashke - 10/18/1999 9:34:41 AM

pseuder #1006:

Scherzkeks! Ich sehe hier noch nur Käse! Was hast du denn wirklich getippt, wenn ich mal fragen darf?

1009. Hashke - 10/18/1999 9:52:34 AM

Pak Gurubesar dan Irv:

Apa kabar? Diminta disini kehadiran Saudara yang menarik dan penuh semangat!

1010. cmboyce - 10/18/1999 12:00:40 PM

Stumbo, I'll join Hashke's surmise at 1003.

So what's the answer?

1011. Hashke - 10/18/1999 12:27:12 PM

The echoes are getting real bad in here.

1012. PelleNilsson - 10/18/1999 4:55:23 PM

They sure are. And where is Irv? Not here and not in International although Indonesia faces a critical week.

And we have nowhere to publish travel stories and the like. I suggested a Digressions and Trivia thread but wabbit turned it down. Why don't we take over Stories which is dead anyway?

You first. It's bedtime here but you have plenty of time. If you put up the first, I promise another one tomorrow.

1013. Stumbo - 10/18/1999 9:23:42 PM

Hashke, CMB:

Good guess, but that's not it. I'll post a lengthier excerpt later tonight.

1014. ProfEmeritus - 10/18/1999 11:28:58 PM

Pak Hashke

Terima kasih. Saya sendiri sibuk sekali dan anak saya barangkali sama.Dia ada tamu, adik saya dan isteri dari Amerika.

1015. Stumbo - 10/19/1999 12:48:55 AM

We had a solemn stage-wait, now, for about twenty minutes -- a thing I had counted on for effect; it is always good to let your audience have a chance to work up its expectancy. At length, out of the silence a noble Latin chant --men's voices -- broke and swelled up and rolled away into the night, a majestic tide of melody. I had put that up, too, and it was one of the best effects I ever invented. When it was finished I stood up on the platform and extended my hands abroad, for two minutes, with my face uplifted -- that always produces a dead hush -- and then slowly pronounced this ghastly word with a kind of awfulness which caused hundreds to tremble, and many women to faint:

"Constantinopolitanischerdudelsackspfeifenmachersgesellschafft!"

Just as I was moaning out the closing hunks of that word, I touched off one of my electric connections, and all that murky world of people stood revealed in a hideous blue glare! It was immense -- that effect! Lots of people shrieked, women curled up and quit in every direction, foundlings collapsed by platoons. The abbot and the monks crossed themselves nimbly and their lips fluttered with agitated prayers. [So-and-so] held his grip, but he was astonished clear down to his corns; he had never seen anything to begin with that, before. Now was the time to pile in the effects. I lifted my hands and groaned out this word -- as if I were in agony --

"Nihilistendynamittheaterkaestchenssprengungsattentaetsversuchungen!"

1016. Stumbo - 10/19/1999 12:50:17 AM

-- and turned on the red fire! You should have heard that Atlantic of people moan and howl when that crimson hell joined the blue! After sixty seconds I shouted --

"Transvaaltruppentropentransporttrampelthiertreibertrauungsthraenentragoedie!"

-- and lit up the green fire! After waiting only forty seconds, this time, I spread my arms abroad and thundered out the devastating syllables of this word of words --

"Mekkamuselmannenmassenmenchenmoerdermohrenmuttermarmormonumentenmacher!"

-- and whirled on the purple glare! There they were, all going at once, red, blue, green, purple! -- four furious volcanoes pouring vast clouds of radiant smoke aloft, and spreading a blinding rainbowed noonday to the furthest confines of that valley.

1017. pseudoerasmus - 10/19/1999 12:55:40 AM

Mark Twain, A Conn Yank in K. Art's Ct

1018. Stumbo - 10/19/1999 12:58:09 AM

Bingo.

1019. cmboyce - 10/19/1999 1:29:27 AM

Haha, that's wonderful, Stumbo!

1020. Hashke - 10/19/1999 11:17:29 AM

Pelle:

I have the time? Not right now. Remember EL PROYECTO? I've just delivered nearly 60 pages into layout -- leaving only some 140-50 to go.

One of these days I'll get a story in. How about a restoration of the Remembrances thread?

1021. IrvingSnodgrass - 10/20/1999 8:18:46 AM

Is English vocabulary having an effect on the Indonesian language? Consider the following sentence heard today on Indonesian television, from political analyst Rizal Ramli:

"Kita perlu seorang president yang credible, yang tidak mempunyai vested interests dalam policy-making, yang menyusun policy yang selalu coherent dan consistent."

In the same interview, Ramli said that Indonesia shouldn't care what other nations think, and that Indonesia should do things the Indonesian way. It seems he doesn't apply this position to language.

1022. DanDillon - 10/20/1999 8:25:36 AM

Sounds like Ramli has a bad case of Forked Tongue.

1023. Hashke - 10/21/1999 10:59:26 AM

Irv:

That is a lot of pollution coming into Indonesian. Frankly, it looks terrible. Why the sudden (or is it sudden) addiction to so much English in Indonesia?

Sounds like some of the Navajo broadcasts here -- the ones done by younger Navajos. The elders use only the 'old language', unadulterated by either English or Spanish.

1024. DanDillon - 10/21/1999 12:09:07 PM

Spoken like a true old-timer. ESL, or "pollution" as you call it, is the future way of all nations. Linguistic paradigms be damned!

1025. Hashke - 10/21/1999 2:04:25 PM

Dan:

Geez, no one has ever called me 'old-timer' before. Thanks!

ESLphuggingshmESL, this ain't English as a Second Language, but rather the leaving of tracks all over Indonesian by one who can't seem to come up with the terminology in his own language.

The passage would look better with an eclectic salting of palabras from other languishes:

Kita perlu seorang ra'iis yang dostoverny, yang tidak mempunyai intereses creados dalam kebijaksanaan, yang menyusun politik yang selalu muttamaasik dan sinetis."

1026. ProfEmeritus - 10/21/1999 2:20:08 PM

Pak hashke

The influence of English on Indonesian began long before the language was called Indonesian; i.e., when it was still Malay. President Sukarno was one of the leaders who helped anglicize Bahasa. I recall once when someone asked him in Indonesian why he had been in the US. Sukarno responded, "untuk dicekupkan." Henceforth "checkup" became part of the language.

1027. cmboyce - 10/21/1999 3:57:21 PM

Without wanting to directly analogize Coca-Cola hegemony with the Norman Conquest, I don't see why one need grieve for an Anglicized Indonesian any more than for a Frenchified English.

1028. Hashke - 10/21/1999 3:58:55 PM

Thanks, Pak Gurubesar. Is the speaker who uses so much English within his Indonesian showing off or is he ignorant of the native lexicon?

I thew some Russian, Arabic and Spanish into the above to make more of a cosmopolitan stew of the utterance -- à la English or Yiddish, each with its plethora of foreign loan words.

1029. Hashke - 10/21/1999 4:00:35 PM

Ah, c'mon cm, just look at that untidy Scheisshaufe!

1030. ProfEmeritus - 10/21/1999 4:16:33 PM

Pak hashke

I knew what you were up to in your sentence, and it was very clever.

I think Rizal Ramli used though English terms because they are more accurate in expressing essentially Western ideas than are the Indonesian translations.

1031. Hashke - 10/21/1999 4:30:16 PM

Pak Gurubesar:

Until a couple of months ago I somewhat regularly received a newsletter in Indonesian. The text had no English in it whatever --except for possibly some camouflaged items like 'dicekupkan'.

1032. PelleNilsson - 10/21/1999 4:38:45 PM

Hashke

Now that El Proyeto is near its fruition can you tell us something about it?

1033. Hashke - 10/21/1999 4:46:14 PM

Soon, Pelle. At this point all I want to say is that it is more splattered with diacritical marks than the heavens are with stars.

1034. ycmeehan - 10/21/1999 4:48:50 PM

Pour mon prof: Une des devinettes pour ma classe de Français III va comme cela: (Risky restaurant sign): Don't just stand there and be hungry. Come in and be fed up. Ma traduction est: Ne restez pas debout ainsi, affamés. Entrez et ayez raz-le-bol.

Je ne suis du tout satisfaite. Y-a-t' il un moyen d'améliorer cette phrase, s'il vous plaît. Merci.

1035. pseudoerasmus - 10/21/1999 9:44:35 PM

That all depends on what don't just stand there means. What does it really mean idiomatically? Does it mean don't delay any longer? Or perhaps "get moving"?

But whatever the English phrase actually means, "rester debout" is wrong.

1036. cmboyce - 10/21/1999 9:51:16 PM

Given "...and be hungry", it certainly means "don't delay any longer". The humor comes from the simultaneous suggestion of "get moving".

1037. CalGal - 10/21/1999 9:58:04 PM

No, the humor comes from the use of idioms with contrary literal meanings. I mean, why wouldn't someone stand there, if action meant he would be fed up? Who the hell wants to be fed up?

And "don't just stand there" has the added element of refusal or stubbornness.

1038. cmboyce - 10/21/1999 10:31:15 PM

Well, I just meant the humor of "Don't just stand there". Obviously, whoever wrote the sign didn't intend "fed up" to have the humor the more sophisticated viewer sees in it. The sign intends to tempt, and gittin' fed up is gooood!! 'member ol' Mammy's flapjacks? Hoo boy, a dozen at a time! Yeah, I'd git fed up real good, them days.

1039. Hashke - 10/21/1999 11:01:06 PM

On a plein le sac avec ces inanités graffitiques. ;-)

1040. CalGal - 10/21/1999 11:21:57 PM

Obviously, whoever wrote the sign didn't intend "fed up" to have the humor the more sophisticated viewer sees in it.

Oh, you think? Hmm. I assumed it was on purpose. Rather like the time a flight attendant said, as we were taxiing toward the jetway, "We'd like to thank you for giving us the business while we took you for a ride."

If it was inadvertent, then you're right.

1041. ycmeehan - 10/22/1999 7:02:11 AM

Well, Prof, it means idiomatically 'Remuez-vous' and I used the words ainsi: Remuez-vous si vous avez faim. Entrez et prenez le raz-au-bol.

The humor, however heavy, is intended for students who have only two and a half of French.

One student translated the phrase correctly. He is from Thailand, here for the year and studied French since he was twelve years old.

Hashke, j'ai vidé le sac du cours. aidez-moi à le remplir. J'ai besoin de nouvelles devinettes maintenant, bien plus malines evidemment...

1042. Hashke - 10/22/1999 11:45:11 AM

Pseuder is in an obliterative mode over in PseuderTravels, banning punning and off-topic shmoozing and labeling the puns submitted yesterday as inane. I posted something like the following last night, which he promptly chalked over:

Pseuder is continuing his relentless efforts toward an Endlösung der Wortspielfrage -- a final solution to the punning question (problem).

Well, I'll continue to read with great interest and pleasure his accounts of his travels, but punnery, inane or not, is fun
and one must perforce, from time to time, do as did Hamlet -- jest with gravediggers.

1043. pseudoerasmus - 10/22/1999 12:01:30 PM

Don't get me wrong, Hashke. I like your puns, but I think the sustained reckless punning of the kind seen yesterday in over in Pseuder's Travels derails threads.

I certainly think puns can be witty and amusing, especially when apt, but rarely when they are done for their own sake (pun for pun's sake?), and more rarely still when they constitute a whole exchange which lasts for 30-40 messages. Then, the following applies:

"A pun is a gun let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect".

1044. Hashke - 10/22/1999 12:18:13 PM

'Reckless' is in the ear of the behearer.

Btw, puns, even bad ones, offer an interesting dissonance to the stream of language. He who does not dig Stockhausen or even Schoenberg will become tinnitic in the presence of even the best puns.

A really good pun should also 'tickle the intellect'.

1045. pseudoerasmus - 10/22/1999 12:25:01 PM

He who does not dig Stockhausen or even Schoenberg will become tinnitic in the presence of even the best puns.

But I guess he'll still be pretty good Mandarin comprehension!

1046. pseudoerasmus - 10/22/1999 12:25:28 PM

...good at...

1047. pseudoerasmus - 10/22/1999 12:26:48 PM

Sometimes tinnitus is an internal cri de coeur for the end to incessant punning, or incessant (pointless) rhyming.

1048. pseudoerasmus - 10/22/1999 12:27:56 PM

"Twentieth century music is like paedophilia. No matter how persuasively and persistently its champions urge their cause, it will never be accepted by the public at large, who will continue to regard it with incomprehension, outrage and repugnance."

-- Kingsley Amis on Schoenberg

1049. cmboyce - 10/22/1999 12:30:21 PM

Pseudo, I had a question for you that was expunged by you, I suppose in error, for it was eminently on topic. But it fits as well here, so I'll ask again. Did you encounter in Yazd (or elsewhere) Gabri? And in any case, do you know how close it is to ordinary Farsi; or is it something else altogether?

1050. pseudoerasmus - 10/22/1999 12:40:11 PM

Oh, sorry about that, I didn't see that question. No, I didn't hear any Gabri.

1051. Uzmakk - 10/22/1999 12:41:11 PM

What were the two Greek words for man, one the superior man and the other the inferior man.

1052. pseudoerasmus - 10/22/1999 12:42:14 PM

anthropos, andros?

1053. Uzmakk - 10/22/1999 12:42:19 PM

(?)

1054. Uzmakk - 10/22/1999 12:42:24 PM

(?)

1055. pseudoerasmus - 10/22/1999 12:42:44 PM

what do you mean superior and inferior?

1056. Uzmakk - 10/22/1999 12:44:18 PM

How about something like "aner", pseudo?

1057. Uzmakk - 10/22/1999 12:48:37 PM

One Greek and the other not Greek. And one could become Greek by adopting Greek ways. I mean, don't you think that the Greeks had an agreed upon philosophical and cultural understanding as to what the superior man was?

1058. pseudoerasmus - 10/22/1999 12:50:11 PM

Yes, that too, but it also means husband.

1059. pseudoerasmus - 10/22/1999 12:50:45 PM

not Greek = barbaros (foreigner)

1060. Uzmakk - 10/22/1999 12:50:53 PM

There is another Greek word I like that means,"dwellers round about". It slips my mind at the moment.

1061. Uzmakk - 10/22/1999 12:53:15 PM

1058Pseudo:
That makes sense.

1062. Hashke - 10/22/1999 7:40:04 PM

pseuder:

One of my favorite Kingsley Amis quotes is 'A man who does not drink is not fit company' -- akin to Caitlin Thomas' 'I can't stand a man without the smell of whisky on his breath'.

1063. Hashke - 10/23/1999 10:33:44 AM

ycmeehan:

I personally like 'bouge ta viande' and 'avoir plein le sac', but...

I hope that you have gotten the book you ordered. For some reason my publisher does not seem to have the wile to get the books at amazon on a 24 hour shipment basis -- so it's really better to order directly from Norton/Audio-Forum.

Publishers in general are a pain in the butt -- ils sont tout à fait des emmerdeurs!

1064. ycmeehan - 10/23/1999 4:46:24 PM

Hashke,
No, I have not received the book. It was ordered September 15 and promised to be sent in 4 to 6 weeks' time. So I will wait a little longer and inquire again.

Vous savez que mon prof, étant un prof, ne peut donc agir qu'en prof, no?

1065. Hashke - 10/23/1999 7:18:31 PM

ycmeehan:

The prof is in the pudding.

Il est Shiva, Destructeur des Mondes.

1066. IrvingSnodgrass - 10/23/1999 9:23:34 PM

Hashké (msg num=1023):
That is a lot of pollution coming into Indonesian. Frankly, it looks terrible. Why the sudden (or is it sudden) addiction to so much English in Indonesia?

In the past 18 months, an entirely new dialogue has emerged in Indonesia, which was formerly absent, even forbidden, and that is the dialogue about politics and democracy. The language for this discussion had never been allowed to develop in Indonesian, so it shouldn't be surprising that these words are being borrowed wholesale from English.

A major factor is that the person defining much of the discussion, Amien Rais, has a PhD in Political Science from the University of Chicago. Listening to his commentary, one often wonders where the Indonesian stops and the English begins. He alone is responsible for introducing hundreds of new political terms into the Indonesian vocabulary.

Message # 1028:
Is the speaker who uses so much English within his Indonesian showing off or is he ignorant of the native lexicon?

Not at all. The words simply didn't exist in Indonsian, until now.

Message # 1031:
Until a couple of months ago I somewhat regularly received a newsletter in Indonesian. The text had no English in it whatever -- except for possibly some camouflaged items like 'dicekupkan'.

This is quite surprising, unless the topic was unrelated to politics or current affairs. A look at the front page of any Indonesian newspaper shows a very large number of English loan words.

1067. IrvingSnodgrass - 10/23/1999 9:24:53 PM

How appropriate that my post about language contact was number 1066!

1068. ilyavinarsky - 10/23/1999 10:35:03 PM

Godless Linguistics

1069. Hashke - 10/23/1999 10:39:35 PM

Irv:

Thanks for that great insight! But how do the huddled masses deal with all that sudden English? I would think that, as clever as the Indonesians are, they could at least invent new Indonesian terminology à la Navajo: 'ádiilohiijí'=on the side of the ones who lassoe with their noses=Republicans, etc., etc.

I am sure that there must have been some inmix of English in the stuff I got from Indonesia, but nothing like the dreadful lesions that appeared on the Indonesian sentence you posted.

Where have you bean by the whey?

1070. IrvingSnodgrass - 10/23/1999 10:44:16 PM

ilyavinarsky:
Was the person who wrote that post serious, or is it very cleverly put sarcasm? Lacking any context, I really can't tell.

1071. Hashke - 10/23/1999 10:44:31 PM

Sorry -- ...'chîîh (noses) ádiilohiijí'...

1072. ilyavinarsky - 10/23/1999 10:52:46 PM

What do you think, Irving?

1073. IrvingSnodgrass - 10/23/1999 10:55:17 PM

Hashké:
I've been busy IRL. Things have been pretty exciting around here, after all.

The huddled masses haven't been involved too much in the dialogue over the sudden onset of democracy (which, of course, is why we had riots this week -- most people simply don't understand the principles of democracy). I'm sure by the time they start learning about the concepts, the words will have been Indonesianized. I admit I intentionally spelled things the English way in my earlier post to make the borrowings more transparent, even though a number of the words have Indonesian spellings.

Foreign words are a hallmark of public speaking at the highest levels here. This will continue as long as there are concepts Indonesian is lacking. In Gus Dur's inaugural address the other day, he used many foreign terms, such as "raison d'etre."

1074. IrvingSnodgrass - 10/23/1999 10:59:47 PM

ilyavinarsky:
As I said, I don't know the context of the dialogue. But I can't imagine that anyone would seriously take such a position, so I'd have to choose sarcasm.

1075. Hashke - 10/23/1999 11:52:41 PM

Godless sarcasm.

1076. PelleNilsson - 10/24/1999 4:26:20 AM

Ilya's link is obviously a lampoon of the creationist/evolutionist battle.

1077. PelleNilsson - 10/24/1999 5:21:18 AM

Hashke

A travel story of little consequence starting here. Your turn.

1078. Hashke - 10/23/1999 7:34:08 PM

"A pun is a gun let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect".

My little Wortspiel of a couple of days ago in this thread -- 'Nicht mehr Licht' -- was double-edged, and aside from the stimulatingly sibilant rush of unvoiced palatal alveolars, should have tickled the intellect -- had you not in your Shivaic apoplexy slapped it into limbo, probably barely noticing it.

How might the translingual/transliterary association lead you down the path to what work that bears at least a modicum of topicality to the PseuderTravels thread???

1079. pseudoerasmus - 10/24/1999 8:26:36 AM

Heart of Darkness ?

1080. IrvingSnodgrass - 10/24/1999 9:35:03 AM

Here's an interesting report on a development I first heard about in Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct:

A Linguistic Big Bang (from the NYT)

1081. Hashke - 10/24/1999 10:01:16 AM

pseuder:

Conjectura baik, aber nyet. Keep trying. I love it when a man of your intellect and literary breadth misses one -- and equally so when the bulb goes on.

Any guesses from others?

1082. Hashke - 10/24/1999 10:06:29 AM

Pelle:

Wonderful story! What are all those braless ducks doing wandering about in there?

I'll try to come up with a travel tale soon.

1083. Hashke - 10/24/1999 10:10:09 AM

Irv:

Huh? All I get is a registration form.

1084. IrvingSnodgrass - 10/24/1999 10:13:10 AM

Hashké:
If you're not registered with the NYT, I recommend it. It's free. If you are registered, they occasionally ask you to log in again (it happened to me today).

1085. pseudoerasmus - 10/24/1999 11:52:09 AM

Kamera obscura

1086. pseudoerasmus - 10/24/1999 12:18:58 PM

Another riddle based on crosslingual puns:

What city in the Western hemisphere harbours a sheriff drinking Saturn's sweet ale?

(Somehow I'm inspired to produce these from city names.)

1087. Hashke - 10/24/1999 12:50:22 PM

No, not Kamera obscura. Wrong original language, wrong century, right nationality of characters though.

The Western Hemisphere is a large territory, pseuder.

1088. Hashke - 10/24/1999 1:45:24 PM

Well, saturnalia was a Roman practice and sheriffs were generally found where the buffalo Rome.

1089. Hashke - 10/24/1999 1:48:54 PM

Or, who knows, there may be an ale called Saturn in Nottingham.

1090. pseudoerasmus - 10/24/1999 3:27:14 PM

Well, perhaps that riddle is unreasonably difficult and circuitous....so here are few clues:

(1) a word in the question puns with an Arabic word whose meaning is similar to an English & French word contained in the answer;

(2) another word in the question puns with a thing chemically related to a word contained in the answer;

(3) yet another word, when used as a different part of speech, is a synonym for the word clued in (1).

1091. ilyavinarsky - 10/24/1999 4:56:27 PM

Amazing!

1092. PelleNilsson - 10/24/1999 5:09:18 PM

Portmouth?

1093. PelleNilsson - 10/24/1999 5:29:48 PM

Portsmouth, I mean.

1094. stostosto - 10/24/1999 5:44:43 PM

Portsmouth?
Which definition of Western Hemisphere are you using?

1095. stostosto - 10/24/1999 5:46:46 PM

Here is a small bilingual pun, widely used in Denmark:

Q: "Do you have a lighter?"
A: "Leider nicht"

1096. stostosto - 10/24/1999 5:48:15 PM

(Yes, I know it's silly. I am just stalling for time, trying to come up with something on Pseuder's cryptogram).

1097. pseudoerasmus - 10/24/1999 6:03:37 PM

Well, I didn't know there was so much interest in crosslingual "cryptograms". Here are the two others already posed to Hashke, the first one he got, the second he didn't. (The solutions are given in the back posts of this thread.)

(1) What African city is both the gift of peace and the house of lard?
(2) Where in Europe does Cinderella tend to lions?

1098. pseudoerasmus - 10/24/1999 6:04:04 PM

By the way, Portsmouth is not the answer to the Western Hemisphere cryptogram.

1099. Hashke - 10/24/1999 6:54:08 PM

vinarsky:

What is amazing?

1100. Hashke - 10/24/1999 6:55:28 PM

stotsto:

Well, at least you are keeping one of the words in play.

1101. ilyavinarsky - 10/24/1999 7:02:23 PM

The creation of the new language is. I forwarded this story to a former coworker who is deaf, and whose life is a teacher of sign language.

BTW the New Guinean Tok Pisin was also born in this century, wasn't it? And the pidgin Dersu Uzala spoke is also well-documented, isn't it?

1102. ilyavinarsky - 10/24/1999 7:03:10 PM

I meant 'whose wife is a teacher of sign language'. Don't know, how you edit posts in this place.

1103. Hashke - 10/24/1999 7:04:08 PM

Shropshire?

1104. pseudoerasmus - 10/24/1999 7:05:25 PM

No, Hashke. The Herringistanis were a wee bit closer to the mark.

1105. Hashke - 10/24/1999 7:08:03 PM

stosto:

Just thot of this while waiting to solve PE's dastardly crypto.

'Do you have a leader?'
'Leiter nicht.'

1106. Hashke - 10/24/1999 7:10:49 PM

Mazar-i-sharif.

1107. pseudoerasmus - 10/24/1999 7:13:24 PM

#1106

Western Hemisphere, Hashke, Western Hemisphere. But Mazar-i-Sharif is not such a bad answer. Now, play off your answer as well as the Herringistanis'.

1108. Hashke - 10/24/1999 7:18:40 PM

How are you coming with 'nicht mehr licht'?

1109. pseudoerasmus - 10/24/1999 7:20:53 PM

Nicht mehr Licht: could you give me another clue? is it a pun, or is it merely a reference? And it's a German work of the 19th century?

1110. Hashke - 10/24/1999 7:30:40 PM

A referential word play to do with expungeative policies und deutsche Literatur des 19ten Jahrhunderts.

Herringstanis? I thought the saturnalia (Saturn ale) and Roman buffalos would do it!

1111. Hashke - 10/24/1999 7:32:46 PM

Port-au-Prince

A 'sherif' is a kind of prince and port is chemically somewhat like ale.

1112. pseudoerasmus - 10/24/1999 7:45:28 PM

Port-au-Prince! Yes.

The full explanation:

sheriff => sharif => prince
Saturn => sauterne (a sweet wine) => port
harbours => harbour => port

1113. pseudoerasmus - 10/24/1999 7:51:17 PM

Well, Sturm und Drang was a German literary movement to expunge the Enlightenment, and that could plausibly work with Nicht mehr Licht, but S und D was for the most part a late 18th century movement.

1114. pseudoerasmus - 10/24/1999 7:56:21 PM

But Hashke, you also said "what work", so I was thinking titles of novels or plays or poems.

1115. Hashke - 10/24/1999 7:56:45 PM

Du kommst immer näher.

1116. Hashke - 10/24/1999 7:59:00 PM

Yes, 'work'. Es sollte jetzt sonnenklar sein!

1117. pseudoerasmus - 10/24/1999 8:01:02 PM

Wandrers Nachtlieder

1118. Hashke - 10/24/1999 8:01:44 PM

Why is there all this goddam white in here?

1119. Hashke - 10/24/1999 8:04:35 PM

Nein, und auch nicht zehn, aber fast auf'm Ziel.

1120. Hashke - 10/24/1999 8:05:35 PM

By the way, your crypto was quite ingenious!

1121. pseudoerasmus - 10/24/1999 8:11:44 PM

I can think of several things to do with light or darkness, and several things to do with travel or movement, but none which combines the two in some way.

1122. pseudoerasmus - 10/24/1999 8:14:42 PM

Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre?

1123. Hashke - 10/24/1999 8:15:00 PM

A salient part of 'Nicht mehr Licht' is the key to the whole shebang.

1124. Hashke - 10/24/1999 8:16:48 PM

Bingo! A real pleasure to see you nail it.

Now, will you be so kind as to explain it to the Völker beobachting out there?

1125. pseudoerasmus - 10/24/1999 8:18:14 PM

I give up.

1126. pseudoerasmus - 10/24/1999 8:22:20 PM

What does that novel have to do with "nicht mehr Licht"?

1127. Stumbo - 10/24/1999 8:27:33 PM

Didn't Goethe say something to that effect on his deathbed?

1128. Hashke - 10/24/1999 8:52:41 PM

'Mehr Licht' (More light)-- Goethe's last words.

'Nicht mehr Licht!' (Not more light) -- hashke imploring Shiva to quit overexposing the plates in PTravels.

Goethe is the author of 'Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre' (Wilhelm Meister's Year of Wandering), hence the topicality.

1129. pseudoerasmus - 10/24/1999 10:26:49 PM

Hashke:

At this cathedral, the bishop hails only his kin, and his rank makes thousands.

Which cathedral is it?

1130. pseudoerasmus - 10/24/1999 10:29:00 PM

For that cryptgram, you need only English, German and Romance languages.

1131. Hashke - 10/24/1999 11:15:11 PM

Damn, no Turkish?

1132. Hashke - 10/24/1999 11:16:29 PM

What kinds of thousands does his rank make? Strange sentence.

1133. pseudoerasmus - 10/24/1999 11:30:00 PM

dollars?

1134. Stumbo - 10/24/1999 11:38:52 PM

Quickie:

Which oath -- made famous by a comic strip -- consists of a word meaning "a thousand," and a word which is a homophone (*) of the word for "cathedral" in another language?

-----------
(*) modulo, as usual, some general phonetic differences between the languages in question.

(As with my sleeping-with-fat-cats puzzle, this is just a byproduct of an unsuccessful attempt to solve the current one.)

1135. Hashke - 10/24/1999 11:41:40 PM

La Sagrada Familia -- Barcelona -- Gaudi?

1136. pseudoerasmus - 10/24/1999 11:44:18 PM

Yes! apparently that was too easy.

1137. Hashke - 10/24/1999 11:48:09 PM

Well, kin=familia, aber was denn ist die deutsche Verbindung?

But then, you always throw in a false clue to confuse the guesser.

1138. Hashke - 10/24/1999 11:54:54 PM

Stumbo:

How old a comic strip?

1139. Hashke - 10/25/1999 12:01:18 AM

Ya gotta know comic strips for this one, which I don't.

1140. pseudoerasmus - 10/25/1999 12:03:50 AM

#1137

Name one false clue I have ever laid in my cryptos.

Sagrada familia
hail = heil => heilig = sagrada
kin => family = familia
his rank makes thousands => sa - grada - fa -milia

1141. Stumbo - 10/25/1999 12:06:47 AM

It's a very well-known comic strip. (Actually, I shouldn't really say "strip," since I don't think it ever appeared in a less-than-one-page-at-a-time format.)

1142. Hashke - 10/25/1999 12:08:56 AM

Pak marj:

In the Hindi language resources link above right I find no Hindi idiomatic expressions listed. Any hints where some may be found, Pak marj?

1143. PelleNilsson - 10/25/1999 6:50:55 AM

Hashke

Because you are becoming too good at standard Swedish, we shall proceed to transcribed Swedish dialects. What follows is a complete sentence which carries certain geographic information. Given your love for the diacritical, you may also find it beautiful.

Å i åa e ä ö

1144. Hashke - 10/25/1999 9:19:33 AM

"Name one false clue I have ever laid in my cryptos."

I should have said 'extraneous', as was 'Cinderella' in a former crypto. And the last one was easily solvable without the German and the very clever 'rank'. However, I would rather see more clues than fewer in these little devils. Interesting to observe here the Tasmanian erasmian mind at work.

1145. Hashke - 10/25/1999 9:24:27 AM

Pelle:

Wait a minute! That is a sentence?

Yeah, the diacritics are beautiful, but I am dying of diacritics these days.

I'll work on this, though I'll be gone most of the morning.

1146. pseudoerasmus - 10/25/1999 5:28:04 PM

Hashke, a new crypto:

In this European town, eating onions does not bust your dignity.

Hint: don't look for a city, but a place within a European city.

1147. Hashke - 10/25/1999 5:57:14 PM

Stumbo:

The solution seems to depend on an oath in a comic, and even though I know the word for both 'thousand' and 'cathedral' in nearly thirty languages, I can't come up with it. Given, though, your Russian bent, it might be related to 'tysach' and 'sobor' ('dom').

1148. Hashke - 10/25/1999 6:04:32 PM

Pelle:

Jag behöver en ledtråd!

1149. Hashke - 10/25/1999 6:09:04 PM

pseuder:

You say 'in this European town' and then 'don't look for a city'.

Could you reword this one?

The first thing I think of is Munich with the Frauenkirche and its Zwiebeltürme and then on to the Hofbräuhaus from there.

1150. Hashke - 10/25/1999 6:11:42 PM

What literary figure got himself into the doghouse for his leftist leanings -- and for what work in particular?

1151. pseudoerasmus - 10/25/1999 6:19:01 PM

No, I worded my hint badly: the answer is not a city, but a thing contained within the city. Of course you would have to know what city it's located in.

In Munich there is nothing which surpasses Asamkirche in resplendent gaucherie.

1152. pseudoerasmus - 10/25/1999 6:21:55 PM

Is #1150 a straight question, or a crosslingual crypto?

1153. Hashke - 10/25/1999 6:25:14 PM

Eating onions does not bust your dignity in this thing contained within a your a peein' city??? Hmmmm...

Tapa bar?

1154. Hashke - 10/25/1999 6:27:44 PM

It has some cross-cultural essences and a whiff of punnery.

1155. pseudoerasmus - 10/25/1999 6:27:49 PM

#1153

?

?

1156. pseudoerasmus - 10/25/1999 6:29:58 PM

is doghouse = prison?

is "in the doghouse" an idiom for "in trouble" or "in disgrace"?

1157. Hashke - 10/25/1999 6:31:26 PM

Pos, sabes lo que son tapas, no?

1158. pseudoerasmus - 10/25/1999 6:32:19 PM

Yes, I know what a tapa bar is.

1159. Hashke - 10/25/1999 6:34:37 PM

Yes, 'im Verschiss', 'hiyameshi'. The Navajos say 'to be chased out' --ch'íbidineelchââ'.

1160. Hashke - 10/25/1999 6:37:09 PM

A place contained within a European city where one can eat onions without busting one's dignity. Hmmmm...

Is this cross-lingual. What languages, if so?

1161. pseudoerasmus - 10/25/1999 6:38:25 PM

Arabic, Russian and arguably German.

1162. Hashke - 10/25/1999 6:40:23 PM

Hmmm... What the hell is in Basel that has to do with a bust of dignity? Oy...the pain!

1163. pseudoerasmus - 10/25/1999 6:42:05 PM

Here is an easy one: where in Russia can one see a piece of iron float in water AND get some barbecue for a gift?

1164. Hashke - 10/25/1999 6:43:56 PM

Münsterplatz, where there is a statue (bust) of ever-forgiving Erasmus?

1165. Hashke - 10/25/1999 6:55:35 PM

St. Petersburg

1166. pseudoerasmus - 10/25/1999 6:57:31 PM

#1165
That's not the city I had in mind. Does St. Petersburg fit the description in some way?

1167. Hashke - 10/25/1999 7:15:06 PM

Isn't 'Potemkin' still still floating in the Neva?

1168. Hashke - 10/25/1999 7:23:04 PM

The reason I tossed out Basel relates to Arabic 'baSal' -- onion -- and there is a statue in the Münsterplatz of yr namesake. But I'm sure you have something more subtle in mind.

1169. pseudoerasmus - 10/25/1999 8:06:45 PM

What does Potemkin to do with barbecue or a gift?

1170. marjoribanks - 10/25/1999 8:15:04 PM

Pak Hashke,

I have looked all over for a good source for Hindi idioms, and have found none. The only ones I know are crude - "there is a bone in the kebab" etc.

Sorry.

1171. Hashke - 10/25/1999 8:54:24 PM

Potemkin has only to do with iron floating in water.

How goes the doghouse?

1172. Hashke - 10/25/1999 8:58:05 PM

Pak marj:

Thanks! I love 'a bone in the kebab' -- like 'eine Haare in der Suppe' or 'tama ni kizu'.

Any other 'crude' ones that come to mind?

Can you romanize the Hindi for 'a bone in the kebab'?

1173. Hashke - 10/25/1999 9:02:01 PM

1169. pseudoerasmus - 10/26/99 12:06:45 AM
What does Potemkin to do with barbecue or a gift?

In order to catch fish you gotta chum the waters.

The only barbecue that I can think of now is 'Zhar-Ptitsa'.

1174. Hashke - 10/25/1999 9:04:25 PM

In what Russian city would a foreigner such as yourself be likely to be scoffed at?

1175. marjoribanks - 10/25/1999 9:10:59 PM

Pak Hahke,

I feel quite ashamed about offering you these meager gleanings.

Kebab me hadi (there is a bone in the kebab].

and

Daal me kuch kala (there is a black bit in the daal).

These mean the same thing - "something is rotten...."

1176. pseudoerasmus - 10/25/1999 9:13:51 PM

#1173
Kebab me haar or kebab me haddi.

1177. pseudoerasmus - 10/25/1999 9:14:33 PM

what on earth is "tama ni kizu"? Sometimes a wound?

1178. Hashke - 10/25/1999 9:14:45 PM

Pak marj:

No shame, please. These are great. I have looked far and wide for Hindi representation for inclusion in a book I am doing, but no luck.

These are a gift for which I am very grateful.

1179. pseudoerasmus - 10/25/1999 9:16:41 PM

"where in Russia can one see a piece of iron float in water AND get some barbecue for a gift?"

Rostov on the Don

"In this European town, eating onions does not bust your dignity."

Jardin du Luxembourg

1180. Hashke - 10/25/1999 9:19:38 PM

pseuder:

I have 'tama ni kizu' as 'scar on a jewel'.

1181. pseudoerasmus - 10/25/1999 9:21:47 PM

#1180

That would be "tama NO kizu", and it sounds like you're saying a crystall ball has a scratch on it.

1182. Hashke - 10/25/1999 9:23:47 PM

So you are playing on 'luk' etc...aha...veddy klehva! But trudno.

I hate to have to give you the doghouse and scoff answers.

1183. Hashke - 10/25/1999 9:29:32 PM

Are you sure? Nobuo Akiyama says 'tama NI kizu' and the dictionary of the Japan foundation lists 'gem' or 'jewel' among the meanings of 'tama'.

1184. Hashke - 10/25/1999 9:33:44 PM

Kaigi wa umaku itta no desu ga, kaishi jikan no okure ga tama ni kizu deshita.

1185. Hashke - 10/25/1999 9:36:02 PM

Subarashii bakansu deshita ga, ichi nichi gou ga futta no ga tama ni kizu deshita.

1186. pseudoerasmus - 10/25/1999 9:38:03 PM

Yes, one of the definitions of "tama" is "jewel" or "gem". Perhaps "tama ni kizu" is OK idiomatically, but it wouldn't translate as "scar of a jewel", more like "jewel scars".

1187. pseudoerasmus - 10/25/1999 9:40:14 PM

Ah! Tama ni kizu desu = this is a scar in the jewel

with the verb left off, it sounds strange.

1188. Hashke - 10/25/1999 10:22:56 PM

Rostov on the Don was very good. Roast off and 'dono' and the latter word's several variations for gift. Do you also mean by 'Rostov' to 'rust off' (iron) as well as giving it the barbecue connotation?

No questions on the lonely scoffed-at wanderer and the doghouse?

Where is everbuddy?

1189. PelleNilsson - 10/26/1999 1:01:14 AM

Hashke

Å i åa e ä ö.

It has to do with streaming water and a piece of dry land.

1190. Stumbo - 10/26/1999 5:11:34 AM

Hashke:

The pictorial narrative referred to in #1134 was Les aventures de Tintin. And one of your homophone suggestions was correct.

1191. Hashke - 10/26/1999 12:02:57 PM

Pelle:

Jag har inte den blekaste aning!

1192. Hashke - 10/26/1999 12:11:08 PM

Aha, landskap og natur

å ån åar -- mindre vattendrag, ström.

ö -- a small island?

1193. PelleNilsson - 10/26/1999 12:19:39 PM

Hashke

You are getting there. All except one of the other "words" are dialectal abbreviations of common words.

1194. DanDillon - 10/26/1999 9:48:36 PM

I've been trying desperately to procure a signed first edition of Chomsky's Syntactic Structures, but no luck. I've tried ABE over and over. Anyone know of other sites, locales that may be more fruitful? This is perhaps an epoch-defining pamphlet. And that was perhaps meiosis.

1195. ProfEmeritus - 10/27/1999 10:29:52 AM

Singapore is attempting to abolish spoken Singlish. It apparently began with Lee Kuan Yew. (If he was still Prime Minister, Singlish could be outlawed). The move is supported by present Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong. A popular sitcom "Phua Chu Kang" is under particular attack. The chief character from whom the sitcom gets its name speaks exclusively Singlish, and this is considered degrading and to undermine the nation's efforts to speak world-class English. The Prime Minister is already beginning to move against the Television Corporation of Singapore which produces the sitcom. To me, as a non-linguist, it seems ridiculous to try to reform a country's language by raising it to the presumed level and purity of the former colonial masters. Singlish always pleased me with its local charm.

1196. Hashke - 10/27/1999 3:10:35 PM

Dan:

Check www.alibris.com

1197. Hashke - 10/27/1999 3:18:28 PM

Pak Gurubesar:

It is strange that the David Crystal's otherwise fairly comprehensive
The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language mentions Singapore Portuguese, but not Singlish.

1198. Hashke - 10/27/1999 3:25:10 PM

I've gone as far as I can go with Stumbo's and Pelle's conunudrums.

My leftist doghouse leaner is still up for grabs. pseudo has foutred le camp without so much as a heilige María.

In what Russian city would a foreigner most likely be scoffed at?

Pskov

1199. Hashke - 10/27/1999 5:58:21 PM

Pelle:

It must mean something like 'water in a stream flowing on an island'?

1200. DanDillon - 10/27/1999 7:34:54 PM

Merci, Hashke. Ferai.

1201. PelleNilsson - 10/28/1999 12:50:01 AM

Hashke

Å	i	åa	e	ä	FACE="Arial">ö
Och	i	ån	är	en	ö
And	in	the river	is	an	island

1202. PelleNilsson - 10/28/1999 12:51:20 AM

Sorry about that 'FACE='. Didn't show in preview.

1203. Stumbo - 10/28/1999 1:04:34 AM

Hashke:

"Mille sabords!" -- the favorite oath of Captain Haddock, Tintin's sidekick. "Sabords," of course, being a homophone of "sobor." (At least, in most parts of Russia.)

1204. IrvingSnodgrass - 10/28/1999 1:31:26 AM

Stumbo:
I've never read Tintin in French (or English, for that matter). Kapten Haddock's favorite oath, in the versions I've read, is "seribu juta topan badai!"

1205. Stumbo - 10/28/1999 1:35:53 AM

Irv: meaning...?

1206. IrvingSnodgrass - 10/28/1999 1:40:26 AM

"a thousand million typhoons"

1207. cmboyce - 10/28/1999 1:42:59 AM

Great curse! I'm gonna try that (& see if I can break my "shitfuck" habit).

1208. PelleNilsson - 10/28/1999 1:45:16 AM

The first Indonesian expression I've ever seen in a Swedish newspaper:

sudah gamut said to mean 'you are already fat', a compliment to prosperity and happiness.

1209. IrvingSnodgrass - 10/28/1999 1:48:25 AM

I see the Swedish papers are as accurate with foreign expressions as they are with sports scores.

The term is sudah gemuk.

1210. Stumbo - 10/28/1999 1:49:21 AM

Irv: a reasonable equivalent, yes. (I don't even remember what the English translation was.)

BTW -- the posts I referred to on Int., a few days ago, were the ones that contained easily-traceable personal info.

1211. Hashke - 10/28/1999 2:13:45 AM

Pelle:

Det e himla bra!

1212. Hashke - 10/28/1999 2:20:46 AM

Stumbo:

J'aurais dû donner plus d'un coup de sabord à cette énigme! Pues, hay que admitir que tus rompecabezitas tienen un cierto sabor.

1213. PelleNilsson - 10/28/1999 2:21:26 AM

Hashke

Where do you pick up these things? 'Himla' is dialect (Gothenburg, my city), which became in vogue country-wide ten years ago because of a popular TV-program.

1214. Hashke - 10/28/1999 2:25:32 AM

Irv:

Kutukan itu ribut sekali!

1215. Hashke - 10/28/1999 2:33:15 AM

Pelle:

Das ist himmlisch gut!

1216. Dusty - 10/28/1999 8:23:18 AM

Modeled is spelled with two "l"s in English (as opposed to American). Does anyone know if other doubled letters are common in English spellings? Specifically, I ran across "mentionned". Before I flag it as an error, I'd like to be sure it isn't simply a regional difference.

1217. PelleNilsson - 10/28/1999 8:36:05 AM

Dusty

An amateur's opinion. I have my spellchecker on British English and I find it remarkably good. It rejects 'mentionned'.

1218. Dusty - 10/28/1999 8:46:07 AM

Thanks Pelle.

1219. IrvingSnodgrass - 10/28/1999 8:47:59 AM

Dusty:
Although ls are often doubled in British English (travelled, labelled) and sometimes other letters (focussed) where they are single in American English, "n" is not one of these. "mentionned" is wrong in any dialect.

1220. Hashke - 10/28/1999 10:21:04 AM

Stumbo:

...rompecabecitas...

1221. Hashke - 10/28/1999 10:25:21 AM

Irv:

Seribu -- ribut. I guess they don't work as a pun.

1222. tmachine - 10/28/1999 4:34:13 PM

captain haddock's english version of irv's one is "thundering typhoons"! he is also fond of saying "blistering barnacles"

1223. Hashke - 10/28/1999 5:25:34 PM

How goes the Yiddish, tmachine?

Do you know German? If so, Yiddish is home free...almost not quite.

1224. Hashke - 10/29/1999 12:23:50 PM

Este lugar es un camposantos.

1225. Stumbo - 10/30/1999 2:41:11 AM

TM:

Yes, I now remember the barnacles.

My parents somehow managed to get me a few Tintin books, when I was a kid; some in French, some in English. I had a semi-decent handle on both languages, thanks in part to those same books. So a pal of mine hit on the bright idea of charging other kids for reading them -- i.e., for watching the pictures as I translated on the fly. (He pocketed half the proceeds, mostly in sticks of chewing gum.)

The scheme met its downfall when one of the clients caught me in a contradiction. "Wait a minute... The dog's name is 'Snowy'? You said last time that it was 'Milou'!" All my explanations were in vain; from that point on, they assumed I was just making it all up.

BTW, could you email me at stumbo@post.com? I have another small favor to ask.

1226. tmachine - 10/30/1999 2:08:56 PM

hashke: ikh hob a bissel gelernt--"Wus iz dus?" "dus iz a benkel" etc. ikh heyss Tamara, ikh wohn in Brooklyn. ober di alefbet iz shver (is it the same in yiddish as in german for "difficult"?) tzu lernen (I have a feeling I said that wrong). Zei gesunt!

1227. Hashke - 10/31/1999 11:44:49 AM

Yes, 'shver' is German ('schwer'='severe'). Just about everthing you have written here is German. For the letters, or alphabet, there is also the word oyses, which is used all the time. In reading the oyses, the discriminations that have to be made between 'gimel' and 'nun', between 'dalet' and 'resh', etc., etc. are very 'shver' and can cause eye-strain and emotional trauma. It's a beastly alphabet, but very pretty.

Does your course include some conversation? Are tapes, videos, etc. used -- or is it mostly reading and grammar?

1228. Hashke - 10/31/1999 11:50:46 AM

With schwer=severe I am not implying that 'schwer' means only 'severe' (although it can also mean that), but just pointing out an interesting translingual relationship. The German word means 'difficult', 'heavy', 'serious', 'severe', as does the Yiddish.

1229. tmachine - 10/31/1999 8:45:51 PM

I think I answered your question backwards--I do know basic German, I realized when I was writing the post that I didn't know what "difficult" was in Yiddish, so I just guessed it would be the same as the German. I didn't know "oyses" though. the big struggle is trying to learn the written AND the printed scripts simultaneously--it's practically double the work! it's coming, but slowly, i still can't look at a line of print and SEE it the way i can with cyrillic alphabets, i have to decipher letter by letter. thank god for knowing german, i can often guess the word just by knowing the context and reading the first couple of letters. actually it's very easy compared to german in some ways, fewer inflections most of the time. and words are run together--in the written alphabet, "vi heystu" is what in a literal German version would be "wie heissts du."

1230. Nostradamus - 10/31/1999 11:38:58 PM

I need a quick answer, if possible.

Is an 18 year old person a teenager?

Is a 19 year old person a teenager?

1231. marjoribanks - 10/31/1999 11:42:56 PM

Of course he is. What the hell kind of question is that?

1232. Nostradamus - 10/31/1999 11:45:41 PM

I'm arguing with some Master's of Sociology student in another forum who is insisting otherwise. Thanks.

1233. DanDillon - 11/1/1999 8:59:52 AM

(And PE considers me irrational.)

1234. Hashke - 11/1/1999 10:41:58 AM

tmachine:

Great! Looks as if you are making progress. You also have the advantage of Yiddish speakers in New York, and probably Yiddish radio -- for practice.

I posted the following in Salon a few days ago to try to get some action in Yiddish from my friend Rossi aka Dino Bianchi/Dino Verdi/Gino Azzurro -- but no answer, not surprisingly. It's going around. Anyhow, I'll bet that, with your basic German, you can read it. I've represented each and every of the Yiddish oyses with a romanized letter (the diphthongs are another matter).

hashkétsoh - 03:57pm Oct 29, 1999 PDT (# 1428 of 1530)

Tino Verdi:

Zai azoi gut un sag mir, main filshprakhike khaver, vos iz der moker daines tsinizmus un dainer umtsufridnkeyt veygn di farainiktn shtatn un di amerikaner? Vu verst du lesof voynen?

Undoubtably other Germanists here can read this brief passage. Pelle comes to mind, and I know that ycmeehan knows some German. And possibly PE, but he has taken an adumbrative stance since his Kristallnacht of a week or so ago, hiding out among the sherds with his Schutzstaffel/Sturmabteilung cohorts. ;-)

1235. Hashke - 11/1/1999 10:49:20 AM

And, oh well, while I'm about it here is the solution to the ridiculously hint-packed and unchallenged crypto WHAT LEFTIST LEANING AUTHOR GOT INTO THE DOGHOUSE AND WHAT SPECIFIC WORK IS INVOLVED?

doghouse=pound
leftist=Fascist
leaning=tower of Pisa

Ezra Pound, The Pisan Cantos

1236. pseudoerasmus - 11/1/1999 10:53:16 AM

You once accused me of including false clues in my cryptos. And here are you literally falsifying your clues! How could anyone arrive at Ezra Pound from "leftist-leaning"? It's misleading. Please learn some crypto etiquette....

1237. pseudoerasmus - 11/1/1999 11:03:34 AM

[That was a joke, Hashke. I thought it was a pretty good crypto. But the "left-leaning" threw me off.]

1238. Hashke - 11/1/1999 11:12:04 AM

Well, Pound for pound he Mussolini-ed so far to the left that he was rightist.

Whether The Tower is left- or right-leaning depends on where one is standing.

I am thinking of another crypto for you, but I don't want to insult yr intelligence with such simple clues as in the one above.

1239. PelleNilsson - 11/1/1999 11:19:55 AM

Hashke

To my surprise I find that I probably can read your Yiddish sample although I don't understand "der moker" and "lesof" (but I can guess).

1240. Hashke - 11/1/1999 12:30:57 PM

Pelle:

Let's see if tmachine knows those two words. Rustler undoubtably does, but no fair.

1241. tmachine - 11/1/1999 1:04:16 PM

hashke, without a dictionary or anything else handy, this is the best I can manage:

Kindly tell me, my language-loving [?] ??? [what is khaver?], what the reason [? don't know moker, is it like makher?] is for your cynicism and discontentedness about the United States and Americans. Where will you live ---- [I don't know lesof either]? (not sure about that last sentence, unless it somehow means "Why do you still live there", but i'm pretty sure "vu" is "where," i.e., "wo" in germ.)

sorry for my feebleness but am unequipped

1242. tmachine - 11/1/1999 1:05:15 PM

p.s. did you see that the Cathedral of St. John the Divine voted the other day not to allow a memorial to Pound in their Poet's Corner?

1243. PelleNilsson - 11/1/1999 1:51:58 PM

OK, the question was to tmachine and now that she has had her go (please correct me if I'm wrong tmac but I seem to remember a female name in TT), I'll put my version:

Zai azoi gut un sag mir, main filshprakhike khaver, vos iz der moker daines tsinizmus un dainer umtsufridnkeyt veygn di farainiktn shtatn un di amerikaner? Vu verst du lesof voynen?

Be so good as to tell me, my multi-lingual friend, what is the cause of your cynicism and you dissatisfaction with the United States and the Amercians. ???

The last sentence beats me. Vu=wo=where. Voynen=wohnen=live. Verst=varst?. Lesof=??. Where did you live?

1244. Hashke - 11/1/1999 3:08:44 PM

tmachine and Pelle:

Good work! You see here that with a knowledge of German how far one can go with Yiddish. Some texts are much more difficult of course.

moker=source, cause (Hebrew 'makor')
khaver=friend (Hebrew)
filshprakhik=multilingual, polyglot -- German 'vielsprachig'
verst=will -- German 'wirst'
lesof=finally, ultimately (Hebrew) 'Where will you finally settle down'?

1245. PelleNilsson - 11/1/1999 3:31:14 PM

From The Economist's Style Guide

U N N E C E S S A R Y W O R D S.

Some words add nothing but length to your prose. Use adjectives to make your meaning more precise and be cautious of those you find yourself using to make it more emphatic. The word very is a case in point. If it occurs in a sentence you have written, try leaving it out and see whether the meaning is changed. The omens were good may have more force than The omens were very good. Avoid strike action (strike will do), cutbacks (cuts), track record (record), wilderness area (usually either a wilderness or a wild area), large-scale (big), weather conditions (weather), etc.

Shoot off, or rather shoot, as many prepositions after verbs as possible. Thus people can meet rather than meet with; companies can be bought and sold rather than bought up and sold off; budgets can be cut rather than cut back; plots can be hatched but not hatched up; organisations should be headed by rather than headed up by chairmen, just as markets should be freed, rather than freed up. And children can be sent to bed rather than sent off to bed-though if they are to sit up they must first sit down. This advice you are given free, or for nothing, but not for free.

Certain words are often redundant. The leader of the so-called Front for a Free Freedonia is the leader of the Front for a Free Freedonia. A top politician or top priority is usually just a politician or a priority, and a major speech usually just a speech. A safe haven is a haven. Most probably and most especially are probably and especially. The fact that can often be shortened to That (That I did not do so was a self-indulgence). Loans to the industrial and agricultural sectors are just loans to industry and farming.

1246. PelleNilsson - 11/1/1999 3:33:31 PM

Community is another word often best cut out. Not only is it usually unnecessary, it purports to convey a sense of togetherness that may well not exist. The black community means blacks, the business community means businessmen, the homosexual community means homosexuals, the intelligence community means spies, the international community, if it means anything, means other countries, aid agencies or, just occasionally, the family of nations.

Use words with care. A heart condition is usually a bad heart. Positive thoughts (held by long-suffering creditors, according to The Economist) presumably means optimism, just as a negative report (eg, from the Department of Health on the side-effects of drugs) is probably a critical report. Industrial action is usually industrial inaction, industrial disruption or a strike. A substantially finished bridge is an unfinished bridge. Someone with high name-recognition is well known. Something with reliability problems probably does not work. If yours is a live audience, what would a dead one be like?

In general, be concise. Try to be economical in your account or argument ("The best way to be boring is to leave nothing out"-Voltaire). Similarly, try to be economical with words. "As a general rule, run your pen through every other word you have written; you have no idea what vigour it will give to your style." (Sydney Smith)

1247. ScottLoar - 11/1/1999 3:47:38 PM

Pellenilsson, all well and good advice on prose style but it still neglects the very malady, which is pretention. Those usages you've cited are most often enfeebled attempts to puff up mediocre expression or ennoble trite thoughts. And nowhere is such puff more abundant than in business writings. I've had memos cross my desk that defy understanding so abstract was the writing.

1248. PelleNilsson - 11/1/1999 3:56:36 PM

ScottLoar

I know the feeling having been on the receiving end of UN and World Bank papers.

There is a lot more in the Style Guide, most of it good and some of it funny. I intend to publish a piece from time to time unless somebody tells me to stop. I cannot link because it is a subscription site.

1249. DanDillon - 11/1/1999 9:40:23 PM

Excellent stuff, Pelle. Of perhaps just excellent, Pelle.

Prose styles are among my favorite language topics. I'll try to post some observations when I find the time.

1250. Stumbo - 11/2/1999 12:12:04 AM

Supposedly-actual headline, featured on Leno's show:

"Girl Kicked By Horse Upgraded To Stable."

1251. tmachine - 11/2/1999 11:00:24 AM

that Economist stuff is great--however, at seventeen magazine I frequently find myself battling the opposite problem with the copy department: such zeal to cut "superfluous" words that the prose loses all its original rhythm and a lot of personality. this is important since our tone has to be chatty and straightforward. The copy editors also have such terror of repeating words that they query repetitions that are clearly stylistic.

1252. PelleNilsson - 11/2/1999 12:58:07 PM

There are of course mindless people, who, given a set of guidelines, mistake them for absolute rules and apply them mindlessly.

1253. PelleNilsson - 11/2/1999 1:02:32 PM

The introduction to the Style Guide:

Clarity of writing usually follows clarity of thought. So think what you want to say, then say it as simply as possible. Keep in mind George Orwell's six elementary rules ("Politics and the English Language", 1946):

i. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

ii. Never use a long word where a short one will do.

iii. If it is possible to cut out a word, always cut it out.

iv. Never use the passive where you can use the active.

v. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

vi. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

1254. ScottLoar - 11/2/1999 1:40:56 PM

The fifth principle is that most abused in everyday English in these United States.

1255. Hashke - 11/2/1999 2:12:29 PM

Scott:

The guy who did the fifth principle has to be a colorless monoglot, eh?

1256. CalGal - 11/2/1999 2:15:38 PM

#6 is the actual text? "Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous"?

"Outright barbarous"? That can't be right.

1257. PelleNilsson - 11/2/1999 4:07:04 PM

CalGal

I copied it straight off the site. How would you put it?

1258. CalGal - 11/2/1999 4:28:06 PM

I am trying to think of the best way to describe what seems wrong.

"Outright" should only be used with a noun, I think. You would not say "outright black" or "outright white".

So I would say "Break any of these rules rather than commit an outright atrocity."

1259. PelleNilsson - 11/2/1999 4:38:07 PM

I guess " barbarousness" is the noun.

1260. CalGal - 11/2/1999 4:48:46 PM

No, I think it would be barbarity or barbarism.

The other approach would be to drop the "outright".

"Break any of these rules sooner than say anything barbarous."

Or

"Break any of these rules sooner than commit an outright barbarity."

I'm trying to think of a way to keep the "say anything" structure.

"Break any of these rules sooner than say anything that is an outright barbarism."

But I'd switch to "commit". One commits barbarous acts, one doesn't say things that are barbarous.

1261. PelleNilsson - 11/2/1999 5:02:53 PM

Think of substituting "bad" for barbarous. "Outright bad" is not wrong is it? Which does away with the idea that "outright" must be followed by a noun.

As to the noun:

Main Entry: bar·ba·rous
Pronunciation: 'bär-b(&-)r&s
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin barbarus, from Greek barbaros foreign, ignorant
Date: 15th century
1 a : UNCIVILIZED b : lacking culture or refinement : PHILISTINE
2 : characterized by the occurrence of barbarisms
3 : mercilessly harsh or cruel
synonym see FIERCE
- bar·ba·rous·ly adverb
- bar·ba·rous·ness noun

Finally: is it likely that George Orwell, an author, would make a grammatical error when advising on usage, or, in the unlikely event he did, that The Economist would incorporate said error in its Style Guide?

1262. Indiana Jones - 11/2/1999 5:04:23 PM

Don't be dissin my homey Orwell. He most likely meant barbarous in the sense of "characterized by substandard usages in speaking or writing" or mebbe even "harsh in sound, raucous," so barbarous is good for the double meaning.

Over in politics they been discussin logical fallacies, so this might be a good time to put this link. Now we can sling these at each other all the time (though I's a little confused about the difference between "hasty generalization" and "sweeping generalization").

1263. CalGal - 11/2/1999 5:11:00 PM

"Outright bad" would be just as awful. I can't think of a time when "outright" is used with an adjective, but I may be missing a whole slew of examples.

While I am a reliable judge of what is usual and customary (with the caveat that my writing doesn't always reflect it), I have very little knowledge of what is grammatically correct.

1264. ChristinO - 11/2/1999 6:00:45 PM

Hmmmm.....I was thinking it was a mistake and should have been "downright barbarous" although that doesn't fit the tone.

1265. CalGal - 11/2/1999 6:03:18 PM

Yeah, downright would have worked. But then, "downright" is used with adjectives.

That's downright mean. That's downright rotten. That's downright decent.

But one doesn't say outright mean, outright rotten, and outright decent. At least, I would always add "thing". "That's an outright mean thing to say."

1266. CalGal - 11/2/1999 6:08:29 PM

Actually, I'd say: "Man, that's a mean thing to just say outright like that."

But I fear that this might confuse Pelle. Pelle, see the caveat in 1263.

1267. alistairconnor - 11/2/1999 8:15:31 PM

"Outright barbarous" is spot on. I don't even care why. Orwell said it, and that's good enough for me.

"Outrightly barbarous" - now that would be oughtright barbarous.

1268. cmboyce - 11/2/1999 8:27:48 PM

I think "outright" is the adverbial form of the adjective "outright"

1269. cmboyce - 11/2/1999 8:50:12 PM

I think "outright" is the adverbial form of the adjective "outright"

1270. CharlieL - 11/2/1999 9:40:06 PM

Why is 'upright' not the opposite of 'downright?'

And, why is no one ever slapped 'downside the head?'

1271. tmachine - 11/2/1999 11:08:14 PM

It's interesting that one of Calgal's suggestions for improving Orwell--Break any of these rules sooner than commit an outright barbarity--kind of embodies the problems that Orwell was addressing with his rules, since it detracts from his direct, colloquial tone and introduces a latinate word, "commit," where Orwell had the anglo-saxon "say." That's one of his rules (never use a multisyllable Latin or Greek derived word when there's a short Germanic/anglo-saxon equivalent; pelle must have left a few out of his version of the list).

1272. Candide - 11/2/1999 11:27:55 PM

Has THE MOTE discussed the disappearance of FEW and its replacement with LESS?

"Fewer" meaning a smaller number of individual parts, and "less" meaning a smaller sized single item.

Now it is more common to hear a speaker on the radio say: "There are less people here", than to say: "There are fewer people here."

1273. cmboyce - 11/3/1999 12:00:35 AM

The new Fowler's remarks on the phenomenon, observing it (though disapprovingly) as a historical phenomenon, seeming to find less offense in the ancillary misuse of "no less than" for "no fewer than", citing Margaret Drabble and Iris Murdoch ("and who is to contradict them"), and then adds:
"Historical note. The account given above is an attempt to describe current attitudes... It should be borne in mind, however, that there is ample historical warrant for the type less roads, less people, etc. Such uses originate "from the OE construction of laes [that "ae" is a ligature with an accent grave] adv. (quasi-sb) with a partitive genitive" [OED]. In OE, laes worda meant literally "less of words". When the genitive plural case vanished at the end of the OE period the type less words took its place, and this type has been employed ever since: e.g., "there are few Vniuersities that have lesse faultes than Oxford" (Lyly, 1579). Hostility to the use emerged in the 18c., but "folk memory" of the medieval type has ensured that there has been no break in the use of the type which I have branded as incorrect."

1274. cmboyce - 11/3/1999 12:08:31 AM

# 1273 was all from R. W. Burchfield's 3rd ed.(1996); interestingly, the 1st, written by Fowler himself and published in 1926, treats the correct usage (as we've been regarding it here, and as Burchfield regards it), as a new, incoming phenomenon, one of which he approves, "since it makes for precision".

1275. CalGal - 11/3/1999 3:31:56 AM

Tmachine,

I wasn't trying to improve on what he said. I was trying to restate the sentiment with the same tone of the original--without the problematic phrase.

"say anything outright barbarous" just sounded dreadful.

To say something barbarous (whether outright or no) is to commit an atrocity.

1276. tmachine - 11/3/1999 11:23:57 AM

but "outright barbarous" doesn't sound awful to me at all. I thought the comparison with "downright" was a very good one.

1277. Stumbo - 11/4/1999 9:46:42 PM

Folks:

For lack of anything better to do, I recently took it upon myself to translate the 10 short stories on my Averchenko page into English. Everyone is hereby invited to check out the results. (Those who can also read the originals, and compare -- doubly so.) Feedback would be highly appreciated -- either here, or at stumbo@post.com.

It goes without saying that the translations are far inferior -- due not only to my lack of experience and/or ability, but also to Averchenko's very colorful style. Nonetheless, I hope that they're still worth a look.

I attempted to convey, as best I could, the spirit, rather than the letter -- in order to make the translations more readable. On the other hand, I included no footnotes or explanations -- and there are probably a few names, events, and abbreviations mentioned here and there that might not be familiar to most non-Russians. So, in particular, I would be interested in suggestions as to which terms should be footnoted.

Anyway, here goes:

originals (in KOI8)

translations

1278. Nostradamus - 11/4/1999 11:10:43 PM

What is the plural of forum? (I'm going to look it up, just curious if others know.)

1279. Stumbo - 11/4/1999 11:17:46 PM

"Forums," or "fora."

1280. Stumbo - 11/4/1999 11:22:42 PM

Who cares about some stuffy plurals, anyway? Just read my damn translations, o quatrain-spouting one.

1281. Nostradamus - 11/4/1999 11:24:02 PM

Dammit, who would ever use the word 'fora'. Cost me a dinner. Grrr. Anybody else never heard of it or am I the lonely illiterate?

1282. ScottLoar - 11/4/1999 11:32:13 PM

Stumbo, I just read the foreward. I'll read it all.

1283. Stumbo - 11/4/1999 11:43:01 PM

SL:

Thanks. Hope it's worth your while.

And, of course -- the (justifiedly) harsher the criticism, the better.

1284. Hashke - 11/4/1999 11:51:42 PM

Nostrumdamus:

First teenagae and now forums?

1285. Hashke - 11/4/1999 11:53:40 PM

Stumbo:

What I've read I like very much. Very smooth. The guy is an original. I want to read the Russian, but as for downloading the cyrillic, it's a hopper-stopper for sure.

1286. Stumbo - 11/5/1999 12:09:37 AM

Hashke:

Thanks, likewise.

As for being able to read the Russian versions: the KOI8 site I linked to must surely have some step-by-step installation guide. If you're using a Macintosh, you can also try this site.

1287. cmboyce - 11/5/1999 2:45:57 AM

Stumbo: despite the need for sleep, I've just read the whole thing. It is great stuff. As for footnotes, there's almost no end to the amount of footnotes that could be provided. There are a great many things that I (an ordinarily decently-educated reader) don't recognise and would be interested in. But none of them is necessary; nothing is so puzzling as to interfere with one's response: mingled horror at the (already familiar) situation he records and delight in his recording of it. I'd suggest writing footnotes to the extent that you are moved to do so; pick the items whose story will be most fun to tell.

I have no Russian, but supposing that your demotic English is supported by the original, as I do, I can only say this is great political satire. Was it published in the prints of the day? Who is this guy? Is he well-known? Is he well-known in translation? Am I correct in assuming that his death date reflects his reception by the authorities?

In any case, congratulations. And thanks; I'm grateful to have made the man's acquaintance.

1288. Nostradamus - 11/5/1999 3:10:59 AM

What is the word that is to hearing as glimpse is to seeing? Probably something obvious that I've overlooked, can't think of anything this late.

1289. ScottLoar - 11/5/1999 3:30:50 AM

Stumbo, I've finished the lot. I do appreciate that you've boldly posted the originals to invite criticism of your translations, quite beyond me as I know no Russian.

But why use American colloquialisms? In The Evolution of Russian Books "Wow, that's so far out!"; in Kerensky "What's shaking, dude?". And American slang words in Proletarian Art "crappy balilaikas", etc. Although infrequent they still seem out of place and so distracting. Quite unlike "Mensheviks kinda sorta" in Martov and Abramovich which seems quite natural.

By the way, I particularly enjoyed the menu in Peters.

On the plane back to the US recently I was moved to think of translating a preface I'd just read so wonderfully put it was. Your work prompts me - almost - to do so.

Really Stumbo, all in all a good read. Thank you.

One last nag, is "slammer" the English equivalent? It seems to divorce us from

1290. ScottLoar - 11/5/1999 3:33:18 AM

It seems to divorce us from the experience of reading a text written in a foreign language, meaning part of the charm of reading translation is it allows one to "read" at least for the time in that foreign language.

1291. ScottLoar - 11/5/1999 3:34:38 AM

Hope you don't find these criticisms unjustified or harsh or even superfluous.

1292. cmboyce - 11/5/1999 3:36:48 AM

I don't believe there is one. You'd have to metaphorize: I caught a breath of rustling in the bedroom. Or: He heard a waft of music as he passed the ballroom. [A muted trombone?] But for the verb glimpse... I dunno. Again, I don't believe there is one.

But someone will no doubt post something obvious, as you said.

And, as you also said, it's too late to think. And so to bed.

1293. DanDillon - 11/5/1999 8:35:15 AM

Dammit, who would ever use the word 'fora'. Cost me a dinner. Grrr. Anybody else never heard of it or am I the lonely illiterate?

You were up against the tricky (and ultimately useless) business of Latin plurals and what happens to them in English. Unless we're headed for another bout of Renaissance respellings, I'd be very surprised if anyone aside from the pedant-extremists among us would ever use "fora" instead of "forums." The same goes for the plural of "curriculum." Interestingly, "quorum" is its own plural form [general plural of qui: who].

Humble pie never makes for a pleasant meal.

1294. Ronski - 11/5/1999 9:19:21 AM

I'm utterly descriptivist when it comes to Latin plurals in English.

Is this wrong?

1295. IrvingSnodgrass - 11/5/1999 9:32:53 AM

Ronski:
Only to a prescriptivist, and there aren't many around here.

Please spend more time in this thread. I've always enjoyed your linguistic observations.

1296. ilyavinarsky - 11/5/1999 1:33:31 PM

Q to the paleolinguists out there:

I read in Olmstead's History of the Persian Empire that the original languages of Asia Minor were Caucasian (whatever that means). The Olmstead book was published in the 1940s; do modern-day linguists think so, too?

1297. ilyavinarsky - 11/5/1999 1:34:08 PM

Excellent translations from Averchenko, BTW.

1298. ilyavinarsky - 11/5/1999 1:50:50 PM

Let me spam this thread with a translation from Babel

1299. PelleNilsson - 11/5/1999 2:15:30 PM

ilya

Nice to see you around again. Hope you will make it into International too.

1300. pseudoerasmus - 11/4/1999 11:00:15 AM

Well, I will move them when I have my next installment, so as not to whiten out the page with one post stranded.

1300. Hashke - 11/4/1999 11:05:05 AM

I get this image of pseudo as a spectreish Dr. Strangelove turning unwanted posts into mist with his uncontrollable arm.

1300. pseudoerasmus - 11/4/1999 11:06:02 AM

Marzipranks: I wonder if you know that according to Christopher Sykes, Byron's travel companion in Oxiana, Byron made up all his dialogues in that book.

1300. pseudoerasmus - 11/4/1999 11:07:03 AM

#805: Actually, I do a fantastic imitation of Peter Sellars doing Dr Strangelove.

1302. pseudoerasmus - 11/4/1999 1:00:09 PM

Irving: I was hoping you might comment on my remarks about the pidgin in Quetta.

1302. IrvingSnodgrass - 11/4/1999 1:22:00 PM

PE:
I was fascinated by your linguistic observations in Quetta. It's a fine example of language contact in action, and who can predict what the outcome will be in such situations? Either a true pidgin will develop, or one language will eventually dominate for the purposes of daily communication between the various groups. Given the sucess of Urdu as a national language in other parts of Pakistan, it is the most likely winner, though I gather from your comments there is not a little resistance in Baluchistan to Urdu and the Pakistanization of the region.

I'd also be interested in your comments on Brahui. Has the language, as a Dravidian isolate, been greatly influenced by the Indo-European tongues surrounding it? Can one easily see the Dravidian character of the language? Does it have a Dravidian phonlogy? (i.e, lots of liquids and nasals and more retroflex sounds than other languages of the region? -- I'm pretty certain the retroflex sounds in most Indic languages were borrowed from Dravidian, since they are extremely common in Dravidian languages, and virtually unknown in other IE tongues).

1302. pseudoerasmus - 11/4/1999 1:34:28 PM

I thought you might ask about the Brahui language! Unfortunately I know nothing at all about Dravidian languages and in Quetta had little basis to intelligently inquire about Brahui. I browsed in stores & stalls for books on the Brahui language, but couldn't find any. The Brahuis themselves don't admit ANY borrowings or infuences from the surrounding languages, so convinced & proud they are of their uniqueness and purity. But when I asked one of them (the khan of Kalat, by the way) to count in Brahui (which is one of the first things I'm curious about in any language), I noticed that while the first couple of numerals were unfamiliar, the rest all sounded like those found in Iranian languages. Actually, I wrote them down up to 10. Let me go find my notebook.

1302. PelleNilsson - 11/4/1999 1:42:26 PM

I think we can safely assume that PE's rather draconian delete and move policy is prompted by his desire to have a reasonably clean record to depart from when he puts together the book.

I join with others in saying that this is simply too good to be buried in some obscure place on the net.

1302. IrvingSnodgrass - 11/4/1999 1:43:28 PM

PE:
Numerals are an excellent way to get a quick glimpse of a language. They are usually resistant to change, and any language with borrowed numerals has been heavily influenced by another language (I can only think of a handful of examples). The little I've read about Brahui indicates a great deal of IE influence, but your observations of the Brahui belief that their language is pure nevertheless is not surprising (and an indicator of their Dravidian cultural heritage!).

I look forward to seeing the Brahui numerals.

1302. tmachine - 11/4/1999 2:55:46 PM

what is a retroflex sound?

1302. PelleNilsson - 11/4/1999 3:32:27 PM

One which is made retroflexively.

1302. Raskolnikov - 11/4/1999 3:37:40 PM

I haven't been able to post here for the past two weeks, but I have been reading. Quite interesting. I am quickly becoming aware of exactly how little I knew about central asia.

1302. pseudoerasmus - 11/4/1999 3:39:32 PM

Well, it seems I scribbled down in my notebook pages and pages of words in Uighur, Wakhi and Dolgan, but not in Brahui. Still I swear I recorded several Brahui food terms somewhere. Anyway, here are the numerals in Brahui as well as other languages used in Baluchistan:

English	Brahui	Pashto	Farsi	Baluchi	Urdu

one	awal	yau	yek	yik	ek
two	iraat	dua	do	do	do
three	nem	drei	sê	saw	tiin
four	chaar	tsalare	chahâr	chah	chaar
five	panch	penza	panj	panch	pãch
six	sesh	shpag	shesh	shesh	chai
seven	apt	owa	haft	haft	saat
eight	asht	ata	hasht	hasht	aath
nine	nawat	naha	noh	nah	nau
ten	dah	las	dah	dah	das

1302. pseudoerasmus - 11/4/1999 3:42:22 PM

One should not be misled by the cognates above into thinking these are mutually intelligible languages; on the contrary, except for Farsi and Baluchi, each is totally incomprehensible to the other.

1302. pseudoerasmus - 11/4/1999 3:49:01 PM

Brahui, in particular, sounds totally out of this world. Every time I heard it, "what the fuck?" was my immediate reaction.

Snodgrass could explain it more technically, but "retroflex" refers to certain consonants pronounced with the tip of the tongue curling upward against the palate. Indian languages are full of retroflex consonants. I think the closest equivalent in English is the T sound in the American pronunciation of "butter", which, as Irving has told us, is actually an R sound.

1303. Hashke - 11/4/1999 7:19:05 PM

The retroflex can be plosive, fricative, tap. In American English the tongue curves but the tip (there is lateral contact) makes no contact with the palate --'burr', 'ride', 'wrestle' -- an r-voiced retroflex alveolar liquid. The sound in 'butter', 'batter' is an apico-alveolar tap -- the tip of the tongue contacting the alveolar ridge.

1304. IrvingSnodgrass - 11/4/1999 8:46:03 PM

PE:
The numbers list is very interesting. I can only see one certain Dravidian cognate there, and that is the word for two, iraat (compare Tamil irandu). I don't know where the numeral for three comes from. The others are from Arabic (awal for "one" -- I'm not sure what it means in Arabic, but in Indonesian, it means "start" or "beginning") or Indo-Iranian (four through ten).

In one of those linguistic coincidences which lead to false cognates, the word for two in Pashto (dua) is exactly the same as the word for two in Indonesian, although both are formed naturally from Proto-IE and Proto-Austronesian roots, respectively.

Brahui, in particular, sounds totally out of this world. Every time I heard it, "what the fuck?" was my immediate reaction.

That sounds like a perfect description of a Dravidian language.

Snodgrass could explain it more technically, but "retroflex" refers to certain consonants pronounced with the tip of the tongue curling upward against the palate. Indian languages are full of retroflex consonants.

Actually, I couldn't do any better than that for a simple technical description. Retroflex sounds are indeed the defining characteristic of all Indo-Aryan languages, and even occur in most varieties of Indian English.

I think the closest equivalent in English is the T sound in the American pronunciation of "butter", which, as Irving has told us, is actually an R sound.

The medial consonant sound in "butter" is not a retroflex sound, but rather a tap r, as Hashké explains in 822. The retroflex r in English is the common r sound. I'm pretty sure English is the only western IE language with a retroflex sound. Retroflex r sounds are not uncommon in languages of the world, however (Arabic is a good example).

1304. Hashke - 11/4/1999 10:42:24 PM

Irv:

Unless I misunderstand you, I think the Arabic non-emphatic r sound might be better described as a dental (depending upon the dental devastation of the speaker) or apico-alveolar lateral trill or dental vibrant, with the sound represented by 'rr' in 'mudarris' pronounced excatly like that in Spanish 'barrio', 'perro'.

1304. IrvingSnodgrass - 11/5/1999 12:04:07 AM

Hashke:
There must be variation in different dialects of Arabic then, because I've heard a pure retroflex r from Arabic speakers.

1304. Hashke - 11/5/1999 12:39:52 AM

You mean like the r in English 'burr'? Hmmm...could it have been Netanyahu in disguise?

No, his would be uvular. Hmmmm....

Moroccans, Dan?

1304. IrvingSnodgrass - 11/5/1999 12:49:45 AM

Hashké:
A Malaysian linguist I know attributes the fact that word-initial r sounds in Malaysian Malay are retroflex to influence from Arabic. (In other dialects of Malay, they are trilled).

1304. pseudoerasmus - 11/5/1999 1:06:55 AM

Well, I don't know what either of you is talking about, but if the ordinary English R is a retroflex consonant, then why does it sound different from the R in Urdu words such as gharaa (pot) or kiiraa (bug)? (For Hashke's information, the retroflex R in Urdu is represented by the Arabic letter raa' with a little Taa' written over it.)

1304. pseudoerasmus - 11/5/1999 1:10:34 AM

Well, I was going to post something about Karachi & Sindh, but I'm still smarting from having written all that about Baluchistan. So the next installment will come after the weekend.

1304. pseudoerasmus - 11/5/1999 1:18:25 AM

By the way, don't the French J and the Russian ZH count as retroflex? (If I'm understanding what "retroflex" is correctly?)

1304. pseudoerasmus - 11/5/1999 1:19:16 AM

By the way, don't the French J and the Russian ZH count as retroflex? (If I'm understanding what "retroflex" is correctly?)

1304. Hashke - 11/5/1999 1:28:02 AM

Irv:

You mean in a word like 'rumah'?

Is it enunciated with any kind of tap or trill?

1304. Hashke - 11/5/1999 1:39:06 AM

pseuder:

What words in other languages that you know have sounds exactly like, or at least closely similar to, the r sound in 'gharaa' and 'kiiraa'?

I think that French and Russian 'zh' are both palato-alveolar fricatives with some retroflex.

1304. pseudoerasmus - 11/5/1999 1:57:55 AM

#838
What words in other languages that you know have sounds exactly like, or at least closely similar to, the r sound in 'gharaa' and 'kiiraa'?

I really can't think of anything. All I know is that the Rs in common words like baraa (big) and aaraam (rest) are distinguished. The latter R is slightly trilled against the teeth; with the former, the tip of the tongue is curled against the palate. Neither sounds like the R in the English word paradise.

I think that French and Russian 'zh' are both palato-alveolar fricatives with some retroflex.

Hahahaha. I don't know what this means. But when I pronounce either letter, the tip of the tongue curls against the palate.

1304. IrvingSnodgrass - 11/5/1999 3:07:09 AM

PE:
if the ordinary English R is a retroflex consonant, then why does it sound different from the R in Urdu words such as gharaa (pot) or kiiraa (bug)?

The retroflex r in North Indian languages is a retroflex tap... quite different from the retroflex r in English (and Dravidian languages), which are approximants.

To further confuse things, Dravidian languages also have dental tap r sounds and alveolar stop r sounds. North Indian languages, meanwhile, also have an alveo-palatal (Hindi/Urdu) or dental (Bengali) tap r sound, in contrast with the retroflex tap r sound. In addition, Pashto, which is not an Indic language at all (it is in the Iranian sub-family, the languages of which do not generally have retroflex sounds), has a lateral retroflex r sound (closer to the English r than the Indian variants) as well as an alveolar trill r.

By the way, don't the French J and the Russian ZH count as retroflex?

As Hashké indicates, these are (voiced) alveo-palatal (or palato-alveolar) fricatives, in a similar category as the (voiceless) sh sound in English. The middle of the toungue, rather than the tip, bunches up toward the roof of the mouth (but doesn't touch it). This naturally produces what Hashké termed "some retroflex."

Hashké:
Yes, like in "rumah" or "rindu." The r's in these words in Malaysian Malay sound just like an English r, with no tap or trill.

1304. IrvingSnodgrass - 11/5/1999 3:09:14 AM

PE:
Feel free to move these posts to the Language thread, where this discussion can continue (if needed) while we wait for the next installment of your travels.

1304. stostosto - 11/5/1999 5:36:31 AM

Pincher #764:

I would say that your #749 is very funny except I have it on good authority you are humourless.

You got that right. I am a through and through earnest Scandinavian. I won't stand for any accusations by anyone of possessing any kind of humour.

By the way: Are you British? I was once lectured by Irv that "humour" is actually "humor" to Americans. (Which he apparently, incomprehensibly, regards much more humorous than humour is humourous...)

1304. pseudoerasmus - 11/5/1999 9:29:43 AM

#840
The retroflex r in North Indian languages is a retroflex tap... quite different from the retroflex r in English (and Dravidian languages), which are approximants.

So I wasn't completely hallucinating with my comparison in #818?

In addition, Pashto, which is not an Indic language at all (it is in the Iranian sub-family, the languages of which do not generally have retroflex sounds), has a lateral retroflex r sound (closer to the English r than the Indian variants) as well as an alveolar trill r.

Irving, the pronunciation of Pashto varies from city to city, from tribe to tribe, from village to village. The ordinary trilled R is pretty uniform, but there is another R which is Jekyll-and-Hyde depending on the geography (represented by the Arabic letter raa with a dot below it, a variant not found in other languages using the Arabic script). A word with this letter is taraf, which means something like "where one is headed" (an important word among Pathans...). In Abbottabad, a Pashto enclave in a Panjabi/Saraiki sea, the R is pronounced like the retroflex R in Urdu. In Mardan, heart of Yusufzai country, however, the R is double-trilled, almost like darra. In the even more anomalous Peshawar, the sound varies from something a bit like the French R to the Arabic GH.

1304. pseudoerasmus - 11/5/1999 9:33:09 AM

I'll move all these linguistics-oriented posts to the language thread once I have the next installment, lest I white out the page.

1304. pseudoerasmus - 11/5/1999 10:04:08 AM

#845
I can't tell whether I'm being agreed with or not, but Pashto is not a standardised language, even in Afghanistan where it has official status.

1304. IrvingSnodgrass - 11/5/1999 9:58:03 AM

PE:
Obviously, I am not an expert on Pashto, and have gleaned my information from a reliable source. The following is from D.N. MacKenzie's article on Pashto in Bernard Comrie's The World's Major Languages:

"The maximum inventory of segmental phonemes in Pashto is set out in table 26.1 [the table I quoted from above]. Besides the common consonant stock of most modern Iranian languages, it comprises the dental affricates c, j [ts, dz] and, thanks to its neighbourhood to Indo-Aryan languages, a set of retroflex, or cerebral, sounds. While the retroflex stops (t), (d) occur only in loanwords, the (r) has... also developed within Pashto [the parentheses indicate retroflex sounds, since I lack a method to put circumflexes above the letters]. In distinction from the alveolar trill r and from the dental (or alveolar) lateral l, it is basically a retroflexed lateral flap. [In other words, it is a retroflex flap (tap) as in Urdu, but differs in that it is a lateral -- made further back on the tongue. Perhaps in the Pashto of Pakistan, it has merged with the Urdu sound]. Its nasal counterpart (n), which does not occur word-initially, is a nasalized (r) -- the nasalization often extending to the preceding vowel -- and not simply a retroflex nasal (which latter only occurs as an allophone of dental n before (t), (d))."

So I wasn't completely hallucinating with my comparison in #818?

No, actually, since you were describing a tap, and the Urdu sound is a retroflex tap.

1304. IrvingSnodgrass - 11/5/1999 10:25:14 AM

PE:
My post is tentative agreement regarding the sound in Pakistani Pashto, but pointing out that MacKenzie describes the Pashto sound in question as being a lateral retroflex tap, while the Urdu sound is a non-lateral retroflex tap. You can think of lateral sounds as those having an "l-like" quality.

MacKenzie makes the same point about the lack of a standardized form of Pashto, hence he describes "the maximum inventory" of segmental phonemes, which assumes that some dialects lack one or more of these sounds.

1305. IrvingSnodgrass - 11/5/1999 10:29:18 AM

(I say "tentative" only because I don't know any more about Pashto than what I read in my sources. Your experience with the language is much more meaningful, so I defer to your observations.)

1305. vonKreedon - 11/5/1999 11:47:32 AM

Irv - Drop over to the Cafe for a moment if you would.

1305. ilyavinarsky - 11/5/1999 12:30:21 PM

Look how the peoples all over the world cannot agree with each other, even though almost all their languages have been standardized.

[bonus question: what language is that?]

1305. ilyavinarsky - 11/5/1999 12:31:11 PM

Look how the peoples all over the world cannot agree with each other, even though almost all their languages have been standardized.

[bonus question: what language is that?]

1305. ilyavinarsky - 11/5/1999 12:31:31 PM

Cannot embed IMG tags - here is the cartoon.

1305. cmboyce - 11/5/1999 12:43:36 PM

Georgian?

1305. pseudoerasmus - 11/5/1999 12:52:49 PM

Ruthenian-Ukrainian

1305. IrvingSnodgrass - 11/5/1999 12:56:56 PM

ilya:
You should be able to post the image:

1305. ilyavinarsky - 11/5/1999 1:00:28 PM

Carpatho-Rusyn.

1305. stostosto - 11/5/1999 1:34:50 PM

OK, I'll fold: What does it mean???

1305. pseudoerasmus - 11/5/1999 1:36:59 PM

Ilya put it up there: "Look how the peoples all over the world cannot agree with each other, even though almost all their languages have been codified". I guess it means that even where there is a standard, dialects assert themselves.

1305. stostosto - 11/5/1999 1:39:37 PM

Ah, a little self-referential devil!

Apt.

1305. ilyavinarsky - 11/5/1999 2:04:33 PM

This, sonny, is your mother tongue.

1305. ilyavinarsky - 11/5/1999 2:04:58 PM

This, sonny, is your mother tongue.

1305. ilyavinarsky - 11/5/1999 2:05:13 PM

How do you delete duplicate posts here?

1305. pseudoerasmus - 11/5/1999 2:11:02 PM

I love that cartoon!

Ilya, only I can delete posts here. (Well, so can Alistair Connor and Dulcet Wabbit...)

1305. ilyavinarsky - 11/5/1999 2:19:37 PM

If you're interested in Slavistica:

This is an announcement of a May Day 1921 demonstration in Pinsk, Western Belarus, then a part of Poland. It is in Polish, Russian and Yiddish; Belarusian isn't there because it wasn't considered a language.

1305. pseudoerasmus - 11/5/1999 2:21:21 PM

(Ilya, maybe you want to take this to the language thread?)

1305. PelleNilsson - 11/5/1999 2:23:15 PM

So Yiddish was (is) written in the Hebrew alphabet? Intersting; I didn't know that.

1305. PelleNilsson - 11/5/1999 2:24:03 PM

Interesting

1306. ilyavinarsky - 11/5/1999 2:54:24 PM

Yiddish has always been written in the Hebrew alphabet (with a few digraphs and diacritics - Hebrew alphabet is very poorly suited for a Germanic language).

1307. PelleNilsson - 11/5/1999 3:03:09 PM

Ilya

That must have made it so much easier to revive Hebrew as a current language - people already knowing the alphabet I mean.

1308. Hashke - 11/5/1999 3:03:50 PM

Yes, pelle, it says zuntik (German -- Sontag) in pinsk der ershten mai, a groyser manifestatsie

Remember, tmachine and I were discussing a few days ago the difficulties of discriminating between certain letters of the Hebrew alphabet? This was in reference to the passage you and she translated from romanized Yiddish.

1309. ilyavinarsky - 11/5/1999 3:22:35 PM

zuntig in Pinsk dem ershtn mai a groyse manifestatsiye

1310. Ronski - 11/5/1999 3:25:50 PM

Are there Rusyn (Carpatho-Rusyn) speakers who still use the Latin alphabet, at least in that portion of Ruthenia that was part of Czechoslovakia between the wars?

Does anyone know anything about how Polish/Ukrainian Galicia got its name? Is it still considered a distinct region? I'm assuming that like Galicia in Spain, the name is derived from erstwhile Celtic inhabitants.

1311. Ronski - 11/5/1999 3:28:06 PM

1312. Ronski - 11/5/1999 3:28:46 PM

Did I close the italics?

1313. Ronski - 11/5/1999 3:29:31 PM

Let's try again.

1314. Ronski - 11/5/1999 3:38:20 PM

Does ilya have to close the font? Or Irv?

1315. Hashke - 11/5/1999 3:38:54 PM

vinarsky:

Richtik, a toes-hatfus. a dank.

1316. ilyavinarsky - 11/5/1999 3:52:31 PM

> Are there Rusyn (Carpatho-Rusyn) speakers who still use the Latin alphabet, at least in that portion of Ruthenia that was part of Czechoslovakia between the wars?

The portion of Ruthenia that was part of Czechoslovakia was annexed by Stalin in 1945 (as it is a strategically important platzdarm - for an invasion of Czechoslovakia, for example), and is now is the Transcarpatian Province of Ukraine. It is probably the poorest part of Ukraine, which earlier this year was devastated by floods caused by deforestation. Standard Ukrainian is used throughout the province as the official language, written in Cyrillics. Funny that the only time in my 15 years in that country that I was forced to speak Ukrainain was with a boy from that province, even though the language spoken in this province is farther from Ukrainian than standard Russian and standard Ukrainain are. This winter I corresponded with a young woman from Lviv, who is a graduate student of computational linguistics, about Ukrainian literature and linguistics. She said that she'd had a lot of exporure to the "mountain dialects", but they are very hard to learn.

The speakers of Carpatho-Rusyn language (or dialect) also live in Slovakia, around the town of Prešov, which Stalin didn't annex for whatever reasons, which is where the cartoonist came from. There, it is written in Cyrillics, as you can see from the cartoons. They also used to live in Eastern Poland, but hundreds of thousands of them were deported to Ukraine in 1947. See www.lemko.org for memoirs of the ethnic cleansing.

Ugh! Off to the one language that really matters - SQL!

1317. PelleNilsson - 11/5/1999 4:08:22 PM

Were (are) Yiddish newspapers and books invariably printed with Hebrew characters or was the romanized version also current? Was there a cyrillic version as well?

1318. ilyavinarsky - 11/5/1999 4:21:38 PM

Hebrew [Assyrian, really, though the vast majority of speakers didn't know it] with diacritics.

There was one difference, though. Words of Hebrew origin (e.g. holiday, yontef - from Hebrew yom tov, day good) were spelled phonetically in the Soviet Union, and as in Hebrew in the West.

1319. ilyavinarsky - 11/5/1999 4:24:13 PM

There is a difference between Ashkenazi Hebrew and Sephardic Hebrew, on which Israeli Hebrew is based. It is yom tov in Israeli Hebrew; I don't know what it is in Ashkenazi Hebrew. Of course, (the remnants of) Yiddish is not a standardized language in any meaningful sense.

1320. PelleNilsson - 11/5/1999 4:42:11 PM

ilya

Your posts are cryptic. What I wanted to know is whether Yiddish texts were always published in the Hebrew alphabet, or whether latin and cyrillic versions were used as well. Consider for example the Jewish Autonomous Region out there in Siberia. What alphabet was used?

1321. ilyavinarsky - 11/5/1999 4:44:14 PM

Hebrew.

1322. PelleNilsson - 11/5/1999 5:07:04 PM

Good.

1323. IrvingSnodgrass - 11/5/1999 8:11:13 PM

For Pelle (and TMachine):

Some Yiddish links:

• Yiddish Forward Daily Newspaper (also available in English and Russian editions)
• Shtetl, Yiddish Language and Culture
• Unofficial Cracow's Yiddish Page (Yiddish proverbs and links to Yiddish sites)

1324. ilyavinarsky - 11/5/1999 9:25:04 PM

I once wrote a little essay for a Yiddish mailing list.

1325. IrvingSnodgrass - 11/5/1999 9:49:14 PM

ilya:
Thanks for sharing your essay. It's encouraging to see the efforts being made to keep Yiddish alive for its cultural value.

Between your essay and Stumbo's translations, this thread is getting some very interesting and valuable contributions from our Russian-born participants.

1326. DanDillon - 11/5/1999 10:54:28 PM

Has anyone noticed how screwy the numbering of posts is around here? Is this due to deleting/moving posts from other threads?

I've heard a pure retroflex r from Arabic speakers.

Moroccans, Dan?

No, I've never come across a Moroccan who was able to pronounce a pure retroflex r without tremendous difficulty (and I'm sure they felt very foolish trying, to boot). Where was the Arab from, Irv, the one who was able do so?

1327. Hashke - 11/5/1999 11:01:08 PM

Pelle:

To answer your question, Yiddish has been written in orthographies other than Hebrew. How widesrpread this has been is unknown. to cite as one example, Uriel Weinreich in The Field of Yiddish ll remarks that a Prague litterateur named Siegfried Kapper "published in German characters the text of a Purim play after a lost manuscript on which a perfomance in the Prague ghetto had been based in the twenties of the last century."

In fact, Weinreich's book is itself replete with Yiddish texts done in various non-Hebrew orthographies.

1328. Hashke - 11/5/1999 11:04:14 PM

Dan:

The screwy numbering is doubtless due to erasmus' Strangelovian pogrom over in Travel, with the arm making desperate out-of-control dispositions of unsavory materials into other threads.

1329. Stumbo - 11/5/1999 11:23:19 PM

CMB, SL, IV:

Many thanks for the kind words. To answer some of the questions:

Averchenko was a fairly well-known humorist (and editor of a magazine called The New Satyricon) prior to the revolution. A few months after it, his magazine was closed down, and he was forced to leave the country to avoid getting arrested and shot. (His death in 1925 was due to illness.)

These stories were written around 1919-21, and published abroad at the time. I don't know of any published translations of any of his work, though.

As for the demotic/colloquial/slang bits: yes, they do correspond to similar expressions in the originals; I was (perhaps awkwardly) trying to transplant the style. In the Kerensky quote, in particular, this is crucial: the whole point is the unceremoniousness, bordering on vulgarity, on the part of the speaker. (My first version had him saying "Hey, Al-meister...")

Same with Proletarian Art -- in the original, that entire speech is simply stuffed with colloquialisms and "popular" expressions; if anything, my translation is much more formal. (The closest English equivalent would've been putting the whole thing in Ebonics -- and, for many reasons, I definitely didn't want to go there.)

"Far out" is less defensible; maybe I can think of a better way, at some point.

1330. ScottLoar - 11/5/1999 11:56:56 PM

I got the crude and rude, the tough's slouch, the "up yours" attitude so, yes, your translation succeeded. Again, a good read.

1331. ScottLoar - 11/6/1999 12:10:31 AM

Beyond that lay the constant theme behind all Russian literature (or atleast that from the last two centuries) - suffering, suffering, suffering.

1332. Stumbo - 11/6/1999 12:14:02 AM

SL:

Then all's well with the world. Thanks, again, for the feedback.

In any case, I'm not planning to quit my day job just yet...

1333. Stumbo - 11/6/1999 12:18:29 AM

The first sentence of #1332, of course, was in response to #1330.

The second can be, retroactively, considered a response to #1331.

1334. ScottLoar - 11/6/1999 12:29:35 AM

Got'cha Stumbo.

1335. ProfEmeritus - 11/6/1999 10:53:37 AM

Anak Kami

Selamat Ulang Tahun dari Ibu juga!!

1336. IrvingSnodgrass - 11/6/1999 11:03:50 AM

Terima kasih, bu! Semoga sehat-sehat saja.

1337. Hashke - 11/6/1999 11:21:06 AM

Irv:

Selamat Hari Ulang Tahun sahabatku, dan lebih banyak mereka!

1338. ycmeehan - 11/6/1999 12:29:17 PM

Hashke,
Mettez des lunettes teintées quand vous regardez votre écran. C'est ce que mon oculiste m'a conseillé de faire car, comme vous, j'ai quelques problèmes de vue en ce moment. À part cela, ça va?

1339. Hashke - 11/6/1999 1:30:40 PM

ycmeehan:

Ça marche. Après les deux chirurgies jai pas plus de problèmes, mais bon avis néanmoins. Merci! Soignez bien les yeux, vous!

Et vous avez reçu le livre, non?

1340. Hashke - 11/6/1999 1:34:29 PM

...j'ai pas plus...(je n'ai pas plus)

Pour les enculeurs de mouches entre nous!

1341. ycmeehan - 11/6/1999 4:50:18 PM

Hashke,
Merci. Pas encore pour le livre. Je vais me renseigner lundi.

1342. Hashke - 11/6/1999 8:09:34 PM

ycmeehan:

Increíble!!! Que gacho! Y que gordo me cae la estupidez de aquellos cholos pinches cabrones hijos de la chingada! Merecen una nalgada!

1343. IrvingSnodgrass - 11/6/1999 10:20:20 PM

Hashké:
Terima kasih!

1344. PelleNilsson - 11/8/1999 3:19:04 AM

The Economist on Journalese and Slang.

"Do not be too free with slang (eg, He really hit the big time in 1994). Slang, like metaphors, should be used only occasionally if it is to have effect. Avoid expressions used only by journalists, such as giving people the thumbs up, the thumbs down or the green light. Stay clear of gravy trains and salami tactics. Do not use the likes of. And avoid words and expressions that are ugly or overused, such as the bottom line, high profile, caring (as an adjective), carers, guesstimate (use guess), schizophrenic (unless the context is medical), crisis, key, major (unless something else nearby is minor), massive (as in massive inflation), meaningful, perceptions and prestigious.

Politicians are often said to be highly visible, when conspicuous would be more appropriate. Regulations are sometimes said to be designed to create transparency, which presumably means openness. Governance usually means government.

Try not to be predictable, especially predictably jocular. Spare your readers any mention of mandarins when writing about the civil service, of their lordships when discussing the House of Lords, and of comrades when analysing communist parties."

1345. PelleNilsson - 11/8/1999 3:20:35 AM

" In general, try to make your writing fresh. It will seem stale if it reads like hackneyed journalese. One weakness of journalists, who on daily newspapers may plead that they have little time to search for the apposite word, is a love of the ready-made, seventh-hand phrase. Lazy journalists are always at home in oil-rich country A, ruled by ailing President B, the long-serving strongman, who is, according to the chattering classes, a wily political operator-hence the present uneasy peace-but, after his recent watershed (or landmark or sea-change) decision to arrest his prime minister (the honeymoon is over), will soon face a bloody uprising in the breakaway south. Similarly, lazy business journalists always enjoy describing the problems of troubled company C, a victim of the revolution in the gimbal-pin industry (change is always revolutionary in such industries), which, well-placed insiders predict, will be riven by a make-or-break strike unless one of the major players makes an 11th-hour (or last-ditch) intervention in a marathon negotiating session."

1346. PelleNilsson - 11/8/1999 3:22:05 AM

"Prose such as this is freighted with codewords (respected is applied to someone the writer approves of, militant someone he disapproves of, prestigious something you won't have heard of). The story can usually start with the words, First the good news, inevitably to be followed in due course by Now the bad news. A quote will then be inserted, attributed to one (never an) industry analyst. Towards the end, after an admission that the author has no idea what is going on, there is always room for One thing is certain, before rounding off the article with As one wag put it . . .

Perhaps even more wearying for the reader is the trendy journalist's fondness of vogue words and expressions. Some of these are deliberately chosen (bridges too far; empires striking back; kinder, gentler; F-words; flavours of the month; Generation X; $64,000 questions; southern discomfort; back to the future; thirty-somethings; where's the beef?), usually from a film or television, or perhaps a politician. Others come into use less wittingly, often from social scientists. If you find yourself using [such] words, you should stop and ask yourself whether (a) it is the best word for the job (b) you would have used it in the same context five or ten years ago, and if not why not."

1347. ScottLoar - 11/8/1999 3:32:00 AM

In other words, don't allow cliche to become an excuse for thought.

1348. CharlieL - 11/8/1999 9:43:14 AM

I have a language question.

There is a quarterback in the NFL whose name is Brett Favre. He and all the sportscasters in the country pronounce the name as if it were spelled "Farve."

This set me to thinking. Are there any words in the English language in which consecutive consonants are pronounced in the reverse order of appearance in the word?

I couldn't come up with any.

1349. IrvingSnodgrass - 11/8/1999 10:09:02 AM

Chuck:
A common pronunciation of "comfortable" in colloquial American English is "comfterble." It's even listed in the dictionary (the preferred pronunciation is "comftuble").

1350. CharlieL - 11/8/1999 1:34:15 PM

That's a good one, Irv. The dictionary pronunciation seems to be merely dropping letters, making it sound like "comftable"

I wonder if that has evolved from a regional dialect. One of the maddening things I hear here in the DC area all the time is "Warshington, DC." In fact, my mother and my sister both say that, and think there's nothing wrong with it. When I ask them where the "r" is in "Washington," I just get "That's the way I say it."

They also "warsh" clothes. Very grating to my ears.

1351. CuriousPluck - 11/8/1999 4:02:15 PM

Belated Happy Birthday wishes, Irv!

1352. tmachine - 11/8/1999 5:08:32 PM

chuck: this isn't quite the same thing as what you describe, but there's the word "caramel," in which for some mystifying reason most Americans leave out the second "a" altogether. this has led to a common spelling mistake: "carmel," as though it described some biblical type of candy.

1353. tmachine - 11/8/1999 5:09:24 PM

p.s. irv--thanks so much for the yiddish sites! I need the reading practice very badly. and happy birthday from me too!!!

1354. CalGal - 11/8/1999 5:23:27 PM

All Americans, actually. "Carmel" is the correct way to refer to it in its candy form. If you refer to it as an ingredient, I think you'd generally use the "care-uh-MELL" pronunciation.

1355. ycmeehan - 11/8/1999 5:47:42 PM

I am always surprised that the last syllable of words ending in two consonants and -e, such as -ble, cle, ple, is pronounced as bel, cel, pel. Why is that, Irv?

CharlieL,
I may be wrong but I think that Favre is a French name because it was a common name where I grew up. The French pronounce it Fa-vreu with the stress on the first syllable. The newscasters try to pronounce it as Favre himself does it, the -v and -r running together. Most people try to emulate him and it comes out as Farve. But an authority on pronunciation, I am not.

1356. tmachine - 11/8/1999 6:31:52 PM

Calgal: My husband is certified all-American, and he absolutely does not call the candy "carmels." We have actually discussed this point, so I know it's not just me listening to me.

1357. CalGal - 11/8/1999 6:37:58 PM

Well. It is entirely possible that your husband is incorrect! It's not impossible. He did buy a Volvo at one point in his life.

Seriously, the preferred pronunciation is 'kär-m&l, according to Websters. I suppose there are some who pronounce the middle syllable, but I really don't think it is the norm. I shall now run around to everyone I know and ask them.

More interesting, to me, is our automatic switch to the 3-syllable pronunciation just because it becomes an ingredient, rather than the main event. I wonder if that is due to the voiceovers on any number of candy commercials.

1358. DanDillon - 11/8/1999 8:30:13 PM

I am always surprised that the last syllable of words ending in two consonants and -e, such as -ble, cle, ple, is pronounced as bel, cel, pel.

ycmeehan,
I think you're confusing 'bel,' 'cel,' and 'pel' with what should be a schwa between those consonants. And in this case, it's simply a matter of ease of articulation. In French, you'll find what's easy for them isn't what's easy for Americans. (Is that why you asked?)

CG,
Compare "athlete," pron. ath-uh-lete. And why is the Norhtern Califonia city stressed on the second syllable, /kar 'mel/?

1359. IrvingSnodgrass - 11/8/1999 8:44:06 PM

CalGal:
Seriously, the preferred pronunciation is 'kär-m&l, according to Websters

Where did you find this? In all the dictionaries I have checked, including Webster's Third New International, the preferred pronunciation has three syllables, with the two-syllable version listed second.

1360. CalGal - 11/8/1999 9:58:38 PM

Irv--are you talking about the preferred pronunciation for the candy, or for the flavoring?

The Merriam-Webster site is down right now, and I'm at home away from the dictionary I used at work as a backup. The MW online site was where I copied the phonetic pronunciation used above, and it was first. I can't remember what dictionary I used at work.

So I scrambled around for dictionaries at home and came up with two: The Random House Webster's Dictionary and Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (the latter an ancient edition, somewhere in the 40s).

The Random House version puts the three syllable one first--but it also lists the definition referring to it as an ingredient first. It then lists the candy definition second. (I believe the MW site had the order opposite--had the candy first, then the flavor.)

The Webster Collegiate is even more specific. It lists the three sylabble pronunciation, then the ingredient definition. Then it provides the second definition, with the associated pronunciation.

I think this supports my contention: We use the two-syllable pronunciation when speaking of the candy, and the three syllable pronunciation when referring to the flavor, or the ingredient.

1361. IrvingSnodgrass - 11/8/1999 10:11:45 PM

CalGal:
MW seems to be an exception, then. I've checked every dictionary I can get my hands on (without leaving the house) and all 5 (Webster's Third International, Webster's New World, Funk & Wagnall's, Macmillan, and Thorndike-Barnhart) list the three-syllable definition first.

The word is obviously undergoing change, and I think your Webster's Collegiate has the best approach, as the two meanings seem to truly be undergoing a split, with separate pronunciations for some speakers.

1362. IrvingSnodgrass - 11/8/1999 10:15:47 PM

I checked the OED, also, and (not unexpectedly) this conservative tome doesn't even list the two-syllable form of caramel.

1363. CalGal - 11/8/1999 10:17:41 PM

Irv,

I originally said that "Carmel" was the preferred pronunciation for the candy, and then--in the sentence you quoted--just said it was the preferred pronunciation, period. Sorry for the confusion. I think you're right about the best approach.

Are there any Americans out there that use the three-syllable pronunciation for the candy?

1364. Hashke - 11/9/1999 12:54:18 AM

No, the phugging stuff sticks to the teeth so that only one sillyble
is possible.

1365. cmboyce - 11/9/1999 1:01:41 AM

Re Message # 1363: I do. 'Car a mel. Always have. That's the candy; I don't know from the ingredient.

1366. Ronski - 11/9/1999 9:57:25 AM

I have learned the history of the term, Galicia, in Eastern Europe.

It is derived from the city of Halych, which gave its name to the region, Halychina, roughly comparable to modern Southwest Poland and Northwest Ukraine. It was, between 1200 and 1400, a Rusyn (Ruthenian) principality. Halych was superseded by Lvov (Lviv, Lwow, Lemburg, Leopolis) as the region's capital. Today, Ruthenia (Carpatho-Ukraine), the former easternmost province of Czechoslovakia between the two World Wars, lies to Galicia's south.

As for the confusion of "h" and "g" at the beginning of the word, these sounds are exchanged in some of the Slavic languages. For example, some common words in Czech that begin with an "h" appear with a "g" in Polish.

It appears Galicia does not to come from a Celtic word, but rather from a particular bird on the region's coat of arms, the bird being called a "halka" in the native dialect. It looks a bit like a crow.

Austria called the region Galizien (Galicia) after receiving the territory following the late 18th c. partitions of Poland. The Poles called the area Malopolska or Little (Junior) Poland.

This info is by way of the National Heraldry Page and a fellow named Alex Allister Shvartsman, whom I thank, wherever, like Mrs. Calabash, he may be.

Heraldica

1367. Ronski - 11/9/1999 10:09:17 AM

Clarification: While the name Galicia comes directly from Halychina, the Austrian (German) term Galizien was identified with the word halka because the Austrians used the bird on the coat of arms they employed for their newly acquired province. Whether Halychina and the city of Halych are themselves named after the bird, I don't know.

1368. ilyavinarsky - 11/9/1999 1:48:50 PM

halka is crow/jackdaw in English (according to Niniowsky's Ukrainian-English dictionary, which I happen to have at work). In Roman transliteration of Uke, h denotes a sound somewhere between the English g of to get and h of hello.

1369. hashke - 11/9/1999 2:38:53 PM

Vinarsky:

That reminds me of a couple of foreign equivalents of 'to eat crow':

German - zu Kreuze kriechen -- to crawl to the cross

Italian - inghiottire il rospo -- to swallow the toad ('rospo' is also a surly person)

Navajo - shizéé' násdlîî' -- the (my) mouth returned to its previous state

1370. PelleNilsson - 11/9/1999 3:58:21 PM

In Swedish it is simply 'äta upp' - eat up, implicitly one's own words or actions.

1371. IrvingSnodgrass - 11/9/1999 8:22:19 PM

ilya:
In Roman transliteration of Uke, h denotes a sound somewhere between the English g of to get and h of hello

A rather impossible proposition, as there is no sound between a stop and a fricative. It's like being somewhere between pregnant and not pregnant.

The process of shift between g and velar (,x) or pharyngeal fricatives (h) is fairly common in many languages. Dutch and Spanish are two common examples of languages where this change has occurred or is occurring.

1372. IrvingSnodgrass - 11/9/1999 8:25:14 PM

I have no idea why that image isn't working. It's supposed to be a gamma symbol (a voiced velar fricative).

1373. hashke - 11/9/1999 9:30:44 PM

Thanks for that, Pelle!

1374. Dusty - 11/10/1999 1:40:57 PM

For language Lovers

1375. ilyavinarsky - 11/10/1999 1:44:12 PM

Make it 'voiced h of 'Hello'', then. I don't know phonetics at all, sorry. The gamma symbol is working all right.

Of course, that's how it's pronounced now; I've no idea (though the professionals probably do know) how it was pronounced when Halych was founded.

1376. ilyavinarsky - 11/10/1999 1:44:57 PM

Ronski, Ukrainian novelist Yuri Andrukhovych calls this city Singapura.

1377. pseudoerasmus - 11/10/1999 1:49:43 PM

IrvingSnodgrass:

As proven in Message # 127, you don't need to load a graphic image to use Greek letters. Just write g, or g. Everyone has the symbol font.

1378. hashke - 11/10/1999 4:05:13 PM

Dusty:

Very nice page! Thank you!

1379. ycmeehan - 11/10/1999 6:56:38 PM

Dan,
Thank you for telling me that the Schwa sound is a matter of ease of articulation. I never understood that sound this way before.

1380. IrvingSnodgrass - 11/10/1999 7:24:43 PM

Dusty:
Nice link. I've added it to the links for this thread.

Ilya:
h is a glottal sound, and has no voiced version. I'm pretty sure what you mean is the g, which is very common in many languages of the world. It's more like a g whith no stoppage of the airflow (i.e., a voiced velar fricative). In other words, combine the sound of g with the fricative nature of h.

Less common are back velar sounds, like the well known q of Arabic. There is a voiced counterpart, but I forget the linguistic symbol.

Even rarer are pharyngealized consonants. In fact, Arabic and some closely related languages are the only languages which have them.

PE:
Thanks. I couldn't remember the html for changing the font, and was too lazy to look it up (beyond checking to see if it was on the Mote help page, which it wasn't). I've made a note of it now. The symbol font is very useful for linguistic notation (though it lacks a schwa, an edh and a couple of other useful symbols).

1381. stostosto - 11/11/1999 4:09:41 AM

Here is a funny little poem.

Hans Magnus Enzensberger
Die Scheisse

Immerzu höre ich von ihr reden
als wäre sie an allem schuld.
Seht nur, wie sanft und bescheiden
sie unter uns Platz nimmt!
Warum besudeln wir denn
ihren guten Namen
und leihen ihn
dem Präsidenten der USA,
den Bullen, dem Krieg
und dem Kapitalismus?

Wie vergänglich sie ist,
und das was wir nach ihr nennen
wie dauerhaft!
Sie, die Nachgiebige,
führen wir auf der Zunge
und meinen die Ausbeuter.
Sie, die wir ausgedrückt haben,
soll nun auch noch ausdrücken
unsere Wut?

Hat sie uns nicht erleichtert?
Von weicher Beschaffenheit
und eigentümlich gewaltlos
ist sie von allen Werken des Menschen
vermutlich das friedlichste.
Was hat sie uns nur getan?

1382. stostosto - 11/11/1999 4:12:46 AM

And here is another one:

Robert Gernhard
Dreissigwortegedicht

Siebzehn Worte schreibe ich
auf dies leere Blatt,
acht hab' ich bereits vertan,
jetzt schon sechzehn und
es hat jetzt längst mehr keinen Sinn,
ich schreibe lieber dreißig hin:
Dreißig

1383. hashke - 11/11/1999 11:15:02 AM

stosto:

Urkomisch...aber bist du sicher, dass das nicht von einem Koprophiliaker geschriebn wurde?

1384. stostosto - 11/11/1999 11:18:49 AM

Nein, hashke, davon bin ich gar nicht sicher. Was ist ein Koprophiliaker denn doch für ein Ding?

1385. hashke - 11/11/1999 11:30:49 AM

stosto:

Für ein Ding ist er ein Kerl, dem die Kacke sehr gefällig ist.

1386. stostosto - 11/11/1999 2:58:30 PM

hashke

'die Kacke' was heißt denn dass? Ein anderes wort für phaekalische Nachlässigschaften?

Ich hoffe Sie geben mir zu, daß mein deutsch vielleicht nicht ganz spitzen-prima ist.

Diese zwei gedichte konnte ich doch trotzdem verstehen.

Und wer hat gesagt, daß die Deutsche kein Humor haben? Sie sind ja scheiss humoristisch!

1387. stostosto - 11/11/1999 2:59:52 PM

Ach! gedichte => Gedichte

1388. stostosto - 11/11/1999 3:02:15 PM

Ach nochmals!

wort => Wort

deutsch => Deutsch

(Deutsch ist eine sehr kapitalistische Sprache).

1389. PelleNilsson - 11/11/1999 3:37:46 PM

sto

Ich hatte keine Ahnung dass dein Deutsch so gut ist. Wahrscheinlich viel besser als das der Hashke. Er benützt, ich glaube, das Übersetzungdienst AltaVistas. Und PE? Vielleicht ist es besser wenn wir uns nicht über PE und Deutsch unterhalten. Er kann sehr böse verden, nicht?

1390. hashke - 11/11/1999 4:27:12 PM

Pelle:

Du verkohlst mich, ja? Nein, und du weisst gar, dass ich keinen Uebersetzungsdienst verwende. Die sind alle ganz wertlos. Aber ich stimme mit dir ueberein, dass der stosto fast Fehlerfrei deutsch schreibt. Er ist mit allen Hunden gehetzt.

1391. hashke - 11/11/1999 4:35:45 PM

stosto:

Ja, die Kacke, dh. der Urknall -- oder was die meistens hier täglich in diesen Seiten hinter sich tropfen lassen.

1392. PelleNilsson - 11/11/1999 4:45:19 PM

Hashke

Ich habe Spass gemacht, dass weisst du doch, oder?

1393. Dusty - 11/11/1999 4:49:07 PM

AltaVista translation:

I did not have notion that your German am so good. You char me? No, and you know that I do not use a translation service. Those are quite worthless all. But I correspond with you that stosto almost the error free writes German. He rushed with all dogs.

Why useless? I had no idea what Message # 1390 said. Now I do. Far, far from perfect, but much better than nothing.

1394. hashke - 11/11/1999 7:34:26 PM

Ja, ja Pelle, ich weiss schon!

1395. hashke - 11/11/1999 7:38:27 PM

Dusty:

LOL! Useless from the standpoint of getting anything literate back. These translators cannot handle idiomatic expressions at all.

du verkohlst mich -- you char me -- you're pulling my leg

er ist mit allen Hunden gehetzt -- he rushed with all dogs -- he knows all the tricks

1396. pseudoerasmus - 11/11/1999 8:08:51 PM

CTOCTOCTO: Ich frage dich noch einmal, weil du erstes Mal nicht geantwortet hast: kennst du ein gutes deutsches Diskussionforum?

PelleN: Hashke...benützt, ich glaube, das Übersetzungdienst AltaVistas.

Besser solche Dinge nicht zu sagen! Deine Anschuldigung hat unseren Freund von seine Sprachfähigkeit äußert unsicher gemacht. Ich spreche mit ihm nur auf Englisch. Ich glaube daran, daß man mit jedermann auf seine Muttersprache soviel wie möglich sprechen sollte. Aber als Ehrendeutsche nenne ich dich und das andere Mitglied des Heringvolks.

1397. hashke - 11/11/1999 9:38:37 PM

pseudseer:

Aber als Ehrendeutsche nenne ich dich und das andere Mitglied des Heringvolks

Gar nicht schlecht für einen Wortspielignoranten und Cryptoflüchtling.

1398. hashke - 11/11/1999 9:48:10 PM

...äußert unsicher gemacht

...äusserst...

Blaue Dunst, amigo. Einbildung ist auch eine Bildung.

1399. pseudoerasmus - 11/12/1999 3:30:10 AM

Well, Kakashke, you caught the typo but missed the declension error:
it should be "von seiner Sprachfähigkeit".

1400. stostosto - 11/12/1999 4:25:07 AM

Herrn Psäuder:

Vielen Dank für die ausserordentliche Ausnennung als Ehrendeutsche. Davon bin ich stolz wie ein Pabst. Auch wenn es mir nicht ganz klar ist, woher dein titelzuteilungsgemässige Autorität kommt. Ich gehe davon aus, daß es mit deine zum Viertel mecklenburgvorpommerenbrandenburgersachsenanhalterostpreussische hoch- und kerndeutschen Wurzeln zu tun hat.

Ich habe schon lange gedacht, daß du ein Bißchen am großen deutschen Polyhistor und Entdeckungsreisende Alexander Humboldt erinnerst. (Vielleicht deshalb, daß ich eigentlich nicht sehr viel von ihm weiß).

Deine Frage kann ich aber leider nicht beantworten. Ich bin mit deutsche Diskussionsfora auf dem Netz nicht bekannt.

Es tut mir leid, daß ich nicht früher diese deine Frage beantwortet habe, aber ich glaube daß es einfach meiner Aufmerksamkeit entgangen hat. Wann war das?

Hashke

"Er ist mit allen Hunden gehetzt"

Toll!

1401. PelleNilsson - 11/12/1999 5:51:01 AM

I have found a bl--dy fantastic site. Copy a paragraph from any of the posts in German, then enter the site which belongs to Bell Lab's speech synthezing project. Other languages are available too.

1402. IrvingSnodgrass - 11/12/1999 6:15:29 AM

Pelle:
I've linked the site to this thread. Interesting mix of languages there.

1403. PelleNilsson - 11/12/1999 6:20:50 AM

Yes, like "pig latin". Couldn't PE write some for us? Or is Hashke a latinist too?

1404. IrvingSnodgrass - 11/12/1999 6:41:19 AM

Pelle:
Most of us are adept at Pig Latin.

Ouyay eanmay ouyay ontday owknay igpay atinlay?

Hashké will be interested in the Navajo project, too.

1405. stostosto - 11/12/1999 6:51:16 AM

Ellepay isay anay ellsway uygay, Vingiray. Easeplay utcay imhay omesay ackslay onay ethay atinlay ontfray. Otnay everyay odybay isay asay ellway-oomedgray as ouyay anday emay.

1406. hashke - 11/12/1999 11:05:31 AM

Just listened in on the Navajo. It is nearly totally incomprehensible. The guy is talking with a mouth full of boiling- hot 'tánáshgiizh' washed back with two-week-old fermented 'tólbáhí'. And I hear /i/ in 'bizaad' enunciated as /ii/. No way. Better to do it right or not at all.

Can you hear me, Watson?

1407. DanDillon - 11/12/1999 11:15:08 AM

Wouldn't it be neat-o-keen if our posts could be represented as sound files? I love to hear myself talk! ;-)

1408. PelleNilsson - 11/12/1999 2:29:05 PM

Dan

At last I have one more supporter for my idea of getting us a RealPlayer server for sound files. And then we could also hear Hashke do it as it should be done.

1409. hashke - 11/12/1999 3:42:19 PM

Pelle:

That is a great link, I am a supporter -- and I would be glad for a shot at doing it right. As it is, it's only a bizarre distortion.

I have not yet checked out languages other than Navajo. How do they impress you with regard to fidelity?

1410. PelleNilsson - 11/12/1999 4:11:38 PM

Hashke

Try the German. I thought it was quite good. And remember to input your own text.

1411. ycmeehan - 11/12/1999 4:45:21 PM

hashke,
I just heard about your book. Amazone tells me that they are going to check with the publisher incessantly. So we shall see, my dear.

1412. pseudoerasmus - 11/12/1999 5:10:37 PM

Mein liebester Vorläufigenunterhilfsheringsvolksbeobachter,

Auch wenn es mir nicht ganz klar ist, woher dein titelzuteilungsgemässige Autorität kommt.

Was? Weißt du gar nicht, daß meine, aus einer über das Thema "problematische epistemologische Monaden der Pseuderasmistik" verfaßten und in meiner für wissenschaftliche Originalarbeiten selbstgegründeten Zeitschrift nach der Ablehnung von idiotischen, kommunistischen, syphilistischen Universitätfakultäten veröffentlichten Doktorabeit hergeleitete Autorität umfassend ist?

Ich gehe davon aus, daß es mit deine zum Viertel mecklen...[und so weiter]....hoch- und kerndeutschen Wurzeln zu tun hat.

Sie war gar keine Russin, stammte aus Silesien, echt deutsch.
Und als wir Kinder waren, als wir bei meiner Großmutter blieben,
bei ihrem Geist, sie führte mich hinaus,
um einen Schlitten zu fahren.
Und ich hatte Angst.

1413. stostosto - 11/12/1999 5:20:59 PM

"Silesien"

Hmmm.

Ist das vielleicht dasselbe wie Schlesien?

1414. pseudoerasmus - 11/12/1999 5:22:28 PM

errata

Silesien = Schlesien

1415. stostosto - 11/12/1999 5:27:53 PM

Aber Psäud,

Wo habe ich angedeutet, daß deine Großmutter Russin war?

1416. pseudoerasmus - 11/12/1999 5:30:11 PM

Du hast einen solchen Ding nie gesagt!

1417. stostosto - 11/12/1999 5:37:16 PM

Nein, meinte ich auch nicht.

Es war deine Aussage daß sie "gar keine Russin" war, daß mich verwirrte.

Übrigens: Dein ausdruck "Das Heeringvolk" klingt ganz wagnerisch. Psäudo-wagnerisch, vielleicht.

1418. pseudoerasmus - 11/12/1999 5:40:40 PM

Es war deine Aussage daß sie "gar keine Russin" war, daß mich verwirrte.

Sicher wird Hashke dir ein Licht über die Anspielung aufstecken.

1419. hashke - 11/13/1999 12:22:16 AM

Sicher wird Hashke dir ein Licht über die Anspielung aufstecken

Durch das gedämpfte und schrägeinfallendes Licht seines Bewusstseins, bei näherer Betrachtung wird ihm ein Licht eingehen, dass er hinters Licht geführt wurde, dass ihm manches Licht über das Fach aufgegangen ist, und plötzlich wird sich das Geheimnis hoffentlich endlich lichten.

1420. hashke - 11/13/1999 12:28:25 AM

Du hast einen solchen Ding nie gesagt!

Das Ding an sich.

1421. pseudoerasmus - 11/13/1999 7:06:49 AM

I'm a bit disappointed that my beautifully preposterous syntactical tangle of a German sentence in Message # 1412 did not stimulate others to produce versions of their own. I had hoped for a whole exchange based on such constructions.

An explanation for the German-less. I named Sto and Pelle honourary Germans. Sto asked me what gave me the authority to do so. My reply went as follows, literally translated:

"What? You don't know that my from a on the theme of "Problematic Epistemological Monads of Pseudoerasmistics" written-- and in my for-original-scientific-articles self-founded journal after rejection by idiotic, communist and syphilitic university faculties published-- doctoral-thesis derived authority is all-encompassing?"

stostostosto: Es war eine freie Übersetzung von einigen Verse aus dem Gedicht "The Wasteland".

Hashke: It's "Durch das...schrägeinfallende Licht, without S.

1422. PelleNilsson - 11/13/1999 8:27:07 AM

PE

My German is awfully rusty. There was a time when i could tangle a syntax with the best of 'em, but, alas, not any longer.

1423. dusty - 11/13/1999 9:11:56 AM

ilyavinarsky

Ugh! Off to the one language that really matters -SQL!

Which reminds me of a conversation I had with a Ukrainian on Thursday. We started out discussing thinking in Russian versus thinking in English, and then I asked him how he thought when programming, where the "language" tended to be English words. This led to the question:

Are all computer languages in English?

Obviously, a chunk of any computer language is made up of numbers, which are practically universal, but there are many words, some of which may have been invented for the language, but most of which were borrowed from existing English words. Not surprisingly, any computer language I am likely to see will be English, but I queried whether other countries had developed any computer languages using native words. He didn't think so.
This seems surprising to me, despite the dominance of the English speaking countries in the development of the computer. Surely the French must have at least proposed writing or converting an existing language into French.
Is he right? Do all computer languages use English words?

1424. hashke - 11/13/1999 9:51:25 AM

pseuder:

Yes, it was nicely done syntax, indeed! And yes, bestimmt ohne S.

But my 'das Ding an sich' (I was using a kinder, gentler method of correction) evidently did not prompt you to note that 'Ding' is neuter and therefore cannot take a singular masculine accusative as in your mangled du hast EINEN SOLCHEN Ding nicht gesagt!

;-))

1425. hashke - 11/13/1999 10:30:42 AM

ycmeehan:

The book hassle is unbelievable! If, within the next couple of days, you have not gotten it or at least received info that it has been shipped, please let me know and I'll see to that you get a copy SOON! kawilson@cia-g.com

1426. hashke - 11/13/1999 10:52:51 AM

The following is an emu response in Bavarian from a German friend. Its meaning should be instantly apparent to you out there who know hochdeutsch. pseuder, note 'dös Dingerl'. ;-)

>Merci, Mick. J'ai pas le macron, mais ça va marcher -- bôu jûk -- ou est-ce que serait tout à fait mieux sans accents???

Argh .... ja mia gangst, dös Dingerl hast scho af daim Kompjuta, oba dös bläde WöadPöafekt ko dös ned mocha, i dad Wöad vawendn oda du kohst a aus meine Mails die Buchstam kopian, I schick dia die Vokaal noch amoi, damit dus a ole host. Du muaßt die Zeicha ham, sonst kanntasts ned i maine Mials säng.
aeiou
AEIOU

Oba probia doch zerst amoi die ganzn Sätz aus meine Mails zkopiera.

Michl

1427. ScottLoar - 11/13/1999 12:12:32 PM

Dusty, I really don't understand what you mean by "computer language". Could you explain through examples?

1428. pseudoerasmus - 11/13/1999 1:44:37 PM

[this is the wrong thread, but I don't know where else she might look regularly]

Tmachine, I was wondering what your brother thinks about the charges that the current regime in Sarajevo has turned Islamist (or had always been Islamist), especially as lodged in a document such as this? Bollocks? A lot of truth in it?

1429. pseudoerasmus - 11/13/1999 1:45:17 PM

alarmism & scaremongering? My impression is that that document does everything but talk about camel jockeys and towelheads.

1430. PelleNilsson - 11/13/1999 3:07:58 PM

I think that document - almost three years old - is complete rubbish. I was in and out of Sarajevo between December 1996 and August 1997 and saw no signs of msulim fervour whatsoever.

1431. dusty - 11/13/1999 4:55:32 PM

ScottLoar

Basic has commands such as: if, then, else, dim(ension), all English words.

Fortran has commands such as: common, call, do, return

Other languages similarly have commands using English words.

1432. PelleNilsson - 11/13/1999 5:24:38 PM

dusty

I don't think there are any non-English programming languages. And I also think that there is a simple explanation: In the Beginning Was ASCII which in early implementations did not support the diäcriticûls and whatnot which abound in other languages.

1433. stostosto - 11/13/1999 7:43:56 PM

Psäud

Ich habe dein syntaxüberbebürdigte Satz tatsächlich vielmahl merhmals als es mir gefällt aufzudenken und mit ziemlich sparsamem Zweck in der Sinne es zu Gründe zu verstehen durchgelesen.

Ich war am nächstens an der Grenze deine Ausgüterungen als quatschvollem Volapük abzuschreiben und damit auch ähnlich konkludieren zu machen daß du sicher nicht viel zu viele Tassen im Schrank hast gekommen, und ich hätte sie ganz sicher wenn du dich nicht in deinem Bescheid Nr. 1421 bei der Benutzung eines völliges byzantinischem Farbentechnik erklährt hättest auch überschrieden.

Na, also. So war es nicht.

Und die Russin ist vom T.S.Elliott Gedicht "Das Abfallland" gestaltigt? Ach. Leider erinnere ich mich kein Russin, sondern nur das Bild vom Starnbergersee im grausamsten April. Oder sowas.

Mächtig gewaltig, sozusagen.

Hashke:

Dein Münchner Freund war gar nicht leicht zu dechiffrieren, aber ich glaube daß es mir sowieso gelungen ist.

1434. CalGal - 11/13/1999 7:53:56 PM

Dusty,

If all programming languages don't use English words, the exceptions are few and far between.

1435. PincherMartin - 11/13/1999 8:40:42 PM

Has anyone here seen this article on the genesis of alphabetic writing? Apparently the discovery of some limestone inscriptions off a road in Egypt has lead to speculation that alphabetic writing is two to three hundred years older than previously thought, and invented by a Semitic people in Egypt rather than in the Syria-Palestine region.

The NY Times quotes one Near Eastern expert: "Because of the early date of the two inscriptions and the place they were found," said Dr. P. Kyle McCarter Jr., a professor of Near Eastern studies at Johns Hopkins University. "it forces us to reconsider a lot of questions having to do with the early history of the alphabet. Things I wrote only two years ago I now consider out of date."

Here is the article, Discovery of Egyptian Inscriptions Indicates an Earlier Date for Origin of the Alphabet

1436. hashke - 11/13/1999 9:06:47 PM

stosto:

...daß du sicher nicht viel zu viele Tassen im Schrank hast...

Oder, wenn nicht, mindestens eine Leiche im Keller. Aber keine Antwort von ihm, als ob er eine lange Leite hätte, oder schwer von Begriff wäre. Er hat nur auf mein vortreffliches, redewendungvolles Lichtspiel gepfiffen.

Es gefällt mir, dass du das Bayerische verstanden hast!

1437. hashke - 11/13/1999 9:07:56 PM

Pincher:

Where have you been? I report that there is some progress on the kanji front.

1438. dusty - 11/13/1999 9:51:30 PM

PincherMartin

yes, it was a featured article in the Baltimore Sun. I meant to link it in here, but hadn't gotten around to find it online. Thanks for doing it.

1439. dusty - 11/13/1999 9:53:29 PM

One of the ironies is that it seems to be based upon grafitti. I'm not a big fan of grafitti, despite the (or perhaps because of the)attempts to treat it as a cultural icon, but maybe I'll have to give it some measure of respect in this instance.

1440. dusty - 11/13/1999 9:59:42 PM

The article in the Baltimore Sun isn't simply a repeat of the NYTimes article, so I'll provide the link.

1441. Stumbo - 11/14/1999 12:03:29 AM

Dusty:

I briefly had to study a French version of BASIC, called LSE (Langue scientifique d'enseignement, or something like that.) The only other difference was that it used "<-" instead of "=", for assignment.

-----

From www.anekdot.ru:

A (Russian) programmer is asked how he managed to learn English so quickly. "It was easy," he explains; "it turns out they took most of their words from C++."

1442. PincherMartin - 11/14/1999 12:09:55 AM

Hashke --

I'm glad to hear that you are making progress on your Kanji. How did you find that book I recommended?

Dusty --

I think graffiti is understandable in an age without stationery stores.

1443. DanDillon - 11/14/1999 6:13:48 PM

Pincher,
Thanks for the NY Times link. It strikes me as odd that there have been a number of alphabet/writing system discoveries made in the past 18 months or so. Is this an archeological fluke, or have people been stepping up efforts to uncover precisely these sorts of linguistic things?

dusty,
I enjoyed comparing the coverage of the two newspaper articles. Thanks for not making assumptions about how news gets written.

1444. PincherMartin - 11/14/1999 7:55:48 PM

Dan --

I wasn't aware that the last eighteen months have been a period of rich discovery for archeologists in this area.

1445. dusty - 11/14/1999 7:59:55 PM

Stumbo

I briefly had to study a French version of BASIC, called LSE (Langue scientifique d'enseignement, or something like that.)

Very cool. I figured if any place had done it, it would have been the French.

The only other difference was that it used "<-" instead of "=", for assignment.

Much like APL. And logically correct, unlike the sloppy decision to use the equal sign in many languages.

1446. CalGal - 11/14/1999 8:06:00 PM

LSE? You don't mean the DEC multi-language text editor, do you?

1447. Stumbo - 11/14/1999 8:59:43 PM

Dusty:

Of course, in C, it's even worse: different symbols, but used the wrong way around. A conscious, boneheaded decision upsets me far more than mere sloppiness.

The Pascal convention seems best, IMHO, and it's even been adopted by many math folk.

CG:

Nor did I mean the London School of Economics, heh.

(I'm not even sure I've got the acronym right -- it's been so long, anyway.)

1448. CalGal - 11/14/1999 9:03:55 PM

The reason I ask is because I thought LSE was a text editor that allowed people to write code in various languages and then translated it--but I could be wrong.

1449. tmachine - 11/14/1999 10:53:21 PM

dear pseudo: the document you linked to looks like serious race-mongering--the fact that it's over two years old makes it less scary. I think any muslim terror influence is simply crap, but will ask misha if he thinks there's any kind of real-life base to it. where did that document originate? seemed like real Protocols of Zion type stuff

1450. hashke - 11/15/1999 3:45:39 PM

Pincher #1442:

Yes, it's a fine book, its only drawback being that it provides neither the Japanese nor the Mandarin words. However, I have other materials now as supplements, one of them the excellent dictionary published by zhongwen (see www.zhongwen.com). Learning the kanji is a wonderful pasttime, one that I can only characterize as great fun!

1451. ScottLoar - 11/15/1999 4:02:51 PM

Hashke, obey the stroke order. It's very important that you obey the stroke order.

1452. hashke - 11/15/1999 4:05:45 PM

Scott:

I know, but I haven't even tried stroking the ideographs yet. Just getting a great deal of pleasure out of reading. Sheer fun -- or as they say in Mandarin 'chrfan'.

1453. ScottLoar - 11/15/1999 4:07:57 PM

Characters, Hashke, for not all characters - nay, not even most - are ideographs.

1454. hashke - 11/15/1999 4:23:20 PM

Scott:

Explain.

1455. pseudoerasmus - 11/15/1999 4:33:53 PM

some are pictographs, others are ideographs, still others are combinations of the two.

1456. hashke - 11/15/1999 4:38:19 PM

pseuder and scott:

What did you think of 'Three Kings'? I just threw a blustery review of it into Movies.

1457. hashke - 11/15/1999 4:39:48 PM

Movies, #1786 and continued.

1458. hashke - 11/15/1999 9:14:16 PM

Thanks for the explanation.

1459. pseudoerasmus - 11/15/1999 10:24:31 PM

Hashke, were you able to heard this before?

http://www.geocities.com/Baja/Outback/9630/pseudoerasmus/yakuza.wav

1460. hashke - 11/15/1999 10:36:04 PM

pseuder:

I get a 'ran out of memory placard' for some reason. Any other approaches to this?

1461. pseudoerasmus - 11/15/1999 10:46:20 PM

Well, I'm not sure. Perhaps someone else has suggestions. It's too bad, you could have heard my rendition of a gruff, boorish yakuza loanshark demanding his money back, plus a cranky frog who swears into the telephone as he's woken up, plus a homosexual Hispanic fashion designer explaining how he was inspired by the Pathan suit.

1462. CalGal - 11/15/1999 10:54:46 PM

Hashke,

Tsk, tsk. We wouldn't talk about language in the Movies thread.

BTW, I left you a response--wanted to know if you'd seen that Iranian movie Children of Heaven?

1463. hashke - 11/15/1999 11:00:35 PM

CalGal:

No, haven't seen it. Who directed?

Tsk, tsk. We wouldn't talk about language in the Movies thread.

Tant pis!

1464. hashke - 11/15/1999 11:01:33 PM

And these guys don't want to talk movies in the Language thread.

1465. CalGal - 11/15/1999 11:04:24 PM

Hash,

Well, the answer will be in movies.

1466. cmboyce - 11/15/1999 11:30:27 PM

I just took the Alta-Vista Translator in the butterscotch side-bar for a ride, and this is what happened:

I took the following text:

"Listening to great oratory produces a visceral, almost primal, satisfaction, just as listening to great music does. Ever since Darwin proposed that music preceded speech in human development, anthropologists have been stewing about the relationships between the two--but almost everyone agrees that music's evolutionary function was political. It brought people together."

And had it translated into German, and then submitted the German text I received and had it translated into English, and this is what I got:

" hearing to the large Beredsamkeit produces a viszerales, almost originally, satisfaction, just, like a hearing large music. Since suggested Darwin that music speech in the human development preceded it absorbed, Anthropologen over conditions between the two -- however almost everyone corresponds in the fact that development function of the music was political. It got those together people ",

1467. cmboyce - 11/15/1999 11:39:26 PM

I have questions, perhaps unanswerable save with the old stand-by, human error:

If it could get "oratory" to "Beredsamkeit" [which my Cassells tells me is correct], then how could they not possibly get it back?

Why doesn't it recognize "primal" as an adjective. It almost got that one...

Hmm. "Anthropologen" encountered the same fate as "Beredsamkeit". Could it be the capital letter that confuses it? It thinks its a place name (context be damned, obviously) and thus must be left be?

Are there any of these that are any good? Or is computer translation still a generation or so of development away?

1468. cmboyce - 11/15/1999 11:40:22 PM

For "not possibly" read "possibly not", in 1467.

1469. cmboyce - 11/16/1999 2:29:45 AM

Has anyone else followed the links from the "Kalasha/Nuristani Word List" link in the side-bar? Whoo-oo-whee! Fucking exhausting! The guy who put it up must spend most of his life writing the stuff. He (claims) was a broker who was shut down by the SEC (illegitimately--he was the victim of a plot, I think by his brother, whom he blames for other problems as well); he is married to a woman from Chilgit--a member of the Royal-Family-that-was (with links to historical accounts of Chilgit, including one by Winston Churchill and The Man Who Would Be King), but his wife has been kidnapped by the Pakistani government, in order that she be married to some influential lawyer and forcibly installed with him in Islamabad; his daughter by her has, moreover, been kidnapped by the "Jerry Falwell Organization"; he is some sort of ex- or semi-or both official in the US Chess Federation, and there are long screeds against his political enemies therein, and lots of links to other chess sites (some of them "scandal"s); he has, or has had, a 2d wife, from Sri Lanka, who was also (briefly) kidnapped, in Oman (conclusion not provided, though she apparantly reappeared); there's a link to a webcam site of a young Chinese woman in London; there are lots of pictures of various and sundry people, including Falwell and a Chilgit shepherd who shot him/almost shot him (in different captions); there are ... Well, you get the idea. And it goes on and on and on. And despite its semi-lunatic nature, lots of it is quite interesting. But weird; you're reading along about Dardic languages or something, and he puts in a dig (really; just a passing remark) about his daughter who was kidnapped by Jerry Falwell. Too much!!

I've just been there for 3 hours! And only dismayed some of the time! Give it a whirl!

1470. PelleNilsson - 11/16/1999 3:11:47 AM

cm

I just did a brief tour. Incredible! Talk about Web site!

1471. PelleNilsson - 11/16/1999 5:14:03 AM

defenestration /n./ [from the traditional Czechoslovakian method of assassinating prime ministers, via SF fandom] 1. Proper karmic retribution for an incorrigible punster. "Oh, ghod, that was *awful*!" "Quick! Defenestrate him!" 2. The act of exiting a window system in order to get better response time from a full-screen program. This comes from the dictionary meaning of `defenestrate', which is to throw something out a window. 3. The act of discarding something under the assumption that it will improve matters. "I don't have any disk space left." "Well, why don't you defenestrate that 100 megs worth of old core dumps?" 4. Under a GUI, the act of dragging something out of a window (onto the screen). "Next, defenestrate the MugWump icon." 5. [proposed] The requirement to support a command-line interface. "It has to run on a VT100." "Curses! I've been defenestrated!"

1472. PincherMartin - 11/16/1999 5:59:03 AM

Hashke --

There are six categories in which Chinese characters are grouped:

1). zhishi: "pointing to situations" or "indirect symbols" examples of this are shang (above) and xia (below) -- two simple characters which you are certainly familiar with by now.

2). huiyi: "meeting of ideas," combination of pictographs -- an example of this is nan, the character of man. It is a combination of the character for strength sitting below the character representing a field.

3). xingsheng: (these two characters literally mean "shape-sound") this kind of character is also a combination of two elements, but this time the radical --which is usually on the left hand side of the character -- determines the category of meaning while the other part of the character determines how it will sound. An example of this is he, which means 'river.' The left hand side has the water radical and the right hand side of the character has what would read he, even if the water radical was eliminated.

4). zhuanzhu: characters with a similar appearance and related meaning, and yet they remain separate from one another except for the purposes of pedagogy when a teacher might find it economical to introduce them together. Two characters which fit this category are kao ("to test" as well as "deceased") and lao (it means "old", but also can refer to teachers) --strikingly similar characters. The book you bought, Remembering Kanji, probably has dozens of these paired characters on the same page.

continued...

1473. PincherMartin - 11/16/1999 5:59:20 AM

5). jiajie: "phonetic loan characters" to quote one source I have, this is the process whereby a character used to write one word is borrowed to write another, homophonous word; e.g. the character which originally meant "wheat, barley, growing grain" was borrowed to write the character "come"...

6). xiangxing: (literally, "like a form") finally, the pictographic characters so many people think represent the bulk of Chinese characters.

1474. Uzmakk - 11/16/1999 8:07:41 AM

Sorry for the lack of profundity but I thought the following turn of phrase, used by a local columnist was pretty good---Chances are as good as those of a celluloid rabbit in a blast furnace.

1475. Ronski - 11/16/1999 8:21:49 AM

Pelle,

And not only prime ministers, as it happens.

1476. DanDillon - 11/16/1999 8:38:49 AM

cmboyce,
The Atlantic Monthly ran an article last year on electronic translation. Much of the information its author provides falls into the "Hmm... Interesting" category, but in the end Mr. Budiansky's lack of linguistic savvy undermines his authority.

We discussed the issue briefly, when it was current, in the old place.

1477. Ronski - 11/16/1999 8:46:53 AM

(Defenestrations, etc.)

1478. PelleNilsson - 11/16/1999 9:06:09 AM

Ronski

I ran across the defenestration quote when I searched the net for two instances in Prague and posted it here, implicitly addressed to Hashke, the most incorrigible punster of them all.

What I was really looking for, however, was an illustration for the online version of my History of Sweden which is slowly emerging. There must be some dramatic painting from either or both of these occasions but I failed to find any. Did you see anything of the kind?

1479. Dusty - 11/16/1999 9:57:32 AM

Some of you will be interested in today's WSJ, front page, fourth column article on the @ symbol, including history and other interesting facts. Unfortunately, I don't subscribe to the online version, so I cannot link it, or copy and paste.

1480. Ronski - 11/16/1999 10:16:38 AM

Pelle,

I seem to recall seeing something once, resembling a woodcut print, but not online. I'll look, though.

1481. cmboyce - 11/16/1999 10:34:50 AM

Dan, thanks for the interesting cites. Budiansky's riposte to your letter raises a question (at least for linguistically uneducated types like me): is he simply wrong when he asserts " Though the matter is admittedly controversial, the sampling surveys that have been done suggest that verb-final is indeed the largest category, with just about half the world's languages; verb-medial is a close second; and verb-initial (as in Arabic) a distant third. Verb-final languages include Japanese, Korean, German, Dutch, the Turkic languages (Turkish, Uzbek, Kazakh, and others), the Iranian languages (Persian, Kurdish, Tajik, Pushtu), most of the Indic languages (Punjabi, Tamil, and many others), most of the Tibeto-Burman languages (Tibetan, Burmese, and several hundred others), Slovene, Basque, Eskimo, and many Native American languages."?

Or, if the nature of these languages is "controversial", what's the controversy? (That is, I'd have thought that sampling each would yield pretty straightforward conclusions.)

1482. cmboyce - 11/16/1999 10:51:28 AM

Pelle, I have an illustrated history of the Thirty Years War that contains a plate of an engraving from a contemporary work, Mathaus Merian's Theatrum Europaeum I. The only source the book gives is obviously a commercial German photo archive. I'm afraid I have no scanner, though. The book is a translation of Herbert Langer's Hortus Bellicus: Der Derissigjährige [Edition Liepzig, 1978] (possibly unillustrated), published as The Thirty Years' War in 1980 by Branford Press Ltd., in Poole, Dorset. Good luck.

It occurs to me that, Merian being a pretty well-known engraver, a good art book department in a library might have his Theatrum Europaeum, at least in reproduction.

1483. ScottLoar - 11/16/1999 11:32:40 AM

PincherMartin you are exactly right, and follow the Chinese' own explication of Chinese characters, and that's exactly why they are commonly called "characters" in English.

1484. Stumbo - 11/16/1999 1:11:13 PM

The defenestration def. in #1471 is from the Hacker's Dictionary, which would be a worthwhile addition to the links on the right.

1485. Uzmakk - 11/16/1999 1:38:43 PM

Will I be consulted regarding the "off line" version of The Concise History?

1486. hashke - 11/16/1999 1:44:07 PM

Pincher:

Now THAT'S an explanation. It's a keeper. Thanks much, amigo!!!

1487. hashke - 11/16/1999 1:48:06 PM

Pelle:

For a guy with my lightness of being (meine Daseinsleichtigkeit) defenestration is a window of opportunity.

1488. PelleNilsson - 11/16/1999 2:01:19 PM

cm

Thank you. I'll go on hunting.

1489. DanDillon - 11/16/1999 3:50:33 PM

cmboyce,
I'm not sure I can say he's wrong in his riposte simply because of the nature of the rebuttal. He uses ambiguous language to falsify my claims: "the matter is admittedly controversial" and "the sampling surveys...suggest". So while it's not exacly right of me to say his facts are wrong, I can assert that his facts are roaming around on feet of clay.

As to the alleged controversy of classifying languages, I have enjoyed numerous discussions with Irv and others on this very topic. If he's around, I'm sure he'd love to chime in and share what he knows about the ambiguities of linguistic classification based on syntax and sentence structure. It's a tangled web we weave.

1490. cmboyce - 11/16/1999 6:47:22 PM

Yeah, where's Irv? It must be around dawn in Bali (aaaah!), so perhaps he'll be here soon.

I agree, Dan, about Budiansky's lousy, wafflish style. I think his big thing is animal language, so this is probably just some piece of hackery tossed off for a smallish check, and so he is probably both not being particularly intensive about his research and at the same time is being careful about not getting pinned down to any errors. (I've done such stuff myself, though I hope, be it said (g), with more care about both research and foursquare--or at least threesquare--declaration. But I don't especially blame the guy; he can hardly be expected to make determinations about Ruhlen vs. whoever if he has to meet some early deadline with a strep-throat recovery case mewling at his knees the while, as is, if my own experience is anything to go by, all too bloody likely!).

1491. pseudoerasmus - 11/16/1999 7:43:12 PM

As I said the last time, both Dillon and Budiansky perpetuate the myth that German is an SOV language. German is in fact both an SOV and an SVO language. That is, in dependent clauses, or in sentences using infinitive & participial constructions, verbs come at the end of the sentence. But in an independent clause, the German verb is located precisely where the English verb is. Thus,

Ich verliere mein Herz in Heidelberg. (I lose my heart in Heidelberg.)
Ich habe mein Herz in Heidelberg verloren. (I lost/have lost my heart....)
Ich werde mein Herz in Heidelberg verlieren. (I will lose my heart...)
Sie sagt, daß ich mein Herz in Heidelberg verliere. (She says that I lose my heart in Heidelberg.)

1492. cmboyce - 11/16/1999 8:05:51 PM

BTW, speaking of the classification of languages, I've lately read Ruhlen's Guide to the World's Languages: Classification, and I am sorely perplexed by the seeming feebleness of its taxonomic standard, if any. Here's a guy who's supposed to be a premier taxonomist, and he can call, Indo-Pacific a "phylum" (which he has established as a higher-order term than "family") and a family, in the same paragraph! And, inversely, "family" is fairly often used for both an entity and another which it is within (as, eg, Indo-Hittite and Indo-European). "Phylum" is also so used, where the "super-phyla" (my term) Nostratic et al, are invoked (as phyla).

It seems that any taxonomic system should have a prescribed set of definitions for its taxa, no? I see that the differing degrees of complexity in, say, Austric and Indo-Hittite and Australian, but he doesn't seem to use the available subsets--"class" and "order" etc.--to properly sort the more complex. It drove me nuts. I kept thinking I'd like to know if languages x & y related to each other as English to German, or to Sanskrit; and I couldn't seem to find a correct scale within which to speculate. (I've also read a somewhat too-elementary introduction, Language by R. L. Trask (very interesting, nonetheless, I hasten to add), and the same problems obtained, though less obtrusively.)

My extreme innocence of foreknowledge in these matters doubtless makes for more obscurity in this matter than is necessary--and I'm aware that my own sense of the problem is a bit obscure itself, and that this shows, here--but (in short) 1493. cmboyce - 11/16/1999 8:10:44 PM

Jesus. I don't know what happened there. Anyway:

-but (in short) 1494. cmboyce - 11/16/1999 8:12:13 PM

Well. I don't know what's going on here, but I'll try again.

-but (in short) what the hey?

Can anyone take a shot?

1495. cmboyce - 11/16/1999 8:14:38 PM

Sorry about that. I had omitted a close-quotes in the htpl, and it wouldn't preview, so I kept punching it up before I discovered my error. (Though where that yellow comes from I've no idea.)

I'm told by the local webmaster, and proprietor of this machine, that I must be off-line for a while. I hope to be back later tonight.

1496. DanDillon - 11/16/1999 10:16:34 PM

Psst! Hey buddy! Yeah -- shhh. Over here! Don't tell -- c'm'ere c'm'ere -- Don't tell anyone who told you this, but German is an SOV language. No, not SOB. SOV! Shhhh. Keep it on the QT. Real hush-hush. Spread the word. But don't reveal your source. Yeah. German. SOV. Now scram. Get outa here.

1497. hashke - 11/16/1999 10:52:39 PM

cmboyce:

Here's a guy who's supposed to be a premier taxonomist, and he can call, Indo-Pacific a "phylum" (which he has established as a higher-order term than "family") and a family, in the same paragraph!

See 'Ethnologue' at top of links on right side above for more info.

'Family' is a term defining a group of languages having a close historical relationship. 'Phylum' is sometimes used if the connections are more distant. Crystal says that all the aboriginal languages of Australia are related "but as there is no clear historical evidence which bears on the matter, and little typological work, scholars often refer to the Australian '(macro)phylum' rather than to the Australian 'family'."

I'm not sure how you attribute Ruhlen assigning 'phylum' as higher order. And your note about 'in the same paragraph' he mentions only that Wurm, an Australian linguist, calls a less-inclusive family 'Trans-New Guinea phylum'. Is that what you are referring to?

1498. alistairconnor - 11/16/1999 11:03:26 PM

#1487, hashke, as ever, is full of hot air...

You are a proud Mongolian, brother (weak bilingual pun)

1499. hashke - 11/16/1999 11:31:27 PM

alistair:

Hehheh -- are you referring to Montgolfier? Il était de temps en temps gonflé.

1500. CalGal - 11/16/1999 11:38:25 PM

1501. hashke - 11/17/1999 12:07:11 AM

C'est à dire, les frères Montgolfier...

1502. CalGal - 11/17/1999 12:17:39 AM

testing?

1503. cmboyce - 11/17/1999 12:35:05 AM

Hashke, I know what "phylum" and "family" mean!! And implicit in their meanings, as given by you and understood by me, is that "phylum" refers to the higher order, or more inclusive, level in the hierarchical arrangement that is a taxonomic "tree".

The paragraph I mentioned has nothing to do with Wurm's thing (though calling "a less-inclusive part" of a family a phylum would illustrate my problem as well or better), but is the initial paragraph in Chapter 5 "Oceania" (p 159 of the 1991 pb edition): "Close to 40% of the world's languages ... belong to one of three families: Austronesian..., Indo-Pacific..., or Australian. [He then describes "the Austronesian family", and goes on,]Languages belonging to the Indo-Pacific phylum are...[and concludes with a description of "the Australian family]." Now I'll grant that this may constitute no more than a slip, or even an editor's error, but the same lack of discrimination occurs passim. There's a similar ill-defined quasi-equivalence to "group" and "branch", within the taxon "family". He's a respected linguistic taxonomist introducing linguistic taxonomy to "the interested layman" [p. viii], for crying out loud. I should think that merely having been one for x years would inculcate an habitual consistency with such terms. I conclude that the discipline (linguistic taxonomy) lacks a tradtional agreed upon framework for such terms, such as botany or zoology present.

1504. IrvingSnodgrass - 11/17/1999 6:51:42 AM

CM:
The reason I haven't been around is I'm on a business trip through Java, and don't have the time to connect much, and won't for the next week or so. In the past few days I've been to Surabaya, Pandaan, Mojokerto, Jombang, Malang, and Yogyakarta, and will be visiting Surakarta, Klaten, Magelang, Semarang, Jepara, Cirebon and Jakarta before I'm through (get out your atlas).

Dan and I covered the Budiansky thing pretty well in the old place, and I don't have much to add. The guy is simply wrong. Calling Dutch an SOV language because some structures end in verbs is absurd. I'm sure you can find verb-final structures in most languages in one structure or another, but this doesn't mean these languages are all normally verb-final. PE explains it pretty well above.

As for Ruhlen, I recommend his later book, The Mother Tongue, over the Classification book (although I use the earlier book a lot as well). In one of the books, Ruhlen discusses how the classification terms are used, and why they are often used loosely. I'm away from my library, or I'd give you a citation. It would be nice if Ruhlen was more consistent, but few linguists are very consistent, since classifications beyond the family level are new and controversial. It's an area which will be defined better as more study is done.

1505. hashke - 11/17/1999 9:37:35 AM

cmboyce:

Yes, Irv is correct about the inconsistency of linguists.

I suggest that to settle your gripe with these particular taxing taxonimic questions that you write your opinions to Ruhlen, Greenberg, and Cavalli-Sforza, perforce getting the scoop from the horses' mouths.

1506. hashke - 11/17/1999 1:03:47 PM

...taxonomic...

These translingual puns don't get no respect. In #1505 noch wieder Perlen vor die Säue geworfen.

1507. PelleNilsson - 11/17/1999 2:23:19 PM

hashke

You're too clever by one.

1508. hashke - 11/17/1999 2:49:33 PM

Pelle:

And you say that you don't understand puns! I've never believed it.

And isn't 'too clever by half' more than enough? Are you implying rococo or worse, Gongorismo?

1509. PelleNilsson - 11/17/1999 5:01:15 PM

hashke

There is a story in there. Watch this space tomorrow.

1511. pseudoerasmus - 11/18/1999 2:07:53 PM

An Ainu couple:

1512. hashke - 11/18/1999 3:30:44 PM

Wow! Did you take this photograph?

1513. CuriousPluck - 11/18/1999 3:36:40 PM

Double wow. Is the woman's mouth tatooed?

1514. pseudoerasmus - 11/18/1999 3:47:30 PM

No, I didn't take this photo. You can find the source in the image location.

1515. PelleNilsson - 11/18/1999 4:16:40 PM

hashke

The story behind "too clever by one". I think I've told it before but in another place and perhaps you were not around at the time.

It has to do with Nikola Holcer, telecom engineer with the World Bank, now retired.

Nikola was born in Vojvodina in northern Yugoslavia. It is a jigsaw of ethnical minorities of which the Hungarians are the largest group. Nikola's grandfather had come there from Austria during Habsburg times. He had married a Hungrian lady and the family was now Hungarian in all but name. So Nikola's first language was Hungarian. But in the street and in the market the common denominator was Serbo-kroat so he picked up that too as a child.

When the time came to enter primary school Nikola's German surname meant that he was sent to a German school.

Later, at university, the language was Serbo-kroat but a lot of the lectures and most of the literature was in Russian. Then, when Nikola had started his career in telecom, came Tito's break with the Soviet Union. Now, Russian was out, English was in. Another language to pick up.

Nikola's English was very effective. One was never left in doubt about what he wanted to say. But his grasp of grammar and idiom was not, shall we say, fully developed.

And that is why, just before a meeting in Bratislava, he pulled me aside, discreetly pointed to another participant and said: "Pelle, watch out for that guy, he is too clever by one, meaning, in Nikola's parlance that the guy's deviousness was double that of somebody who was merely too clever by half.

1516. stostosto - 11/18/1999 5:48:13 PM

A couple of illustrations I found on the thirty years war. The drawing is from 1941, and the map from 1921. I don't really know how to interpret it...

(This post is primarily to check out whether I can post pictures from this particular source at all).

1517. ilyavinarsky - 11/18/1999 6:24:48 PM

Pelle's story reminds me of the episode in Svejk where the soldiers argue about how long WWI would be. One of them says - 15 years because there was once a 30 years' war, and we are now half again as smart.

1518. pseudoerasmus - 11/18/1999 6:48:55 PM

Great story, Pelle!

1519. hashke - 11/18/1999 9:25:36 PM

Pelle:

Thanks for that entertaining story. I assume that in your earlier remark directed to me that you intended the synonym for 'clever' -- be it by half or by one -- to be 'smart' rather than 'devious'.

1520. ilyavinarsky - 11/19/1999 10:23:40 PM

Trick question:

In what language is this written?

1521. ilyavinarsky - 11/19/1999 10:24:48 PM

actually it isn't a good example. never mind.

1522. ilyavinarsky - 11/19/1999 10:27:52 PM

(the answer is: Church Slavonic / Russian / Ukrainian vinaigrette)

1523. ilyavinarsky - 11/20/1999 7:21:03 PM

Is anyone interested in discussing Eastern Slavistica (Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Carpatho-Rusyn language/dialects [there is no agreement among the linguists which it is]) ?

1524. PincherMartin - 11/20/1999 8:04:37 PM

Ilya --

Don't be discouraged if you don't have any responses to your question this weekend. Saturdays and Sundays are usually very slow on this forum.

1525. Roadrage - 11/20/1999 8:21:35 PM

StoX3, your two images (#1516) arrived here (win95/oe4.0) as image frames with the red x in a box. I get this occasionally on damaged or incomplete image files.

1526. dusty - 11/20/1999 9:27:09 PM

Want to be part of the OED?

Anyone can, but I'll bet the regulars in here are more qualified than most.

1527. alistairconnor - 11/20/1999 9:44:23 PM

Gee, I misread that, Dusty. I thought you were linking an application form for nations applying to join the OECD.

Form an orderly queue, please, Westernized Oriental Gentlemen.

1528. dusty - 11/20/1999 10:02:04 PM

alistairconnor

No silly, I'll post that application in International.

1529. cmboyce - 11/21/1999 1:38:48 AM

Thanks for that link, Dusty. I have been collecting words that are not in the OED, ever since reading that biography of Murray (Caught in the Web of Words; a prescient title, I guess), and now I'll have something to do with them.

I have only checked them against the First, including all Supplements. Someone told me that the Second is simply all this stuff collated. Does anyone know if that's so?

Of course, now I have a "reason" to buy the Second. But I probably won't, because I know it's too tall for any bookshelf I have or am likely to have unless some miracle permits me to move, and I really don't need or want another dictionary, if I'm going to have to remove it from its goddam box whenever I want to consult it! (g)

1530. cmboyce - 11/23/1999 1:36:46 AM

HELLO-O-OO-OOO-OO-ooo

!!

That's funny, I'd have sworn there were languages being spoken here, just a while ago.

1531. ilyavinarsky - 11/23/1999 1:54:42 AM

Richard Wilbur.

"To the Etruscan Poets"

Dream fluently, still brothers, who when young

Took with your mother's milk the mother tongue,

In which pure matrix, joining world and mind,

You strove to leave some line of verse behind

Like a fresh track across a field of snow,

Not reckoning that all could melt and go.

1532. cmboyce - 11/23/1999 2:08:41 AM

Hahahahahahah.. Very nice, Ilya. Can it be that English is going the way of Etruscan, that fast!!!??? Well, if at all, then fast please. BTW, I meant to remark in "Books", and perhaps did but I don't think so, that that story you posted, "Red Caviar Sandwiches", was also very nice. You seem to have excellent taste.

1533. PelleNilsson - 11/23/1999 3:49:21 AM

Ilya

This is from an economist article about Seamus Heaney, the Irish Nobel Price winner:

Mr Heaney's third effort this autumn is a contribution to "After Pushkin", a new book of translations into English of the Russian poet that is being published by the Folio Society to celebrate the bicentenary of Pushkin's birth.

Mr Heaney has been tussling with the particular problems of translating great poetry for many years. As long ago as 1979 he was wrestling with Dante's crafty trimeters. In "Field Work", his collection of poems published that year, he included a short excerpt from the "Inferno". Then in 1983 he published an exuberant modern version of a medieval Irish classic, "Sweeney Astray".

Translating Pushkin presents a particularly daunting challenge. The language of Russia's "greatest poet" has a clarity and colloquial vigour that has often proved resistant to translation. Poets find it easier to translate other poets when they can match metaphor with metaphor, and image with image.

Mr Heaney has resolved the problem in his new version of "Arion"-Pushkin's telling of one man's miraculous survival of a shipwreck compressed into 16 shapely lines-by producing an extremely shapely and colloquial version of his own. He has worked with the spirit of the Russian original and not tried to copy it word for exacting word.

The book is:

AFTER PUSHKIN.
Edited by Elaine Feinstein.
Folio Society; 96 pages; £22.50.
Carcanet Press; £7.95 (paperback)

1534. PelleNilsson - 11/23/1999 6:21:57 AM

The Economist on Americanisms

If you use Americanisms just to show you know them, people may find you a tad tiresome, so be discriminating. Many American words and expressions have passed into the language; others have vigour, particularly if used sparingly. Some are short and to the point (so prefer lay off to make redundant). But many are unnecessarily long (so use and not additionally, car not automobile, company not corporation, court not courtroom or courthouse, transport not transportation, district not neighbourhood, oblige not obligate, rocket not skyrocket, stocks not inventories unless there is the risk of confusion with stocks and shares). Spat and scam, two words beloved by some journalists, have the merit of brevity, but so do row and fraud; squabble and swindle might sometimes be used instead. The military, used as a noun, is nearly always better put as the army. Gubernatorial is an ugly word that can almost always be avoided.

Other Americanisms are euphemistic or obscure (so avoid affirmative action, rookies, end runs, stand-offs, point men, ball games and almost all other American sporting terms). Do not write meet with or outside of: outside America, nowadays, you just meet people. Do not figure out if you can work out. To deliver on a promise means to keep it. A parking lot is a car park. Use senior rather than ranking.

1535. PelleNilsson - 11/23/1999 6:23:42 AM

Put adverbs where you would put them in normal speech, which is usually after the verb (not before it, which usually is where Americans put them). Choose tenses according to British usage, too. In particular, do not fight shy-as Americans often do-of the perfect tense, especially where no date or time is given. Thus Mr Clinton has woken up to the danger is preferable to Mr Clinton woke up to the danger, unless you can add last week or when he heard the explosion.

Prefer doctors to physicians and lawyers to attorneys. They are to be found in Harley Street or Wall Street, not on it. And they rest from their labours at weekends, not on them. During the week their children are at school, not in it.

In an American context you may run for office (but please stand in countries with parliamentary systems) and your car may sometimes run on gasoline instead of petrol. But if you use corn in the American sense you should explain that this is maize to most people (unless it is an old chestnut). Trains run from railway stations, not train stations. The people in them, and on buses, are passengers, not riders. Cars are hired, not rented. City centres are not central cities. Cricket is a game not a sport. London is the country's capital, not the nation's. Ex-servicemen are not necessarily veterans. Bullet-proof vests are bullet-proof waistcoats unless, improbably, they are singlets. In Britain, though cattle and pigs may be raised, children are (or should be) brought up.

1536. PelleNilsson - 11/23/1999 6:25:37 AM

Make a deep study or even a study in depth, but not an in-depth study. On-site inspections are allowed, but not in-flight entertainment. Throw stones, not rocks, unless they are of slate, which can also mean abuse (as a verb) but does not, in Britain, mean predict or nominate. Regular is not a synonym for ordinary or normal: Mussolini brought in the regular train, All-Bran the regular man; it is quite normal to be without either. Hikes are walks, not increases. Vegetables, not teenagers, should be fresh. Only the speechless are dumb, the well-dressed smart and the insane mad. Scenarios are best kept for the theatre, postures for the gym, parameters for the parabola.

Grow a beard or a tomato but not a company. By all means call for a record profit if you wish to exhort the workers, but not if you merely predict one. And do not post it if it has been achieved. If it has not, look for someone new to head the company, not to head it up.

You may program a computer but in all other contexts the word is programme.

Try not to verb nouns or to adjective them. So do not access files, haemorrhage red ink (haemorrhage is a noun), let one event impact another, author books (still less co-author them), critique style sheets, host parties or loan money. Gunned down means shot. And though it is sometimes necessary to use nouns as adjectives, there is no need to call an attempted coup a coup attempt or the Californian legislature the California legislature. Vilest of all is the habit of throwing together several nouns into one ghastly adjectival reticule: Texas millionaire real-estate developer and failed thrift entrepreneur Hiram Turnipseed . . .

1537. alistairconnor - 11/23/1999 6:34:38 AM

Try that stuff in New Zealand, Pelle, and people will think you an insufferable snob. I always prefer British usages, or strictly indigenous ones, but Murcanisation of the dialect is rampant.

1538. ScottLoar - 11/23/1999 7:43:53 AM

Pish and posh. You both, Pelle and Alistair, have ample experience of writings by Americans here in this forum. Do you find American usage in general to be inferior to British usage? Do you second the Economist on Americanisms? Do you leave your car at the parking lot or take the Mum and kiddies for a stroll in the car park? My daughter's in school, how about yours? "Hemorrhaging" according to my dictionary is verb intransitive but perhaps all firms in England do too well. Cricket is neither game or sport to most Americans and do not suggest to a Chicago cop that his bullet-proof vest is a waistcoat.

1539. PelleNilsson - 11/23/1999 8:00:31 AM

Scott

Your post deserves a more reasoned answer than I have time to prepare right now. I'll be back in a few hours.

1540. CharlieL - 11/23/1999 8:59:35 AM

"do not suggest to a Chicago cop that his bullet-proof vest is a waistcoat."

If his name is Wayne, it could be wainscoating, according to the panel.

1541. pseudoerasmus - 11/23/1999 9:38:56 AM

That silly Economist piece on Americanisms mixes up in one big stew things which should be kept apart. For example, genuine national differences in usage (maize/corn) are treated the same as usages & styles which are considered substandard or vulgar on both sides of the Atlantic. For example, I have seen American prescriptivists or pedants say each and every one of these:

and not additionally
Make a deep study or even a study in depth, but not an in-depth study
On-site inspections are allowed, but not in-flight entertainment
Throw stones, not rocks
Regular is not a synonym for ordinary or normal
Hikes are walks, not increases
Vegetables, not teenagers, should be fresh
Only the speechless are dumb
the well-dressed smart
the insane mad
Scenarios are best kept for the theatre
postures for the gym, parameters for the parabola.
Grow a beard or a tomato but not a company
By all means call for a record profit if you wish to exhort the workers, but not if you merely predict one.
"Try not to verb nouns or to adjective them. So do not access files, haemorrhage red ink (haemorrhage is a noun), let one event impact another, author books (still less co-author them), critique style sheets, host parties or loan money...And though it is sometimes necessary to use nouns as adjectives, there is no need to call an attempted coup a coup attempt..."

1542. pseudoerasmus - 11/23/1999 9:39:53 AM

Some of the things the article says are just hallucinatory. Who says "in school" instead of "at school"? Who says "meet with" instead of simply "meet"? And are adverbs regularly placed before the verb in the USA? And the description of the shyness about the perfect tense has nothing to do with the speech I've heard Americans engage in.

1543. Dusty - 11/23/1999 10:05:46 AM

Don't be silly. Lots of people say "in school". Correctly.

And while "meet with" may be redundant, it is common.

1544. tmachine - 11/23/1999 10:13:43 AM

pseudo: "in school" is very common in the U.S. Of course, there's nothing about it that makes it worse or better than "at school." And I agree about the adverb-in-front-of-the-verb thing--that sounds totally weird. could someone give me an example? I suppose it could be something like "He slowly walked down the street." but as far as I know Americans would be at least as likely or more likely to say "He walked slowly down the street."

1545. pseudoerasmus - 11/23/1999 10:13:45 AM

Well, maybe it's a pecularity of your state or something.

1546. pseudoerasmus - 11/23/1999 10:14:41 AM

# 1545 was directed Dustmop, but I'll believe Tmachine.

1547. ScottLoar - 11/23/1999 10:17:20 AM

Do you know where your children are?

Yes, of course, in school.

1548. ScottLoar - 11/23/1999 10:34:04 AM

If The Economist cavils over meet with then what's to be said of the typically Southern usage visit with as I visited with Billy and he opined that dog can't hunt, or I just visited with Beau Ritchie who's pitchin' sod; he'd found his wife crawling between sheets with James Lee?

1549. ScottLoar - 11/23/1999 10:37:19 AM

Reminds me, I gotta' visit with Mama on Thanksgivin'.

1550. Dusty - 11/23/1999 10:46:46 AM

ScottLoar

One of us is laboring under a major misunderstanding. I took the Economist to be offering advice to Brits, not to Americans. Can you tell me why you keep mentioning examples in the states?

1551. ScottLoar - 11/23/1999 11:29:55 AM

Dusty, dusty, dusty. Yes, The Economist is offering advice to Brits. If The Economist cavils over meet with then what would it say about visit with which is colorful, strong, and used throughout one great part of the US?

Why don't you ignore my posts? If you don't like what I say then just ignore me, please. Please!

1552. ScottLoar - 11/23/1999 11:35:40 AM

Obviously some must think there is something fundamentally disruptive or unpatriotic in borrowing usages from the different dialects of English. Fear of corruption or contamination by colorful speech?

1553. Dusty - 11/23/1999 12:09:17 PM

ScottLoar

Dusty, dusty, dusty. Yes, The Economist is offering advice to Brits.

Then why would you ask about American usage? I didn't interpret the Economist as suggesting that Americanisms ought to be eschewed by Americans.

Why don't you ignore my posts? If you don't like what I say then just ignore me, please. Please!

Because you say interesting things. What makes you think I don't like what you say? I interpreted the Economist in a certain way—I inferred from your comments that you interpreted it differently, and I respect your opinions enough that I wondered if I might be wrong. Hence my question.

1554. Dusty - 11/23/1999 12:15:12 PM

ScottLoar

Obviously some must think there is something fundamentally disruptive or unpatriotic in borrowing usages from the different dialects of English. Fear of corruption or contamination by colorful speech?

No, not at all. They aren't imitating the French and railing against all Americanisms. They are suggesting that an Americanism for Americanism's sake is snobbish pretension. They accept Americanism's where the phrase is better, suggest the British version when it is better, and urge the British phrase when they are roughly the same (in terms of wordiness).

I would expect an American usage guide to suggest the same (mutatis mutandis), although most Americans are so insular, it hardly needs be said.

1555. ScottLoar - 11/23/1999 12:25:59 PM

Dusty, yes, I know you neither said or implied that American usage should be eschewed by Americans, neither did I infer so. Let's let that one rest, eh?

I didn't ask about American usage. I asked if The Economist cavilled over meet with what would it do (if The Economist only knew!) about visit with?

1556. ScottLoar - 11/23/1999 12:29:28 PM

The Economist is not accusing use of Americanisms as snobbish pretension but vile usage approaching illiteracy.

1557. Dusty - 11/23/1999 12:30:46 PM

ScottLoar

Sorry you aren't following, but I'll drop it as you plainly aren't interested in explaining.

1558. ScottLoar - 11/23/1999 12:32:35 PM

Done.

1559. Dusty - 11/23/1999 12:35:30 PM

ScottLoar

Thanks for Message # 1556
It helped explain. Now I see where we disagree.

I'll be interested in Pelle's take on it.

1560. SpenceMirrlees - 11/23/1999 2:02:30 PM

quick question: about how many words on average are in the vocabulary of an adult English speaker? Another: is this comparable to other languages that use words?

1561. PelleNilsson - 11/23/1999 2:08:40 PM

I posted the Economist piece partly because I (rightly) suspected it would enliven the thread a bit, partly because I'm interested in the subject.

That interest comes from being a non-native speaker of a language for which there is no single norm. It took me quite some time to realise that there are different usages. I thought for example that 'lift' and 'elevator', and 'sidewalk' and 'pavement' were simple synonymes for the same things, and that one could use either of them at one's fancy.

Later, when I became more aware, I thought I should adopt one usage in order to avoid writing things like "He stepped from the sidewalk into the lift" which no doubt looks ridiculous. So nowadays I'm trying, not always successfully, to write the British variant of English, not because I have anything against American, but because it is the one I'm most familiar with.

1562. CalGal - 11/23/1999 2:16:29 PM

I use "in school" and "at school" interchangeably if I am telling someone where Spawn is at the moment.

But if I were speaking of a friend's kid at Harvard, I'd say "at school".

1563. CalGal - 11/23/1999 2:24:17 PM

Adverbs:

I actually think it's better if we put these two in reverse order.

I don't necessarily think that this is so.

He literally hopes that a miracle will occur.

Flustered, she quickly sat up straight and began to recite the lesson.

*****

But then, I am a noted syntax mangler.

1564. PelleNilsson - 11/23/1999 2:41:22 PM

William Safire's Rules for Writers:

Remember to never split an infinitive.
The passive voice should never be used.
Do not put statements in the negative form.
Verbs have to agree with their subjects.
Proofread carefully to see if you words out.
If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal of repetition can be by rereading and editing.
A writer must not shift your point of view.
And don't start a sentence with a conjunction. (Remember, too, a preposition is a terrible word to end a sentence with.)
Don't overuse exclamation marks!!
Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more words, to their antecedents.
Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided.
If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors.
Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing.
Always pick on the correct idiom.
The adverb always follows the verb.
Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; seek viable alternatives.

1565. dusty - 11/23/1999 2:43:57 PM

Pelle

You missed the final paragraph:

Do not feel obliged to follow American fashion in overusing such words as constituency (try supporters), perception (try belief or view) and rhetoric (of which there is too little, not too much—try language or speeches or exaggeration if that is what you mean). And if you must use American expressions, use them correctly (a rain-check does not imply checking on the shower activity).

1566. dusty - 11/23/1999 2:48:00 PM

CalGal

I agree. My son is home on break, but when he is at school, I would say "at school" whether it was during classroom hours or not. I would tend to say my daughter was in school only during classroom hours, although I might say "at school".

1567. dusty - 11/23/1999 2:50:58 PM

Pelle

Do you have more to say about the Americanisms article? I'm interested in your take on some of the points raised in here.

1568. CalGal - 11/23/1999 2:52:21 PM

Spence,

We had a discussion about the average adult vocabulary a while back, but I can't remember the number.

1569. PelleNilsson - 11/23/1999 3:00:13 PM

dusty

I didn't exactly miss it. I just dropped it because I came up against the 2000 character limit. I admire your patience in putting in all the bold tags. Or have you come up with some clever Word macro to assist you?

Since you can access the Style Guide I assume you are a subscriber to The Economist. In the current issue there is an article on the "new economy". I thought of uploading it to my website and linking it in Economics, but (not being An Economist) I'm not sure about its value. What do you think?

1570. PelleNilsson - 11/23/1999 3:04:04 PM

Spence

I have a hazy recollection of 3,000 words for an educated speaker and less than 1,000 for basic knowledge.

Another: is this comparable to other languages that use words?

Please list non-word languages (sign languages also use "words").

1571. dusty - 11/23/1999 3:06:38 PM

One source suggests between 20,000 and 50,000 words

Another:
Above the 50,000-100,000 words needed for average adult communication

1572. ilyavinarsky - 11/23/1999 3:08:02 PM

This is the kind of pedantry up with which I shall not put.

1573. CalGal - 11/23/1999 3:10:29 PM

I was curious about adverbs, so I went looking.

E.J. Dionne column:

Gore can probably make up lost ground fairly quickly with traditionally Democratic groups (African Americans and Democratic-leaning women) among whom he is "underperforming," according to Democratic pollster Geoff Garin.

Newsweek:

Why are the investigators publicly downplaying Batouti's role?

In fact, as the airlines ceaselessly and correctly remind their customers, flying has never been safer.

1574. Dantheman - 11/23/1999 3:11:12 PM

And as the child asked the parent who wanted to use an Australian geography book as bedtime reading:

What did you bring that book that I did not want to be read to out of about "Down Under" up for?

(ending a sentence with 8 prepositions!)

1575. dusty - 11/23/1999 3:11:13 PM

A third source:English is the richest language with the largest vocabulary—over 1,000,000 words—on earth. Yet the average adult has a vocabulary of only 40,000-50,000 words.

A fourth:
The average adult has a vocabulary of about 50,000 words.

1576. PelleNilsson - 11/23/1999 3:12:11 PM

dusty

My main problem with American English is fuzziness and long-windedness: the tendency not to call a spade a spade but a wooden-handled implement with a metal blade used to prepare the soil to receive seeds.

1577. CalGal - 11/23/1999 3:15:43 PM

Pelle,

Yes, but is that the language or the speaker?

1578. pseudoerasmus - 11/23/1999 3:17:04 PM

PelleNilsson: That problem is universal, found in all languages, but particularly in Romance languages, where the principle of "use five words where one would do" seems de rigueur.

1579. PelleNilsson - 11/23/1999 3:24:11 PM

CalGal and PE

It is of course the speaker rather than the language. But when I am at conferences of the kind where people stand up a read a paper for 15 minutes and then take questions for five, I note a distinct difference between the average American speaker and the British one. Americans seem to have a need to coin new terms for familiar concepts.

1580. dusty - 11/23/1999 3:25:21 PM

PelleNilsson

Or have you come up with some clever Word macro to assist you?

I am using Notetab per the recommendation of wabbit. I just bought the Pro version (with spell-check)—the lite version is free.
One of the nice features is the way it incorporates HTML. I select text, then click on a button to add bold, size and color, etc. It reduces errors because it automatically adds the closing tags.

1581. alistairConnor - 11/23/1999 4:27:35 PM

Scott Loar :
If I were to visit with my mother, for example, it could only mean that the two of us were visiting a third person or another place. In any other case, the word with is not only superfluous, but redundant.

This agglutination of redundancies, useful for clarifying meaning when either the speaker or the listener, or both, are likely to be unsure of it, is characteristic of all pidgins, I believe.

1582. PelleNilsson - 11/23/1999 4:28:44 PM

dusty

I see that I evaded your Message # 1567. If you have some specific points in mind please refer to them and I'll do my best.

1583. alistairConnor - 11/23/1999 4:30:58 PM

Pre-emptive clarification : I am winding you up, ScottLoar.

1584. PsychProf - 11/23/1999 4:35:35 PM

We have pidgins in our parks, but they sure as hell are not language redundant...

1585. Dantheman - 11/23/1999 4:38:06 PM

PP,
But, like Tom Lehrer, do you go Poisoning Pidgins in the Park?

1586. PsychProf - 11/23/1999 4:40:08 PM

I'll tell ya Dan, if they start cooing with a bunch of superflous adverbs, I will...

1587. PelleNilsson - 11/23/1999 4:53:27 PM

Alistair

agglutination of redundancies

Exceedingly good.

1588. ScottLoar - 11/23/1999 5:03:37 PM

If I were to visit with my mother, for example, it could only mean that the two of us were visiting a third person or another place. But of course, Alistair, because you've no experience otherwise.

Alistair, I do not use the phrase myself (incidentally, I'm not from the South) but think it cute when I first heard it and thereafter. No matter how you choose to explain it away your visit with me on this phrase is to no effect as I very much enjoy peculiarities of character and place in speech and writing.

1589. ScottLoar - 11/23/1999 5:06:57 PM

Best immediate example of agglutination of redundancies,

Cute little mini-skirt dress -

Wilson Pickett, Monterrey Pop Festival, 1968

1590. CalGal - 11/23/1999 5:09:33 PM

I think the two are used for different reasons?

I'd say "I went to visit with my mother" if I had just spent the afternoon having lunch and chatting at her house.

I'd say "I went to visit my mother" if she lived out of town.

1591. ScottLoar - 11/23/1999 5:13:23 PM

I visited with ScottLoar in the usage I've quoted can mean I communicated with ScottLoar by phone and does not necessarily mean I visited his person in person.

1592. CalGal - 11/23/1999 5:16:16 PM

Oh, yes. I agree with that as well.

1593. ScottLoar - 11/23/1999 5:17:02 PM

Agglutination of reduncies cleaves to me now as I cleave my way through Alistair's windings.

1594. dusty - 11/23/1999 5:48:44 PM

PelleNilsson

If you have some specific points in mind please refer to them and I'll do my best.

Your Message # 1539 left me on pins and needles.

But I do have a specific question. Some items in the Economist list are clearly driected at only the British writer, without a hint of superiority. So, for example, the Economist suggests stocks rater than inventories, but one would expect that the opposite advise would be given to an American writer. In other cases, [t]ry not to verb nouns or to adjective them, one expects the same advise to be given to Americans, but they are mildly chiding of American bad habits, as opposed to suggesting that such habits are acceptable in the states. In yet other instances [s]cenarios are best kept for the theatre, postures for the gym, parameters for the parabola there may be a hint of condescension if these vulgarities are to be avoided, but heathen Americans would find them quite acceptable.

On the whole, I didn't infer a sense of superiority of British English over American english, or a sense that Americans would do well to heed all of these imperatives, but some others read it differently. What did you think?

1595. alistairConnor - 11/23/1999 5:55:41 PM

Cute little mini-skirt dress
Poetry can be as redundant as it needs to be. You can't fence me in with Wilson Pickett.

By phone? Well, I suppose that I could be visited by the Holy Ghost without meeting its person in person - though I'm not holding my breath - but visiting by telephone is a new one on me. But if that is an accepted American meaning, I can only hope it remains confined within your national borders.

1596. CalGal - 11/23/1999 5:58:53 PM

Oh, be silly. Of course it was a smack. Delivered by one who feels himself, wrongly, in the inferior position. A touch of aggrievement is discernible--surely, in any properly run world, we Americans would be aping our linguistic superiors.

1597. ScottLoar - 11/23/1999 6:02:43 PM

Again, Alistair, I know it's a new one on you, hence this exchange.

1598. CalGal - 11/23/1999 6:21:45 PM

I don't think it's particularly American, is it?

The difference is whether or not "visit" takes an object. If you say "I visited [person/place]", then you physically spent time in the presence of that person or place. If you say "I visited with [person]" (no object), then physical presence is not required--it just means that time was spent with that person.

Do the English not use "visit" in the intransitive form?

1599. dusty - 11/23/1999 6:22:09 PM

After posting 1594, then rereading PE's earlier point, I realize that I repeated part of his point. Yes, the section on Americanisms is a mishmash. Some of the examples of poor usage belonged elsewhere, such as in the Syntax section.

I still find it odd that a publication would insult its readers, but perhpas it is intended to be clever; subtle enough that heathen Americans will miss it, while obvious to the English and the cognoscenti.

1600. PelleNilsson - 11/24/1999 6:18:44 AM

If you want hear something funny go to the Speech Synthezing link, select French, input a text in English and listen to the result.

1601. alistairconnor - 11/24/1999 6:23:38 AM

The French they do at that synthesis link is very poor, Pelle. That's odd, because French pronunciation is completely determined by orthography, so you have to try really hard to make mistakes. And I have heard perfectly good French synthesised by a (French) demo program I downloaded off the internet at least three years ago.

1602. PelleNilsson - 11/24/1999 7:54:29 AM

But did you input French text?

1603. hashke - 11/24/1999 11:57:05 AM

because French pronunciation is completely determined by orthography

??

French pronunciation is French pronunciation, German is German. Orthography attempts to represent phonetics, French in its own peculiar way. English orthography is notoriously non-representative of English phonetics. Yiddish and Navajo are reasonably accurate orthographic systems.

1604. Cinimin - 11/25/1999 10:45:22 AM

"I visited with ScottLoar" in the usage I've quoted can mean I communicated with ScottLoar by phone and does not necessarily mean I visited his person in person.

Trembling newbie, here. (Rats. Is "trembling" redundant?)

Scotty is that you? Next you'll be telling us that "Beam me up, Scotty!" will result in nothing more than a phone call.

How......relatively luddicous!

1605. PelleNilsson - 11/25/1999 12:30:23 PM

Welcome Cinimine. Do not tremble.

1606. hashke - 11/25/1999 12:39:59 PM

Med skälvande röst asplövet skälver i vinden...

1607. PelleNilsson - 11/25/1999 1:08:14 PM

... och i sju skjul sjunger skitande skälvande chaufförer generat.

1608. hashke - 11/25/1999 2:04:20 PM

Den pinsamma situastionen generade dem (dom) inte det minsta.

1609. hashke - 11/25/1999 2:04:46 PM

Den pinsamma situationen generade dem (dom) inte det minsta.

1610. hashke - 11/25/1999 2:08:06 PM

Nu har de skitit i det blå skåpet.

1611. pseudoerasmus - 11/25/1999 2:09:35 PM

aho, Motam prati me vitarka-bahuiyad akula buddhir na niscayam adhigacchati.

1612. ilyavinarsky - 11/25/1999 2:27:09 PM

Does anybody know how the Ebonics controversy ended?

1613. hashke - 11/25/1999 2:37:13 PM

Awenydd! Vai' datha...

1614. ilyavinarsky - 11/25/1999 2:41:42 PM

I posted some more linguistics stuff into my travelogue.

1615. hashke - 11/25/1999 2:42:38 PM

1523. ilyavinarsky - 11/21/99 12:21:03 AM
Is anyone interested in discussing Eastern Slavistica (Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Carpatho-Rusyn language/dialects [there is no agreement among the linguists which it is]) ?

1616. hashke - 11/25/1999 2:43:52 PM

Yes, Vinarsky. Start it off.

1617. hashke - 11/25/1999 2:51:05 PM

Pelle:

Var gick du? Skal du gå vidare?

1618. PelleNilsson - 11/25/1999 3:11:58 PM

hashke

I went to cook dinner and eat it with my wife, who came home after a long day at the rolling blood bank.

Men varför sket de i det blå skåpet? Det hade jag ärvt av min farmor.

1619. hashke - 11/25/1999 3:27:14 PM

Pelle:

Det er en idiom, icke sant? Och från vem har du ärvt din förstånd och din humor?

1620. hashke - 11/25/1999 3:29:24 PM

Vinarsky???

(Den där er hal som en ål)

1621. PelleNilsson - 11/25/1999 3:49:19 PM

hashke

It is not a Swedish idiom. (But "hal som en ål is", indeed). It may be Norwegian, in which case it should exist in Danish too. We need the advice of sto^3. But he has been lazy lately.

1622. pseudoerasmus - 11/25/1999 3:51:41 PM

Hashke, what's your obsession with Ilya?

1623. hashke - 11/25/1999 4:27:10 PM

pseuder:

What is yr obsession with my 'obsession'?

Shíni' yé'éts'ih -- my mind he pinches it -- wie man's auf Navajo sagt.

He whineth like a Pentacostal about lack of readership of his stuff (which is excellent, by the way), he maketh sly remarks about the uniqueness of his wide reading ('Moties don't care about books'), he throweth out suggestions like the above about Eastern Slavistica and makes no reply when takeneth up on it...otherwise I think he's a swell guy. Given a shedding of the 'viva Yo' syndrome he might even be entertaining on a hike.

Vinarsky, ya gonna do the Slavistica? Do it with pseudo or Pelle...or Raskolnikov or, yes, with Stumbo!

1624. stostosto - 11/25/1999 4:31:29 PM

pellehashke
Vad pratar ni om? Vilket är ett idiom på norska och danska? Att "skita i det blå skåpet", eller "hal som en ål"? (Eller "hal som en ål is(????)"?)

Jag fattar inte ett dugg.

1625. stostosto - 11/25/1999 4:41:08 PM

hashke
Il y a un peu d'Ilya sur les langues slavistiques dans sa thread de travel. Je crois que c'est du stuff pour vous exactement.

1626. hashke - 11/25/1999 4:51:14 PM

stostosto:

Du fatta inte vad saken gäller? Vi bara ta upp et par idiomen. Det er icke betydelsefull. Gå tillbaka till begynnelsen.

Dessvärre må jag gå nå.

1627. PelleNilsson - 11/25/1999 4:53:32 PM

sto

Egentligen fattar jag inte ett dugg heller.

But my impression was that hashke claims that "skita i det blå skåpet" is idiom.

It is definitely not Swedish idiom. But hashke has earlier confessed that Norwegian was his first foray into Scandinavian languages.

I assumed then that it might be a Norwegian idiom, and since Norwegian is essentially Danish (hope no Norwegian lurkers around), you would be able to help out.

If you also don't recognise "skita i det blå skåpet" as idiom, hashke has a bit of explaining to do.

1628. stostosto - 11/25/1999 5:00:16 PM

pelle
That expression is not known to me. But it's a powerful one, we just need a meaning of it.

So, hashke has "confessed" that Norwegian was his first encounter with Scandinavian languages, has he? How did you extort that embarassing admission from him? Did you pun him to surrender?

1629. PelleNilsson - 11/25/1999 5:16:41 PM

My punning powers are limited. But I prodded him with the Edda and he confessed immediately. And who wouldn't?

For lurkers

The phrase we are discussing "att skita i det blå skåpet" means "to defecate in the blue cupboard".

As sto says it is very powerful, very symbolic. Think of "after receiving the news from the front he defecated in the blue cupboard".

But, again agreeing with sto, what does it mean?

hashke?

1630. stostosto - 11/25/1999 5:36:14 PM

pelle
'skita' means 'defecate'? I'd have said 'shit'.

But perhaps you'd rather shit in the blue cupboard than say a thing like that?

1631. PelleNilsson - 11/25/1999 6:01:57 PM

Yes. I'm a very delicate nature in these matters.

But I think we are on the verge of coining a great new cyber acronym: ISITBC, I Shat In The Blue Cupboard. Think of:

ISITBC when I saw [name of candidate] on the [name of host] show.

1632. hashke - 11/26/1999 1:08:53 AM

Pellestostosto:

Veldig drolig! Ni är dråpliga karlar med en stor sinne för humor, och en instinktiv känsla för hur något hänger ihop -- tvärtemot vad som påstås om skandanavienar. Jag anada att skita i det blå skåpet var snarlik tysk Blödsinn treiben, fransk faire l'imbécile, och spansk hacer el tonto.

1633. PelleNilsson - 11/26/1999 1:40:50 AM

Thank you hashke. Unfortunately I have to be off now - on icy roads to the office.

1634. stostosto - 11/26/1999 3:55:37 AM

There is a Danish expression: "Vil du skide i havet", ca.: "Why don't you go shit in the sea". It's primarily used to express disbelief, like "Get the fuck out of here". Or "Why don't you take a shit in the blue cupboard".....?

1635. hashke - 11/26/1999 10:28:31 AM

stosto:

Tack för det. Komisk. Jag har hörde en likvärdig uttryk, släng dig i väggen!. Det är som fransk va te faire cuire un oeuf, och Basque hoa akerra jestera -- go milk a billy goat

Men jag undrar varför du icke skriver en svensk.

1636. stostosto - 11/26/1999 12:37:44 PM

hashke

Gå hjem og vug din gamle mor på kanten af en teske.

1637. hashke - 11/26/1999 3:35:22 PM

stosto:

Jag tror att det är dansk. Kansje är det som 'gå hjem och duk din gamle mor på bord (?) af en tesked'?????

1638. ilyavinarsky - 11/26/1999 10:42:46 PM

skita / shit, skirt / shirt, skiff / ship. It figures.

1639. ilyavinarsky - 11/26/1999 10:46:01 PM

Today I went for a long walk with my wife's kid. A hobby store had a flyer, "For a small donation, you can tour a WWII-era B-17 Flying Fortress plane and visit with the local WWII veterans."

Also, a liquor store had a poster, "You can stop DUI driving."

You've got to love the English language.

1640. hashke - 11/26/1999 11:24:11 PM

stostosto:

En exakt yiddisk likvärdig uttryk för 'vil du skide i havet' är gey kucken af dem yam. Det är stor råd att Vinarsky bör betänka, icke sann? ;-)

1641. hashke - 11/26/1999 11:28:14 PM

1629. PelleNilsson - 11/25/99 10:16:41 PM
My punning powers are limited. But I prodded him with the Edda and he confessed immediately. And who wouldn't?

Those venerable verses in Swedish were an Edda delight.

1642. hashke - 11/26/1999 11:28:43 PM

1629. PelleNilsson - 11/25/99 10:16:41 PM

My punning powers are limited. But I prodded him with the Edda and he confessed immediately. And who wouldn't?

Those venerable verses in Swedish were an Edda delight.

1643. ilyavinarsky - 11/26/1999 11:37:48 PM

Vinarsky appreciates it very much when people talk about him in Skandihoovian.

1644. hashke - 11/26/1999 11:38:50 PM

Ursäkta et dubbelspel!

1645. hashke - 11/26/1999 11:40:13 PM

Ursäkta det 'Scandahoovian'.

1646. ilyavinarsky - 11/27/1999 12:23:47 AM

Nikita Mogilevsky speaking, today and yesterday:

"Mommy, do me a flavor..."

[a janitor is towing garbage cans with a tractor] "Odin, dva, tri, chetyre, piat', shest'. Shest'! Eto skol'ko mne let!" [One, two, three, four, five, six. Six! That's how old I am!]

[playing with my boss's children in the basement of my boss's house.] "Ilyusha, idi vniz! My tebya ne budem ubit'!" [the diminutive of Ilya, come down! We won't have you killed!]

"Stoysia zdes'!" [stand yourself here!]

etc.

1647. hashke - 11/27/1999 1:17:32 AM

Risunok SOVSEM khorosh!

1648. stostosto - 11/27/1999 8:05:27 AM

hashke

Gå hjem og vug din gamle mor på kanten af en teske

Go home and rock your old mother at the edge of a teaspoon.

1649. alistairconnor - 11/27/1999 8:45:03 AM

Words fail me tonight.

1650. hashke - 11/27/1999 10:08:49 AM

stostosto:

Hoa antzerrak perretzera. (Basque)

Go shoe the goose with irons.

1651. hashke - 11/27/1999 10:22:19 AM

Man må tude med de ulve man er iblandt.

1652. hashke - 11/27/1999 4:31:57 PM

Dra dit pepparn växer.

Geh' hin wo der Pfeffer wächst.

Etc., etc...

1653. hashke - 11/27/1999 4:42:39 PM

Ho phugging hum

1654. hashke - 11/27/1999 4:56:21 PM

"And even when we have mastered a language sufficiently well, it keeps trapping us, refusing to allow us to finish a train of thought by deserting us suddenly, making fun of us by coming out wrong. The language we grow up with is our servant; we are always a step ahead of it. A new language, however, already exists; we have to grasp hold of it by the tail, and are never wholly sure where it will take us."

Alastair Reid in Whereabouts, Notes on Being a Foreigner

1655. hashke - 11/27/1999 4:57:51 PM

Y-a-w-n

1656. ilyavinarsky - 11/28/1999 12:35:40 AM

Re 1654: it's a weary prostitute vs. kinky lover thing.

1657. ilyavinarsky - 11/28/1999 12:40:43 AM

Q to our resident Navajophile:

Many Russian minority languages with far fewer speakers than Navajo, such as Chukchi, and those with far more, such as Erzya and Chuvash, have literatures written in the language for the language's speakers, even though a print run of a Chukchi-language book can be at most 500 or 1000. Are there Native American writers writing in Native American languages for Native American readers?

1658. hashke - 11/28/1999 10:13:53 AM

Ah, Vinarsky, what a treat to see a friendly face in these barrens! Even the Scandanavians fled.

I can only speak for Navajo. There are a few attempts here and there at poetry and short fiction, but only sputterings. And very few Navajos can read the language at all.

1659. KULIgintheHOOLIgan - 11/28/1999 12:35:28 PM

OK, who knows the proper response to this greeting:

"Ngapi"

1660. ScottLoar - 11/28/1999 2:17:21 PM

Many Russian minority languages with far fewer speakers than Navajo, such as Chukchi, and those with far more, such as Erzya and Chuvash, have literatures written in the language for the language's speakers...

Yes, but do Chukchi, Erzya, Chuvash etc. have a traditional written form? American Indian languages excluding Cherokee do not, so the language was traditionally oral and as the number of native speakers decreases the language of instruction English increases to choke out the transcribed mother tongue. In other words, the written form becomes increasingly useless among a people for whom the oral language is alive only to the preliterate, very old.

1661. ScottLoar - 11/28/1999 2:25:12 PM

Was it Estonian that promises to soon become extinct? That or one of the Baltic states. And if that language which has a written history is to become extinct what of Mandan, Hadasa, and countless others which until lately were only spoken? These languages are transcribed but to what end? To serve the vanity of ethnologists, themselves foreign to the culture and tongue they try to preserve?

1662. pseudoerasmus - 11/28/1999 2:30:10 PM

Chukchi is a written language mostly in theory - that is, in the textbooks written by linguists. I can't believe that the language has any kind of literary production. Why, three-quarters of all Chukchi are reindeer herders, and there are only about 15,000 of them to begin with.

Chuvash is a completely different story -- and cannot be compared with Chukchi of all things! Its almost 2 million speakers have a republic of their own along the Volga. It's a Turkic language with official status in the republic, whose cultural revival is supported and financed by the Republic of Turkey. There are magazines, newspapers, television shows, etc. in the Chuvash language.

1663. pseudoerasmus - 11/28/1999 2:30:59 PM

Estonian is not anywhere near going extinct.

1664. pseudoerasmus - 11/28/1999 2:36:12 PM

I don't know anything about Erzya (also known as Mordvinian). The Mordvins too have a republic of their own, but who knows about the situation with their language. Ilya?

1665. hashke - 11/28/1999 4:03:09 PM

In other words, the written form becomes increasingly useless among a people for whom the oral language is alive only to the preliterate, very old

The written form becomes increasingly more valuable -- not 'increasingly useless' -- when it is used for preserving ceremony, idiom, song, personal narrative, humor. It builds stock in a kind of museum from which native culture and the world at large may draw.

1666. stostosto - 11/28/1999 4:05:33 PM

Nor can I believe that any of the two other Baltic languages are nearing extinction. The most threatened of them would be Latvian, since Latvians have almost become a minority in their own country. But their independence movement was all about culture and traditional Latvian folk songs and ethnic distinctness, and they have clashed with Russia over tough language requirements for becoming a citizen, i.e. a minimum of Latvian skills were required.

1667. Stumbo - 11/28/1999 4:23:17 PM

There are more Chukcha jokes than there are Chukchas.

1668. PelleNilsson - 11/28/1999 4:35:31 PM

Tell us one.

1669. ilyavinarsky - 11/28/1999 5:18:58 PM

A Chukchi enters a department store.

"Do you have color TVs?"

"Yes."

"I'd like a green one, please."

1670. ilyavinarsky - 11/28/1999 5:23:16 PM

There is a Chukchi writer called Yury Rytkheu, who writes in Russian. BTW he is quoted in David Landes's The Wealth of Nations, though Landes misspells his name. There are also some Chukchi writers who write in Chukchi; I read about them here and here.

1671. ilyavinarsky - 11/28/1999 5:24:31 PM

Oh, I meant The Wealth and Poverty of Nations.

1672. ilyavinarsky - 11/28/1999 5:26:13 PM

Two Chukchis are fishing on the shore of the Arctic Ocean.

"Want to hear a joke?"

"Yes."

"A political one."

"No, no, they'll send us South!"

1673. ilyavinarsky - 11/28/1999 5:27:19 PM

Q: What's a Chukchi restroom?

A: Two sticks. One you stick into the snow so the wind doesn't blow you away, and with the other you drive away the wolves.

1674. ilyavinarsky - 11/28/1999 5:34:27 PM

Erzya we are!

Was Chapayev really of Erzya origin? There is also a huge number of jokes about him.

1675. ilyavinarsky - 11/28/1999 5:36:27 PM

Two Chukchis are fishing on the shores of the Arctic Ocean. An airplane flies overhead.

"This is a government airplane."

"No it isn't. If it were a government one, there would be a motorcade in front of it."

1676. ilyavinarsky - 11/28/1999 5:38:51 PM

A Chukchi man is guarding a geologists' camp. A geologist tries to get in.

"Stop! Who are you?"

"Don't you know me? I am the head of the party."

The Chukchi man shoots and kills him.

"The Chukchi man isn't a fool. The Chukchi man knows, who is the head of the Party."

1677. ilyavinarsky - 11/28/1999 5:45:12 PM

Several Baltic (geographically, not linguistically - linguistically they are Finnic) languages are near-extinct, including Ingrian and Livonian. The Ingrian language is really a dialect of Finnish that was spoken in the St. Petersburg area before the region was Russian. My friend's mother (right?) worked as a schoolteacher in some villages 50km south of St. Petersburg, and the people there spoke Russian and watched Russian TV, but had Finnic surnames. As far as I know, Finland encourages immigration of these mostly Russian-speaking people.

Latvian is alive and well - there is even a Latvian-language version of Windows 95!

1678. ilyavinarsky - 11/28/1999 5:47:23 PM

Chukchis are herding reindeer through downtown Anadyr.

1679. ilyavinarsky - 11/28/1999 5:49:48 PM

Moreover, equality – to the extent that it was possible to be non-Russian but equal in the USSR – was not forthcoming. During the “stagnant” 1970s, when most official values were subject to carnivalesque debunking through popular humor, the Chukchi emerged as the most popular butt of jokes that parodied Soviet claims of rapid development and spectacular cultural advances by the formerly backward. Thus the native northerners were taken up by the folk mythmakers for the same reason they had been used by the creators of socialist realism: seen as an extreme case, they provided maximum edification in the heroic genre and the most striking implausibility in the comic.

Yuri Slezkine. Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North.

1680. ilyavinarsky - 11/28/1999 6:06:20 PM

I believe there is a college somewhere in Washington State that teaches various Native American languages to everyone willing to learn them.

1681. ilyavinarsky - 11/28/1999 6:09:32 PM

A Chukchi man enters a department store.

"Do you have fridges?"

"What do you need a fridge for - it's already cold in Chukotka!"

"Outside it's -30 centigrade, and in the fridge it's -5 - I'll be warming myself."

1682. stostosto - 11/28/1999 6:09:32 PM

Landes quotes a Juryi Rychten from his 1960s novel Ajvanhu. Its Siberian hero complains: "I have never been able to understand how anyone can discover land that is already inhabited by people.... It's as though I went to Yakutsk and announced that I had discovered that city. That would hardly please the Yakuts."

---
I forgot that there are several Baltic languages besides the official ones in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Isn't it correct that the original Prussians - the ones that gave name to Prussia and subsequently German inhabitors of that area - lived there, yet have been absorbed and their language extinct?

1683. ilyavinarsky - 11/28/1999 6:14:11 PM

Yes, Landes misspells Rytkheu's name.

Yes, the info about Old Prussian is correct. And it went extinct quite recently, in the 18th century, was it? There were also various Baltic languages in the Middle Ages, and I am sure that university libraries in Riga, Minsk and Vilnius have many unread Ph.D. dissertations about them.

1684. ilyavinarsky - 11/28/1999 6:15:00 PM

I wanted to write "various now-extinct Baltic languages". Shux, I am used to Salon TT where you can edit posts.

1685. stostosto - 11/28/1999 6:22:47 PM

Ilya
Here you have to correct yourself in subsequent posts like you just did. It doesn't work out all that bad, I think. You can of course "Check for Dust" before posting, but it does feel a bit cumbersome.

1686. pseudoerasmus - 11/28/1999 6:36:10 PM

I have heard many of the "Chukchi" jokes with other nationalities -- in particular, the colour television joke I've heard applied to Turks, Koreans and (I think) even Sikhs. Obviously ethnic jokes circulate around the world because they are rarely truly ethnocentric they can be applied to anybody.

1687. ilyavinarsky - 11/28/1999 6:45:18 PM

Nothing can beat the Russian marasmus, though:

During Gorbachov's times, a Chukchi man visited Moscow, and after returning to his herders' camp declared:

"Everything we've been told is wrong! Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels are not husband and wife - they are four unrelated people!"

1688. ilyavinarsky - 11/28/1999 6:46:00 PM

The novel should probably be called Ivanhoe.

1689. ilyavinarsky - 11/28/1999 7:02:50 PM

> And very few Navajos can read the language at all.

Is it taught in elementary schools? I really don't know; apart from a long article in Harper's magazine about poverty and violence on the reservation, I don't know anything about the 1990s Navajos.

1690. ilyavinarsky - 11/28/1999 7:06:25 PM

A Chukchi is crying. "Curse Czar Alexander! He sold Alaska to the Americans! But left Chukotka to the Russians!"

1691. ilyavinarsky - 11/28/1999 7:10:10 PM

A Turk, a Chukchi and an engineer are sitting at a table. However, only one foot touches the floor. How come?

The Turk is sitting cross-legged. The engineer put one leg upon the other. And the Chukchi's legs are too short.

1692. ilyavinarsky - 11/28/1999 7:13:01 PM

A Chukchi man found an orange in the snow, and immediately ate it. His friend is pestering him:

"Tell me, tell me, what did it taste like - like salted walrus fat?"

"No."

"Like fried whale blubber?"

"No."

"Like smoked reindeer meat?"

"No."

"Like what?"

"Like sex."

1693. ScottLoar - 11/28/1999 8:08:31 PM

Well shit, I got a lot of Chukchi jokes and little else.

Hashke, my point is exactly that the language becomes an ethnologist's preserve as the bulk of the population moves ever farther away from the language of their forefathers. Yes, the written language does become ever more useful for the ethnologist even as the native culture loses it. Ironic that there arrives a spate of fitful attempts to revive the culture and language when it is almost gone.

1694. ScottLoar - 11/28/1999 8:10:21 PM

Hashke, what you describe in #1665 is culture preserved under glass.

1695. ilyavinarsky - 11/28/1999 8:17:57 PM

Geoffrey Chaucer's Middle English language and culture are preserved under glass. Is the world poorer because of this?

1696. ScottLoar - 11/28/1999 8:23:04 PM

Ilya, do you propose that the world will benefit as much from the preservation of Mandan as a transcribed language as Chaucer? Ilya, I can read Chaucer; indeed, I can pronounce Chaucerian English much as Chaucer would have spoken it. I cannot do so with Mandan and I daresay the audience for Mandan is considerably less.

1697. ScottLoar - 11/28/1999 8:29:47 PM

A language distanced from use, from the everyday life of its speakers, is going to be a dead language as will be the events, ceremonies and culture it recounts.

1698. ilyavinarsky - 11/28/1999 8:35:05 PM

I am an engineer; I like constructive proposals. What do you propose?

1699. ilyavinarsky - 11/28/1999 8:39:32 PM

The end result will be the wannabee Indian pseudonymous entity who spams Salon Magazine Table Talk forum.

1700. ScottLoar - 11/28/1999 9:11:36 PM

What do I propose? That was never the purpose of this exchange but... transcribe the language, record the dying memories of the last few native speakers for this is testimony to their existence, and keep these records open to whomever is moved by it all, but do not think in one's vanity that you have succeeded in saving a dying culture.

1701. ScottLoar - 11/28/1999 9:12:10 PM

Oh, I am not an engineer.

1702. ilyavinarsky - 11/28/1999 9:21:39 PM

http://www.themote.com/viewThread.asp?thread=30&Back=1532

1703. ilyavinarsky - 11/28/1999 9:22:09 PM

Oh, please delete this one. I meant

http://www.themote.com/viewThread.asp?thread=30&Back=1531

1704. ilyavinarsky - 11/28/1999 9:23:08 PM

I meant http://www.themote.com/viewThread.asp?thread=30&goToMsg=1531

1705. ScottLoar - 11/28/1999 9:24:18 PM

Yes, I know.

1706. ilyavinarsky - 11/28/1999 9:26:08 PM

Shall I post some of Nikita Mogilevsky's (my part-time stepson who has a living father) linguistic and mental productions?

On Wednesday a burglar smashed my car window and ripped out the radio. This morning, my wife, Nikita and I were picking the glass out of my car (it was raining almost nonstop since Wednesday in Bellevue, WA). Nikita suggested that I build a robot that would do it for me.

1707. hashke - 11/28/1999 9:51:58 PM

1700. ScottLoar - 11/29/99 2:11:36 AM
What do I propose? That was never the purpose of this exchange but... transcribe the language, record the dying memories of the last few native speakers for this is testimony to their existence, and keep these records open to whomever is moved by it all, but do not think in one's vanity that you have succeeded in saving a dying culture.

Nobody is arguing about 'saving' a dying culture through the recording of its utterances. But the essences of culture are certainly evident in Homerian Greek, Virgilian Latin, Chaucerian English -- and we would rune the day had we not had a taste of the charms and incantations evidenced in those Teutonic carvings.

Over twenty years ago I published a work about Navajo humor. One of my greatest pleasures was surreptitiously seeing a young Navajo couple in a campus quad reading those old stories, laughing, making comments and telling their own, newer jokes. At least, for the time, they were experiencing something more than fossilized communication. The book is still in print and still working for more people than I can imagine.

A large audience does not necessarily ascribe value or worth to anything.

1708. hashke - 11/28/1999 10:00:13 PM

1699. ilyavinarsky - 11/29/99 1:39:32 AM
The end result will be the wannabee Indian pseudonymous entity who spams Salon Magazine Table Talk forum

I dunno, but you may be talking about a Native American Indian.

1709. hashke - 11/28/1999 10:03:18 PM

1689. ilyavinarsky - 11/29/99 12:02:50 AM

Is it taught in elementary schools? I really don't know; apart from a long article in Harper's magazine about poverty and violence on the reservation, I don't know anything about the 1990s Navajos.

It is taught in some schools on the reservation, but they never seem to get beyond days of the week and month, names of clans, colors, and counting to ten.

1710. hashke - 11/28/1999 10:03:55 PM

...names of months, that is.

1711. PincherMartin - 11/28/1999 10:17:50 PM

Hashke --

I dunno, but you may be talking about a Native American Indian.

I think Ilya is speaking of Sakonige.

1712. hashke - 11/28/1999 11:04:53 PM

Pincher:

Exactly what I mean. I believe that she is Cherokee and of Kwakiutl or some other Northwest Indian blood, no?

1713. PincherMartin - 11/28/1999 11:18:06 PM

Hashke --

I don't know. The accusation has been made -- perhaps wrongly -- that Sakonige is something of a counterfeit, one who exaggerates her connection to North American Indians. I have no idea. No one can doubt her emotional connection to them, however.

1714. hashke - 11/28/1999 11:29:42 PM

Pincher:

Irv had a photo of her on his old website. It was on the Fray. She certainly had a Native American look about her -- and she is quite beautiful.

1715. hashke - 11/28/1999 11:32:57 PM

Perhaps she is lurking and will speak up on it, either here or in TT.

1716. PincherMartin - 11/28/1999 11:36:01 PM

Hashke --

Irv had a photo of her on his old website. It was on the Fray. She certainly had a Native American look about her -- and she is quite beautiful.

So I heard.

1717. Candide - 11/29/1999 2:03:05 AM

1713. PincherMartin - 11/29/99 4:18:06 AM
" Hashke --

I don't know. The accusation has been made -- perhaps wrongly --
that Sakonige is something of a counterfeit, one who exaggerates
her connection to North American Indians. I have no idea. No one
can doubt her emotional connection to them, however.

I am absolutely convinced that Sakonige is genuine.

In Australia a cheap racist shot at mixed race Aboriginals with a European appearance is to say that they are fakes. This is mostly used against urban Aboriginals who don't overtly live like people from Arnhem Land. As PincherMartin says, it's the emotional connection. I should also add the psychological traumas during childhood.

About dead or dying languages. In Australia there are a great many Italians whose languages (dialects) no longer exist in Italy. Even the villages have gone or been absorbed in larger urban developments. There have been Italian scholars collecting their languages in Australia because they no longer exist in Italy. I suspect that this is true for other nationalities as well. The Italiant dialects are very different from modern Italian. I saw Olmi's "The Tree of the Little Wooden Clogs" in Milan where they had sub-titles for the Italians because the Bergamo dialect was impenetrable for them.

1718. Candide - 11/29/1999 2:05:10 AM

"1713. PincherMartin - 11/29/99 4:18:06 AM
" Hashke --

I don't know. The accusation has been made -- perhaps wrongly --
that Sakonige is something of a counterfeit, one who exaggerates
her connection to North American Indians. I have no idea. No one
can doubt her emotional connection to them, however."

SHOULD HAVE QUOTES.

1719. Candide - 11/29/1999 2:20:04 AM

I should have said that Bergamo is very close to Milan.

1720. ScottLoar - 11/29/1999 8:03:45 AM

(Navajo) is taught in some schools on the reservation, but (students) never seem to get beyond days of the week and month, names of clans, colors, and counting to ten.

That's exactly my point. A few more years and even this will seem an heroic accomplishment notwithstanding the success of your joke book among a few.

1721. ScottLoar - 11/29/1999 8:06:04 AM

A large audience may not ascribe value or worth to anything, but a language needs more than just a few speakers else it becomes a museum curio.

1722. pseudoerasmus - 11/29/1999 9:31:03 AM

My favourite linguistic museum curio-to-be: the archaic Greek that is still spoken as a first language among the residents of villages outside Otranto on the heel of Italy.

1723. hashke - 11/29/1999 9:36:48 AM

Scott, you are like the tennis ball one hits triumphantly up into the stands after a victory only to be thrown back down by some fucker up in the crowds.

1724. hashke - 11/29/1999 9:44:02 AM

And yr rhetoric is as circular as that of the Chinese and the Navajos themselves.

Museums and libraries contain things of inestimable value.

And it's not a 'joke book', but rather a fully annotated work with interlinear translations, explications of text, cultural notes, paradigms, and so forth.

1725. ScottLoar - 11/29/1999 10:45:26 AM

No, I didn't intend to disparage your work nor treat you as the tennis ball. There is always some wise ass who claims exception to the general rule, implying all that went before is a lie or inaccurate.

This has been a wasted exchange. Thank you very much for your patience.

1726. ScottLoar - 11/29/1999 10:51:03 AM

Museums and libraries contain things of inestimable value.

Oh, so that's what we were talking about? Ah well...

1727. pseudoerasmus - 11/29/1999 10:58:28 AM

Loar, you have reduced Hashke's labour of love to an ethnologist's vanity. You should be glad his response was so mild.

1728. marjoribanks - 11/29/1999 11:06:06 AM

Gentlemen, gentlemen, why this unnecessary rancor between two of the most learned/interesting/generous participants in this discussion site, or indeed that I have ever run across anywhere.

Pak Hashke, I don't think our friend Loar meant to disparage you or your efforts. His point was/is more general and not inaccurate, really.

1729. marjoribanks - 11/29/1999 11:06:51 AM

Pseuder, your comment is gratutious.

1730. ScottLoar - 11/29/1999 11:14:45 AM

Thank you Marjoribanks. I would hope that Hashke takes your explanation as sincere and accurate of my point however clumsily I expressed it.

1731. hashke - 11/29/1999 11:18:27 AM

Scott:

First of all, I put a grin mark by my tennis ball simile, and the ball is you, idefatigably bouncing back. Your bounce has its humorous element, which I thought the comment might have caught. The (g) didn't show up in or after my remark. I ain't mad at you. It's fun. Pax voscum.

1732. hashke - 11/29/1999 11:20:01 AM

Pak marj and pseuder:

Thanks for the kind remarks. No problem. I liked the Otranto reference. Pax vobiscum.

1733. marjoribanks - 11/29/1999 11:34:05 AM

Well, that's better.

Now, the only thing is that this thread languishes most of the time. What linguistic topic is there out there that you fellows haven't chewed over and spit out? Should Pak Hashke and I abandon ourselves to another round of homespun wisdom? I have an hour to while away.

1734. marjoribanks - 11/29/1999 11:36:20 AM

Does anyone, Pseuder excepted, remember how he came to have his moniker truncated in this particular (and now popular) manner?

1735. hashke - 11/29/1999 11:44:36 AM

Pak marj:

I am working away at sending stuff in to layout, so have little while-away time at the moment. Why don't you take up where Loar and I left off? (g)

1736. ScottLoar - 11/29/1999 11:47:52 AM

Actually, our cat responds only to Mandarin. I have told wife and daughter the next cat will be instructed in Iroquois, a language for which I've always had a hankering.

I'm off to the Philippines at the end of this week for two weeks, and tomorrow give a lecture comparing the family in China and Japan, so these promise to be my last few comments and slights of the day.

1737. marjoribanks - 11/29/1999 11:51:02 AM

Gee thanks, Pak Hashke.

Here's the answer. When Pseuder returned to his early Fray moniker of PseudoErasmus, that scamp known now as MrSocko went off and changed his own "name" to PseudoSocrates. This was very funny, people even confused the two. Having recently seen that puerile gem of a comedy 'Dumb and Dumber', I took to calling the two Pseud and Pseuder. Thus created (maybe for me only) endless hilarity. Sadly, tired of being mistaken for someone else, Pseud morphed into MrSocko. But the other nickname stuck. Occasionally, I still get a giggle out of it.

1738. marjoribanks - 11/29/1999 11:52:19 AM

Loar!

A precis of the speech please. It sounds rather fascinating. Who is the intended audience?

1739. ilyavinarsky - 11/29/1999 3:02:46 PM

Candide,

If somebody lives the same way as the whites, eats the same food as the whites, has sex like the whites, speaks the same language as the whites, in which sense aren't they whites?

In Australia, are there special laws regarding the Aborigines? And how do they determine who is, and who isn't an Aborigine?

1740. Candide - 11/29/1999 3:19:37 PM

Ilya

The Aborigines themselves keep track of bloodlines. Anyone who claims to be an Aborigine must show proof through kinship. This isn't always possible because of the atrocious policy, only stopped about 30 years ago, of removing part-European children from their families and putting them in hostels or "good!" white homes where they were brough up as European Australians. This has caused great trauma in the Aboriginal community and has also produced several generations of people who were unable to be successful parents.

There are many nationalities (I'm afraid I can't say how many - many were destroyed) and unlike the Maoris in my native land whose tribes all can understand each other, their languages often don't connect and they can't communicate with each other. This made it easier, coupled with the vast distances, for the Europeans to dominate them. I don't know whether you have ever met a Maori individual but there's no way on earth you could patronise them.

1741. Candide - 11/29/1999 3:27:01 PM

Pseudoerasmus

In regerence to your Otranto post.

I have read in Italian books that the word 'maccherone' derives from the Greek word 'makros' -long- and also from 'makares' referring to the 'blessed' dead whose banquets were mainly based on farinaceous products.

I don't know Greek and my Italian is on the comical side.

1742. Candide - 11/29/1999 3:38:28 PM

Pseudoerasmus

correction: for 'in reGerence' of course read in reFerence.

1743. Candide - 11/29/1999 3:50:06 PM

Ilya

I should have said that Aboriginal people identify deeply with their traditional land. They draw all their sense of self and of life itself from the particular land that is the land of their group. To prove connection, and therefore a claim, for such land, they have to be supported by their kin.

A Torres Strai islander, Eddie Mabo, claimed his land against every sort of legal pressure. The strain killed him but the Keating Labor government supported his claim and since then the ability to claim land has been recognised. This was a large ingredient along with a new rural poverty, that caused the Pauline Hanson party to arise in the rural areas. Many 'great' Australian families had their land as a lease of Crown Land and they had become very wealthy by farming land they didn't own. They had forgotten, by the fourth generation, that they didn't own it. Some of these families have spontaneously supported the Aborigines and amicable arrangements have been reached.

The late Burnam Burnam was a 'removed child' and was a mixture of European sophistication and fierce loyalty to his people. I was handing out 'how to vote slips'(terrible Australian electoral custom outside polling booths) for him at a polling booth once when he turned up in a golden Rolls Royce. You could hear the intakes of breath. He did it on purpose of course. he had a wonderful sense of mischief.

1744. Candide - 11/29/1999 3:52:06 PM

Torres StraiT stoopid.

1745. Candide - 11/29/1999 4:13:53 PM

Ilya

Another thing I have decided that I should say about European settlers and Aborigines. I have found that new immigrants to Australia from your part of the world have the same attitudes towards the Aborigines that earier Europeans had. Because they haven't yet learned to understand them they look down on them and often regard them as cattle.

These are people with academic backgrounds. I find it very distressing because they mostly have pretty tragic histories themselves. I am continually amazed at people's inability to imagine life outside their circle.

1746. Candide - 11/29/1999 4:17:48 PM

Sigh (I'm under pressure to prepare breakfast) 'earLier Europeans.

I'll stop.

1747. PelleNilsson - 11/29/1999 4:41:56 PM

PE is showing remarkable self-restraint.

1748. ilyavinarsky - 11/29/1999 4:42:57 PM

Candide, you haven't answered my question.

If a member of an indigenous group (Australian Aborigine, Native American etc.) assimilates into the majority group, adapting its behavior, language and attitudes, why should the society treat him or her differently than a member of the majority group?

1749. hashke - 11/29/1999 4:48:55 PM

Pseuder, your comment is gratuitous.

I don't see that in his comment, Pak marj. But he does keep a quiver full of banderillas by his desk, drawing them out to barb the unsuspecting, the slow of wit, the laborious heavy breathers.

He has been suspiciously quiet of late -- perhaps in anticipation of his coming nuptials. His brow is undoubtably furrowing over what might be in for him there.

1750. hashke - 11/29/1999 4:52:17 PM

1733. marjoribanks - 11/29/99 4:34:05 PM

Well, that's better.

You're very good at patching up squabbles, Pak marj. As I have said somewhere before, we should call you Pax marj.

1751. Candide - 11/29/1999 5:24:35 PM

"1747. PelleNilsson - 11/29/99 9:41:56 PM
PE is showing remarkable self-restraint."
We all are PelleNilsson.

Ilya

"Candide, you haven't answered my question.
If a member of an indigenous group (Australian Aborigine, Native
American etc.) assimilates into the majority group, adapting its
behavior, language and attitudes, why should the society treat him or her differently than a member of the majority group?"

Can one generalise?

In Australia the assimilation is too recent and was rarely voluntary. There is also the invasion denial which sets Aboriginals apart. They can never fully assimilate because they are too torn between what they know about most of their less assimilated people and also by the implied separateness that shows itself in many ways, often trivial, but accumulative, throughout their life. They drag a heavy burden behind them.

In New Zealand there was a lovely little Maori girl in my class at school. She was definitely the class leader. She was good at all her schoolwork and she excelled at games. Her mother was European but her father was Maori. Her mother also worked in what I think Americans call a dime store. None of my mother's friends 'worked'.
In my innocence I proudly brought this little Maori girl home to play with me. My mother told her that her mother would be worried about her and sent her home. (My mother's family were North of Ireland Presbyterians and very racist - although that was my first experience of anything like that from my mother.) The little girl was almost in tears and so was I.

A few of those experiences every so often make the word "assimilation" look a bit hollow. Constant knockbacks leave deep scars.

1752. ilyavinarsky - 11/29/1999 5:25:01 PM

A Chukchi soldier is guarding a military base. Another soldier approaches.

"Password!"

"Fuck you."

"I've been standing here for two years," wonders the Chukchi, "but the password doesn't change."

1753. Candide - 11/29/1999 5:29:35 PM

Pseudoerasmus

Will you come and play with me?

1754. ilyavinarsky - 11/29/1999 5:30:50 PM

> the colour television joke I've heard applied to Turks, Koreans and (I think) even Sikhs

Russian:Chukchi = Persian:Turk[men] = ?:Korean = ?:Sikh

(And why the Koreans? Isn't it true that Korea has the highest number of Ph.D.-s per capita of any country?)

1755. ilyavinarsky - 11/29/1999 5:32:41 PM

Pseudoerasmus doesn't like to play with people who dump on their mothers.

1756. Candide - 11/29/1999 5:40:09 PM

Language

My back garden is currently full of large comical birds called Currawongs. They deserve the capital. They have an enormous variety of calls including something very like a loud wolf whistle. This alarms recent arrivals to Australia. Especially if a kookaburra laughs immediately afterwards.

I was recently in the Blue Mountains and the currawongs there speak a slightly different argot.

The locals have a sort of call-and-answer in their vocabulary:

the first group will call like clarions -"Hullo Hullo-----where are you --where are you? and the second group answers -"Here I am, comealong."

In the Blue Mountains the answer is:"I'm here. I'm here. Come on Come on."

Ornithologists have discovered that just a few kilometres of distance produces differences in bird song. The almost-toucan-beaked golden-eyed black and white currawong is a spectacular example.

1757. Candide - 11/29/1999 5:41:03 PM

Ilya

What about fathers?

1758. Candide - 11/29/1999 5:44:26 PM

If I sacrificed a goat?

1759. Candide - 11/29/1999 5:45:37 PM

A woman?

1760. Candide - 11/29/1999 5:46:11 PM

A virgin?

1761. ilyavinarsky - 11/29/1999 5:49:25 PM

Please excuse me for posting Pseudoerasmus's picture from an Armenian church in Esfahan:

This book has a translation of an excellent poem by Fazil Iskander about Gegard, an Armenian stone temple.

1762. Candide - 11/29/1999 5:54:12 PM

Boots (an old Chinese tale.)

A man went out one day in odd boots. The sole of one was thick and the other thin, so that he found walking most uncomfortable. "What's the matter with my legs today?" he said to himself; "one is short and the other is long". Then he thought the awkwardness must be due to the unevenness of the road, but then someone pointed out to him that his boots were not a pair. He stayed where he was and sent his servant home to fetch the other boots. After a long time the servant returned empty handed saying:"It was no use bringing them Master; they have one sole thick and one sole thin too."

1763. ilyavinarsky - 11/29/1999 5:55:33 PM

The anthology also has a few poems by Gennady Aygi, an ethnic Chuvash who writes in Chuvash, Russian and French, and translates between the three languages. His poetry feels very alien to me; I don't know whether this is due to Aygi's modernism or to the influence of the traditional culture of his homeland, about which I know nothing. Imagine reading Japanese poetry and knowing absolutely nothing about Japan.

1764. Candide - 11/29/1999 5:55:40 PM

Why excuse yourself.

It's lovely.

1765. Candide - 11/29/1999 6:00:03 PM

What are the thoughts of everybody except pseudoerasmus about the possibility of translating a poem?

1766. Candide - 11/29/1999 6:01:44 PM

Arthur Waley devoted his life to translating Chinese literature and deliberately never went to China.

1767. Candide - 11/29/1999 6:07:08 PM

A HAIKU by a Maori poet, Hone Tuwhare, written in English

Stop/your snivelling/creek-bed:

come rain hail/and flood water

laugh again.

1768. ilyavinarsky - 11/29/1999 6:10:18 PM

A haiku by an anonymous writer, written in Russian, translated by Ilya Vinarsky.

A stone garden / I couldn't enjoy / Somebody stole the stones.

1769. ilyavinarsky - 11/29/1999 6:15:51 PM

I translated many poems here

1770. Candide - 11/29/1999 6:18:15 PM

Ilya

I like that.

Another short Maori poem. The poet's name is Michael Stevens. (I like to think I'm related to him. My greatgrandfather married a Maori "princess" and a heap of land came with her. Then she died after having numerous children and he remarried my snooty English great grandmother (sorry pseudoErasmus) and she had a lot of children and the others were more or less out in the cold. My family name is Stevens.

Prayer

Let feathered psalms/soar skyward:/may no dark clouds/impede their paths/nor black smoke nor choking dust/coat their bright singings.

1771. pseudoerasmus - 11/29/1999 6:22:07 PM

the person who goes by the name of the former pupil of Pangloss and lover of Cunégonde is like an Antipodean version of Blaise.

1772. ilyavinarsky - 11/29/1999 6:27:15 PM

I am sure Waley knew a lot about Tang Dynasty China and Heian Japan.

1773. Candide - 11/29/1999 6:29:05 PM

Ilya

I only read the Byelorussian Michal Aniempadystau. They are good to read. I loved the last one.

I've translated poems too but always with the knowledge that I've made a different poem. I don't think that poetry gives more than a hint of itself across languages. My favourite example of that is an Italian translation I have of Lewid Carrol's "Alice Through the Looking Glass". The nonsense poem 'Jabberwocky' is the most vivid example.

1774. Candide - 11/29/1999 6:32:22 PM

The person going under the pseudonym of Gerhard Gerhards must be paying me some subtle compliment.

1775. Candide - 11/29/1999 6:40:47 PM

Ilya

He did. he didn't want to spoil his powerful inner life by confronting modern reality.

1776. pseudoerasmus - 11/29/1999 6:53:10 PM

I've posted this picture before, but I think I forgot to mention what it was. This is the ceiling of the Ferhad Pasina Mosque in Banja Luka, Bosnia-Herzogovina, ca 1590. This flower of Ottoman Bosnian architecture was bulldozed by Serbs in October 1996, a year after the Dayton Peace Accords, despite the presence of NATO troops. It is among the hundreds of mosques of Bosnia and Croatia destroyed in the Bosnian war.

1777. Candide - 11/29/1999 6:53:23 PM

I'll be honest. I only love those poems that I happen to love. As an ex-singer I am handicapped about poetry. I find many poets unfathomable as a species and find little of what I think of as 'poetry' in their poetry or conversation.I don't mean that I want sentiment. Not at all. I am often astonished by their ponderousness.

I read a lot of poetry.

1778. Candide - 11/29/1999 6:56:36 PM

pseudoerasmus

There was a terrific article in The Sunday Times about all the great buildings and works of art destroyed by the recent NATO bombardment in Kosovo. Many of them were Islamic.

1779. ilyavinarsky - 11/29/1999 6:57:25 PM

From recent www.anekdot.ru:

Milaya Hokkaido

Ya tebia Honshu

Za tvoyu Shikoku

Ya tebia Kyushu

(sorry, cannot translate the is word play)

1780. Candide - 11/29/1999 7:06:21 PM

http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/Times/frontpage.html?3116802
"A crime against humanity is being met by a crime against civilization". Simon Jenkins

"The Times" May 8, 1999.

I think it's in archives but worth looking out.

1781. pseudoerasmus - 11/29/1999 7:16:03 PM

Yes, I've read that. Simon Jenkins also had a piece on Wednesday or Thursday about how the Western countries are spending $50,000 per Kosovo Albanians but only 5 cents per Orissan. In Orissa, there are over 12 million made homeless by a typhoon.

1782. ilyavinarsky - 11/29/1999 7:35:58 PM

The "Hokkaido" piece is claimed to be the only way for a Russophone to memorize the names of the Japanese islands.

Does anybody remember the politically incorrect way to memorize the resistor color-coding? Something like "Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly."

1783. Candide - 11/29/1999 7:50:44 PM

Last night on television we saw the re-opening of the Basilica of s. Francesco ad Assisi.
They showed the distressed local residents whose homes were not yet rebuilt still living in prefabs.

And yet, compare that with Banja Luka.

Although the priority of the Assisi Basilica over housing is unjust, I realised after looking at your slide of the mosque, why it is I love Italy. My Serbian friend was icy cold about the bridge at Mostar. And Dubrovnik. Her parents had terrible memories from WW2 and they seemed to have destroyed all other feelings.

1784. Candide - 11/29/1999 7:52:57 PM

Orissa.

The scale is so vast one feels incredulous and helpless. It is terrible that the world isn't galvanised into collective action. After the Turkish earthquakes people have run out of imagination. I will look for the Jenkins articles.

1785. Candide - 11/29/1999 7:55:52 PM

A tenuous thread connection only in that it concerns another country. I marched twice against the bombardment of Iraq. Now I have to be reminded that it is occurring.

Something awful has happened to all of us.

1786. ilyavinarsky - 11/29/1999 8:35:39 PM

The mosque dome is very beautiful.

1787. ilyavinarsky - 11/29/1999 8:41:04 PM

Lancut synagogue, Poland.

1788. pseudoerasmus - 11/29/1999 8:49:56 PM

I didn't take the photo of the Armenian Church. The JPEG was sent to me by Jens, the German-Iranian friend mentioned in my travelogue. I'm not sure whether he took the photo or not.

The photo of the dome of the Bosnian church is from my 1988 trip to Yugoslavia and it was taken by my then girlfriend. If I had known how many mosques would be destroyed in the Balkan wars, I'd have taken pictures religiously even though I hate the very idea of holding a camera. Many churches were also destroyed in Bosnia, but they're found all over Yugoslavia. By contrast, Ottoman Bosnian style is unique.

I've been thinking of creating a website devoted to cultural patrimony destroyed by war and ethnic conflict. But I wouldn't know where to start, however.

1789. pseudoerasmus - 11/29/1999 8:52:14 PM

Photos of synagogues destroyed during WWII would be high on the list of things to post on such a website.

1790. Candide - 11/29/1999 9:23:00 PM

1787. ilyavinarsky - 11/30/99 1:41:04 AM
Lancut synagogue, Poland
That is really beautiful. Is it out of line to observe that it has an Italian influence?

Pseudoerasmus

I have often wondered how much we have left in comparison with what we have lost? I wish such a research project were possible.

1791. pseudoerasmus - 11/29/1999 9:30:13 PM

Italian influence? Everything about it says Italian baroque!.

1792. Candide - 11/29/1999 9:32:47 PM

My husband shares my wish that such a record be created.

He also said that the Italian influence was superficial and merely in some of the decorations. He did greatly admire the photograph.

He also was devastated by the destruction of the mosque. His comments would have started a war on a forum thread.

I get a hard time most of the time.

1793. Candide - 11/29/1999 9:34:23 PM

pseudoerasmus

I'll tell him.

1794. ilyavinarsky - 11/29/1999 9:36:51 PM

Lancut synagogue

1795. ilyavinarsky - 11/29/1999 9:37:17 PM

I should probably translate a beautiful story by Isaac Babel, called "Pan Apoliek".

1796. pseudoerasmus - 11/29/1999 9:45:37 PM

Can he be more specific? The arch isn't terribly Italian, but the columns seem to be: unfluted shaft, leafy capital, leafing necking, etc.

1797. ilyavinarsky - 11/29/1999 9:46:10 PM

Not now, and it's already been done many times.

1798. Candide - 11/29/1999 9:46:46 PM

pseudoerasmus and Ilya
You are both no doubt aware of Umbert Eco's project of putting 'all?' printed books on computer files. Is it called the Gutenberg project? Perhaps you are involved in some way? It's a huge undertaking.

All the books published in the last 50? years or so are turning to brown crumbly dust because of the type of paper on which they were printed.

I am really fired up about a record of things lost in wars.My Serbian friend said about the Mostar Bridge "We have plenty of bridges! We can replace bridges. We can't replace people." I tried to explain that these things are not just cold bits of materialism. That their destruction destroys something like the collective human spirit.
She is a medical doctor and didn't agree.

1799. ilyavinarsky - 11/29/1999 9:52:55 PM

Candide,

Computer media isn't eternal either, and the redundancy is far less than, say, that of the Beowulf manuscript, so if something is gone, it is gone forever. I would be surprised if a CD is longer-lived than an ordinary printed book.

1800. Candide - 11/29/1999 9:56:35 PM

1796. pseudoerasmus - 11/30/99 2:45:37 AM
Can he be more specific? The arch isn't terribly Italian, but the
columns seem to be: unfluted shaft, leafy capital, leafing necking,
etc."

He's gone off to the dentist to have a broken tooth fixed.

Actually he looked a bit dodgy when he said it. After the dentists he may agree with you. I suspect that you have reason. The arch is a little more austere in form perhaps, but for my money, it is Italian baroque.

1801. Candide - 11/29/1999 9:58:05 PM

Ilya

Is nothing permanent? Not even us?

1802. Candide - 11/29/1999 10:00:32 PM

Perhaps the book project leads on to reprinting on better paper at regular intervals. One could keep a cycle going that way.

1803. Candide - 11/29/1999 10:15:44 PM

TRANSLATION OF POETRY

First verse of "Jabberwocky" from Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass"

JABBERWOCKY

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves/
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;/
All mimsy were the borogoves,/
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Italian translation by Masolino d'Amico

CIARLESTRONIANA

Era brillosto, e i tospi agiluti/
Facean girelli nella civa;/
Tutti i paprussi erano mélacri,/
Ed il trugòn striniva.

Perhaps Italians get the same illogical jolts out of the Italian as English speakers do from the Englis? I shall never be able to know.

1804. ilyavinarsky - 11/29/1999 10:19:16 PM

I know two versions of the first stanza of the Russian Jabberwocky.

Varkalos'. Khlivkiye shor'ki
Pyrialis' po nave.
I khryukotali zeliuki
Kak miumziki v mave.

Chasovo. Zhirkiye tovy
I dzhikali, i dzhakali v iskhode.
Vse tenali borogovy,
I guko svitali ovodi.

1805. ilyavinarsky - 11/29/1999 10:21:40 PM

Goodness, how much garbage is there in my head!!!

1806. hashke - 11/29/1999 10:24:19 PM

Vinarsky:

Avtor?

Chornaya babochka s tonkoi beloi kaimoi, monashenka obmerla v kholodnoi rosye i, ne dozhdavshis' ytrennovo lucha, otchevo-to upala vniz, kak zheleznaya.

1807. ilyavinarsky - 11/29/1999 10:24:41 PM

Khlivkiye is khlipkiye i lovkiye (puny and agile).

Zhirkiye is zhirnyye i skol'zkiye (fat and slippery).

I don't remember any other decipherment in either version.

1808. ilyavinarsky - 11/29/1999 10:25:59 PM

I don't know the author. Nabokov wrote about butterflies, for what it's worth.

1809. Candide - 11/29/1999 10:27:22 PM

1794. ilyavinarsky - 11/30/99 2:36:51 AM
Lancut synagogue

Sorry Ilya. I had missed this one. The synagogue just fits into the very late baroque period and is probably then better described as baroque influenced. We certainly leave Italy behind in the other details.

The human story is draining.

1810. hashke - 11/29/1999 10:29:52 PM

Mikhail Prishvin

1811. Candide - 11/29/1999 10:30:45 PM

Thank God for Lewis Carroll, Spike Milligan, Salman Rushdie (pace), and James Joyce and in case anybody has read it, Flann O'Brien's "The Third Policeman".

1812. ilyavinarsky - 11/29/1999 10:31:00 PM

I am not the only one here whose head contains much garbage, apparently.

1813. Candide - 11/29/1999 10:31:50 PM

Off to the super market. Whoopee!

1814. hashke - 11/29/1999 10:34:13 PM

Slava bogu!

1815. Candide - 11/30/1999 1:17:01 AM

Hashke

Praise God?

1816. hashke - 11/30/1999 1:19:10 AM

Oh, christ, I thot you had gone shopping.

1817. hashke - 11/30/1999 1:20:15 AM

Can you find a place where they have longer lines?

1818. hashke - 11/30/1999 1:21:07 AM

Just doing some pre-dodo kidding around.

1819. Stumbo - 11/30/1999 2:38:14 AM

IV:

I've seen the first version; not the second. Here's another, pretty old one (if I'm not mistaken) -- I couldn't remember all of it, but found the complete text on this site (which includes a few more, mostly amateur translations).

"Bylo supno. Krugtelsya, vintyas' po zemle,
Sklipkikh kozei tsarapistyi roi.
Tiho misikov staika grustela vo mgle.
Zelenavki khryushali poroi."

1820. DanDillon - 11/30/1999 8:07:31 AM

"Jabberwocky" must be fairly difficult verse to render in languages that don't have the same type of morphemic glue that English has. (I suspect the more synthetic the language, the tougher.) Of course, I can go only so far with my assertion due to my inability to thoroughly parse Russian, Italian, et. al. The nonsense words must be rather fun to gyre and gimble, though.

1821. ilyavinarsky - 11/30/1999 1:42:09 PM

this is funny.

1822. hashke - 11/30/1999 3:03:30 PM

Blyadi i poblyadushki podmakhivayut i pod*yobyvayut pizdami s osloyobami kak khuyovye ryby v vode.

1823. hashke - 11/30/1999 3:04:58 PM

Totally experimental.

1824. ilyavinarsky - 11/30/1999 3:09:59 PM

"Omudoblyadennaya pizdoproyobina," skazal poruchik Rzhevsky, i gryazno vyrugalsia.

1825. hashke - 11/30/1999 3:38:49 PM

"Yob tvoyu mat'!!!" skazala koroleva uvidya khui persidskovo tsarya.

1826. ilyavinarsky - 11/30/1999 3:41:31 PM

It should be uvidev.

1827. hashke - 11/30/1999 3:52:36 PM

Da!

"Posat'!!" skomandoval Suvorov i tycyach khuyov blesnuli na solntse.

Eto vsyo. Pora!

1828. hashke - 11/30/1999 3:54:19 PM

Poka!

1829. ilyavinarsky - 11/30/1999 4:03:38 PM

- Vassily Ivanovich, Kotovsky priyekhal.

- Nakormit'!

-Vassily Ivanovich, Kotovsky syt.

- Possyt, nakormit'!

1830. ilyavinarsky - 11/30/1999 4:04:20 PM

Is there anything comparable in Navajo humor?

1831. ilyavinarsky - 11/30/1999 5:59:39 PM

I just learned another language called Cool, which is something of a cross between C++ and Java. Unfortunately, its day would've been 4 years ago.

Every technology reaches perfection at the point of irrelevancy.

1832. hashke - 11/30/1999 7:19:41 PM

1830. ilyavinarsky - 11/30/99 9:04:20 PM

Is there anything comparable in Navajo humor?

Hahaha! The play on the words 'syt' --'possyt' is wonderful.

The Navajos do love that sort of calembourish flourish. This one is told in Navajo with a few English words. I'll keep the Navajo to minimum:

A father and his young son have car trouble. The father says to the son, 'Hooghangóó ndílyeed.' (Run home). 'Battery dóó generator short ííl'î bidiní' (Tell them the battery and the generator shorted out).

The boy ran home and said, 'Betty and Jenny got into a fight and Shorty can't break it up.'

The play, aside from the English, is on 'ííl'î' and the first couple of syllables of 'alk'íilwodgo' (they fell upon one another, fought) which sound somewhat alike in joke-speed oral narrative.

The Navajo word for 'battery' is 'chidí bijéí' -- car its heart, and for 'generator' is 'atsiniltl'ish ííl'ínígíí (lightning the one that makes it). You can see that the joke would not work using the Navajo words for those car parts.

1833. hashke - 11/30/1999 9:42:22 PM

There is a quiet humor in Yiddish and a gratitude for every day of life, every crumb of success, each encounter of love....In a figurative way, Yiddish is the wise and humble language of us all, the idiom of a frightened and hopeful humanity.

--Isaac Bahevis Singer - Address at Nobel Prize banquet, Stockhom (December 10, 1978)

1834. hashke - 11/30/1999 9:55:32 PM

tmachine:

A lerer hat gefregt a yingl: "vos iz 'hoyzn' -- eyntsol tsi mertsol?"

"Oybn iz eyntsol, untn iz mertsol," hot der yingl geentfert.

1835. ilyavinarsky - 11/30/1999 10:34:39 PM

The new version of the Unicode standard has some letters and symbols even weirder than the old version - Latin letter Hwair, Latin letter Wynn, Armenian hyphen, Arabic letter Lam with three dots below. Also Syriac, Thaana(?), Sinhala, Tibetan Cantillation Sign Heavy Beat, Myanmar, Ethiopic, Cherokee, Canadian Syllablics, Ogham, Runic, Khmer, Mongolian (used in Nei Mongol, apparently; Outer Mongolia uses Cyrillics), Tugric Sign, Hysteresis Symbol, Braille, CJK Radical Jade, KangXi radical Leek, non-Mandarin Bopomofo, Yi syllables and radicals...

1836. ilyavinarsky - 11/30/1999 10:37:40 PM

Can anyone (pseudo?) translate these two for me:

From Unicode 2.0 (the old standard):

1837. ilyavinarsky - 11/30/1999 10:39:19 PM

1838. ilyavinarsky - 11/30/1999 10:43:07 PM

Translation of 1834, please?

1839. hashke - 11/30/1999 11:09:16 PM

Vinarsky:

I thought you knew Yiddish! No?

#1834 is for tmachine, a student of the language. If she can't figure it out, I'll translate.

1840. pseudoerasmus - 11/30/1999 11:11:33 PM

What I see are meaningless smudges, though they look a bit like my rendition of the fourth character in my story.

1841. hashke - 11/30/1999 11:15:49 PM

Pelle, stosto, pseuder with their German can probably do it, but I would like for tmachine to have first shot.

1842. alistairConnor - 12/1/1999 12:09:01 AM

Il brilgue: les tôves lubricilleux
Se gyrent en vrillant dans le guave,
Enmîmés sont les gougebosqueux,
Et le mômerade horsgrave.
Garde-toi du Jaseroque, mon fils!
La gueule qui mord; la griffe qui prend!
Garde-toi de l'oiseau Jube, évite
Le frumieux Band-à-prend.

Son glaive vorpal en mail il va-
T-à la recherche du fauve manscant;
Puis arriveé à l'arbre Té-Té,
Il y reste, réfléchissant.

Pendant qu'il pense, tout uffusé
Le Jaseroque, à l'oeil flambant,
Vient siblant par le bois tullegeais,
Et burbule en venant.

Un deux, un deux, par le milieu,
Le glaive vorpal fait pat-à-pan!
La bête défaite, avec sa tête,
Il rentre gallomphant.

As-tu tué le Jaseroque?
Viens à mon coeur, fils rayonnais!
O jour frabbejeais! Calleau! Callai!
Il cortule dans sa joie.

Il brilgue: les tôves lubricilleux
Se gyrent en vrillant dans le guave,
Enmîmés sont les gougebosqueux,
Et le mômerade horsgrave.

1843. alistairConnor - 12/1/1999 12:20:50 AM

Better:

La Dgiabl'yéouoqu'thie(1)
'Tait mébouoilli(2). Les tôves(3) lîtheurs(4)
Githaient et gîmbliaient(5) sus lé liainde(6).
Les ouothogôves(7) 'taient touos mîntheurs(8),
Ouaithe qu'les râthes(9) mâmes(10) hortcheindrent(11).

"Garde-té du Dgiabl'yéouoque(1), man fis!
Chutte dgeule d'mordeuses! Ches mains grînmeuses!
Garde-té d'l'ouaîsé Tchappe-Tchappe(12), et fis
La Bandésnâque feunm'theuse!(13)"

I' prînt san sâbre vèrtcheux(14) en main,
S'en allit souotre l'enn'mîn mantchibl'ye(15),
Au bouais Tînme-Tînme, restit enfîn
Auve ses pensées hâthibl'yes(16).

Coumme i' hâthait(17) auprès du bouais,
Lé Dgiabl'yéouoque, la fliamme ès ièrs,
Pathut chûffliant(18) dans la forêt
Et beurbliait(19) ès taûgièrs(20).

Ieune, deux! Ieune, deux! Et l'sâbre vèrtcheux
Lî baîllit bein eune pataöuarre!(21)
La bête dêfaite, i' prînt sa tête,
Galoppeux(22) et gaillard.

"As-tu tué lé Dgiabl'yéouoque?
Veins m'embraîchi, man fis radgi!(23)
O jour fraptchi!(24) Haro! Hari!(25)"
Lé vièr rîth'lait(26) dé ji.

'Tait mébouoilli(2). Les tôves(3) lîtheurs(4)
Githaient et gîmbliaient(5) sus lé liainde(6).
Les ouothogôves(7) 'taient touos mîntheurs(8),
Ouaithe qu'les râthes(9) mâmes(10) hortcheindrent(11).

This is in jerriais, Norman French dialect of the isle of Jersey. Excellent site with all the footnotes here.

1844. hashke - 12/1/1999 12:30:47 AM

alistair:

Terrific site!

1845. alistairConnor - 12/1/1999 12:43:58 AM

My wife's grandmother, who died a couple of years ago, spoke near enough to that dialect, she lived on the Cotentin peninsula in Normandy, within sight of the iles anglo-normands or channel islands.

1846. Candide - 12/1/1999 5:07:12 AM

Alistair

They're both wonderful. The Norman one is amazing. Rhythm is the main thing isn't it and the click-a-clack.

Here is the Italian version in full. It reads well. I once deliberately recited the whole thing over commercial talk-back radio. The presenter was a man worthy of, and since has achieved, a better program on a better station. He was too nice to stop me.

Cialestraniana.
Era brillosto, e i tospi agìluti
Facean girelli nella civa;
Tutti i paprussi erano mélacri,
Ed il trugòn striniva.

"Ma bada al Cialestrone, o figlio!
Con fauci e denti ti rinserra.
Del Giuggio uccèl bada all'artiglio,
E al frumio Bandefferra!"

Il figlio impugna il brando vòrpido,
in cerca del mansone va;
E giunto dei Tontoni all'albero
Fermo e perplesso sta.

Qui mentre sosta in pensier bellici
l'occhidibragia Ciarlestrone
Si sonfla nella selva tulgida
Sbollando nell'azione!

Un, dué! Un, dué! E poi daccapo
Il brando vòrpido schidiatta!
Morto il nemico, col suo capo
Galonfa alla ritratta.

"Il Ciarlestone hai schiantato?
Qua che t'abbracci, o raggioso!
Callò! Callài! Giorno fregiato!
Quei stripetò, gioioso.

Era brillosto, e i tospi agiluti
Facean girelli nela civa;
Tutti i paprussi eranp mélacri,
Ed il trugòn striniva.

1847. Candide - 12/1/1999 2:24:46 PM

alistairconnor

A thought.

French converts from'English?' more successfully because it has one syllable words. The Italian is a brave approximation when read aloud with the correct stresses.

When I was a professional singer I had great difficulties in accepting translations. The climactic word usually missed the climactic note or phrase, and often a word like "the" would be placed at the peak of a phrase. I mention that I was professional only because I was therefore often obliged to sing translations that made me blench. I used to wrestle for days trying to rewrite translations in old libretti. (The alternative was often to sing in a language that one barely understood.) Stravinsky sometimes deliberately set words against music for a typical wrong-headed joke. This was not always understood, indeed was often a better joke than a good song. (I love Stravinsky.)

Even in poetry not set to music, the grammatical structure can still dilute the power of a phrase. It is a fascinating problem.

1848. ilyavinarsky - 12/1/1999 3:46:08 PM

The lowest two characters here

1849. ilyavinarsky - 12/1/1999 7:32:46 PM

Some new Unicode characters (requires an Adobe Acrobat reader)

1850. hashke - 12/2/1999 12:49:39 PM

Any of you Germanists want to translate this little Yiddish joke? It is 99% tysk:

A lerer hat gefregt a yingl: "vos iz 'hoyzn' -- eyntsol tsi mertsol?"

"Oybn iz eyntsol, untn iz mertsol," hot der yingl geentfert.

1851. pseudoerasmus - 12/2/1999 1:20:52 PM

My favourite fruit, the Japanese persimmon, is in season and I just had five in a row. I'm not sure whether most people know what a Japanese or Chinese persimmon looks like, so here is a picture of the fruit I found at one of the gardening links provided in the House & Garden thread:

Persimmon is actually a fairly new word to me. I've always known it by two names, the Japanese kaki or

and the Pashto/Farsi khormalu or

. (The variety grown outside Peshawar is definitely inferior to the East Asian kind.)

The Russian word is khurma (

), which I suppose is another of Russian's borrowings from Iranian languages, a subject Ilya and I were discussing the other day.

1852. ScottLoar - 12/2/1999 1:43:54 PM

Anyone interested in seeing the Chinese persimmon may refer to the painting Five Persimmons by the Southern Sung Ch'an School artist Mu Qi (Mu Ch'i). Unfortunately I don't have the means to transmit the picture.

1853. tmachine - 12/2/1999 1:50:30 PM

hashke--no dictionary with me! what is "hoyzn"?

A teacher asked a boy, "What is 'hoyzn'--singular or plural?"

"Over (?) is singular, under is plural," replied the boy.

sorry I'm so lame, forgive my beginnerhood.

1854. PelleNilsson - 12/2/1999 2:03:34 PM

Hoyzn = hosen = trousers?

1855. ilyavinarsky - 12/2/1999 2:33:36 PM

hoyzn is pants.

1856. pseudoerasmus - 12/2/1999 3:09:08 PM

Here is a better photo of the Japanese persimmon:

1857. pseudoerasmus - 12/2/1999 3:10:36 PM

(from a site called the Natural History of Hiroshima)

1858. ilyavinarsky - 12/2/1999 3:42:16 PM

If these are Hiroshima fruit, are they in a strainer or in a stadium bowl?

1859. PelleNilsson - 12/2/1999 3:45:51 PM

Ilya

We're into American/British usage here. The OED:

pants
1. underpants or knickers
2. (Americ.) trousers

1860. hashke - 12/2/1999 4:43:15 PM

Good work tmachine. You got most of it. For fun compare the Yiddish with German:

lerer -- Lehrer
yingl -- Junge
hot -- hat
gefregt --gefragt
vos -- was
iz -- ist
hoyzn -- Hosen
eyntsol -- Einzahl
mertsol -- Mehrzahl
oybn -- oben
untn -- unten
geenfert --geantwortet

1861. hashke - 12/2/1999 4:44:27 PM

Do you know a great deal of Yiddish, ilyavinarsky?

1862. hashke - 12/2/1999 4:47:44 PM

Arabic for 'persimmon' is 'faakha alkaalii', as probably everyone knows.

Those photos are superb!

1863. ilyavinarsky - 12/2/1999 5:17:04 PM

No, hashke. And even if I did, who would I talk to? The Mendele mailing list?

1864. Candide - 12/2/1999 8:39:58 PM

PseudoErasmus

An Italian reference book says the following about the persimmon.
Diospyros Kaki (Ebenaceae family)
500 species of the tree (including the priceless ebony woods such as Diospyros ebenum)in the tropical and temperate zone, from which come the edible species such as the asiatic Diospyrus lotus and the Diospyros virginiana of North America. Their fruits are greatly prized. It was probably Linnaeus who gave the plant its name derived from the Greek díos-divine and pyrós-wheat with the meaning of "divine food".In fact the specific name of 'kaki' is related to the Japanese vulgar name that was given to the plant by Carl von Linné junior (Linnaeus filius) at the end of the 18th century, although this information is controversial. Some say that the plant was brought to England in the second half of the 18th century while others maintain that it was cultiavted in the south of France around 1790. It seems that the first plant brought to Italy was to the Boboli Gardens in Florence in 1871 and the fruit was displayed at an agricultural conference in 1876 - the same year in which it was introduced to the Unied States.

It comes from the far east, perhaps from the mountains of northern China from whence the first plants were taken to Japan. The plant was frequently confused with the lotus species to such an extent that nowadays the plant is sold as kaki or lotus.

On the other hand the term lotus, used by the Greeks only for a type of clover and for a small tree with edible fruit (perhaps Ziizyphus lotus), a favourite local food that they call lotofagi and that is found in northern Africa, causes more confusion.

I remember a train trip through Italy when golden kaki hung in profusion from trees surrounded by snow. I love them almost rotten accompanied by plain Greek yogurt.

1865. pseudoerasmus - 12/2/1999 8:58:37 PM

ecqisth de odunh esti twn en anqrwpoisi auth, polla jroneonta mhdenoV krateein.

1866. Candide - 12/2/1999 9:18:41 PM

pseudoErasmus

Your round I think.

1867. Candide - 12/2/1999 9:20:15 PM

PseudoErasmus

You are indeed a slippery fellow.

1868. Candide - 12/2/1999 9:21:59 PM

1865. pseudoerasmus - 12/3/99 1:58:37 AM
ecqisth de odunh esti twn en anqrwpoisi auth, polla jroneonta mhdenoV krateein.

I can guess, but after my labour I think you do owe me a translation.

1869. Candide - 12/2/1999 9:23:11 PM

IS THAT CLEVER? OR HAVE YOU JUST UPSET MY COMPUTER?

1870. ilyavinarsky - 12/2/1999 9:23:12 PM

This should do it, Candide

1871. ilyavinarsky - 12/2/1999 9:25:12 PM

THIS IS NOT CLEVER. THIS IS STUPID. VIVA XML

1872. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/2/1999 9:30:05 PM

It's all Greek to me.

1873. ilyavinarsky - 12/2/1999 9:37:24 PM

1874. Candide - 12/2/1999 9:37:55 PM

If it wasn't that I knew a punch in the mouth is concealed somewhere in there I would have enjoyed it.

1875. ilyavinarsky - 12/2/1999 9:37:57 PM

1876. ilyavinarsky - 12/2/1999 9:38:35 PM

1877. DanDillon - 12/2/1999 9:38:43 PM

It's all Greek to me.

Greek [from the Latin Graecus]

Ergo, it must be all Latin.

1878. Candide - 12/2/1999 9:39:56 PM

IrvingSnodgrass

Is this persecution?

1879. ilyavinarsky - 12/2/1999 9:42:32 PM

More fun with fonts:

NY

1880. Candide - 12/2/1999 9:44:13 PM

IrvingSnodgrass

Is this persecution?

1881. Candide - 12/2/1999 9:45:29 PM

If I had used an Australian expression meaning go away you son of an unmarried parent, would that have got me banned in the context?

1882. Candide - 12/2/1999 9:47:06 PM

Has power gone to someone's head?

1883. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/2/1999 9:50:36 PM

Candide:
I have never deleted a post from this thread (which is not to say I never will), and an Australian expletive would certainly not be deleted (some can be quite colorful -- I am a great fan of Antipodean English).

1884. hashke - 12/2/1999 10:04:44 PM

1863. ilyavinarsky - 12/2/99 10:17:04 PM

No, hashke. And even if I did, who would I talk to? The Mendele mailing list?

Seattle must have a liberal sprinkling of Yiddish speakers for practice. You could mendele some fences there, right?

There's also 'Shtetl', and others.

1885. PincherMartin - 12/2/1999 10:09:54 PM

Irv --

Can you recommend three books on linguistics for the nonlinguist? (Please don't include Pinker's book.) I would like one book that explains what it is that linguists do, with the range of scholarship they usually pursue; one book with a comparison of the world's languages (something similar to what you did in the Fray sometime back); and one book with a history of the English language (since Bryson's book doesn't pass muster with the linguists here).

Thanks.

1886. hashke - 12/2/1999 10:23:47 PM

THIS IS NOT CLEVER. THIS IS STUPID. VIVA

Oh, I wouldn't say that!

1887. hashke - 12/2/1999 10:27:21 PM

If it wasn't that I knew a punch in the mouth is concealed somewhere I would have enjoyed it.

Ya gotta watch him every minute.

1888. Candide - 12/2/1999 10:28:05 PM

IrvingSnodgrass

Pity. It's too late for me to use it now, unless pseudoErasmus unlocks his Greek for all to see. I suspect it says much the same as my Australian would have done.

1889. Candide - 12/2/1999 10:30:17 PM

He doesn't like yogurt and threw it at his nanny.

1890. hashke - 12/2/1999 10:30:35 PM

The above headings are from pseuder's and Vinarsky's 'Greek' capers.

1891. Candide - 12/2/1999 10:34:09 PM

1890. hashke - 12/3/99 3:30:35 AM

Disappointing.

1892. ilyavinarsky - 12/2/1999 10:38:15 PM

Anthony Burgess. A Mouthful of Air.

1893. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/2/1999 10:55:22 PM

Pincher:
I can't think of a book offhand in the first category, but the following books fit your other two categories nicely (and are written for the non-linguist as well as the linguist, and are therefore very readable:

The Origin of Language: Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue, by Merritt Ruhlen

Origins of the English Language: A Social and Linguistic History, by Jospeh M. Williams

Also in the latter category, I recommend the companion volume to the excellent BBC TV series (which I've never seen) on the history of English. I can't remember the exact title at the moment, but the book is very well done.

1894. hashke - 12/2/1999 11:04:11 PM

1891. Candide - 12/3/99 3:34:09 AM

Disappointing.

You expected ikra (khaviari) and shampanskoe (sampania)?

1895. hashke - 12/2/1999 11:17:19 PM

Pincher:

I have three on my shelves of the history of English:

'The Story of English' -- McCrum, Cran, MacNeil (PBS, mentioned also by Irv)

'Our Marvelous Native Tongue' -- Robert Claiborne

'A History of the English Language' -- Albert C. Baugh

1896. SpenceMirrlees - 12/2/1999 11:24:31 PM

I have a question but I'm not sure it's well formed.

Is there any one most inflected language?

For example, English is not very inflected and so depends a lot on word order to convey meaning. In "The boy gives the girl candy" and "The girl gives the boy candy," the doer and receiver are distinguished by word order.

Latin is more inflected, so in either of those two sentences, the words could be arranged in any order and their endings would convey the meaning adequately (though it might sound strange). But still you cannot always tell what a noun, for example, is doing based on its ending alone.

Is there any language with a 1 to 1 mapping from word endings to functions, so that word order is strictly speaking irrelevant?

1897. hashke - 12/2/1999 11:33:09 PM

Pincher:

Randy Allen Harris' book 'The Linguistic Wars' is fairly recent and a good overview. I found it an interesting read. Amazon has a good review of it.

1898. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/2/1999 11:36:15 PM

Hashke:
The Story of English, that was it! And PBS, not BBC (as I said, I never saw it). A very well-done overview of the language.

Spence:
I don't know what the most synthetic language is (a better linguistic term than inflected). English is the least synthetic of Indo-European languages, and you will find higher degrees of inflection in older IE languages than modern ones. The Slavic languages are probably the most synthetic (inflected) IE languages today. Other languages of the world are even more synthetic. Finno-Ugric, Altaic, Dravidian and Inuit languages are all highly synthetic. I don't know what language is the most synthetic, but there is a continuum, from the highly synthetic languages mentioned above to highly analytic languages such as English, Chinese and Austronesian languages.

1899. SpenceMirrlees - 12/2/1999 11:46:02 PM

Thanks Irv. Just what I wanted to know.

Hashke, I could not find any book called The Linguistic Wars at Amazon. Could you provide a link?

1900. PincherMartin - 12/2/1999 11:54:51 PM

Irv and Hashke --

Many thanks for the recommendations. I have ordered the books from Amazon (with the exception of the Claiborne book, which is out of print, they are all available within two to three days). I read the PBS book some years ago, and I might have a copy of it around someplace.

1901. CalGal - 12/2/1999 11:57:47 PM

Pincher--out of curiousity, did you use the Mote franchise for ordering the books? It's okay if you didn't, I just randomly ask whenever I see someone mention it.

1902. PincherMartin - 12/3/1999 12:00:41 AM

Spence --

Use the author's name to look for it.

1903. PincherMartin - 12/3/1999 12:01:34 AM

CalGal --

No, I didn't. Do I get a deal if I do?

1904. CalGal - 12/3/1999 12:06:05 AM

Naw, but the Mote gets 15%.

1905. PincherMartin - 12/3/1999 12:12:57 AM

CalGal --

Oops, I could have earned you guys 30 dollars. Well, I'll make sure to use the Mote's franchise in the future. Thanks for the heads up.

1906. Candide - 12/3/1999 12:48:00 AM

228. Candide - 12/3/99 5:46:38 AM
Ilya see the above post on the books thread.

1907. ilyavinarsky - 12/3/1999 1:13:26 AM

I believe that the Baltic languages (Lithuanian and Latvian are the only surviving Baltic languages) have more cases than the Slavic 7.

1908. Candide - 12/3/1999 1:33:30 AM

Ilya
228. Candide - 12/3/99 5:46:38 AM

I was just going to explain when my cable fell out of the tree.

The Vidal essay in the above, describes an encounter with Anthony Burgess. It is about the difficulty an American has understanding English speech.

1909. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/3/1999 1:58:21 AM

Ilya:
I'm sure you're right. I've heard the Baltic tongues are the most "archaic" (i.e., closer to proto-IE than any others) of all IE languages, and that would fit.

1910. SpenceMirrlees - 12/3/1999 2:15:14 AM

But it's not just the number of cases that I'm asking about. Latin has seven cases, yet in 4th declension singular neuter nouns, for example, six of them end in -u; one case for singular masculine and feminine 4th declension nouns also ends in -u.

1911. JonesAtLaw - 12/3/1999 2:24:59 AM

CalGal- I didn't know about the Mote Franchise for amazon. I'll remember the next time I order something for work, the prices for the stuff I use are outrageous and it will take some of the sting out of it.

1912. Candide - 12/3/1999 2:27:13 AM

1894. hashke - 12/3/99 4:04:11 AM
" 1891. Candide - 12/3/99 3:34:09 AM

Disappointing.

You expected ikra (khaviari) and shampanskoe (sampania)?"

Wit? Kaki not caca.

1913. Ronski - 12/3/1999 10:01:06 AM

To illustrate the age of the Baltic languages it is sometimes said that certain basic phrases in Sanskrit can be understood by speakers of modern Lithuanian, such as the following borrowed from "Lithuanian Roots," edited by Rytis Ambrazevicus, courtesy of the Lithuanian Folk Culture Center:

Lith: "Dievas dave dantis, Dievas duos duonos"
Sans: "Devas adat datas, Devas dasyati dhanas"
(God gave us teeth, God will give us bread)

Lithuanian is closer to Sanskrit than is Latvian.

1914. DanDillon - 12/3/1999 10:23:20 AM

Ronski ,
Lith: "Dievas dave dantis, Dievas duos duonos"
Sans: "Devas adat datas, Devas dasyati dhanas"

What I find most curious about the two renderings above is the shift from /v/ to /t/ in the Lithuanian dave and the Sanskrit adat. The change obviously has nothing to do with inflected verb endings, since "D(i)evas" is the nominative in both maxims. The labiodental fricative /v/ is a far cry in the mouth from the alveolar stop /t/. Is this a regular shift (conditioned change) across the board? Or is it a more isolated (unconditioned) phenomenon? There is nothing in Grimm's Law that would explain such a change, although I realize this might not be the best slide rule to use seeing as it applies to PIE, Germanic, Italic, and Hellenic languages only.

I know precious little about both languages here.

1915. PelleNilsson - 12/3/1999 3:15:24 PM

At some time, at some place we discussed throat singing. Here is an article from Scientific American which looks very informative and has many links to more information.

1916. pseudoerasmus - 12/3/1999 3:19:40 PM

I'm not sure why the Tuvans get all the attention -- Buryats and Mongolians also do throat-singing, quite a lot of it, actually. The common denominator among these three is that they belong to the Mongolian branch of the Altaic language family....

1917. ilyavinarsky - 12/3/1999 4:12:06 PM

I ate two persimmons last night, and they don't taste at all like you-know-what.

1918. Ronski - 12/3/1999 4:46:49 PM

But the consistency is the same.

1919. Candide - 12/3/1999 6:14:04 PM

PelleNilsson

A brief unscholarly thanks for the 'Scientific American' article on throat singing. This is of great personal interest to jme because I was a professional 'classical' singer who, owing to a New Zealand childhood love of yodelling, had problems with what they called the 'chest register' and finally, my saviour teacher, called the throat register.

"and, in an unusual case of musical improvisation, in the 1920s cowboy songs of Texan singer Arthur Miles, who substituted overtone singing for the "customary yodeling."

I never actually sang two notes at the same time (although I was better than most at trills, turns etc.) but I definitely felt that I possessed two voices. My first London teacher came from the Viennese school and her solution was to throw away the bottom octave of my voice.One never discussed 'how'. It was considered a grave error to analyse the process of singing.

My next teacher had been a great tenor in the Italian tradition, a pupil of Fernando De Lucia and a protégé of Caruso, and he called the 'chest voice' the 'throat voice' and actually discussed the physical process of melding the registers and an awareness of the vocal chords and how to control them. I quickly cured my register break and as a consequence had a much more flexible and secure vocal technique.

In the 'Scientific American' article there are many physical experiences that I recognise.

1920. PelleNilsson - 12/3/1999 6:31:56 PM

Candide

I'm off to bed now so I won't read your answer (if any) for some time. But I'm a bit intrigued by your I was a professional 'classical' singer. I have the impression that most classical singers don't retire until late in life. So, do you still sing? Or teach?

1921. Candide - 12/3/1999 6:50:13 PM

PelleNilsson

No. I caved in because I was an unfashionably early anorexic. Coming as I did from dairy-farming and cycling New Zealand to Mary Quant,Twiggy-dominated- Observer headlines of "Boobs are Out" London, where, at the time all the ambitious singers of the western world converged, I was advised by a powerful international Hungarian operatic panjandrum that :"Your figure is your advantage. Whatever you do, don't put on weight". English girls(compared to NZers) were stick like with atrophied leg muscles, unlike those of us who had cycled up hill against a head gale. So being an over achiever......

I achieved amazing thinness. Some of my later reviews described my presence as "fey".

I did enough with terrific colleagues to be satisfied that mine was more than an ego-trip. Years of preparation in New Zealand and then some good years in Britain have left me like ex-athletes- an ex. It's a state of mind. I didn't teach when I came to Australia for reasons too complex for this space. I hate "International" star-based opera. In fact, I prefer doing it to watching it.

1922. pseudoerasmus - 12/3/1999 6:52:15 PM

Is Candide trying to convince us that she is Kiri Te Kanawa?

1923. Candide - 12/3/1999 7:49:14 PM

pseudoerasmus

Much thinner!

1924. Candide - 12/4/1999 12:21:36 AM

1922. pseudoerasmus - 12/3/99 11:52:15 PM
" Is Candide trying to convince us that she is Kiri Te Kanawa?"

Oh. Understood. No not Solti. A sinisterly powerful backstage Hungarian. A sort of Piovra.

1925. pseudoerasmus - 12/4/1999 1:22:53 AM

I'm pleased you finally got all the associations: Kiwi Be Kanada, a thin soprano from New Zealand, egged on by that awful Hungarian.

1926. PelleNilsson - 12/4/1999 7:16:20 AM

hashke

Irv says you learned Indonesian on the web. Do you still have the address to the site?

1927. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/4/1999 7:25:47 AM

Pelle:
Here's Lesson One: The sounds of Indonesian.

Indonesian has 22 consonant sounds, all of which should be familiar to you:

p pohon 'tree'
b bebek 'duck'
t terima 'receive'
d dansa 'dance'
k kaki 'foot'
g gigi 'tooth'
f fanatik 'religious fanatic'
s sisir 'comb'
z zamrud 'emerald'
sy (same as English "sh") syair 'poem'
j jumpa 'meet'
c (same as English "ch") cucu 'grandchild'
' (glottal stop, spelled with a "k" and always word-final -- sounds like a British English working-class word-medial "t") katak (kata') 'frog'
h harus 'must'
r rasa 'feel'
l lima 'five'
w warna 'color'
y yakin 'sure'
m mata 'eye'
n nama 'name'
ny nyaris 'almost'
ng (rarely found word-initially) barang 'thing'

There are six vowels. Unfortunately, two of them are spelled the same, but this causes as much confusion for foreigners as for Indonesians:

a apa 'what'
e (soft "e," like a schwa) enam 'six'
e (hard "e," like the "e" sound in most European languages) enak 'delicious'
i ini 'this'
o orang 'person'
u udang 'shrimp'

And that's it. Easy, yes?

1928. PelleNilsson - 12/4/1999 7:58:19 AM

Irv,

Can you give some English words where the sounds for

'z', 'w', 'o' and 'u' appear?

1929. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/4/1999 8:55:03 AM

Pelle:
The z in Indonesian is the same as the z in 'zoo' in English. The 'w' in Indonesia is the same as the 'w' in 'word' in English.

For the vowels, the following gives a pretty good comparison, although the Indonesian vowels are pure, without the off-glides so common in English. Indonesian vowels are similar to Spanish or italian vowels:

a as in English 'father'
soft e as in English 'women'
hard e as in English 'bait'
i as in English 'beat'
o as in English 'boat'
u as in English 'boot'

1930. hashke - 12/4/1999 10:39:09 AM

Pelle:

I found a site through Yahoo. It may still be there. But that was only a beginning. Irv was the real inspiration for my getting into the language. By the way, Irv did not like much of the Indonesian used on the site.

Are you taking up a stud? It is a fascinating language!

1931. hashke - 12/4/1999 10:42:58 AM

1912. Candide - 12/3/99 7:27:13 AM
1894. hashke - 12/3/99 4:04:11 AM
" 1891. Candide - 12/3/99 3:34:09 AM

Disappointing.

You expected ikra (khaviari) and shampanskoe (sampania)?"

Wit? Kaki not caca.

You disparage the Greek of two of our foremost wits?

1932. hashke - 12/4/1999 11:05:23 AM

Pelle:

Was just in International. I see, so you are going to Bandung. Great! You'll find Indonesian most interesting, but not the piece of cake Irv says it is. Remember, he's been speaking it for many years.

1933. hashke - 12/4/1999 11:07:33 AM

Irv:

I could never get the talking dictionary you so kindly sent me to work. Nor could the computer guys who updated my equipment, more's the pity. Not to worry, though, I have plenty of Indonesian stuff to keep me very busy.

1934. hashke - 12/4/1999 11:38:15 AM

Pelle:

http://indonesia.n3.net/jendela

1935. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/4/1999 12:05:00 PM

Hashké:
Sorry you couldn't get the dictionary working. It's probably because it was a cheap bootleg version.

I know you're not the average language learner, but you did learn Indonesian very fluently in a few weeks without ever meeting a real Indonesian.I'm sure Pelle will find it easier than Arabic.

That's not to "menyepelekan" your achievement. (A perfect phrase for our friend, no? Or should it be "menyePellekan"?)

Pelle:
That's right. Hashke's lessons were at Jendela Indonesia. To make a link out of the url Hashké posted:

Jendela Indonesia

1936. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/4/1999 12:44:58 PM

Pelle:

Lesson Two: A Simple Conversation

A: Selamat pagi, Mr. Pelle! (1)
Good morning, Mr. Pelle!
P: Selamat pagi! Tetapi siapa Anda?
Good morning! But who the hell are you?
A: Saya membawa sesuatu untuk Anda, karena saya cinta orang Swedia.
I brought you something special, because I just love Swedes.
P (meninggalkan dengan gelisah): Terima kasih. Aduh, saya baru ingat saya harus pergi. Da!
(edging away nervously) Thank you. Oops, I just remembered I've got to go. Bye!
P (kepada diri sendiri): (Kenapa orang Indonesia pertama yang saya jumpa begitu bego?)
(to himself) (Why is the first Indonesian I meet such a nutjob?)

(1) You can leave your last name at home. You'll be "Mr. Pelle" as long as you're in Indonesia (or "Pak Pelle" when you have gained enough respect).

1937. hashke - 12/4/1999 1:00:12 PM

He should probably now be Pak Pelle (a nice ring; Pak Pelle picked a peck of pickled peppers...), but Pak Gurubesar is the esteemed bestower of that title, right?

1938. CalGal - 12/4/1999 1:36:35 PM

Toys.

1939. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/4/1999 1:41:17 PM

Toys? Where? I see no un-put-away toys.

1940. CalGal - 12/4/1999 1:43:57 PM

You use Netscape. In Netscape, you can use any < /* > tag to close out any font formatting. So if you use then the text , Netscape will stop italicizing. In other words, it allows for mistakes.

IE assumes that if you wanted to close off italics, you'd use the tag.

1941. CalGal - 12/4/1999 1:45:27 PM

So, in post 1929, you typed:

u as in English 'boot'

Netscape ended the bold font; IE didn't. So everything until my post is in bold font to an IE user.

1942. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/4/1999 1:57:36 PM

Ah... well, then you're using an inferior program.

Sorry about all the bold.

1943. CalGal - 12/4/1999 2:02:10 PM

Well, Netscape assumes that its users are idiots. Who am I to say otherwise?

1944. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/4/1999 2:06:16 PM

Otoh, IE is a Microsoft program. Need I say more?

1945. PsychProf - 12/4/1999 2:15:06 PM

Ban all posts unless they are fake.

1946. CalGal - 12/4/1999 2:15:16 PM

Well, they think we're sheep.

But they think we're smart sheep.

1947. CalGal - 12/4/1999 2:15:36 PM

PP--did you mean for that post to be here?

1948. PsychProf - 12/4/1999 2:16:56 PM

Opps...

1949. Candide - 12/4/1999 2:47:52 PM

"1931. hashke - 12/4/99 3:42:58 PM
1912. Candide - 12/3/99 7:27:13 AM
1894. hashke - 12/3/99 4:04:11 AM
" 1891. Candide - 12/3/99 3:34:09 AM

Disappointing.

You expected ikra (khaviari) and shampanskoe (sampania)?"

Wit? Kaki not caca.

You disparage the Greek of two of our foremost wits? "

No. The translation. I think there was more.

1950. hashke - 12/4/1999 3:06:25 PM

Allez cultiver votre jardin.

1951. Candide - 12/4/1999 3:43:56 PM

Too busy weeding already.

We are all ignorant but about different subjects.

1952. ycmeehan - 12/11/1999 1:50:29 PM

Salut, Voltaire, ça boume? J'attends toujours votre livre.

1953. Candide - 12/11/1999 4:14:15 PM

Is there an IrvingSnodgrass in the house?

1954. hashke - 12/11/1999 8:05:44 PM

ycmeehan:

Incroyable ça! Quelle dégueulasserie! Les salauds ont le culot de vous envoyer balader. Comme je vous ai dit auparavant, donnez-moi votre addresse et je ferai à mon éditeur vous envoyer le livre sur le champ -- en un clin d'oeil. Vraiment mon plaisir, je vous assure.

Mon email: kawilson@cia-g.com

1955. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/11/1999 9:29:27 PM

Candide:
Yes?

1956. hashke - 12/11/1999 9:31:10 PM

Irv!

I have sent you a couple of recent emus. Are they ether?

1957. hashke - 12/11/1999 9:32:51 PM

or aura?

1958. hashke - 12/11/1999 9:36:50 PM

ether aura, that is.

1959. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/11/1999 9:56:05 PM

hashké:
Sorry I haven't replied yet... I've been out of town again, and I'm frantically trying to catch up. Expect a reply soon.

1960. Candide - 12/11/1999 10:37:07 PM

IrvingSnodgrass

Just checking. I feel more securely back on The Mote when I know that your guiding presence is here. Glad that you're back.

1961. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/11/1999 10:46:42 PM

Well, it's sure nice to have the Mote back, but I would hesitate to describe my presence as "guiding."

1962. hashke - 12/12/1999 12:36:19 AM

Irv:

Terima kasih!

Ketika aku telah memperbarahui komputerku sudah dikelihangan alamatmu. Aku menemukan sesuatu yang menarik, dan aku ingin mengirimnya kepadamu. Aku memerlukan alamatmu secepat mungkin, kawanku. Apakah kamu masih tinggal di Denpasar?

1963. AceofSpades - 12/12/1999 1:35:45 AM

IF ANYONE WANTS TO PLAY THE POOL THIS WEEK, THE SPREADS ARE UP AND YOU HAVE TO PICK BY KICKOFF TIME SUNDAY.

I'm going to Spam this on every thread. Sorry, but I'm sure most people have forgotten about it by now.

1964. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/12/1999 2:21:38 AM

Hashké:
Masih di Denpasar, tetapi di alamat baru. Tinggu emu dari saya... tidak lama lagi.

1965. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/12/1999 2:31:02 AM

Ace:
Sorry, but this is a spam-free thread.

1966. hashke - 12/12/1999 10:52:35 AM

Irv:

Baik. Di waktumu senggang.

1967. JayAckroyd - 12/12/1999 12:03:30 PM

One of the interesting things I learned in Egypt was that "adobe" is a word that has it's roots in ancient Egyptian, which the OED confirms.

A tour guide claimed that "amen" is also of Egyptian origin, from "A-Mon" a reference to the dominant god. The OED does not confirm that, but since it sends it back to Hebrew, no doubt the guide would claim that the Hebrew is from the Egyptian.

Anyone know any other English words that are derived from ancient egyptian?

1968. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/12/1999 12:38:56 PM

Jay:
I'm sure there are others. One which comes to mind is "pharaoh."

I am quite sure that "amen" doesn't come from "Amon"... it wouldn't make sense etymologically. Besides, it is fairly clearly derived from a Hebrew word meaning "truly," which fits much better.

1969. JayAckroyd - 12/12/1999 1:51:36 PM

Pharaoh seems to be a trivial case. Fellahin is also used once in a while, but, again, seems to be trivial (unless that originates in arabic).

1970. Candide - 12/13/1999 1:51:26 AM

The New Zealand troops brought back some obscene language from Cairo after WW2. I don't suppose that counts?

1971. Candide - 12/13/1999 1:57:11 AM

Looking in Claudia Roden's 'Middle Eastern Food' I see the most common word used for the penis is perhaps Arabic for courgette or zucchini.
'Kousa' used by very rude adolescent boys in my youth.

Hope I haven't shocked anyone.

1972. DanDillon - 12/13/1999 8:07:20 AM

There are numerous English words of Arabic (Egyptian?) origin, including--but not limited to: assassin, emir, harem, infantada, mohair, sherbert, ghoul, & zero. Another that may be on the loanword horizon is flooz or floos, meaning "money." While reading the newspaper the other day, I came across an add for "flooz.com" (little surprise), a web site where you "buy online gift currency, send [it] by e-mail, and [the recipient] spends [it] at the web's best stores."

1973. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/13/1999 8:38:45 AM

Dan:
I think it shouldn't be hard to distinguish between the handful of words borrowed from Ancient Egyptian (Coptic) and the many borrowed from Arabic, since the two languages are quite distantly related in the Afro-Asiatic family (Ancient Egyptian was not a Semitic language).

1974. Ronski - 12/13/1999 2:13:36 PM

I understand that the word "Egypt" is probably derived from "Copt," via the Greek "Aigyptos" and the Arabic "al-Qibt." "Copt" itself comes from an ancient Egyptian term (phrase) for Egypt's city of Memphis. This according to a site I will attempt to post a link to, later.

1975. PelleNilsson - 12/13/1999 2:37:00 PM

Of course Egypt is not known as Egypt in Arabic but as al-Masr.

1976. DanDillon - 12/13/1999 9:00:46 PM

Oh, Ancient Egyptian. Missed that. Coptic -- a much more useful term.

1977. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/14/1999 10:33:08 AM

Pelle:
It's been a while since I've given you any Indonesian language lessons. Here are some simple everyday phrases to get you going. They're all pronounced pretty much as expected, except that "e" sounds are often dropped in speech. I'll include the actual pronunciations in parentheses. It's important to remember that there is no strong stress in Indonesian, but a light stress occurs on penultimate syllables (example: sem-BI-lan).

Lesson 3: Useful Phrases

selamat pagi (SLAmat PAgi) = good morning
selamat siang (SLAmat SIang) = good day
selamat sore (SLAmat SOré) = good afternoon
selamat malam (SLAmat MAlam) = good evening
apa kabar? (Apa KAbar)= What's the news? (used like "how are you" in English)
kabar baik (KAbar BAik) = the news is good (the standard reply)
terima kasih (TRIma KAsih*) = thank you

* Word final "h" is pronounced in Indonesian, but is usually omitted by language learners, which causes no confusion. You can leave it off with no problems.

And here's one phrase you will thank me for:

Maaf sekali, saya tidak bisa nyanyi hari ini karena sakit tenggorokan = I'm very sorry, but I can't sing today because of a sore throat

And, of course, what basic vocabulary wouldn't be complete without the cardinal numbers:

1 = satu (SAtu)
2 = dua (DUa)
3 = tiga (TIga)
4 = empat (M-pat)
5 = lima (LIma)
6 = enam (N-am)
7 = tujuh (TUjuh)
8 = delapan (DLApan)
9 = sembilan (semBIlan)
10 = sepuluh (SPUluh)

Next: more numbers, days of the week, months of the year, and the alphabet.

1978. DanDillon - 12/14/1999 6:29:04 PM

There are, of course, vestiges of modern Arabic in that mini-lesson, except, curiously, in the numbers. They seem much more Indo-European than I would have expected.

1979. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/14/1999 9:20:36 PM

Dan:
I figured you'd catch the Arabic words (selamat, kabar, maaf).

Any resemblance to Indo-European numbers is entirely coincidental, as all Indonesian numbers can be traced easily to Austronesian roots. The one which jumps out ("dua" for "two") comes from proto-Austronesian "lua" -- the "l" to "d" change is well attested.

I'll jump ahead in my lessons to provide the days of the week. These offer an interesting and easy exercise for the etymologist (and will be easy for Pelle to learn, as he's certainly familiar with all of them already):

Sunday: Minggu
Monday: Senin
Tuesday: Selasa
Wednesday: Rabu
Thursday: Kamis
Friday: Jumat
Saturday: Sabtu

The reason all the names of days are borrowed is that they replaced the traditional five-day week in many parts of Indonesia (which is still used in some placed, notably here in Bali). The five days of the week are pon, wage, kliwon, paing and umanis (none of which come from borrowed roots).

1980. hashke - 12/15/1999 10:04:24 AM

Irv:

Our Swedish friend already has, besides his native language, English, German, French. And now he'll know Indonesian.

He is a true Pelleglot.

Saya baru saja mengirimkan emu kepada Anda.

1981. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/15/1999 10:55:55 AM

hashké:
Don't forget that our Pelleglot has a smattering of Arabic as well.

Sudah diterima. Saya akan membalasnya bila ada waktu. Trims.

1982. PelleNilsson - 12/15/1999 11:39:07 AM

Irv

Thanks for the lessons which I study and archive.

Our Indonesian friends cannot make up their minds about what they want. Right now it is coordination of international procurement, a subject I know well, and which I am - consequently - quite bored by.

1983. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/15/1999 11:58:32 AM

Pelle:
Perhaps you can suggest other areas in which you could help which would be more of a challenge. And who knows... if you impress them with your linguistic skills, they might give you a more domestically-oriented role.

Here, then is the next lesson:

Lesson 4: More Basic Vocabulary

Months of the year
These are all from Dutch, and should be very familiar to a European. Remember, though, the "j" is pronounced as in English.

Januari
Februari
Maret
April
Mei
Juni
Juli
Agustus
September
Oktober
November
Desember

I already presented the days of the week above. Anything look familiar with them?

The Alphabet
The alphabet is pronounced like most European (non-English) alphabets, with a few exceptions. The names of the letters are:

a = ah
b = bé
c = ché (as in "chair")
d = dé
e= ei (as in "date")
f = ef (same as English)
g = gé
h = ha
i = ee (as in "meet")
j = jé (same as English)
k = ka
l = el (same as English)
m = em (same as English)
n = en (same as English)
o = o (same as English)
p = pé
q = ki
r = er (with a rolled r)
s = es (same as English)
t = té
u = oo (as in "food")
v = fé
w = wé
x = ek
y = yé
z = zed (same as British English)

1984. hashke - 12/15/1999 12:40:39 PM

Irv:

I sense that Pelle does not find appealing or compelling my use of his appellation in making little puns, so I'll stop, not wishing to become the appellee in an appellate action.

He keeps his eye strictly on the ball, i.e., business.

1985. PelleNilsson - 12/15/1999 12:56:48 PM

I'm not apelled at all but as you know I'm severely pun challenged.

Here is a good example of faux amis:

From axe to limp.

1986. PelleNilsson - 12/15/1999 2:42:36 PM

In fact I felt so bumfuzzled that I swole up and had to go shit in the blue cupboard.

1987. ilyavinarsky - 12/15/1999 3:03:51 PM

One of Tolkien's tongues has the English month names that would be if they hadn't been replaced with Latin ones. For example, January is Afteryule.

1988. hashke - 12/15/1999 3:53:07 PM

Pelle:

Haahahahaha! Ah, that ole blåskåp.

I've been meaning to suggest to triple-sto an even better way than 'gå hjelpe din gamle mor...' to tell someone to get lost. It is Russian:

Idi slonu yaitsa kachat' -- 'go swing an elephant's balls'.

Explain that faux amis, pliz.

1989. hashke - 12/15/1999 3:54:09 PM

axe/limb?

1990. hashke - 12/15/1999 3:55:48 PM

Ilya:

Navajo for 'January' is 'yas nlt'ees' -- 'roasting snow'.

1991. PelleNilsson - 12/15/1999 4:00:34 PM

Hashke

The Swedish phrase is:

Från ax till limpa.

1992. hashke - 12/16/1999 10:34:03 AM

Pelle:

Those faux amis look like cross-Pellenization.

A classic example would be English 'assist', Spanish 'asistir'.

1993. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/16/1999 10:37:59 AM

Or English "fabric," Indonesian (from Dutch) "fabrik" (factory).

1994. hashke - 12/16/1999 10:42:57 AM

Or German 'Hut' (hat), Engllish 'hut'. The possibilities are legion.

1995. Dantheman - 12/16/1999 10:51:30 AM

We had a whole set of these in Hebrew school when I was a kid:

Hebrew (transliterated) English translation
Mee --------------------- Who
Hu --------------------- He
He --------------------- She
Dag --------------------- Fish
Meets ------------------- Juice

1996. PelleNilsson - 12/16/1999 11:41:59 AM

Ax === ears (e.g. of wheat)

Limpa === loaf of bread.

Från (From) ax till (to) limpa === metaphor for taking care of someting from the beginning to the end.

1997. hashke - 12/16/1999 3:15:37 PM

Very nice, Pelle. Thanks.

1998. stostosto - 12/16/1999 5:53:28 PM

hashke
And why do Russians call an elephant a "slon", when all other Europeans seem to call her "elephant" in some form? Or do other Slavs also use "slon"?

1999. CalGal - 12/16/1999 6:24:18 PM

I don't know the answers to your questions, Sto. I have a new phrase for you, though...

2000. CalGal - 12/16/1999 6:25:40 PM

THREAD GEEKS

Refers to regulars who leave a thread at #99# for days on end. Dreadfully irritating.

2001. hashke - 12/16/1999 9:36:00 PM

Triple-sto:

'Slon' is from the Slavic group and is found in Russian, Slovak, Czech, Serbian, Serbo-Croatian, Polish, Belorussian, etc.

I would be interested in Vinarsky's comment on this and in whatever he may find in his etymological dictionary, the 90$ for which I have not yet sprung.

From what sources is it a slon word, Ilya?

2002. ilyavinarsky - 12/16/1999 9:42:38 PM

I don't have the Vasmer dictionary, just borrowed it once from the UW library.

2003. hashke - 12/16/1999 9:46:36 PM

I'll lay aside a monthly pittance for it.

2004. hashke - 12/16/1999 10:35:07 PM

'Elephant' comes through Latin 'elephantus' and Greek 'elephas', possibly from Hamitic 'elu' and mebbe Egyptian 'abu' -- 'ivory'.

2005. DanDillon - 12/17/1999 7:47:35 PM

Yes, but where does mebbe come from?

2006. hashke - 12/17/1999 8:51:39 PM

Dan;

Hahaha! From my hed.

2007. hashke - 12/18/1999 12:03:37 AM

Dan:

Inta shiribt 'ee, ya akhi? Maa fi dukhaan bilaa naar.

2008. ycmeehan - 12/18/1999 6:23:56 AM

Hashke,
Check this article:http://www.msnbc.com/news/347842.asp#BODY

2009. ycmeehan - 12/18/1999 7:01:40 AM

hashke,
I have sent you the article: "France finds that the Net is not the enemy after all" because I think that the link I have posted earlier is not working now. I already knew that popular opinion had changed lately. Suddendly, everyone under forty in my family is e-mailing me with such abandon that I spend precious time every evening, before allowed to read the Mote, acknowledging the messages.

2010. ycmeehan - 12/18/1999 7:19:55 AM

Merde!! suddendly=suddenly

2011. DanDillon - 12/18/1999 1:00:58 PM

hashke,
Naam? Wesh ana shrubt shehaja?

2012. ycmeehan - 12/22/1999 11:25:37 PM

It seems that we are all waiting for you to come back, Hashke.
Are you all right?

2013. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/23/1999 12:01:19 AM

yc:
I believe Hashké is currently in currently in sunny Mexico, where he plans to immerse himself in the Spanish language, among other things.

2014. ycmeehan - 12/23/1999 5:52:05 AM

Thank you very much, Irv.
Bonne et heureuse année.

2015. DanDillon - 12/23/1999 11:28:37 AM

Anne and I were having an especially shitty day yesterday, so we decided to have a slice of Christmas a few days ahead of schedule; we gave each other one gift early. She let me choose from the three she had bought, and I went with the unusually heavy shirt box (no shirt could be that heavy, I thought). Indeed, it wasn't a shirt at all. Anne got me the first two (of three) volumes of the definitive resource on American argot: the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang. It's a thrilling collection, "the OED of slang." I combed through it last night for several hours, and it was the first thing I read today as well. (I'm a reference book hound, you might say.) Anyway, I wanted to share my recent rapture with you and let you know that if you need to know anything -- anything at all -- about slang, feel free to consult the authority.

2016. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/23/1999 11:44:48 AM

Dan:
I hope you'll share generously of your discoveries in this thread.

2017. ScottLoar - 12/23/1999 12:02:00 PM

Okay, Dan. In the book Papillon I remember a reference to "wide boy". What's that?

Please give the definition for "gunsel".

What is "French delay", supposedly practiced by Wallace Simpson on her boy prince?

2018. ScottLoar - 12/23/1999 12:03:53 PM

What is the correct spelling of "bodacious" as in "bodacious ta-ta's"? Anyone need a definition? Please recount the etymology (from Texas I'd think).

2019. ScottLoar - 12/23/1999 12:06:08 PM

Ah, the things that set me to wondering...

2020. PelleNilsson - 12/23/1999 2:44:34 PM

Irv

An article about politically correct Bahasi.

2021. DanDillon - 12/23/1999 4:11:31 PM

ScottLoar,

I should have qualified my earlier offer by saying that I can handle any slang term beginning A through O. The third volume of the set (P through Z) isn't scheduled for publication until this coming summer. Alas, I can handle "gunsel" and "bodacious." ("French delay" didn't make the cut, apparently. Do you know of another term for it?) You'll hafta wait on "wide boy." (That was the crucial one, right?...)

gunsel n. [prob. gendzl 'gosling', with vowel fr. a blend with E gun in slang or S.A.E. senses] 1.a. (esp. among tramps) a boy; raw youth.--used derisively. b. (among tramps and convicts) a catamite; (hence) a usu. young homosexual man.--usu. used derisively. 2. a stupid or contemptible fellow. 3. a gunman; thug.

bodacious adj. [perh. bold + audacious So. & Midland. 1. enormous; formidable; strong; excessive; big. Also adv.

There you have it.

2022. Uzmakk - 12/23/1999 4:25:36 PM

2015DanDillon:
Slang terms for "tank",i.e. the military machine.

2023. Uzmakk - 12/23/1999 4:26:49 PM

Sorry, missed the above post. I am so dissappointed DD.

2024. DanDillon - 12/23/1999 4:54:52 PM

Uzi,
You'll just hafta wait until summer like the rest of us.

2025. ScottLoar - 12/23/1999 6:23:19 PM

Dan, thank you. Actually, "French delay" seems to be English slang and damn if I'm not curious to know more about it! It seems that Wallace Simpson practiced this with another woman in front of the Duke when they visited Shanghai in the 30's. I am intrigued to no end.

2026. ScottLoar - 12/23/1999 6:23:53 PM

No, no, the term was "lesbian delay"! Please!

2027. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/23/1999 6:52:36 PM

Pelle:
Interesting article on Bahasa Indonesia (the correct term).

The new openness in society is indeed accompanied by a new openness in language which is an exciting development.

But I must disagree with Pramoedya, who states that using English words means "We have returned to the colonial mentality, thinking that everything that is foreign is more intellectual and high-minded." The simple fact is that, in many cases, there simply aren't Indonesian words for certain concepts, and the wise move linguistically is to borrow those words into Indonesian and make them a part of the ever-growing language. This is particularly true today, when we find many words for concepts relating to democracy and freedom entering the language.

Btw, the Trib misquotes the one Indonesian term it uses. The term is kepentingan umum, not the mangled version found in the article. Everything else in the article is accurate and quite perceptive.

2028. DanDillon - 12/24/1999 11:44:17 AM

Steven Pinker wrote an Op-Ed piece that ran in today's NYT. He sure is one level-headed guy. Anyway, he claims that "children do not learn their accents from television announcers. Children acquire accents from other children...." I agree with the first part of the statement, but I would add to the second part that children also acquire accents from their parents. Wouldn't this strike him as an obvious fact? Was it an oversight?

2029. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/24/1999 11:55:20 AM

Dan:
Pinker is right. It may not be as apparent where you live, but here the children who go to schools where American English is the norm speak American English, no matter where their parents come from, the children who go to British schools speak British English, the kids who go to Indian schools speak Indian English, etc. I know Australian kids with American accents, American kids with British accents, Irish kids with Indian accents, and so on. The parents' accent has little or no influence on how the kids speak.

2030. DanDillon - 12/24/1999 12:05:21 PM

Irv,
Off-topic, but important: Where is your post about all of the different holidays happening around Indonesia and world? I'd like to see that one again, and I don't recall where to find it.

2031. ScottLoar - 12/24/1999 12:10:51 PM

Not only from their parents but to those closest around them. My own weird pronounciation which I can control except when excited was learned from my Grandma:

you'uns plural of "you"
cun't and shun't further contraction of "couldn't" and "shouldn't"
Addition of "r" behind certain vowels followed by consonants as in warsh
Roof pronounced as ruff, route and root as rut, crick for creek

These peculiarities are not evident in the speech of my half-brother and half-sister, and less so in my sister. Athough less obvious I suspect one's writing (vocabulary, expression) may also reflect the influences of those who have (for the process can be continuous) a profound impact on one's learning.

Apropos to nothing else I also stammer when excited or agitated, a clear example of the mind working much faster than my being able to articulate.

2032. DanDillon - 12/24/1999 12:12:50 PM

Living proof to augment my argument and complement Irv's and Pinker's.

2033. ScottLoar - 12/24/1999 12:16:13 PM

I note that my daughter's speech does not have these peculiarities yet she does indeed use some of my phrasing and sometimes unusual vocabulary.

2034. Candide - 12/24/1999 4:51:12 PM

2027. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/23/99 11:52:36 PM

Apropos nationalism in language. I have a German friend who maintains that this search for national purity of language is the clearest indication of latent fascism. Mussolini and Hitler certainly both followed that path. My friend also maintains that attempts to control language to meet new needs such as 'chairperson' for chairman' are different manifestations of a similar spirit. I disagree with this.

As a small girl I was made to feel second-rate in comparison with my brother, by the frequent repetition of such words as mankind. Subtle exclusion was woven through the language.

Many French people resent intrusions into French.

2035. ycmeehan - 12/24/1999 6:13:16 PM

Candide,
"Many French people resent intrusions into French"

The French Academy and those who would love to belong to it, you mean. Ordinary people don't seem to mind English words at all. I talk with members of my family or with old friends every Sunday for an average of two hours since MCI charges only nine cents a minute now.

Expressions such as: super, cool, are commun as are many other English words. What greatly amuses me is that when I remark on their use of English words, my listeners seem as genuinely surprised as are Americans to know that many expressions and words in English come from 'Old French".

2036. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/24/1999 6:15:23 PM

Dan:
Look in the International thread. The convergence of holidays is downright eerie.

Candide:
Fortunately, there is no sign of a movement to "purify" Indonesian, and there never has been. Most people realize there is a very serious need to develop the language, and the only way to do this is by adding vocabulary. It's much easier to borrow words than to coin new words and try and get people to use them.

The phenomenon referred to in the article is a form of "doublespeak," of the sort made famous by bureaucracies aound the world. The USA is probably the worst offender in this area, using silly euphemisms where straight talk will do just fine.

For language purists, the worst are the French and Germans. I am certain their ethnocentrism holds back the development of their languages, as they seek to root out foreign influences. By contrast, two-thirds of English vocabulary is borrowed, making English the richest language in the world. Other languages such as Urdu and Japanese also feature more than 50% borrowings, and Indonesian is probably very close to 50%.

I wouldn't however, call those who push for language purity "fascists." They are merely ethnocentric fools.

As for words with a sexist twist, I agree with you when it comes to terms like "chairman," because they specifically refer to one gender, but disagree about "mankind" as the meaning of the word obviously encompasses all people. Even more ludicrous are those who seek to change words like "history," "woman," and "human," the etymology of which these folks have no understanding of.

2037. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/24/1999 6:24:19 PM

On a seasonal note:

Merry Christmas
Selamat Hari Natal
Prettige Kerst
Maligayong Pasko
Joyeux Noel
Sugeng Natal
Barka da Sallah
Buon Natale
Krismas Mubarak
Wilujeng Natal
Selamat Ari Pesta
Felices Pascuas
God Jul
Feliz Natal

That's all I can think of off the top of my head (and avoiding those not in Roman script). Perhaps some of you can add others.

2038. Candide - 12/24/1999 6:48:56 PM

IrvingSnodgrass #2036

"As for words with a sexist twist, I agree with you when it comes to
terms like "chairman," because they specifically refer to one gender, but disagree about "mankind" as the meaning of the word obviously encompasses all people. Even more ludicrous are those who seek to change words like "history," "woman," and "human," the etymology of which these folks have no understanding of."

Of course I agree with you about 'history' and other ridiculous misunderstandings. I repeat against logic, that 'mankind' was and somehow is still the word that I feel harmed me most as a child. Of course it represents the whole. Is "people" too un-grand for those with Miltonic tendencies? "Humans"? "Humanity"?

2039. Candide - 12/24/1999 6:54:00 PM

2035. ycmeehan - 12/24/99 11:13:16 PM

I enjoyed your reply. I remember being amused by words in French (and Italian) such as footing and weekend.

IrvingSnodgrass.

My German friend was raised by the Hitler Youth movement and she has done a heroic job of cleansing her mind of most of the guff they planted there although inevitably some fragments of pollution remain. She is a terrific character.

I love the sheer mongrel quality of English.

2040. Candide - 12/24/1999 7:01:09 PM

While I'm intruding in this thread - which I don't intend to make a habit of - I'm fascinated to observe from my own limited knowledge of languages, the meanings that are lacking in all languages but present in some others.

My favourite example is the English word shallow for which Italian has no equivalent. They say superficiale but that is not the same meaning.

2041. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/24/1999 7:33:55 PM

Candide:
You're not intruding. This thread is for everyone.

The "mongrel" quality of English is its greatest strength.

2042. Candide - 12/24/1999 7:54:21 PM

2041. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/25/99 12:33:55 AM

I wasn't being servile IrvingSnodgrass but thanks for the friendly greeting. I respect this discussion thread for its knowledgeable and scholarly quality. I regard myself as raw material for savants to analyse rather than a 'dinkum' participant. Just occasionally a discussion surfaces to which the general public can contribute.

The Queen and I felt that such a moment had arrived.

2043. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/24/1999 10:26:02 PM

Candide:
Language is one subject everyone has thoughts on and can make interesting observations on. One doesn't need special training to add value to discussions here. Please jump right in.

2044. Candide - 12/25/1999 12:19:36 AM

IrvingSnodgrass#2036

The USA is probably the worst offender in this area, using silly euphemisms where straight talk will do just fine.

Have you heard of the late Alex Carey, an Australian psychologist whose life study was precisely this language? He was more than a little to the left, and was a great friend and admirer of Noam Chomsky who came to Australia to launch Alex's book the title of which I have forgotten - I and was disappointed.

Alex suicided in the saddest and most unexpected manner. It is widely publicised so there is no harm in telling some of the facts. Alex, a lifelong Marxist had secretly been playing the stock market and lost most of his money when the 80s bubble burst. 'Right-wing' journalists had a field day attacking him and his daughter Gabriel Carey wrote a book about him expressing her love for him and defending him.

2045. Candide - 12/25/1999 12:22:27 AM

" I and was disappointed. " should read "which I had read and had been disappointed by"...... not too brilliant a construction either!

2046. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/25/1999 12:36:30 AM

Candide:
I haven't heard of Alex Carey, though I'm sorry to hear of his sad end.

The leading watchdog in the USA is William Lutz of Rutgers University, who publishes the "Quarterly Review of Doublespeak."

2047. ScottLoar - 12/25/1999 12:56:42 AM

I do not know "suicide" as a verb.

2048. Candide - 12/25/1999 12:59:42 AM

2046. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/25/99 5:36:30 AM

I must trace that publication. During the NATO Serbian operation (how's that for obfuscation?) I got into struggling Italian correspondence with an Italian linguistics academic who had come out of the field of advertising. He was about to publish a sensational volume about how the Vatican invented marketing.

I don't think it is an invasion of privacy for me to quote:
Io sono allievo di Tullio de Mauro, che
insieme a Eco e' il massimo linguista italiano. Insegno all'universita' di Salerno Tecniche della Comunicazione Pubblicitaria perche' sono stato un pubblicitario (quello che un tempo veniva definito "hidden persuader") in grandi agenzie di pubblicita'. Adesso mi occupo di ricerca intorno a questi argomenti.

Si tratta di una cosa molto difficile che probabilmente mi
creera' un sacco di problemi... Un libro contro il Vaticano che esce
proprio per il Giubileo! Parla dell'invenzione del marketing. Il marketing non e' stato inventato dagli americani ma dalla Chiesa Cattolica perche' e' da 2000 anni che riescono a venderci un prodotto che non esiste. Il titolo e' "Gesu' lava piu' bianco". E credo che fara' scandalo. Almeno qui in Italia...

If you were interested in contacting him I could send an email and ask his permission. he writes perfect English but let me practice my atrocious Italian on him.

2049. Candide - 12/25/1999 1:01:15 AM

scottLoar

Quite right. I am suitably reprimanded.

2050. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/25/1999 1:07:25 AM

ScottLoar:
I do not know "suicide" as a verb.

Although it's rare in American English, it is acceptable, and listed in the dictionary. It's much more common in other varieties of English.

Americans usually say "to commit suicide."

Candide:
Better yet, get him to join us here on the Mote so we can all enjoy his observations!

2051. Candide - 12/25/1999 1:20:10 AM

IrvingSnodgrass

"suicide" as a verb.

Although it's rare in American English, it is acceptable, and listed in the dictionary. It's much more common in other varieties of English.

Americans usually say "to commit suicide."

Oh dear. So do Candides.

Candide:
Better yet, get him to join us here on the Mote so we can all enjoy
his observations!

I'll certainly try that. He is great fun. I'm not sure that CalGal will be thrilled. I know CalGal that you are a tolerant soul. My Italian friend is definitely not 'leaning towards the centre'.

2052. ScottLoar - 12/25/1999 2:07:06 PM

I will not use suicide as a verb or practice.

Candide, please, please do not paste quotes as preamble to your comments if the quote occurs but a few entries previous to your own. It is most distracting. Surely we can all follow the thread of the conversation.

2053. ScottLoar - 12/25/1999 2:07:37 PM

That goes for everybody.

2054. CalGal - 12/25/1999 3:29:14 PM

I'm not sure that CalGal will be thrilled.

What a silly comment. Among other things, it indicates you didn't understand my posts at all.

Regarding "suicide" as a verb--sometimes you'll hear shrinks use it, but usually regarding an attempt. I've never seen it used as Candide used it.

2055. Candide - 12/25/1999 3:57:49 PM

Sorry CalGal,ught the same as soon as I had posted it but it was too late to retract it. I think I did understand and was just teasing a little.

I thought that most people posted quotes before responses. Always glad to obey the rules.

2056. Candide - 12/25/1999 3:59:31 PM

I type too quickly. "I THOught the same"

2057. Candide - 12/25/1999 4:02:52 PM

scottLoar

If some evidence for a statement is needed and some of us are upset by quotes, is the alternative just to trust in the assertions of others?

2058. Candide - 12/25/1999 4:08:59 PM

Or if someone has written a complex post and there are subtle points to be made, isn't it more useful to have the reference right there? Sometimes the other post is on another page and it clarifies the points for everyone.

I will try not to overdo it but I have just unilaterally and courageously decided that I disagree with you.

2059. Candide - 12/25/1999 4:20:12 PM

scottLoar
If as I suspect Loar means 'law' then you will appreciate the importance of evidence.

2060. CalGal - 12/25/1999 4:22:01 PM

Candide,

It is indeed courageous to disagree with Scott.

My personal preference is to copy the specific passage and italicize it. I agree with Scott that your habit of copying the post header is confusing. But there is no one Mote methodology that we all must follow.

2061. Candide - 12/25/1999 4:52:04 PM

CalGal

I was so distressed at having offended you that although I have to go out and I'm late and looking a mess, I searched and found - finally-in Inferno, your excelllent post 1464 and read it carefully.

(Forgive me IrvingSnodGrass for drifting from the Thread but I think that language is involved in this.)
I realise that you were specifically referring to a particular kind of discussion about American politics. I understand now why you were disappointed with me.

When I first peeped in at The Mote I decided it was too exclusively American in tone for me to be able to take part. I find now that this is not the case but I frequently find myself in situations that are a bit dicey simply because of the difference in our political and social experience, combined with the way in which American attitudes impinge on the lives of all of us. This is an interesting experience as well and does involve everything from language to social expectations.

I'll go and paint myself ten years younger now. Thank God for my art school training.

2062. ilyavinarsky - 12/25/1999 6:14:09 PM

Schastlivogo katolicheskogo-protestantskogo rozhdestva!

Schaslyvoho uniyats'kogo rizdva!

2063. PelleNilsson - 12/26/1999 5:10:44 AM

The ones most obsessed about the purity of language are the Icelandic. There are only 250,000 speakers and if they open the door for loan words, the language would quickly become corrupted, not neccessarily by English, but by its own daughters Danish, Norwegian and Swedish.

In Sweden we are rather pragmatic about loan words, perhaps because we have always imported words, first from German, then from French and these days from English. After some time, these words lose their "foreigness" and become integrated into Swedish. Two recent examples are 'doping' which has become 'dopning' and 'site' which has become 'sajt'.

2064. ScottLoar - 12/26/1999 9:10:53 AM

Proof positive that you Swedes cannot spell properly.

2065. ScottLoar - 12/26/1999 9:13:36 AM

Of course I am not a lawyer.

2066. PelleNilsson - 12/26/1999 12:49:21 PM

Aj nöu jo ar nått ö låjer.

2067. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/26/1999 12:53:25 PM

Why does that remind me of the Swedish Chef?

2068. Candide - 12/26/1999 5:57:45 PM

scottLoar #2052
Candide, please, please do not paste quotes as preamble to your
comments if the quote occurs but a few entries previous to your own.

Aha! That was the point with which I disagreed.

Of course I see that pasting in the heading is distracting and I promise to be good.

I spent a lovely day yesterday with a New York-Italian friend who has taken out Australiahn nationality. She was educated in Paris and is a very patriotic Australia. Hew husband is an Australian film director. I just thought this might add a dimension to our earlier discussion.

2069. Candide - 12/26/1999 6:04:28 PM

ilyavinarsky #2062
Schastlivogo katolicheskogo-protestantskogo rozhdestva!

Got that bit you devious ethnic person. What does the next bit say?

Is there a word agnosticheskogo? Or freethinkeskogo?

"Chiunche nasce a morte arriva
nel fuggir del tempo; a'l sole
niuna cosa lascia viva."

fragment from Michelangelo

2070. Candide - 12/26/1999 6:06:18 PM

Candide #2068
"taken out Australiahn nationality"

No that wasn't available so she had to make do with Australian.

2071. Candide - 12/26/1999 6:08:10 PM

scottLoar #2065

Of course I am not a lawyer.

Ooh, sorry. At least I didn't call you a journalist/

2072. Candide - 12/26/1999 7:51:16 PM

pelleNilsson
site' which has become 'sajt'.

This reminds me of a rather tragic pronunciation problem for non-Australians who learn their English in Australia. Tremendously 'proper' middle class Europeans hear many Australians pronouncing the word rain as 'rine'.

Europeans who pronounce vowels phonetically in the Italian manner naturally interpret the letters 'ai' as 'rine'. These are people who are tremendously careful about all aspects of speech in their native tongue. There is no nice way to tell them what they are doing. Their children all learn the Australian pronunciation. Australians will not tolerate condescension based on speech in the English manner, therefore it is impossible to convey to immigrants the effect of their aquired speech on the ears of more international users of English. Not without seeming to condescend towards general Australian speech. One becomes accustomed to Australian speech and to enjoy the expressiveness of the vernacular.

I should say that there is no real class division in Australian pronunciation. There tends to be an educated Australian spoken among older educated Australians but this is not a secure indication of social 'class'. The ex-prime minister Bob Hawke, was a Rhodes scholar but I would have been severely punished as a child if I had pronounced English as he does.

2073. Candide - 12/26/1999 7:52:56 PM

aCquired speech

2074. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/27/1999 2:53:57 AM

Candide:
That reminds me of a funny story from when my son was in his early years of school. Although he (and most of his classmates) had pronounced American accents, his fourth grade teacher was from New Zealand. It took a while for the students to get used to her accent, but they managed pretty well. One day, the class went on a field trip to the zoo, where the teacher showed them some animals they had never seen before.

When I asked my son what the most interesting animal was, he said "the typir." It took a while to convince him that it was pronounced "tapir" in his dialect.

2075. Candide - 12/27/1999 6:38:20 AM

Ouch!

2076. Candide - 12/27/1999 6:44:26 AM

IrvingSnodgrass
A distinguished Australian newspaper editor, known for his detailed knowledge of language and speech, gave his address — Point Piper, Sydney — to a desk clerk in a New York hotel. The clerk wrote down "Point PAper".

It's other vowel shifts that bothered me as a New Zealander. My name contains 'A' in the first syllable similar to Anne. It was always pronounced 'E' as in wEt, by school teachers.

2077. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/27/1999 10:13:30 AM

Candide:
It sounds like a perceptive desk clerk who would overcorrect a perceived Australian accent. After all, Australians would say the man was a "newspiper editor."

The most distinguishing feature of a New Zealand accent to me is the substitution of a short "u" for a short "i" sound (a quirk which isn't found in Australian English). As a result, one hears Kiwis speak of "fush and chups." Many years ago, I shared a house with a Kiwi friend, who extolled the virtues of a rock group from his native land. I'd never heard of the group, and only had his account to go on. Imagine my surprise, months later, when I discovered the name of the group was not really "Splut Enz."

2078. Candide - 12/27/1999 3:17:57 PM

IrvingSnodgrass
I know. The accent has become much more general and more pronounced since I lived there. There were people who spoke like that but in general, New Zealand was a more 'British' place than Australia and British speech values were fairly general.

I have a dear friend who is an internationally recognised photographer. She always slightly swallowed her vowels but since moving from Christchurch to Auckland and having a family her accent has become much thicker. I thought that she was mistaking the name of a dear friend (Quentin) 'Quintin' until I heard her say that he was in 'Willington. I had an aunt who was a poet and who invented something awful called 'children's verse-speaking choirs'. She would come on stage in arts and crafts movement clothes and conduct huge masses of children as they recited poems deemed duitable for the form. She broadcast all over the world and over the BBC during WW2. The fashion faded.

I can remember as a tiny child attending a performance. The children were saying - or rather eenunciaiteeng :"Come out Te Rau-pa-ra-ha, red nose hiding in the rapu."
Te Rauparaha was a famous warring Maori chieftan and presumably in this thrilling ode, he had tried to disguise himself as a water fowl
pukeko hiding in the reeds.

2079. Candide - 12/27/1999 3:20:11 PM

SSSSUitable not Duitable for the form.

2080. PelleNilsson - 12/27/1999 5:29:08 PM

Trivium:

Wich is an Anglo-Saxon word meaning "a place that has salt," and all the English towns whose names end in wich were at one time salt producers.

(Mark Kurlansky, Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World)

2081. Candide - 12/27/1999 5:48:02 PM

IrvingSnodgrass
It sounds like a perceptive desk clerk who would overcorrect a
perceived Australian accent. After all, Australians would say the man was a "newspiper editor."

I have it from the newspiper editor himself. It was the "Sydney" in his address that caused the correction.

2082. Candide - 12/27/1999 5:57:42 PM

pelleNilsson
Which may explain the British railway sandwich.

2083. Candide - 12/27/1999 6:16:45 PM

PelleNilsson
We're in deep water with this wick business. The shorter Oxford gives the salt derivation.
Brewer's Dictionary of namessays of 'Norwich' for instance:"The county town of Norfolk has a name meaning 'northern port', from Old English north and wic.
Of 'Dulwich': "The district of southeast London has a name meaning 'dill marsh' from Old English dile, 'dill' and wisce'marshy meadow' (preserved in the Sussex dialect word wish). The -wich of the name is thus not the same as in Norwich or Woolwich.

2084. PelleNilsson - 12/27/1999 6:18:12 PM

Perhaps. I know of the person but not of the place. East Anglia?

2085. Candide - 12/27/1999 6:27:37 PM

Woolwich. The London district on the south bank of the Thames has a name that means 'wool place', with the second half of the name deriving from Old English wic used to denote a special type of farm or place. (That might suggest that the use Pelle quotes might mean 'place' for salt?). In this instance it would have been a place where wool was loaded onto or off boats on the Thames.

PelleNilsson. I am fascinated by your book about Cod. I was delighted when I learned that Basque whalers in about the 11th century, brought the salt and dried cod, indeed cod itself to the Mediterranean where, against all logic, it became a staple food.

2086. Candide - 12/27/1999 6:34:33 PM

pelleNilsson

I'm not sure that there is a place. Lord Montagu 4th Earl of Sandwich packaged his food conveniently to obviate the necessity of leaving the gaming table.

2087. PelleNilsson - 12/27/1999 6:38:50 PM

Candide

Yes, but where is Sandwich? The bread contraption is named after one of the Lords of Sandwich, I don't know whom. The Lord of Sandwich I "know" is the early benefactor of Samuel Pepys, the diarist.

11th century is wrong. Make that 15th century. And if you are interested in early whaling I have just the book for you but I don't want to rummage around in the book shelves at this time of night. Watch this space.

2088. Candide - 12/27/1999 6:39:10 PM

Brewer again.
Harwich. The name of the Essex town and port means 'military settlement', from Old English here-wic. There was a sizeable Danish military camp here in the 9th century (invading Herringstanis!)Cp. other 'army' names such as Harlow, Harpenden, Hereford, Herstal.

2089. Candide - 12/27/1999 6:43:14 PM

PelleNilsson.
11th century is wrong. Make that 15th century. And if you are
interested in early whaling I have just the book for you

I got the information from a Spanish book about Spanish food written by an eccentric journalist and cuisinologist named Xavier Domingo. he said 5 centuried before Colombus!

I would love to know about the 'cod' book. When convenient naturally.

2090. Candide - 12/27/1999 6:45:08 PM

Yes, but where is Sandwich?

I'm still searching. It's not in any atlas or dictionary so far invesigated. I will pursue this vital point.

2091. Candide - 12/27/1999 6:56:27 PM

SANDWICH

Treasures of Britain published by Drive Publications Ltd. for the Automobile Association, Fanum House, Leicester Square, London, WC2.
Sanwich Kent
Once a thriving port (one of the Cinque Ports), Sandwich is now over 2 miles from the sea, so much has the estuary of the R.Wantsum silted up. The little town is a network of narrow streets, punctuated by three huge churches, two of them never properly repaired after their towers collapsed after the 17th century. The tiny oblong square in front of St. Peter's Church is the centre of the town's life today. High street to the east, is the most handsome street, but the best houses are in the north-west corner of the town: Manwood Court, built of typical Sandwich pale yellow brick in 1574, and the King's House, also 16th century. Of Strand Street is the picturesque, but mainly modern tollhouse.

CHURCH OF ST CLEMENT. A large splendid church, mainly of the 14th and 15th centuries, but with a magnificent Norman central tower whose exterior has three tiers of arcading below the battlements. There is also a Norman doorway with carved decoration, and misericords. The site may have been the cemetary of nearby Roman Rutupiae. (Richborough.)

MORE THAN YOU HOPED TO KNOW ABOUT SANDWICH!

2092. JudithAtHome - 12/27/1999 7:00:16 PM

Candide:

Question for you over in Home & Garden.

2093. DanDillon - 12/27/1999 7:17:34 PM

I'd always considered -wic, -wich, and -wick to be the OE equivalents of the Scots Gaelic (Erse) -by, all suffixes denoting a farm or arable land.

2094. Candide - 12/27/1999 7:22:53 PM

DanDillon

They don't appear to all come from the same source.

2095. Candide - 12/27/1999 7:29:43 PM

Shorter Oxford
WhitbyOld English by with stroke above'y'
Old Norse for -habitation, village, town.

Brewer says:
Whitby, the North Yorkshire resort and port has a Scandinavian name that means Hvíti'svillage'.The personal name means 'white-haired or pale-faced person.

2096. ScottLoar - 12/27/1999 10:12:40 PM

Weren't the Hawaiian islands originally called the Sandwich Isles in name of that very Lord?

2097. Candide - 12/28/1999 1:12:10 AM

ScottLoar
Sandwich Islands later Hawaii.

Once again, ever in search of information I have looked in Chambers Biographical Dictionary.
It names two Montagu (Sandwichs. Number 2 was the boy but I feel didactic so here they both are.
1)SANDWICH, Edward Montagu, 1sr Earl of (1625-72) English naval commander. In the Civil War he fought on the parliamentary side...sat in parliament 1653 and fought in the first Dutch War. For services in the restoration of the monarchy(1660) he was appointed admiral of the narrow seas. Ambassador to Spain (1666-69) he helped to negotiate King Charles 11's marriage and escorted Catherine of Braganza to England. In the third Dutch war (1672-78)he fought in the battle of Southwold Bay and was blown up with his flagship the Royal James.

SANDWICH, John Montagu, 4th Earl of (1718-92) [2 & 3 seem unworthy of record]
English politician, and inventor of the 'sandwich'. he succeeded his grandfather in 1729 and became First Lord of the Admiralty (1748-51). he held same post from 1771-82, where his ineptness contributed to British failure in the American War of Independence.Notoriously corrupt, he was a member of Francis dashwood's 'Mad monks of medmenham Abbey', and was involved in the persecution of his former friend, John Wilkes. The Sanwich (now Hawaiian) Islands were named after him by Captain Cook. The sanwich reputed invented by him as snack at gaming table.

2098. Candide - 12/28/1999 1:14:28 AM

I must type more carefully, I must type more carefully, I sumt tepy mroe cralfuyl....sob

2099. Candide - 12/28/1999 1:46:31 AM

sandwiches, known in the British vernacular as 'sangers'.

2100. Candide - 12/28/1999 1:59:56 AM

Off to make a frittata of globe artichokes, potato and bacon. (That was for ScottLoar).

2101. Candide - 12/28/1999 2:00:33 AM

and onion.

2102. Candide - 12/28/1999 2:23:24 AM

garlic

2103. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/28/1999 5:32:25 AM

Candide (Message # 2078):
I thought that she was mistaking the name of a dear friend (Quentin) 'Quintin' until I heard her say that he was in 'Willington.

Obviously, she meant "Quentin." If she had meant "Quintin," she would have said "Quuntun," given the peculiarities of the New Zealand accent. So it works, in its own way.

There is great confusion between short i and short e in many American dialects as well. Try asking a Texan for a pin. You are as likely to receive a pen as anything (if you receive anything at all).

2104. PelleNilsson - 12/28/1999 5:50:19 AM

Candide

You were right about dating the first appearance of Basques with salted cod to the 11th century. Its popularity in the Mediterreanean had to do with Christianity. Every Friday was a "fast" day when it was forbidden to eat meat. Add that the 40 days of the Lent and a lot of saint's days and you will find (according to the book) that almost half of the days in the year were fast days.

The other book I referred to is Alan Guerney, Below the Convergence: Voyages Toward Antarctica 1699-1839. Very interesting.

2105. Candide - 12/28/1999 6:26:37 AM

PelleNilsson #2104

It's embarrassing how much I've written today! We have dank weather and the season has spoiled my concentration.

I look forward to investigating Alan Guerney. I was so amazed to read that the French Basques (that's how the Spaniard described them) voyaged into that zone so early. Apparently the cod were a bycatch that they salted along with the salted whale meat. I've long loved baccalà, but my husband is keener than I am. He doesn't have to get all sticky and smelly preparing it.

IrvingSnodgrass

Yes, his name IS QuEntin. I didn't realise the same shift existed in the USA. New Zealanders all complain about the way Australians pronounce the first syllable of SEEdney. They want it to be SUDney. My husband was annoyed, when we first arrived in Britain, by the BBC announcers who pronounced 'one' as 'won' to rhyme with John. I didn't notice it.

2106. DanDillon - 12/28/1999 9:21:15 AM

Interesting and rich sound correspondence:

militias /malicious

2107. Candide - 12/28/1999 3:48:45 PM

milizia and malizia Italian. I cheated on the first word which is singular, not plural.

2108. DanDillon - 12/28/1999 6:24:36 PM

Even more interesting and rich.

2109. CalGal - 12/28/1999 6:27:07 PM

Candide,

New Zealanders all complain about the way Australians pronounce the first syllable of SEEdney. They want it to be SUDney.

So Sydney with a short i isn't how the natives know it?

And are you saying that "won" rhymes with "John"?

2110. Candide - 12/28/1999 8:23:11 PM

CalGal

One, as in one two three, is often pronounced to rhyme with John by educated English speakers in England.

In Australia, Sydney, is often pronounced with perhaps a lean towards 'ee' rather than a short i. New Zealanders who are famous for their vowel shifts hear it in exaggerated form because it is so unfamiliar to them. New Zealanders tend nowadays to replace the 'a' in 'jam' with the 'e' in 'pen'. The 'i' in 'fish' with the 'u' in 'but'. On the whole New Zealanders pronounce consonants clearly and in the south of the South Island they roll their 'r' in a splandid fashion.

Australians are lazy with consonants in the same way that Americans often are. I was walking along a pedestrian mall once when a spruiker outside a large book shop called out - as far as I could tell — over a microphone: "Australian riders. Australian riders. get your books signed by Australian riders." 'WriTers' being the intended word.

2111. Candide - 12/28/1999 8:25:13 PM

SplEndid. No vowel shift intended.

2112. CalGal - 12/28/1999 8:27:07 PM

There is a difference in pronunciation between writers and riders? That's as silly as Irv's insistence that caught and cot aren't homonyms.

But do you pronounce "won" and "one" as homonyms, or no?

2113. Candide - 12/28/1999 8:33:19 PM

My use of 'won' was misleading. That's why I changed to 'john' as an indication of pronunciation. No the word 'won' as in winning is pronounced to rhyme with 'fun'.

I guess I care more than most about consonants because in vocal music they give the rhythm. They are the drum beat.I'm talking about what we are forced to call 'classical' music although I hate the description. 'T' is a lovely light sound while 'D' is thicker. It all adds to the vitality and movement of the sung phrase. That's why I mourn the loss of 'T'.

2114. Candide - 12/28/1999 8:36:59 PM

I should add that I greatly enjoy American speech in all its manifestations. Also Australian speech. Something that maddens Australians is that we are expected (and do) to understand the most regional accents in American movies but Australian movies are often rejected by US distributors because they say nobody will understand the accent. Also Australian TV documentaries with respected Australian commentators are often given a voice-over by an American actor. It makes Aussies spit tacks.

2115. Candide - 12/28/1999 8:39:43 PM

When I used to perform songs by American composers I always deliberately inflected my accent towards American vowels and consonants. Some critics thought I was being phony but I saw it as the same thing as trying one's damndest to sound Italian or german or French. It was part of the caligraphy of the music.

2116. Candide - 12/28/1999 8:43:13 PM

calLigraphy Bart Simpson!

2117. Candide - 12/28/1999 8:48:24 PM

CalGal
I just lost a post in the system. I said that I loved the US TV show with - was it Brett Butler?- Grace Under Fire because it showed a southern, working-class woman who was intelligent and funny. I loved the accents.

2118. Candide - 12/28/1999 9:07:02 PM

'Sydney' rhymes with 'kidney'.

2119. PincherMartin - 12/28/1999 9:15:28 PM

Candide --

It's amazing to me how many good films and good actors come out of Australia. How does a country of only 25 million do it? The other night I saw Sirens with the talented Sam Neill. He was also in the wonderful thriller Dead Calm with Nicole Kidman.

Here are some of the Australian films and actors I like:

Muriel's Wedding

The Road Warrior Series

Gallipoli

Shine

Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert

The Year of Living Dangerously

Nicole Kidman

Sam Neill

Guy Pierce

Cate Blanchett

Russell Crowe

Mel Gibson

Geoffrey Rush

Hugo Weaving

Judy Davis

For such a small country, Australia certainly produces more than its fair share of good films and actors (and I know I'm only touching the surface here).

2120. Candide - 12/28/1999 9:37:44 PM

PincherMartin

Sam Neill is a New Zealander. I couldn't resist saying that. He was 'discovered' by James Mason.

I can't really explain the film activity. Australia was one of the first countries in the world to make a feature film. Between 1910 and 1912 at least 101 Australian three-reel or four-reel features were released. Bush films with action were the most popular. The industry languished after WW2.

The present rush is something to do with what Edna Everage ironically describes as the 'great Australian vitality'. It's true I think.
Also, a newish society has to do another Aussie thing: "Take a good hard look at itself." Australia is torn between its natural tendency towards internationalism and its desire to tell its own story. Like the French cinema, Australian film-makers are feeling under attack.

One of my favourite Australian expressions."He wants to take a good hard look at himself". Note the substitution of 'wants' for'needs'.

2121. PincherMartin - 12/28/1999 9:39:56 PM

Australia, New Zealand -- What's the difference? ;-)

2122. PincherMartin - 12/28/1999 9:44:49 PM

Also, It's interesting to me -- and relevant to this thread -- how easily Australians fit into American roles in American movies. And some of the actors (Rush, Blanchett, etc.) also seem to fit into British roles just as easily. Is there something about speaking Australian that suits them to fitting into either role?

Off-hand, I can only think of a couple of actors who can play British roles -- Streep, Paltrow, etc. -- and many British directors refuse to cast them into them at all.

2123. Candide - 12/28/1999 9:44:59 PM

PincherMartin #2121

Thet's a stringe quistion.

Actually, the similarities are great as are the differences which are formed from geography.

2124. PincherMartin - 12/28/1999 9:47:24 PM

It was a joke. The combination of a semi-colon, dash, and half a parenthesis is suppose to give it away.

2125. Candide - 12/28/1999 9:48:16 PM

Yes, I think Australians and New Zealanders have a key to both cultures. My New Zealand childhood surroundings were a touch Norman Rockwell. I read English and American books and comics. Both cultures were familiar to me.

2126. Candide - 12/28/1999 9:49:22 PM

PincherMartin
I KNEW it was a joke. And I laughed.

2127. DanDillon - 12/28/1999 10:05:44 PM

PM,
...speaking Australian...

What does that mean?

2128. PincherMartin - 12/28/1999 10:11:42 PM

Speaking the Australian variant of English

2129. DanDillon - 12/28/1999 10:20:35 PM

This raises a question that often puzzles me: Are there such languages as American and Australian?

I'd like to suggest they're just dialects; we all are able to communicate here thanks to the phenomenon of bidialectism.

2130. Candide - 12/28/1999 10:33:18 PM

My resident fusspot says they are not different enough for dialects. Just variants of vocabulary and usage.

Me, I dunno.

2131. PincherMartin - 12/28/1999 10:43:15 PM

Dan --

Are there such languages as American and Australian?

Of course not. I didn't mean to suggest that the two were separate languages. And I have no idea how linguists classify them. Dialects, I suppose. But the variations between the most common spoken forms of English used in Australia and the United States were being discussed, and I mentioned what I thought was the relevant point about Australian actors having a wider international range in the range of acting roles they could assume. I wondered if it might have something to do with the type of English spoken in Australia. It could, of course, have to do with nothing more than necessity since the size of Australia might force Australian actors to be more adaptable than either English or American actors.

2132. Candide - 12/28/1999 10:49:01 PM

PincherMartin #2131

It's both the need for work and the cultural dexterity. This part of the world has strong links to British culture and to American culture.

2133. PincherMartin - 12/28/1999 10:52:27 PM

Sometimes I do wish there was an edit function here:

...wider international range in the range of acting roles they could assume.

should be

...wider international range of acting roles they could assume.

2134. Candide - 12/28/1999 10:57:32 PM

Japanese gardeners say that perfection is vulgar.

2135. PincherMartin - 12/28/1999 11:06:15 PM

Candide --

It's not so much perfection I seek as simply a way to save face.

2136. Candide - 12/29/1999 12:03:21 AM

PincherMartin:
You could dye your whiskers green
And then could wear so large a fan that they could not be seen.

2137. Candide - 12/29/1999 1:54:29 AM

ScottLoar

I have been thinking and have decided to say that if I have inadvertantly offended you I am truly sorry. I realise that you are an entertaining and intelligent contributor to this forum so please don't be angry with my knee-jerk reaction to criticism of my old town. I'm just a dog defending its pack after all. OK. Bitch defending its pack if that helps.

2138. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/29/1999 5:44:34 AM

Candide (Message # 2105):
My husband was annoyed, when we first arrived in Britain, by the BBC announcers who pronounced 'one' as 'won' to rhyme with John.

I've never noticed this one, but I agree with your husband: BBC announcers are annoying.

Message # 2110:
In Australia, Sydney, is often pronounced with perhaps a lean towards 'ee' rather than a short i.

I tested this on half a dozen Australians today.

Not a single one used an "ee" sound, and all were aghast when I suggested the possibility. It's a short i sound, full stop.

They said "Seedney" sounded like how an ignorant and illiterate foreigner might say it. Or a New Zealander trying to overcorrect to avoid saying "Sudney."

Australians are lazy with consonants in the same way that Americans often are. I was walking along a pedestrian mall once when a spruiker outside a large book shop called out - as far as I could tell — over a microphone: "Australian riders. Australian riders. get your books signed by Australian riders." 'WriTers' being the intended word.

There's nothing lazy about it. The two sounds are the same intervocalically in all dialects of English. Anyone trying to pronounce them differently is using a hypercorrect (and incorrect) pronunciation, whether s/he be in the Antipodes, North America, or the British Isles. It's like people who pronounce the "t" in "often" (a sound which has never been correct, historically).

I appreciate your point about singing, as sounds are often enunciated unnaturally in singing. But what holds true for singing does not hold true for speech.

Btw, what is a “spruiker”?

2139. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/29/1999 5:47:42 AM

CalGal Message # 2112:
There is a difference in pronunciation between writers and riders?

No, not in any native speaker dialect of English.

That's as silly as Irv's> insistence that caught and cot aren't homonyms.

I know you know the score on this one, but I'll clarify it for the benefit of others. "cot" and "caught" are only homophones in California (and possibly other parts of the western USA), and nowhere else in the English-speaking world. So, they are indeed homophones for you, but not for most of us.

Candide Message # 2114:
I should add that I greatly enjoy American speech in all its manifestations. Also Australian speech.

I'm the same way. I have a deep appreciation of both American and Antipodean accents, and enjoy learning more about both. British accents, otoh, can really drive me up a wall.

Something that maddens Australians is that we are expected (and do) to understand the most regional accents in American movies but Australian movies are often rejected by US distributors because they say nobody will understand the accent.

Australian films, and in fact all things Australian, are increasingly popular in the USA, so I don't think this is a fair comment.

Also Australian TV documentaries with respected Australian commentators are often given a voice-over by an American actor. It makes Aussies spit tacks.

Well, I've seen exactly the same thing in reverse on Australian TV, where American shows are dubbed in Australian accents. It is merely a move on the part of the TV networks in each country to appeal to the average viewer, and nothing deeper should be read into it.

2140. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/29/1999 5:49:08 AM

Pincher Message # 2120:
Australia does indeed produce a large number of excellent films. However, I beg to differ with your inclusion of “The Year of Living Dangerously” on the list. The film bears no relation to reality in Indonesia, and since that was the point of the film, it is a failure.

I would add Bryan Brown to your list of Australian actors.

Also, It's interesting to me -- and relevant to this thread -- how easily Australians fit into American roles in American movies.

I’ve noticed the same thing. I think it has to do with the fundamental similarities between American and Australian societies. And the British veneer on Australian society allows them to fit into British roles as well. Your point that the same doesn’t work for Americans is very true as well.

It probably also has to do with the smaller market in Australia, and the fact that Australian actors have to be more versatile.

I did notice one thing when I was in Australia that was interesting... when given a choice between British and American cultures, Australians seem more comfortable with Americans. I saw one TV show where there was an American guest and also a guest from England. The Australians teamed up with the American to make things almost unbearable for the British guest (who seemed a fairly decent person, though he didn’t take it well at all).

Candide Message # 2130:
My resident fusspot says they are not different enough for dialects.

If your resident fusspot has a workable definition for dialects, please let all of linguistic science know. I think a good case can be made for calling Australian and American English dialects... both have strong and readily recognizeable cultural bases while remaining mutually intelligible.

2141. KuligintheHooligan - 12/29/1999 8:20:05 AM

Then I thought to myself, "Why not post in every thread?"

2142. DanDillon - 12/29/1999 8:23:21 AM

Well aren't you nifty.

2143. KuligintheHooligan - 12/29/1999 8:35:27 AM

No, just a bit bored actually.

2144. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/29/1999 9:11:27 AM

Kuligin:
"Why not post in every thread?"

Because it is obnoxious and adds nothing to the topic at hand. It is spam of the worst sort.

I might even be tempted to delete posts of this nature here... and I've never deleted any posts in this thread. I ask you to please take note of my No Spam policy.

2145. Dantheman - 12/29/1999 9:14:59 AM

Irv,
Are other obscure types of luncheon meat permitted? Souse? Pimento loaf? Loose meat?

Inquiring minds want to know.

2146. PincherMartin - 12/29/1999 9:28:55 AM

Irv --

Thanks for the comments.

Australia does indeed produce a large number of excellent films. However, I beg to differ with your inclusion of “The Year of Living Dangerously” on the list. The film bears no relation to reality in Indonesia, and since that was the point of the film, it is a failure.

I've given up on believing I can get any historical accuracy out of a film. Artists fudging the details of a historical event is a tradition that goes all the way back to Homer. In the case of movies, the director's desire to make a dramatic film will always trump the desire to make a historically accurate film. The Year of Living Dangerously is good drama with two gorgeous actors in Gibson and Weaver and a great director in Peter Weir.

2147. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/29/1999 9:35:18 AM

Pincher:
Fair enough. For me, the comic book portrayal of Indonesia overrides anything else, but I can't argue with the talents of the film's personnel.

Dantheman:
I have nothing against most luncheon meats, as my glad tolerance of a great deal of baloney in this thread proves.

2148. Dantheman - 12/29/1999 9:39:31 AM

Irv #2147,
That's because you're surrounded by so many hams, and even a few turkeys.

2149. DanDillon - 12/29/1999 9:43:34 AM

I'd rather be fowl than a loaf.

2150. Dantheman - 12/29/1999 9:44:21 AM

DanD,
Being fowl seems fair to me.

2151. DanDillon - 12/29/1999 10:27:54 AM

Are you calling me a Thane?

2152. Dantheman - 12/29/1999 10:30:59 AM

DanD,
It's your Thane
Do what you wanna do!

2153. marjoribanks - 12/29/1999 11:31:55 AM

Damn strange story. We've talked about the Dutch as master linguists, but the frigging Konkanis?

"PANAJI: Konkani-speaking students have a better command over English
language than their counterparts all over the world, according to data
published by US-based Educational Testing Service (ETS).

Konkani-speaking students who appeared for the Test of English as
Foreign Language (TOEFL) conducted by ETS at around 150 centres all
over the
world have consistently emerged at the top during 1993-98.

The basic examination conducted by the New Jersey-based institution
which
helps students get admission in universities has Konkani candidates in
their
elements and they get the best average in the entire world.

An Israeli linguist Dr Dennis Kurzon yesterday told reporters that this interesting data had prompted
him
to conduct research to find out why they excel in English.

According to the ETS data, a Konkani student's average grade was 622
during
the 1993-95 TOEFL exam while Maltese and Dutch students' average was
610 and
608 respectively.

During 1995-96, they again scored over Dutch students and managed to
get an
average of 615 while Danish students secured 609. In 1996-97 and
1997-98,
Konkani students again outstripped their Dutch counterparts."

2154. marjoribanks - 12/29/1999 11:32:52 AM

I, by the way, am a master-linguist Konkani.

2155. hashke - 12/29/1999 12:14:22 PM

Konkani students again outstripped their Dutch counterparts."

That's onkanny. Wooden you know that they would shoe off?

2156. Dantheman - 12/29/1999 12:48:42 PM

"Konkani students again outstripped their Dutch counterparts."

And here I didn't know that removing clothes was a section of the TOEFL test.

well, someone had to say it...

2157. hashke - 12/29/1999 1:13:54 PM

That was OEFL!

2158. Dantheman - 12/29/1999 1:29:10 PM

Thank you, hashke. It's nice to knwo when one's favorite pastime is appreciated. After all, I can sit around and pun-tificate for hours.

2159. hashke - 12/29/1999 1:32:32 PM

When in drought, pun.

2160. Dantheman - 12/29/1999 1:33:20 PM

The prose here is becoming un-pun-etrable.

2161. PelleNilsson - 12/29/1999 1:41:40 PM

Welcome back Hashke! Been travelling?

2162. ScottLoar - 12/29/1999 2:07:20 PM

I cannot believe that the results of the TOEFL exams are considered in any way a measurement of a groups' ability in English. The cheating in TOEFL exams is notorious. The TOEFL exam is considered another hurdle to entry into US graduate school and qualification for financial aid, and so considered fair game to outwit and cheat at any opportunity, just like proclamations of faith are not unconscionable if needed to gain a grant or scholarship. Or so do some cultures allow.

2163. ScottLoar - 12/29/1999 2:11:42 PM

Mind you, the Konkanis may be exceptional linguists blessed with most excellent instruction in English with a tradition of English literature, composition and critical analysis exceeding that common to most public and private school education in the US and England.

Maybe. Maybe

2164. Candide - 12/29/1999 2:17:44 PM

IrvingSnodgrass

Ooh! Where to start?
Australians are lazy with consonants in the same way that Americans
often are. I was walking along a pedestrian mall once when a spruiker outside a large book shop called out - as far as I could tell — over a microphone: "Australian riders. Australian riders. get your books signed by Australian riders." 'WriTers' being the intended word.

There's nothing lazy about it. The two sounds are the same
intervocalically in all dialects of English. Anyone trying to pronounce them differently is using a hypercorrect (and incorrect) pronunciation, whether s/he be in the Antipodes, North America, or the British Isles. It's like people who pronounce the "t" in "often" (a sound which has never been correct, historically).

I know that you have studied this IrvingSnodgrass but I assure you as one who has lived and worked in Britain for an extended period (a decade) and visited it often since then that to substitute 'D' for 'T' is considered very strange indeed and is absolutely not done except by kids imitating American pop singers. I'm no linguist but I was (she said blushingly) often complimented about my speech by those who cared too much about such things. I had to rapidly adjust my speech when I came to Australia in order not to alienate people whom I met casually who all bristled at what they assumed was a British voice.

2165. Candide - 12/29/1999 3:32:11 PM

IrvingSnodgrass

As I said further down. Sydney rhymes with kidney. I was not clear enough when I wrote the earlier piece.
In Australia, Sydney, is often pronounced with perhaps a lean towards 'ee' rather than a short i.
This was meant to be in contrast with the New Zealand pronunciation, not to indicate that an Italian vowel was used. My fault for an inadequate explanation.

I tested this on half a dozen Australians today.

Not a single one used an "ee" sound, and all were aghast when I
suggested the possibility. It's a short i sound, full stop.
Yes it is.

They said "Seedney" sounded like how an ignorant and illiterate
foreigner might say it. Or a New Zealander trying to overcorrect to
avoid saying "Sudney." I apologise to all 'new' Australians who were described by other Australians as ignorant and illiterate. Some highly educated immigrants retain their accent for the rest of their lives.

2166. Candide - 12/29/1999 3:40:37 PM

irvingSnodgrass
I appreciate your point about singing, as sounds are often enunciated unnaturally in singing. But what holds true for singing does not hold true for speech.

Only ghastly singers distort sound more than minimally for physically unreachable notes. I particularly loath the "Cawstaw Divaw' (casta diva school of singing. I had already adjusted my brain for that one.
“The Year of Living
Dangerously” on the list. The film bears no relation to reality in
Indonesia, and since that was the point of the film, it is a failure.
Agreed.

2167. PelleNilsson - 12/29/1999 3:45:03 PM

I protest most strongly the claim that writers and riders are pronounced the same. The 't' lives, please listen to the BBC.

2168. Candide - 12/29/1999 3:46:11 PM

IrvingSnodgrass
Btw, what is a “spruiker”?

A spruiker is someone who sells something loudly in public. In my Collins dictionary it says: Austral. slang. To speak in public (used esp. of a showman or salesman), [C20: of unknown origin] —spruiker n..

2169. CalGal - 12/29/1999 3:47:01 PM

The only times I can think of that we enunciate the "t" is when the "d" pronunciation has a different meaning.

"Biters" and "biders"--and then only if someone misunderstood would I say, carefully, "Bi-T-ers".

2170. SnowOwl - 12/29/1999 3:49:53 PM

Pelle,

This is not really the appropriate thread for these questions, but I'm seeking your help. Yesterday I received a large parcel from my son in Sweden, which included a number of different Swedish foods. One, which comes in a tube, is called Rokt Renkot and he has translated this as reindeer meat cheese. Could you enlighten me please? There is also a can of something called Norrlandw Polsa to which he has taped a note "Swedish equivalent of Haggis". Any explanation you can add would be very much appreciated There are several other tubes of what smells like fish paste, but I'm happy enough to eat that without translation.

2171. SnowOwl - 12/29/1999 3:50:40 PM

That is Norrlands Polsa.

2172. Candide - 12/29/1999 3:54:08 PM

IrvingSnodgrass
CalGal Message # 2112:
There is a difference in pronunciation between writers and riders?

"No, not in any native speaker dialect of English".

How are you using the word dialect here? My dictionary gives'dialect' as: "a form of language spoken in a particular geographical area, or by members of a particular social class or occupational group, distinguished by its vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation.

I can honestly assure you that in British English (I think even in mummerset) the confusing of 'D' and 'T' is NOT done. In relaxed spoken British English the 'T' is not exaggerated. It is slightly 'dental?' (I don't know the official terms) but it is completely distinct from the 'D'. COMPLETELY! I would go down fighting to the grave insisting on this point.

2173. Candide - 12/29/1999 3:57:44 PM

IrvingSnodgrass
Well, I've seen exactly the same thing in reverse on Australian TV,
where American shows are dubbed in Australian accents.

I only know of one series in Australia where this was done and nobody liked it. The Australian journalist George Negus read the text of a ghastly British series about famous crimes. The series was awful to start with and dear old George's Aussie voice without the visual benefits of the hairy chest and the gold chain went down like a stone.

2174. Candide - 12/29/1999 4:00:32 PM

IrvingSnodgrass

If your resident fusspot has a workable definition for dialects, pleease let all of linguistic science know. I think a good case can be made for calling Australian and American English dialects... both have strong and readily recognizeable cultural bases while remaining mutually intelligible.

I'm sure he'd agree with you. He just sort of threw that at me in passing. My fault as usual.

2175. Candide - 12/29/1999 4:12:24 PM

PelleNilsson#2167
I protest most strongly the claim that writers and riders are
pronounced the same. The 't' lives, please listen to the BBC.

Thank you Pelle.

By the way by 'lazy' I meant the sound is lazy, not the people using it. It sounds kind of sexy.

2176. Candide - 12/29/1999 4:15:14 PM

SnowOwl I spotted a Russian recipe left by you in Home and garden. I mean to go back and have another look. Enjoy your Herringstan haggis.

2177. PelleNilsson - 12/29/1999 4:31:30 PM

SnowOwl

One, which comes in a tube, is called Rokt Renkot and he has translated this as reindeer meat cheese.

I'm quite certain that this is processed cheese to which has been added a small quantity of smoked reindeer meat. Should be quite tasty.

Norrlands Polsa.

Yes, it's a haggis type thing, although haggis, I think (I've only had it twice), is more spicey. I'm no fan of pölsa myself. I didn't know it came in tubes. Does your son live in the north of Sweden?

2178. SnowOwl - 12/29/1999 4:39:14 PM

Pelle,

Thanks for the information. The Norrlands Polsa is canned, it's the other stuff which is in tubes, including such delicacies as Smorgas Kaviar and MacKaviar (whatever they may be). My son lives in Stockholm. He works at the Karolinska Institute. I think he's just trying to give us a sampling of the sort of processed food that's available over there.

Candide,

I'm sure the recipe is not traditionally Russian, but it is very rich and very tasty. I fiddle around with the ingredients and usually add more dill.

2179. PelleNilsson - 12/29/1999 4:46:24 PM

SnowOwl

Kaviar is smoked and salted cod roe. Much liked in Scandinavia.

2180. PelleNilsson - 12/29/1999 4:51:57 PM

BTW SnowOwl, Karolinska is a prestigious place to work, but I guess you know that.

2181. Candide - 12/29/1999 5:22:45 PM

PelleNilsson

A contributor to a publication I edited and organised was professor and head of the psychology division in the Karolinska Institute. She corrected my English and she was right! In my defence, I was working under inhuman conditions at the time with no equipment worth mentioning. Her essay is splendid. The human factorIt's about the combination of human fallibility and imperfect technology.

2182. Candide - 12/29/1999 5:24:14 PM

IrvingSnodgrass
I received a Christmas email from my Italian linguist friend but no matter what I do I can't open it. I'll email him again and ask for a reply in plain sewing.

2183. Candide - 12/29/1999 6:40:44 PM

IrvingSnodgrass

It came to me in a vision that I had failed to mention one interesting manifestation of the 'T' phenomenon in Britain.
Cockneys swallow the 'T' in a sort of glottal stop. I lived in PuTney. The cockneys would say Pu-ney. There would be a pause but no T. For 'bottle' they would say 'bo-le'. In singers' language, a coup de glotte.

2184. Candide - 12/29/1999 6:45:28 PM

Another cockney example. Little would be 'li-le. There is a definite rhythmic grunt in the gap.

2185. hashke - 12/29/1999 6:57:57 PM

Thanks Pelle. I've been in Mexico and intend to go back soonest possible.

2186. Candide - 12/29/1999 7:30:03 PM

hashke

I was in Mexico City just before Christmas once. They had decorated everything in those wonderful Mexican colours that are like nobody else's colours.

2187. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/29/1999 10:07:16 PM

Hashké:
Welcome back! Dan beribu-ribu terima kasih atas peta Diné Bikéyah! Hebat sekali!

ScottLoar:
Don't get me started on the deficiencies of the TOEFL test. I spent 20 years preparing thousands of students for that test. It is basically useless as a measure of anything useful.

Candide:
Many British dialects (and there are many) do indeed pronounce t and the same intervocalically. Many others, particularly in the north (as well as Cockney, as you mentioned) change "t" to a glottal stop. Only RP, which is a hypercorrect and unnatural dialect (in a linguistic sense) pronounces "t" and "d" as "t" and "d." RP has influenced many educated speakers, but you won't find most speakers making such a distinction.

The best evidence for this is American and Australian speech... where do you think these two geographically disparate dialects got this feature if not from the homeland?

Only ghastly singers distort sound more than minimally for physically unreachable notes.

I was thinking more about things like rolled r's, which are commonly found in singing, and rarely in English speech (and do indeed often add a nice touch when sung).

Pelle:
The 't' lives, please listen to the BBC.

The "t" only lives in hypercorrect speech, such as the BBC. Listen to the man/woman in the street.

Candide Message # 2168:
Thanks for defining "spruiker." I had never come across the term. I'm more familiar with the British "hawker." I can't even think of what Americans call these people. Barkers?

2188. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/29/1999 10:08:17 PM

CalGal Message # 2169:
The only times I can think of that we enunciate the "t" is when the "d" pronunciation has a different meaning.

True... the sounds can be enunciated to underline the difference... but it is clearly marked as such in speech, and doesn't sound natural.

Candide Message # 2172:
How are you using the word dialect here?

British English is not a dialect... it is a collection of many dialects. Your comments refer to RP alone.

Message # 2173:
There was a show shown for years on Indonesian TV (I can't remember the title) which featured Australian accents dubbed over the original American. It was a science/educational show. I didn't even realize it was originally American until I happened to see it when visiting the USA.

Message # 2175:
There's nothing "lazy" about speech. Speech is designed to communicate, and change occurs naturally without hindering communication. Sound changes occur naturally in all languages. The change to one sound for "t" and "t" intervocalically is a natural one, and does not in any way indicate a laziness on the part of speakers. The speakers to be censured are those who fight against linguistic change (like speakers of RP). But they are sure to lose in the long run, so there's no need to make it into a cause. I said it many times in the old place: You can't fight the tide of linguistic change.

2189. DanDillon - 12/29/1999 10:09:13 PM

Dan beribu-ribu terima kasih atas peta Diné Bikéyah! Hebat sekali!

Come again?

2190. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/29/1999 10:13:58 PM

Dan:
Better sign up for an Indonesian lesson.

2191. SnowOwl - 12/29/1999 10:50:17 PM

Pelle,

We've now sampled the Rokt Renkott and the various Kaviars and found them very tasty indeed, although the Kaviar is different from the caviar I'm familiar with (not as familiar as I'd like to be). Thanks for your help.

Yes, I'm aware that the Karolinska is a prestigious place. My son felt he was very lucky indeed to get a position there, and it's been a tremendous career move for him.

And to bring this back to the subject of the thread, his one regret is that he's not progressing very well with learning Swedish. The language of his lab is English, all of the people he has met speak perfect English and I think they find it easier to converse with him in that rather than listen to his bumbling attempts at their language.
As, however, it appears he will be settling permanently in Sweden I imagine he will have to become proficient in the language at some stage.

2192. hashke - 12/30/1999 12:42:45 AM

Irv:

Saya senang sekali bahwa Anda suka peta. Akan ada ujian nama-nama tempat untuk Anda kalau Anda datang ke Baru Meksiko.

(Saya berkalakar saja).

2193. hashke - 12/30/1999 12:54:01 AM

Candide:

Much in Mexico is high color: mariachi, corrida, pachanga. It hides what is debajo el volcán.

2194. Candide - 12/30/1999 1:02:39 AM

IrvingSnodgrass

Ooh, ooh and ooh again.
Only RP, which is a hypercorrect and unnatural dialect (in a
linguistic sense) pronounces "t" and "d" as "t" and "d." RP has
influenced many educated speakers, but you won't find most
speakers making such a distinction.
NO NO NO. Not only toffee-nosed snobs pronounce the 'T'. People with regional accents also pronounce it. Nearly everyone pronounces it. I tavelled a great deal with touring companies and as an oratorio soloist and mixed a great deal with the locals who were mostly working class people who sang in choirs for relaxation. I really am not sounding off the top of my head.
I did say that by lazy I was referring to the pleasant aesthetic effect on the ear of the 'D' sound, not calling the people lazy. It can sound very graceful. It's just that to my ears there is theabsence of a delicate expressive sound — but certainly at the same time plenty of even better sounds are gained.
IrvingSnodgrass #2112
"No, not in any native speaker dialect of English".

It was the placement of the word 'dialect' in your sentence that confused me. Of course I am very familiar with English dialects from Devon to Northumberland. (I can't resist saying they all pronounce'T'.)

2195. Candide - 12/30/1999 1:20:58 AM

Here in Australia we have the MacQuarie Dictionary. I accept that speech changes and grows.

The BBC has welcomed in many regional speakers and the Home Counties voice is no longer the dominant voice on the air-waves. In fact the joke was that upper-class Nigels and Susans were rapidly cultivating working-class accents.

The rolled 'r' is not used in English singing except for comic effect. Just as English dancers move their limbs more closely to their bodies than say, Russian dancers, so the genteel English sing with restraint, with some blessed exceptions.

In Italian that's a different story. Here's a lovely witty example from Rossini's Cenerentola (Cinderella). I'll syllabify it as sung. Unless I place a hyphen assume that all the syllables are elided into one note.

Que-sto`e un-no-doav-vi-lu-pa-to, que-sto è un-grrrrrup-po-rrrin-trre-ccia-to.

In ordinary Italian Questo è un nodo avvilupato, questo è un gruppo rintrecciato
It's one of those lovely rhythmic build-ups in which Rossini excelled and the 'rrr' is a lovely repeating comic and rhythmic touch.

2196. Candide - 12/30/1999 1:26:44 AM

IrvingSnodgrass
The best evidence for this is American and Australian speech...
where do you think these two geographically disparate dialects got
this feature if not from the homeland?

Sure. And there were many of those. Ireland for one example. The cockney tune is strong in Sydney speech.

My own family was a mixture of Scottish and English. My poet aunt who was born last century spoke exactly like a recording I have heard of Lord Gladstone. Uninflected and beautiful. No 'poshery' about it. Her niece has drifted from that I fear. A sort of trans-Tasman/trans-Atlantic mess.

2197. Candide - 12/30/1999 1:39:13 AM

hashke #2193

Yes there certainly is a volcano underneath.(My Spanish is very limited) I fell in love with Mexico City (Qantas used to have a route that passed through it) but could not accustom myself to 3 year olds selling things in the streets after midnight, nor to the police with whom we had a frightening experience when a police car crashed into the back of our cab then a policeman pulled a gun on the cab-driver. My biologist niece has just attended a conference there and they were escorted by police wherever they went. Kidnapping being the go.

2198. Candide - 12/30/1999 2:05:07 AM

IrvingSnodgrass

I wonder which science show that was? I'd be interested to find out. The science team at the ABC is very strong. We also see British shows (in British) and David Suzuki from Canada. Also many other American and European and I even remember an Egyptian archeological show.

Do you ever see The Bush Tucker Man? There's Australian speech for you!

2199. PelleNilsson - 12/30/1999 3:13:27 AM

SnowOwl

Your son's problem with learning Swedish is exactly the same as I had with Arabic, for which I am regularly castigated by persons in this thread who shall remain nameless.

2200. Candide - 12/30/1999 5:46:34 AM

IrvingSnodgrass

The monoTony of endless Tea
Translates inTo fuTiliTy

To Tease it so DidacTically
Is TanTamounT To cruelTy

DialecTical hyperbole
Cramps riDers for eTerniTy.

So I am righT and you are wriTe
So T or D, good grief, gooD nighT.

2201. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/30/1999 5:49:28 AM

Candide:
NO NO NO. Not only toffee-nosed snobs pronounce the 'T'. People with regional accents also pronounce it. Nearly everyone pronounces it.

Your observation is at odds with both the linguistic literature on British dialects and my on experience working with many British English teachers for many years. The pronounced "t" is a distinguishing characteristic of educated speech in Britain, and that's all.

Of course I am very familiar with English dialects from Devon to Northumberland. (I can't resist saying they all pronounce'T'.)

Well, of course they all pronounce "t"... but only when it is word-initial, word-final or before or after a consonant. I am speaking of intervocalic "t" (between two vowels) and I know of no British dialects which pronounce this, except in "educated" speech. As I said, the proof is that it isn't pronounced outside of England either.

I wonder which science show that was?

I can't remember the title, but I think it had "2000" in the name.

Pelle:
Your son's problem with learning Swedish is exactly the same as I had with Arabic

Not so, for two reasons: (1) Almost every Swede at all levels of society speaks excellent English, which is certainly not true in the Arab world (though it's more true in Jordan than in Yemen, of the countries you lived in), and (2) SnowOwl's son intends to settle permanently in Sweden (which gives him added motivation to learn Swedish that you never had with Arabic).

So, never fear, the castigation will continue.

2202. Candide - 12/30/1999 6:29:43 AM

IrvingSnodgrass #2201
Your observation is at odds with both the linguistic literature on
British dialects and my on experience working with many British
English teachers for many years. The pronounced "t" is a
distinguishing characteristic of educated speech in Britain, and
that's all.

I guess the Brits have all become educated then. I can't argue with your academic researchers. But, I think it was more the glottal variety of burying, rather than the up front D that was so surprising to me in Australia. After all one can't argue with 'surprise'. Being plunged from hot to cold is needed for that type of reaction. It was new to me and to my husband who worked in Reuters in London and later with a book publisher where he met all sorts of people, not all home-counties types.

2203. Candide - 12/30/1999 6:30:12 AM

I've racked my brain trying to think of a 'D' replacement and I honestly can't and I do have a reasonable ear for such things.

I remembered the professional 'characters' seated on benches outside a pub in Appledore in Devon. They greeted my husband with "Ullo me 'ansom. Arr yerr buyin' a drink me 'ansom?"
And I sang with a Northumbrian chorus in a touring opera company that took a skeleton chorus and padded it with locals. Northumbrian is almost unintelligible. I don't know whether you have heard the late Owen Brannigan's records of Northumbrian folk songs. The Northumbrians said things like "me hinny" and they used multiple vowels in single syllable words thus making several syllables. But I can't remember a D substitute for T no matter how I try.

In the case of 'rider' for 'writer', I think the fact that they would mentally close the word 'write' might have prevented the D substitute, if your intervocalic idea is the applicable one.

I'm not being cantankerous, just reporting my experience. I'm trying to mentally revisit Gloucestershire which has a very slurred dialect but can't 'hear' the D-T even with the DTs.

2204. Candide - 12/30/1999 6:33:47 AM

I can't remember the title, but I think it had "2000" in the name.

There was an Australian originated program of that name that they sold the rights for overseas. I can't remember who to. The ratings failed in Australia.It started as ABC, shifted to commercial then I lost track of it.

2205. Candide - 12/30/1999 6:36:32 AM

Shut up Candide!

2206. PelleNilsson - 12/30/1999 6:46:32 AM

BTW, apart from the accent, you can recognize Swedes and Norwegians by the fact that certain consonants, among them 'd', 'l' and 't' sound "thin". That is because we pronounce them with the tip of the tongue against the front teeth, which native English speakers do not.

2207. ycmeehan - 12/30/1999 7:35:13 AM

Pelle,
I see that I pronounce the 'd', 'l', 't' with the tip of the tongue against the front teeth. How do English speakers pronounce these consonants, please?

2208. PelleNilsson - 12/30/1999 7:48:28 AM

ycmeehan

Long time ....!

Try to put the tip against the ridge you feel a little behind the front teeth. It produces a more "fruity" sound.

2209. PelleNilsson - 12/30/1999 8:09:53 AM

And, yc, if you want to go really American let the tip slip to the backward slope of that ridge.

2210. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/30/1999 8:47:46 AM

Pelle & yc:
You have uncovered one of the features of a European accent in English. Since most European languages (all, except English, I believe) pronounce "t" and "d" with dental articulation, it is often hard for these speakers to make the English alveolar sound (pronounced, as Pelle identified, on the alveolar ridge behind the teeth).

Conversely, you will find English speakers pronouncing these consonants improperly in European languages, as they maintain the alveolar articulation when the correct articulation is dental.

2211. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/30/1999 8:52:33 AM

Candide:
I must not have been clear above. When I said that British regional dialects did not pronounce "t," I did not mean that they all use a "d" instead. A great many British dialects (Cockney, Liverpool, Sheffield, Yorkshire, for a few) substitute a glottal stop for "t" so you get pronunciations such as "bo'ul" for "bottle." This pronunciation is even found in the USA for some words, such as "button," which is usually pronounced "bu'un." The "d" pronunciation intervocalically is most often found in Southern British dialects, especially in the Southwest of England.

2212. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/30/1999 8:54:12 AM

Candide:
You may well be right about the TV show... I have no idea where it originated, but I've seen it in both American and Australian versions.

2213. Ronski - 12/30/1999 10:05:05 AM

Is it true that Danish uses a glottal stop, but Swedish doesn't?

2214. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/30/1999 11:01:43 AM

Ronski:
Unfortunately, my source (an article by the legendary Einar Haugen of Harvard University) doesn't cover glottal stops. I hope stostosto and Pelle can enlighten us.

However, I did discover the following fascinating facts about the Herringstani tongues:

• Danish has undergone the very same change we are discussing above wrt English. From Haugen:

A much later development was the trend in Danish and adjacent areas of Norwegian and Swedish to voice short fortis stops p t k to b d g after vowels.

It's interesting to find this same change (although in English it is still limited to t to d) in another Germanic language.

• An interesting note on "r" sounds (I especially like Haugen's use of "insidious"):

While most of Norwegian and Swedish has retained the Germanic (and Indo-European) r as a tongue-tip trill (or tap), Danish has adopted the French and German Uvular r [R], weakening it usually to a vocalic glide. This insidious sound has spread also into many areas of southern and western Norway and Sweden, still not including either Oslo or Stockholm.

And two notes on unique sounds in dialects of Herringstani:

• ...both countries [Sweden and Norway] show a widespread weakening of the trills before dentals, resulting in a set of retroflex consonants of Indic type [why didn't Pelle mention this in our earlier discussion of retroflex consonants??!]: rt (retroflex t), rs (retroflex s), rl (retroflex l), rn (retroflex n), rd (retroflex d).

• The same dialects have a so-called 'thick' (calcuminal) flap derived from r* and l that is virtually unique among the world's languages; though it is universal in the dialects of eastern Norway and north-central Sweden, it is not accepted in elite circles.

2215. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/30/1999 11:13:36 AM

The sound which appears as "r*" above was my attempt (using a symbol which the Mote won't accept) to denote r + edh (the voiced th sound in english).

2216. marjoribanks - 12/30/1999 11:17:12 AM

Pak Hashke!

Travel tales! Travel tales, at the soonest.

2217. CharlieL - 12/30/1999 11:40:28 AM

Another attempt at translation:

Dan beribu-ribu terima kasih atas peta Diné Bikéyah! Hebat sekali!

Dan, convert your rubles into cash, and pedal your bike! Habits, basically!

2218. DanDillon - 12/30/1999 12:04:42 PM

Chuck,
You always seem to have just the right answer. Humor!

Happy New Year, all. See you on the other side.

2219. Ronski - 12/30/1999 12:06:51 PM

At 5:00 a.m., Eastern Standard Time (New York), it will be 2000 in Tonga.

2220. CharlieL - 12/30/1999 12:33:32 PM

Where Y2K will be thick on the ground...

2221. PelleNilsson - 12/30/1999 2:00:25 PM

Ronski

I'm fairly sure that Danish has a glottal stop, but let's hope sto reads and confirms.

The "insidious 'r'" spread rapidly in the early 20th century but has stopped a bit south of Gothenburg. There are Gothenburgians who have it but it is considered non-genuine and vulgar.

I did not comment on "retroflex consonants" because I don't know what they are. It is true, however, that in "standard Swedish" the combinations 'rl', 'rd' and 'rt' produce sounds very similar to the English 'l', 'd' and 't'.

Yes, there is a "thick' (calcuminal) flap derived from r* and l". It is accepable in dialects but if I were to use it, it would be considered a conscious vulgarisation.

Side issue: What does "virtually unique" mean?

2222. CalGal - 12/30/1999 2:03:50 PM

What does "virtually unique" mean?

The information is only found on a single URL.

2223. Candide - 12/30/1999 2:34:34 PM

IrvingSnodgrass
I've just woken up and I haven't read the new posts and I am probably repeating what is above me - but here is my new millennium present to you. I listening to the BBC who were being very boring with a program that was about a sort of Disney theme-park recreation of Robin Hood and lo, the Sherrif of Nottingham said the magic word"I'm enjoying i'."

Then I remembembered Londoners from the East End saying "Know wo' i mean?"

And it became clear to me in a blinding flash.

The 'D' exchange for 'T' was blinding (or deafening) me to the bleeding obvious and I had forgotten.
There's no' a lo' of bo'le in the geezer.
There's not a lot of bottle in the geezer.

Not 'D'. No. Glottal at all times as far as I can remember. I await the 'D' 'T' experience and will concede if one is produced but Know wo' i mean?"

2224. Candide - 12/30/1999 2:36:31 PM

And some of us drop the last f from sherifF.

2225. Candide - 12/30/1999 4:14:25 PM

Great stuff while I slept. I bow to wisdom and learning. It was all very impressive and interesting. Thanks all.

2226. Dantheman - 12/30/1999 4:20:51 PM

Candide #2223,
Similarly, a bridge connecting Philadelphia with New Jersey named for a famous poet is uniformly pronounced "Wal' Whi'man" here.

2227. Candide - 12/30/1999 4:52:01 PM

Dantheman

Well wa' d'yuh knaw?

I should add that Glaswegians drop every final t there is, just about.
Glasgow people for those who are unfamiliar with the term.

2228. Candide - 12/30/1999 4:53:23 PM

Walt Whitman was an idol during my adolescence.

2229. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/30/1999 8:06:07 PM

Pelle:
It is true, however, that in "standard Swedish" the combinations 'rl', 'rd' and 'rt' produce sounds very similar to the English 'l', 'd' and 't'.

English doesn't have retroflex consonants except "r." The sound combinations Haugen notes should produce sounds which are only found in Indic languages (plus Pashto), among Indo-European tongues. Swedish and Norwegian, therefore, are the only IE languages outside the Indian sub-continent with this feature, which I find fascinating.

Candide:
For the d/t substitution in England, try Bristol and parts of the Southwest.

The dropped final t is a different phenomenon than the changing intervocalic t. It is not nearly as widespread in the English-speaking world.

2230. ProfEmeritus - 12/30/1999 10:47:30 PM

Pak Hashke, Pak Marj, Pak Irving dan teman-teman semua di seluruh dunia:

SELAMAT MILLENNIUM BARU!

2231. Candide - 12/30/1999 11:17:49 PM

IrvingSnodgrass

And here I am of course out of my depth and I bow respectfully to your deeper knowledge.

I did a three week 'season' in Torquay and the Northumbrian chorus came down to swell the Devon chorus. In the pub I found myself having to translate for both groups. They were totally unable to understand each other. I found them both relatively easy because I had known a Northumbrian in New Zealand and somehow the buzzing language of the Devonians was accessible to me. I remember the Devon folk had a slow drowsy, heavy way of speaking with 'R' not so much rolled as a sustained 'r'.

Another thing I remember is less relevant but I can't resist telling it. Our stage manager was a large dreamy Scot with private means who lived on the Isle of Man. He had been in the army and always wore a kilt. It was hot in Torquay while we were there and he was taking his ease in a relaxed posture when some genteel elderly ladies from the Torquay chorus sort of screamed and rushed from the rehearsal room. Our stage manager had solved for them the eternal mystery of do they or don't they wear anything under the kilt.

He was a self-taught musical genius who could play entire complex scores like 'Rosenkavalier' entirely by ear but with all the internal orchestral parts. And he minded my wallet in his sporren when I was on stage.

2232. Candide - 12/30/1999 11:28:40 PM

I felt insecure and I was right to. SporrAn. Sporran, a large pouch, usually of fur, worn hanging from a belt in front of a kilt in men's Scottish Highland dress. C 19:from Scottish gaelic sporan purse; [compare Irish Gaelic sparan purse, Late Latin bursa bag.]
And I add modern Italian bórsa.

2233. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/30/1999 11:58:14 PM

Candide:
Actually, the "r" in the Southwest of England is not so different from the American "r," and some linguists have posited this as the origin of the rhotic nature of American English.

2234. Candide - 12/31/1999 12:19:26 AM

IrvingSnodgrass

That's interesting. There was a TV documentary program some years ago about the Scots Irish who have infiltrated many parts of the globe. (My mother's family are part of this mob.) It visited the West Indies, Canada, America (Appalachins), and of course Australia and New Zealand. It traced common speech practices in all these areas. You will know about this of course.

2235. SnowOwl - 12/31/1999 1:29:34 AM

Candide,

I am married to a Glaswegian and lived in Glasgow for some years after marriage. I am completely unaware that the dropping of the final t is a widespread phenomenon there. There are word usages such as didnae for did not, and can nae for cannot, but in general the final t is enunciated.

2236. Candide - 12/31/1999 2:30:11 AM

SnowOwl

I'm mainly going by a wee Scottish/Russian/Jewish friend of mine who grew up in her granny's apartment in the Gorbals. When it rained her granny placed an umbrella over her bed. She can of course speak clearly when she wants (she's a very successful wee singer) but she lapses into a strong accent sometimes and thats when she drops the final 't'. Also a dear old Scottish chap I knew who was the adopted father of a student friend.

I bow to your superior familiarity with Glaswegian speech. How would you characterise 'working class' Glaswegian speech? I mean the patterns of consonants etc.? Not the middle class version. My little Scottish man who was my friend's father was a wharf labourer and one of the finest natural intelligences I have encountered. He introduced me to Drambuie. (Is that how it's spelled?)

2237. IrvingSnodgrass - 12/31/1999 4:34:11 AM

Candide:
The Scots-Irish indeed had a profound influence on the development of American speech. I read something about this influence recently, but I can't remember the details.

2238. PelleNilsson - 12/31/1999 7:30:28 AM

The Swedish word with the most consecutive consonants:

Världsschlager

2239. hashke - 12/31/1999 10:06:06 AM

Pak Gurubesar:

Terima kasih! Selamat Tahhun Baru dan Millennium Baru dari Meksiko Baru!

2240. hashke - 12/31/1999 10:55:36 AM

...Tahun...

2241. Candide - 12/31/1999 3:14:08 PM

SnowOwl

Well now, a New Year drunk's (sorry IrvingSnodgrass) confession. When I told my husband what I had said about Glaswegian pronunciation he was outraged. He grew up in Dunedin (the Edinburgh of the south) and he "What nonsense! All the Scots pronounce their t's extremely clearly".
He declares (and I begin to suspect that he has reason) that the long drawn out vowels are finished with strong consonants.

I have had less than four hours' sleep and may regret this confession when I have looked a currawong in the eye.

2242. Candide - 12/31/1999 3:16:18 PM

SnowOwl will possibly agree that the great Scottish sound is "Och!"

2243. SnowOwl - 12/31/1999 3:31:51 PM

This morning it's more like an Ouch, rather than an och. But yes, och, or och aye, are uttered at every appropriate and inappropriate moment. I hope you had a good night, Candide, and best wishes for the New Year.

2244. Candide - 12/31/1999 4:42:23 PM

SnowOwl

The very best of new years to you too.

2245. PelleNilsson - 1/2/2000 1:29:16 PM

To all Slavic speakers.

For reasons that may become apparent in another thread I made a search on "Societas Eruditorum" and came up with this site which seems to be in Czech.

Can anybody help me understand the gist of it?

2246. PelleNilsson - 1/2/2000 1:30:32 PM

This site. Sorry.

2247. ycmeehan - 1/2/2000 6:26:44 PM

I wonder if this link will work.

American culture silencing wide use of Spanish

2248. Candide - 1/2/2000 6:47:22 PM

ycmeehan

That link was extremely interesting to an Australian. The proximity of a large Spanish-speaking zone makes a great difference to the strength of Spanish in California. Everything else in the article is true of the group I know most about in Australia, the Italians. About 15 years ago most young middle-class Italians returned to Italy because material prospects there were suddenly superior to those in Australia. The language is slowly dying among the younger Italians in Australia.
I once co-ordinated an Italian earthquake appeal at a multi-ethnic radio station and tiny Italian children would speak for their grandparents who knew no English. I know thirtyish Italian Australians in various shops and cafes who practice their bad Italian on my (non-Italian) bad Italian. They are desperate to speak Italian because they never get an opportunity and have mostly forgotten it.

2249. hashke - 1/3/2000 9:53:39 AM

Pelle:

Sorry, viewing your link leaves me with a blank Czech.

I can read some of the words but not enough to give you a coherent synopsis. Maybe Vinarsky can help, mais ubi est?

2250. stostosto - 1/3/2000 10:39:00 AM

Re intervocal 't' in BriTish English, I second Candide (and Pelle). The BeaTles had a song called "Paperback wriTer" (not "Paperback rider"). Did they fall victim of hypercorrect RP? That's news to me.

I believe I have seen scores and dozens of British TV shows, films and series, many of them portraying working class or everyday Britain, where the Candide pronunciation is prevalent. I simply can't believe your stubborn insistence otherwise, Irv. Perhaps Tmachine can help us out? Isn't she London-based? Of course, PE might be a good source as well, him being parlty brought up in Manchester, only he isn't here.

Wrt Danish: Yes, we are glottal stoppers. But Danish linguists make much of a phenomenon known as 'stødgrænsen', or (I think) the glottal stop line running east-west throughout the country, dividing the peninsula of Jutland as well as the major islands Funen and Zealand in glottal stoppers to the north of the line, and non-glottal-stoppers to the south. I have never heard this explained, since most dialectical divisions, such as you find them in this small language area, are east-west as you'd expect given the geography.

2251. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/3/2000 10:54:09 AM

sto:
It isn't my stubborn insistence... it is linguistic fact.

As for the Beatles song, please see my earlier note on singing.

2252. ilyavinarsky - 1/3/2000 12:55:35 PM

The site talks about the scientific community (the Academy of Sciences?) in the Czech Republic.

2253. ilyavinarsky - 1/3/2000 1:23:43 PM

Which is more correct:

> [...] the gigantic bloody abscess bursts, leaving not a trace of Wang.

or

> not a trace of Wang's.

?

2254. ilyavinarsky - 1/3/2000 1:24:51 PM

From the movie "The Iron Giant":

> Welcome to downtown Coolsville. Population: us.

Why not "Population: we." ?

2255. PelleNilsson - 1/3/2000 2:16:28 PM

Ilya
So you mean that Societas Eruditorum is Cezch for Academy of Science?

I don't believe you.

2256. hashke - 1/3/2000 3:42:48 PM

ycmeehan:

Por la boca muere el pez. Ojalá que haya llegado el maldito libro. Si no, de nuevo que barbaridad!

2257. PelleNilsson - 1/3/2000 4:31:30 PM

Irv

The Heringista Armed Linguistic Command (HALC) seconded by Candide will not give up on this issue. Where are these so called facts? And is it only T between wovels that is indistinguishabe from D (in your opinion)? What about 'not' and 'nod', 'hit' and 'hid' 'tin' and 'din', 'tally' and 'dally', 'subtle' and 'saddle', 'latter' and ladder'?

And if you tell me that 'tit for tat' may sound as 'did for dad'. I will laugh, yes Sir, I will laugh a great, chilling HALC laugh.

2258. DanDillon - 1/3/2000 4:35:21 PM

ilyavinarsky,

I'm not sure I understand the first of your two questions, but if I had to take a stab with the information you give, I'd say the former [Wang] is correct. It's certainly more idiomatic than the latter [Wang's], which simply doesn't make any sense.

(I'll answer your second question when I have the time. I'm running out to a birthday party.)

2259. Candide - 1/3/2000 5:22:23 PM

Ilya #2253

I haven't given up on you if you haven't given up on me. My life has been chaotic and I can't remember whether I have any unfinished translating business from you. Remind me. I'll have to look it up in my equally chaotic files.
Which is more correct:

" > [...] the gigantic bloody abscess bursts, leaving not a trace of Wang."

Definitely Wang unless it is about something belonging to the said Wang

2260. Candide - 1/3/2000 5:30:09 PM

Ilya #2254
Welcome to downtown Coolsville. Population: us.

"us" is correct. Imagine a sentence such as :"the population is us.

'Population' is the subject. 'Us' is the object.

'We' are the population would make 'we' the subject.

2261. Candide - 1/3/2000 5:47:17 PM

IrvingSnodgrass
please see my earlier note on singing.

And mine. I don't know this Beatles song so I'm not commenting further. Scholarship is not doubted. NoT aT all. I'm a ToTally ToleranT SkepTic.
Ta Ta for now.
Except I'll repeat Gore Vidal's rendition of "Knightsbridge?" English. (I posted it ages ago in Books) as uTTered by Anthony Burgess and his wife at a publisher's cocktail do.
The year 1964.

She said in a loud clear voice, "You," and then I ceased to understand her, "chung cheers boog sightee Joyce yearsen roscoe conkling." I am certain that I heard the name of the nineteenth century New York senator, and I turned to the man — the senator's biographer? — and saw, like infected buttonholes, eyes I dared not meet in dreams. "Tchess." He took up the refrain. "Boog Joyce venially blind, too, bolder." I had been drinking, but not that much, while the tall man appeared sober. Obviously I was having my chronic problem with English voices: the low rapid mumble, the urgent wheeze, the imploding dipthong, vowels wrongly stressed, and consonants long since gone west with the thirteen colonies.

There Irving. Wasn't that nice of me?

2262. stostosto - 1/3/2000 5:48:00 PM

Hmmm... Världsschlager, va? It always helps when you can borrow a German 'schl'-word. Even better if you could snatch one of those wonderful 'tzschr' multipel consonant clashes.

Of course, in Danish we have

angstskrig

which is only seven consequtive consonants, but is a genuinely homegrown word.

Er... actually, 'Angst' is German too - or so it seems. But you see, the Germans most likely got it from us. As did the Swedes: 'Ångest' if I am not mistaken.

I suppose we might even compose an 'angstschlager' but that would be rather synthetic.

2263. Candide - 1/3/2000 6:44:49 PM

Pelle I thank you for your dogged support of the English T/D case.

Gore Vidal above was reproducing a special kind of posh Oxonian English that I'm sure you would have encountered. They often snort and chuckle while they speak. Sorry Irving. I was wrong again but have just corrected myself. I'm forgetting things!
On my first day in London I attended a French horn recital in the Raphael tapestry room at the Victoria and Albert Museum. I could not BELIEVE the accents of the people seated behind me. They were another type of English 'posh'. Knightsbridge (which I wrongly appended to Vidal's pair.) It looks like cockney when written by a non-scholar like me but it is unmistakably the voice of the privileged class. Placed high in the palate it sounds a bit like duck quacking. ""Euohw ebsoleuootely spiffing." "We hed a mawvellous taime." Always very loud.

The one educated sound that colonials trying to pass aseducated British natives never say correctly is the 'y' before the 'U', in such words as absolyutel. Colonials say 'absolutely' and the Brits exchange knowing looks.

2264. Candide - 1/3/2000 6:47:55 PM

Damn. I'll stop after this!
"The one educated sound that colonials trying to pass as educated
British natives never say correctly is the 'y' before the 'U', in such words as absolyutely. Colonials say 'absolutely' and the Brits exchange knowing looks."

2265. hashke - 1/3/2000 7:00:15 PM

Heilige Scheisse!

2266. Candide - 1/3/2000 7:17:24 PM

Holy shit to you too Hashke.

2267. hashke - 1/3/2000 7:51:18 PM

I was not addressing you, panjang bibir.

2268. hashke - 1/3/2000 7:52:19 PM

Oh, ;-))

2269. Candide - 1/3/2000 7:58:51 PM

hashke

I know.

2270. Candide - 1/3/2000 8:00:55 PM

panjang bibir?

Wot mins? Big boozer? I don't want to spoil the mystery but curiosity tingles.

2271. hashke - 1/3/2000 8:07:54 PM

Candide:

It is a gentle poke at prolixity.

Check online Indonesian dictionary for solution.

2272. Candide - 1/3/2000 8:10:14 PM

We can't all communicate in haikus hashke. Some of us are into narrative. I plead guilty.

2273. Candide - 1/3/2000 8:13:11 PM

Hashke
conservatively
craves the silence
of the pebble in the pool of knowledge.

2274. Candide - 1/3/2000 8:28:50 PM

Or a Chinese poem by Po Chü-i (772-846 A) translated by Arthur Waley.

The Philosophers
Lao tzu

Those who speak know nothing;
Those who know are silent."
Those words, I am told,
Were spoken by Lao tzu
If we are to believe that Lao-tzu
Was himself one who knew,
How comes it that he wrote a book
Of five thousand words?

2275. hashke - 1/3/2000 8:41:36 PM

Hahaha! Very good research, Candigonde!

2276. Candide - 1/3/2000 8:55:22 PM

You are forgiven my good acerbic Hashke. But if you leave a space something will fill it.

2277. hashke - 1/3/2000 9:37:35 PM

So sagte Hitler, wann er Lebensraum ausrufte.

2278. hashke - 1/3/2000 9:42:04 PM

Question:

What will leave a space if you leave it?

Answer:

Candide

;-))

2279. ycmeehan - 1/3/2000 9:47:53 PM

Oui, Hashke, J'ai le livre et la cassette aussi sur laquelle je ne comptais pas. Merveilleux! Je suis ravie, enchantée et éternellement reconnaissante.

Il neige ici et la rumeur était aujourd'hui à l'école que nous allons être ensevelis ici demain sous la neige qui tombe en ce moment. Donc je pourrais m'ensevelir dans votre livre, j'espère, bien au chaud, demain.

2280. hashke - 1/3/2000 10:15:49 PM

ycmeehan:

Ah, bon! Merci! J'étais au point de saler encore une fois mon éditeur.

2281. hashke - 1/3/2000 10:17:49 PM

Candide:

Correction...What will fill a space...

Managgia!

2282. hashke - 1/3/2000 10:22:28 PM

ycmeehan:

...sur le point de faire des enmerdes...

Merde et zut alors!

2283. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/3/2000 10:51:49 PM

Pelle (Message # 2257):
And is it only T between wovels that is indistinguishabe from D (in your opinion)? What about 'not' and 'nod', 'hit' and 'hid' 'tin' and 'din', 'tally' and 'dally', 'subtle' and 'saddle', 'latter' and ladder'?

I've been quite clear that it's only intervocalic "t" that is affected in English, and that the "t/d" confusion is not the only form this takes... in Britain the glottal stop is a much more common manifestation (except for the southwest), so there is no t/d confusion -- it only affects the "t."

Of the pairs you listed, you will find "latter" and "ladder" sound the same in American and Australian English as well as in SW England. In the rest of England you will usually here a glottal stop for the t in "latter."

Btw, in American and Australian English, it is not a case of a d being substituted for t. It is that both t and d are replaced by an intervocalic voiced flap.

Other languages have different changes underway. In Dutch, for example, word final voiced sounds are devoiced, so that your example of "not" and "nod" would sound identical (pronounced "not"). This is a feature of a Dutch accent in English as well.

Candide (Message # 2261):
Your example ("NoT aT all. I'm a ToTally ToleranT SkepTic. Ta Ta for now.") shows that you haven't understood what I'm saying. Only one of the nine "t"s in your example would be affected in any dialect of English. Can you tell me which one? All the others would remain clearly t sounds in all dialects.

I'm quite familiar with the very high-class brand of British English you mention. The frightening thing is that people use it perfectly seriously. It sounds hilarious. Fortunately, it appears to be a disappearing dialect.

2284. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/3/2000 10:55:38 PM

hashké:
Dari mana asal usul julukan 'panjang bibir' untuk teman kita dari negeri di bawah?

2285. CalGal - 1/3/2000 11:34:29 PM

Totally for sure. But is it only in California-speak that "not at all" is pronounced "nodadall"?

2286. Candide - 1/3/2000 11:37:32 PM

IrvingSnodgrass
I think I did understand. (toTally) I was kidding a liddle.

2287. Candide - 1/3/2000 11:54:01 PM

hashke
It was my turn to flaunt some esoteric knowledge of the English class system.

IrvingSnodgrass

It may be trivial and comical but it was lethal in its effects.

2288. Candide - 1/3/2000 11:59:53 PM

hashke mio caro prepotente (scherzo!)
How many languages do you speak? Include those with which you can survive as well as those in which you are fluent.

2289. Candide - 1/4/2000 12:07:25 AM

IrvingSnodgrass
In Dutch, for
example, word final voiced sounds are devoiced, so that your example
of "not" and "nod" would sound identical (pronounced "not"). This is a feature of a Dutch accent in English as well.
I have a Dutch friend who I first knew in student days. She says "dat" for that.

2290. hashke - 1/4/2000 12:24:09 AM

Irv:

Dari kamusku dan interpretasiku mengenai suka bicara yang panjang teman kita dari negeri bawah -- hanya untuk iseng-iseng. Apakah aku sudah mengerti dengan benar pertanyaanmu?

2291. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/4/2000 12:29:48 AM

CalGal:
But is it only in California-speak that "not at all" is pronounced "nodadall"?

No, that's pretty common in American speech, and I've heard it from Australians, too. It's a case of the set phrase being spoken as a unit, so it has the effect of being an intervocalic t. This happens with many set phrases, actually.

Candide:
I think I did understand. (toTally)

Cool. You did get it.

It may be trivial and comical but it was lethal in its effects.

Nicely put, and quite true.

(to hashké)
How many languages do you speak? Include those with which you can survive as well as those in which you are fluent.

It's easier to ask him the languages he doesn't speak.

I have a Dutch friend who I first knew in student days. She says "dat" for that.

That's a different error, and a very common one among many non-native speakers of English, since very few languages have the "th" sounds of English. The "th" to "d" change is even found in some native speaker dialects, especially in the USA and West Indies.

2292. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/4/2000 12:34:53 AM

hashké:
Memang, Anda mengerti pertanyaanku dengan pas. Tetapi saya tidak pernah menemukan ungkapan 'panjang bibir.' Memang cocok untuk dia. Lebih sering kita bilang 'tukang ngomong.'

Dan Anda juga menggunakan kata 'iseng-iseng' dengan baik. Itu salah satu ungkapan favorit saya.

2293. Candide - 1/4/2000 12:35:19 AM

Irving
And Ireland.

2294. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/4/2000 12:38:34 AM

Candide:
Yes indeed, Ireland as well. People often underestimate the large influence Irish English has had on American English.

2295. Candide - 1/4/2000 12:57:02 AM

Signor hashke

Tante lingue. Tanto silenzio.

2296. hashke - 1/4/2000 1:16:48 AM

Candide:

A dozen or so, I guess, in and out, and still learning --and in various states of disarray, just like me life at present.

Perchè è scherzo? (interessant, dass das Deutsche ist 'Scherze').

2297. hashke - 1/4/2000 1:21:24 AM

Irv:

'Tukang ngomong' memang! LOL! Tetapi tidak sama sekali omong kosong, bukan?

2298. hashke - 1/4/2000 1:26:39 AM

Signora Candide:

A sage thing is timely silence, and better than any speech.

-- Plutarch

2299. Candide - 1/4/2000 1:29:39 AM

Hashke

Una dozzina! Io lei saluto col molto rispètto.
Io, capisce, sono un chiacchierone perché sfrutto una lingua al fondo! Proprio al fondo.
La lingua nativa é un segreto? Scusi se chiedo qualcosa troppo personale.

2300. Candide - 1/4/2000 1:31:03 AM

But Plutarch's dead and I'm alive. I speak, therefore I am.

Shutup Eccles!

2301. Candide - 1/4/2000 1:32:19 AM

Goon Show.

2302. Candide - 1/4/2000 1:35:19 AM

scherzare [Dal Longobardo skerzan]

The German connection.

2303. hashke - 1/4/2000 1:42:38 AM

Inglese, e non è troppo personale. Ma il vostro italiano è molto buono. Io parlo italiano a singhiozzo, purtroppo.

2304. hashke - 1/4/2000 1:44:15 AM

...l'italiano...

2305. Candide - 1/4/2000 1:50:53 AM

Hashke

No ahime no. Purtroppo io parlo italiano molto male. Non ho piu un amica o amico italiana/o in Australia. Non lo parlo mai, senno per parlare una frase una volta in un mese negli negozii. Cantavo in Italiano (con italiani) prima che gl'imparavo, quindi - accento bello, grammatica orrende.

2306. Candide - 1/4/2000 1:53:32 AM

hashke
C'era un motivo che lei ha spinto verso le lingue?

2307. Candide - 1/4/2000 2:00:14 AM

hashke

Inglese inglese o Americano o Canadese o altro?

2308. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/4/2000 2:02:18 AM

hashké:
Tetapi tidak sama sekali omong kosong, bukan?

é... bisa juga. Sebetulnya, kadang-kadang, dalam hal ini.

2309. hashke - 1/4/2000 2:08:06 AM

Ma scrivete con scorrevolezza. Con il italiano io rimesto nel torbido. Grammatica anche spaventevole, accento accettabile.

Ma adesso è molto tardi. Sono stanco, e è necessario che io vada a letto. Piacere, e buona notte.

2310. hashke - 1/4/2000 2:18:24 AM

Irv:

Aduh, ia kesepian barangkali. Sekarang ti waktu tidur saya. Malam yang menyenankan!

2311. Stumbo - 1/4/2000 2:18:57 AM

Damn the grammatica, full accento ahead.

Quella parte era la vostra favorita? (Or something like that)

2312. stostosto - 1/4/2000 3:50:47 AM

It isn't my stubborn insistence... it is linguistic fact.

See? That's what I mean.

2313. stostosto - 1/4/2000 3:51:20 AM

Unbold

2314. Candide - 1/4/2000 7:11:37 AM

Stumbo

In Italiano? In Italiano ne ho goduto molto il ruolo d'Amneris, principessa egiziana. Mi ha piacuto un mondo dove ho maledetto agli preti.
Ho cantato anche molto Rossini e Mozart - ma Mozart, nonostante é lui il mio prediletto compositore vocale — non ha scritto bene per la lingua italiana percui agli cantanti Italiani, non piacciono a cantare Mozart. Io comunque amavo molto a cantare Mozart.
A me anche piaceva molto a cantare in Francese, una lingua che non parlo, ma capisco e sapevo cantare e cucinare. Ecco.

Stumbo, che piacere che parla italiano.

2315. stostosto - 1/4/2000 8:08:46 AM

Ma che diversità linguistica! Parlo un poco, poco, pochito italiano io stesso. Penso che è la lingua europeana(?) la piu bella. Ma sta dieci anni che non ho visitato l'Italia. Purtroppo; anche il paese è molto bello.

2316. Candide - 1/5/2000 12:02:12 AM

stostosto

Anche lei?
Io non l'ha visto per 18 anni. Per me, gl'italiani sono molto simpatici. Anche sono gente serie ed austeri. Sono ingegneri, scienziati e per questo motivo sono anche architétti, ecc. perché per loro tutto a base é la forma nel significanza piu forte. Spero che questa non sembrarebbe troppo pomposo. Vedi, il mio italiano é molto arruginito.

You and the other linguists on this thread are amazing to me. You have such a grasp of so many languages.

2317. Stumbo - 1/5/2000 1:29:39 AM

Candide:

Il mio ruolo di mezzo-soprano favorito da Verdi è Azucena; in generale, è Marfa (da La Khovancina). Avete cantato quelli?

2318. Candide - 1/5/2000 2:29:03 AM

Stumbo

Purtroppo no. Io non conosco abbastanza bene Khovancina. Mi piace molto quanto conosco. Avrei cantato il ruolo del giovane figlio di 'Boris Godunov', ma per motivi della salute ho smesso a cantare prima di quel occasione.

Purtroppo la gente con potere mi hanno sempre visto come un ragazzo, perche ero meno grasso che erano molti degli'altre. Ho cantato Carmen, che mi ha preparato bene per discussione con Socko. Mi piaceve il parte dove Carmen urlava a Don José e lanciato a lui il suo cappèllo e la sciabola. Ho anche cantato 'Nicklaus' da 'Hoffman' (Il ritratto della madre anche che mi piaceva molto - asceso una scala con velocita con una vela sopra il vestito di Nicklaus, poi sono scese e diventato subito ancora un ragazzo) e Hänsel da 'Hänsel und Gretel' e Orlovsky, da 'Fledermaus' ecc. ecc.

Azucena ho cantato solamente come un studio. Ma Amneris é anche piu bella. Aida stessa é niente. Amneris ha tutto. Verdi per me e un santo. Cosi umile é cosi grande. 'Otello' e 'Falstaff' sono tremende.

2319. Stumbo - 1/5/2000 2:43:39 AM

Khovancina

Nicklaus

;-)

2320. Candide - 1/5/2000 3:19:10 AM

Stumbo

Hoho

Un altro Nicklaus. Se la mia macchina sa suonare, lo sentiro dopo la cena che comincia adesso.
Grazie.

Sai che Chaliapin é il mio idolo. Il mio primo insegnante di canto cantavo Marina da Bosis insieme con Chaliapin.

2321. Candide - 1/5/2000 3:20:47 AM

'cantava' 'Boris' uffa

2322. Candide - 1/5/2000 4:05:02 AM

Stumbo

Notizia male e notizia buona.

Sound machine non l'abbiamo.

MA esattamente lo stesso Khovancina ne abbiamo. Noi abbiamo una mucchia di disci, ma la nostra macchina era rotta ma adesso è guarito e lo sentiremmo con gran piacere. Arkhipova era meravigliosa. La nostra vita ha avuto qualche difficolta per cui abbiamo perso contatto con la musica, ma Mussorgsky, sopratutto 'Boris' è il prediletto di tutto.

Ho fatto Nicklaus in inglese ma è come un trucco teatrale insieme profondo. Buon mercato e profondo insieme. Offenbach era veramente il Mozart di marciapiedi.

2323. Candide - 1/5/2000 4:06:30 AM

Anche Toscanini NBC Verdi Requiem è molto vicino al mio cuore.

2324. stostosto - 1/5/2000 4:19:55 AM

Ciao Stumbo!

I just had a look at your homepage. Amazing. I'd have guessed you were at least twice your age, based on your postings here. (No offense!)

How did your parents manage to get an emigration permit from the USSR?

Why do you speak Italian?

(I am just curious).

2325. Candide - 1/5/2000 5:48:24 AM

dischi. uffa ancora
stostosto
Io sospetto che conosco gia Stumbo. Ci sono gente da il vecchio impero Russo che hanno una cultura larga. Oggi e ieri, e per questo sono molto ricchi.

2326. hashke - 1/5/2000 11:13:25 AM

Solo una lingua! Tante parole!

2327. Candide - 1/5/2000 4:18:34 PM

hashke
Era un scambio d'idée. Mi dispiace. Parla lei invece
nel modo giapponese..... ..... .....

La parte piu importante.

Forse bisogniamo un filo linguistica dove si potrebbe chiacchierare?

2328. hashke - 1/5/2000 6:55:16 PM

Candide:

Era un scherzo, una riposta a la vostra osservazione Tante lingue. Tante silenzio, ma purtroppo non ha caputo. E parlare 'nel modo giapponese' è migliore che balbettare come le scimmie. ;-)) (g), etc.

Non, in verità io sono del parere che Lei è una donna interessante, con una gran capacità intellettuale, con una conoscenza ampia del mondo, e veramente mi piace leggere i vostri discorsi ampollosi. (g)(g).

Ma l'umore, signora, una vena d'umorismo, prego.

Ahimè, con il italiano trovo ben al di sopra delle mie capacità!

2329. Candide - 1/5/2000 8:36:17 PM

Ho capito benissimo e lei ringrazio per la sua gentilezza hashke. Era anche spiritoso.

Intellettuale? Io? Non lo credo. Io spesso dico le parole ironiche del Patrick White con cui ho spesso parlato di questo e quello al telefono. Lui mi ha detto che lui non lo considerava un intellettuale. Invece a lui piaceva a stare un anima libera.
Io prefirebbe a sapere piu che so adesso ma ... dove a cominciare?
Io rispetto molto il beato pseudoErasmus chi è davvero, come lei stesso, un intelletuale. Ma cosi crudele. È perchè lui è giovane. Ma un ragazzo eccezionale. Scusi che parlo di un compagno vostro dal campo delle parole, ma preferisco che lei capirebbe che il sdegno verso a me da pseudoErasmus non mi ha ciecato al fatto che lui è molto dotato.

Non voglio a rovinare un conversazione di qualita sul questo filo.

2330. PincherMartin - 1/6/2000 1:51:17 PM

From the recent cover article in Atlantic Monthly called The Diffusionists have Landed

At the ISAC gathering Mike Xu, a professor of modern languages and literatures at Texas Christian University, raised the possibility of direct Chinese influence on Mesoamerica's Olmec culture. Xu is young, quiet, and almost diffident about the bold proposition he came to reveal. Drawing on linguistic scholarship in his native China, he suggested that carved stone blades found in Guatemala, dating from approximately 1100 B.C., are distinctly Chinese in pattern. Moreover, they bear ideographic writing that has uncanny resemblances to glyphs from the contemporaneous Shang Dynasty, which ruled North China from its center in the lower Yellow River valley.

2331. ScottLoar - 1/6/2000 3:42:25 PM

Bullshit. The designs are typically anthropomorphic, geometric and so coincidentally similar. Moreover, the genesis of Chinese characters is scapulamancy which practice is also quite common. There's nothing bold about Xu's suggestion as the thought passes the mind of almost everyone familiar with Shang and Mayan design. Chinese commonly believe they were first in all aspects of civilization.

2332. Candide - 1/6/2000 3:53:36 PM

An unscholarly interjection. People try from time to time to find a connection between Maori design and Celtic design, based on the use of the spiral. Same mistake? If it is a mistake that is.

2333. Candide - 1/6/2000 3:56:36 PM

ScottLoar
scapulamancy

What does that word mean ScottLoar?

2334. ScottLoar - 1/6/2000 3:57:39 PM

The spiral is as universal as the cross or swastika yet still able to tempt some minds into grandiose speculation.

2335. ScottLoar - 1/6/2000 4:00:26 PM

Divination by subjecting the scapulae (shoulder bones) of deer or tortoise shells to fire then interpreting the cracks. Eskimos as late as this century used scapulamancy to divine the location of reindeer herds. This evolves to carving signs and pictures onto the bones then intuiting the crack results.

2336. Candide - 1/6/2000 4:03:11 PM

ScottLoar #2334
Agreed. There are forms which are simply the natural products of human structure - by which I mean body movement. And simple geometrical shapes which are inescapable, plus the nature of material worked upon and the tools used.

2337. ScottLoar - 1/6/2000 4:03:16 PM

Oddly enough some argue that scapulamancy as practiced by the Eskimos provides the greater element of random chance into the quest for the right direction, as the hunters would otherwise follow the direction dictated by their custom and practice.

2338. ScottLoar - 1/6/2000 4:05:35 PM

Yes, the nature and shape of the material used (e.g., jade), its ultimate purpose and the tools used to figure it, would seem to dictate an uncanny similarity in designs.

2339. Candide - 1/6/2000 4:05:49 PM

2335

Wow. I'd worked out the 'scapula' bit but the rest wasn't in any dictionaries I could place my hands on. Thanks.

2340. dusty - 1/6/2000 4:06:33 PM

Scapulimancy

2341. ScottLoar - 1/6/2000 4:06:59 PM

I may have misspelled the word. Maybe not.

2342. ScottLoar - 1/6/2000 4:07:35 PM

Aha, all for the lack of a small "i".

2343. dusty - 1/6/2000 4:08:07 PM

ScottLoar

I found both spellings.

2344. Candide - 1/6/2000 4:08:12 PM

ScottLoar

I don't know whether you have ever seen early Maori 'jade' (greenstone) Tikis. They can have an amazingly sophisticated beauty and strength of form reminiscent of Japanese netsuke.

2345. ScottLoar - 1/6/2000 4:08:48 PM

And I am especially gratified to see that save for spelling my recollection was correct in more aspects than recounted by the quoted article.

2346. ScottLoar - 1/6/2000 4:10:33 PM

Candide, not only have I seen tiki I have carved greenstone, but not the older pieces which the New Zealand government zealously guards against export.

2347. dusty - 1/6/2000 4:11:14 PM

Yeh-lu Chu'tsai the Magician

The most recent biography on Chingis, that of Paul Ratchnevsky, mentions that Yeh-lu Chu'tsai also used to read probable future developments by burning sheep's scapulae (scapulamancy) and observing the patterns of the cracks.

2348. ScottLoar - 1/6/2000 4:11:35 PM

Ooh, both spellings, so I am right. Rather caps my day after the earlier gross misunderstandings in International.

2349. Candide - 1/6/2000 4:18:13 PM

We are all sensitive plants here and are bound to feel pain occasionally.

2350. Candide - 1/6/2000 4:21:16 PM

For shamefully petty chauvinist reasons I was delighted to discover that Gaugin's main Polynesian inspiration occurred in the Auckland Museum not in the arms of Tahitian beauties.

2351. ScottLoar - 1/6/2000 4:22:37 PM

By the way, Candide, did you know that Germany in the early 1900's manufactured literally hundreds of thousands of those greenstone tiki? The tiki was a very common and fashionable icon in late Victorian Europe.

2352. Candide - 1/6/2000 4:22:41 PM

GaugUin

2353. ScottLoar - 1/6/2000 4:23:00 PM

Rather, Edwardian.

2354. Candide - 1/6/2000 4:24:45 PM

German tikis! I didn't know, but the scientific/artistic nature of Germany of the period makes it seem logical. I will need some time to get used to the idea though.

2355. Candide - 1/6/2000 4:28:20 PM

That explains an elegantly proportined but non-authentic small greenstone pendant I inherited from an aunt. The top is set in gold filagree which is somehow shocking, but in this piece works. I never wear it. I'm a purist I guess.

2356. Candide - 1/6/2000 4:30:19 PM

Sorry about my sloppy typing. I have to get breakfast and am typing at guilt-ridden speed.

2357. PincherMartin - 1/6/2000 5:22:20 PM

Scott Loar --

Bullshit. The designs are typically anthropomorphic, geometric and so coincidentally similar. Moreover, the genesis of Chinese characters is scapulamancy which practice is also quite common. There's nothing bold about Xu's suggestion as the thought passes the mind of almost everyone familiar with Shang and Mayan design. Chinese commonly believe they were first in all aspects of civilization.

I agree with you. My cut and paste was meant to stimulate dicussion, not advance a personal viewpoint.

The Atlantic Monthly is often thought of as a respectable periodical with thoughtful articles. In my opinion, the magazine more often than not publishes trash of which the excerpt in Message # 2330 is a good example. Other examples include articles by James Fallows on the rise of the East Asian industrial model and other scurrilous attacks on economists. Another example sometime back was an attack on evolutionary theory which suggested scientists were trying to cover up the huge holes in the theory so as to put off attacks by the Fundamentalists.

Sometimes the magazine will still have first-rate articles.

2358. PincherMartin - 1/6/2000 5:24:27 PM

Harpers is another example of an American magazine which is hugely overrated.

2359. ScottLoar - 1/6/2000 5:43:45 PM

My Dear PincherMartin;

I never thought you personally were advancing such rubbish, and in truth I hadn't read the article so you can understand how pleased I am by our tacit understanding of one another's mind. And again, I think The Atlantic Monthly most usually all right but I gave up on Harper's years ago after Lapham became editor, just some time after finances threatened to shut them down. I would recommend The American Spectator if you can wade through the political polemics and Civilization as well as specialized journals like Archeology.

But, really, I am glad we see eye-to-eye on so many matters that we hold in common. It reinforces my own sense of understanding of a matter.

I do like Asia Weekly in Chinese, which beats hell out of the opinionated commentary I get in Taiwan and China from many sides.

By the way, I'll be in Taiwan 28 January to 4 February. Need some tea?

2360. Candide - 1/6/2000 6:02:05 PM

ScottLoar

Do you speak/read Mandarin? Cantonese? I am always very impressed by those who do.

It is too late for me I'm afraid, but there is so much to read if one can penetrate it.

2361. Candide - 1/6/2000 6:03:54 PM

I realise that to read one is to read both.

2362. ScottLoar - 1/6/2000 6:05:42 PM

I mangle Mandarin and am deaf to Cantonese save for some filth learned at a bar in Wanchai long ago.

2363. Candide - 1/6/2000 6:13:37 PM

Mangled Mandarin is a sorbet worth tasting.
Can you read in Chinese? I have always treasured Monkey by Wu Ch'eng-En. Just like the coincidental physical forms that we discussed earlier, it mirrors Schikaneder's (Mozart's) Magic Flute that was my first big professional opera job. I gave copies of Monkey to all my friends in the cast.

2364. ScottLoar - 1/6/2000 6:14:41 PM

Last word on this subject please. Yes.

2365. ScottLoar - 1/6/2000 6:15:07 PM

So does PincherMartin.

2366. Candide - 1/6/2000 6:16:19 PM

Low bow and retreat backwards to the sound of muffled gongs.

2367. PincherMartin - 1/6/2000 6:26:46 PM

Scott Loar --

I never thought you personally were advancing such rubbish, and in truth I hadn't read the article so you can understand how pleased I am by our tacit understanding of one another's mind.

In truth, I posted that excerpt in the expectation that Irv would blast away at it. I enjoy seeing that usually mild-mannered guy work himself up into a lather over such things. I still remember the time he blasted away at an Economist article on the Chinese language that I posted in the old forum. I expected similar fireworks from him this time around. You beat him to it.

And again, I think The Atlantic Monthly most usually all right but I gave up on Harper's years ago after Lapham became editor, just some time after finances threatened to shut them down. I would recommend The American Spectator if you can wade through the political polemics and Civilization as well as specialized journals like Archeology.

I loathe Lewis Lapham. The last three journals I've never read, but shall look them up on your recommendation.

My problem with The Atlantic Monthly is that it plays against the conventional wisdom of academe too often. Unfortunately most of their educated readers (including myself) don't know enough about the conventional wisdom in, say, economics or biology to understand that the article they've just read shouldn't be used in place of the hard-won understanding that these fields have earned through the years.

I do like Asia Weekly in Chinese, which beats hell out of the opinionated commentary I get in Taiwan and China from many sides.

Is this "Asia Weekly" the famous Yazhou Zhoukan? If so, I know it by reputation only.

2368. PincherMartin - 1/6/2000 6:27:21 PM

By the way, I'll be in Taiwan 28 January to 4 February. Need some tea?

No thank you, I'm well-stocked. Let me know, however, if you're ever passing through the Bay Area. If given enough advance notice, I shall make the short trip up to see you, and if you have enough time, we can have lunch or dinner.

2369. hashke - 1/6/2000 7:11:17 PM

Pincher:

A blindered friend enthusiastically sent me a few months ago a copy of Fells' 'America B.C.', better titled 'America B.S.'. I tossed it aside after checking out his chapter the 'Libyans of Zuni' in which he acribes to Zuni a vocabulary of 1200 words. He calls Zuni vocabulary 'basically North African', gives a short group of look-alikes, and of Zuni grammar says, 'This has many features recalling the Coptic language, but a discussion is impossible without going into great detail'.

2370. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/6/2000 8:03:53 PM

Pincher:
You're quite right... ScottLoar beat me to it, and I didn't have anything to add to his well-informed comments. He knows much more than I do about Chinese language and history, anyway.

I just got up, anyway, and was getting ready to lay into Candide's mention of the ludicrous theory that Celtic and Maori were related in some way. That theory, of course, is much more far-fetched than any Chinese-American influence. Cultural contact between ancient Chinese and pre-Columbian America is not out of the question, but contact between Celts and Maoris before the European advent in New Zealand is absurd. It's as bad as the theory Socko once mentioned that the Maoris are a lost tribe of Israel. (I don't intend to imply in any way that Candide or Socko believe in these nutty theories just because they mention them... I enjoy seeing such theories and tearing them apart).

I recall well that article you once posted, Pincher, and I was grateful for the opportunity to point out its errors. I hope you keep finding and posting such controversial or thought-provoking citations.

Candide:
Don't believe ScottLoar's modesty. He has an excellent command of Mandarin (and, I suspect, Cantonese). Pincher is a trustworthy expert on Mandarin as well.

2371. ycmeehan - 1/6/2000 8:13:08 PM

Of course, Hashke, you know about the Navajo Code talkers.
Can you tell me where I can get some information about them, please?

2372. ScottLoar - 1/6/2000 8:44:52 PM

The AsiaWeekly is as you said.

2373. hashke - 1/6/2000 9:14:30 PM

ycmeehan:

Yahoo and Altavista are both replete with links to stuff about Navajo code talkers -- including a dictionary of code. Give them a shot.

2374. DanDillon - 1/6/2000 9:49:46 PM

Harpers is another example of an American magazine which is hugely overrated.

Yes, it has been disappointing lately. In fact, I anticipate the arrival of The Atlantic more nowadays because Harper's has been so poor. This never used to happen.

2375. DanDillon - 1/6/2000 9:54:13 PM

I loathe Lewis Lapham.

It's so reassuring to know I'm not the only one. From his stilted, unnatural prose style right down to his inflated, fatuous opinions, Lapham is fat-witted!

2376. DanDillon - 1/6/2000 9:58:37 PM

PM,

If you're fortunate enough to sup with ScottLoar, might I be so bold as to suggest you let him order? Certainly if you go for anything Oriental, you must. One of my most memorable lunches was had in the company of him and his wife, just around the corner from my old apartment in Chicago. Sweet memory.

2377. ScottLoar - 1/7/2000 7:18:55 AM

And we still expect you over for tea and cake DanDillon.

2378. MrSocko - 1/7/2000 7:57:51 AM

Why do people reserve such scorn for Lewis Lapham? I read his Hotel America anthology with considerable pleasure. I know, I know, he gets a little heavy in places -- too much throat clearing and forelock tugging -- but that doesn't take away from the verve of his style and the value of what he has to say.

2379. stostosto - 1/7/2000 11:23:55 AM

Irving 'D' SnoDgrass:

I've just completed a scientific inquiry into the pronunciation of intervocal 't' in English.

You said: There is no difference in the way the words 'writer' and 'rider' is pronounced. And that goes for any dialect of English. And that is a scientific linguistic fact.

I said: What?!

My dictionaries say: Nonsense!

All three of them. And get this: One of them is A Pronouncing Dictionary of American English.

You are udderly asdounding.

2380. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/7/2000 11:40:47 AM

sto:
You have misquoted me. I said that intervocalic "t" is not pronounced as "t" in any colloquial dialect of English... you can look it up. I made it clear that in most dialects of British English, "t" and "d" are distinct. It's just that the "t" is not pronounced "t." Except in the Southwest, it is commonly a glottal stop.

On the other hand, there is no dialect of American English in which intervocalic t and d are distinct in normal spoken pronunciation. If you found a source that says otherwise, it is probably a prescriptivist tract of no linguistic integrity. There are still those who advocate a spelling pronunciation of words, in direct opposition to the way words are actually pronounced (and, indeed, as they have historically been pronounced -- the t/d thing has a long history in English).

2381. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/7/2000 11:43:54 AM

I might add that in both American and Australian English, this process has gone even further, and also often affects t sounds after a consonant. For example, in colloquial speech, "thirteen" is often pronounced "thirdeen." This is more common in Australia than the USA, but in both nations, its frequency is increasing.

2382. stostosto - 1/7/2000 12:01:58 PM

Irv

Sorry about the misquote. But all three sources have 'd' in rider and 't' in 'writer'.

You are undoubtedly right about the A Pronouncing Dictionary - possibly on both your speculations. I suspected so myself, since it dates from 1953, and since I have never heard Americans say wriTer for wriDer. I just wanted you to demand that admission before I gave it.

2383. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/7/2000 12:12:33 PM

sto:
I still mantain there is no natural dialect of English which pronounces a "t" in "writer." In America, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Ireland, and parts of England, it is a voiced alveolar tap (NOT a "d"). In Northern and parts of Southern England, it is a glottal stop. This has been true historically, and is not a recent development. Any speaker pronouncing a "t" in the word is using an unnatural hypercorrect pronunciation.

2384. marjoribanks - 1/7/2000 12:14:42 PM

Irva,

Me, my brother, my parents, all my relatives, everyone I know in India, all use this "hypercorrect" pronunciation. Maybe Indian English is simply an exception, but surely it is a "natural dialect."

2385. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/7/2000 12:20:34 PM

Marj:
Indian English, as a creolized dialect, is not a natural dialect of English. But, you're right, it is one of the rare places where the intervocalic "t" is pronounced. In all societies descending from immigrants from England, the intervocalic "t" is not pronounced.

2386. stostosto - 1/7/2000 12:21:01 PM

From Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, Merriam-Webseter, Massachusetts 1983:

"\t\ as in tie, attack, late, later, latter. In some contexts, as when a stressed or unstressed vowel precedes and an unstressed vowel or \el\ [the small 'e' there should be upside down and heigthened, sto] follows, the sound represented by t or tt is pronounced in much American speech the same as the sound represented by d or dd in similar contexts."

(Guide to pronunciation, p. 36.)

In much American speech, yes. But it doesn't say anything about intervocal 't' being differently pronounced from 't'in other English variants.

2387. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/7/2000 12:25:29 PM

sto:
That's because it's an American dictionary.

Dictionaries, btw, are notorious for their prescriptivism, especially in Britain. I'd be surprised if any British dictionaries listed the glottal stop form which is prevalent.

Look up pronunciation descriptions in the linguistic literature. Both the British Isles and the USA have extensive linguistic atlases which provide a wealth of information.

2388. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/7/2000 12:29:23 PM

I might add that I've never seen a linguistic atlas of Australia. This is probably because Australian speech is more uniform, and speech differences are related to class rather than geography (the lower the class, the more "Aucker" the speech). There are some geographical differences ("Aucker" speech is less common in the cities, and less common in the west).

There is an excellent dictionary of Australian English, the Macquarie Dictionary, which accurately covers the innovations of Australian pronunciation and usage.

2389. stostosto - 1/7/2000 12:50:55 PM

Irv

HA! Gotcha!

I first took your word for it when you said I misqutoted you. But in Message # 2138, you say:

"[quoting Candide:]Australians are lazy with consonants in the same way that Americans often are. I was walking along a pedestrian mall once when a spruiker outside a large book shop called out - as far as I could tell — over a microphone: "Australian riders. Australian riders. get your books signed by Australian riders." 'WriTers' being the intended word.

There's nothing lazy about it. The two sounds are the same intervocalically in all dialects of English. Anyone trying to pronounce them differently is using a hypercorrect (and incorrect) pronunciation, whether s/he be in the Antipodes, North America, or the British Isles. It's like people who pronounce the "t" in "often" (a sound which has never been correct, historically). "

Ergo, you claim that 'rider' and 'writer' are homophones in all dialects of English. Contrary to what the dictionaries say.

And - more importantly - contrary to what millions of Brits would tell you.

2390. ScottLoar - 1/7/2000 1:05:52 PM

Most odd. Surely Americans commonly run over the "t" in "thirty" to pronounce it as "thirdy" but emphasize the "t" in "thirteen" exactly because the latter has two syllables equally stressed. This is not hypercorrection - is it? - as when I say "Missoura" for "Missouri" which is where I was born and is an example of hypercorrection.

The non-native speakers of English I hear mispronounce "thirteen" by stressing the first syllable at the expense of the second so the word becomes almost indistinguishable from "thirty", again with that "t" coming out as a "d" sound.

2391. vonKreedon - 1/7/2000 3:20:44 PM

I have a request, can someone translate the portions of the following that relate to Gore's speech about V-E day? Viel Danke (pardon my German).

Staatsakt zum 8. Mai in Berlin
US-Vizepraesident Gore bezeichnete den 8. Mai 1945 als Tag des Sieges fuer Europa. Die Niederlage Hitler-Deutschlands sei der Triumph des Guten ueber das Boese gewesen. Gore dankte allen deutschen Bundeskanzlern fuer ihre Verdienste um Freiheit und Demokratie. Frankreichs Staatspraesident Mitterand nannte das Kriegsende einen Sieg der Europaeer ueber sich selbst. Am 8. Mai 1945 habe man dem Gesetz des Staerkeren und der Gewalt abgeschworen. Der Feind von gestern sei der Freund von heute geworden unterstrich Mitterand.

2392. hashke - 1/7/2000 4:36:26 PM

US VP Gore denoted May 18, 1945 as the day of victory for Europe. The defeat of Hitler's Germany was the triumph of good over evil. Gore thanked all of the German chancellors for their services to freedom. France's president Mitterand called the war's end a victory of Europeans over themselves. On the 8th of May 1945 the law of the stronger over the weak and (the use of) violence was renounced.
Mitterand emphasized that yesterday's enemy had become today's friend.

2393. vonKreedon - 1/7/2000 4:38:24 PM

Thanks Hash.

2394. hashke - 1/7/2000 4:40:46 PM

vonKreedon:

Bitte sehr!

2395. Candide - 1/7/2000 5:05:36 PM

A timid uTTerance from a British colonial relic.

I would rather die than say wriDer.
I don't mind at all when an American says it, but anybody whose speech is tied to English as in England feels pain when they hear it from another of their dessicated species.

It is one of the experiences in Australia that requires fortitude from an English speaker hailing from a basically English-oriented background. I admit that I was trained not to speak like my peers as a child, but so were most middle-class children. It was not my fault - the English association between speech and class still ruled in some circles in New Zealand. I've greatly modified my speech since those days.

In Britain I did a lot of spoken acting as well as singing and I would also rather have died than speak in an exaggerated or over enunciated way as many singers do when they speak in the middle of a sung performance. I thought hard about it and I worked hard at it.

The fact that I experience a small pain when I hear D for T from people whose accent otherwise resembles New Zealand accents and similar accents must say something about what is usual in English English- if someone who has lived and worked in Britain feels that way.

2396. Candide - 1/7/2000 5:12:34 PM

I went away from the keyboard, muttering to myself that I wouldn't dream of it, and then I thought: "How do some Americans say those words?"
wouldn't dream of it.

I guess 'would'n'dream of it.' And Australians too.

2397. Candide - 1/7/2000 5:46:05 PM

IrvingSnodgrass
Any speaker pronouncing a "t" in the word is using an
unnatural hypercorrect pronunciation.

The Welsh always pronounce English that way. They would say Wri-Ter.

2398. ScottLoar - 1/7/2000 6:35:41 PM

I may purposely mispronounce a word for simple euphony as the sound gives me pleasure and satisfies my belief that the word should be said so.

2399. Candide - 1/7/2000 6:49:53 PM

ScottLoar

So do I. I somehow like the Canadian way of saying about. Aboht. And I often say it like that for my own quiet enjoyment.

2400. Candide - 1/7/2000 6:59:48 PM

The place where I heard the spruiker shout "Australian wriders", was an open shopping mall. I put on a comic act for my own diversion. I leapt out of the way looking wildly around me and exclaimed:"Where? Where?"

In another similar unattractive piece of exhibitionism I once in Rome, when exiting from a rarely hideous (in Rome)19th century church with an exaggeratedly pompous flight of stone steps from the door —I lifted my hands in the air and staggered down the steps crying:"I can walk! I can walk!"

Last egostistical and vulgar tale. We were with a party of mainly American tourists inside the Kings Chamber in the Great Pyramid in Egypt when the power failed and everything went black. I sang the High Priestesses aria from Aida and a woman screamed so I stopped.

2401. vonKreedon - 1/7/2000 7:04:46 PM

Was that a comment on your singing or was the woman simply afraid of the dark?

2402. Candide - 1/7/2000 7:06:13 PM

Both.

2403. hashke - 1/7/2000 7:06:55 PM

In the old days the chamber reeked of turgoman urine. Mebbe she yearned for air rather than aria.

2404. Candide - 1/7/2000 7:11:03 PM

That was the fairly old days, although new in Egyptian parlance, it reeked!

2405. hashke - 1/7/2000 7:12:07 PM

I hope you noticed the use of 'yearned'.

2406. Candide - 1/7/2000 7:15:51 PM

Very impressive. I was caught up in 'turgoman' rather than turkoman.

2407. hashke - 1/7/2000 7:34:34 PM

Was there an aura of turgoman air in the aria?

2408. hashke - 1/7/2000 7:38:36 PM

I am aware that the word 'turgoman' is not in most dictionaries, but I have seen it thus somewhere in the literature and vis-a-vis 'turkoman' i prefer its meatier heft.

2409. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/7/2000 8:05:23 PM

sto:
I realized after I made the first post on the topic that I had over-generalized. It was a passing comment, and wrongly worded. I was specific in the next and all subsequent poosts, which I am surprised you seem to have missed.

Prescriptivists and dictionaries (most of which are also prescriptivist) can say what they want. The fact remains that the words are indeed homophones in many dialects of English (I have made it clear that it is not all, by any means).

Scott Loar:
Your observations in Message # 2390 are spot on. Pronouncing the "t" in thirteen is not hypercorrect... it is still standard English. And you're quite right about the balanced stress on "thirteen" in American English.

Candide:
You'll find that the way you speak (and others around you) is nothing like how you imagine it. Listening to yourself and others is the first step on the road to linguistic self-realization. Keep it up.

2410. CalGal - 1/7/2000 8:10:04 PM

Pardon the spam, but I have finally updated the HTML hints page. I would appreciate any and all feedback. Please post responses in Try the Mote.

And now, halfway through posting to most of the heavy traffic threads, I realize that not everyone will know what that is. Sigh. I hate it when I do that.

The HTML Hints link is on the front page, near the bottom. And on every page in the Posting Window text. I'm not going to link it because I want to make sure newbies can find it using this description.

2411. Candide - 1/7/2000 9:13:21 PM

IrvingSnodgrass, good morning to you.
The way I speak is a trans-everything mess and I have no illusions.

I have long been fascinated by the way native speakers of any language dogmatically tell foreigners to make a certain sound, and when the beknighted foreigner reproduces the sound he/she hears, they are corrected and the same sound that the native speaker has just uttered is repeated more forcefully.

You made no comment on my reference to Welsh pronunciation of English. You will be aware that Indian English is sometimes described as Indian Welsh.
IrvingSnodgrass
Any speaker pronouncing a "t" in the word is using an
unnatural hypercorrect pronunciation.
" The Welsh always pronounce English that way. They would say
Wri-Ter."
They syllabify very distinctly. It's fun to mimic. Listen to Neddy Seagoon (Harry Secombe) in the Goon show. If that is ever heard in Bali which reason makes me doubt. We don't hear Balinese comedy shows either.

My husband caught me saying pure New Zealand "us ut" this morning, if that helps.

2412. Candide - 1/7/2000 9:19:50 PM

About knowing how we sound. When I played the character of Nicklaus in Offenbach'z The Tales of Hoffman we used the version where Nicklaus doubles as the muse of poetry and music. I had to enter a dark stage and speak a prologue. I wore a huge midnight blue velvet cloak and threw it back to reveal a magnificent lining of stars and the moon.
The production was in English. My first 'magic'words were :"I am the spirit of music".

At the first rehearsal I was extremely mortified to hear my thin antipodean vowel pour forth "mewsic".
I tore home after the rehearsal and shouted "myoooosic" into the bath so I could hear it back properly and I watched myself like a hawk from then on.

2413. Candide - 1/7/2000 9:25:24 PM

BeKnighted was not a witty play on words - it was a witless display of ignorance.

Benighted

2414. Candide - 1/7/2000 9:36:40 PM

hashke 2407
Was there an aura of turgoman air in the aria?
There was an aural aurora obscuring ausculation obliging the conclusion of the oral recitation.

2415. ScottLoar - 1/7/2000 9:40:40 PM

That church you exited in Rome with the pompous flight of stairs. Are you quite sure it was 19th century? Grand, wide stairs leading to rather narrow unimpressive doorways is a Baroque conceit.

2416. Candide - 1/7/2000 9:44:19 PM

ScottLoar
Yes, but they did it well. I love Rome with a passion. I can't remember either the location or the name of the church in question, but I think it's the same one mocked by Natalia Ginzburg in Lessico Famigliare. They hoped that it would be destroyed by the bombing.

2417. ScottLoar - 1/7/2000 9:49:06 PM

I cannot with clear conscience pretend I recognize Natalia Ginzburg (pastor's daughter, eh?) or Lessico Famigliare so your comment is quite wasted on me.

2418. hashke - 1/7/2000 9:50:20 PM

Candide:

Super good!

Ariel and Ariosto themselves would become Prosperously and oracularly ariose over the arioso qualities of that Aristedian, Aries-like display of Aradnian wit.

2419. ScottLoar - 1/7/2000 9:51:50 PM

re #2412: Molting hawks hie to mews, mostly.

2420. ScottLoar - 1/7/2000 9:52:52 PM

Hashke shakes-spear.

2421. Candide - 1/7/2000 9:55:22 PM

Cattish mews from Scottish lore. Hoary humour out the door.

2422. hashke - 1/7/2000 9:56:01 PM

...Ariadnian...

2423. ScottLoar - 1/7/2000 9:56:22 PM

Candide, you sound like Hecate over a cauldron.

2424. Candide - 1/7/2000 10:00:26 PM

Hashke and ScottLoar as I go to rustle up some lunch...

Furioso sto cercando
il buffone ScottLoarando.

Sto scherzando
Pace e gioa
senno, vado alla boia.

2425. ScottLoar - 1/7/2000 10:02:57 PM

I've never before been called a buffoon but only for lack of vocabulary I'm sure.

2426. hashke - 1/7/2000 10:08:53 PM

2420. ScottLoar - 1/8/00 2:52:52 AM

Hashke shakes-spear

Bygod, methinks that in your wonderful anagram there lies a compliment!

A Danteing idea.

2427. hashke - 1/7/2000 10:24:21 PM

vado alla boia.

Fa un boia senza gli giuochi di parole.

2428. hashke - 1/7/2000 10:26:52 PM

...i giuochi...,prego.

2429. Candide - 1/7/2000 10:50:25 PM

Mi dispiace ScottLoar

It scanned so beautifully. You're far too elegant to be a buffoon.

Hashke è tutto una boiata.

2430. Candide - 1/7/2000 10:58:43 PM

hashke
In plain English, I'm intrigued by your use of giuoco instead of gioco.

I've sung giuocoin Rossini but rarely seen it used in modern Italian.

2431. rycky - 1/7/2000 11:01:51 PM

b ??

Hecate didn't speak Italian.

•••

2432. Candide - 1/7/2000 11:05:39 PM

Hecate had the gift of tongues.

2433. Candide - 1/7/2000 11:41:17 PM

hashke/ScottLoar

Was DanTe a 'danDy'in the USA?
Hashke shakes-spear brilliant.

2434. hashke - 1/8/2000 12:24:12 AM

2430. Candide - 1/8/00 3:58:43 AM
hashke

In plain English, I'm intrigued by your use of giuoco instead of gioco.

I've sung giuoco in Rossini but rarely seen it used in modern Italian

In my dictionary both are listed equally with no comment. And I've read it in the letteratura moderna.

2435. Candide - 1/8/2000 1:56:45 AM

hashke

I'm sure you're correct.

2436. cmboyce - 1/9/2000 12:34:31 AM

I was going to say that I had always pronounced the "t" in "writer", but "voiced alveolar tap" seems to cover the case better. "Thirteen", on the other hand, definitely has a "t", doubtless for the reason stated by ScottLoar. Incidentally, I also say "Missoura", doubtless because I too was born there, but I don't regard this as "hypercorrection". Just correction. ;-)

2437. cmboyce - 1/9/2000 12:43:06 AM

Oops. I see that remark was about 60 entries too late. Chalk it up to enthusiasm for minor points of pronunciation. I'm afraid I can't do much with Italian, though. Back to the Quiz thread.

2438. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/9/2000 12:47:14 AM

cm:
I too say the "t" in thirteen, but I've heard Americans use a tap for it fairly often, and it sounds natural enough. It is even more common in Australia, where it is the usual form. The Aussies also stress the second syllable (which makes it easier to distinguish from "thirty," which is stressed on the first syllable).

I spent the past week with a friend from "Missoura" who always says it that way.

2439. cmboyce - 1/9/2000 12:58:23 AM

I understand all Missourians (ie, of course, "Missoura-^ns") say it so. God knows why.

Well. I looked up the etymology of "Missouri" in the AHD and got the following: "from Missouri [the Siouan tribe (and its language), of which name it is said: "...from American Colonial French ouémissourites, 'those who have canoes', based on Illinois missouri, 'canoe'."

I'd speculate that perhaps in Illinois (the language), the word was pronounced "missoura", except that the river, and for that matter the tribe and language, are (per AHD) also pronounced both ways--with "-i" the preferred ending.

So "God knows why" must stand.

2440. DanDillon - 1/9/2000 9:24:39 AM

cmboyce, Irv,

There are indeed many Missouri natives who flatten the final vowel sound of their state. But there are just as many who do not. I've found living in eastern Kansas to be quite an intersting linguistic experience, not just from a pronunciation p.o.v. but from a usage one as well. I'll have to tell you all about "anymore" sometime after I have my two cups of coffee in me.

2441. ycmeehan - 1/9/2000 9:53:04 AM

Irv,
I would like this mystery elucidated:
In which countries is the 't' of "often" properly pronounced? I was told once that only English natives and the United States' Southerner natives stress it.

I think that I have asked this question before in this thread. If I did, I can't remember if it was answered. Thank you.

2442. ScottLoar - 1/9/2000 10:38:37 AM

DanDillon, please. We're talkin' about true sons of the soil, native "Missourans" whose Grandma's and Grandpa's supported the South, Jesse James, the Coles, Youngers and Daltons.

2443. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/9/2000 10:47:39 AM

yc:
Pronouncing the "t" in "often" is unnatural in any dialect of English, and is always evidence of hypercorrect speech. Historically, it has never been pronounced. At the risk of sounding prescriptivist, it is simply wrong.

2444. DanDillon - 1/9/2000 3:15:51 PM

Wrt Message # 2442:

Oh.

2445. DanDillon - 1/9/2000 3:48:23 PM

The word "anymore" (or the adverbial phrase "any more" if you want to split hairs) is put to very curious use here in my part of the U.S. The strangest thing about it is that people use it in an affirmative utterance just as often (perhaps more often) as in the negative. Whereas I'm used to something like "I don't play tennis anymore," you'll hear someone here say "Anymore, the roads are full of potholes." In the latter of these two examples, "anymore" takes the place of a sort of time marker, such as "nowadays" or "for some time now." Another example of this curious usage is "The suburbs anymore are spreading all across old farm land." There is invariably a slight pause before and after "anymore" when it's used to this effect.

When I first arrived here in the Kansas City area and heard the word used in such a bizzare way, I simply couldn't understand why people were putting it into their sentences at seemingly nonsensical junctures. After I thought about it a while and talked to a few local folks about why they do it (I was clearly nuts, I'm sure they thought, asking them something about the way they spoke, and about such a trifling thing, to boot), I realized that the word functions, in each and every one of their utterances, as an adverb. And the uniqueness of an adverb, in that it is a sort of syntactic free radical, allows it to float around and land pretty much wherever it wants in an English sentence.

Tomorrow, I'm going to the store.
I'm going tomorrow to the store.
I'm going to the store tomorrow.

No other word in that simple sentence has the mobility of the adverb "tomorrow." In fact, you can't mess with the syntax of that sentence at all, except for that adverb of time. Thus, "anymore" and its odd usage as an averb of time in affirmative sentences.

2446. DanDillon - 1/9/2000 3:48:50 PM

One thing still perplexes me, however. How--or why--did the semantic shift take place here in this region? How did a perfectly good word like "nowadays" get supplanted by "anymore"? The syntactic puzzle solved, I have yet to figure out why people here use this word to mean what it does.

2447. Candide - 1/9/2000 4:15:08 PM

IrvingSnodgrass
Pronouncing the "t" in "often" is unnatural in any dialect of English, and is always evidence of hypercorrect speech. Historically, it has never been pronounced. At the risk of sounding prescriptivist, it is simply wrong.

Irving, so manyof us being wrong? Can that be correct? I just can't accept what you say. While not denying that many people pronounce the T as you describe, my entire life experience tells me that the majority outside America and Australia do clearly pronounce the final T and educated (not affected) people pronounce all the Ts.

You may be asking Australians who hate the English due to the Irish experience. That version of the wrong is that if it is English it is wrong.

I'm not denying that scholars may very well have fond many pockets of England where dialect alters the T.

It is usual in England to pronounce the T as T not D and it is usual to pronounce every T. And I'm talking about relaxed educated, as distinct from affected and self-conscious people. There may be some social reason for dismissing this but there can be no other reason.

2448. DanDillon - 1/9/2000 5:02:25 PM

Fowler on often:

Pronounce aw'fn or o'fn. The sounding of the t, which as the OED says is 'not recognized by the dictionaries', is practised by two oddly consorted classes--the academic speakers who affect a more precise enunciation than their neighbours' & insist on de'vil & pi'ktür instead of de'vl & pi'kcher, & the uneasy half-literates who like to prove that they can spell by calling hour & medicine howr & me'disin instead of owr & me'dsn.

No effort should be made to sound the t in the large classes of words ending in -sten (chasten, fasten, listen) & -stle (castle, wrestle, epistle, jostle, bustle), nor in often, soften, ostler, nestling, waistcoat, postpone. But some good people, afraid they may be suspected of not knowing how to spell, say the t in in self-defense.

2449. DanDillon - 1/9/2000 5:06:02 PM

Odd seeing Irv play the role of prescriptivist to Candide's descriptivist (so many of us being wrong? Can that be correct?).

Or fun, perhaps, is the better adj.

I've got to add that, intended or not, Fowler's final editorial note on those who pronounce "the t in self-defense" is a clever jab indeed.

2450. Candide - 1/9/2000 5:06:23 PM

Silent T is a different matter. That is like much English spelling and also affects other letters. Hence the English joke :"The P is silent as in surf bathing".

2451. DanDillon - 1/9/2000 5:13:32 PM

Candide,

Have I misunderstood your Message # 2447? I was under the impression you were offering a rebuttal to the excerpt from Irv's post.

2452. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/9/2000 5:31:33 PM

Candide:
Please find me a linguist or commentator on language (even a despicable prescriptivist) anywhere in the world who advocates pronoouncing the t in often.

The Fowler whom Dan quotes is a British grammarian who wrote in the early part of the last century, and he was describing British English. The language hasn't changed since then.

What makes the t in often any different from the "silent t" you describe? It is also a "silent t."

You're railing against the entire body of linguistic literature with your objections. It isn't just me... it's all linguists and language mavens.

2453. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/9/2000 5:34:20 PM

Candide:
I might add that anyone who tried to pronounce English as it is spelled would sound silly indeed.

2454. Candide - 1/9/2000 6:02:20 PM

Irving

I don't advocate pronouncing T in often. I was joking.

2455. Candide - 1/9/2000 6:03:21 PM

DanDillon.

You are correct. Rebuttal was the name of the game.

2456. Candide - 1/9/2000 6:07:49 PM

IrvigSnodgrass

I agree. Spelling pronunciation is strong in Australia because the Irish nuns brought it over from Ireland. The history of language in Ireland is a tragedy of which I am sure you are already aware. Australia gets the pronuncialtion of the letter 'aitch' as 'Haitch' from the Irish nuns. In England that is definitely a working class pronunciation much exploited by comedians. In Australia it is uttered seriously by learned scholars.

2457. Candide - 1/9/2000 6:09:54 PM

pronuncialtionsob.

2458. DanDillon - 1/9/2000 6:10:15 PM

Candide,

I'm sorry, but I'm finding it increasingly difficult to follow what I perceive to be a series of non sequiturs. Is it that you're not providing enough context for your posts? Maybe I'll just watch for a spell.

2459. Candide - 1/9/2000 6:25:45 PM

DanDillon

I'm sorry. I had to prepare and serve breakfast between your post and my next. I try not to let these things show.
DanDillon 2448
Pronounce aw'fn or o'fn. The sounding of the t, which as the OED
says is 'not recognized by the dictionaries', is practised by two oddly consorted classes--the academic speakers who affect a more precise enunciation than their neighbours' & insist on de'vil & pi'ktür
instead of de'vl & pi'kcher, & the uneasy half-literates who like to
prove that they can spell by calling hour & medicine howr & me'disin
instead of owr & me'dsn.
You know the normal, as distict from Public (private) school pronunciation of 'picture' is a mixture of the posh/working class 'picher' and picTyer. The last syllable being an 'indeterminate' vowel. I am out of my depth here when I try to describe as a lay person what my ear tells me.

No effort should be made to sound the t in the large classes of words ending in -sten (chasten, fasten, listen) & -stle (castle, wrestle, epistle, jostle, bustle), nor in often, soften, ostler, nestling, waistcoat modern people usually say 'waisTcoat, as distinct from the more archaic 'wescit'.postpone. But some good people, afraid they may be suspected of not knowing how to spell, say the t in in self-defense.
True, but the difference 'twixt one and t'other can only be spotted by one or the other. The fiendish class-game of English English is made up of such traps and pitfalls. There is a steady middle-middle class that just talks plainly and clearly.

2460. Candide - 1/9/2000 6:36:19 PM

IrvingSnodgrass

I can't find maven in any of my distionaries including the Shorter Oxford. What does it mean? (I deduced a meaning but I need guidance. Something like 'covens'?)

2461. Candide - 1/9/2000 8:23:40 PM

IrvingSnodgrass
I am very much at fault. I was rushing to close the gap after missing a lot and my reading was slovenly. I apologise profusely.
IrvingSnodgrass
Pronouncing the "t" in "often" is unnatural in any dialect of English, and is always evidence of hypercorrect speech. Historically, it has never been pronounced. At the risk of sounding prescriptivist, it is simply wrong.

You are absolutely correct. God knows what I thought I had read. I apologise once more for wasting your time. be merciful in your judgement. I am trying to do too many things at once, but you should not be the victim of my chaos.

2462. DanDillon - 1/9/2000 8:26:36 PM

Shouldn't be the victim of anything, really.

2463. Candide - 1/9/2000 8:30:49 PM

DanDillon

In the context of my horrid realisation of my wrong reading of Irving
the academic speakers who affect a more precise
enunciation than their neighbours' & insist on de'vil & pi'ktür
instead of de'vl & pi'kcher, & the uneasy half-literates who like to
prove that they can spell by calling hour & medicine howr & me'disin
instead of owr & me'dsn.

It's true that a certain class of oxonian speech uses 'awftin', as do some working class speakers.

I apologise for taking your time when I was unable to concentrate adequately.
There ought to be a lor!
Candide does not concentrate in class and her work shows some sloppiness.

2464. profemeritus - 1/9/2000 8:54:27 PM

Candide

This is the first time I have addressed you. I do so because you are remarkable. Why remarkable? Because you are uniquely unique on the Mote in freely admitting a mistake.

I wonder what Pak Hashke (do you know what a distinguished linguist he is?) is going to say about "uniquely unique."

2465. Candide - 1/9/2000 9:10:48 PM

profemeritus

You are kind. I was wrong so what's the point in denying it? I am always impetuous but usually more careful than in the last utterances on this thread.

I believe 'Uniquely unique' is slightly better than 'almost unique'.

2466. DanDillon - 1/9/2000 10:17:57 PM

My favorite is "singularly unique."

2467. ScottLoar - 1/9/2000 10:25:32 PM

Candide is not unique in admitting error. Rare, yes; unique, no.

2468. Candide - 1/9/2000 10:27:41 PM

DanDillon
Untoppable.

2469. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/9/2000 10:57:11 PM

Candide:
Whether you are misunderstanding or not, I enjoy our encounters here. I find your thirst for knowledge a fine addition to the Mote. ScottLoar's amendment of ProfE's fine post is quite correct (ScottLoar being one who has admitted errors on occasion), and we can all learn a lesson from your approach.

And you shouldn't worry about misspelling "pronunciation" a few posts after I misspelled it myself.

Maven is a fine word from Yiddish which is quite common in American English. It means an expert, with a dash of self-importance added. There is a chapter in Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct (a fine book which I recommend highly... we once discussed it in a special thread at the old place) entitled "The Language Mavens."

At any rate, I agree with your statements about English in recent posts. I would transcibe the English Public School pronunciation of picture as soemething like "pik-chiuh." The pronunciation Fowler was making fun of is more like "pik-tyoo-uh."

Finally, though I agree a bit with your reservations about Australian English ("haitch" grates on my ears as well), I am a great fan of Australian English, and personally find it extremely pleasing to the ear, and much preferable to any British varieties.

2470. DanDillon - 1/9/2000 11:05:46 PM

Random selection from a prized possession:

mooner n. Police. a person whose wrongdoing is supposedly caused by the influence of the full moon. Cf. S.E. lunatic.
1958 N.Y. Times Mag. (Mar. 16) 88:Mooner.--One of a number of people who keep policemen busy during full moons (when, according to police lore, categories of crime show an increase.)

-from Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang

2471. Candide - 1/9/2000 11:14:34 PM

IrvingSnodgrass

As I said before. You are one of nature's gentlemen.

2472. joezan - 1/9/2000 11:17:39 PM

The town I grew up in on Long Island, N.Y., though settled by the English in the 1600's, was still little more than a pine barren when it was inundated and re-settled by a wave of Irish immigrants escaping the blight in the late 1800's.

Though less than an hour east of Manhattan, by the mid-60's when I entered elementary school, many of the 3rd and 4th-generation locals still spoke with a distinct Irish brogue. And my sibs and I were taught to pronounce the letter H, haitch.

2473. DanDillon - 1/9/2000 11:17:44 PM

Candide,

You're an excellent judge of character.

2474. stostosto - 1/10/2000 5:26:05 AM

Irv, what a relief:

"I realized after I made the first post on the topic that I had over-generalized. It was a passing comment, and wrongly worded. I was specific in the next and all subsequent poosts, which I am surprised you seem to have missed. "

I too am surprised I missed them (or maybe not, I tend to down-prioritize this thread due to other contestants for attention). My gripe was exactly with your sweeping generalisation which I found hugely odd. And I haven't seen you retract any of it until now. But, again, I may have missed it.

For the record, I think you are right in taking Candide to task wrt her busybodiness about other people's pronunciation, which started the whole debate.

Candide:

What were people's reactions to your affectations about 'wriders'? Your mockingly shouting "Where? Where?" in a shopping mall strikes me as - pardon this - insufferably pretentious.

As did that act on the church steps, btw. A kind of studentikos behaviour you'd expect of cocky high school attendees (I was one such myself, once - but I am not proud of it...).

2475. Candide - 1/10/2000 6:29:11 AM

stostosto

No reaction. Entirely for my own diversion.

What were people's reactions to your affectations about 'wriders'?

NOT AFFECTATIONS. A genuine reaction to an ugly loss of meaning in the context of my own culture — the culture in which I dwell and which I know. I assure you that all Australians don't say wriDer for writer. It is a battle for variety still worth fighting in this place. On this point I won't concede while not denying others' right to different pronunciation.
My reaction was sincere and you are being a surprisingly unhumorous person.

2476. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/10/2000 6:30:04 AM

joezan:
I'm sure someone, somewhere, has done a study of the profound influence of Irish English on American English, especially in the Northeast. Thanks for the fascinating observation.

Sto:
And I haven't seen you retract any of it until now. But, again, I may have missed it.

I clarified my response in Message # 2187, Message # 2201 and Message # 2211.

I wouldn't say I "took Candide to task," but I did try to set some of the issues straight. I admire her spirit.

2477. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/10/2000 6:35:57 AM

Candide:
Just to clarify: Australians don't substitute a "d" for a "t" when they say what you hear as "wrider." They are using a voiced alveolar tap, which is a different animal altogether. The confusion comes from the fact that this is the same sound used for intervocalic "d" in natural speech (in Australian, American, and some British English).

And, as I've said before, no matter how much you rail against it, you can't fight the tide of language usage. And, I assure you, there is no loss of meaning. In those rare instances where a different interpretation is possible, you'll find speakers enunciate the appropriate sound to stress the difference (as CalCal pointed out waaay back).

2478. stostosto - 1/10/2000 6:44:47 AM

Candide:

You mean, you actually genuinely thought the spruikers (as you call them - a new word I learnt there, thx) meant 'riders'?
Otherwise, I see no humour. Surprise or not.

2479. Candide - 1/10/2000 6:45:02 AM

I would like to explain the 'language' in a rather racier than usual tale I posted in 'Stories'. Many males from other cultures in Sydney resort, as I gather they also do in the USA, to four-letter words to fill in gaps of emphasis and insecurity in their new language.

One such character moved in next door to me, and while I don't judge him (I do judge other aspects of his behaviour) I found it ugly to live in a loud and constant and inescapable wash of that sort of language. This neighbour in particular augmented the pain by running a garment import business from his house and by bringing a crowd of youths to assist him, who all expressed themselves in the same way. The house in which he lives is owned by his girl friend who is a very sharp lawyer so I was trapped. I also am an invited member of the Free Speech Committee, so I could hardly complain about the language which was loud and continuous—like a stream of filth. All the conversations in the tale are authentic. Nothing, apart from the ending was invented.

He seems to have abandoned that trade now although he sings all day loudly and tunelessly. I think he is on tranquilisers. An example of city living where we have to somehow protect our own environment in the face of oiverwhelming odds.

2480. stostosto - 1/10/2000 6:46:16 AM

Irv:
Thanks for giving providing those links. They do seem to soften your stand a bit.

2481. Candide - 1/10/2000 6:46:42 AM

You must allow me to grieve a loss. All that you say may be correct but still, I grieve a loss.

2482. stostosto - 1/10/2000 6:46:54 AM

"giving providing"

Well, scratch one of them.

2483. Candide - 1/10/2000 6:47:57 AM

stostosto

I pretended I thought they meant 'riders'. A little melancholy joke.

2484. stostosto - 1/10/2000 6:48:40 AM

Irv,
but how about your Message # 2383?

"sto:
I still mantain there is no natural dialect of English which pronounces a "t" in "writer." In America, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Ireland, and parts of England, it is a voiced alveolar tap (NOT a "d"). In Northern and parts of Southern England, it is a glottal stop. This has been true historically, and is not a recent development. Any speaker pronouncing a "t" in the word is using an unnatural hypercorrect pronunciation."

2485. Candide - 1/10/2000 6:49:54 AM

Do Danes make jokes?

2486. stostosto - 1/10/2000 6:51:43 AM

Candide
I thought you were pretending. And I just don't think your "melancholy joke" was funny. Sorry.

2487. stostosto - 1/10/2000 6:54:05 AM

Candide:
Danes make much too many jokes. We tend to find ourselves extremely witty and humorous. And we tend to insufferably overdo it.

2488. Candide - 1/10/2000 6:59:15 AM

stostosto

Oooh.Lost in translation I fear.

You under-estimate the melancholy experienced and the need for the joke in the first place.

2489. Candide - 1/10/2000 7:07:27 AM

stostosto
p.s.And I just don't think your
"melancholy joke" was funny. Sorry.

It was MELANCHOLY.

2490. stostosto - 1/10/2000 7:16:19 AM

Well, I didn't find it melancholy either.

2491. stostosto - 1/10/2000 7:16:44 AM

...melancholic...

2492. tmachine - 1/10/2000 10:16:29 AM

happy new year all. and especially to irv--irv, spent new year's with my family in GB, including Ralph--first time I'd seen him since 1984!!! he has a distinct Australian intonation now as a matter of fact, not without charm, and has clearly gotten v. accustomed to the weather in northern NSW--his main complaint in England was about the cold.

2493. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/10/2000 10:27:30 AM

sto:
but how about your Message # 2383?

What about it? It's well-worded and clear and 100% factually accurate.

2494. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/10/2000 10:30:15 AM

TM:
I miss Ralph, and hope he'll pass through here again eventually. His accent when I knew him had decidedly Australian overtones, which have no doubt been strengthened in the past 15 months. I think it's a rather nice accent, myself.

2495. hashke - 1/10/2000 11:43:10 AM

2464. profemeritus - 1/10/00 1:54:27 AM
Candide

This is the first time I have addressed you. I do so because you are remarkable. Why remarkable? Because you are uniquely unique on the Mote in freely admitting a mistake.

I wonder what Pak Hashke is going to say about "uniquely unique."

Peerlessly peerless.

2496. tmachine - 1/10/2000 12:13:16 PM

it is a nice accent, irv. i liked ralph very much (i know it's a funny thing to say about your own brother, but it's been so long since we spent any time around each other), though he has a certain remoteness and tends to look at the rest of his sibs with a slightly bemused, what-are-you-hamsters-running-around-on-your-wheels-for look at times. i'm sure he'll get back to Bali eventually--actually I had to go online at my mother's to help him find the phone number of some hotel there so he could contact friends of his who were going to get his scuba diving gear back for him. highly involved. the real question is, when will I get to Bali? i would so love to go but the hideous cost of college for our oldest already...

2497. Candide - 1/10/2000 2:45:17 PM

One last throw of the dice.
A very close friend in publishing, contemplating an Australian language dictionary, was chatting to the language prof from Macquarie University (the eagles' nest of Australian English) and mentioned the T/D pronunciation and the prof laughed and said:"Yeah, bewdy".

The D pronunciation here in Broad Australian is not subtle or mixed — it's a plain, clear, heavy D.

I'm not saying it's wrong to speak in this fashion. But I bet all of you who have children, correct their speech and try to steer some path of moderation in pronunciation.

2498. Candide - 1/10/2000 2:46:19 PM

Macquarie University in Sydney has quite rightly established Australian speech as a way of speaking English that is not wrong; but a social follow-up to this has happened. Broad Australian — which I agree with Irving is pleasant and full of character — has, in certain circles become, not just acceptable, but obligatory. It's a manifestation of a certain type of nationalism. The Ocker character became tremendously established in the commercial media. All the female news readers on Channel 10 seem to have been selected for this pronunciation. It is perfectly acceptable in Australia to use this speech and it always has been, but now it is virtually being taught in some circles.

2499. Candide - 1/10/2000 2:46:45 PM

There is a hell of a difference between natural speech evolution and a deliberate nationalist encouragement of one of many existing speech patterns in Australia.

There are careers resting on this. Books have been written. Academic posts have been granted. In a way it can be compared to the recent takeover by media giants of the traditional people's football teams.
Nationalism of this kind is mercifully on the wane nowadays, but those who rode to power on the Ocker wave are still in place. Some of those who encouraged it at the start have publicly regretted the monster they created.

This is NOT a negation of the very charming, unforced, natural, unself-conscious Australian speech.

2500. Candide - 1/10/2000 3:17:14 PM

IrvingSnodgrass#2383
In America, Australia, New Zealand,
Canada, Ireland, and parts of England, it is a voiced alveolar tap
(NOT a "d").

By no means is it always as you have described when spoken in Australia.

Sorry Irving. It just isn't. It often is. But this is not invariable. A proper D is very common. And I can hear the difference.

2501. Candide - 1/10/2000 3:20:05 PM

stostosto
I may be a female lout, but I'm valiant.

2502. Candide - 1/10/2000 3:57:08 PM

The Australian Pocket Oxford Dictionary page 90.
bewdy bju:di:/var. of BEAUTY
bewdy bonzer adj. colloq.magnificent, wonderful; dinkum Australian.

I just found the dictionary in our mess.

2503. ScottLoar - 1/10/2000 4:19:03 PM

A Practical Guide to Australian Speech and Custom

Just imagine yourself in a Robert Louis Stevenson novel.

2504. Candide - 1/10/2000 5:32:24 PM

ScottLoar

How did you guess that my name is Catriona?

2505. ScottLoar - 1/10/2000 5:40:18 PM

I did guess you are buxom, bawdy and can hold your own among drunken sailors.

2506. Candide - 1/10/2000 5:44:29 PM

I deny buxom.

2507. ScottLoar - 1/10/2000 6:07:27 PM

I deny a fervid imagination.

2508. Candide - 1/10/2000 6:36:48 PM

Denial is a recognised symptom.

2509. stostosto - 1/10/2000 6:44:17 PM

Candide:

"I may be a female lout, but I am valiant".

That sounds like a great tagline for TT.

(I actually feel a little bad for having betrayed you like that, you, my valiant comrade in arms in the great, grim pronunciation baddle. Sorry. But I can't promise it will never happen again. But if so, I will apologise again. I can promise you that).

2510. Candide - 1/10/2000 7:33:18 PM

stostosto

Bless you my valiant companion in verbs. How could you have failed to be confused by my own chaos.

2511. DanDillon - 1/10/2000 9:27:56 PM

Candide,

Are you a lawyer/barrister?

2512. Candide - 1/10/2000 9:35:31 PM

DanDillon

Never.

2513. Candide - 1/11/2000 3:57:47 PM

IrvingSnodgrass
If you don't speak to me I will think that you hate me.

I should have been able to produce that dictionary example atraight away, but because I am a chaotic mess I only thought of it after dragging you through all that rough country.

Actually, I didn't even know that we had a copy of that particular dictionary. My husband works at the other end of a long thin house and together we have an accumulation of books that is out of control. The filing system breaks down because of the incompatibility of the sizes of the books and the sizes of the shelves.
Please forgive my disorderly nature.

2514. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/12/2000 12:25:50 AM

Candide:
I've been putting off responding because I will have to get into another area of linguistics (one which I described at length in this thread's predecessor several times) and I can't cover this wth a simple short answer... there is just too much groundwork I need to lay first.

When speaking of the sounds of a language, there is an important distinction to be made between phonemics and phonetics.

Phonemics is the study of the sounds as they are perceived by the speakers of a language. Phonetics is the study of the actual sounds. It is important to realize that we don't hear with our minds the same sounds that our ears hear. Every language has its own system of phonemes, and it is those sounds that our mind tells us we're hearing.

In each language, there are phonetic variants of sounds which we don't recognize, since they are unimportant to the language. But these variants are often entirely separate sounds in other languages. These phonetic variants of a sound are called allophones.

Examples of allophones in English are aspirated and unaspirated "t." The "t" at the beginning of words is aspirated, while word-medial "t" is not. These are different sounds phonetically, but English speakers "hear" them as the same sound. Speakers of other languages hear them as separate sounds.

I could give more examples from a variety of languages, but the problem with using linguistic symbols here (the international phonetic alphabet, or IPA) makes it difficult. And it is very hard to indicate phonetic symbols using the English alphabet, since it denotes English sounds to English speakers. I hope you can take my word for it, or, if you are interested, check out a textbook on Phonetics and Phonemics from the library.

[continued]

2515. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/12/2000 12:26:44 AM

Dictionaries are designed for use by average speakers of a language. They are not written by or designed for use by linguists. The sound symbols used in dictionaries only represent the phonemic form of a word. They do not say anything about the underlying phonetic<

For example, phonemically there is a relationship in English between "long i" and "short i." Phonetically there is no special relationship between these sounds: "long i" is a diphthong [ai] made up of two vowel sounds, while "short i" is a high front vowel closely related (phonetically) to the sound called "long e" in English.

This is all by way of preparing the groundwork for two important points:

1) You can't mix phonetics and phonemics. I am talking about phonetic phenomena, and you are providing phonemic evidence. The two are not comparable.

2) Phonemically, the voiced alveolar tap in words like "beauty" is perceived as a "d" by English speakers, hence a dictionary will represent it as a "d." In fact, it is an allophone of "t," occuring in intervocalic environments, and is not the same as a "d," which is a voiced alveolar stop. The sounds are different phonetically even though they are perceived to be the same phonemically by speakers of English. Dictionaries do not even use a symbol for voiced alveolar taps... such allophonic variants are irrelevant to non-linguists.

So, the bottom line is that the intervocalic sound you hear in lace of "t" as a "d" is not a "d" at all. It is an allophonic variant of "t" (just as the glottal stop is an allophonic variant of "t" in many dialects of British English) and, as such, will not show up in a dictionary.

2516. Candide - 1/12/2000 12:46:43 AM

IrvingSnodgrass
Examples of allophones in English are aspirated and unaspirated "t."
The "t" at the beginning of words is aspirated, while word-medial "t"is not. These are different sounds phonetically, but English speakers "hear" them as the same sound. Speakers of other languages hear them as separate sounds.

I'm sure you are right. I had to wrap my brain around some of that when I sang in German especially when I sang WITH Germans. I never did say mädchen as I wished to.
I still claim that SOME Australian words are simply an ungarnished plain D. But the majority are as you describe.
I have been listening like a super-hawk since the beginning of our discussion and I do mainly hear what you describe — BUT I also do hear what I describe. I hear THUD as well as the gentler sound.
I still draw your attention to the cultural nationalism which encouraged a debased version of broad Australian and exaggerated natural tendencies.

I hope that your television shows Les Hiddens, the Bush Tucker Man. Apart from being an extremely interesting program it is a fascinating example of an almost impenetrable and entirely unforced Australian 'dialect' of a quite different kind.

2517. Candide - 1/12/2000 12:47:50 AM

Does that do it?

2518. Candide - 1/12/2000 12:49:47 AM

IrvingSnodgrass.

All my carefully selected italics passages got buried in the avalanche. I think your justified weariness with the whole darn thing entitles you to an avalanche or two.

2519. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/12/2000 12:56:59 AM

Sorry about the unclosed italics above... my connection is so slow today that I didn't preview it.

Of course there are regular "d" sounds in Australian English. You just won't find them as an allophonic variant of "t" intervicallically.

I haven't seen the program you mention, though I would like to. As I mentioned earlier, I am a great fan of Australian English, allophones and all.

2520. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/12/2000 12:59:15 AM

intervocalically

2521. Candide - 1/12/2000 1:02:19 AM

Les Hiddens is a military man who knows how to live off the land - probably in all of Australia - but particularly in the extreme north. He is actually extremely scholarly and intellectual and knows the most amazing facts about early Dutch exploration in Australia. He tries to find evidence for some theories he has during some of the programs. His rough diamond surface conceals a most refined and sensitive mind and spirit. His speech just about needs sub-titles for urban Australians.

2522. Candide - 1/12/2000 1:10:02 AM

My standard dictionary that I prefer to the 'Oxford' is 'Collins Dictionary of the English Language'. An Italian poet and academic of my acquaintance only began to relax with the English language after he bought himself a Collins dictionary. It gives good clear definitions of allophone and phoneme.

2523. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/12/2000 1:25:14 AM

Candide:
I hope you also have the Macquarie dictionary on your bookshelf.

As a follow-up to my post in the International thread, here is a brief pronunciation guide to Fijian names. The article it accompanies is fascinating reading on the 1987 Fijian coup (in which your friend Timoci Bavadra was ousted).

2524. Candide - 1/12/2000 1:37:38 AM

Before I read it I should tell you (uninfluenced) that I met him at a Sydney anti-nuclear rally. He was with Don Dunstan, the late and very lamented extremely cultivated Premier of South Australia. I subscribe to the theory that the Fijian's 'Nuclear Free Pacific Treaty' commitment' caused the uprising to be activated by some well recorded and genuinely non phantasmic CIA individuals operating in the area. The Fijians were sincere of course, but the timing was exquisite.

2525. Candide - 1/12/2000 2:13:02 AM

IrvingSnodgrass
I'll move to international.

2526. Candide - 1/12/2000 6:04:30 PM

ScottLoar and IrvingSnodgrass

I've moved here from 'International' because the topic is language.

When I said the Brits consider it vulgar to use foreign names, I was not sufficiently careful.

I should have said, when speaking English to other English speakers.

It is actually an English virtue that they do not wish to flaunt superior knowledge when conversing with someone who may not share that knowledge. Therefore, in the context of an English conversation the English version of place names is always used by polite people, even if they are completely familiar with the original name. So, for once, they are not being Imperialists. News readers in England are following this practice.
When Italians do the same I suppose there may be a similar motive, although I have my suspicions that it never occurred to them to do anything else.

2527. pseudoerasmus - 1/12/2000 7:39:25 PM

Irving, I dare you to find any actual human being (as opposed to a linguist) with any experience of England, Scotland, Wales or Ireland who would agree with you. Sounding the intervocalic T is neither affected nor unnatural nor hypercorrect nor emphatic nor snobbish nor, to say the least, incorrect. There are two ways of pronouncing the intervocalic T in the British Isles, as a real living breathing T and as a glottal stop. The former is the natural, colloquial and unaffected pronunciation of the majority of educated native English speakers outside the Antipodes and North America, especially those in the middle class and above. Frankly I don’t understand why you think this is ‘unnatural’. By descriptivist logic, whatever is, is natural; whatever a large number of people do and say, is natural. End of story. Do you think those who as a matter of course pronounce the T in maternity, exciting, complicated and at all, resort to saying, during less guarded moments, ma’erni’y/madernidy, exci’ing/exciding, complica’ed/complicaded and a’all/adall? I don’t think even glottal stoppers do the deed in Haiti or water. Just imagine saying wa’er! (¡¡@#$%!!)

Some caveats, however. BeauDiful (with the tap sound) is quite common in the UK, but one never hears toDally and seldom to’ally. Thus, toTally beauDiful’. La’in for Latin is becoming well nigh universal too. In RP or RP-influenced speech, sometimes syncopation makes the intervocalic T (and D) not so intervocalic. Thus, lateral comes out as latr’l, literally as litr’lly, salutory as salyutry and model as modl (with the stress on the first syllable.)

Message # 2250: Manchester? I’ve never set foot in that city. My school was not more than 25km from central London.

2528. stostosto - 1/13/2000 5:02:31 AM

Pseuder

Wonderful! Thank you for finally weighing in. If that does not convince Irv, I will write him off as a complete linguistic quack. (Though he will still be a very pleasant guy). I have for weeks now been unable to follow the intent of British speak because I have focused exclusively on how they pronounce intervocal T. And, of course, they do pronounce it, well, like I said.

As to your Manchester upbringing, I was wrong-footed by this page

"Wattle-Flap [a very minor English public school, located outside Manchester], 1980-1986"

I realised some of the information was mock, but not all of it.

(Even though I guess that if your school was not more than 25km from London, it might be said to be located outside Manchester as well).

2529. alistairConnor - 1/13/2000 5:37:58 AM

Yup, now that the Pseud has committed the crime of lese-majeste, I can cry Hear Hear, Irv was obviously wrong... not that I am a foneddick fonaddick or anything...

2530. Candide - 1/13/2000 6:19:58 AM

25 kms from London eh? Now let me see? That includes ****** and **** as well as several excellent borstals.

Chaps were taught not to blub at those institutions.

2531. Candide - 1/13/2000 8:22:43 PM

hashke

This post is not relevant but neither is the place where I read your post about your father. I loved it. One of the things that I like most about my husband is his ability to do beautiful things with wood.

2532. hashke - 1/13/2000 10:41:30 PM

Candide:

Good for your husband! That is a splintered avocation and I wood if I could. But it has always somehow gone against my grain, lignominiously so.

2533. Candide - 1/14/2000 2:18:47 AM

hashke

If yew pine fir a resin it wood be a chip axetivity.

2534. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/14/2000 3:08:18 AM

PE:
There are two ways of pronouncing the intervocalic T in the British Isles, as a real living breathing T and as a glottal stop. The former is the natural, colloquial and unaffected pronunciation of the majority of educated native English speakers outside the Antipodes and North America, especially those in the middle class and above. Frankly I don’t understand why you think this is ‘unnatural’. By descriptivist logic, whatever is, is natural; whatever a large number of people do and say, is natural.

You've hit upon the key point. The dialect spoken by your "middle class and above" speakers is based upon an unnatural variety concocted by prescriptivists who felt that language should reflect spelling (rather than the other way around, which is normal). It is unnatural in that it doesn't descend from English historically through natural sound changes, but represents a succesful attempt to change language through class consciousness. The proof is that the intervocalic t is pronounced as a voiced alveolar tap everywhere else in the native English speaking world: North America, the Antipodes, the West Indies and Ireland.

Furthermore, in England itself, the intervocalic t is not regularly pronounced as a t by all but the middle class and above, as a look at any linguistic atlas will show you. The hoi polloi may be discounted by you, but they are normally the first place to look for language change, and remain true to a language's roots in the face of borrowings and prescriptivism.

Just imagine saying wa’er!

I've heard this form frequently.

Sto:
If that does not convince Irv, I will write him off as a complete linguistic quack.

No need to do that. If you continue to insist on your point in the face of linguistic evidence, all you need do is write yourself off as a linguistic ignoramus.

2535. stostosto - 1/14/2000 4:37:43 AM

My Goodness you're intransigent, Irv.

So you are saying that the English spoken by millions of Brits every day, the language they have been taught by their mother, the language spoken by everyone in their surroundings, the language that they by all indications and signs must regard as their own normal way of speaking, that this language is - unnatural?

Mind you, I am not saying I prefer one pronunciation over another. I am merely asserting that this is the way that people, normal people actually, in fact, as well as in practice, communicate with each other in their everyday conduct without giving any thought whatsoever to any kind of 'unnatural' prescriptions that there might be, as in taking pains to remember pronouncing the 't's clearly. They simply speak that way.

"It is unnatural in that it doesn't descend from English historically through natural sound changes, but represents a succesful attempt to change language through class consciousness".

That might be true, I don't know. But surely this is a definition of 'natural' that goes beyond the individual's own perception of his/her own speak.

And nor, in my experience, is the wriTer (greaTer, daughTer, visiTed, fighTer, etc.) pronunciation confined to "middle class and above" speakers.

I will of course gladly write myself off as a linguistic ignoramus. I have never claimed otherwise. But I will not disregard my own actual observations.

2536. tmachine - 1/14/2000 1:31:53 PM

hold on a minute.

I am an RP British English speaker.

1. I pronounce "writer" with a t. A "d" pronunciation is, to me, American or, possibly, midatlantic sloppiness.

2. I pronounce "often" as "offn." Pronouncing the "t" when I was growing up in London was definitely considered to be a sort of error of hypercorrectness and to convey prissy lace-curtain lower-middle-classness.

THE T'S PRESENT IN "WRITER" and "OFTEN" ARE NOT RELATED AS PRONUNCIATION ELEMENTS.

Pronouncing "writer" as "wri'er" and "water" as "wa'er" are working-class and generally south-of-England working-class. Lots of people who aren't working-class use them now too, originally probably to sound of-the-people-ish, nowadays because more and more that kind of pronunciation is becoming RP itself.

2537. PelleNilsson - 1/14/2000 1:50:11 PM

tmachine

Now and then I see references to something called "Estuary English", which is apparently spreading at the expense of RP. Can you enlighten us about what it is?

2538. Ronski - 1/14/2000 1:54:53 PM

hashke,

As I recall you do not report much knowledge of Native American languages from the Northeast U.S., but a question having arisen elsewhere over the possible meaning of a Vermont ski area's Indian-sounding name, can you tell me whether there is a translating dictionary for Abenaki (or the Algonquin group) available on the internet or in print? Thanks.

2539. hashke - 1/14/2000 2:10:16 PM

Ronski:

Yes. Hit the SSILA link above right on this page and then the link to language learning materials. There is info there on an Abenaki dictionary.

2540. ScottLoar - 1/14/2000 2:11:44 PM

Ronski, could you recount the word in question? Please.

2541. Ronski - 1/14/2000 2:38:46 PM

Scott,

Okemo.

2542. ScottLoar - 1/14/2000 2:48:43 PM

Thanks. I'll look in my own meager sources, just for my own curiousity, but if I discover anything close I'll tell ya'.

2543. Ronski - 1/14/2000 3:03:24 PM

Scott,

Thanks. It's been proposed that the word may be related to an Ojibway (Chippewa) word meaning "chief," and Ojibway and Abenaki are both Algonquin, apparently.

2544. ScottLoar - 1/14/2000 3:15:20 PM

I have a limited reference to both.

2545. Thoughtful - 1/14/2000 3:35:25 PM

Ronski, This page suggests it's Chippewa.

2546. Ronski - 1/14/2000 3:45:36 PM

Thoughtful,

Yes, that is what's been proposed. But the Chippewa were not native to Vermont, even though they speak a language that is not too distantly related. Thanks.

2547. Candide - 1/14/2000 10:17:42 PM

Hashke and other collectors of absurd mixed language

A headline in La Repubblica

"Il "Dome" fa flop gli inglesi lo snobbano"

It refers of course to the London Millennial Dome which is apparently not paying its way.

2548. JudithAtHome - 1/15/2000 10:22:12 AM

I have a question:

Is it Pino-shet or Pino-shay? I'm listening to a report on NPR, an interview with a off-site reporter and the interviewer is saying "Pino-shet" but the reporter is saying "Pino-shay". So which is correct? (I am spelling his name phonetically)

By the way, the reporter was in Chile.

2549. JudithAtHome - 1/15/2000 10:22:51 AM

And yes, I mean General Pinochet.

2550. JudithAtHome - 1/15/2000 12:02:21 PM

I guess this isn't earth shattering enough to warrant an answer. C'mon, at least it involves Language! :-)

2551. CalGal - 1/15/2000 12:04:18 PM

I've always said Pinochay--maybe that's just us ugly Americans.

2552. JudithAtHome - 1/15/2000 12:12:52 PM

CalGal:

I've always said it that way, too, but this thing on NPR the last few days has me confused. More than one announcer has said PinoSHET. I just wondered if this was some sort of "UP Stylebook" type of rule or something.

2553. hashke - 1/15/2000 2:26:44 PM

I have heard three pronunciations: Pinoshay, Pinoshet, and Pinochet,
but have never had the opportunity of hearing a flesh-and-blood Chilean say it --only the talking heads (las cabezas parlantes) on Murcan TV.

2554. hashke - 1/15/2000 2:37:27 PM

2547. Candide - 1/15/00 3:17:42 AM
Hashke and other collectors of absurd mixed language

A headline in La Repubblica

"Il "Dome" fa flop gli inglesi lo snobbano"

Molto buffo!

Btw, I was reading in Pirandello last night and happened upon the following:

'Come comunicare altrui il giuoco (italics mine) istantaneo di queste fuggevoli immagini impensate'.

I wonder what form Calvino might use.

'Gioco' is quicker but 'giuoco' might be slicker. ;-))

2555. Candide - 1/15/2000 2:49:03 PM

hashke
I've just woken up and can't get the brain to giocare abbastanza.Mi dispiace, sono ancora pigra.
I have a great deal of unread Pirandello to read. I admire him immensely.
Have you read any Gadda? His famous title being Quer pasticciaccio brutto de via Merulana. The ultimate giallo.

2556. PelleNilsson - 1/15/2000 2:50:46 PM

Big Irv is under siege.

How will he manage? Will he prevail? Will he extricate himself with a deft manoeuvre? Or will he go down in flames?

Tension mounts as the world watches an epic battle of alveolars and voiced taps.

2557. arkymalarky - 1/15/2000 3:03:09 PM

I've got exchange students from several different countries, as I mentioned before, and three are taking English under me. We're doing research projects, and they're going to make a series of lessons of their languages and include audio-tapes. I'm getting Spanish, Russian, and Kyrgyz.

2558. Candide - 1/15/2000 3:37:16 PM

JudithatHome

The BBC insists on 'Pino-shet' and they have often done their homework.

2559. Candide - 1/15/2000 3:38:40 PM

JudithatHome

The BBC insists on 'Pino-shet' and they have often done their homework.

2560. hashke - 1/15/2000 3:43:54 PM

Have you read any Gadda?

No, but given that title I feel that I gadda.

2561. hashke - 1/15/2000 3:46:31 PM

Is it giallo enough to turn my knees to jello?

2562. Candide - 1/15/2000 4:01:51 PM

Giallissimo.
Farebbe gnocchi degli ginocchi.

È il James Joyce Italiano che vuol dire ché gioca con le parole. Molto interresante e molto divertente.

Carlo Emilio Gadda. Milanese. Scomparso adesso, sospetto. Nato 1893.

Devo andare per da mangiare agli uccelli (peccato capisco, ma ho fatto cominciare e quindi devo continuare...) e anche devo a fare il primo colazione.

2563. JudithAtHome - 1/15/2000 4:13:35 PM

Candide:

Thanks for the heads-up on BBC...maybe that is where NPR came up with that esoteric pronounciation.

2564. Candide - 1/16/2000 12:57:34 AM

On the Home Page of L'Espresso there is a column on the left which lists available topics that can be opened at that spot. 'Opinioni' contains among other things an essay by Umberto Eco which may be of interest to Italian readers.

2565. Candide - 1/16/2000 12:58:47 AM

The URL for L'Espresso is available in the International thread.

2566. Candide - 1/16/2000 1:08:06 AM

I have an observation to make about language as used in such places as The Mote.

The tendency to get carried away with one's own loquacity and to make one's messages stronger than intended.

I realise that I have done this to ScottLoar and I'm sorry that I did.

I have a line which has already brought me success in the correspondence columns of newspapers. It involves the words"sclerotis colonels shifting the cruet as they settle the tides of history"and I couldn't resist using it to counter ScottLoar's having called me a 'nut'.

Now ScottLoar is correct, I am a nut. But he, I'm sure is not a sclerotic colonel. It was just my defence for being marginalised for having used an emotional argument. (Which like a true nut I stand by.)

I over-wrote. Umberto Eco has written about this cyber-habit at length. It appears that it is a common fault with users of the word processor.

I once meant to mildly rebuke a politician who was also a friend, and she telephoned me in floods of tears. Again, I had over-written.

ScottLoar I hope you will accept this as an explanation and some sort of apology.

2567. Candide - 1/16/2000 2:08:02 AM

It involves the
words"sclerotiC colonels shifting the cruet as they settle the tides of history"and I couldn't resist using it.."

Typo. Again!

The previous time I used that line in a newspaper it was very appropriate and I offered no sort of apology.

2568. ScottLoar - 1/16/2000 3:36:58 AM

You are not a friend (friendship cannot come so casually), I am not in floods of tears, you have over-written. Please stop.

2569. Candide - 1/16/2000 6:51:23 AM

I was not claiming intimacy Mr Loar. Just a pleasant exchange of trivia. I will try not to over-write and you must try to be a little more unbending. I'm sure you're not really a stuffed shirt.

2570. hashke - 1/16/2000 12:03:04 PM

Candide:

That Loar is a thorny rascal, isn't he? Nevertheless, he remains one of my favorite curmudgeons in these parts.

The Germans call a stuffed shirt 'lackierte Affe' -- 'a lacquered monkey', surely as good as Italian 'pallone gonflato' -- 'inflated balloon'. And RustlerPike came up with this wonderful Modern Hebrew equivalent: 'nod nafuach' -- 'an overfilled waterskin'.

I apply none of these to Loar, who is some other kind of rara avis.

2571. Candide - 1/16/2000 3:07:41 PM

hashke
Grazie.
Quel uccello, certamente bravo e indipendente qualchevolta,mi ha beccato un po duramente. Ci sono troppo gente qui a cui piacciono a mostrare una superiorita verso i quali mostrono un po di debolezza.
Mi domando veramente se proprio si vale la pena a scrivere dentro questo manicomio maschile.
Purtroppo, mentre a me piace molto a fare la cucina ecc. non mi piace a parlare di queste cose, siccome scrivo di quelli come mezzo di mantenimento.Quindi la 'casa e giardino' non a me servono. Uffa!

Mi dispiace che non ho riuscito a giocare colle parole stamattina. Mi manca il caffè.Si piove e sono troppo beccatto da quel'uccello minaccioso e dignitoso. Eccomme dignitoso!
Simpatico lo stesso.

2572. ScottLoar - 1/16/2000 3:58:03 PM

Another type of rara avis, one that flaps flightless wings and squawks Dork! Dork! Dork! in the middle of the night.

2573. Candide - 1/16/2000 4:02:44 PM

My own wings are enormous and I never utter such hideous noises. You mean the Channel-billed-Cuckoo.

Not very mellow today MrLoar?

2574. ScottLoar - 1/16/2000 4:05:05 PM

Quite the contrary, I'm eager as a stud bull in rut.

2575. Candide - 1/16/2000 4:14:02 PM

Ode to a lot of bull.
So stuff my nose with garlic
Coat my eyes with butter
fill my ears with silver
before the mighty rutter.
(apologies to Adrian Mitchell)

2576. ilyavinarsky - 1/16/2000 10:19:55 PM

A good source of info on British accents

2577. ilyavinarsky - 1/16/2000 10:22:16 PM

Is this supposed to be Irish accent?

2578. ilyavinarsky - 1/16/2000 10:26:31 PM

In which accent is this?

2579. hashke - 1/16/2000 10:40:15 PM

Mi domando veramente se proprio si vale la pena a scrivere dentro questo manicomio maschile.

Ah! Chi a fatto trenta può fare trentuno!

Bisogno ad intervalli essere all'altezza della situazione, perdere le staffe, farsi sotto a spada tratta, non dargli spargo. O la va o la spacca! Da ultimo, ma non meno importante, bisogno rendergli pan per focaccia, per lo fare andare a gambe all'aria, no?

2580. Candide - 1/16/2000 10:56:27 PM

hashke
ha sempre ragione. Ho pensato anch'io la stessa cosa. Le parole spiritose a me non vengono oggi.

2581. Candide - 1/16/2000 11:14:21 PM

Ilya#2577
No Ilya. Stage cockney. They're all university chaps pretending to be something else. Not a terrific example to use in order to study British speech. In no way Irish. Very very funny though. I'm not sure of Eric Idle's provenance.

2582. Candide - 1/16/2000 11:19:03 PM

hashke
difatti ho cucinato un bel pannetone altissimo ma poi ho pensato sarebbe meglio a buttarlo via.
Grazie ancora.

2583. Candide - 1/16/2000 11:23:50 PM

Ilya

I've got the disk somewhere so I didn't open them all as it takes a fair bite (no pun intended) out of my allowance.

I don't know whether there is available in any recorded form, the wonderful class performance with John Cleese, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett. Cleese being upper class, Barker middle class and Corbett lower class. Very funny and a better example (although still in the realm of theatre) of idiomatic English. They each articulate their attitude towards the other two.

2584. ilyavinarsky - 1/16/2000 11:26:19 PM

Yeah, I don't watch many movies so I seldom hear English spoken by anyone but Microserfs.

Genuine Irish accent

2585. Candide - 1/16/2000 11:29:57 PM

paneTTone.

2586. Candide - 1/16/2000 11:41:40 PM

Have a look at some BBC videos of Yes Minister for upper class English.

Have they shown northern British playwright, (used to be with Cambridge comedians 'Beyond the Fringe) Alan Bennett's 'Talking Heads TV plays for solo performers? They are wonderful and they display a huge variety of dialects. Thora Hird is a great English actress with a terrific northern dialect. Maggie Smith is one his performers.

2587. Candide - 1/16/2000 11:56:47 PM

I'm told that if I open your Irish accent I'll have blown my allowance. Sorry Ilya. I saw Brendan Behan's Borstal Boy at Dublin's Abbey Theatre. Total saturation in Irishness.

Once a year in Sydney they make something like a commercial Christmas in Sydney of "Bloom's Day" and a 'professional' Irish character always comes out to launch it and then a long string of Irish/Australians read all of Ulysses out loud nonstop until it's finished. They start the day with the same breakfast as Bloom's - sheep's kidneys.

2588. hashke - 1/17/2000 1:12:09 AM

difatti ho cucinato un bel pannetone altissimo ma poi ho pensato sarebbe meglio a buttarlo via

LOL! Adesso deve fare un altro più alto e più grasso e buttarlo, non via, ma direttamente al bersaglio!

Come sa, 'bersaglio' ha un doppio senso.

Buona notte!

2589. Candide - 1/17/2000 1:26:49 AM

hashke

lei mi consiglia cosi?

Caspita.

2590. hashke - 1/17/2000 12:52:47 PM

Lei è pari a qualcheduno qui, molto abile di sgridare i galli della Checca, di costringere cualcuno a mettere le carte in tavola. Coraggio, e avanti! ;-)

2591. ilyavinarsky - 1/17/2000 2:04:13 PM

hashke, how many languages do you speak?

2592. hashke - 1/17/2000 3:08:45 PM

Ilya:

A dozen or so, in varying states of atomization through lack of practice. You?

2593. PelleNilsson - 1/17/2000 3:29:11 PM

Hashke

How is The Project going? Some time ago you were proof-reading if I remember correctly.

2594. hashke - 1/17/2000 3:45:41 PM

Pelle:

The entire text is in layout for downsizing, pagination, etc. The preface is almost finished, the foreword is in the works. Additions to --and more proofing of -- the downsized copy will be necessary. Need title, subtitle, cover design and so forth to be finalized.

I see a couple or more months more of work, depending also upon how soon my friend can get his foreword to me.

2595. PelleNilsson - 1/17/2000 3:58:10 PM

Hashke

The thread is slow right now. If you have some time I would be very interested in the mechanics of publishing. How much does the author have to do (apart from the vreative work)? In which format do you submit the manuscript? What does "downsizing" mean?

It is strange, I think, that you don't have a title. Don't they tend to suggest themselves as the work takes form?

2596. PelleNilsson - 1/17/2000 3:59:00 PM

... creative ...

2597. Candide - 1/17/2000 4:25:13 PM

PelleNilsson

I work on the fringes of publishing and my husband (partly retired)in the thick of it. The title is the point where the author slits his/her wrists. The title nowadays is rarely decided by the author. Market forces move in.

2598. Dusty - 1/17/2000 4:32:01 PM

JudithAtHome
I can only guess that both are correct. It is odd, though to listen to NPR. As you noted, it is not simply that different people use different pronunciations. It occurs in the same segment, with the on location reporter using a different pronunication than the home announcer. I heard this several months ago—if they had erred then, I think they would have corrected it by now.

2599. PelleNilsson - 1/17/2000 4:33:49 PM

Candide

But in a scholarly work like Hashke's, surely the author would have a big say?

2600. Candide - 1/17/2000 6:47:21 PM

PelleNilsson

Much more likely, but even here the dreaded market forces flash their orthodontistry.

It's always best to choose a name when the book is finished anyway since the main point should be clearly expressed in the title and even academic works tend to develop and change during creation.

2601. ilyavinarsky - 1/17/2000 7:10:24 PM

Does the dozen include Navajo and Jicarilla Apache?

> You?

Three (Russian, Ukrainian, English). Ukrainian somewhat less fluently than the other two, for lack of practice, but I still correspond with a middle school classmate in Ukrainian and have translated poetry from Ukrainian into English.

In college, I thought about studying Chinese, but realized that I couldn't do justice to it in a semester, so I had to stick to two out of three: a foreign language, engineering, and mathematics. I chose engineering and mathematics.

2602. ilyavinarsky - 1/17/2000 7:11:35 PM

I couldn't do it justice. Shux, I am used to Salon TT, where you can correct your typos.

2603. Candide - 1/17/2000 7:29:21 PM

Ilya

A very pleasant and good Ukrainian woman who supported her extended family in Sydney, asked my husband for a job reference in which he would state that she was fluent in Russian and Ukrainian. She had been an English teacher in Kiev.

My husband refused with great regret and embarrassment because he is very honest and couldn't possibly know the level of her knowledge of either language.

Do most educated Ukrainians have an equal knowledge of both languages?

2604. ilyavinarsky - 1/17/2000 8:17:48 PM

Most educated Ukrainians are conversant in Russian much better than in Ukrainian.

2605. hashke - 1/17/2000 9:24:42 PM

Pelle:

For a good article to answer most of your questions go to:

jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/RIL_11.html

Candide is dead on about titles.

I've gone the publisher route, Grolier, university, Norton, where one writes, submits, and waits -- the waiting can be long. I've also self-published.

The format is submitted usually in camera-ready copy. Downsizing is merely going from 8x11 to a smaller format. I believe that the article suggested above covers all of this.

2606. hashke - 1/17/2000 9:29:11 PM

Ilya:

Yes, both Navajo and Jicarilla Apache, languages of such infinitude and complexity that although I have written on both, I've never conquered either to my satisfaction.

I am wondering why educated Ukranians are more conversant in Russian than Ukranian.

2607. ilyavinarsky - 1/17/2000 9:34:34 PM

hashke's link reminds me of this appeal.

2608. ilyavinarsky - 1/17/2000 9:35:57 PM

> I am wondering why educated Ukranians are more conversant in Russian than Ukranian.

Because there is a much greater amount of "high culture" in Russian than in Ukrainian.

2609. hashke - 1/17/2000 10:15:40 PM

Ilya:

Hmmm...

Navajos educated in White ways often are more conversant in English than in Navajo. Strictly speaking though, a stereotype of an 'educated' Navajo would be an elderly medicine man (hataalii) totally at ease with every facet of Navajo life and expression and with, as well, vast knowledge (memorized) of his ceremonial and religious language and rituals.

2610. hashke - 1/17/2000 10:16:15 PM

How does that parallel the Ukranian/Russian situation?

2611. ilyavinarsky - 1/17/2000 10:31:20 PM

It doesn't. The Russians and the Ukrainians have common ethnic origin, their languages are (largely) mutually intelligible, and their lifestyle is similar. Neither is true of the Honkeys and the Navajos.

2612. ilyavinarsky - 1/17/2000 10:38:02 PM

The Ukrainian Pavlo Dzikovsky has a site here. It has links to poems by 31 poets in Russian, 5 classic poets, and puts upfront 2 poems in Russian and 1 in Ukrainian.

2613. hashke - 1/17/2000 11:23:20 PM

2611. ilyavinarsky - 1/18/00 3:31:20 AM
It doesn't. The Russians and the Ukrainians have common ethnic origin, their languages are (largely) mutually intelligible, and their lifestyle is similar.

I know that. I assume that you are saying that because educated Ukranians immerse themselves in the richesse of Russian 'high culture' they achieve a dexterity with the Russian language that they don't or can't have with their native tongue? Are you talking about only language or about the whole cultural shtik? You are implying, to me at least, that (educated) Ukranians speak better Russian than they do their lengua natal. Is this a widely recognized and accepted fact in the Ukraine and in Russia? Just curious.

That is a very rich link, by the way, affording even a look at three great Spanish poets. Thanks!

2614. ilyavinarsky - 1/18/2000 12:12:47 AM

> I assume that you are saying that because educated Ukranians immerse themselves in the richesse of Russian 'high culture' they achieve a dexterity with the Russian language that they don't or can't have with their native tongue?

It isn't that you can't express yourself as well in Uke as in Russian. It just requires a great deal of effort. When you look at the Uke-language materials of Kiev newspaper "The Day", they look like translations from the Russian (and perhaps they are - I don't doubt they use some machine translation software). The great late 19th-early 20th century authors such as Lesia Ukrainka (Larissa Kosach), Ivan Levytsky, Mykhailo Kotsiubinsky wrote in fluent Uke that was quite distinct from the contemporary Russian [funny that if you try to spell-check a novella by Kotsiubinsky, the spell-checker flags the "Rusisms" in it]; however, people just don't read them very much. When I try to write in Uke, what comes out is largely calques from Russian.

> Are you talking about only language or about the whole cultural shtik?

The cultural schtick should be called Soviet (or Post-Soviet). You wouldn't know whether these poems by poet Victor Neborak were originally written in Russian or in Ukrainian (or in Armenian).

> You are implying, to me at least, that (educated) Ukranians speak better Russian than they do their lengua natal.

Yes.

2615. ilyavinarsky - 1/18/2000 12:12:53 AM

> Is this a widely recognized and accepted fact in the Ukraine and in Russia?

I don't think Russia cares much about things Ukrainian - they are quite content with the stereotypes of lard-lovers and Russian-haters. For example, the Department of Slavic Languages of Moscow State University (look it up - it's on the Net) has specialists in West Slavic (Czech etc.) and South Slavic (Bulgarian etc.) but none in East Slavic (Ukrainian, Belarusian, Carpatho-Rusyn dialects[?] besides Russian), as they don't consider it a subject worth studying. As for Ukraine - there is a great deal of hypocrisy around the language issue, though the goal - revival of Ukrainian - is quite worthwhile (which is of course not for me to decide, as I am not a citizen of Ukraine).

2616. hashke - 1/18/2000 1:03:18 AM

Ilya:

Thanks for the more thorough explanation. Very good!

The Uke newspaper link doesn't gets only a can't find placard for me, unfortunately.

2617. hashke - 1/18/2000 1:06:22 AM

Correction:

The newpaper link gets only a 'page cannot be found' placard for me.

2618. ilyavinarsky - 1/18/2000 1:15:32 AM

It should've been this

2619. ilyavinarsky - 1/18/2000 1:21:50 AM

Read these posts

2620. Ronski - 1/18/2000 10:49:38 AM

If anyone can post something about how Russian, Ukrainian and Rusyn (Carpatho-Ukrainian) differ, to what extent they are mutually intelligible, etc., I would be most appreciative.

2621. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/18/2000 10:59:59 AM

Ronski:
According to Bernard Comrie, in The World's Major Languages, "although [Russian, Ukrainian, and Belorussian] are now considered distinct literary languages, they are very close to one another, with a high degree of mutual intelligibility." Given the date of their separation (700-1000 years), the relationship between the East Slavonic languages is probably quite comparable with the Scandinavian languages: if historical events had been different, we would be talking about dialects of a single language.

2622. hashke - 1/18/2000 11:07:06 AM

Ilya:

Thank you. Most interesting!

That newspaper link works fine. I can read a great deal of the Ukrainian. The blinking Russian graphic 'ne v brov', a v glaz' is amusing.

2623. ilyavinarsky - 1/18/2000 2:27:37 PM

Ukrainian cartoonist

2624. hashke - 1/18/2000 2:40:31 PM

Ilya:

Those are marvelous! Are they ALL in Russian -- nothing in Ukranian?

Ah, Vinarsky you do offer up a rich platter, 'a largesse universal, like the sun'.

2625. hashke - 1/18/2000 2:41:19 PM

Gotta get some lunch and come back to check out more of these beauties.

2626. hashke - 1/18/2000 2:42:11 PM

...Ukrainian

2627. ilyavinarsky - 1/18/2000 3:35:13 PM

Not on this site. Vorontsov has other sites such as this:

2628. Candide - 1/18/2000 3:45:09 PM

Ilya
I may be hallucinating but I ALMOST seem to understand the words in the bubble. Is a translation possible?

2629. ilyavinarsky - 1/18/2000 4:01:17 PM

This is salomasochism. Salo, or salter pork lard, is the Ukrainian national dish.

2630. PelleNilsson - 1/18/2000 4:05:54 PM

Hashke

I did read the link in Message # 2605 but I forgot to acknowledge. Thank you. It is always interesting to read about the minutiae of a trade. I was surprised, though, by the rather low resolution required for the photo-ready original. Is the object of the down-sizing to make the letters sharper? I seem to remember that linotype machines print at the equivalent of 1200 dpi or better. So we are talking offset printing here?

Suggestion: Put up a brief synopsis of the book in Books (or the Café which is more frequented) and ask for ideas for a title. You will get a lot of silly-funny proposals but perhaps one or two of them could be something to work from.

2631. hashke - 1/18/2000 4:08:22 PM

Vinarsky:

Hilarious -- 'salo-mazokhizm'!

From #2627 my favorites are 'moya korova ne vovremya pripyorlas'' and 'v Shvetsii vsyo est'. 'Muzhchina, vy butylochku ne sdayote' not particularly funny. I'll go through all of these when I have some time. Thanks!

2632. hashke - 1/18/2000 4:15:59 PM

Pelle:

Good suggestion. Shall do that if I don't come up with my own title.

Down-sizing merely makes the book a bit smaller in size, possibly easier to handle, and easier to fit into standard shelves. And I know nothing about printing.

I will be underway on another project, or projects, before this one is finished.

2633. Candide - 1/18/2000 4:34:46 PM

Salo masochism.

A lard of prejudice.

2634. ilyavinarsky - 1/18/2000 4:42:17 PM

I didn't know Karlsson who Lives on the Roof (who is depicted in the Sweden cartoon) is known in the United States. He is wildly popular in Russia, though.

2635. ilyavinarsky - 1/18/2000 4:43:03 PM

2636. hashke - 1/18/2000 4:54:38 PM

Ilya:

I can't stop. Tsygankov, Popov, etc. 'Eti sushchestva vsyu zhizn' provodyat bez vody', itd, itd. 'Byustomery'...

Vinarsky, you are absolutely ROONING my work schedule, reading, and siesta.

What to do?

2637. ilyavinarsky - 1/18/2000 4:56:20 PM

Okay, the last one for today:

Another Vorontsov site, which has this cartoon without a caption:

2638. hashke - 1/18/2000 4:57:31 PM

A site for sore eyes.

2639. PelleNilsson - 1/18/2000 5:02:53 PM

Ilya

The discussion about similarities and dissimilarities between Slavic languages reminds of Nicola, a Yugoslav, I one told a story about here or in International. Nicola had Serbo-Croat as one of his mother tounges. He also had very good Russian.

We worked together in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia (as it was then) and Poland. I noticed that he got along very well in everyday discussions so I asked him if he talked Russian everywhere. "No,no,no" he said, "good men don't speak Russian in these parts." He then went on to explain - he was an engineer as we are - that he had constructed a generic, core Slavic language, made up by words that are the same or very similar in all Slavic languages. Then, during his travels, he had learnt a number of words and phrases that were unique to each language. So when he went to, say, Bulgaria he tacked on the Bulgarian module to the Slavic core.

This, by the way, is also how things operate among Scandinavians who work in each other's countries.

2640. Candide - 1/18/2000 5:03:40 PM

Wonderful lively drawing. No translation required for the Clinton, the other? Don't bother. Jokes die when dissected.

2641. ilyavinarsky - 1/18/2000 5:18:28 PM

2642. ilyavinarsky - 1/18/2000 5:19:09 PM

We have everything / You have nothing sacred!

2643. Candide - 1/18/2000 5:51:51 PM

I wish I had your computer skills. Australia has some great cartoonists.
The disillusioned sardonic humour of your cartoons is unmatchable.

2644. ilyavinarsky - 1/18/2000 7:04:18 PM

For what it's worth: the little guy with a propeller in 2635 comes from a fairy tale by Astrid Lindgren called Karlsson-On-The-Roof. Unfortunately, according to www.amazon.com, it is out of print in the United States.

2645. Candide - 1/18/2000 7:17:31 PM

That's the trouble with publishing. Books comes for a second then go forever. More than ever nowadays.

I only know her work through televised children's productions.

2646. wonkers2 - 1/18/2000 8:14:37 PM

The NPR news people are finally pronouncing Augusto Pinochet's name correctly--not Pinoshay as if he were French but Pinochet with the last syllable pronounced as in the man's name, "Chet."

2647. Candide - 1/18/2000 9:19:29 PM

wonkers2

The BBC have done that from the start. Chileans in Australia say that the hard T is correct.

2648. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/18/2000 10:14:40 PM

I believe the sound in question is not the "t," but the "ch." Since "ch" in Spanish is pronounced like the "ch" in English (as in "church"), it makes sense to pronounce the name "Pee-noe-chett," with the final syllable sounding like the man's name "Chet."

The "Pinoshay" pronunciation is a French pronunciation, which is unlikely in a Latin American name (though possible, if the name is originally French). The "Pinoshet" pronunciation is a hybrid of Spanish and French, and is even less likely.

2649. Candide - 1/18/2000 10:22:31 PM

IrvingSnodgrass

That was the point I ineptly strove to make. In Australia they Frenchify everything foreign. From anywhere. Hence one hears radio people saying Donte, for Dante etc.

I was intending that instead of the frequent Pinoshay the BBC and the Chileans in Australia say Pinochett.

2650. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/18/2000 10:42:40 PM

Candide:
It isn't only in Australia. English speakers everywhere have a tendency to Frenchify foreign pronunciations. I suppose, subconsciously at least, French sounds "exotic."

2651. Candide - 1/18/2000 10:46:27 PM

As a food writer I find it intensely irritating to be forced to call the great Italian Parmigiano cheese by its French name Parmesan. It's because the cheese reached the English via the French. In fact I suppose most things did.

2652. stostosto - 1/19/2000 7:25:34 AM

I once read an "explainer" in Slate about the pronunciation of Pinochet. I haven't been able to relocate it, but the gist was that the name is originally French, and that the Chileans pronounce it Spanish fashion Peeno-chet. ('chet' as in Chet Baker).

2653. stostosto - 1/19/2000 7:32:00 AM

But I don't think people should occupy themselves so much about the 'correct' pronunciation of foreign names. I prefer English speakers to say Koe-pen-hay-gun in stead of the local pronunciation of the Danish København, which sounds more like Købm'oun' with a glottat stop, and in any case is damn near inachievable to foreign speakers. I have previously complained about the fashionable American attempt to approximate what they perceive as a more local pronunciation, sounding like Kobbenhaagen.

2654. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/19/2000 8:28:19 AM

sto:
In general I agree that English speakers are within their rights to pronounce foreign names in an English way (and Copenhagen is a good example). What I dislike is when English speakers pronounce foreign names in a French way (non-French foreign names, that is). Example: the morons who say "Beizhing" for "Beijing" (the "j" in Beijing is properly like the English "j" in "jingle") or those who say "Tazh Mahal" ("Taj" should rhyme with "dodge").

2655. stostosto - 1/19/2000 10:05:58 AM

Irv
I couldn't agree more. It's the same gripe I have with "Kobbenhaagen", really.

2656. PelleNilsson - 1/19/2000 2:22:54 PM

Offhand, I know of three "foreign" cities which have established English names:
Göteborg/Gothenburg, Helsingör/Elsinore and Köbenhavn/Copenhagen.

There must be others. Mini-quiz?

2657. ScottLoar - 1/19/2000 2:25:12 PM

What? I don't quite understand you. Three cities have established English names? Look at a map of the world in English. Then in French for established French names, German, Chinese, etc.

2658. ilyavinarsky - 1/19/2000 2:32:38 PM

Cologne, Livorno, Moscow, Warsaw...

2659. ilyavinarsky - 1/19/2000 2:33:12 PM

Pardon me, Leghorn

2660. PelleNilsson - 1/19/2000 3:23:46 PM

That was a stupid quiz.

2661. ScottLoar - 1/19/2000 3:27:14 PM

Did anyone pass?

2662. hashke - 1/19/2000 3:40:41 PM

I pass.

2663. ilyavinarsky - 1/19/2000 5:37:26 PM

Pelle, do the Scandinavians love Karlsson-On-The-Roof?

Do you agree that Astrid Lindgren should be given the Nobel Prize?

I mean Szymborska, Fo, Saramago are probably fine writers (Szymborska is the only one of the three I've read), but their impact on the world is far less than Lindgren's.

2664. ScottLoar - 1/19/2000 5:41:36 PM

Hashke's passed gas.

2665. stostosto - 1/19/2000 5:54:38 PM

ILYA!!!!

Yes, Scandinavians love Karlsson on the roof. It's one of my son's favourites.

And yes, Astrid Lindgren should absolutely be given the Nobel. The trouble is, she is Swedish. It doesn't look good. Swedes (as well as other Scandinavians) are already over-represented in the all-time Nobel ranks, possibly due to a more pronounced parochialism in the early days. (Have you heard of a Danish writer called Johannes V. Jensen, for instance?)

Did you see the discussion on Russia in International, btw? Do you have opinions that you are ready to share?

2666. Dusty - 1/19/2000 6:08:27 PM

Candide

It's always best to choose a name when the book is finished anyway since the main point should be clearly expressed in the title and even academic works tend to develop and change during creation.

Your explanation reminded me of the story, probably apocryphal. The author of a book prevailed upon a famous author(Somerset Maughn?) for help in naming his new book. Maughn, asked, "Does it have any drums in it?" The author shook his head no. He then asked, "Does it have any bugles in it?". The author again shook his head no.

"So call it, 'No Drums, No Bugles'"

2667. ilyavinarsky - 1/19/2000 6:24:19 PM

> Johannes V. Jensen

No.

2668. hashke - 1/19/2000 7:27:29 PM

2664. ScottLoar - 1/19/00 10:41:36 PM

I'm aghast, but nice alliteration, Loar.

I've gotten to a theory as to the cause of some of yr ramblings:

Faltaffian noontime quaffing, seasoned with quixotic
imaginary dialoguing with Sancho himself, all of this igniting sallies into distorted picaresque jousting with kinds of humor and reasoning best ascribed to an empulqueado stereotypically in urgent need of a neurological work-up. ;)

None of this detracts from yr loveable and very endearing curmudgeonry, of course.

2669. wonkers2 - 1/19/2000 7:40:58 PM

Great word "empulqueado." New to me. I assume it means "drunk." Is its origin Mexican? Or do they have pulque in Spain? Do they say "emaguartienteado" in Colombia?

2670. Candide - 1/19/2000 7:53:21 PM

Dusty 2666

The rule about ALL bird books is that they should have an eagle on the cover.

2671. hashke - 1/19/2000 7:59:31 PM

wonkers2:

Yes, Mexican, from 'pulque', a strong hootch made from cactus.

Where and who is wonkers1?

2672. wonkers2 - 1/19/2000 8:23:53 PM

Hashke, Thanks! As far as I know there is no wonkers1. The 2 stands for "too" or "also." I picked the handle because the Fray was peopled, using the term loosely, with a fair number of wonks or wannabe wonks a certain number of whom were bonkers. Hence wonkers2, or bonkers2, as you please.

2673. ScottLoar - 1/19/2000 8:37:49 PM

No, you're way off Hashke; I just find it amusing. Actually I'm quite sincere. Truth is the strongest stuff I take now is wine.

2674. Candide - 1/19/2000 8:46:56 PM

Il bere giusto per parole ingiuste?

2675. hashke - 1/19/2000 9:21:13 PM

Candide:

Il BERE GIUSTO per parole ingiuste?

Hahaha! And what kind of berry juice might that be?

2676. hashke - 1/19/2000 9:27:50 PM

wonkers2:

Both pulque and mezcal are distilled from different species of agave. Featured in the bottle is a floating gusano, said by some to load a charge into one's giddy-up.

2677. Stumbo - 1/19/2000 9:33:54 PM

For IV:

Dialog u kompyutera

- Oi, Van', glyadi, kakie fortochki!
Baldeyu, chto za krasota!
A Yuniks - bukvy vse da chertochki,
i neponyatno ni cherta.
Ivan, snesi ego, davai,
i luchshe fortochki skachai!
Nu chto "mastdai", opyat' "mastdai"!
Obidno, vai!
- Ty, Zin, na grubost' naryvaesh'sya!
Tebe by tol'ko dergat' mysh'!
Tut v firme s yuzerami maesh'sya,
pridesh' domoi - tam ty sidish'.
Vindy -otstoi dlya duraka,
a esli ne pusta bashka,
Nuzhna komandnaya stroka!
Plesni pivka!
- Oi, Van', pis'mo mne iz Ameriki!
Zaidem po ssylkam, chto vnutri!
Nu chto ty srazu, kak v isterike?
Ved' obeschayut Money Free!
Ne hochesh' sam - togda pusti
menya polazit' po seti!
Chai, sam sidish' v nei s devyati
do devyati!
- Ty, Zina, luchshe pomolchala by!
Naskol'ko b legche bylo nam,
Kogda by ty ne otvechala by
na provokacii i spam.
Ya skol'ko raz, ty vspomni, Zin,
iz-za tebya menyal login!
V poslednii raz pod nim gruzin
zvonil v Berlin!

2678. Stumbo - 1/19/2000 9:35:02 PM

- Oi, Van', a eto chto za failiki?
Nu dlya chego oni, Vanek?
A mne v pis'me risuyut smailiki,
ty slyshish'? Vidimo, namek.
A on sidit i ni gu-gu,
net, ya tak bol'she ne mogu!
Ivan, ya ot tebya sbegu
do chetvergu!
- ...Tak, etot modul' podstavlyaetsya...
Oi, Zina, ne goni volnu!
Nu vot, poka otkompilyaetsya,
poidu eshe pivka glotnu.
Tebe by vse menya dostat',
a net by helpy prochitat'?
Tam prosto vse, kak pyat'yu pyat',
ni dat', ni vzyat'!
- Nu vot, chitayu: "Zdes' nahoditsya
nabor sistemnyh utilit".
Da, kstati, Van', kak perevoditsya
stroka "Formating C:... Complete?"
Ty chto-to nervnyi stal, Ivan,
zachem ty vyronil stakan?
Nu chto ty pyalish'sya v ekran?
Ochnis', Ivan!
-...Vot blin, tak ty schitaesh' shutochki!
Predupredila b, e-moe!
Tebya zh ostavish' na minutochku...
Net, eto, pravo, ne zhit'ye!
Ved' govoril zhe mne Vadim:
programmer dolzhen zhit' odin...
Polozh' na mesto novyi DIMM!!
Zarezhu, blin!!!

-- from Kulichki

2679. Candide - 1/19/2000 10:44:47 PM

zhit' odin..

An insult to the Herringstanis?

I'm sorry if I trod on sacred ground. I am unlettered and simple in your outlandish tongue oh Wayfarer.

2680. hashke - 1/19/2000 10:59:20 PM

Very good translingual scatalogico-pantheonic pun, Candide, but it means 'to live alone'.

2681. wonkers2 - 1/19/2000 11:04:47 PM

Hashke, is it customary to eat the gusano or just enjoy the flavor it imparts to the mescal? Is that what puts the ismo into the machos? I drank a fair amount of aguardiente in Colombia years ago. I believe it's made from sugar cane. Awful stuff!

2682. Stumbo - 1/19/2000 11:06:04 PM

It's an updated version of a classic Vysotsky song about a couple bickering in front of their TV. (Here, it's a computer, instead.)

I hope IV likes it, even though it makes fun of his employer's best-known product...

2683. hashke - 1/19/2000 11:18:00 PM

wonkers2:

And the '-íssimo' into 'fortíssimo'. It all tastes good to me, save the gusano, which I leave to the huesos colorados, the true encandilados and cohetes.

2684. Candide - 1/19/2000 11:18:15 PM

Stumbo

Did I detect something about Black Ivan in there?

2685. Candide - 1/19/2000 11:23:16 PM

hashke

The bere giusto would be old wine well past its time, in which the sediments clogged the sentiments.

Not so much degorgement as disgorgement.

2686. Stumbo - 1/19/2000 11:27:44 PM

Candide:

Ivan (or Van', for short) is the male protagonist's name, yes. (He's a UNIX hacker. His airhead wife or gf, Zina, is begging him to install Windows instead.)

2687. Stumbo - 1/19/2000 11:29:20 PM

Or rather, "Vanya" is the diminutive form of "Ivan," and "Van'" is the vocative form of "Vanya."

2688. Candide - 1/19/2000 11:37:20 PM

Stumbo. It sounds very funny.

2689. Stumbo - 1/19/2000 11:45:03 PM

It is. (As was the original.)

2690. Candide - 1/19/2000 11:54:59 PM

Stumbo

Is it a parody?

2691. Stumbo - 1/20/2000 12:08:01 AM

They actually call it that, on the site, but I don't know why. (A parody of a work or author aims to make fun of that work or author.) I'd call it a take-off, or update, or something.

2692. Candide - 1/20/2000 12:22:38 AM

Stumbo

My last question was more than usually dumb. You had already explained in #2682.

I had a very late and self-indulgent night last night.

Thank you for your forbearance.

2693. Stumbo - 1/20/2000 1:08:50 AM

No probs.

2694. pseudoerasmus - 1/20/2000 5:11:53 AM

Dillon, a while ago I posed this question in the ersatz Mote when the real Mote was down but you didn’t catch it probably. Have you ever heard of a singer named Saida Fikri?

Dusty: I think I’ve asked this question before, but what is the lightest laptop one can get these days? I don’t mean those ‘palmtop’ things which look like bulky wireless phones, but a real laptop computer with a real keyboard. The laptop I have got is insufferably heavy and bulky.

Tmachine (Message # 2536): What on earth has the pronunciation of ‘often’ to do with what was being talked about?

Candide (Message # 2647)
Not the BBC World Service. Not only does the news reader say the name à la française, but so has their correspondent in Santiago done.

2695. pseudoerasmus - 1/20/2000 5:12:59 AM

Candide, ho scoperta la tua essenza (ma per te, l’essence précède l’existence): canti come Helen Caldicott e pensi come Kiri Te Kanawa. (Non piangere, sto scherzando. Non posso fare a meno di molestarti nonostante che prenda le mie parole sempre troppo sul serio. Nella vita reale mi piacciono molto le donne artistiche, ultrasensibli ed emotive come te.)

2696. pseudoerasmus - 1/20/2000 5:13:47 AM

2697. pseudoerasmus - 1/20/2000 5:15:50 AM

Meine lieben herringistanischen Freunde -- Ich suche euren Ratschlag. Ich habe nicht mehr Bücher zu lesen, aber ich muß doch die Zeit am Flug von Russland nach Indien totschlagen. Also überlege ich mich, ob ich eine schewdische oder dänische Grammatik zum Selbstlernen lesen sollte. Welche Sprache ist für mich ja besser? Einfacher? Welches Land hat die interessantere Literatur? Die hübscheren Mädchen? Und so weiter. Bitte debattiert dieses Thema. Verteidigt doch euer Heimatland und eure Muttersprach!

2698. pseudoerasmus - 1/20/2000 5:17:19 AM

2699. Candide - 1/20/2000 7:20:27 AM

pseudoerasmus

Ho sempre pensato,cantato e recitato molto meglio che Kiri. Grazie a Dio!
Buon scherzo nonostante.

2700. ilyavinarsky - 1/20/2000 12:29:53 PM

Da.

I wish my wife's son spoke Russian as good as yours.

2701. ilyavinarsky - 1/20/2000 12:31:48 PM

"Van'" is the vocative case of "Vanya."

There are 7 cases in Russian, just like in most Slavic languages. Why on earth they taught in Soviet schools that there are 6, I have no idea.

Gospodi bozhe moy, Iisuse Khriste!

2702. ilyavinarsky - 1/20/2000 12:36:12 PM

Here is something for STumbo:

The same song in Ukrainian

2703. ilyavinarsky - 1/20/2000 12:43:20 PM

Stumbo and I posted two parodies on this song.

2704. ilyavinarsky - 1/20/2000 1:12:33 PM

parodies of.

2705. Candide - 1/20/2000 3:41:14 PM

A horrid confession.

I listened to the BBC World Service last night and damn me if they weren't saying Pinoshay as PE stated.

I definitely heard a discussion on the BBC opting for 'chett'.

The world has truly gone to the dogs when the BBC loses consistency.

2706. wonkers2 - 1/20/2000 8:28:08 PM

Hashke, My old Cuyas didn't help me with "huesos colorados." Are you saying you leave the worms to the horny characters, the true sparklers and skyrockets?

2707. hashke - 1/20/2000 9:26:18 PM

Pseuder:

Die hübscheren Mädchen?

Sounds like you still have yr barba, Rossa. I've been worried about you and Delilah.

2708. hashke - 1/20/2000 9:29:51 PM

wonkers2:

Exactly and very humorously put. 'Los huesos colorados' are the dyed-in-the-wool diehards. The 'encandilados' and 'cohetes' are the hopelessly emborrachados.

2709. wonkers2 - 1/20/2000 9:38:23 PM

PE is God. God knows all.

2710. Candide - 1/21/2000 12:26:39 AM

hashke
"Los huesos colorados" are the codini then.

A little ode to the questing mind:

The questing mind
will always find
material of worth.
The idle and the indigent
find this a cause for mirth.

Celestial wrath
will foam and froth
at blemishes and flaws,
And few survive the fiery breath
of PseudoSantaclaus.

His russet beard
so greatly feared
by infants in their beds
will bristle like
a cuckoo shrike
and flame about their heads.

So children dear,
next time you hear
the footstep in the sand,
just close your eyes
and realise
That God had all this planned.

So be GOOD!

2711. Candide - 1/21/2000 12:39:12 AM

pseudoerasmus

In case you read this doggerel in some Godforsaken spot,you must understand that it was written with fond respect. If you'll pardon the familiarity.

2712. stostosto - 1/21/2000 6:00:39 AM

Herrn Pseudoerasmus!

Dänisch oder Schwedisch am liebstens lernen? Hmmm. Eigenlich ist das Verschieden nicht groß, daß weißt du schon. Die beide Sprache gleichen einander, aber ich zweifle trotzdem ob ein Ausländer der die eine lernt, auch ohne weiter die andere verstehen und sprechen kann.

Schwedisch ist sicher einfacher in der Aussprache. Es gibt 9 Millionen Schweden und nur 5 Millionen Dänen. Also einfacher sprechen, vieler Leute mit wen zu sprechen - vielleicht auch ein tieferer, mehr umfassender Litteratur wegen der größsere Bevölkerung.

Doch: In Dänemark ißt und trinkt man besser. Das Wetter ist wärmer, die Städte sind schöner, die Leute lustiger, die Mädchen hübscherer und süßer.

Und wenn du dänisch lernst, dann kannst du auch norwegisch verstehen - besonders älter norwegisch Litteratur ist tatsächlich in dänisch geschrieben. Ibsen ist sicher der meist berühmten norwegische Schauspielsautor, aber man muß auch Ludvig Holberg nennen. Ein Komödieschauspielsschriftsteller, der eine Dänische Nationalklenodie ist, obwohl er eigenlich Norwege war. Seine Statue sitz davor das königliche Theater in Kopenhagen. Mein Lieblingsschauspiel von ihm heißt Erasmus Montanus und geht um ein junger Bauernsohn, der im Ausland ausbildet wird, rückkommt, und ganz selbstverliebt alle Leute im Dorf herablassend "ausdisputiert". (Es erinnert mich von jemand...)

(Es gibt 4 Millionen Norwegen, so daß die beide Länder Schweden aufwiegen).

2713. stostosto - 1/21/2000 6:01:21 AM

Sollte man ein generelles, stereotypisches Litteratur-vergleich machen, habe ich mal ein gehört, das die Schweden besonders gut an Romanen und Theater sei, während die Dänen sich an Novellen und Gedichte auszeichnen. Das ist aber warscheinlich Quatsch. Es paßt viel zu angenähmlich mit Hans Christian Andersen und August Strindberg als Inkarnationen von die respektive National-Litteraturen.

Und ich möchte sehr gerne eine von meine dänische Favorittenschriftsteller anbefahlen: Hans Scherfig. Ein satirischer, sarkastischer, lustiger Kerl. Am bestens mag ich sein Roman "Idealister", in dem er Fantasten und heuchlerische Welterlöser herrlich aufspießen. Selber war er lebenslang verstocken Kommunist...

2714. DanDillon - 1/21/2000 9:08:10 AM

pe Message # 2694,
No, I've never heard of her. You've piqued my interest. Why do you ask?

2715. rdbrewer - 1/21/2000 11:24:08 AM

Hi, Irv. Good to see you again.

2716. Ronski - 1/21/2000 11:39:18 AM

The colder weather is Sweden is a plus, for some.

2717. Ronski - 1/21/2000 11:39:56 AM

in Sweden...

2718. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/21/2000 11:45:43 AM

Hey, RD! How's the golf game?

2719. rdbrewer - 1/21/2000 12:14:40 PM

I'm still dreaming of a single digit handicap. Whatever happened to that nasty little country you were living in? Oops, perhaps I should say, " . . . beautiful country with the nasty little government you were living in."

2720. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/21/2000 12:29:36 PM

RD:
In case you haven't been reading the news, the nasty government is gone. Check out the International thread.

Also check out PP's excellent Sports thread. If you read back about a week or so, you'll come across a report of one on my finest golf holes ever.

2721. PelleNilsson - 1/21/2000 4:44:13 PM

sto

Thanks for taking the time to answer PE without rising to his attempt to instigate an intra-Heringista squabble. I agree with you that Denmark is a jollier and more relaxed place than Sweden.

2722. Candide - 1/21/2000 4:52:44 PM

stostosto

I undestood large swatches of that highly enjoyable post. I don't want to stoke the fires so will refrain from comment. I gather that you claimed Ibsen for linguistic reasons?

2723. Candide - 1/21/2000 4:57:27 PM

stostosto

No. I see you were claiming a more prominent place for Ludwig Holberg.
Is Karen Blixen considered to be too light or something? You didn't mention her.

2724. stostosto - 1/21/2000 6:32:40 PM

Candide, I mentioned Ibsen and Holberg specifically because they were both Norwegian writers who wrote at a time when written Norwegian was practically identical to Danish. So, if Pseuder learns Danish, he will at the same time gain access to Norwegian literature.

I could have mentioned Blixen and other famous Danish writers, but I chose to call attention to Hans Scherfig who is a towering figure in Danish 20th century literature, a must in every high-school curriculum, and widely acclaimed and cherished by literati and common man alike, but lesser known internationally than Blixen or H.C.Andersen (or Kierkegaard). Plus, he really is one of my personal favourites, and I think Pseuder could relate to his wonderfully underplayed but devilishly stinging satire.

2725. Candide - 1/21/2000 6:38:37 PM

stostosto

The fact that I have never heard of Hans Scherfig probably just reflects my own ignorance. Do you know if he is translated, and if so, are they good translations?

2726. stostosto - 1/21/2000 7:09:37 PM

Hans Scherfig has had most of his major works published in English. The following are available at amazon.com:

Hans Scherfig: Idealists

My personal favourite Scherfig book. It's set partly in Copenhagen, partly in rural Zealand, where the murder of a local magnate sets the story rolling into hilarious renderings of a world of psycho-babbling gurus, alchemists, soothsayers, barefoot-walkers, fanciful economics students, etc.

Hans Scherfig: Missing Bureaucrat

A quiet bureacrat in the Ministry of Defense with no ambition but regularity and order goes missing and is found blown to pieces. But is it really him?

Hans Scherfig: Stolen Spring
This is definitely the best known of his works, one which most Danes with a high school exam will be familiar with to the point of using it for colloquial reference. Everyone knows, for instance who Lektor Blomme is (I don't know his name in English). He is a particularly nasty and tyrannical teacher at an esteemed Copenhagen boy's school for the better-offs. He dies mysteriously.

2727. stostosto - 1/21/2000 7:10:18 PM

Apart from these, there is a novel set during the German occupation of Denmark (Frydenholm), which is a almost unbearably grilling tale of Danish passivity and complicity during that dark period. Especially how the Danish police and authorities went out of their way to help the Gestapo round up the Danish communists - nay, they didn't help them, they rounded them up themselves! - many of whom died in concentration camps.

The Danish government stayed in charge during the first three years of the occupation, keeping the country running smoothly to German satisfaction, if under formal protest at the occupation. Not very heroic. But no doubt we got off a lot more lightly than we would otherwise have.

Deftly, we broke decisively with the Germans just in time that we credibly ended up on the Allied side, in large part due to popular protests and strikes in 1943, and a resistance movement that gained momentum as the war proceeded. But this story is gefundenes Fressen for a satirical master as Scherfig - who on top of it had a personal gripe having been jailed by the Danish police as a card-carrying communist himself.

2728. stostosto - 1/21/2000 7:13:45 PM

I should add, that if any of you are tempted to buy one of these books that I have linked to, you will secure a percentage of the price for the Mote by going through those links.

2729. stostosto - 1/21/2000 7:22:10 PM

Candide: Are they good translations? I have no idea. But they are written in a very straightforward manner, so I would imagine they are not difficult to translate. (I could be wrong, though. They have a wonderful flow and lightness of touch in the language that must be preserved in a good translation...)

2730. Candide - 1/21/2000 7:28:07 PM

Thank you stostosto

He sounds marvellous. I'm not very affluent. I'll find out how much they cost. After buying from Amazon there's the freight to Australia as well. I'll read them somehow and help The Mote if I can.

Style is often everything in such books but Danish and English are close enough for not too much to be lost.

2731. stostosto - 1/21/2000 7:41:21 PM

Did you understand my comment on the Holberg play Erasmus Montanus? (#2712).

I hate the inelegance of translating it, but I hate the idea that no-one understands it even more.

Mein Lieblingsschauspiel von ihm heißt Erasmus Montanus und geht um ein junger Bauernsohn, der im Ausland ausbildet wird, rückkommt, und ganz selbstverliebt alle Leute im Dorf herablassend "ausdisputiert". (Es erinnert mich von jemand...)

My favourite play by him [Holberg] is called Erasmus Montanus and is about a peasant son who gets educated abroad, returns, and completely enamoured with himself starts condescendingly to defeat the good villagers in "disputes". (It reminds me of someone...)

---
Of course, that is entirely because of the latinised Danish name of the protagonist which is also the title of the play...

2732. Candide - 1/21/2000 8:01:05 PM

stostosto

I had already perceived enough for a quiet smile. I read German via the Bach cantatas basically. Then I progress to Brahms, Schubert, Mozart and Beethoven and even Wolf and Schoenberg.

Shameful I know. It all came to me at once when I was doing things ahead of my brain. I had also been badly frightened as a small child by Germans, on the radio and in newspapers and films. A disincentive. Then most of all I was badly frightened by German coaches in London. They were like the concentration camp guards in war films.

I was coached in a Slovak dialect for some Bartok, then there was French, Spanish and Italian.
And me, just a rural village maiden.

2733. stostosto - 1/21/2000 8:15:34 PM

Concentration camp guards and bad Germans have done their share to deter people from learning German. Here, German is becoming marginalised as a second foreign language. This development is furthered by the fact that more and more Germans are becoming decent English speakers.

2734. Candide - 1/21/2000 8:21:59 PM

stostosto

And I have some very dear German friends, much of my favourite literature (translated) and music is German. It's an evil virus that was planted in my brain by historical events. The coaches in question were extremely punitive and authoritarian in approach. That did nothing to the mental salivary juices.

And the Italians, Spanish and French had food too! Actually, I recommend cooking from the language of the food as a way to get into a language.

Now for me it's a matter of priorities. I wish I had learned German but I won't now. There's too much other marvellous stuff to do.

2735. stostosto - 1/21/2000 8:31:22 PM

Candide

Here is a chilling Excerpt from Stolen Spring by Hans Scherfig. Translated by Frank Hugus

The translation is excellent.

2736. stostosto - 1/21/2000 8:33:02 PM

...speaking of being authoritative in the pedagogical approach.

2737. Candide - 1/21/2000 8:42:40 PM

stostosto

Wow and Phew!

What pace. What horror.

Yes I want to read Scherfig.

2738. stostosto - 1/21/2000 8:45:18 PM

That's great Candide! You have made my day.

2739. ilyavinarsky - 1/21/2000 8:51:32 PM

I pity Lillebror.

2740. ilyavinarsky - 1/21/2000 8:53:22 PM

Has anyone else read children's book Anni Maninnen by Marja-Leena Mikkola?

2741. Candide - 1/21/2000 8:54:52 PM

Ilya

Is that 'little brother'?

2742. ilyavinarsky - 1/21/2000 8:56:26 PM

It is the main character of Karlsson on the Roof. His real name is Svante Svantesson, IIRC.

2743. Candide - 1/21/2000 8:59:26 PM

A trip to the children's library seems to be on the itinerary.

2744. ilyavinarsky - 1/21/2000 9:00:14 PM

2745. ilyavinarsky - 1/21/2000 9:04:23 PM

2746. ilyavinarsky - 1/21/2000 9:07:24 PM

2747. ilyavinarsky - 1/21/2000 9:11:53 PM

2748. sakonige - 1/21/2000 9:13:19 PM

What? I don't get it.

2749. Candide - 1/21/2000 9:17:48 PM

Beats the hell out of Buck Rogers.

Is there any text?

Air-borne angst and insecurity and anticlimax.

2750. sakonige - 1/21/2000 9:19:42 PM

These are illustrations of a children's story about people with propellers?

2751. ilyavinarsky - 1/21/2000 9:26:47 PM

The first two are. The second two are parodies.

2752. ilyavinarsky - 1/21/2000 9:30:24 PM

Sakonige, this is Karlsson-On-the-Roof and Little Brothers, the two main characters of three fairy tales by Swedish author Astrid Lindgren.

2753. ilyavinarsky - 1/21/2000 9:30:38 PM

Little Brother

2754. hashke - 1/21/2000 9:34:28 PM

Stockholm

Stuck golem.

2755. hashke - 1/21/2000 9:35:35 PM

#2745, that is.

2756. ilyavinarsky - 1/21/2000 9:36:17 PM

2757. hashke - 1/21/2000 9:40:51 PM

#2756

Lyublyu etu karikaturu!

2758. hashke - 1/21/2000 9:42:34 PM

Ilya:

I've tried select all/copy/paste on stuff like this, with no result. Kak sdelaetsya?

2759. ilyavinarsky - 1/21/2000 9:44:35 PM

In Microsoft Internet Explorer on Windows:

Right-click on the picture

Properties

It will show the url.

Triple-click on the url to select all.

Rclick-copy.

2760. ilyavinarsky - 1/21/2000 9:45:59 PM

You can also do rclick-copy on the picture, but this copies the picture, not the url

2761. hashke - 1/21/2000 10:02:47 PM

I want to copy the pic but keep getting only the url, trying both suggestions. aaargh!

2762. ilyavinarsky - 1/21/2000 10:37:55 PM

2763. Candide - 1/21/2000 10:51:57 PM

Ilya and hashke
On a Macintosh we dragged the picture from Netscape onto the desktop and a gif downloaded automatically and Bob's your uncle.

We don't know to send images because we haven't tried andI have been told by SIR that the "scanner isn't available for social purposes".
(I'll work on the latter!)

2764. Candide - 1/21/2000 10:53:00 PM

The "Bob's your uncle" was a bit of racy idiom to maintain thread topic.

2765. hashke - 1/21/2000 10:57:43 PM

Candide:

My Macquarie says 'Bob's your uncle' means 'it's okay', 'there you are'.

2766. Candide - 1/21/2000 11:07:41 PM

Topic respectability mantained and new information acquired.

I didn't dare tell IrvingSnodgrass that I DON'T have a Maquarie dictionary. It isn't deliberate. Well only in part. There is something of a philosophical saturation here "Maquarie-wise". I don't quite trust it. Mostly I do, but not always. When nationalism raises its linguistic head one had better stay alert.

I flirted with buying a copy last week but I had too many other expenses. It must wait for a few weeks.

2767. Candide - 1/21/2000 11:15:32 PM

hashke
It's not actualy an Australian expression. I quote Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase & Fable.
Bob's your uncle. That will be all right; you needn't bother any more, just leave it to me! The phrase was occasioned by A.J. Balfour's promotion by his uncle Robert (Lord Salisbury), the TORY Prime Minister, to the post of Chief Secretary for IRELAND. Balfour had previously been made President of the Local Government Board in 1886, then Secretary for SCOTLAND with a seat in the CABINET. The suggestion of nepotism was difficult to ignore.

2768. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/21/2000 11:16:38 PM

Candide:
The Macquarie is something you simply must have on your bookshelf.

I don't understand the feeling that some Australians have that Australian English is something terrible which must be stamped out (to be replaced, horror of horrors, by British English). Yesterday I mentioned to the head of the Australian School here that I admired Australian English, and she said "Oh no! It's horrible!"

2769. Candide - 1/21/2000 11:26:42 PM

IrvingSnodgrass

Aha! That roused you from your hiding place!

I must defend myself. I LOVE Australian English. I just don't like PHONY Australian English. The Macquarie fanatics are 99.9 per cent genuine. It's that one per cent that worries me. It becomes like stage cockney.

Are you familiar with Barry Humphries's invented Australianisms? He used them mostly in his comic strip in Private Eye with Nicholas Garland, "Barrie Mackenzie".

I'm not accusing the Macquarie people of doing anything comparable, but there is a tilt in that direction.

Of course Australian English isn't horrible, but when some people cultivate an exaggerated and distorted version of it from motives of aggressive pride, then the valuable ability to communicate with other English-speakers is damaged. A bit like the South African Dutch I suppose. We live in the age of electronic communication so there is no need to dwindle into a colourful minority, no matter how interesting it is a field of study.

2770. Candide - 1/21/2000 11:35:00 PM

"as" a field of study.]

I'm not sure how Barry McKenzie is spelled. I think my second attempt is the correct one.
The name itself is a joke about the antipodes. In Britain every Barry are Welsh and every McKenzies is Scottish. The mixture sounds hilarious to British ears.

Humphries is a genius but he's also a frightful snob. He is now married to the daughter of the English poet, Stephen Spender. Like Peter Sellers, he is a mercurial character who has to play a role to achieve an identity.

Edna Everage is a cruel caricature of Australian and New Zealand women from the 1940s and 50s and 60s. It no longer applies, but because Humphries mainly lives in Britain I don't think he quite realises that.

He is an enormously gifted observer of language and behaviour.

2771. Candide - 1/21/2000 11:36:42 PM

IS Welsh. I didn't know whether to say Barrys are or Barry is. I didn't change it properly. Again!

2772. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/21/2000 11:41:14 PM

Candide:
Although there may be a few oddballs around, I wouldn't worry about the ability of Australians to communicate. My personal experience is that the real strong ("Ocker," if that's how it's spelled) accents are getting less common, leaving a sort of standard Australian dialect which is easily understood by English speakers everywhere, while retaining a distinctly Australian charm. Wouldn't it be boring if English speakers everywhere sounded the same?

I wouldn't let 0.1% of Australians keep you from acquiring the fine Macquarie dictionary.

I haven't come across the invented Australianisms you mentioned, but I can imagine how they sound. It reminds me of a book I once read which purported to be the tale of the experiences of an Italian immigrant to Australia (it later turned out that the book was a hoax). What people like the writer of that book don't realize is that the reality is already good enough... there's no need to manufacture anything.

2773. ilyavinarsky - 1/21/2000 11:49:02 PM

Hi Candide. I Can Jump Puddles was quite popular when I was growing up.

2774. Candide - 1/21/2000 11:52:28 PM

IrvingSnodgrass

That easily understood relaxed Australian has always been around — apart from the early ABC news readers whose genteel attempts at Englishness used to make real English people double up with laughter.

The book you mention is famous. They made a film of it.

John O'Grady/alias Nino Culotta. They're a Weird Mob was actually written from a slightly Macquarie point of view. It illustrated the linguistic idiomatic difficulty that might be experienced by an immigrant whose knowledge of English was basically from England. It looked lovingly at Australian English and most Australians took it as a compliment.

I forget the name of the famous Italian actor who starred in the film but he was a top name.

2775. Candide - 1/21/2000 11:57:09 PM

Ilya
I Can Jump Puddles by Alan Marshall is a wonderful book.

When I gave a copy to my father we managed to communicate for the first time in years.

2776. Candide - 1/22/2000 12:01:44 AM

IrvingSnodgrass

I WILL GET THE MACQUARIE DICTIONARY as soon as financially possible. Promise.

I don't know whether you would ever get to hear the excellent ABC interviewer, Phillip Adams? He is an example of really pleasant Australian speech.

2777. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/22/2000 12:04:10 AM

Candide:
Yes, I know the relaxed Australian accent has always been around. It seems to me (and I may be wrong -- this is from personal observation) that 20 or 30 years ago, Australians spoke one of three vaieties of Australian English... the common Ocker accent, which is at times indecipeherable for an outsider, the "relaxed" variety which is definitely Australian, while being more comprehensible to outsiders, and the pseudo-British accent you mentioned, which was common among newscasters and academics. These days, the relaxed variety seems to be more and more common and accepted, and the other two varieties are less common (in the case of the pseudo-British accent, this is a very good thing).

Yes, that's the book I read about 25 years ago. I recall feeling cheated when I discovered it wasn't by an immigrant at all... it seemed, in that light, as if it were poking fun at immigrants. And I remember feeling at the time that it overdid the differences of Australia and Australian English.

2778. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/22/2000 12:06:52 AM

Candide:
I'm not familiar with Phillip Adams, though I may have heard him. I find that almost all the broadcasters on ABC (both radio and TV) have pleasing accents.

2779. Candide - 1/22/2000 12:09:12 AM

The John O'Grady book is terribly dated now. The influx of immigrants has totally altered the whole Australian culture, speech included. At least in the cities.

Henry Lawson (1867-1922) is the true parent of Macquarie-speak and Henry's mob no longer rule Australia.

Henry Lawson is well worth reading by the way.

2780. Candide - 1/22/2000 12:21:16 AM

I think that you're right about relaxed Australian becoming more common.

I am guilty of sounding a bit lost between three countries. But I am a bit like a retired ballet dancer - professional distortion. You must have noticed that retired ballet dancers walk like ducks.

I instinctively recoiled as a child from exaggerated New Zealand vowels. No one from any branch of my family used them, including the farmers, and they were all very much New Zealanders. Not all of my family were snobbish. I was unable to respect a teacher who distorted the pronunciation of my name.

Colonial speech is always loaded with implications that are dangerous to discuss. When I returned from the northern hemisphere and heard what had happened to the New Zealand accent I was astonished. It had changed tremendously in a short time. Television seems to be the main reason.
David Lange's vowels astonished me. It was as though someone had spilled a tin of paint and it had run everywhere.

When I got a job in a British company run by the famous singer Joan Cross (one of Benjamin Britten's left wing snobbish crowd — the WORST snobs) she said:"Oh you're a New Zeahlander!. Quite the worst accent in the world apart from South Africa!"

2781. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/22/2000 12:21:37 AM

Candide:
Are there any titles of Lawson's you'd recommend? I have a friend who's going to Melbourne tomorrow for a week, and I could ask him to pick up a book or two for me.

2782. ilyavinarsky - 1/22/2000 12:24:37 AM

I once interviewed with a New Zealander, whom I barely understood, and who says his family says he talks like an American.

He did his master's thesis in linguistics on a Polynesian language spoken by a few hundred people on some small South Pacific island.

2783. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/22/2000 12:26:00 AM

Candide:
Well, I disagree with Joan Cross about the New Zealand accent (which I quite like), but I have to agree about the South African accent, which I'd label (to paraphrase her statement) "Quite the worst accent in the world apart from RP!"

2784. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/22/2000 12:30:37 AM

Ilya:
That's one of the strange things about living among speakers of another accent. One's accent ends up somewhere in the middle, and is not accepted by either group of native speakers.

Do you happen to know what Polynesian language this fellow studied? Austronesian languages are my field as well, and I'm always interested.

2785. Candide - 1/22/2000 12:35:07 AM

I'm not sure what is presently available. His short stories are his master pieces.

The Drover's Wife is a famous short story as is the very funny The Loaded Dog.

I think there are anthologies While the Billie Boils and Joe Wilson and his Mates.

There is "good old Australian racism" to burn in them. One has to perform a lobotomy on oneself to perceive the true genius that is very evident in the stories. The heart of Australian self-perception is in Lawson. More's the pity in some ways, but not in all.

2786. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/22/2000 12:38:29 AM

Candide:
For an interesting glimpse at the Australia of 50 years ago, I have always enjoyed the books of Arthur Upfield.

2787. ilyavinarsky - 1/22/2000 12:38:51 AM

According to his CV, his master's thesis was on "Ergativity in Roviana".

2788. Candide - 1/22/2000 12:39:52 AM

I have a Texan friend whom we met when he worked in Australia. He told me that my "British" accent then chilled him to the bone and terrified the wits out of him. He returned on a visit recently, he now lives and works in New York, and he was obviously disappointed because I no longer sounded British. I think I have lost my power over him.

2789. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/22/2000 12:46:36 AM

Ilya:
Ah, that's a Melanesian language... even more interesting. It's spoken on New Georgia, in the Solomon Islands.

2790. Candide - 1/22/2000 12:49:06 AM

IrvingSnodgras

All that I know about Arthur Upfield(1892-1964) is that he wrote the Bony detective series. They made a television series of it and starred a white New Zealander with makeup instead of using an Aboriginal actor. This caused outrage in liberal circles not to mention Aboriginal.

I am ordered to get up and go for a walk and I think that I must.

Henry Lawson is an Australian classic. I think you would like him despite his jibes at various ethnic groups. He was an artist.

2791. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/22/2000 12:55:30 AM

Candide:
I'll check out Lawson. Upfield's Bony books are quite good. I find it a bit appalling that they had to use a white to play Bony on TV, but I've seen the same sort of outrageous ethnic casting in American TV and film.

Btw, I suppose I should post this in the Int'l thread, but you'll be interested to note that the headline in today's paper here indicates a thawing of diplomatic relations between Australia and Indonesia. Gus Dur mentioned Australia as one of the three countries Indonesia can depend upon for moral and material leadership (the others are the USA and Japan).

2792. SnowOwl - 1/22/2000 1:08:06 AM

U think it's a bit silly to call an accent "good", "bad", "the worst" or whatever, since our appreciation, or otherwise, depends on one's own hearing of it. I do find some of the South African accents grating, but all South Africans do not sound exactly the same and some I find quite pleasant to listen to.

When I worked in Glasgow my boss refused to believe I was a New Zealander and insisted that I came from Kelvinside (one of the "posh" areas of the city). No matter how I tried I could not convince him otherwise. Yet many other people have told me I have a fairly marked New Zealand accent although, thankfully, distance and time away from Auckland have lessened my tendency to make statements sound like questions.

2793. SnowOwl - 1/22/2000 1:10:58 AM

U = I (and I do intend to proof read but the road to hell is paved etc).

2794. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/22/2000 1:22:18 AM

SnowOwl:
[I} think it's a bit silly to call an accent "good", "bad", "the worst" or whatever, since our appreciation, or otherwise, depends on one's own hearing of it.

Of course... it's all a matter of taste.

I find with white South Africans, it's not so much how they sound (though I personally don't find their accent pleasing) as what they have to say... like the fellow who recently told me that all black South Africans would all like to return to the days of apartheid.

2795. PelleNilsson - 1/22/2000 5:02:47 AM

sto

That excerpt from Scherfig reminds me vividly of a scene from Ingmar Bergman's first film, "Hets". It was directed by his mentor, Alf Sjöberg, but Bergman wrote the script and was assistant director. I wonder if the script was based on Scherfig. Great similarity, anyhow.

2796. Candide - 1/22/2000 4:56:52 PM

PelleNilsson

I too thought of the Bergman film although I had forgotten its name. It is wonderfully written.

SnowOwl

I have a similar set of experiences. Perhaps most New Zealanders over a certain age share this. I was told, kindly, in London, when I said I was a New Zealander:"Never mind Dear, it doesn't show."

I have a confession to make to IrvingSnodgrass. I really like English RP. I wish you could have heard a British actor Robert Eddison. No singer approached him for beauty and unforced elegance. I could listen to him read the telephone directory.

There is also the great Australian actor, Leo McKern. "Rumpole of the Bailey". I love his speech.

There are other wonderful elements in speech that are more important than 'beauty', but when there is also beauty, that is a great treat.

2797. Candide - 1/22/2000 5:21:15 PM

IrvingSnodgrass

I'm glad we are thawing out. Personally, I never felt frosty.

By the way, I think that ocker-speech can be beautiful too. I just think that an educated English person speaking without affectation can be a delightful thing to contemplate. It would be a pity if history blinded us (deafened us) to this fact. Well I claim that it's a fact.

2798. ilyavinarsky - 1/22/2000 5:24:43 PM

Lillebror grows up:

2799. hashke - 1/22/2000 5:29:43 PM

Ilya:

Hahaha! Nakonets nos doros.

2800. ilyavinarsky - 1/22/2000 6:05:24 PM

I hate multilingual punsters.

2801. pseudoerasmus - 1/22/2000 6:41:49 PM

Dillon (Message # 2714): She says she’s a famous singer in Morocco, has had problems with the authorities because her songs have ‘social themes’. She and her husband have been my neighbours for the past year.

Message # 2784 and Message # 2789: Sounds very very familiar.

IlyaV (Message # 2700): Why not send him to your in-laws next summer? Novosibirsk, was it? Or have they left? At any rate, send him to Russia for the summer. Expressly for linguistic reasons, my parents forcibly deported me hither and thither into the care of relatives every summer between 6 and 18.

Hashke (Message # 2707): Yes, but while you increpate the rotensile mulitions, the others cug the panners in the forenittle.

Stostosto: Ich habe deine lustige, begeisterte and gründlige Verteidigung von deiner Muttersprach “durch der Glieder angespannte Stille” gelesen! (Wer hat diese Wörter geschrieben?) Dänisch gewinnt! Leider gewinnt es, nicht besonders weil Dänisch seine einigen Vorteile hat, sondern nur weil ich mit einer Sprach zwei Fliegen schlagen kann. Wie James Joyce hätte ich Norwegisch gern lesenkönnen, nur um Ibsens Originalarbeit zu lesen.

Übrigens....warum hat die Arbeitslosigkeit in Dänemark im Vergleich zu England and Schweden sich nicht verbessert?

2802. marjoribanks - 1/22/2000 6:48:16 PM

Pseuder,

Am sprinting in and out of here this instance, but want to remind you to visit the headquarters of the AES in Hauz Khas Village in delhi and buy lots of books, you lucky bastid. Also please pick up a new edition of the catalog for me, be a good fellow. I'm interested in the History one.

Enjoy desh, remember that Delhi is warmer than Moscow for sure but still too fucking cold at this time for my liking.

2803. hashke - 1/22/2000 8:00:36 PM

Pseuder:

Ah, yis, but refrict Delilah or Delhi tribalbutience's a bride's aye stammpunct and beyant stambimobily.

2804. sakonige - 1/22/2000 8:10:38 PM

buffalo and dogs have beards.

2805. sakonige - 1/22/2000 8:13:31 PM

Wear a hat.

2806. Candide - 1/22/2000 9:10:00 PM

I have just heard the ABC news-reader say Pinoshay.

They must have ended up applying the Macquarie principle. More people in Australia say it so it's correct.

2807. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/22/2000 9:28:04 PM

Candide:
No, they're applying the English speaker principle: "if it's a foreign name, pronounce it the French way."

Message # 2796
I have a confession to make to IrvingSnodgrass. I really like English RP.

That's very common among Antipodeans. As I alluded to earlier, Australians and New Zealanders often feel their speech is somehow inferior, and that RP is the correct way of speaking.

I just think that an educated English person speaking without affectation can be a delightful thing to contemplate.

The problem is, so much educated English speech is full of affectation. For a really nice British accent, I hope you have a chance to hear the Mote's tmachine someday. Of course, she's spent 25 years in the USA which, no doubt, has had an influence. Her brother has spent 20 years in Australia, and, likewise, has a very pleasing, though rather different, accent.

2808. Candide - 1/22/2000 10:30:56 PM

I like all the accents you mentioned. But - as one who lived and worked in England and environs for about a decade, I can claim some intimate experience of English speech. Especially since I had to blend, in spoken roles, with the speech of native British people.

It is a false impression to think of most middle-class home counties speech as being affected. Might it be that your ear is more attuned to American speech and unconsciously British speech sounds like a distortion of American speech? I know you're a professional but these things still must have some effect.

It is Irish Roman Catholicism that made the gap eventually larger in Australia, but even Australia was closely linked to Britain for a long time. The evolution is natural and it would be ridiculous to try and alter it.

Have you read Ethel Turner's (1852-1958) famous children's book Seven Little Australians(1894)? It gives a pretty good picture of middle-class Australian life of that period. Your daughter might enjoy it (or might not-who can tell?).

Another essential book is the epic poem by C.J.Dennis (1876-1936)The Sentimental Bloke which is a story of working-class love. Highly comical and unintentionally patronising, be it ever so affectionate.

2809. ilyavinarsky - 1/22/2000 10:33:59 PM

> gives a pretty good picture of middle-class Australian life of that period

Candide, have you ever read Alan Marshall's I can Jump Puddles?

2810. Candide - 1/22/2000 10:37:28 PM

p.s. IrvingSnodgrass

I was coping with a conversation at the same time and may have painted with too broad a brush.

I'm not sure whether the native speakers of closed-circle dialects - Oxbridge - Knightsbridge- are being affected. I think the affectation starts when people from outside of those groups want to give the impression that they belong to them. The awful philosophical problem for the unkind listener then is to realise that it was the conceit and exclusivity of the native insiders that prompted the artificial speech of the would-be insiders.

Ouch!

I'm glad that I'm out of all of that!

2811. Candide - 1/22/2000 10:45:07 PM

Ilya #2809

Yes. I answered that yesterday I thought. I loved it. It's ages since I read it but it has a truth about it that is wonderful.

My Oxford Companion to Australian Literature tells me that it sold over three million copies and was particularly popular in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe and was produced as an award-winning film in Czechoslovakia in 1970 and as a television series in Australia in 1981.

It's Alan Marshall's childhood autobiography. I remember the description of the gradual gaining of confidence by the author as a child who lost the use of both legs at the age of six after he contracted polio.

2812. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/22/2000 10:49:09 PM

Candide:
I've worked with British speakers of all stripes for many years, and I'm quite familiar with the varieties of British speech. For a number of years, I was the lone American in a school staffed by British teachers. My impressions of British speech have been largely influenced by the opinions (and speech) of British colleagues.

Ilya:
Check out Candide's Message # 2775.

2813. ilyavinarsky - 1/22/2000 10:56:57 PM

I am sorry; there is too much traffic in this thread.

2814. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/22/2000 10:57:57 PM

Candide:
I'll see if they have the Turner book at my daughter's school... the English teachers are all Australian there. They also might have it at my son's school, since he goes to the Australian International School here, but their library is tiny since the school is very new (in fact, the first full school year starts tomorrow).

Living here, I have a hard time finding books, since there is no library, and bookstores have extremely limited selections. I do my book buying on my trips to Australia and the USA. I've added your recommendations to my list for my next trip to Oz, which will probably be late next month.

2815. Candide - 1/22/2000 11:02:01 PM

IrvingSnodgrass

I think we are in agreement and riding our bicycles around in circles.

Seriously, the Ethel Turner book Seven Little Australiansis essential to the understanding of Australia. A wonderful ABC TV series was made of it in 1975 and it topped the TV polls in Sweden.

I cried over it when I was a child and so did my mother as a child before me. Every antipodean has read it. Or had until recently.

C.J. Dennis who wrote The Sentimental Bloke was greatly admired by Henry Lawsaon who quoted him in one of his own poems. There is even a terrific silent film.

2816. Candide - 1/23/2000 12:58:21 AM

IrvingSnodgrass.
Do you know of A.A. Morrison/ aka 'Afferbeck Lauder' Professor of Strine? SAY IT ALOUD. DON'T DESPAIR IF YOU CAN"T CRACK THE CODE.
"Hagger Nigh Tell?
Hagger nigh telephime reely reel?
Hadder Y. Noah Fimere?
Car sigh ony nowered I thing ky feel,
An maybe I'm knotty veneer.

I mipey no lesson I mipey no more
Than a shadder we idle fancy.
Prabzyme the moon! Can I Telfer Shaw
That I'm nodgers a nant named Nancy?

I coobie jar sreely a loafer bread,
Or a horse, or a bird called Gloria.
I mipey alive - but I coobie dead,
Or a phantasmabloodygoria.

Hagger nigh tellime notonia dream,
Cook tarpner mare chick's pell?
Cor sigh my pig zackly what I seem,
Bar towg nigh reely tell?

Wunker Nawlwye stell; yegger nawlwye snow
If you're reelor yerony dreaming;
Yellopoff the topoff your nirra stow,
A new wafer the sander the screaming.

2817. Candide - 1/23/2000 12:59:16 AM

I will do a translation but only if REELY needed. It's hard for me too.

2818. Candide - 1/23/2000 1:15:21 AM

Translation for non-Australians
"How can I Tell?
How can I tell if I'm really real?
How do y'know from here?
Cause I only know what I think I feel,
And maybe I'm not even here.

I might be no less and I might be no more
Than a shadowy idle fancy.
Perhaps I'm the moon! Can I tell for sure
That I'm not just an ant named Nancy?

I could be just really a loaf of bread,
Or a horse, or a bird called Gloria.
I might be alive - but I could be dead,
or a phantasma-bloody-goria.

How can I tell I'm not only a dream,
Cooked up in a magic spell?
'course I might be exactly what I seem,
But how can I really tell?

One can always tell; you can always know
If you're real or you're only dreaming;
You lop off your nearest toe,
And you wait for the sound of the screaming.
Translated by Candide

2819. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/23/2000 1:15:54 AM

That's great, Candide. I can make sense of most of it (How can I tell? How can I tell if I'm really real? How do I know if I'm here?...). But don't let me stop you from offering a translation for those who aren't as familiar with Strine.

Was Morrison the author of "Let Stalk Strine"? I can't remember the author's name, but I recall hearing he passed away a year or so ago.

2820. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/23/2000 1:19:39 AM

I think my translation is more accurate for line number three. But I'm not about to attempt the whole thing.

Obviously, it's much better if spoken. It would be great if you could link a sound file of spoken Strine.

2821. Candide - 1/23/2000 1:20:11 AM

IrvingSnodgrass.

Yes he was and I think he did. Parts of that were hard for me. Especially the 'magic spell'.

2822. Candide - 1/23/2000 1:22:58 AM

IrvingSnodgrass
I wavered over line number three. I could have gone either way. I still tilt a little towards my decision but have not dismissed yours.

2823. Candide - 1/23/2000 1:32:30 AM

IrvingSnodgrass
At the time the Oxford Companion to Oz lit was published (1985) he wqas still with us but....
Alistair Ardoch Morrison (1911-) Born melbourne, has worked as an artist and graphic designer, mainly in Sydney. As Professor "Afferbeck Lauder", Professor of Strine (q.v.) studies at the University of Sinny, he published several 'papers' on strine in The Sydney Morning Herald in 1965. Some of these were subsequently published in Let Stalk Strine (1965) and Nose Tone Unturned (1966).

He has also published complilations of Knightsbridge English for the uninitiated. Fraffly Well Spoken(1968); a compendium, Fraffly Strine Everything (1969); and under the name Alistair Morrison, a comic miscellany, The Scrambled Egghead (1971).

2824. Candide - 1/23/2000 1:33:38 AM

[Compilations.] Bit weary.

2825. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/23/2000 2:12:06 AM

Candide:
A friend once told me the (probably apocryphal) story of an American author who was promoting his book in Australia. He was seated in a bookstore, signing copies of his book, when a woman appraoched him, holding a copy of the book, and asked "emmachisit?" ("How much is it, for the non-Strine speakers here). The author took the book from her and autographed it "To my faithful reader Emma Chisett."

A search on the web reveals that Morrison passed away in June 1998.

2826. cmboyce - 1/23/2000 12:35:05 PM

I'm assuming the moniker "Afferbeck Lauder" has meaning in Strine, but I can't dope it out. "After Beclouder"? Hmm. Any help?

2827. Candide - 1/23/2000 2:40:56 PM

cmboyce
"Afferbeck Lauder"

Steel yourself ....

ALPHABETICAL ORDER

IrvingSnodgrass

"Emmachisit" was Morrison's own story. It's what inspired the whole exercise.

2828. Candide - 1/23/2000 2:50:03 PM

IrvingSnodgrass.

Thanks for the obit.

You may be interested to know that Campbell McComas who wrote it is a fascinating character as well. He is a chameleon. He is presented at seminars and other self-important occasions as one of the professional participants. He just merges with the people in the room, then he is announced as an expert on whatever is the topic of the day, and he makes a perfectly serious (apparently) speech. His appearence is always different at each occasion, but is never too unusual. Then he takes questions from the floor. He is almost never found out. he is a walking parody of professional pretentiousness. Very funny.

I once had a blazing row with him on talkback radio when he pretended to be an American film company magnate who's come to Australia to subsume the Australian film industry. I thought he was the real thing.

2829. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/24/2000 10:34:58 AM

Here's an interesting article from the LA Times on language in LA. Although it's a bit off in some things it says, it's nice to see a story about language in the press which tries to go a bit more in-depth. It would have been nice if they had used a linguist or two as a source (instead of relying (gag) on Bill Bryson's website. My opinion of Bill Bryson gets lower and lower the more I read by the man. He's an idiot.).

The chart at the end is a little odd. They would have been better off using Ethnologue's numbers.

Anyway, the story is definitely worth a read:

Ethnic Pockets Amid a Vast Fabric of English

2830. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/24/2000 10:38:12 AM

Here's a language-related item on GW Bush I came across in the Sydney Morning Herald. I think it's originally from the NY Times. Not much here... the reporter could have done more with this story.

Syntax of the father visited on the son

2831. Candide - 1/24/2000 3:07:24 PM

IrvingSnodgrass#2830

Oh dear oh dear. Very very funny. Is this the man whose finger may be on the button? Let's hope that his emotional processes are in better shape.

The article about the language islands could have been written about Sydney, although some of the languages would have been difficult.

For work reasons, I recently made a precis of the contents of a huge book called The Australian People in which there are the histories of the settlement in Australia of all the nationalities they could trace up to the time of publication in 1988.

There are several "ethnic" radio stations. Monday's SBS (Special Broadcasting Service) radio contained the following hour-long programs: Greek; Serbian; Vietnamese; Cantonese; Norwegian; Aboriginal?; Polish; Hungarian; Croatian; Tongan; Greek (again); Vietnamese (again); Cantonese (again); Khmer; Laotian.
Tuesday:Greek; Slovenian; Vietnamese; Mandarin; French; Albanian; Polish; Hungarian; Serbian; Macedonian; etc.
They are different to some extent each day, the preponderance depending upon the size of the audience. Many people regard these programs as their lifeline. The community power of the 'star' broadcasters is a bit of a worry in some cases. That at least was my experience with some Italian broadcasters.

2832. hashke - 1/24/2000 3:58:45 PM

Irv:

Perhaps the son is trying to semantic the relationship by morphing into the father.

Bush is in favor of lowering taxes. Does that include syntax?

2833. Candide - 1/24/2000 4:38:44 PM

Tax sin by all means but leave Texas alone cried the New Zealander.

2834. Candide - 1/24/2000 4:40:28 PM

message 2831
Some of the languages would have been DIFFERENT.

2835. PelleNilsson - 1/24/2000 4:44:21 PM

A note in a newspaper her claims that 307 languages are now spoken in London making it the most multi-lingual city in the world.

English is still the dominant language followed by Punjabi, Gujarati, Hindi and Urdu.

2836. Candide - 1/24/2000 4:48:55 PM

Having lived in both Sydney and London I'd have thought they were about equal, but the wise old bird has spoken.

2837. Candide - 1/24/2000 6:45:09 PM

IrvingSnodgrass
There was an Italian in Sydney who spoke an obscure and nearly vanished rural dialect, who spent many years in a mental hospital because he was unable to communicate with anybody. He was discovered accidentally by a visiting Italian academic. Apart from the trauma of the experience the man was completely sane.

2838. ilyavinarsky - 1/24/2000 10:09:57 PM

This is a sad story.

Does anybody know what the word 'Naksaa' mean, and in what language? It is in the epigraph of Paul Theroux's The Mosquito Coast.

2839. Candide - 1/25/2000 12:55:04 AM

hashke

The German anonymous poem set by Mahler.

Lob Des Hohen Verstandes

Einstmals in einem tiefen Thal
Kukuk und Nachtigal thäten ein Wett' anschlagen:
Zu singen um das Meisterstück:
Gewinn' es Kunst, gewinn' es Glück:
Dank soll er davon tragen.

Der Kukuk sprach: "So dir's gefällt,
Hab' ich den Richter wählt,"
Und thät gleich den Esel ernennen:
"Denn weil er hören desto bos und,
'Was recht ist, kennen!"

Sie flogen vor den Richter bald.
Wie dem sie Sache ward erzählt,
Shuf er, sie sollten singen.

Die Nachtigall sang Lieblich aus!
Der Esel sprach: "Du machst mir's kraus!
I---ja! I---ja! Ich kann's in Kopf nicht bringen"
Der Kukuk drauf fing an geschwind
Sein Sang durch Terz und Quart und Quint.

Dem Esel g'fiels, er sprach nur:
"Wart Wart! Wart!
Dein Urtheil will ich sprechen, ja sprechen.
Wohl sungen hast du, Nachtigal!
Aber, Kukuk, singst gut Choral!
Und hälst den Takt fein innen!
Das sprech' ich nach mein' hoh'n Verstand!
Und kost'es gleich ein ganzes Land,
So lass ich's dich gewinnen!"
Kukuk! Kukuk! I---ja!

2840. Candide - 1/25/2000 12:59:54 AM

Verse 2

Der Kukuk sprach: "So dir's gefällt,
Hab' ich den Richter wählt,"
Und thät gleich den Esel ernennen:
"Denn weil er hat zwei Ohrwen gross,
So kann er hören desto bos und,
'Was recht ist, kennen!"

2841. ScottLoar - 1/25/2000 7:41:33 AM

#2837: I've heard the same involving Russian and Chinese, stowaways in each instance who were overcome by fumes on ship and discovered unconscious and supposedly incoherent. Sent to the asylum only to be discovered years later by the visiting ambassador.

2842. ScottLoar - 1/25/2000 7:42:32 AM

I seem to recall reading a short story to that effect as well.

2843. stostosto - 1/25/2000 8:14:54 AM

Another amusing piece on GWBush-speak

Slate's Jacob Weisberg comments on Bush's proclaimed reading of Dean Acheson:

"One lesson Bush obviously did not learn from Dean Acheson is how to form a grammatical sentence. "

And he goes on, cruelly, to quote W verbatim.

2844. hashke - 1/25/2000 1:57:26 PM

Candide:

Thank you very much for the German. It has a ring unaccomplished in the translation. But thanks also for posting the translation in Poetry.

2845. ilyavinarsky - 1/25/2000 3:00:03 PM

So nobody knows what 'Naksaa' means.

2846. Candide - 1/25/2000 4:37:56 PM

Ilya

If hashke and sakonige don't know, I don't like your chances.

Stostosto

The Bush article is wonderful.

Hashke

The piano is the star turn in that song which is a pure delight. Christa Ludwig made an enjoyable recording of it many years ago. I seem to remember that Mahler was getting at a certain critic about something.

2847. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/25/2000 9:02:47 PM

Ilya:
I don't know the meaning, but I'd guess the language is Coastal Carib or possibly Maya, given the setting of the book.

2848. hashke - 1/25/2000 9:36:23 PM

Probably a word from the Miskitu language itself -- spoken by the Pech, Tawaka, and Miskito Indians of la Moskitia.

There was a fellow from Belize
Who in Pskov was ill at ease.
When he said 'naksaa'
They heard 'Warsaw'
And put him outside to freeze.

2849. hashke - 1/25/2000 9:39:15 PM

Candide:

Thanks for the Mahler hints. I'll try to find the recording.

2850. Candide - 1/25/2000 9:45:02 PM

hashke maaaaaaaaalaugh!

A Viennese sneeze.

2851. hashke - 1/25/2000 9:52:37 PM

Candide:

You must've read my moniker.

2852. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/25/2000 9:52:54 PM

Hashke:
Probably a word from the Miskitu language itself -- spoken by the Pech, Tawaka, and Miskito Indians of la Moskitia.

I thought the same thing myself until I checked the listing for Belize in Ethnologue and discovered that Miskitu isn't spoken in Belize. It is spoken by a few speakers in Honduras, and many in Nicaragua.

2853. ilyavinarsky - 1/25/2000 9:53:57 PM

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Miskito

2854. ilyavinarsky - 1/25/2000 10:03:19 PM

I just sent mail to an anthropologist who did fieldwork in Nicaragua.

2855. hashke - 1/25/2000 10:03:53 PM

Irv:

Yes, I know. I used Belize, for obscure psychological reasons, for the limerick because it is in the region and out of the blue came trippingly upon the tongue.

2856. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/25/2000 10:13:20 PM

hashké:
Well, if memory serves me, the book was set in Belize, so the limerick fits.

2857. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/25/2000 10:18:31 PM

An interesting note on Miskito: it is a widespread coastal lingua franca, and is spoken by many native speakers of Spanish, as well as Indian native speakers of other languages.

2858. sakonige - 1/25/2000 10:45:23 PM

Naksaa. I wonder if it has a meaning in Cherokee?

hashke, I've been wondering if any native American languages ever use an "r" sound.

2859. sakonige - 1/25/2000 10:46:31 PM

?

what's with all the whitespace?

2860. sakonige - 1/25/2000 10:47:09 PM

2861. sakonige - 1/25/2000 10:47:35 PM

hhmmmm....

2862. sakonige - 1/25/2000 11:00:26 PM

2863. sakonige - 1/25/2000 11:01:39 PM

2864. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/26/2000 3:08:54 AM

sakonige:
Plenty of Native American languages have an "r" sound, including most of the languages of Central and South America (an example is the Miskito language mentioned above).

Due to regional typology, "r" sounds are not as common in the languages of North America, although they are occasionally found there as well.

2865. Thoughtful - 1/26/2000 1:52:03 PM

I have a question -- really more of a grammar question. I've noticed more people saying "He's in hospital" where I always said and usually heard, "He's in the hospital." Is this a British-ism? Regional? Are both correct? Oddly, I say and hear, "He's in college" but "He's at the university, though now more often hear, "He's in university."

Just wondering.

2866. ilyavinarsky - 1/26/2000 2:04:57 PM

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Miskito, hyperlinked above, has plenty of r's.

2867. tmachine - 1/26/2000 3:19:53 PM

Brits do indeed say "in hospital" rather than "in the hospital" as Americans have it. They say someone is "at university" rather than "in college"; "at school" rather than "in school"; and they do not use "school" as another synonym for "college," only for primary and secondary institutions (except they do say "night school" and "medical school"). I'm continually surprised by these sometimes very small but noticeable variants. For instance, Brits tend to say "on behalf of" while Americans frequently use "in behalf of"; Brits say "on the cards" while Americans say "in the cards"; Americans say "catch up to" while Brits say "catch up with." i could go on and on...

2868. tmachine - 1/26/2000 3:20:23 PM

p.s. irv, got your lovely christmas (?) card the other day!

2869. CalGal - 1/26/2000 3:59:27 PM

An odd regional variant is the SoCal habit of putting "the" before their freeway numbers. NoCal just use the numbers.

So in SoCal, you'd say, "Take the 405 to the 5 going north."

In NoCal, you'd say "Take 280 south to 85 east."

Actually, I'm not sure which is the variant, but I believe the rest of the US is more like NoCal.

2870. Candide - 1/26/2000 4:12:50 PM

An interesting change in language is the use of "on behalf of" when "on the part of" seems more applicable.

"On behalf of" seems to mean "To the advantage of" whereas "on the part of" seems to mean "a contribution by...".

2871. Ronski - 1/26/2000 4:42:23 PM

A favorite regionalism: In NYC one stands on line rather than standing in line.

2872. PelleNilsson - 1/26/2000 5:02:27 PM

"On behalf of" is interesting. I only use it in the sense of "standing in for", or "acting for": -- "on behalf of the management I would like to ...". Please advise of other usage.

2873. Candide - 1/26/2000 5:09:39 PM

PelleNilsson

That is how I have always used it too.

Now, in Australia, the expression "on behalf of" is substituted at all times for "on the part of" and it is also still used as you or I might use it normally. I have heard speakers on BBC radio do the same thing so I have decided it's not just in Australia.

I detect in my own life time a loss of small degrees of meaning and a flattening out of the language.

An example which I have been toldby the Macquarie Dictionary language experts is acceptable, is the replacement of "fewer" with "less" in all applications.

2874. Candide - 1/26/2000 5:51:03 PM

PelleNilsson

I am currently preparing and eating breakfast and trying very hard to remember some examples of the uncouth usage of "on behalf of". Rather than rush it I will meditate and listen and produce some genuine examples later on.

2875. Candide - 1/26/2000 6:26:36 PM

PelleNilsson

So far I have come up with these examples
More often they say "On my behalf" when they mean "for (on) my part".

"Well speaking on my behalf I was very grateful."

When speaking of an action by another person they might say :"That was a good action on his behalf" - where I would say "on his part".

This usage is heard mostly from sports people, but also from people interviewed casually on the radio.

2876. Candide - 1/26/2000 7:00:27 PM

PelleNilsson

Another 'normal'(which means me) use of "on behalf of" would be, "The charity funds were raised 'on behalf of' the widows and orphans".

A 'normal' (me) use of "on the part of" might be "It was a noble gesture 'on the part of' those who collected the money".

2877. SpenceMirrlees - 1/26/2000 11:22:40 PM

Team:

I would like a book that will allow me to learn Spanish comprehensively and quickly. I know some but mostly just enough to make strange sounding gibberish involving the words sausage, cheese, pants and shampoo, and the like. I would like to actually learn it.

I prefer books that have no pictures and are dull and compendious. I do not like books that make learning fun. It already is fun and the extra is just distracting. A book comparable to Latin: An Intensive Course by Moreland and Fleischer would be ideal.

Recommendations appreciated!

2878. Candide - 1/26/2000 11:29:02 PM

I would like to know of a good Spanish grammar with verbs clearly laid out.

2879. CalGal - 1/26/2000 11:31:40 PM

"I prefer books that have no pictures and are dull and compendious. I do not like books that make learning fun. It already is fun and the extra is just distracting. "

(geeeeeeeeeeeek. geeeeeeeeeeeeeek.)

2880. SpenceMirrlees - 1/26/2000 11:36:02 PM

Ahem.

Such books also go better with the edgy and urbane likes of me.

2881. CalGal - 1/26/2000 11:40:50 PM

(....he says, sitting up straighter, pushing his hornrims firmly in place, glancing down quickly to ensure his fly is closed and his pocket protector is safely behind his snazzy green plaid sportscoat...)

2882. SpenceMirrlees - 1/26/2000 11:56:09 PM

Nonsense. That is nothing like me.

I don't wear glasses.

2883. Candide - 1/27/2000 12:11:03 AM

I was once warned not to trust American men in plaid trousers.

2884. SpenceMirrlees - 1/27/2000 12:52:14 AM

I'll remove them if it'll make you feel better.

2885. Candide - 1/27/2000 1:07:45 AM

SpenceMirrlees

EXCHANGE was the word we were looking for.

2886. hashke - 1/27/2000 10:18:51 AM

Spence:

You should get both text and cassettes. Check out www.audioforum.com for good beginning courses in Spanish. Do a lot of listening to Spanish on tape, TV, barrios, etc. Make a nuisance of yourself by addressing Spanish speakers and trying to deal with the rapid fire (figurative) responses. Travel. Read. Don't worry about mistakes. They are inevitable. Stay with it. It takes time.

2887. hashke - 1/27/2000 10:22:48 AM

Candide:

Given your mastery of Italian, any old Spanish grammar will do. My grammars are ancient, so I have no specific recommendations. I'm sure that you can find something quite appropriate where you are.
A good text will adequately present all verb forms, regular and irregular.

2888. Candide - 1/27/2000 3:18:24 PM

hashke

"Mastery" is a fine exaggeration. The books are all very expensive. I thought that perhaps there might be a good one that cost a little less.

Stupid question from Australia.

2889. ilyavinarsky - 1/27/2000 4:43:29 PM

I once played in a quiz show (among the Russophone students from the San Francisco Bay Area, sponsored by various Russian-owned businesses). The teams were asked this question, which my team couldn't answer:

Which literary genre has people speaking Luoravetlan?

2890. hashke - 1/28/2000 12:51:36 AM

Ilya:

Only a guess, but possibly only an oral, ceremonial, poetic, or shamanistic genre, depending on exactly what you mean by the question. The language is spoken by the Chukchi, herders and fishers.

2891. SpenceMirrlees - 1/28/2000 1:02:48 AM

thanks for the info & link, Hashke. Very nice stuff. And expensive.

2892. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/28/2000 1:34:47 AM

Spence:
The very best way to learn a language is to take a course with a qualified and experienced teacher. I am certain there are good courses available in your area. I've spent most of my working career in the field of language education, and there are just some things which are hard to learn from a book (although if you must use a book -- and tapes are a must in that regard -- you can't beat the courses available from Audio Forum (especially their courses in Southwest Indian languages)).

2893. Candide - 1/28/2000 1:54:21 AM

IrvingSnodgrass

Because, as one amongst us has remarked, I am a nut, I learn best in a one to one relationship with a teacher. For me the private lesson is infinitely more successful than the classroom.

2894. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/28/2000 1:58:26 AM

Candide:
Private lessons or classrooms, the key is having a teacher, rather than just a book, as a guide and model. There's nothing wrong with private lessons, and they can be even more effective than classroom learning (though they are not cost-effective).

2895. Candide - 1/28/2000 2:05:25 AM

IrvingSnodgrass

My Italian teacher (who can't be blamed for me) was such an interesting person to talk to and had such a gift for presenting an idea with clarity that it was a delight to visit her. It wasn't so expensive. It was at Berlitz before they became monstrous. I also used a language laboratory (Sydney University)for Maori and found that quite helpful for pronunciation at least.

2896. SpenceMirrlees - 1/28/2000 2:12:39 AM

well, I could take classes for free at my university, but it's out of the question right now. I have the small issue of a dissertation to finish and these sorts of frivolities must work into the schedule, not the other way around.

2897. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/28/2000 4:50:31 AM

Spence:
Perhaps you can find a student tutor (one studying to be a teacher) who could work with you on your schedule (and for cheap. unless you're independently wealthy). You'd be surprised how many young teachers (even those with good training) look for opportunities to increase their experience.

2898. SpenceMirrlees - 1/28/2000 4:54:08 AM

that's a good suggestion Irv, thanks.

2899. EricCartman - 1/28/2000 5:49:14 AM

Spence:

For foreign language texts, I have similar preferences -- no pictures, no "learning is fun" crap, just systematic plans for acquiring a skill. So, I have two recommendations, neither of which should bust your wallet, and either should be helpful:

I have a book called Mastering Spanish, by Robert Clark. I picked it up at Barnes & Noble for $11.95. Dry, but not overly so. Systematic.

Also, I have a very good German language text from Barron's, called Mastering German ($14.95). This is even more dry (in a plain typewritten font), and in the preface, it explains that the course was developed by the US Foreign Service, for training US gov't employees. It is extremely systematic and logically laid out, with sections on gender forms and verb conjugations and such. Very good question and answer sections, and quizzes at the end of each lesson. If their Spanish text is anything like the German one I have, I'd highly recommend it.

Buenos nachos!

2900. Uzmakk - 1/28/2000 6:09:01 AM

Irving:
I await email from you.

2901. PelleNilsson - 1/28/2000 6:30:06 AM

But you have mail from me re picture publishing.

2902. Uzmakk - 1/28/2000 6:34:49 AM

Yes, I do. But Irv said he had some ideas for Mote promotion.

2903. Uzmakk - 1/28/2000 6:37:26 AM

Just checking, Pelle. You are refering to detailed instructions you sent me 5Nov99?

2904. PelleNilsson - 1/28/2000 6:39:29 AM

Did I? I had forgotten. I sent a new set just five minutes ago.

2905. Uzmakk - 1/28/2000 6:53:52 AM

Got them. Thank you.

2906. DanDillon - 1/28/2000 9:28:49 AM

OFF-TOPIC

Pardon me. Popping in to express some regret over my recent extended absence. With the nuptials only several weeks off, I find myself busy as... busy as, um, busy as... well, busy as a very busy person. So I'll most likely continue invisible until well after I've officially bonded with my mate. Ta-ta. Carry on.

2907. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/28/2000 9:39:56 AM

Dan:
I think the idiom is "busy as a bee," though I'm sure someone can come up with a more creative alternative.

When is the big day? We miss you around here, but your absence is understandable.

2908. rdbrewer - 1/28/2000 11:29:29 AM

Stan, whatever happened to David Cohen? Does he ever pop in? How about Alex, Maria, and JadeGold? And who was that guy that caused such a row when he logged onto the fray under others' names? He was funny but threatening to many. What about Kluddy Puddy?

I guess I need to catch-up on things in general.

2909. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/28/2000 11:41:13 AM

RD:
Who's Stan?

The others you ask about are either here (under other names, and I won't pair up their real names with their pseudonyms) or have left the scene. JadeGold was recently heard from in TT claiming she had been banned from the Mote, which is obviously completely untrue (nobody, in fact, has been banned from the Mote). And who is "Kluddy Puddy"?

And, much as I enjoy having you around, I'd be remiss as a thread host if I didn't mention that this is all off-topic in this thread, and would fit better in the cafe.

2910. Thoughtful - 1/28/2000 11:43:15 AM

Irv, we used to say, "Busy as a one-armed wallpaper hanger."

2911. CalGal - 1/28/2000 11:45:37 AM

Or the truckdriver's alternative: "busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest".

2912. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/28/2000 11:49:28 AM

Thoughtful, CalGal:
Just what I was hoping to elicit. Keep 'em coming!

I'll bet Hashké will have some examples from other languages.

2913. hashke - 1/28/2000 2:25:24 PM

Irv:

Since you ask:

Russian - vertet'sya kak belka v kolese -- to spin like a squirrel in a wheel

German - bienenfleissig --literally, 'bee-diligent'

Japanese - seki no atatamaru hima mo nai --there is no time for a seat to get warm

Japanese -

2914. ilyavinarsky - 1/28/2000 4:08:55 PM

The Russian speakers have Luoravetlan speakers only in the joke genre.

e.g. a Chukchi man visits Moscow, and comes back to his herders' camp. "Everything we've been told is wrong. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels are not husband and wife - they are four unrelated people."

2915. ilyavinarsky - 1/28/2000 4:10:12 PM

Was Beowolf beo-diligent?

2916. Uzmakk - 1/28/2000 4:41:20 PM

You know, Irv, when one is about to mount an advertising campaign one feels a distinct need for encryption.

2917. Candide - 1/28/2000 7:05:41 PM

Ilyavinarsky

?

2918. hashke - 1/28/2000 7:10:19 PM

Ilya:

No, but Milosevich is beodegradable.

The Chukchi joke is great!

2919. hashke - 1/28/2000 9:39:00 PM

beo(de)grad(able)= beograd (white city) = Belgrade

Chort voz'mi!

2920. wonkers2 - 1/28/2000 9:56:52 PM

I read in the paper today that Keyes jumped in a "mosh pit" which I deduced from the context is a crowd of people. Can anyone tell me exactly what a "mosh pit" is and from whence the expression came?

2921. Candide - 1/28/2000 10:27:37 PM

Australian 'busy' expression:

flat out like a lizard drinking.

2922. DanDillon - 1/29/2000 1:49:07 AM

When is the big day?

March 25th

2923. Candide - 1/29/2000 11:06:56 PM

We're discussing frogs on the International thread, which led to rice and malaria etc.

I remind Italian speakers of the film "Riso Amaro" which has an ironical double meaning.

2924. PelleNilsson - 1/30/2000 4:05:42 AM

Authentic long Swedish word:

Integrationskonsekvensbeskrivning.

2925. Candide - 1/30/2000 5:29:57 PM

Authentic long Maori place name. (A portmanteau word of course.)

Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu.

It breaks up into Taumata=brow of a hill; whakatangihanga=place of sounding or playing; koauau=flute; o =of; Tamatea-pokai-whenua=proper name of the legendary traveller Tamatea-who-travelled-the-land, ancestor of the east coast tribes; ki=to; tana=his; tahu=loved one.

There is a longer unofficial version of the name:
Taumatawhakatangihangakoauaotamatea[turipukakapimaungahoronuku]pokaiwhenuakitanatahu= "the brow of the hill where Tamatea (the man with the big knees who slid, climbed and swallowed mountains) who travelled the land, played his flute to his loved one".

2926. Candide - 1/30/2000 5:34:56 PM

The place is the highest point (305m) on the ridge between the Mangaorapa and Mangamaire Streams, both tributaries of the Porangahau River, Waipukurau District, Southern Hawke's Bay. North Island, New Zealand.

2927. ilyavinarsky - 1/30/2000 5:42:02 PM

The Russian word with the most consonants in row:

Vzbzdnut'.

bzdet' is to fart. n is a suffix meaning "to do something once" (I am sure there is a technical term for it). Vz is a rare perfect tense-forming prefix.

2928. ilyavinarsky - 1/30/2000 5:43:38 PM

The Russian word with 4 r's: refrizhirator. The Russian word with 4 i's: ekvilibristika. Or perhaps they aren't really Russian.

2929. Candide - 1/30/2000 5:46:16 PM

Onomatopoeia

2930. PelleNilsson - 1/30/2000 5:46:39 PM

What is a portmanteu word?

2931. Candide - 1/30/2000 5:47:29 PM

#2927 I meant.

2932. Candide - 1/30/2000 5:54:50 PM

Pelle

My dictionary (Collins) defines it thus:n another name for blend 9sense 7) [C19: from the idea that two meanings are packed into one word]. blend 7 also called portmanteau word formed by joining together the beginning and end of two other words: "brunch" is a blend of "breakfast" and "lunch".

Which suggests I may have misused it. I have previously only heard it used to describe those long German words (like your Swedish word) that connect several words into one long word.

Good question.

2933. Candide - 1/30/2000 6:07:59 PM

blend (sense 7). Ignore 9.

2934. Candide - 1/31/2000 2:00:20 AM

I pray to God that this link to Umberto Eco works:

The Mote

2935. Candide - 1/31/2000 2:01:55 AM

It didn't. I pasted over "new". Klutz!

No time to do it all again.

Real life beckons alas.

2936. Candide - 1/31/2000 2:07:41 AM

http://www.espressoedit.kataweb.it/cgi-bin/spd-opinioni_gettext.sh?ft_cid=36681The Mote

2937. Candide - 1/31/2000 2:09:32 AM

Double Klutz.

2938. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/31/2000 2:10:57 AM

Candide:
I thought you might be interested to know that an Australian expression has now entered mainstream American English. After being on the fringes for a few years (probably after being introduced through the Crocodile Dundee movies), "no worries" is not a common expression in America.

2939. cmboyce - 1/31/2000 2:16:15 AM

That's what I'd've said too, Irv; I've never heard anyone say it.

2940. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/31/2000 2:19:49 AM

Candide:

Is this what you wanted?

Umberto Eco

2941. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/31/2000 2:24:01 AM

Oops... that was a typo... it should read... "no worries" is now a common expression.

I've seen it twice in the past week... in writing, which usually reflects already entrenched spoken language.

2942. cmboyce - 1/31/2000 2:31:19 AM

Hokay, Irv. Just teasing a bit about the typo. But I've still not heard or read it. "No problem", "no big deal", "don't worry", "quitcherbellyachin" etc., but no "no worries".

2943. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/31/2000 2:42:31 AM

cm:
One of the two places I saw it in the past few days was here in the Mote, from a garden variety American. I wish I'd made a note of the two cites.

2944. SpenceMirrlees - 1/31/2000 2:57:36 AM

My own anecdotal account suggests "no worries" has caught on in small pockets only. It appears very common in La Jolla, CA (a beach city just outside of San Diego). Not so common in San Diego proper, just in La Jolla. Maybe a couple other places too.

My brother, who lives in La Jolla, has taken to this phrase and deigned to tell me I could use that La Jolla original any time I wanted. He obstinately refused my insistance that it came from Oz.

2945. SnowOwl - 1/31/2000 3:16:17 AM

Well, no worries has been used here in New Zealand since I can remember. I've never heard it suggested that it was an Australian expression but it's certainly possible.

2946. SpenceMirrlees - 1/31/2000 3:32:15 AM

Of course by "Oz" I mean all you blokes and sheilas down there.

Do you folks ever feel gypped that you have arbitarily been called the southern hemisphere?

A friend of mine from Sydney asserted that, in the midst of the talk awhile back of Australia leaving the Commonwealth, there was some discussion about what to call the head of state -- a sufficiently Australian name was required. He claims the moniker Top Bloke was facetiously suggested, which left some confusion over what to call a female head of state, or the wife of a male head of state. The natural companion to Top Bloke, evidently, is First Sheila.

2947. SnowOwl - 1/31/2000 3:59:12 AM

Spence,

If I wasn't such a corker sheila I might feel obliged to chastise you severely for failing to differentiate between Australia and New Zealand.

In my father's day "jokers" was more commonly used than "blokes", but that seems to have fallen out of favour now.

2948. SpenceMirrlees - 1/31/2000 4:04:22 AM

if you string together my gaffes, SnowOwl, I now have you down as a bloke from Perth or something, not a Sheila from -- which is it again, Auckland or The Other One?

By the way, if you know anyone planning to enter pro wrestling, I think "The Thunda from Down Unda" would be a positively bonzer nickname.

2949. SnowOwl - 1/31/2000 4:38:30 AM

Jeeez Wayne, that sounds like a flatulence joke to me. There were a pair of pro wrestlers who purported to be Kiwis. But they weren't really Kiwis and they weren't wrestlers. I think they called themselves the Bushwhackers or something like that.

2950. Candide - 1/31/2000 7:02:08 AM

IrvingSnodgrass

Thanks so much for the wonderful Eco echo. For non-Italian readers it's about the development of noise to mask noise (music in air-ports etc.) and the increasingly luxuriousness and inaccessibility of silence.

I WILL master links and during the process I will experience public humiliation. I ran out of time before.

"She'll be right," I think is Australian.
"No worries."I think was the phrase from the British workman that used to put the fear of God into the customer. You might hear it as they dropped your piano for example.

What say you SnowOwl?

2951. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/31/2000 7:09:52 AM

Spence:
Have you ever seen the episode where the Simpsons visit Australia? For some odd reason, you remind me of Bart in that episode. Good thing SnowOwl's such a corker sheila.

SnowOwl:
We'll call "no worries" an Antipodean expression. It's hard to tell what's from Oz and what's from New Zealand unless it has a short i sound in it, which Kiwis are physically unable to produce. From my experience, if anything is worthwhile or slightly culture, New Zealand will lay claim to it. Otherwise, it's Australian (I remember the great TV commercial I saw in Oz which Alistair told me was from NZ). What's certain is that "no worries" has been popularized in the USA by Australians... there just aren't enough Kiwis around to mount an effective PR campaign.

I always thought the male equivalent of a sheila was a bruce. But I may be wrong.

I think I recall those wrestlers that went by the "bushwhackers." They were pudgy, bald and wore black, if I recall. And they were probably Australians to boot.

2952. Candide - 1/31/2000 7:22:47 AM

IrvingSnodgrass

I adore "The Simpsons" but like most American tries at Australia it was a disaster from that point of view and miles off the target.

It's like the Brits trying to sound like Americans. Dreadful! They never catch the tune. And the same is true in reverse.

2953. Candide - 1/31/2000 7:28:39 AM

AND furthermore:

Another thing. They are always out of date and use expressions long forgotten by living Australians.

Umberto Eco gave a lovely talk in Sydney once where he described the desperate race of the would-be trendies to catch up with the style-setters. They never can, because by the time they're doing the things that the style-setters were doing, the style setters were doing something else completely different.

It's a bit like that with language. The supposedly Australian slang in British or American so-called Australian shows is decades out of date.

You might equate it with stage Irishmen who say "begorra" all the time.

2954. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/31/2000 7:34:42 AM

Candide:
"She'll be right" (or "all right") is certainly Australian, and so is "no worries" (look it up in your Macquarie... when you get one).

The Simpsons visit to Australia (which, oddly enough, I saw in Australia) was supposed to be off target... it was poking fun at American stereotypes of Oz. My Australian friends here all loved it. At least the Australian voices were done by real Australians (I've never met an American who can do a decent Australian accent... even those who have lived there for many years).

You're quite right about Americans doing British accents. I think they're bewildered by the huge variety of British accents, and put in a bit of each to compensate. The resulting mishmash sounds like nothing heard on either side of the Atlantic. Brits are much better at producing convincing American accents. A number of British film actors have impressed me with their realistic American accents (to name a few: Peter Sellers, Emma Thompson, Bob Hoskins).

If you want some help at producing links without filling up the Mote with your attempts, drop me a line at this address.

2955. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/31/2000 7:40:43 AM

Candide:
Actually, American knowledge of Australian slang comes from real-live Australians. If the slang they use is outdated, you'll need to blame Paul Hogan and Jacko and whatever other Australians are filling American ears with Australian phrases these days (there were some TV commercials featuring Australians which were quite popular a few years ago).

I don't think I've ever heard an American try to do an Australian accent in a film (but I don't see many films). The Australians who try to pass themselves off as Americans in films aren't terribly convincing, either (I always cringe when hearing Mel Gibson play an American).

2956. hashke - 1/31/2000 11:01:26 AM

Irv:

Kartu hari natal Anda baru saja tiba. Terima kasih! Anak perempuan Anda seniwati yang hebat! Rasanya warna dan potongan sangat bagus!

2957. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/31/2000 11:10:44 AM

Terima kasih, Hashké!

2958. CalGal - 1/31/2000 11:46:16 AM

Snow,

Jeeez Wayne, that sounds like a flatulence joke to me.

Hahahaha.

"No worries" is not common at all--it would be considered an affectation, albeit one with a certain amount of charm.

English actors have much more practice doing American accents than the other way round, I should think. I agree that Sellers, Hoskins, and Thompson all did exceptionally well.

2959. Ronski - 1/31/2000 12:07:12 PM

It may just be my ear or the fact that I've never visited the two countries, but I have the impression that the New Zealand accent is softer, perhaps more British, than the Australian.

The only accent in the English-speaking world I find difficult to listen to is that of the former Rhodesia, which I have been told by a Brit is a lower middle class London accent to which certain upper class affectations have been added, transplanted to southern Africa. Those old enough to do so may think of the late Ian Smith.

2960. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/31/2000 12:16:46 PM

Ronski:
It's not easy to tell a Kiwi accent from an Australian one, especially if the Kiwi is able to pronounce a short i (many Kiwis say "fush and chups"). The two accents are closer than American and Canadian accents.

2961. Thoughtful - 1/31/2000 12:21:51 PM

You can't talk about Brits doing American accents without mentioning Tracy Ullman -- she's got them all knocked. I agree that Americans trying to do Australian accents is a mess. One fellow on a soap I watch (Mac on GH for fans) had an Australian accent when he first came on the show which was awful....after awhile, he just gave it up.

BTW, Mel Gibson is an American -- born in Poughkeepsie, NY.

2962. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/31/2000 12:34:13 PM

Then why is his accent so awful?

Tracy Ullman is British? You're right... she fooled me.

2963. CalGal - 1/31/2000 12:36:47 PM

Gibson's dad won a packet of money on Jeopardy, I believe, and moved his family to Australia in 1968. Gibson was 12 by then, so I'm surprised it affected his accent.

2964. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/31/2000 12:41:04 PM

12 is right on the borderline. Before that age, one acquires a native accent. Afterwards, forget it. (It has to do with brain lateralization... I can go into it if anyone is interested.)

Mel must have moved there before his brain lateralized. I wonder if he sounds American to Australians... perhaps he has a mid-Pacific accent. He sure doesn't sound American to Americans.

2965. CalGal - 1/31/2000 12:42:24 PM

Brain lateralization?

2966. Thoughtful - 1/31/2000 12:42:59 PM

Someone with more knowledge of such things than I would know for sure, but when Tracy Ullman speaks in her natural voice, it sounds rather Cockney to me...certainly, how do you say, from the other side of the river?

2967. Thoughtful - 1/31/2000 12:45:28 PM

Any way Mel sounds is just fine by me! Caught the tail end of Year of Living Dangerously last night. He sure is a good looker.

2968. Thoughtful - 1/31/2000 12:47:54 PM

Sorry my error. Mel was born in Peekskill, NY which is near Poughkeepsie.

2969. PelleNilsson - 1/31/2000 1:44:44 PM

Sellers did all accents well.

2970. PelleNilsson - 1/31/2000 1:47:36 PM

Irv

Do you mean that the brains of all of us are lateralized?

Does that mean that we are all into lateral thinking?

2971. hashke - 1/31/2000 1:52:42 PM

Irv:

Check out www.linguasphere.org and see if you think it worthy of a place among the above links in this thread.

2972. Candide - 1/31/2000 2:43:27 PM

Thoughtful

BTW, Mel Gibson is an American -- born in Poughkeepsie, NY.

But was educated and trained as an actor at the National Institute of Dramatic Art NIDA) in Australia.

2973. Candide - 1/31/2000 2:50:15 PM

There are exceptions. I never thought that Peter Sellers's American accent was good although it was funny. Did anyone ever hear the Sellers/Goons American running joke in the "Goon Show"?

"This is Ed Hern of Hern. What do you think of the present crisis Ed?"

Ed Hern:"Hern hern hern. Hern hern hern hern hern etc." The R was pronounced, naturally.

2974. Ronski - 1/31/2000 2:53:51 PM

Peeksill and Poughkeepsie (Po - kip - see) are mixed up by many New Yorkers, even.

2975. Candide - 1/31/2000 3:01:29 PM

Paul Hogan once had a weekly television show. Ages before "Crocodile Dundee" He was terribly funny and very likeable. He was a 'stand-up comedian'.

He'd been employed working on the Sydney Harbour Bridge and at that time he was authentic. Then he became popular and he froze his style and language into that period and it's still there while everyone else has moved on.

His tourist commercials naturally exploit familiar stereotypes and Hogan has become a time-warp figure, and in the context of Australia, a rather sad one.

2976. Ronski - 1/31/2000 3:03:55 PM

Hogan pitches Subarus in the U.S., and without a Subaru I would never have gotten out of my driveway the last two weeks, therefore, I like Paul Hogan.

2977. Candide - 1/31/2000 3:06:46 PM

There's another layer of Australian comedians who more accurately represent Australian reality.

Rod Quantock comes to mind. He is an extremely well read melancholic who physically resembles Henry Lawson. He does more writing and producing now than performing.

2978. Candide - 1/31/2000 3:08:36 PM

hashke

I looked briefly at the linguasphere and am delighted to discover that I am a star in the galaxy. It looks interesting.

2979. hashke - 1/31/2000 4:03:43 PM

A luminary in the starry host? Wieso?

2980. Candide - 1/31/2000 4:08:25 PM

hashke

or a sputtering candle in the cosmic wind

2981. Candide - 1/31/2000 4:10:43 PM

Ronski

Hogan's a delightful individual - no doubt.

We went for Mitsubishi. They killed more people during WW2 so they must be good.

2982. Candide - 1/31/2000 4:12:34 PM

hashke

wieso?

Check the home page of the linguashere.

2983. Uzmakk - 1/31/2000 4:38:24 PM

Irv:
I still await email concerning teak furniture and ideas for Mote promotion.

2984. Candide - 1/31/2000 5:33:54 PM

Is there any teak left?

2985. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/31/2000 9:42:01 PM

CalGal Message # 2965:
Brain lateralization?

To put it simply, before the age of 12, we can use both sides of our brain. After age 12, the brain is locked (lateralized) into one side or the other... The left side for right-handed people, and the right side for left-handed people. Since natural language learning requires both sides of the brain, it is no longer possible after lateralization, and we must learn languages academically (which leaves an accent). This is why it's best to teach children a new language when they're young. For more on this, see any book by Pinker.

Pelle Message # 2970:
Do you mean that the brains of all of us are lateralized?

Yes, everyone over the age of 12.

Does that mean that we are all into lateral thinking?

In a way, yes... we are locked into one dominant side of the brain. We can use the other side as well, but moving between the two is no longer possible.

Hashké:
Great site! I'll add it.

Candide:
Thanks for the notes on Hogan and Australian comedians. I saw some great comedians on Australian TV when there. But they were much too subtle for the American market. You have to hit Americans over the head.

Uzmakk:
It's coming. My job entails writing 50 or 60 e-mails a day, and I'm always slow to write anything non-work-related.

Candide:
Is there any teak left?

Why wouldn't there be?

2986. hashke - 1/31/2000 10:04:05 PM

Uzmakk:

To get an emu from Irv, you have to go lasso the very bird itself.

2987. hashke - 1/31/2000 10:06:34 PM

Candide:

Is there any teak left?

Why wouldn't there be?

Because they make it all into anteak furniture.

2988. CalGal - 1/31/2000 10:08:34 PM

Hey Irv, do you remember the visual thesaurus? Do you still have that link?

2989. Candide - 1/31/2000 10:20:30 PM

IrvingSnodgrass

I really excited an eye specialist when he discovered that I have crossed dominance. What does that do to my lateralization?

2990. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/31/2000 10:28:34 PM

Candide:
You're still lateralized, just like everyone. Some people have inverted dominance... often they are people who are naturally left-handed, who were forced into being right-handers, or ambidextrous people.

CalGal:
This one?

2991. Candide - 1/31/2000 10:31:07 PM

IrvingSnodgrass

I'm definitely right-handed. I broke my left arm four times as a child which did nothing for my piano technique.

2992. CalGal - 1/31/2000 10:32:37 PM

I think I have "crossed dominance", too? Or maybe its something else.

The test I took was for archery. You form a triangular space by crossing your thumbs and index fingers, look through the triangle and line up and center a target in your sights with both eyes open. Then close one eye. The target will either disappear (or move radically off center) or not move, depending on which eye you close.

If you are righthanded, apparently, your right eye should be the one that gives you the unchanged target. I am righthanded, but my left eye sees the target--it disappears when I use my right eye..

2993. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/31/2000 10:33:40 PM

Continually breaking your left arm may have kept you from realizing your natural left-handedness.

2994. CalGal - 1/31/2000 10:38:52 PM

Irv,

That might be it but I can't get it to work.

2995. Candide - 1/31/2000 10:38:53 PM

CalGal

I was desperately trying to remember the test, thinking someone might ask me. It was similar to yours but involved holding a pencil upright in front with an extended arm. The same thing applies. It's centred with both eyes and moves for just one.

Actually I think my test just proved him wrong. The pencil goes to the left when I close my left eye.

Or did that prove him correct? Help!

2996. CalGal - 1/31/2000 10:43:49 PM

Candide,

No, that's the same type of test. If you close your left eye and it moves a great deal, that means your right eye isn't dominant, or whatever. I don't know the terminology. I had this test when I was nine years old for an archery class and I've never forgotten it, even though I can't remember a damn thing about archery and he didn't give me a decent explanation. But it is apparently unusual for your eye "dominance" (or whatever) to be different from whatever hand you write with.

I am definitely not a discouraged lefty as far as handwriting goes.

2997. sakonige - 1/31/2000 10:45:42 PM

Irving,

To learn the Cherokee language, I first have to memorize the 84 syllabary characters' sounds and visual representations. Then I can learn a simple vocabulary and begin to discern the language syntax and idioms. So far, I've gotten a start on the first step. It's a matter of committing the time and energy to this effort instead of others, when learning Cherokee is a purely personal pursuit and other efforts, like learning Spanish, are more practical.

I have some materials from Audio Forum and a set of very helpful tutorial software called the Cherokee Companion. There is also an online newspaper with a Cherokee language editor, a collection of texts written in syllabary characters including the one I copied in the test thread, and an online community of Cherokees some of whom speak the language, some of whom may call me family to my face. There is a lot for me to commit to. Maybe later, as I become more familiar with Cherokee, I'll post a little of it in the language thread.

2998. sakonige - 1/31/2000 10:47:49 PM

Hi, you guys. I thought I would post here instead of the test thread. What's going on?

2999. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/31/2000 10:59:28 PM

sakonige:
Learning a language is always a difficult task, and a language with a different alphabet makes it more of a challenge. Are there any Cherokee speakers living in your area whom you could use for conversation practice? Having a real live person to talk to makes a great difference.

I wish you luck in your venture.

CalGal:
The link is working for me, but it takes a long time to load. Try going straight to the url by pasting it in your browser window: http://www.plumbdesign.com/thesaurus/.

Candide and CalGal:
I have no idea about your brian-dominance situations, since I'm only familiar with how lateralization affects language learning. Perhaps eye dominance can be affected by other factors.

3000. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/31/2000 11:01:23 PM

brain-dominance

3001. CalGal - 1/31/2000 11:03:49 PM

Well, I'm glad you cleared that up. I just checked my list--two Joes, a Jack, and a Michael. No Brians.

3002. profemeritus - 1/31/2000 11:04:52 PM

Irv

I am a converted naturally left-handed person.

Would you check your emails from me and reply?

3003. CalGal - 1/31/2000 11:05:33 PM

Prof--well, then, do the pencil test and tell us what happens.

3004. Candide - 1/31/2000 11:07:37 PM

IrvingSnodgrass
In Ostrylia its brine dominance.

If this is of any use: when I take notes in a situation where I am flustered, I often write the last letter of a word first.

3005. ProfEmeritus - 1/31/2000 11:30:40 PM

CalGal

I could with a little practise write as well left-handed as right.

When I played softball on Irv' team in Jakarta, I was a switch hitter. Irv would not believe I could bat better from the left side so he insisted I bat from the right. As a result my batting average fell from roughly 320 to 220.

3006. IrvingSnodgrass - 1/31/2000 11:44:01 PM

Prof:
As I recall, you couldn't hit too well from either side.

CalGal:
When I typed that comment, I'd just gotten off the phone with a Brian. So my brain was brian-dominant there. The same Brian once did some work in Jakarta as a consultant. The company gave him a box full of name cards with his name spelled "Brain."

3007. Thoughtful - 2/1/2000 8:37:35 AM

For all you language mavens, today's NY Times Science section has an article about world languages, What We All Spoke When the World Was Young

3008. Thoughtful - 2/1/2000 8:39:58 AM

Ronski,
Peeksill and Poughkeepsie (Po - kip - see) are mixed up by many New Yorkers, even.

I guess so, especially since it's Peeks*k*ill! (I have no excuse though as hubby used to work in Peekskill.)

3009. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/1/2000 9:56:03 AM

Thoughful:
Thanks for posting the link on Greenberg's work. Greenberg and his disciple Ruhlen are favorites of mine. Although I have some quibbles with the methodology they use, I don't argue with the results. And the evidence they have amassed is very convincing (although some of the evidence is a little over-generalized). I think there is ample evidence for the Eurasiatic grouping, and Greenberg's classifications of Amerind languages, besides being backed up with plenty of data, also fit what common sense tells us.

3010. Thoughtful - 2/1/2000 10:04:44 AM

BTW, kill from the Dutch kil meaning a small running stream, thus Peeks kill, Fish kill, and others around NY.

3012. hashke - 2/1/2000 11:02:44 AM

Thoughtful:

A very good link concisely summarizing the situation. I have had emu contact with at least one of Greenberg's detractors and I have felt the electronic bristle when I have mentioned either Greenberg or Ruhlen favorably.

Bravo Greenberg!

3013. Ronski - 2/1/2000 11:32:11 AM

Thoughtful,

Thank you for catching my typo. "Kill" does of course mean stream, and there are indeed tons of NY place (and waterway) names with that word or syllable in it, even down in the NYC harbor area, wherever the Dutch settled.

Also, the Times piece, which I read earlier today, is a lot of fun. I especially liked the observation about the "n" sound used to express the negative in languages from Indo-European to Japanese. When I studied Japanese (briefly) many years ago, I wondered about a connection due to that fact. It just seemed so natural, as an English speaker, to make the negative in Japanese with an "n" sound.

3014. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/1/2000 11:46:20 AM

Ronski:
In Indonesian (a language unrelated to Eurasiatic), the negative form is "tidak." But perhaps due to influence from other languages (after all, Indonesian is descended from a trade language), the common form of this word is "ndak" or "nggak." I must admit, it sounds so much more negative with the nasal in there.

3015. cmboyce - 2/1/2000 11:59:47 AM

Irv, is "tidak", "ndak" or "nggak" used as a suffix?

3016. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/1/2000 12:46:08 PM

CM:
No. It always precedes the word it modifies. The other form the word takes is "tak," which is a more formal short form.

And, in a very interesting form, it can be an infix (such things are almost as rare in Indonesian as in English):

abadi = eternal
ketidakabadian = transience

3017. cmboyce - 2/1/2000 1:00:59 PM

Irv, I don't see the infix there. It seems to be "abadi" with a prefix, "ketidak-" and a suffix "-an".

What are some (or the) infixes in English?

3018. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/1/2000 1:22:04 PM

CM:
What is missing in my post is the word "keabadian," eternity, from the root "abadi," with "tidak" as an infix in the form "ketidakabadian." I'll admit it isn't a true infix like Sundanese "budak (child) "barudak" (children), but it's still an interesting form.

There are only a handful of infixes in English, all reflecting archaic forms. But I can't even think of any at 2:20 AM.

3019. cmboyce - 2/1/2000 1:56:06 PM

Yes, interesting. The Sundanese infix to make a plural, especially.

I just looked in Fowler's for infixes and found only one instance (at affix): "...Eliza Doolittle's 'absobloominglutely' ". Haha.

I may find some others, but I'm having ludicrous computer difficulties, and I'm famished for lunch. So I'm outahere. See you later.

3020. ilyavinarsky - 2/1/2000 2:02:05 PM

This is unfuckingbelievable!

3021. cmboyce - 2/1/2000 6:35:32 PM

Thereyago, ilyafuckinvarinsky!

In The Oxford Companion to the English Language there's an entry for "infix" which, after giving as a type specimen a Yurok example, says: "There is no strict equivalent in English, but the following have been cited as kinds of infixation: (1) A recurring nonsense syllable in secret languages such as Turkey Irish (once used in and around New York City), in which "ab" comes before a spoken vowel so that the sentence "Can you see me?" becomes "Caban yaboo sabee mabee?" (2) [abso-blooming-lutely etc.]" And then comes this wonderful xref: "See GREAT AUSTRALIAN ADJECTIVE"

The which of course I did, and found that to the honor and glory of the continent, it is bloody! (Haw!) This is doubtless old news to many here, but the entry goes on to cite an amusing calculation by one A. Marjoribanks (!) that a bullock driver of his aquaintance must in his lifetime "have pronounced this disgusting word no less than 18,200,000 times."

Justifying the xref, the entry also instances these lines: "Shootin' kanga-bloody-roos / At Tumba-bloody-rumba", from a Complete Book of Australian Folk Lore.

3022. CalGal - 2/1/2000 6:39:53 PM

I'm nearly sure it is "unbe-fucking-lievable". Also "abso-fucking-lutely".

3023. cmboyce - 2/1/2000 6:44:11 PM

Further, "Great Australian Adjective" provides a xref to "tmesis", to me mysterious. This is, it seems, from the Gk for "cutting" and means "The insertion of one word into another: for example (archaic) work in what work so ever he may do instead of whatsoever work he may do". The entry then cites as current, "every-bloody-where" and "abso-blooming-lutely", and offers xrefs back to the "GAA" and "infix".

So... who the fu-bloody-uck cares, hah? (But I do. That's all quite interesting, lingui-blooming-istically.)

3024. cmboyce - 2/1/2000 6:46:49 PM

Cal, your second instance sounds right to me, but I'd go with "un-fucking-believable", perhaps because "[-]lievable" offers a confusable homonym (or "homonym").

3025. Candide - 2/1/2000 6:55:26 PM

cmboyce

Absobloodylutely cobber. Jeez, you bastards are fanbloodytastic.

3026. CalGal - 2/1/2000 6:56:03 PM

CM,

Yeah, but's it not really an infix if it leaves the word largely intact. Besides, ll the best infixes have two syllables before the emphasis word.

Then there's the fact that it just sounds better: "unbe-fucking-lievable", as opposed to "un-fucking-believable".

3027. cmboyce - 2/1/2000 7:06:15 PM

Well, chacun a son go-fucking-ut.

3028. Candide - 2/1/2000 7:22:12 PM

cmboyce

Up shit creek without a paddle. No infobloodymation.

3029. cmboyce - 2/1/2000 7:28:32 PM

Candide

About what?

3030. Candide - 2/1/2000 7:31:03 PM

cmboyce

Just wanted to use the word. Actually a really skilled New Zealand or Australian practitioner can go on like that for hours.

I'm too wellbloodybrought-up. I learned too late so it doesn't come naturally.

3031. hashke - 2/1/2000 8:02:05 PM

Antibloodydisfuckingestablishmentsumbitchingarianism

3032. cmboyce - 2/1/2000 8:09:52 PM

The Marjoribanks (irl) anecdote in 3021 reminds me of a passage from Dostoyevsky that I have in a notebook. (I think I may have posted this in the old F place, but it's worth looking at again. And if not, scroll on by.)

Dostoevsky relates a conversation of drunks that entirely consisted of one unprintable word [the Diary of a Writer, for 1873]

"One Sunday night I happened to walk for some fifteen paces next to a group of six drunken young workmen, and I suddenly realized that all thoughts, feelings, and even a whole chain of reasoning could be expressed by that one noun, which is moreover extremely short. One young fellow said it harshly and forcefully, to express his utter contempt for whatever it was they had all been talking about. Another answered with the same noun but in a quite different tone and sense—doubting that the negative attitude of the first one was warranted. A third suddenly became incensed with the first and roughly intruded on the conversation, excitedly shouting the same noun, this time as a curse and obscenity. Here the second fellow interfered again, angry at the third, the aggressor,

[more]

3033. cmboyce - 2/1/2000 8:10:18 PM

and restraining him, in the sense of 'Now why do you have to butt in, we were discussing things quietly and here you come and start swearing.' And he told this whole thought in one word, the same venerable word, except that he also raised his hand and put it on the third fellow's shoulder. All at once a fourth, the youngest of the group, who had kept silent till then, probably having suddenly found a solution to the original difficulty which had started the argument, raised his hand in a transport of joy and shouted... Eureka, do you think? Found it? Found it? No, not Eureka at all; nor did he find anything; he repeated the same unprintable noun, one word, merely one word, but with ecstasy, in a shriek of delight—which was apparently too strong, for the sixth and the oldest, a glum-looking fellow, did not like it and cut the infantile joy of the other one short, addressing him in a sullen, exhortative bass and repeating... yes, still the same noun, which this time clearly meant 'What are you yelling yourself hoarse for?' So, without uttering a single other word, they repeated that one beloved word six times in a row, one after another, and understood one another completely."

3034. Candide - 2/1/2000 8:16:26 PM

hashke
Transubfuckingstantibloodyation

3035. Candide - 2/1/2000 8:18:25 PM

cmboyce

Wonderful!

3036. DanDillon - 2/1/2000 9:10:23 PM

You've all neglected the obvious: infuckingfix.

3037. cmboyce - 2/1/2000 9:33:42 PM

Defuckinglicious!

3038. ilyavinarsky - 2/1/2000 11:33:33 PM

I don't know how many of you here speak Russian, but I remember this bit of 1980s urban folklore:

Polyubila parnya ya -
Okazalsya bez khuya.
Nakhuya mnie bez khuya
Kogda s khuyem dokhuya?

3039. ilyavinarsky - 2/1/2000 11:35:11 PM

An approximate translation:

I fell in love with a guy -
He happened not to have a dick.
Why the fuck do I need one without a dick
If there are shitloads of them with a dick?

3040. ilyavinarsky - 2/1/2000 11:37:19 PM

Valentine Tereshkovoy
Za polyot kosmicheskiy
Fídel Castro podaril
Khuy avtomaticheskiy.

Valentina Tereshkova
Rodila bogatyrya -
Desyat' nog, chetyre ukha,
Trista tridtsat' tri khuyá.

3041. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/1/2000 11:54:39 PM

CM:
I can't remember the examples of archaic infixes in English that I've read of, but I'm sure eventually I'll remember.

In the meantime, this passage from Pinker's "The Language Instinct" (p. 175) sheds some light on where to insert the intensifier in words like "abso-bloody-lutely."

An argot popular among young ruffians contains forms like fan-fuckin-tastic, abso-bloody-lutely, Phila-fuckin-delphia, and Kalama-fuckin-zoo. Ordinarily, expletives appear in front of an emphatically stressed word; Dorothy Parker once replied to a question about why she had not been at the symphony lately by saying "I've been too fucking busy and vice versa." But in this lingo they are placed inside a single word, always in front of a stressed foot. The rule is followed religiously: Philadel-fuckin-phia would get you laughed out of the pool hall.

3042. cmboyce - 2/2/2000 12:01:02 AM

Well, Cal was right on unbefuckinglievable. Way to go, Gal! (Now try my befuckinglievable Quiz; it's been sitting there too long.)

3043. CalGal - 2/2/2000 12:14:38 AM

always in front of a stressed foot

That's so funny. I was driving home, thinking of Candide's "Fan-fucking-tastic", which was correct, but it meant it wasn't the two syllable "rule" that I had made up on the fly above. I realized that it had to be before the stressed syllable (is that foot?).

This is the second or third time that I've come up with an observation out of wholecloth that Pinker has nicely seen fit to confirm for me. (the other one that comes to mind right away is the "could care less"/"couldn't care less" thing that Stumbo always obsesses about.)

Thanks, Pinker!

BTW--it looks like I will be seeing a lecture with Jared Diamond on the 14th.

3044. Candide - 2/2/2000 12:27:21 AM

CalGal

Correct Australian usage is "fanbloodytastic". Not that we mightn't hear your version occasionally as well.

3045. CalGal - 2/2/2000 12:30:18 AM

Yes, I do not understand this whole "bloody" thing. "Fucking" works so well, all short sounds and hard ks. But in any event, it was the one syllable before that I was trying to figure out--I knew it was correct, so how did that fit into the scheme? That's when I realized it was the stressed syllable. (I'm assuming that "foot" and "syllable" are the same?)

3046. cmboyce - 2/2/2000 12:47:03 AM

Foot and syllable are not at all the same thing. A foot is (usually) two or three syllables that compose a rhythmic interval in a line of poetry. The most familiar ones are iamb (ta-DAH), anapest (tin-ta-RAH), trochee (BAH-dum), and dactyl (YA-d'dum). In a single word, a stress is, in definition, on a single syllable. A foot, on the other hand, can contain more than one word (or less; or, in such oddities as the spondee or the choriambus, more than one stress).

3047. CalGal - 2/2/2000 12:51:09 AM

But I thought we were discussing only single words. I do realize what "foot" is in poetry.

3048. cmboyce - 2/2/2000 12:52:53 AM

A foot isn't anything outside poetry. (Leaving aside those things in shoes, of course; you know what I mean.)

3049. CalGal - 2/2/2000 12:59:24 AM

CM,

Irv's quote said:

But in this lingo they are placed inside a single word, always in front of a stressed foot.

????

3050. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/2/2000 1:06:10 AM

cm:
A foot isn't anything outside poetry.

Au contraire. It is something in linguistics as well. Once again, I quote from Pinker (p. 174):

Syllables, in turn, are collected into rhythmic groups called feet. Syllables and feet are classifed as strong and weak by other rules, and the pattern of weak and strong branches determines how much stress each syllable will be given when it is pronounced. Feet, like onsets and rhymes [subjects dealt with by Pinker in the preceding section], are salient chunks of word that we tend to manipulate into poetry and wordplay. Meter is defined by the kind of feet that go into a line. A succession of feet with a strong-weak pattern is a troachic meter, as in Mary had a little lamb; a succession with a weak-strong pattern is iambic, as in The rain in Spain falls mainly in the plain.

3051. Candide - 2/2/2000 1:08:01 AM

I think music does it better.

3052. cmboyce - 2/2/2000 1:24:50 AM

Hmm. Well, OK. But in linguistics, a foot is, still, clearly not at all the same as a syllable, and I think that the rest of my schtick in Message # 3046 was sound.

3053. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/2/2000 1:29:03 AM

CM:
I take no exception to your 3046... only your 3048.

I think CalGal was on the right track, but the operative concept here is the foot, rather than the syllable. On a single word level, however, the two usually turn out to be the same.

3054. CalGal - 2/2/2000 1:32:33 AM

If I understand Pinker, he was saying that you put the "fucking" or "bloody" before the syllable of the word that would normally get the main stress.

Unbelievable
Fantastic
Absolutely

This was the same observation I made on my ride home when I was trying to figure out the rule.

Did I misunderstand his expression of the rule, or is "foot" and "syllable" synonomous in this case?

3055. cmboyce - 2/2/2000 1:34:33 AM

Irv, I'm a little confused, I think. In linguistics, does "foot", then, refer to parts of words? So that "paralinguistics" is scanned as a dactyl and a trochee? Or as a trochee and an amphribrach? Are the feet named with the same names as in English prosody? As in classical prosody? And why do this?

Also, what's an onset?

And what branch of linguistics are these concepts used in?

3056. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/2/2000 1:47:03 AM

CM:
I'm no expert on this area. I could continue to post quotes from Pinker, who gives it a rather full treatment, but I urge you to read "The Language Instinct" if you haven't yet... it's worth it for many reasons, and it's an excellent and well-written book. We once had a book thread on it at the old place.

The terms are part of the study of stress and intonation. I'm not sure how many terms from poetry are used, but there is no doubt that all the terms originated in the study of poetry,

3057. cmboyce - 2/2/2000 1:52:39 AM

I'll have at it, Irv. I'm due for another linguistics book. I don't much care for Ruhlen's Origins of Language, though I plug away at it. It's not that it isn't good, I'm sure, but all that gaming slows things down so. Anyway, onward and upward...

3058. cmboyce - 2/2/2000 1:53:07 AM

3059. cmboyce - 2/2/2000 1:53:31 AM

Sorry about that.

3060. cmboyce - 2/2/2000 1:54:15 AM

Damn! I thought I had it.

There?

3061. Candide - 2/2/2000 1:55:03 AM

You know- where to insert the bloody or whatever - when I went once to a jitterbug(ancient!) hall where Maori adolescents danced, there were mystic and unrecognisable moments in the music when they would all suddenly stomp, or shout or quite a few other things. They just knew when to do it - and they ALL did it at the same time.

Like Satchmo said :"If you have to ask, you'll never know."

3062. cmboyce - 2/2/2000 1:55:03 AM

There.

3063. cmboyce - 2/2/2000 1:56:04 AM

Nice, Candide.

3064. CalGal - 2/2/2000 1:57:14 AM

CM,

You didn't forget to turn off your toys, you just had a typo. The typo resulted in two italic commands, necessitating two turnoffs.

 text (instead of )

So your first italics was turned off in 3058, your second in 3060.

3065. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/2/2000 2:00:50 AM

CM:
I'm surprised you find Ruhlen's book slow going. I read it in one sitting, but then again, I'm addicted to that stuff.

If you want, you can skip all the early parts, where he "proves" each major family, and read the good stuff in the last chapters where he brings it all together.

3066. cmboyce - 2/2/2000 2:04:01 AM

Cal, thanks. How can you see that?

Irv, yeah I was considering that. I guess I'll do it while I wait for the Pinker to come to me. (I'm going to try the Strand, hoping for a half-pricer; then if nec., Amazon, through here.)

3067. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/2/2000 2:11:06 AM

CM:
Look at the page source. You can see everything.

3068. cmboyce - 2/2/2000 2:11:59 AM

What is the page source?

3069. CalGal - 2/2/2000 2:14:41 AM

CM,

If you have IE, it's the View option on your browser menu. It's kind of hard to see, though. If you have any further questions, I'll be happy to respond on Try the Mote.

3070. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/2/2000 2:18:25 AM

It's ok, It's my thread... I don't mind the digression.

CM, if you have Netscape, it's under "View," just as it is in IE.

3071. cmboyce - 2/2/2000 2:19:31 AM

Lord, CalGal, what a trove of glyphs!! (I have Netscape Navigator, but it works there, too.) Naturally, I have a million questions—or rather I would if I could get my head around it all, at all—but I'll spare you. I'll see what I can dope out for myself. Thanks!

3072. cmboyce - 2/2/2000 2:20:24 AM

Thanks to you, too, Irv.

3073. CalGal - 2/2/2000 2:22:29 AM

Oh, okay. Just didn't want it to get out of hand.

CM, you can select View Source on either browser and a file will open with the HTML used to generate the page. It is difficult to read and Notepad is tougher to use than Wordpad or Word,but you can search on a string in your post to get you to the right place.

Once you get knowledgeable, you can diagnose problems without actually looking at the source. I knew what you had done wrong before I looked, based on the symptoms.

3074. CalGal - 2/2/2000 2:32:18 AM

If you have Netscape, I think they have a Communicator thingy or something that makes it easier to view source? Not sure, I'm not a Netscape user.

A few things you can ignore:

< A NAME="3041" >3041< /A >. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/1/00 8:54:39 PM

The a name= is a bookmark. Very convenient if you ever copy posts into an HTML file; you can refer to them directly. If you want to step through the posts one at a time, it's the simplest way to identify the beginning of a post or the beginning of the post text.

To find the end of a page of posts, get to the first post and then search for --that's the one I always use, anyway. If you find a better indicator that takes less typing, let me know.

3075. cmboyce - 2/2/2000 2:44:07 AM

Thanks, Cal. I understand maybe half of what you say, but I'm fascinated nonetheless. Shop talk is among the most interesting things humans do, after all.

3076. cmboyce - 2/2/2000 2:44:49 AM

Often more interesting that the shop itself, I might add.

3077. cmboyce - 2/2/2000 2:49:09 AM

Far be it from me to suggest anything at all in this context, so regard this as a question: Why not type,
? And why type BR at all; doesn't it simply signify (or does it induce?) a paragraph break?

3078. CalGal - 2/2/2000 2:57:56 AM

No, a paragraph break is two carriage returns. A is one.

 is for image and text alignment. It's a way to insert a clean break into a text column. Frankly, I always forget why it's in the html for the page until I start playing with it. Then I go "oh, yeah! That's what it does!"

If you want to print out an HTML tag, the easiest way is to put spaces before and after the angle bracket.

3079. CalGal - 2/2/2000 3:08:15 AM

I'm not sure if you know this, so I'll mention it:

In HTML, if you don't specify line breaks, the system won't do it for you--it will ignore all carriage returns.

So, for example, even though I've put several carriage returns here: (carriage return) (carriage return) (carriage return) (carriage return) (carriage return) (carriage return) the system will just ignore it if I turn off Alistair's text processor.

I don't know if you were here in our early days, but back then we had to add our paragraph and line breaks ourselves--the system didn't break at the end of each line in the posting window. Alistair added a routine that automatically added a --that's what you see in the HTML source. If it weren't there, everything would run together like it does in this post above.

I am adding paragraph tags now in order to tell the system where to put in breaks. You can look at the source to see what I mean, if you're interested.

PS--the way to turn off HTML processing is to code a table into your HTML. You then have to code all your tags yourself. I keep on forgetting to ask Alistair to change that back.

3080. cmboyce - 2/2/2000 3:08:58 AM

Well, I went to the Page Source and figured that out! [pats self on back] Then I went to say as much, and print the corrected version (now no longer needful), and the fucking machine froze again!!! YAAAAARRRRRGGHH!!!!!!!!!!

And I had to reboot to say this. So I am outta here! To bed!. (Aaaaaaah!)

3081. cmboyce - 2/2/2000 3:09:56 AM

Toys?

No. Night all.

3082. cmboyce - 2/2/2000 3:13:15 AM

Well, one more. Cal: "That" in my 3080 referred to the last paragraph in your 3078. Your 3079 falls once again into pleasant but only partly (and barely) comprehensible shop talk.

And now, see ya manana!

3083. CalGal - 2/2/2000 3:27:20 AM

Oh, I'm sure someone else could make it coherent. I'm not clear at the best of times.

3084. DanDillon - 2/2/2000 9:18:07 AM

What we perhaps didn't already know about the origin of "fucking" as an infix, from the authoritative Historical Dictionary of American Slang:

fucking infix. (used as an intensifier).--usu. considered vulgar.*1921 N & Q (Nov. 19) 415 [ref. to WWI]: Words were split up to admit [fucking]: "Absolutely" became "abso---lutely," and Armentières became "Armen---teers." 1952 in Russ Last Parallel 13: Reveille goes tomorrow at four o'fucking clock. 1961 J. Jones Thin Red Line 42 [ref. to WWII]: I guaran-fucking-tee you!

* before the date of citation indicates a non-North American source.

So it seems to be a militarily inspired usage.

3085. CalGal - 2/2/2000 4:49:41 PM

Crossposting to ensure I catch everyone, sorry for the duplication:

I built a list of "members"--we have somewhere around 146 regulars! Not bad for no marketing.

I wanted to use that list as a starting point in building an email distribution list. Web-based accounts are fine for this purpose, and for now I'd only use the distribution list in the event of a Mote outage to make sure that everyone knows what's up and where to go.

If people are open to the idea, I can also add a directory page so that these email addresses are generally available. But I won't do that unless we generally agree, and then of course anyone can choose not to have their name on the list.

But for starters, does anyone oppose building this distribution list for outage notifications?

3086. alistairconnor - 2/2/2000 6:23:27 PM

I just posted this in Feature Suggestions.

CalGal, no need for building e-mail distribution lists. I have been working off and on, on a spam engine that can send out notification messages to all registered users, without any person having to manage lists of e-mail addresses. I imagine I'll do a trial run of it, when we get the development server running.

This is actually fundamental to the Mote's privact/security model, and I'd like to make this clear to everyone. The only people who actually have access to users' registered e-mail addresses are the overall moderator, the gatekeeper (which we don't currently have), and me (for technical reasons, since I manage the database).

It's true that Calgal has used her extensive list of people that she has exchanged e-mails with, to notify people when the server has been down. This has been useful in itself, but is entirely unofficial, and bears no relation to people's registered e-mail addresses.

3087. CalGal - 2/2/2000 10:43:39 PM

Alistair--see my response in Suggestions.

And for everyone else, rest assured that my post was at most (assuming no one objected) an intent to collect email addresses, not use the user database. Hence the mention of web-based accounts.

3088. PelleNilsson - 2/3/2000 8:04:41 AM

Miniquiz.

This word is used for a specific purpose which has to do with printing:

Törkylempijävongahdus

1. What language?
2. What purpose?

3089. Candide - 2/3/2000 5:45:34 PM

Pelle

Something to do with drying off the type?

Is it Swedish she asked nervously?

3090. PelleNilsson - 2/3/2000 5:53:57 PM

No, and not Swedish. Geographically not so far away, though.

3091. Ronski - 2/3/2000 6:07:53 PM

1. Finnish?

2. Not the faintest idea.

3092. PelleNilsson - 2/3/2000 6:09:55 PM

Finnish is right.

Think of checking out that things are working as they should.

3093. Ronski - 2/3/2000 6:15:02 PM

Proofreading?

3094. PelleNilsson - 2/3/2000 6:19:44 PM

No, think about machinery. I regret to say I'm off to bed. It's past midnight here.

3095. Candide - 2/4/2000 12:13:11 AM

PelleNilsson

My husband's opinion is that about all it could be is folding and trimming.

3096. PelleNilsson - 2/4/2000 3:14:34 AM

To end the suspense:

Törkylempijävongahdus

is the Finnish equivalent to "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog", i.e. a phase used to check that all the characters work on a type setting machine or a teleprinter. It is very clever because each letter only appears once.

According to my source it means approximately "The delighted scream of a garbage lover".

3097. Candide - 2/4/2000 4:59:33 AM

Pelle

We'll get you when you least expect it!

3098. stostosto - 2/4/2000 5:07:35 AM

Finnish. What an annoying language. Why can't they speak a proper Nordic language like the rest of us? There is no way that even highly polyglottal people could figure out whatever that word means - if they don't know Finnish, that is (or, possibly, Estonian).

Piilolinsseille pehmeille.

3099. PelleNilsson - 2/4/2000 5:47:36 AM

It's funny how one can give away clues and still find that people haven't any.

sto

Careful now. Finnish makes up two of the five protected minority languages in Sweden. They are "normal" Finnish and Tornedal Finnish which is spoken in the border areas in the north on both sides of the Torne river which makes up the border. The linguistic border between Swedish and Finnish is west of the river but when the geographical border was demarcated in 1809-10 by Sweden and Russia, Sweden insisted on the river (for defense purposes of course).

I strongly suspect that Piilolinsseille pehmeille is made up by you, but if not, what is it?

3100. Candide - 2/4/2000 5:54:17 AM

Pelle

I was thrown by the antediluvian linotype reference. They haven't done that sort of thing since the ark.

It was suggested to me that the language might be Hungarian, although I couldn't see it myself. Close though, after all.

3101. stostosto - 2/4/2000 9:02:23 AM

Pelle. I didn't make it up myself. Now it's your turn guessing. You ought to have a better chance than the rest of us, given the special Swedo-Finnish relationship and all. Go on. Impress us.

3102. PelleNilsson - 2/4/2000 11:03:51 AM

sto

Clue?

I'm getting out of the office now and won't be back on line until 18.30, so you have plenty of time.

3103. stostosto - 2/4/2000 11:28:49 AM

Clue: There isn't more to it than meets the eye.

3104. hashke - 2/4/2000 11:30:33 AM

Pelle:

It is a pangram or holalphabetic gizmo. Is that what you are looking for?

3105. stostosto - 2/4/2000 11:33:47 AM

Pelle #3096

"The delighted scream of a garbage lover". And, please, what kind of a twisted language is it that has fabricated an actual word denoting such a phenomenon?!

3106. Ronski - 2/4/2000 11:40:47 AM

Sto,

You left out the Sami (Lapps) and the three or four remaining speakers of Liv.

3107. PelleNilsson - 2/4/2000 1:00:48 PM

Hashke

I'm not good at that sort of thing. If you want to have a go, be my guest.

3108. stostosto - 2/4/2000 2:01:41 PM

Ronski
Is Sami a Finnish-Ugrian language?

3109. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/4/2000 2:08:17 PM

sto:
The correct term is "Finno-Ugric." And Saami is in the Finnic group of the Finno-Ugric branch of the Uralic-Yukaghir family.

3110. stostosto - 2/4/2000 5:21:16 PM

"The correct term is Finno-Ugric".

Only in English.

3111. tmachine - 2/4/2000 6:18:53 PM

Did anyone ever answer the question about what a mosh pit is?

It's the kids standing in front of the stage at a rock concert--screaming, dancing, drinking, tripping, puking, ripping their shirts off, passing girls over their heads ("crowd surfing"), crushing each other to death by suffocation, etc.

Poem about Yevgeny Yevtushenko
by another Yevgeny

Ty Yevgeny, ya Yevgeny,
Ty nye genii, ya nye genii,
Ty gavnó, ya gavnó,
Ya nedávno, ty davnó.

3112. stostosto - 2/4/2000 6:22:11 PM

Hey, t-max, longtimenosee.

3113. hashke - 2/4/2000 6:26:28 PM

tmachine:

The term 'mosh pit' is great! I'll try to work it into a slangish poem I am fiddling with about the curse of land developers.

Who is the other Yevgeny? Quite a wit!

3114. tmachine - 2/4/2000 7:42:56 PM

longtimenosee all...have been v. busy at work, just came back from 5 days at the new hampshire primary with three teenage reporters and a photographer, covering it for 17! we got the kids on both the mccain and bradley buses, interviewed gore at a diner, got soundbites out of gw at a "sledding event"--it was awesome! two of the kids were interviewed on msnbc on election day, too. thoroughly fun and exhausting, molto to catch up with now...

hashke, you know, i don't know who the other yevgeny is! maybe stumbo might know? it's an old rhyme, someone told it to my dad about 30 years ago...

3115. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/4/2000 11:45:29 PM

sto:
Sto: "Is Sami a Finnish-Ugrian language?"

Irv: "The correct term is "Finno-Ugric.""

Sto: "Only in English."

Yes? In what language is it called "Finnish-Ugrian"?

3116. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/4/2000 11:47:01 PM

TM:
Great to see you here. And it sounds like you and the kids had an outstanding experience.

3117. PelleNilsson - 2/5/2000 1:55:09 PM

More phrases to test teleprinters with.

German
Kaufen sie jede Woche vier gute bequeme Pelze.

French
Voyez le brick geant que j'examine pres du wharf.

Danish
Aequator blev fejret med whisky, øl och punch.

The Equator was celebrated with whisky, beer and punch

Finnish 1
On sangen hauskaa että plkupyörä on maanteiden jokapäiväinen ilmiö.

It is really good that the bicycle is a common sight on the roads

Finnish 2

Sähköttälja hämäläinen rähjäsi päisään pölläkkälän plenissä pirtissä.

The telegrafist Hämaäläinen caused a drunken brawl in the cottage in Pölläkälä

(To me this looks like an attempt to maximise dotted wovels).

Norwegian

Ei stor håkjærring reiv sun garnet hans Mathias i Kvænnavika.

A big shark (special type of) ripped the net of Mathias i Kvænnavika.

Swedish official
Flygande bäckasiner söka hwila å mjuka tufvor.

Flying [Gallinago Gallinago] seek rest on soft tufts

Swedish unofficial (better, more compact)

Gud hjälpe Zorns mö quickt få byxor.

God help Zorn's girl get panties quickly

Anders Zorn (1860-1920) was a Swedish painter (represented in several museums in the US) who, as one of his favourite motives, had nude, bathing, voluptous ladies. Here is an example.

3118. stostosto - 2/5/2000 5:21:21 PM

Ahhh... To bathe in that tub. Gud hjälpe mej.

3119. stostosto - 2/5/2000 5:23:31 PM

Irv:

Sto: "Is Sami a Finnish-Ugrian language?"

Irv: "The correct term is "Finno-Ugric.""

Sto: "Only in English."

Irv: "Yes? In what language is it called "Finnish-Ugrian"?"

Why, in Valby English. Much used in these parts.

3120. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/5/2000 5:25:46 PM

Pelle:
Since I've never come across a similar sentence in Indonesian, I asked a number of Indonesians who would know. They all had the same answer to "What sentence would you type to test a typewriter?"

The answer... "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."

I'll have to see if I can come up with a concise sentence using all the letters of the language.

3121. ilyavinarsky - 2/6/2000 1:31:28 AM

Oh mama.

3122. Candide - 2/7/2000 2:02:06 AM

"Wringing of hands" is a less than attractive expression I have read not only applied to me, but to any expression of sympathy or distress.

Is it a bit of G.O.P. toughness? What is its origin - and please don't give me a lecture about "practical and logical solutions" being the way to go.

A words with different connotations in America is "liberal". Where I come from "liberal" is a good word and means good things. In America it appears to be a term of abuse.

"Wailing" may be specific to one local debating champion, but it is similarly hauled out when anybody expresses any objection to some harsh behaviour.

3123. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/7/2000 2:14:36 AM

Candide:
"Wringing of hands" seems a pretty straight-forward expression to me, and I doubt that its origins could be traced.

"Wailing" dates back a long ways. You'll find it all over the Bible, for instance ("wailing and gnashing of teeth").

"Liberal" is only a nasty expression to those on the right in the USA. To those on the left, it is a positive term. I would imagine the same holds true in Oz.

On another note, I came across the following in The Age (the Melbourne newspaper) today... strangely enough, in an article about Gus Dur:

ONE OF the best characters to emerge from the Hollywood TV factory is Columbo. In each episode viewers know Columbo - an unfailingly polite, shambolically dressed detective - is going to get the culprit who is often smooth, sophisticated and contemptuous of the apparently hapless gumshoe. The fun is finding out how.

My question: Is "shambolically" a common adjective in Oz? Has it emerged from being a slang term to become respectable enough to appear unmarked in a major paper?

3124. Candide - 2/7/2000 2:47:41 AM

IrvingSnodgrass

Shambolically is a friendly vernacular expression with sympathetic and comical undertones - or overtones - whichever you prefer. It's slang, but everyone knows what it means. As you know, Australians like informality and "major" papers are the trendiest of the trendy. It is trendy to be informal.

Liberal is only a bad word in Australia to those who dislike the conservative party named Liberal. It is generally considered a word that describes a virtue rather than a weakness. In England that is definitely the case. That in fact is my point. Does it deascribe a distinct difference of broad social attitudes?

Of course wringing of hands is an old expression with which we are all familiar. But several times today it was used to describe those who objected to violence of one sort of another. Violence of a type that would be considered normal to reject in this part of the world. I wondered whether these expressions are part of some discreet social engineering.

I have been interested in the misuse of language for some time. Alec Carey (the late)was an Australian psychologist who wrote about it a great deal. I told you about my Italian friend who has published books about it. I tried to lure him to the Mote but so far with no success. My point being that if such terms are regularly employed in such a way, they can intimidate people into conformity.

I have to cook dinner now alas.

3125. PelleNilsson - 2/7/2000 2:57:03 AM

The American usage of "liberal" confused me for a long time. Here, and I think in most of Europe, "liberal" is used for a political tradition that goes back to John Stuart Mill with emphasis on personal freedom and laissez-fair economics.

On the other hand, the word has become de-politicised. We may say "let us be liberal when we apply this rule", meaning that we should not be too harsh but allow some leeway. In that sense "liberal" is a generally positive word.

3126. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/7/2000 3:00:34 AM

Candide:
I wouldn't call it "misuse" of language. Language can be a powerful tool, indeed, but we all have the same weapons in the fght.

I don't really want to be the one to judge this, because I am not the one who has used the term, but it seems to me the "wringing of hands" label has been applied not because you object to violence (many of us do), but because of the way in which you object to it. I don't think it has anything to do with where you or the one applying the label are.

Your explanation of the use of shambolically makes sense. I think papers in other countries are more formal in general (except for the tabloids in the USA and the UK). In Australia, even the best papers use slang terms frequently, a practice I applaud.

Does it [the word liberal] deascribe a distinct difference of broad social attitudes?

It can, but not always. Since the word does not denote a specific party as in Oz and the UK, the meaning tends to depend on the speaker and the audience.

Btw, how did the conservative party end up being called the "Liberal" party?

3127. Candide - 2/7/2000 3:00:48 AM

PelleNilsson

Of course it is in the world at large, but not, as far as I can tell, in the United States. I'm not 'confused'. More, a little shocked and sad. There now. I just 'wailed'.

3128. Candide - 2/7/2000 3:13:42 AM

IrvingSnodgrass

Seguine in a post said she had not "wrung her hands" over the bombing of Belgrade. Quite a few tough people objected to that bombing. I'm not criticising Seguine who introduced a civilised note to the discussion.

3129. Candide - 2/7/2000 3:16:01 AM

IrvingSnodgrass

To your last question. It used to be a "liberal" party, and some members still are though they usually leave in deep depression. I suspect that Downer may be a real liberal, but I'm not quite certain.

3130. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/7/2000 3:59:14 AM

Candide:
I don't see how the word liberal is used any differently in the United States from how it is used elsewhere in the world (except Australia, of course, where it means "conservative"). What do you mean by your comments?

Pelle's definition of "a political tradition that goes back to John Stuart Mill with emphasis on personal freedom and laissez-fair economics" seems to fit the American usage as well... what in the USA is termed the "left."

Seguine in a post said she had not "wrung her hands" over the bombing of Belgrade. Quite a few tough people objected to that bombing. I'm not criticising Seguine who introduced a civilised note to the discussion.

Seguine is a pretty tough person -- I can't imagine her wringing her hands over anything. Obviously, what she meant was she hadn't agonized over that move. Someone who did could be said to have wrung his or her hands. Where is the confusion over the term?

3131. SnowOwl - 2/7/2000 4:00:13 AM

Btw, how did the conservative party end up being called the "Liberal" party?.

Irv,

As I'm sure you're aware, in the English system, before the rise of universal suffrage the traditional divide used to be between conservtive parties which tended to support land-based aristocratic power systems and liberal parties which championed the merchant/industralist urban classes. With the rise of mass labour-based parties the dynamics of the 2 party system tended to erode the support of these liberal parties and force them to amalgamate with the more traditional conservative parties as the parties of wealth. However, Australia due to various factors including its voting system and its very concentrated urbanisation was able to maintain two separate wealth-based slightly right wing parties, the Country Party and the Liberal Party, which now generally when governing govern as a coalition.

The term liberal as now applied to anyone slightly to the left is a far more recent use of the term.

3132. SnowOwl - 2/7/2000 4:12:01 AM

Pelle's definition of "a political tradition that goes back to John Stuart Mill with emphasis on personal freedom and laissez-fair economics" seems to fit the American usage as well... what in the USA is termed the "left."

But this would be termed the "right" in the Antipodes.

3133. SpenceMirrlees - 2/7/2000 4:14:11 AM

The left in the US is hardly a bunch of laissez fair-touting J.S. Mill readers.

3134. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/7/2000 4:32:43 AM

Well, the origin of the term in each nation is the same. Historical forces have caused it to take on different meanings. I don't think the US is alone in that, given the comments above.

3135. alistairconnor - 2/7/2000 6:26:54 AM

"laissez fair-touting J.S. Mill readers"

Ah the joys of the creative spelling mistake! Right wing economists as fair(e)ground touts!

Rrrrroll up! rrrroll up! Hurrrry hurrrry hurrrry. Get your John Stewart Mill economic snake oil! Then just stand back and watch your economy grow!

3136. PelleNilsson - 2/7/2000 6:42:54 AM

Irv

It was not until I hosted Political Ideas that I got a real handle on the American usage of "liberal". By and large they mean "FDR politics" which was not at all laissez-faire, but interventionist and Keynesian.

3137. Ronski - 2/7/2000 11:47:43 AM

Interventionist, Keynesian, and yucky. Except for their faction's support of certain personal freedoms in the social -- as opposed to the economic -- sphere, which is good, and genuinely liberal in the original meaning of the word.

In the U.S., to clarify some of this we who support the liberalism of old (18th - 19th c.) refer to it as "classical liberalism," as opposed to "modern liberalism," "left-liberalism," or just plain "liberalism."

3138. Candide - 2/7/2000 4:11:09 PM

AlistairConnor

"Laissez-fair"

I'll think of it like that from now on.

IrvingSnodgrass

When the Australian Liberal party was formed it was to the left (God help us) of the existing ruling party.

When I read the word "liberal" in any main-stream American publication, or hear it pronounced on the American media, it is always used as a term of contempt describing weakness and sentimentality. That is a great distance from the dictionary meaning of the word. I haven't heard any other word that has been substituted to encompass the lost meaning of 'liberal'.

I remember during the arms race they substituted the word facility for "nuclear warhead".

This has been a twentieth century development and I think constant alertness on the part of all of us is called for. Manipulation and intimidation through language is an art form refined by advertising experts. Saatchi and Saatchi(sp?) are getting into our minds.

3139. Candide - 2/7/2000 5:25:00 PM

IrvingSnodgrass

Correction:

The Australian Labor Party was in government when the Liberal party (more liberal than the existing conservatives) was formed.

3140. Uzmakk - 2/7/2000 5:34:24 PM

Hashke:
Have you ever heard the Breakfast Blues on Who Are These People by Trout Fishing in America?

3141. CalGal - 2/7/2000 5:46:06 PM

Irv,

I don't really want to be the one to judge this, because I am not the one who has used the term, but it seems to me the "wringing of hands" label has been applied not because you object to violence (many of us do), but because of the way in which you object to it.

Bless you.

Candide, "wringing of one's hands" and "wailing" is a description of method and has nothing to do with the object of your concern.

3142. CalGal - 2/7/2000 6:12:01 PM

When I read the word "liberal" in any main-stream American publication, or hear it pronounced on the American media, it is always used as a term of contempt describing weakness and sentimentality.

That is simply untrue. It is just that you, as an outsider, can't distinguish between the left and the right as it is defined in American politics.

If the word "liberal" is used as a term of contempt, it means that the person using it has political views to the right of center.

It does not mean that all Americans have the same opinion of liberals.

No journalist would ever use "liberal" as a pejorative. A columnist who tilted right might.

If you have only ever seen "liberal" used in the pejorative, then this means that you have only ever read columnists or TV pundits who are somewhat to the right of center. It also probably means that you haven't translated a columnist's or pundit's support for liberalism because they didn't use the word and you didn't recognize it because they didn't actually use the word.

It might also mean that you're exaggerating, because I quite often see columnists and pundits use the term "liberal" without any contempt.

3143. Candide - 2/7/2000 6:27:16 PM

CalGal

If that's correct I'm glad. I was the one who requested that The Nation be put into the available papers on the Mote, and I read major US papers on the net most days, so I don't think I have a narrow contact with the use of the word in the US. Also we have American Public Broadcasting radio on our ABC radio news channel, and the Jim Lehrer Hour on mutlicultural TV. I don't have cable TV so I haven't heard what CNN is up to.

3144. Candide - 2/7/2000 6:28:43 PM

CalGal

Seguine said she did not "wring her hands" over the bombing of Belgrade. I was not just being personally sensitive.

3145. CalGal - 2/7/2000 6:31:02 PM

Candide,

It's also a percentage thing. While you may see "liberal" used in the non-pejorative sense, you won't see it nearly as often as you'll see it used negatively.

But that's because those who don't use it negatively don't use the term as often. They use other phrases, other means of describing the same political position. But you probably aren't recognizing that.

Don't get me wrong--"liberalism" in the American sense is certainly less popular than it was 30 years ago. But the term itself is not used as you describe. It's rather dangerous to assume that you can know about American politics without a lexicon.

3146. Candide - 2/7/2000 6:33:46 PM

I have an impression that Seguine is British, so I am not getting at America, just the word-masters who insert concepts into our minds. New York today, Sydney tomorrow. Of course it happens naturally as well, but I think there are a few manipulators out there. We all catch the measles.

An Italian cyber-friend has just published a book saying that the Vatican invented global salesmanship.

3147. CalGal - 2/7/2000 6:35:34 PM

Candide,

I know, but you translated the term too narrowly, and decided it was an American term of contempt for people who dislike violence, when in fact it is a term of contempt for a manner of expression.

3148. Candide - 2/7/2000 6:43:39 PM

CalGal

You're probably right there. I apologise if I overdid.

Remember I'm a closet singer at heart, although no longer practicing

Listen to "Oh patria mia" from Verdi's Aida. I've concentrated on the essence rather than the minutae and it probably shows. Professional deformation. I tend to listen to the music rather than the intended message -which sometimes contradicts the other musical message.

3149. hashke - 2/7/2000 7:45:33 PM

3150. hashke - 2/7/2000 7:47:20 PM

Does this have anything to do with liberalism?

The Russian says, "I hate bisexuals".

3151. hashke - 2/7/2000 7:49:51 PM

3140. Uzmakk - 2/7/00 10:34:24 PM
Hashke:
Have you ever heard the Breakfast Blues on Who Are These People by Trout Fishing in America?

No, I haven't. Please enlighten me!

3152. stostosto - 2/7/2000 7:50:57 PM

Re confusing political terms and party names:

Here in Denmark, we have a coalition government between the Social Democrats, and a junior partner called the Radical Left. This party is decidedly to the right of the Social Democrats, actually takes pride in always placing itself spot in the political center as an arbiter between right and left, sometimes governing with the right wing, sometimes with left wing (a little like the FDP in Germany, which they half-consider a sister party).

At the extreme left we have a party called the Unity List, which is very divisive on most issues. The main opposition party, positioned well to the right of the present government, is called Venstre, meaning Left. Their co-name is "Denmark's Liberal Party". They are laissez-faire economically (relatively so, this is consensus country, remember) and tough on crime and immigration.

Then on the extreme left, we have the Progressive Party which is in total regress, its parliamentary representatives having left the party en bloc and now calling themselves "Freedom 2000". Their votes have been taken over by the Danish People's Party, which really is the party of the Danish Bigots. (They are decidedly to the right of Haider's FPÖ, but no one notices because this is Denmark with a wishy-washy past and an apparent squeaky clean record on the Jews).
(cont.)

3153. stostosto - 2/7/2000 7:51:58 PM

In the center we have the Center Democrats who have just called attention to themselves by using extreme language against the Danish People's Party, comparing its leader to Hitler.

We also have three more parties whose names are disappointingly descriptive, namely the Socialist People's Party, the Conservative People's Party, and the Christian People's Party.

There was a peculiar incidence with the latter some time ago, though, in which it felt it had to prohibit a Muslim member of the party from running for parliament. He felt the party's Christian values were the closest to his own Muslim ones... Family values, that kind of thing, you know.

Oh, and btw: All these parties are represented in the Danish Parliament, Folketinget. There are 5 million souls here.

We have some difficulty understanding how 280 million Americans make do with only two parties in Congress.

3154. Candide - 2/7/2000 8:38:18 PM

stostosto

Brilliantly told.

Australia is too convoluted politically for me to explain, especialy today when I'm trying to fake up an impressive meal for guests.

The states each have the same complexity as the Federal political scene. I suppose the US is similar.

It is the relationships of the states to the British crown that screwed up the recent attempt to become a republic.

3155. wonkers2 - 2/7/2000 9:10:38 PM

Based on Safire's Sunday column I just ordered a new book--"The Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations" by Charles Elster. After I get it I'll be available for questions on American English pronunciation. Samples from Safire--vacuum is now correctly pronounced VAC-yoom, not vac-u-um as it once was. But AC-rit is not okay for accurate, nor YOO-zhul for usual, claps for collapse, VUR-bij for verbiage, or TEM-pa-chur for TEM-pra-chur.

Safire also took a shot at Bush for recently saying "I think it's incredibly 'presumptive' for someone who has yet to earn his party's nomination to be picking vice Presidents."

3156. CalGal - 2/7/2000 9:15:06 PM

Sto,

Ha! Great description.

Further discussion probably goes in the political thread, but the US has always limited itself to two parties. We're rather exclusive--none of this "any ol' group can start a party" nonsense.

3157. Candide - 2/7/2000 9:54:52 PM

Wonkers2
How do Amurcins say "secretary"?

3158. Candide - 2/7/2000 9:56:03 PM

hashke

Be sure to use your awesome power for good.

3159. CalGal - 2/7/2000 9:57:32 PM

Seh-cri-terry, because I'm too lazy to look up the proper notation.

And hashke, what HTML mountain do you wish to conquer next?

3160. Candide - 2/7/2000 10:09:04 PM

CalGal

That beats the hell out of secitry, that one hears in Australia, New Zealand and Britain.

3161. Candide - 2/7/2000 10:09:17 PM

CalGal

That beats the hell out of secitry, that one hears in Australia, New Zealand and Britain.

3162. hashke - 2/7/2000 10:21:26 PM

3163. hashke - 2/7/2000 10:22:21 PM

The sign says, "Hitler is done for".

As one would wish this endless discussion were.

3164. hashke - 2/7/2000 10:23:52 PM

Damn! That cartoon was supposed to be in International.

Ah, well.

3165. hashke - 2/7/2000 10:26:38 PM

Candide - 2/8/00 2:56:03 AM
hashke

Be sure to use your awesome power for good.

It wasn't good?

3166. hashke - 2/7/2000 10:28:24 PM

3159. CalGal - 2/8/00 2:57:32 AM
Seh-cri-terry, because I'm too lazy to look up the proper notation.

And hashke, what HTML mountain do you wish to conquer next?

What's left?

3167. Candide - 2/7/2000 10:31:40 PM

hashke

It was good.

I agree about the discussion.

Nobody say a word.

3168. hashke - 2/7/2000 11:23:58 PM

I like 'sekitry'. Sounds like a typewriter.

3169. ScottLoar - 2/7/2000 11:47:25 PM

Seh-krah-terry in American, yes?

3170. SnowOwl - 2/7/2000 11:49:41 PM

sekitry is rarely heard in NZ. Patronising twit is heard much more often.

3171. ScottLoar - 2/7/2000 11:51:10 PM

Sec'try in Australian, yes?

3172. sakonige - 2/7/2000 11:51:48 PM

Candide,

Message # 3157

Here in the US NW, I think most people pronounce each syllable of the word distinctly sek rah tair ry, with what I could call a slightly Irish emphasis on the r's.

3173. Candide - 2/7/2000 11:52:41 PM

ScottLoar

It can be either. Rarely Sec-re-ta-ry

3174. Candide - 2/7/2000 11:53:55 PM

SnowOwl

My teachers said it!

Patronising twit indeed.

3175. sakonige - 2/7/2000 11:55:02 PM

hashké,

Don't worry about your friend. He thinks he's a warrior. He needs to learn not to feel sorry for himself. He will be ok.

3176. Candide - 2/8/2000 12:01:38 AM

SnowOwl

Wearily: They say secitry in Britain. They say secitry in Australia. They certainly said it in New Zealand when last I was there. What's wrong with observing such a thing? I spent a good proportion of my life in New Zealand. I was educated there. I'm still in almost daily contact.
In all three countries a proportion of the population pronounce all the syllables. Obviously you only associate with them. What does it matter for gawd's sake?

3177. hashke - 2/8/2000 12:11:25 AM

3175. sakonige - 2/8/00 4:55:02 AM

hashké,

Don't worry about your friend. He thinks he's a warrior. He needs to learn not to feel sorry for himself. He will be ok.

What say? To what friend -- about whom I am supposedly worrying -- do you refer, Sakonige???

3178. hashke - 2/8/2000 12:12:49 AM

I like 'sekitry'. Sounds like crickets.

3179. Candide - 2/8/2000 12:19:59 AM

hashke

They often are cricketers.

3180. Candide - 2/8/2000 12:21:57 AM

Sakonige

That's how I've heard Americans pronounce it but I thought there may be variants.

3181. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/8/2000 12:56:51 AM

I see Prescriptivism is rearing its ugly head again. No matter how many times you think you've killed the beast, it rises again.

3182. Candide - 2/8/2000 1:34:47 AM

IrvingSnodgrass

Not from me there wasn't any prescriptivism. I was merely observing an eccentric pronunciation without judgement.

I hate inverted snobbery.

What reared its ugly head was something else with which I am familiar

3183. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/8/2000 4:32:18 AM

Candide:
I was mostly reacting to Wonkers's Message # 3155 in which he (and Safire) apparently endorse a prescriptivist.

But your own Message # 3160 has a bit of a prescriptivist flavor as well. According to the OED, SEKrit:ri is the usual (note I don't say "approved") British pronunciation (with the ":" standing for an unstressed schwa). The normal pronunciation in America is SEKr:TERi (only the American form has secondary stress). Check a Macquarie's for the usual pronunciation in Oz.

3184. Candide - 2/8/2000 6:43:20 AM

IrvingSnodgrass

Unusually sensitive we expats. Will try to apply myself and to do better. No prescriptivism I assure you. Merely a Dickensian observation.

3185. Candide - 2/8/2000 6:44:47 AM

Even better than MacQuarie's. I'll LISTEN.

3186. stostosto - 2/8/2000 9:18:41 AM

I must have confused myself in #3152.

"Then on the extreme left, we have the Progressive Party which is in total regress..."

I should have said "..on the extreme right, we have the Progressive Party.."

I know many of you must have wondered about that.

3187. Candide - 2/8/2000 3:19:33 PM

stostosto

In politics anything is possible.

3188. wonkers2 - 2/8/2000 6:13:09 PM

IrvingSnodgrass, I tend not to be a strong prescriptivist. However, one must recognize that society penalizes those who depart from the language norms of the educated middle and upper classes, with allowances for regionalisms. For example, white employers in Detroit are hard on black applicants and employes who say "axe" for "ask." And so it's useful for the schools and others to warn them and try to get them to adopt middle class black and white pronunciation or at least to do so in the workplace when it is to their advantage.

3189. Candide - 2/8/2000 6:20:31 PM

wonkers 2

It's also useful to have a middle language that we can all understand. We can keep our dialects for off campus duty. It's a bit like that in England and Italy. Communication is an advantage.

In Britain it was common knowledge that the local aristocrat and the farm labourer could communicate more easily with each other than with the city folk. They could speak each other's dialect.

IrvingSnodgrass
Did you know that for some years the Italians in the north have been getting very distressed about the speech of their children who hear television that is based in Rome. The children all tend towards Roman speech, vastly different from Milanese. Parents are desperate but can do nothing to alter things.

3190. wonkers2 - 2/8/2000 9:12:33 PM

Good point! Moreover, what would English teachers do without a certain amount of prescriptivism? They'd be out of a job.

3191. Candide - 2/8/2000 10:47:33 PM

wonkers2

I have long been an advocate of abstract expressionism, but it only works when you understand the fundamentals.

My father and one of his sisters when children, spoke a gibberish they had invented in order not to be understood by the others.

3192. PelleNilsson - 2/9/2000 1:10:59 AM

SqueezeWords. Safire on Murcan speech.

3193. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/9/2000 1:38:22 AM

Pelle:
I agree with Safire on the radio editing, and on the use of "presumptive," but he's dead wrong on trying to change pronunciation. He exhibits all the worst tendencies of the prescriptivist.

We've been through the whole prescriptivist thing too many times here. For anyone who feels Safire has a point (other than on the top of his head), I recommend reading Pinker's chapter on "The Language Mavens" in The Language Instinct. It's the surest cure around for incipient presriptivism.

3194. Candide - 2/9/2000 1:42:16 AM

PelleNilsson

I love it.

So Ostraya, Noo Zilind and Murka are not so far apart after all.

3195. Candide - 2/9/2000 1:47:01 AM

Sorry IrvingSnodgrass

I'm used to counting the beats in a bar and I know when they're missing. No judgement implied. No "they're WRONG". No "They're inferior". Just an enjoyment of what he has observed.

It's the stuff that daily drama and humour is made of in the English tongue.

3196. PelleNilsson - 2/9/2000 1:47:12 AM

Don't get so worked up, Irv. I didn't link that because I agree or disagree with Safire, but because I thought it was rather funny and contained some good observations on current pronounciation.

3197. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/9/2000 1:48:23 AM

Candide:
What Safire misses is that it's called "English," and the same forces are happening everywhere, and have always been happening. You can easily find British Safires writing the same things 200 years ago. Far from hindering communication, these forces promote communication, or they wouldn't occur. Safire should know one can't fight the tide of language change. But then again, he's a political commentator dabbling in language.

3198. Candide - 2/9/2000 1:49:55 AM

Pelle

Because I gabble sometimes my husband accuses me of saying "pronounciation" instead of pronunciation.

I'm being picky. Your mastery of English is awe inspiring.

3199. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/9/2000 1:51:09 AM

Pelle:
I didn't mean to address the comments at you, but rather at Safire's comments, and maybe a bit at wonkers, who first brought it up.

Candide:
Music and language are two different animals. The only one "missing" something is Safire.

3200. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/9/2000 1:53:33 AM

I used to write "pronounciation," until an Indonesian friend pointed it out to me about 25 years ago. English spelling can be strange.

3201. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/9/2000 1:54:35 AM

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Pelle's mastery of written English puts most native speakers to shame.

3202. Candide - 2/9/2000 1:55:47 AM

IrvingSnodgrass

As the world gets smaller and we have to communicate with a larger group of people, "nest" language, while fine in the nest, won't do if too exaggerated. It doesn't have to be crushed, derided or discouraged, but outside the nest, some modified version "international" (within the language)would be more useful as a means of wider communication.

Do you know that in Italy they use the term "international" to mean inter-regional, when describing restaurants? People from Sicily speak to people from Milan, using a modern form of Italian, a bit as you have said happens in Indonesia.

3203. Candide - 2/9/2000 2:00:24 AM

IrvingSnodgrass

You know what? I suspect that you are being a tiny bit prescriptive in denying me, a native English speaker, my instinctive and spontaneous responses to my own language. You've introduced a new rule about tolerating anything in the name of expressiveness and won't believe that change may sometimes be a loss instead of a gain.

Of course music is different but you need an ear for music and speech.

3204. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/9/2000 2:05:37 AM

Candide:
Many forces are making the various dialects of English more similar, not less. In the USA and the UK, regional dialects are becoming less common. These forces will probably continue until the English-speaking world speaks one largely-mutually-intelligible dialect. I wouldn't bet against it. International English is already with us, and it works. In fact, the forces Safire fights against are common to all dialects of English. Do you know anyone, anywhere, who pronounces "chocolate" with three syllables?

The regional dialects in Italy (and, indeed, in most European nations) are very different from the situation in Indonesia. In Indonesia, there are hundreds of very separate languages, which, although historically related, have been separated for thousands of years, and are not mutually-intelligible to the slightest extent. The differences between Indonesian, Balinese, Batak, and Javanese are like the differences between English, Italian, Greek, and Russian.

As such, the national language, Bahasa Indonesia, is a common tongue which everyone must learn as a second language.

Just as a simple example, here is the common phrase "I live here" in two languages:

Sundanese: Abdi calik di dieu.
Indonesian: Saya tinggal di sini.

3205. PelleNilsson - 2/9/2000 2:06:39 AM

I have always written 'pronounciation' but never more. Strange that the 'o' gets lost. I looked it up in Mirriam-Webster. 'Pronounce' and 'pronunciation' have the same origin in Latin pronuntiarie

3206. Candide - 2/9/2000 2:10:42 AM

IrvingSnodgrass
Ah. I understand.

Still, in Italy there are many regions that can't communicateoutside at all. While not as dramatic as Indonesia the barriers are real. I remember that I wrote before about the people in Australia who speak languages that have vanished from the face of Italy. (Perhaps, by now, the word should be "spoke".)

3207. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/9/2000 2:12:21 AM

Candide:
If you can seriously say something like "You've introduced a new rule about tolerating anything in the name of expressiveness and won't believe that change may sometimes be a loss instead of a gain," then you have no understanding of why linguists don't believe in prescriptivism. I have been through this discussion many times here, and I could do it again, but I'm a little weary of it.

Please read Pinker, and then let me know what you think. But keep in mind that language changes to facilitate communication, not to hinder it... in other words, change is never a "loss," when it comes to language. And I have made up no rule. Speakers of the language are the ones who make the rules.

I am not denying you your right to be a prescriptivist. I am only pointing out why to be so is pointless and hopeless.

3208. Candide - 2/9/2000 2:14:01 AM

Thinks: I say choclit.

3209. Candide - 2/9/2000 2:17:33 AM

IrvingSnodgrass

I maintain that substituting "Less" at all times for "Fewer" is reducing meaning and hence communication. It is a popular decision, but did it facilitate communication? Whatever caused it I don't think that "communication" was the spur.

.

3210. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/9/2000 2:17:53 AM

Pelle:
As I said, English spelling can be strange. There's really no logical reason why it should be "Pronunciation" instead of "pronounciation."

Candide:
The stuation in Italy exemplifies the problem with drawing lines which say that one variety of speech is a language while another is a dialect. Often, political considerations are more important than linguistic ones. That is why Pelle and Sto can understand each other while speaking separate "languages," while two Italians can't understand each other while speaking two "dialects" of Italian.

3211. Candide - 2/9/2000 2:19:38 AM

Is it possible to be a linguistic environmentalist?

Dodgy question.

3212. PelleNilsson - 2/9/2000 2:19:53 AM

I saw in M-W the charming word 'pronounceability'. I think the '-bility' suffix creates ugly words and clumsy language. In telecom, for example, we use 'intelligibility' and 'recognisibility' when we talk about the quality of speech transmission.

And how many times hasn't one seen, e.g. "we question the practicability of that course of action" instead of "we doubt that it can be done"?

3213. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/9/2000 2:21:23 AM

Candide:
Thinks: I say choclit.

We all do.

The "less/fewer" thing is a good example of what I was saying earlier. It is a nice distinction (one which I still make), but it doesn't add anything to meaning, really (can you, or anyone, think of an example where to use one instead of the other changes the meaning of a sentence or leads to confusion?). And, as English increasingly becomes a language of international communication, it is one of the fine points which will be lost, in the interests of allowing a greater number of people to communicate, and communicate clearly.

3214. Candide - 2/9/2000 2:22:23 AM

Pelle
Long words always sound more impressive to the insecure. I had a terrible job convincing an Italian writer that in English simplicity is considered to be a virtue.

3215. CalGal - 2/9/2000 2:25:58 AM

I can't think of a pronunciation change that has been a big loss.

I'm just waiting for the rest of the world to see the light on cot/caught.

3216. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/9/2000 2:26:39 AM

Candide:
Is it possible to be a linguistic environmentalist?

If you mean someone who wants to preserve the language as it was, the term is "prescriptivist." Language changes, and there are always those who bemoan that fact. It is easy to find examples of commentators bemoaning (wringing their hands over?) language change in every century. But they don't stop it. In Shakespeare's day, there were people fighting the Great English Vowel Shift. Language will always change, and it's a fact of life.

Pelle:
Good point about "-bility." There's a big difference between being a prescriptivist and insisting on clarity. IOW, there's a big difference between legitimate language change and laziness.

3217. Candide - 2/9/2000 2:26:39 AM

IrvingSnodgrass

I believe I could come up with examples where it matters. In painting for instance "Fewer brush strokes" or "fewer fine lines". In music "fewer semiquavers" or "fewer pauses".

In anything numerical in fact where number is distinct from bulk.

3218. Candide - 2/9/2000 2:27:33 AM

One could say however, "less black crayon" or "less volume".

3219. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/9/2000 2:31:09 AM

CalGal:
I'm just waiting for the rest of the world to see the light on cot/caught.

It might happen. But language change is hard to predict. The other possibility, that Californians may begin making a distinction between the two, is also possible.

Candide:
Long words always sound more impressive to the insecure. I had a terrible job convincing an Italian writer that in English simplicity is considered to be a virtue.

Very good points, and very true. Teaching writing to non-native speakers often involves getting them to say things more simply and concisely. Many languages regard verbosity as a virtue (another strength of English -- that it doesn't).

3220. Candide - 2/9/2000 2:31:26 AM

IrvingSnodgrass

You're exaggerating my meaning. I just meant to imply, to save certain things that we believe to be of value. Not most of a language, just things which in our judgement are precious. In what way does that differ from preserving anything else of cultural value?

3221. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/9/2000 2:34:53 AM

Candide:
I believe I could come up with examples where it matters. In painting for instance "Fewer brush strokes" or "fewer fine lines". In music "fewer semiquavers" or "fewer pauses".

If we ignore the ungrammaticality of the phrases (as I said, I still make a distinction between "less" and "fewer"), how would the following change the meaning: "less brush strokes," "less fine lines," "less semiquavers," "less pauses"? The meaning is still exactly the same.

3222. Candide - 2/9/2000 2:37:35 AM

IrvingSnodgrass

I will try to think of some better ones. I will die with my boots on. It just doesn't conjure reduced items as distinct from reduced bulk for me.

An emotional and irrational response but deeply experienced.

3223. CalGal - 2/9/2000 2:38:54 AM

Irv,

IOW, there's a big difference between legitimate language change and laziness.

and

Many languages regard verbosity as a virtue (another strength of English -- that it doesn't).

I think that laziness is the reason that Americans don't regard verbosity as a virtue. That's why we occasionally produce illegitimate language changes like "recognizability".

3224. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/9/2000 2:39:00 AM

Candide:
You're exaggerating my meaning. I just meant to imply, to save certain things that we believe to be of value. Not most of a language, just things which in our judgement are precious. In what way does that differ from preserving anything else of cultural value?

Well, when it comes to language, it is impossible, not to mention pointless. If a distinction is useful and enhances communication, it will not be lost. You can't fight the tide of language change. It is a force that has always been with us, and always will be.

3225. SnowOwl - 2/9/2000 2:41:33 AM

Candide,

You're exaggerating my meaning. I just meant to imply, to save certain things that we believe to be of value. Not most of a language, just things which in our judgement are precious. In what way does that differ from preserving anything else of cultural value?

Surely if a thing has value in a language it would not disappear and would, therefore, not need saving. If we had to save things, how would we reach a consensus on what has value?

3226. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/9/2000 2:44:10 AM

CalGal:
I think that laziness is the reason that Americans don't regard verbosity as a virtue. That's why we occasionally produce illegitimate language changes like "recognizability".

I'm not sure I know what you mean by this. At any rate, illegitimate language changes won't stick. The only changes which stick are the meaningful ones.

It isn't just Americans... English as a language has never seen much good in verbosity.

Cadide:
I will try to think of some better ones. I will die with my boots on. It just doesn't conjure reduced items as distinct from reduced bulk for me.

Please keep trying. I already know what you'll find.

Language change, to a certain extent, is predictable. That's what the science of Linguistics is all about.

3227. Candide - 2/9/2000 2:44:53 AM

SnowOwl

I don't believe that.

3228. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/9/2000 2:46:30 AM

SnowOwl:
You always express things much more clearly than I do. Thank you, and well put.

3229. Candide - 2/9/2000 2:47:27 AM

I didn't finish sorry.

Obviously an effort to save something would have to meet a common response in enough people.

I know a lot of people who think that Shakespeare's a waste of time. It's because enough people disagree that we still have him. Words that are links to past meanings are often valuable in subtle ways.

3230. CalGal - 2/9/2000 2:49:33 AM

Irv,

I thought most of the "ability" words Pelle was complaining about were Americanisms--maybe I had that wrong.

Anyway, I was just saying that I think Americans tend to look for the shortest way to say things out of laziness. Most of them are also efficient. But every so often you get a bad change that sticks around for a while and then disappears.

A while ago, I think we did the same thing with "-wise" that we now do with "-ability". There was at least one song that parodied this tendency. It fell out of fashion and we've only kept the useful "-wise"s.

3231. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/9/2000 2:49:46 AM

Candide:
The point is, no one can turn back the clock. Language changes. It's the way it works. People have tried to fight it for millennia, and no one has ever succeeded.

3232. Angel-Five - 2/9/2000 2:53:03 AM

How is it that we ended up with Bill from William and Neddy from Edward and Fritz from, what is it, Friedrich? Has anyone ever released a good book on the etymology of these nicknames?

3233. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/9/2000 2:53:14 AM

CalGal:
Yes, I agree with your Message # 2230. An excellent example of this impromptu word-formation is the speech of the two George Bushes, though the father is much worse than the son.

Candide:
I hadn't seen your Message # 3227 when I posted Message # 3228. I didn't mean to sound tactless. I was simply admiring SnowOwl's post.

3234. Angel-Five - 2/9/2000 2:55:15 AM

English as a language has never
seen much good in verbosity.

Guess that means I'm pretty much f@#$ed, then.

3235. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/9/2000 2:56:38 AM

A5:
Probably, but I haven't come across it.

And why are there some names (like your real name and mine) which do not lend themselves well to nicknames? (But please don't use them as examples.)

3236. Candide - 2/9/2000 3:00:22 AM

IrvingSnodgrass and SnowOwl

I'm talking now about aesthetics which are always subjective, but happen to be what I care more about than any other thing. I'm not advocating King Canuteism, just regularly pointing out to people at large when one feels that something damaging to degrees of meaning is occurring.

Pronunciation must look after itself. If one hates a phase (and sometimes it is only that) of pronunciation one just needs to pointedly pronounce the word differently without preachiness, and see whether one's preferred version gels.

3237. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/9/2000 3:06:05 AM

A5:
You make up for the lack of verbosity in the rest of the English-speaking world.

3238. CalGal - 2/9/2000 3:08:44 AM

It's a tough job, but I just know he's up to the task.

Of course, I nobly assist wherever possible.

3239. Angel-Five - 2/9/2000 3:10:20 AM

Never thought of that. (Though your real name has at least one nickname that I'm aware of.)

Maybe because they're just so damned elegant and easy to say that people recognize it's best not to mess with them?

I'd guess the obvious guess -- that typical nicknames often come about due to the length or difficulty of pronounciation of the original names, and/or the difficulty children have in pronouncing them.

3240. SnowOwl - 2/9/2000 3:11:03 AM

Irving,

Thank you. My slow connection made mine a crosspost with yours (which I thought was much more clearly expressed).

Candide,

I'm also sorry to see some meanings change or particular words fall out of use, but I think it's impossible to force people to comply with my desired version of English use. In my more pedantic period I would only ever use nice to mean precise, but I'm now quite happy to wish people a nice day.

3241. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/9/2000 3:11:13 AM

Candide:
I hate to disappoint you, but aesthetics is not a factor in language change. You're welcome to speak the language in any way you see fit... individuality is always nice. But it won't change the inevitability of language change.

3242. Angel-Five - 2/9/2000 3:15:05 AM

Yet that doesn't really square with, say, 'Heinz' from Hans.

Can you think of any common nicknames that are as complex if not more complex than the names they replace?

3243. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/9/2000 3:18:44 AM

A5:
Well, I can think of a nickname for your name which is just as odious as the one for mine.

SnowOwl (and Candide):
Of course there are forms which I dislike on a personal level (like "removing the distinction between "less" and "fewer"). But I know better than to try and oppose language change. SnowOwl, you put it very well: "I think it's impossible to force people to comply with my desired version of English use."

3244. Candide - 2/9/2000 3:18:53 AM

IrvingSnodgrass and SnowOwl

Basically I agree with both of you, My aesthetic 'defence' is a sort of deliberate museum defence.

SnowOwl, while not being as nice as that, I do care more about consonants which I won't bore Irving with again.

I now let them search my shopping bag in super markets too.

I love consonants. They're sort of the black notes in the keyboard. Most prigs go for vowels. While also liking vowels, it's consonants I'm defending on my good horse Rosenante (sp?) with my friend Sancho Panza.

3245. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/9/2000 3:23:49 AM

A5:
Can you think of any common nicknames that are as complex if not more complex than the names they replace?

Jimmy for James comes to mind. And many Spanish nicknames.

3246. Angel-Five - 2/9/2000 3:26:34 AM

Rocinante.

3247. Candide - 2/9/2000 3:28:45 AM

Angelfive

I thank you. I thought there was an X. I'm doing three things at once and couldn't look it up.

3248. Angel-Five - 2/9/2000 3:29:58 AM

Yes, that's the first thing I thought of, too. I was thinking of things like Jimmy and Johnny and Sammy more as diminutives than real nicknames, though that's a difference that might not hold a lot of water. Are the Spanish nicknames you had in mind diminutives as well, like Juanito and Carlita?

3249. Candide - 2/9/2000 3:30:25 AM

IrvingSnodgrass

It's called "selling". It works with soap and could work with language.

3250. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/9/2000 3:32:55 AM

Candide:
You'll have less work defending consonants, as they change at a slower pace in any language (though they too change, as you've seen with the evidence for the d to tap change in Australian and American English). But, as with any linguistic crusade, you're doomed to failure.

3251. Angel-Five - 2/9/2000 3:36:21 AM

Candide:

Yeah, but soap is useful, and so is a changing language. I think you're 'selling' freezers to the Inuit.

3252. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/9/2000 3:37:13 AM

A5:
Are the Spanish nicknames you had in mind diminutives as well, like Juanito and Carlita?

Exactly.

Candide:
It's called "selling". It works with soap and could work with language.

Nope. You can take my word for it.

3253. Candide - 2/9/2000 3:40:46 AM

Irving

I know when I'm beaten. I can hear my man through the wall. He's a force of nature as is his vocabulary and pronunciation. It's the inbuilt attitude that is depressing. A real case of form and substance being indivisible.

I'll stay toffee-nosed and represent haughty disdain. It will be a nice hobby for me.

3254. Candide - 2/9/2000 3:42:23 AM

Angelfive

I'm not against change. Just want to keep the baby and throw away the bath water. So I lose? I tried.

3255. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/9/2000 3:45:02 AM

Candide:
There's no such thing as defeat in language. However, 100,00 years of language change has given us a pretty good idea of what happens. Go with the flow. revel in your language, and use it any way you wish.

3256. Candide - 2/9/2000 4:00:43 AM

IrvingSnodgrass

Sure, but that was nearly all before radio and television and over-population. The changes will be interesting to observe.

3257. scottloar - 2/9/2000 4:01:29 AM

Of course Americans are verbose. Look at the bulk of business correspondence, gussied up to high pretense of importance or imitating the language of law to craft a fine wedge of responsibility. I read that from our own company and weep.

3258. scottloar - 2/9/2000 4:02:45 AM

And often verbosity is a consequence of failing to know or exercise the most appropriate word, a failure of vocabulary.

3259. PelleNilsson - 2/9/2000 4:23:38 AM

A trite observation. The prime purpose of language is not to write sonnettes but to describe the world. When the world changes languages must change too. I thought about that when Uzmakk and I were into the haysweep thing. There was a whole set of terms that disappeared from the language when the horses disappeared from the fields. Also, we often redefine an existing word to describe a new phenomenon.

Shifts in meaning can be subtle. The Swedish word 'emellertid' is now equivalent to 'however'. 150 years ago it meant 'in the meantime'. This had me confused when I did some archive research for a thesis. When I read Samuel Pepys, a favourite of mine, I can sense that the meaning of certain common words have changed but usually I cannot pinpoint how.

3260. scottloar - 2/9/2000 5:08:09 AM

No, the purpose of language is to communicate (which includes sonnettes as descriptions of the world), to express oneself and receive reply.

3261. stostosto - 2/9/2000 6:04:56 AM

The purpose of language is to woo women.

3262. SpenceMirrlees - 2/9/2000 6:08:34 AM

No wonder Pelle is a man of few words.

3263. Candide - 2/9/2000 6:44:15 AM

stostosto
And what about women's words?

My husband pointed out that an Australian writer writing Safire's piece would have included "asterix" for "asterisk".

3264. Candide - 2/9/2000 6:48:27 AM

You folk have far more experience of encountering foreign languages than I have, but in Italian I was delighted to realise the connections of meanings in single words that served to replace more than one English word.
i.e. Ancora for "again" and "still" in the sense of having continued.
I had never realised the connection in English but it's clear enough after one thinks about it.

3265. Candide - 2/9/2000 6:58:13 AM

ScottLoar

I have long observed that American English seems to use more Latin-based words and have also thought that some sentence structure is caused by a transfer at some time from German to English.

The English have always congratulated themselves on the good fortune of having so many short Anglo-Saxon words.

3266. Candide - 2/9/2000 7:01:25 AM

I should add that my husband found, when he was editor of an international publisher, that a book produced in English took far fewer pages. If it was an attempt at converting an illustrated technical book from another language this caused him many problems to do with lay-out.

3267. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/9/2000 7:06:29 AM

ScottLoar:
Of course Americans are verbose. Look at the bulk of business correspondence, gussied up to high pretense of importance or imitating the language of law to craft a fine wedge of responsibility. I read that from our own company and weep.

Your reaction proves my point. In many languages (including all Asian languages I know of), a piece of business correspondence which is "gussied up" and pretentious would be highly praised as a masterful work. In English, such a work is generally reviled. Verbosity is not non-existent in English by any means. However, it is not considered a virtue.

And often verbosity is a consequence of failing to know or exercise the most appropriate word, a failure of vocabulary.

Exactly. That was the point CalGal made in her inimitable way above (though I'm not surprised you missed it).

Candide:
I have long observed that American English seems to use more Latin-based words and have also thought that some sentence structure is caused by a transfer at some time from German to English.

The vocabulary of the various dialects of English is nearly identical (hence we have nearly perfect understanding in written communication). I can't think of any Latin-based words only found in American English.

That you notice a parallel in sentence structure between English and German is not surprising, in that both languages are descended from a common ancestor.

3268. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/9/2000 7:09:15 AM

Candide:
I should add that my husband found, when he was editor of an international publisher, that a book produced in English took far fewer pages.

This is quite true when you consider English versus all other languages using a Roman alphabet. In general, writing in Chinese takes up less space than English.

3269. Candide - 2/9/2000 7:11:15 AM

IrvingSnodgrass

No. I'm saying that Americans use complex (flowery even) sentence constructions in comparison with those used by English writers and speakers. This is not a criticism, but an observation.

I have to do the dishes and retire now.

Goodnight all.

3270. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/9/2000 7:23:05 AM

Candide:
I'm saying that Americans use complex (flowery even) sentence constructions in comparison with those used by English writers and speakers.

First off, you might want to rephrase that. Americans are also using English.

I don't think there is really any difference in the complexity of published written English in English speaking nations. But your point is valid with regard to government doublespeak and convoluted business correspondence.

3271. stostosto - 2/9/2000 8:25:50 AM

Candy:
And what about women's words?
Yes, I have often been wondering about that, too.

3272. hashke - 2/9/2000 10:26:07 AM

3251. Angel-Five - 2/9/00 8:36:21 AM
Candide:

Yeah, but soap is useful, and so is a changing language. I think you're 'selling' freezers to the Inuit.

He who tries to sell snow
To the Eskimow
Would never intuit
The Inuit.

3273. stostosto - 2/9/2000 11:09:03 AM

welcome to the hashke show
melting every eskimo
warming up the inuit
- he is full of wit!

3274. PelleNilsson - 2/9/2000 11:16:45 AM

Two clever guys.

He does it well
young stostosto
he does it swell
with an eskimo

See you later kids, I'm in transit for home.

3275. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/9/2000 11:23:22 AM

Somehow, I don't think anyone is going to mistake this for the Poetry thread.

Although Pelle's effort is obviously inspired by the master... Dr. Seuss.

3276. stostosto - 2/9/2000 11:37:41 AM

Irving Snod
He's so hot
In the Poets' Camelot
Irving, Irving, Irving!

3277. hashke - 2/9/2000 11:52:53 AM

Sto, aka triplesto
froze his big toe
on the arctic floe.
With such digital congestions
he will not take questions,
and so out of sorts
with us witty sports
we don't dare eskimo.

3278. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/9/2000 11:55:44 AM

Dare we try... limericks?

There was a young Dane named Stostosto
Whose Mote career wouldn't flowflowflow
He'd post and he'd post
Till they made him a host
Then his rep started to growgrowgrow

3279. CalGal - 2/9/2000 12:13:28 PM

There's this dour Swedish man, name of Pelle,
In whose gloomy soul laughs don't dare dwell.
Still, I'm hearing a rumor
that he'll find some good humor
On that proverbial cold day in hell.

3280. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/9/2000 12:18:41 PM

How does "Pelle" rhyme with "dwell" and "hell"?

3281. CalGal - 2/9/2000 12:21:39 PM

In American, of course!

3282. CalGal - 2/9/2000 12:28:58 PM

However, for our tender international audience, a rewrite:

Pelle is a Swede, I can tell
By the dour laugh that sounds like a knell.
Still, I'm hearing a rumor
that he'll find some good humor
On that proverbial cold day in hell.

3283. CalGal - 2/9/2000 12:33:45 PM

"I'm not pompous!" protested Scott Loar.
"I'm not mean either! I just abhor
those who taunt me and tease me
and really don't please me,
so I frighten them off with a roar."

But if "Loar" and "roar" don't rhyme, I've been saying his name wrong all this time.

3284. scottloar - 2/9/2000 12:44:47 PM

Further testament of why I so easily tire of Calgal.

3285. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/9/2000 12:46:31 PM

How else could it be pronounced?

But you bring up an interesting point... since we never get any aural feedback, any of us could be pronouncing names wrong, and we'd never know.

3286. CalGal - 2/9/2000 12:46:35 PM

You thought that was mean? Sorry. I wasn't trying to be unpleasant.

3287. scottloar - 2/9/2000 12:48:34 PM

Tiring, Calgal, tiring. I cannot be plainer.

3288. CalGal - 2/9/2000 12:49:53 PM

Irv,

I would say "Pell" if I wasn't thinking about it--and I wasn't, obviously. When I see his name, that's how I "hear" it internally. Were someone to ask me how to pronounce the name "Pelle" in Swedish, I would answer properly, though--because I'd focus on it.

I'm pretty sure that most (but certainly not all) Americans would read the first limerick with no quibbles, and would think my second one didn't quite scan properly.

3289. CalGal - 2/9/2000 12:51:52 PM

Multi-lingual and proud! is our Irving
whose keen interest in "tongues" is unswerving.
If you need tips in Tamil,
or translation from "camel"
he'll assist with a speed that's unnerving.

3290. Dantheman - 2/9/2000 12:52:17 PM

CalGal,
I always assumed it was pronounced the same way as in Pelle the Conqueror, as 2 syllables Pel-le. It helps for me that the Flyers had a Swedish goalie a number of years ago whose name was also Pelle.

3291. CalGal - 2/9/2000 12:54:25 PM

Dan,

Yes, that's how I think it's pronounced, too. But it's not my natural pronunciation of it. I should make it clear that I wasn't speaking of Mote murrcans when I said most would read it as Pell.

Also, it occurs to me that "Tamil" and "camel" probably don't rhyme, but I always hear it in my head as if it does.

3292. scottloar - 2/9/2000 12:56:05 PM

"Tamil" does rhyme with "camel", accent and all.

3293. CalGal - 2/9/2000 12:56:57 PM

Oh, good. Two in a row would have been depressing.

3294. scottloar - 2/9/2000 12:57:54 PM

In Danish the beast's second syllable is emphasized, ka.mel if you please.

3295. scottloar - 2/9/2000 12:58:57 PM

"Loar" does rhyme with "roar", "boar" and "chore".

3296. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/9/2000 1:02:05 PM

Tamil and camel do rhyme in English, as both have a schwa in the second syllable.

The Tamil pronunciation of "Tamil" is like "Tah-mirr" with a pure American retroflex r, but I don't recommend using that pronunciation when speaking English.

But "translation from 'camel'"? What on earth does that mean??

3297. CalGal - 2/9/2000 1:03:09 PM

Oh, Irv, it's a limerick. It means you can speak ANY language, even camel.

3298. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/9/2000 1:07:11 PM

Ah, ok. I believe I'm not the only one who is less than fluent in CalGalese.

3299. CalGal - 2/9/2000 1:10:27 PM

I don't think that's a CalGal-ese issue, which I freely acknowledge as a known software glitch.

3300. PelleNilsson - 2/9/2000 1:28:48 PM

In Danish the beast's second syllable is emphasized, ka.mel if you
please.

Right. But, nota bene, withe a long 'e', and it doesn't rhyme with 'tamil'.

3301. CalGal - 2/9/2000 1:30:30 PM

What does this mean, nota bene?

3302. hashke - 2/9/2000 1:36:38 PM

There was a fine fellow named Pelle
His chainsaw a story to telle
He opened his fly
And let out a cry
"Damn, I sawed off my propelle!"

3303. PelleNilsson - 2/9/2000 1:39:15 PM

It means "note well". I thought it was used internationally, like "casus belli" (cause for war) and similar. The origin is Italian I suppose.

3304. Dantheman - 2/9/2000 1:41:34 PM

Pelle,
It's actually Latin, not Italian. It is slightly obscure in the US.

3305. CalGal - 2/9/2000 1:47:03 PM

Pelle,

I don't know this "casus belli", either, so just figure me for a slob.

Once I get past "ad hoc" and "caveat emptor", I'm a goner.

3306. Dantheman - 2/9/2000 1:49:28 PM

CalGal,
"casus belli" literally means "a cause for war". You need a Latin refresher course.

Does this means I should stop using i.e. and e.g.? Does anyone here understand the difference between them?

3307. CalGal - 2/9/2000 1:53:01 PM

Dan,

Yes, I saw Pelle's definition in his post. I was just explaining that it was new to me.

e.g. isn't Latin, is it? I think most people know the difference between e.g. and i.e.

3308. Dantheman - 2/9/2000 1:53:56 PM

CalGal,
e.g. is short for exampla gratia (a free example) and is Latin.

3309. CalGal - 2/9/2000 1:55:51 PM

Oh, okay. I've always been told it stood for "example given".

3310. Angel-Five - 2/9/2000 2:24:07 PM

Irv: You don't notice, say, a difference in the complexity and range of vocabulary between American newspapers and English newspapers? I do. Not the Page Three papers but the Independent and the Times. I'm not speaking of different colloquialisms, I don't think, but to me the difference is noticeable.

3311. Candide - 2/9/2000 5:13:28 PM

IrvingSnodgrass

I slept in this morning and am running late so will be brief

Other language groups beside English speakers in America (and recently in Australia) have contributed to the everyday sentence structure and vocabulary of American English. I buy the "New Yorker" for its fine writing. I am not being critical.I realise that American writing has been among the most dominant and excellent over the last century.

But to someone whose main language contact was England, American is peppered with words and sentence structures that seem like rationalised German. They don't place the verb at the end of the sentence or anything, but there seems to be some sort of blending of thought patterns and a need to translate large complex German words. I believe that German was one of the largest non-English language groups to settle in America. Many great writers come from that heritage. Vonnegut for one. I am not alone in remarking on this. Many English people have this impression.

3312. stostosto - 2/9/2000 5:29:35 PM

Loar
How do you know how kamel is pronounced in Danish?
I am flabberboggled!

3313. stostosto - 2/9/2000 6:04:28 PM

Unrhymeable name she has, CalGal
unless you'll accept MontréalGal
though such pronunciation
seems Calfornication
it's preferable to a banalGal

3314. scottloar - 2/9/2000 7:02:25 PM

Sto3, you're easily impressed. Too easily.

3315. CalGal - 2/9/2000 7:15:51 PM

Sto,

Ha!

I can't tell for sure, but I think we've just uncovered another pronunciation gap. (or maybe you're just fudging, which is fine. It was cute!)

I pronounce the "al" in "Montreal" and "banal" as "all". "CalGal" has a short "a", like in "pal".

If you were to rhyme CalGal with "banalGal", my moniker becomes a description of the oldest profession.

BTW, Irv, is there a term for a two syllable word whose syllables get nearly equal emphasis? For example, "CalGal" has a minor emphasis on the first syllable, but if you "schwa'ed" the "a" in Gal, it wouldn't sound right at all.

3316. CalGal - 2/9/2000 7:20:12 PM

Hey, that's odd. I just looked up "banal" in the dictionary and your pronunciation is right there. But I just checked with 10 people (nice thing about being in an office) and they all say "banALL".

It is entirely within the realm of possibility that we all mispronounce it out here, so now I'm curious. How do other people say it?

3317. cmboyce - 2/9/2000 7:26:07 PM

I grew up saying "BAY n'l" but somewhere along the line, in early adulthood, I was convinced by various and sundry seemingly knowledgable pronouncers to say "b'NAL", which is now habitual.

3318. CalGal - 2/9/2000 7:29:36 PM

"AL" as in "pal"? Wow, that sounds so...rural. Southern. Weird. (g)

3319. cmboyce - 2/9/2000 7:31:50 PM

But, hey! Maybe they were knowledgable. The AHD has "b^-nal [where the "a" is as in "father", -nal [where the "a" is as in "pat"], ba n^l [where the "a" is long]". So I guess all are found, with the first, the old original, apparantly unsophisticated-seeming, BAYnl being the commonest. Or preferred, if one is feeling prescriptive.

3320. cmboyce - 2/9/2000 7:33:39 PM

Whoops. No. Misread my own research. Least common. To be reprehended if prescriptive.

3321. cmboyce - 2/9/2000 7:37:34 PM

As in "pal", yeah, that's the one. #2, per AHD.

What dictionary were you using?

3322. SnowOwl - 2/9/2000 7:41:01 PM

Not being sure of the conventions for posting pronunciation, the best I can do is explain. I pronounce it b'-narl (or more probably with the second a as in father).

3323. CalGal - 2/9/2000 7:43:54 PM

The online Webster's, which (if I read it properly) didn't include "b^nALL" as an option.

But I'm doing three things at once and reading those damn phonetic symbols is a bitch for me at the best of times.

b&-'nal, ba-, -'n[a']l; bA-'nal; 'bA-n&l

where:

\a\ as a in ash
\A\ as a in ace

and I say b&-'näl (\ä\ as o in mop)

3324. CalGal - 2/9/2000 7:44:41 PM

Snow, you say it the same way I do, except you have a fondness for extraneous r's?

3325. CalGal - 2/9/2000 7:48:33 PM

BTW, CM, my original post was in surprise at my discovery that your pronunciation (AL in "pal") is preferred. I wasn't looking down my nose at your pronunciation, but rather wrinkling it at the discovery that Webster's doesn't approve of the way I say it.

3326. Candide - 2/9/2000 8:15:05 PM

I can't write it with the correct symbols but I say a very short "ah" and then a long "aah' bahnaaahl. The first is barely hinted at.

3327. wonkers2 - 2/9/2000 8:35:47 PM

Speaking of prescriptionism, here are some prescriptions from the "Gray Lady's" 1999 "Manual of Style and Usage":

infer, imply. A hearer or reader infers things--that is, draws conclusions. A speaker or writer or a set of facts implies things--that is, gives hints. Preserve the distinction.

data is acceptable as a singular term for information: The data was persuasive. In its traditional sense, meaning a collection of facts and figures, the noun can still be plural: They tabulate the data, which arrive from bookstores nationwide. (In this sense, the singular is datum, a word both stilted and deservedly obscure.)

none. Despite a widespread assumption that it stands for not one, the word has been construed as a plural (not any) in most contexts for centuries. H. W. fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926) endorsed the plural use. Make none plural except when emphasizing the idea of not one or no one--and then consider using those phrases instead.

sewage is waste matter; sewerage us the system that removes it.

home, hone. A detection device (radar, for example) homes in on a signal source, behaving like a homing pigeon. Hone, an unrelated word, means sharpen; it is not used with in.

deja vu. In precise writing, the terms refers to the illusion of reliving an event that has in fact not occurred before. The looser use, to mean re-experiencing a real event, is trite.

Democrat (n.), Democratic (adj.), for the party and its members. Do not use Democrat as a modifier (the Democrat party): that construction is used by opponents to disparage the party. n.b. JJBiener!

3328. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/9/2000 8:37:43 PM

Pelle:
[Nota Bene] means "note well". I thought it was used internationally

It is, in all countries using the metric system.

A5:
Irv: You don't notice, say, a difference in the complexity and range of vocabulary between American newspapers and English newspapers? I do. Not the Page Three papers but the Independent and the Times. I'm not speaking of different colloquialisms, I don't think, but to me the difference is noticeable.

I notice a difference in style, certainly, which would include word choice. But I was referring to vocabulary, and the number of differences between British and American English (including obscure ones) numbers less than 200, which is almost never an impediment to understanding.

To make my point clear... when you read a British paper (or novel, or whatever), would you say you understand less than 100% of what you read? I don't think I'm odd when I say I have 100% comprehension.

CalGal:
Your pronunciation of "banal" is one which I've always recognized as the standard British pronunciation (and Candide and SnowOwl have confirmed it is also standard Antipodean).

To my ears, pronouncing it the British way in America sounds pretentious, but perhaps it is becoming normal in parts of California.

The symbol you transcribed with an ampersand above is the schwa.

Please note that your folk transcriptions of what you say will be confusing for many. For example, "all" is pronounced "awl" in most of the non-California English speaking world, and I'm sure you didn't mean that. And the "o" in "mop" is never an "a" sound outside the United States (and isn't even pronounced that way in all of the USA). You're safer using "the 'a' in father" as an example. British and Antipodean speakers usually annotate this sound as "ar" which doesn't mean they pronounce the "r" (those varieties of English never pronounce r's after vowels).

3329. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/9/2000 8:47:01 PM

wonkers:
That doesn't sound like prescriptivism to me, but rather it insists on correct usage in writing. If they had taken the opposite stand on data and none, then it would be prescriptivism. As it is, they are merely confirming changes which have taken place in standard English, while insisting on clarity in language which hasn't changed (infer/imply, home/hone, etc.).

3330. wonkers2 - 2/9/2000 8:50:10 PM

Speaking of banal, to be consistent, do youse guys pronounce anal, uh NAHL?

3331. wonkers2 - 2/9/2000 8:52:42 PM

Irv, I hear a lot of people saying "honing in" for "homing in" and using "infer" when they should be using "imply." maybe you've been away too long!

3332. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/9/2000 9:03:15 PM

Wonkers:
Of course people make those errors, or they wouldn't have been mentioned. But they haven't become the sual forms in English, and the style manual is well within its rights to insist on clarity without being prescriptivist.

3333. Candide - 2/9/2000 9:05:41 PM

wonkers2

"aynil" to rhymy with 'hay'. the second syllable being closer toa short "uhl" and no realation to "eel".

The word I was retrained in was "harass. I used to say harass but have been worn down to harass.

Also in my childhood I said "forehead". Both syllables. I now say "forrid".

In the antipodes people often pronounce "asphalt" as "ashfelt".

I often hear "mischievous" pronounced as "mischeeveeus".

3334. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/9/2000 9:15:19 PM

Candide:
Interesting notes.

"harass is the preferred pronunciation in the USA, but harass is also heard and accepted. I haven't checked, but I'll bet the latter is the usual British pronunciation.

When you were saying "forehead" you were using the standard American pronunciation. "forrid" is the standard British pronunciation. Which do you hear more often in the Antipodes?

So it seems you had to unlearn your natural inclination to pronounce some words in the American way.

The extra syllable in michievous is heard in the USA as well, and is just as wrong. You can be certain that is one language change that won't catch on.

3335. Candide - 2/9/2000 9:26:04 PM

IrvingSnodgrass

I think forrid wins in Sydney. I wouldn't bet on it in the bush.

Bush in Australia means anywhere non-urban. In New Zealand it basically means forest. This may have changed in recent times. SnowOwl may care to comment.

In New Zealand in my day people who put on boots and knapsacks to walk in the wilderness were called trampers. In Australia they're called bush-walkers.

3336. Thoughtful - 2/9/2000 9:42:44 PM

Of course, in the states, bush has many other meanings and connotations...not the least of which is this aimless weed spreading most recently across S. Carolina....ooops! This ain't politics. Sorry.

A question occurred to me this a.m. for you language experts....do other languages have the equivalent of "nyah..nyah"? It so readily conveys so much to both the speaker and the object of the jeer.

3337. Candide - 2/9/2000 9:48:22 PM

Weally Thoughtful. How Wude. In PWeservation Month and all!

Nyah nyah> I wouldn't mind betting that it's international. A small boy in Aden once did that to me in a descending scale.

3338. CalGal - 2/9/2000 9:50:22 PM

Irv,

For example, "all" is pronounced "awl" in most of the non-California English speaking world, and I'm sure you didn't mean that.

Um. Yes, I did. "All", "father", "cot", "caught", and "awl" have the same vowel sound to me.

And the "o" in "mop" is never an "a" sound outside the United States (and isn't even pronounced that way in all of the USA). You're safer using "the 'a' in father" as an example.

I'll try, but the whole reason I used that was because it was in the online Merriam Webster pronunciation key--ä is the sound in "mop". Just so's you know I wasn't being arbitrary. I'll try and remember to say "a" like in "father"

Thanks for explaining that "r" bit.

To my ears, pronouncing it the British way in America sounds pretentious, but perhaps it is becoming normal in parts of California.

Of the people I checked with in my office, three were from the east and one from the South (Georgia) and they all pronounced it as I did.

3339. Thoughtful - 2/9/2000 9:51:42 PM

Candide -- it really works whether said or sung, plain or exaggerated. Childish and yet says it all.

3340. wonkers2 - 2/9/2000 9:52:52 PM

Cap'n Dirty sez, Thoughtful, as in "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, but a push in the bush is worth two in the hand!"

3341. Candide - 2/9/2000 9:55:41 PM

When people are completely exhausted, they often say :"I'm bushed".

3342. Thoughtful - 2/9/2000 10:01:06 PM

wonk, I always thought it was a cock in the hand is worth two in the bush --

3343. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/9/2000 10:03:21 PM

CalGal:
Well, then how do you write the "aw" sound, as in "Aw shucks"?

That is the sound most English speakers use in words like "all" and "caught." (Meaning all English speakers outside California.)

I don't advocate using "o" to represent "a," although it is standard American English simply because we have a number of participants here who are not speakers of American English. The "o" in "mop" is not a California thing... it is true for most of the USA. That's why I mentioned "'a' in father"... it's true in all dialects of English.

Of the people I checked with in my office, three were from the east and one from the South (Georgia) and they all pronounced it as I did.

So it isn't a regional thing. That leaves pretension.

3344. CalGal - 2/9/2000 10:09:13 PM

Irv,

I don't think it's pretension, either. That's not a common failing of the technology community--we're wasteful, slothful, chichi, and indulgent, of course, but not usually pretentious. I'll check around to see how others pronounce it--or any other murrcans here?

I understand now about "mop" and will try to use "father".

Well, then how do you write the "aw" sound, as in "Aw shucks"?

Um. You're saying you pronounce it differently?

3345. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/9/2000 10:19:47 PM

CalGal:
99% of english speakers pronounce "cot" and "caught" differently. "caught" is pronounced with an "aw" sound, as in "aw shucks." "All" also has this sound.

Unless your target audience consists entirely of Californian speakers, you'll need to be aware of this difference. When you use "all" as an example of an "ah" sound (as opposed to an "aw" sound), you confuse most readers of this thread.

I know Californians don't use this sound. That's no problem. But in the interests of communicating with others, you should note the difference.

Do you mean you don't even say "aw" in "Aw shucks"? Does it sound like "ah shucks"? Very strange.

Wrt banal, the most common pronunciation in the USA is BAYn'l. Your pronunciation (the standard British one) is not wrong, but is less common. I'd be interested to see what class of people use it, since it is apparently not regional.

3346. CalGal - 2/9/2000 10:26:50 PM

Does it sound like "ah shucks"?

Yes. It's possible that the difference is there, but incredibly minor. However, I just practiced "ahhhhh" like for the dentist and "awwwwwww shucks" and could hear no difference. Checked with Spawn, too, who thinks I'm nuts but also agrees that "awl", "all", "caught", "aw", etc, sound the same.

But in the interests of communicating with others, you should note the difference.

Yes, I'm starting to figure this out. The universal "ah" is like the "a" in "father"?

3347. CalGal - 2/9/2000 10:27:56 PM

Well, I suppose I mean "global", not "universal".

And I wonder if movies have caused us to change? I am nearly sure that "BAYn'l" is uncommon these days.

3348. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/9/2000 10:33:13 PM

Yes, like a in father.

For the "aw" sound, try saying "ah" like you would for the dentist, and finishing it off with a "w." Like when someone shows pity and says "Awwww, poor girl." (If such a thing is possible to pronounce in California.)

I've learned something new here. Please confirm... the following italicized words are the same in California?

"Ah, so that's what you mean."

"Aw, you shouldn't have." (Said when receiving a gift, for example.)

3349. CalGal - 2/9/2000 10:39:50 PM

Yes. To say "awwwwww" with the "w" would be an exaggeration for effect. But in daily speech, they are the same.

So if I were mocking someone and speaking in super sympathetic "awwwwwwwwwww, did you huwt your widdle toe?" I would do some weird thing to make the "w" sound at the end.

But in daily speech, I'd say "Aw, that's too bad!" and "Ah, now I see!" and the sound would be the same. But in general, you'd mark the difference with inflection, not pronunciation.

3350. CalGal - 2/9/2000 10:41:06 PM

Scratch the "but" before "in general"

But don't go scratching your butt where others can see.

3351. Candide - 2/9/2000 10:42:30 PM

IrvingSnodgrass

Last night I slept badly and listened on an ear plug to BBC radio. I heard a series of journalists discussing the resignation of the assistant secretary for Wales. Only one of the journalists said all the syllables, The others ALL said SECITRY. Honest injun.

I am a bi defensive about British home counties pronunciation which is not affected, but how the people there speak, and often very delightfully. These journalists all had pleasant educated, unaffected accents and they all said "secitry".

3352. wonkers2 - 2/9/2000 10:47:15 PM

Cap'n Dirty sez, Thoughtful, I definately can't buy inta that one! I'll go fer the cock in the "bush" any day! How about a moonlight sail on the Tomater Sloop? Special winter rates in effect. Because of the ice we won't even hafta leave the dock.

3353. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/9/2000 10:54:07 PM

Candide:
That's also how I've always heard it in British English. I think the OED listing slipped in an extra schwa.

3354. wonkers2 - 2/9/2000 10:55:22 PM

Candide, I say MISSchavas, with the a's pronounced as unaccented vowels, called, by some I believe the "schwa" sound, represented in some dictionaries by an upside-down "e." [Irving, do American lexicographers still talk about the "schwa" sound? That sound causes much consternation for non-native speakers of English used to much more distinct and consistent vowel sounds.]

3355. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/9/2000 10:58:01 PM

CalGal:
Well, then think of that exaggerated "aw" sound (which isn't found naturally in California speech).

That's the sound English speakers outside California (from New York to London to Sydney) use in words like "caught" and "all."

3356. Candide - 2/9/2000 11:01:10 PM

IrvingSnodgrass

When I lived there, and on many subsequent trips to London, people have always complained about the prevalence of "secitry". At least 70 per cent of educated British speakers would have said "sec-re-ta-ry". It was always something that created annoyance.

And, apologies to Snowowl, the same thing was common during my New Zealand youth and is complained of in Australia.

The thing that drives modern educated Australians round the bend is a widespread inability to pronounce the name of the country. Forget the old-fashioned Austrylia jokes. They'd welcome that back with open arms. Today, it's "Ostraya".

3357. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/9/2000 11:03:47 PM

Candide:
I prefer the simple "Oz."

wonkers:
Your pronunciation of michievous is the standard one. Schwas are very much a part of English pronunciation, and it's too bad we can't produce the symbol in this forum. Perhaps we should all agree on CalGal's ampersand to represent a schwa.

3358. CalGal - 2/9/2000 11:03:49 PM

Irv,

Wow. Awwwl. Hmm. I shall chew on this.

3359. CalGal - 2/9/2000 11:05:02 PM

That's not my ampersand, I copied that from m-w. Are there any other online dictionaries?

3360. Candide - 2/9/2000 11:17:34 PM

IrvingSnodgrass

Oz is absolutely wizard.

And CAN you imagine calling a city SYDNEY?

3361. Candide - 2/9/2000 11:19:39 PM

Wonkers2

My own mischuhvuhs" is more or less the same.

3362. SnowOwl - 2/9/2000 11:58:47 PM

Candide,

I was being uncharacteristically snippy and I'm sorry. I'm sure that you have heard it pronounced that way, I probably have myself, although certainly not frequently. In fact, I've heard it pronounced all sorts of ways - sekritree, sekruhterry, sekritri etc.

3363. Candide - 2/10/2000 12:01:24 AM

IrvingSnodgrass

http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/wordpolice/

This one's for YOU!

3364. Candide - 2/10/2000 12:04:48 AM

SnowOwl

Don't worry. I do understand.

You know Marjoribanks got me into the Mote from Salon to talk about New Zealand. I had hoped my economist friend would move in and relieve me but the bastard never came. (he was in a new 'relationship' I later discovered.) It must have been galling for an expat to blather on like that. No hard feelings.

3365. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/10/2000 12:38:41 AM

SnowOwl:
You've got me confused. What's the difference between "sekritree" and "sekritri"?

Candide:
The site you listed is related to the "Word Fugitives" site linked to this thread.

The Word Police idea is very cute, but the idea smacks of prescriptivism. However, since it only concerns itself with writing, and not speech (which is where we observe language in transition), I can accept it.

Good writing involves much more than keeping track of rules of usage, but some of the examples the site gives are indeed evidence of lazy writing (using "everyday" when you mean "every day<" using "alright," etc.).

And one of these days, you must learn to produce links...

The Word Police

3366. SnowOwl - 2/10/2000 12:44:37 AM

Irving,

Absolutely nothing!

3367. Candide - 2/10/2000 12:48:26 AM

IrvingSnodgrass and Word Moties

I have to announce that I have been inducted into the
Word Police Force, Mistaken Identity Squad, and have been commissioned to ensure that verbal virtue is rewarded, crimes against the language are punished, and poetic justice is done.

I have framed certificate to prove it.

You may all address me, but respectfully.

3368. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/10/2000 12:51:46 AM

Candide:
I passed the "Word Police" test, but I take issue with at least one of their definitions. I'd be interested to see how others do here. Most of the questions were obvious, but I'm starting to get the feeling the site is more prescriptivist than I'd originally thought.

By the way, I am now empowered to issue "Grammar Citations." Watch out.

3369. Candide - 2/10/2000 12:52:31 AM

The hoot is that my old senior high school English teacher is still alive and I'm going to send her a copy of my certificate.

3370. Candide - 2/10/2000 12:53:56 AM

IrvingSnodgrass

I didn't read the rest. Perhaps I'd better go back to the site.

3371. CalGal - 2/10/2000 1:05:35 AM

Sorry, folks, it can't be all that impressive an achievement if the Ambiguity Queen passed it, too.

3372. SnowOwl - 2/10/2000 1:06:55 AM

Watch out, Moties. I've also passed the test and I intend to deal very severely with anyone I see using alot, my pet grammar peeve.

3373. CalGal - 2/10/2000 1:10:37 AM

Your/you're and it's/its are the ones that snag at me. If I see a post of mine where I missed grabbing it, I just cringe.

I await the day someone tests for egregious use of adverbs.

3374. SnowOwl - 2/10/2000 1:10:48 AM

Always the spoilsport, CalGal. BTW Candide, we still go tramping in the bush. When I tramp I often have a fag in my mouth at the same time, which is no mean achievement.

3375. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/10/2000 1:12:17 AM

Ooh, SnowOwl, that one drives me crazy, too.

3376. CalGal - 2/10/2000 1:12:52 AM

Snow,

You can gloat with impunity. You write sentences that everyone understands.

3377. CalGal - 2/10/2000 1:13:20 AM

And quit smoking, dammit.

(sorry, it's the Californian in me.)

3378. CalGal - 2/10/2000 1:14:10 AM

Oh, and btw:

When I tramp I often have a fag in my mouth at the same time, which is no mean achievement.

This doesn't translate into American real well, toots.

3379. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/10/2000 1:14:48 AM

I meant "alot" in 3375.

I should keep a list of all the errors which I see again and again around here.

3380. Candide - 2/10/2000 1:15:33 AM

SnowOwl

It's a contradictory experience - striding in the fresh air and inhaling chemicals.

Do you think our basic grounding as infants is the explanation for our impeccable results?

Tramping still. I remember a splendid cartoon about that by the late wonderful A.S.Patterson in the Auckland Weekly

3381. CalGal - 2/10/2000 1:16:12 AM

(continuation of 3378:)

But not everyone can walk and give a blowjob at the same time, so you're right--it's certainly not a mean achievement.

3382. Candide - 2/10/2000 1:17:13 AM

CalGal
NYAH, NYAH, NYAH, NYAH & NYAH.

3383. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/10/2000 1:18:25 AM

I tied the other test at the Word Police... the "Sex and Gender Crimes" one. It's even worse than the first, and I definitely disagree with some of their arbitrary decisions on usage.

But I passed anyway, because I can read the minds of prescriptivists quite well.

3384. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/10/2000 1:20:56 AM

tried, not tied.

Even when my grammar is correct, my typing is lousy.

3385. CalGal - 2/10/2000 1:21:36 AM

I can't find that test.

3386. SnowOwl - 2/10/2000 1:21:45 AM

Cal,

When I was writing a thesis I used to tear my hair out because no matter how hard I tried it never sounded academic enough to me. I've always wanted to be able to toss such phrases as hegemonic superstructure into my writing but I've never quite mastered the art of using elaborate sentences to say very little.

3387. CalGal - 2/10/2000 1:25:58 AM

Snow,

I'd teach you, but you'd have to read and understand my writing to learn the trick and I fear that's more work then any reward you might get.

3388. SnowOwl - 2/10/2000 1:26:17 AM

Cal,

#3381. I knew that. It's one of the very few language jokes I can make when I'm talking to an American.

Candide,

I do know that years of marking student essays has led to a deterioration in my own grammar and spelling. When you see the same mistake over and over again it tends to creep into your own writing.

3389. SnowOwl - 2/10/2000 1:27:49 AM

Oh, so far I'm coping with your writing quite well, Cal. But then perhaps my reading comprehension leaves something to be desired.

3390. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/10/2000 1:27:57 AM

SnowOwl:
It's on the main page at the bottom of the left-hand column.

Be thankful you never developed a predilection for excessive verbosity. Such behaviors must be ardently eschewed.

3391. SnowOwl - 2/10/2000 1:32:29 AM

Haha Irv, I couldn't write sentences like that no matter how hard I tried, although I have used the word predilection once in my life. Unfortunately, I spelled it wrongly.

3392. CalGal - 2/10/2000 1:33:18 AM

Snow,

Naw, you only think you understand. That's the problem. Assumption space can be spoooooooky.

3393. Candide - 2/10/2000 1:34:08 AM

IrvingSnodgrass

I too passed the Gender Test. I too had one quibble, but since I lack the technical vocabulary to defend it I'll just mull over it sulkily. I second-guessed the so and sos and scored 100 per cent.

SnowOwl

I find that living in Australia has confused me totally. I never knew why I was right but I had a good feeling for why things sounded wrong. The personal pronoun tragedy in Australia has ruined me.

Nobody in Australia says "me". It's always "myself" to avoid the "I"/"me" embarrassment. I never had any problems before. Now I'm totally insecure.

3394. CalGal - 2/10/2000 1:36:30 AM

What is the Gender test?

3395. Candide - 2/10/2000 1:39:11 AM

IrvingSnodgrass

Have you seen the Faulty Towers episode where Bernard Cribbins plays the role of a verbose little man whom John Cleese mistakes for a pending restaurant inspector?

3396. CalGal - 2/10/2000 1:39:31 AM

I found it.

That's stupid. Who would use "woman" as an adjective? What the hell is "female" for?

3397. Candide - 2/10/2000 1:41:13 AM

CalGal

If you look at the "Atlantic Monthly" Word Police page you will discover the Gender Test at the bottomish left.

3398. SnowOwl - 2/10/2000 1:41:44 AM

Every reading is a rewriting, CalGal. It doesn't matter what you think you meant, it's what I think you meant that counts.

Candide,

I've stopped worrying about things like that. Now, as long as people understand what I'm saying the way I say it seems of little importance.

3399. Candide - 2/10/2000 1:43:31 AM

Snowowl

True. But it's the loss of a faculty that disturbs me.

3400. SnowOwl - 2/10/2000 1:51:29 AM

But I'm sure your language has been enriched in other ways, Candide. Your experiences overseas must have expanded your knowledge in ways that you probably don't even notice yourself.

3401. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/10/2000 1:54:37 AM

I'll wait and discuss my quibbles with the tests later, when people have had a chance to take them.

I read the "Word Court" columns they're linked to, which are really quite good, and not prescriptivist at all. The tests, otoh, are silly.

Candide:
The subject/object pronoun confusion is everywhere in the English speaking world. And you can blame prescriptivists, who once taught that it was correct to use subject forms in the object place ("It is I.") because it made English like Latin or some such nonsense.

You can expect English to drop the distinction eventually, since it carries no meaning (it is only relevant to case languages) and adopt a single (possibly gender neutral) set of pronouns for all cases. But we won't be around when it happens.

3402. Candide - 2/10/2000 1:56:23 AM

SnowOwl

It's true. I wish I could start over again, knowing what I know today - if you'll forgive the platitude.

3403. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/10/2000 2:03:07 AM

Candide:
I've seen all the episodes of Fawlty Towers, but it was so many years ago that I've forgotten the specifics.

3404. Candide - 2/10/2000 2:04:24 AM

IrvingSnodgrass
Regarding 'being around when the change happens'.

I'm not in any way hostile to change, and it wouldn't matter if I were.

I actually love all dialects when they are true to themselves. Even "Fraffly". They are keys to complex psychologies and cultural groups.

I suppose what disturbs me is when I lose things I have valued. That's the "Catch 22" in nationalism and globalisation. Excessive fondness for the past can produce a form of fascism.

How to love Shakespeare and Dante without becoming a fossil. (I don't incidentally think that producing Shakespeare in modern dress necessarily avoids that pitfall.)

3405. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/10/2000 2:20:13 AM

Candide:
Well, that's what I've been saying. It doesn't matter if you want to hang on to language which is changing... you can't win.

A more interesting exercise is to predict language change in the future.

For example, everything in the Word Police list is going to change. Anything people find confusion in will change. Anything unnecessary will disappear. Anything too complex will be simplified (especially as English becomes an international language).

I don't extend this to spelling reform, though, since such a move would cut us off from our past, and that would be disastrous.

3406. Candide - 2/10/2000 2:27:30 AM

IrvingSnodgrass
In Australia we flirt a little with American spelling. Note the name of the Australian Labor Party. I feel as free as Samual Johnson to choose whether to use Z orS in some words.

Bernard Shaw advocated a form of rational spelling. I like Italian because it is - mainly - phonetical. But it is loaded with traps of syllabic stress. It's by no means the syllable one expects to be stressed that is stressed. Maori is another phonetic language as you know, although the spelling was applied after the speech.

3407. Candide - 2/10/2000 2:35:31 AM

But I'd better call the good Dr. SamuEl Johnson.

3408. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/10/2000 2:39:15 AM

Candide:
yes, I've seen GBS's spelling design, and many others. But if English were ever to reform spelling, it would take away the greatest asset of the language. Can you imagine how it would be if only scholars could unlock the treasures in libraries?

As for American and British spelling, if you think Oz has a little confusion, you should see Canada, where both spelling systems are commonly used, often by the same writer. Fortunately, the differences between British and American spelling mostly consist of "ou" vs "o" and "s" vs "z," so it never affects understanding.

3409. Candide - 2/10/2000 3:07:19 AM

IrvingSnodgrass

In the "Fawlty Towers" episode in question, a dreadful fussy little man who has phobias about everything speaks in frightful ornate circumlocutions until Basil says: "Why don't you talk proper?" "Why don't you speak normally?"

Bernard Cribbins is one of the funniest comic actors in Britain.

3410. stostosto - 2/10/2000 5:55:59 AM

Cal #3315

I agree to pronounce Montréal, Cal
so it's rhyming with handsome and tall, Gal
But I part on banal
which I rhyme on canal
So just bite me if you have the gall, gal.

3411. Candide - 2/10/2000 6:13:25 AM

stostosto for a Dane out of water
your limerick's rather a snorter.
Snorter's one of my Dad's
youthful words with the lads
Before he became trapped with a daughter.

3412. Thoughtful - 2/10/2000 8:54:07 AM

Interesting study done many years back (I believe it was of nuns because they had preserved their earlier works) that showed a very strong correlation between how gramatically complex the child's writing was at around age 7 and the incidence of alzheimer's in later life. The more complex the grammar used early on, the less likely they were to get alzheimer's.

Re misused words, I strongly suspect it has something to do with how the brain stores words as to why so many homonyms get misused. It's almost as if the brain filter that does the careful sorting gets shut down or diminished in the typing process. I've noticed an increased problem with that as I've spent more and more time typing on line. I've noticed it in e-mails from others as well. The one that blew me away was my own e-mail to someone at work where I used hear instead of here....I was astonished. Your/you're, their/there are bad enough, but hear for here? Unforgivable.

3413. stostosto - 2/10/2000 10:01:55 AM

Thoughtful:
Here, here!

3414. DanDillon - 2/10/2000 11:32:27 AM

Irv,
I read the "Word Court" columns...which are not prescriptivist at all.

Odd you think so. I find them not the least bit descriptive, perhaps even borderline fussy. There's a tone Wallraff uses from time to time to cast subtle aspersions.

3415. DanDillon - 2/10/2000 11:33:18 AM

I passed the test by the way. Perfect score.

You're all under arrest.

3416. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/10/2000 12:23:49 PM

Dan:
I didn't find the columns overly prescriptivist because Wallraff supports forms commonly used versus those traditionally prescribed. But I know what you mean about "borderline fussy"... I found the tests to be rather irritating and at times arbitrary. My answers often consisted of guessing her mind set (though I did pretty well at it).

3417. wonkers2 - 2/10/2000 6:38:28 PM

CONFESSIONAL Here are a few pronunciations I just learned from my newly arrived "The Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations":

ague AY-gyoo(rhymes with plague you) not aig, rhymes with vague.

Attila AT'l-uh. All these years I and all my friends have been saying uh-TILL-uh.

basalt buh-SAWLT, not BAY-sawlt

Chilean CHIL-ee-in, not chi-LAY-in

more later

3418. wonkers2 - 2/10/2000 7:23:13 PM

CONFESSTIONAL CONT'D

puerile PYOOR-ul not PWARE-ul as I've been saying it all these years.

rathskellar RAHT-skel-ur. Avoid the half-anglicized RAT-skel-ur and the spelling pronunciation RATH-skel-ur. Alas I was not brought up among the cognoscenti! I have always heard and said the latter.

The author vacillates from quite prescriptive and intolerant of what he deems beastly mispronunciations to fairly tolerant, acknowledging the variety of American pronunciations for many words.

For example, "schism Traditionally and properly SIZ'm. Now usually SKIZ'm." He has three pages on the history of the pronunciation of this word.

One thing is clear from perusing the book. Americans pronounce many words in a variety of different ways most of which are listed as at least acceptable by one authority or another. I could detect no rhyme nor reason for determining which pronunciations are preferable, which are acceptable and which are beastly mispronunciations. However, I did find myself agreeing with the author more often (silent t) than not. It is a popularized book not a scholarly one.

3419. wonkers2 - 2/10/2000 7:37:48 PM

Four [mis?]pronunciations that grate frequently on my ear

AR-tic for ARC-tic. (arctic)

may-OR-ul for MAY-uh-rul. (mayoral)

e-lec-TOR-ul for e-LEC-tuh-rul. (electoral)

for-TAY for fort. (forte)

3420. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/10/2000 8:32:34 PM

wonkers:
I'll try and hold back the more vsiceral parts of my reaction to this book.

Does the author have any linguistic qualifications at all? Who made him God when it comes to judging what's right and what's wrong?

I would guess that some of the pronunciations listed above are used by the majority of speakers, and in my book, that makes them correct (but doesn't necessarily mean that other pronunciations are incorrect).

3421. CalGal - 2/10/2000 8:36:40 PM

For-TAY is standard pronunciation in the states, I believe(?) Certainly in California.

3422. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/10/2000 8:50:34 PM

CalGal:
I checked, and "fort" is the preferred pronunciation (unless one is using the musical term, which comes from a different root). The word forte in English comes from French "fort," and the e was tacked on to make it look cute.

But I say "for-TAY," too, and I sure hear it a lot more than "fort." If it isn't the preferred form, it is certainly an acceptable form.

3423. CalGal - 2/10/2000 8:55:03 PM

I wonder if it was confused with the musical term at some point here.

In the case of "banal" and "forte", I wonder if it was misused on a tv show or movie at some point and the usage caught on.

3424. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/10/2000 9:03:12 PM

CalGal:
I too wondered about confusion with the musical term. It sure sounds likely, but my source didn't mention it.

The difference between "banal" and "forte" is that your pronunciation of "banal" has never been incorrect. It is the standard British pronunciation. I'm sure its popularity in the USA is due to people wanting to sound "cultured."

Different forces are at work with "forte"... probably relating to the fact that "forte" sounds more cultured and foreign (even though it demonstrably is not the correct form in French, the language it was borrowed from).

In other words, "banal" is an attempt to sound cultured by using a British form, and "forte" is an attempt to sound cultured by using a made-up form.

3425. CalGal - 2/10/2000 9:26:19 PM

Well, that actually feels like the same force at work. But I've been thinking about this and I am wondering if the process doesn't go something like this:

At some point in a popular movie, the word was pronounced as "banALL" (or "forTAY")--maybe a TV show. Upscale yuppies, used to learning how to pronounce weird sushi orders, the "t" in the Spanish (or Mexican) way ("t" right at the teeth instead of behind them, I think?) and ordering various espresso drinks in proper Italian went "Hmm. I must have been pronouncing that word incorrectly all this time!"

That would explain the fact that all the high tech folk in my office, no matter what the region of the US (I ran it by some others today) pronounced "baNALL". AT some point we got the impression that we'd been pronouncing it incorrectly before, and fixed it.

So it's not so much pretension as it is the same reflex that causes us to learn how to reel off menu orders in flawless Greek/Japanese/Spanish/French/Thai/Afghan. We might be wretched monolinguals everywhere else, but damned if we don't sound like a native in a restaurant.

If I'm right, you would find the pronunciation in the high-end professional classes (high tech, legal, medical, and so on).

3426. Candide - 2/10/2000 10:13:25 PM

IrvingSnodgrass

Forte is also an Italian word and means 'strong' or 'loud' and the "fortay" pronunciation is correct, since phonetic pronunciation rules in Italian.

It is also a French word in which case it would be "fort" but I think the English usage is borrowed from the Italian.

3427. cmboyce - 2/10/2000 10:30:00 PM

Per AHD, the OF "fort" meant "strong" as well, so I suppose they all (Eng., Fr., It.) express variants of the same thing, so it might make sense for an English speaker to adopt any of the continental pronunciations. I've always thought, with Irv, that "forTAY" represented an effort on the part of English &/or American middle-class speakers of the 19th and early 20th centuries to appear cultured, ie, familiar with French. But I suppose it might have represented the same thing but with the object being to display familiarity with Italian terms, especially in connection with opera. Candide, were the English particularly hip to Verdi and co. especially early? Or, earlier, to Monteverdi or Vivaldi or someone? They certainly took to Italian painting very early (compared to, say, German philosophy or French poetry).

3428. wonkers2 - 2/10/2000 10:47:09 PM

"Charles Harrington Elster is a writer, broadcaster, and logophile. A guest contributor to the New Yorki times magazine's 'On Language' column, he is an occasional language commentator for NPR and cohosts a weekly talk show on San dieog public radio called A WAY WITH WORDS. His books include the vocabulary-building mystery novel TOOTH AND NAIL and THERE'S A WORD FOR IT! He lives in San Diego with his wife and two daughters." From the book cover.

As I said, the book is a popular, not a scholarly work. He seemed to arrive at most of his judgments by checking a bunch of dictionaries, new and old and by his own personal preferences.

3429. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/11/2000 12:16:59 AM

CalGal:
You are seriously overestimating the effect of television or film on pronunciation. IF TV and films did have the impact you posit, regional accents would disappear.

I'm sure the effect you mention may happen with individual speakers, but for the population at large, what you hear on TV is a reflection of what people say, and does not have the power to change language use.

Candide:
If you look at my Message # 3422, you'll see that I mentioned the two forms of "forte" in English. They come from separate languages (one from French, and one from Italian) and are listed separately in all dictionaries I've looked at. The word from French has a preferred pronunciation of "fort," while the Italian word has only one accepted pronunciation: "for-TAY." Although the Italian word may have influenced the pronunciation of the other one, the word we use to mean "something a person does well" was borrowed from French.

wonkers:
As I suspected... the man's only qualification is being a "logophile" (word lover). The sad thing is, there are people out there who will listen to him, a man whose only claim to expertise is that he likes to tell other people how he feels they should speak.

3430. CalGal - 2/11/2000 12:47:03 AM

IF TV and films did have the impact you posit, regional accents would disappear.

Ack. No, I meant nothing so dramatic, and I was just idly speculating. I was thinking of particular words--the sort of word that is very familiar, but isn't often said. Words like "banal" and "forte".

It doesn't have to have been a TV show or movie, but that seems a likely scenario--something like Frasier, for example, or Seinfeld. But TV is only one requirement for the change--the other one is food or lifestyle.

Suppose you are also the sort of person who eats out at restaurants of every nationality--and all of a sudden you hear this word you know by sight quite well (hey, it's on all the vocabulary tests) and wow! you didn't know that's what how it was pronounced! Oh, well. File that away with "bhoti kabab" and "bun mi".

If it's not exactly that, it might be something like it. You've got a whole group of people who are regularly learning new words (but not languages) due to the explosion of different cuisines in the US. They are all of a type in income and class--and probably watch a lot of the same TV shows and movies. So if they all heard a fairly common word that isn't often pronounced, they could process it the same way.

3431. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/11/2000 1:02:37 AM

CalGal:
TV and film simply don't have that sort of impact. One individual doesn't have that sort of impact.

The true answer lies in the other part of your hypothesis: "They are all of a type in income and class" -- meaning they talk to each other. It's daily speech which makes the difference. That's where language change occurs.

3432. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/11/2000 1:05:23 AM

Returning to the "forte" issue... does anyone here say "fort" for this word? (supposedly the preferred pronunciation).

I honestly don't think I've ever heard anyone say "fort."

3433. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/11/2000 1:08:48 AM

I know the etymology reveals it was originally "fort," but if everyone says "forTAY," then it's pretty silly for "word lovers" like Elster to tell us we're wrong, isn't it?

If we were to pronounce every word in accordance with its etymology, we'd have to start speaking Old English (with a healthy dose of Norman French thrown in).

3434. CalGal - 2/11/2000 1:11:37 AM

"They are all of a type in income and class" -- meaning they talk to each other.

Sure. But it had to have been introduced somewhere. I'd put money on it being TV or a movie--probably a funny line, but not a famous one. And I think that particular class is picking up a lot of words lately because they all eat out. Even if we're wretchedly monolingual.

On "forte"--from the online Merriam's:

In forte we have a word derived from French that in its "strong point" sense has no entirely satisfactory pronunciation. Usage writers have denigrated \'for-"tA\ and \'for-tE\ because they reflect the influence of the Italian-derived 2forte. Their recommended pronunciation \'fort\, however, does not exactly reflect French either: the French would write the word le fort and would rhyme it with English for. So you can take your choice, knowing that someone somewhere will dislike whichever variant you choose. All are standard, however. In British English \'fo-"tA\ and \'fot\ predominate; \'for-"tA\ and \for-'tA\ are probably the most frequent pronunciations in American English.

3435. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/11/2000 1:23:22 AM

CalGal:
Well, I disagree about the mechanism by which a pronunciation gains popularity. But nuff said.

As for forte, that is very interesting commentary. However, I think that, for the vast majority of speakers (Mr. Elster excluded), we have arrived at an "entirely satisfactory pronunciation." And that, of course, is "forTAY."

3436. Candide - 2/11/2000 2:22:38 AM

IrvingSnodgrass

Forte is used exactly the same way in Italy as it is in France. Essere forte "to be good at". As in French the word has many flexible uses. Like you I've never heard anything BUT 'fortay' which leads me to suspect that the word was brought into English from Italy.

In all my travels that's the only pronunciation I've ever heard in English.

3437. ilyavinarsky - 2/11/2000 2:28:40 AM

3438. ilyavinarsky - 2/11/2000 2:29:17 AM

Is it still Karlsson? This url changes daily to a different cartoon.

3439. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/11/2000 2:31:09 AM

Candide:
Check out an etymological dictionary, or the etymology listing of any dictionary of English. There is ample proof that the word was borrowed twice into English: once from Old French, and once from Modern Italian. You can look it up.

A case can be made that the forTAY pronunciation has been influenced by the Italian borrowing, but the two words are separate in English, and were borrowed separately.

3440. Candide - 2/11/2000 2:31:50 AM

cmboyce

The English staged Nabucco in 1846, only four years after its Italian premiere. I think they cottoned on fairly early. The Germans, strangely enough, revived Verdi in the 1920s when he was out of fashion elsewhere. They performed him in German.

3441. Candide - 2/11/2000 2:35:21 AM

IrvingSnodgrass

I believe you. I haven't really read the discussion carefully enough. It's hot (which I realise is nothing to you) and I've just come back from the shops and am trying to catch up. I will FORTify myself with something restorative soon.

3442. Angel-Five - 2/11/2000 6:12:22 AM

Hey, Irv.

Does anybody besides me pronounce ring and wring differently? I actually start the latter with a soft w.

3443. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/11/2000 6:43:04 AM

A5:
You're a throwback.

I don't think anyone has pronounced the w in centuries.

A fair number of people (though still a minority) pronounce the "wh" in words like "white," though. (It is pre-aspirated, and sounds like "hw," which was once its form for all speakers.)

3444. Angel-Five - 2/11/2000 6:52:56 AM

That's what my linguistics prof said.
When I asked her about the difference between the r and wr sounds, she looked at me like I was talking about green cheese from the moon. She asked me to demonstrate and sat there with this puzzled look on her face as she watched me form the sounds, like Darwin eyeing a tortoise.

I imagine things like that spring from the fact that I learned a lot of my vocabulary through reading the words instead of hearing them.

3445. Angel-Five - 2/11/2000 6:56:48 AM

I do that too!!

Witch vs which.

I think I make the ch a little harder for witch, too, but only when I'm enunciating clearly.

3446. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/11/2000 7:03:46 AM

Well, the "wh" thing is not that uncommon. It is found in all dialects of English, but isn't the prevalent form in any dialect. It tends to be class-based, with the middle and upper classes more likely to use the "wh."

3447. scottloar - 2/11/2000 7:42:17 AM

Few pronunciations are more grating than the aspirated "wh" as in Wheel of Fortune.

3448. DanDillon - 2/11/2000 3:20:46 PM

There's an historical precedent for this grating pronunciation.

3449. CalGal - 2/11/2000 3:24:48 PM

It tends to be class-based, with the middle and upper classes more likely to use the "wh."

That's odd. When I lived in Jedda, most of my father's fellow employees and their families came from Missouri (KC area). Rarely more than a step or two removed from hillbilly. They remain the only people that I've known who pronounced "wh" as "hw".

3450. Candide - 2/11/2000 3:32:05 PM

I was deeply indoctrinated with "wh" as a child, which is lucky because now Maori pronunciation of maori names in New Zealand is the norm, and that sound is very common in Maori.

Which witch was a favourite infant joke.

3451. Candide - 2/11/2000 3:34:29 PM

ScottLoar

I don't believe I've ever heard anything more than the faintest ghost of an aspirate - if that- on "wheel".

3452. PelleNilsson - 2/11/2000 3:49:08 PM

"So everyone hears is a little differently. Like just now - they heard your Outer Qwghlmian accent, and assumed you were delivering an insult. But I could tell you were saying that you believed, based on a rumor you heard last Tuesday in the meat market, that Mary was convalescing normally and would be back on her feet within a week."

"I was trying to say that she looked beautiful", Waterhouse protests.

"Ah!" Rod says. "Then you should have said 'Gxnn bhldh sqrd m!'"

"That's what I said!"

"No, you confused the mid-glottal with the frontal glottal," Rod says.

(Cryptonomicon, p. 552)

3453. Candide - 2/11/2000 3:54:23 PM

Pelle
hahahaha

3454. hashke - 2/11/2000 7:35:59 PM

Ilya:

Karlsson? Ne znayu.

#3438 ne plokhaya karikatura, no bez perevoda sovsem ne ponimaetsya zdes'.

3455. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/11/2000 8:29:10 PM

Candide:
The Maori sound which is spelled "wh" is not anything like the English "wh" (or even "w")... It is a voiceless bilabial fricative, closer to "f" than any other English sound.

Alistair once mentioned (if I'm remembering correctly) that the further north you go, the more likely you are to hear pakehas saying the sound properly (or, as close to properly as you can in English). My own experience bears this out, as a friend from Whangarei pronounces his town as "Fangarei."

3456. DanDillon - 2/11/2000 8:36:28 PM

Fangarei

Isn't that a creature from Star Trek?

3457. Candide - 2/11/2000 8:43:38 PM

IrvingSnodgrass
True Fanganooi for Wanganui that in my youth was shamelessly pronounced Wongahnyooie.

I did know the difference but was being a bit general because the wh prepares the ear and the lips for the Maori f which is a bit more wh-ish than a straight wh.

3458. Candide - 2/11/2000 8:44:54 PM

Whangarei is a place of rare beauty.

3459. SnowOwl - 2/11/2000 8:45:16 PM

Irving,

You're quite right, although more people are now at least attempting to pronounce Maori words correctly. I think this is partly due to an increased emphasis on things Maori in schools, partly to the influence of TV and radio (announcers do now try to pronounce Maori words correctly) and partly to the higher profile of Maori in the community.

3460. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/11/2000 8:52:41 PM

Candide, SnowOwl:
It's good to know that people are trying to pronounce Maori words correctly. There are no difficult sounds in Maori, apart from the "wh," which is pronounced like an "f" without using the teeth.

Etymologically, the Maori "wh" descends from proto-Austronesian "p" (campare Maori whitu, from Proto-Austronesian *pitu 'eight').

3461. SnowOwl - 2/11/2000 8:53:25 PM

Irving,

Would you explain to me the difference in pronunciation between North and South Island Maori? Is this just a regional thing like a dialect, or is there some more complex explanation? I'm thinking of things like Aorangi/Aoraki, Ngai Tahu (pronounced something like Kai Tahu down here).

3462. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/11/2000 8:59:20 PM

SnowOwl:
I read soemthing about Maori dialects a year or so ago, but I can't recall all the details. As I recall, there are several distinct dialects of Maori, which are generally mutually intelligible. I'll see if I can find my source.

3463. Candide - 2/11/2000 9:02:12 PM

correction
"a bit more wh-ish than a straight wh." of course I meant a straight F.

Thanks Irving for the filled-in answer.

3464. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/11/2000 9:02:28 PM

I read something about it, too.

3465. Candide - 2/11/2000 9:05:33 PM

IrvingSnodgrass and SnowOwl

I have been told that South Island place names often substitute L for the North Island R.

3466. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/11/2000 9:14:37 PM

Looks like SnowOwl's evidence shows a South Island substitution of "k" for North Island "ng."

I'm still looking for a source on Maori dialects.

Candide:
Do you have examples of the 'l" to "r" shift? (it's a common one in languages of the world)

3467. SnowOwl - 2/11/2000 9:20:29 PM

Thanks, Irv. Don't go to any trouble, it's just idle curiosity on my part.

Candide,

I'm wracking my brains, but I can't think of any substitution of l for r.

3468. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/11/2000 9:28:11 PM

This is my favorite Maori language site. I've been a frequent visitor:

te re maori

According to Ethnologue, the dialects of Maori are: North Auckland, South Island, Taranaki, Wanganui, Bay of Plenty, Rotorua-Taupo, Bay of Plenty, and the extinct Moriori dialect of the Chatham Islands. The fact that almost all dialects are found on the North Island points to it as the first area of Maori settlement (and a greater population base).

Still looking for more information.

3469. hashke - 2/11/2000 9:33:08 PM

Irv:

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Recent hashkean transmutation:

The Maori things change, the Maori they remain the Samoa.

3470. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/11/2000 9:43:47 PM

SnowOwl:
I'm interested, too. Austronesian linguistics has always been my passion.

I haven't found my source, but I found an interesting homepage for South Island Maoris:

Ngai Tahu

I really would like to learn more about Maori dialectology. I wish I had access to a good linguistics library (my personal library of several hundred books is probably the most extensive in Bali).

Hashké:
Good one! Hawaii you doing, anyway? Anything Niue to report?

3471. Candide - 2/11/2000 9:55:25 PM

IrvingSnodgrass and Snowowl

There's a lake south of Dunedin called Waihola..
There's Little Akaloa in Banks Peninsula near Akaroa.

3472. Candide - 2/11/2000 10:05:09 PM

Hashke

Manawatu doing?
You speak the Raratonga?

3473. Candide - 2/11/2000 10:09:31 PM

IrvingSnodgrass

I've got the first attempt at a Maori dictionary by a missionary who was one of Samuel Marsden's lads.
A Dictionary of the Maori Language by H.W.Williams
published in 1975 by A.R. Shearer, Government Printer, Wellington, New Zealand.

I also have English -Maori Dictionary by Bruce Biggs
published in 1966 by A.H.& A.W.Reed Ltd

3474. Candide - 2/11/2000 10:18:54 PM

IrvingSnodgrass

I have a dear old friend in Whangarei who has just written to me out of the blue for the first time in decades. Since we parted she has become a considerable archaeologist specialising in Maori sites. I'm sure she will have picked up a good deal of Maori information over the years. She originates from Shropshire and when we were studentsin New Zealand we all used to tease her unmercifully because of the way she pronounced "William" as "Wiyiam."

I'll try to pick her brains about Maori things in general.

3475. Candide - 2/11/2000 10:23:13 PM

IrvingSnodgrass

I think you missed my message in International about the Portuguese upper-class bimbo who after the fall of fascism said :"The people are not ready for it. They are simple people. They need to be directed."
This was in reference to some remarks on the thread about Indonesia.

3476. Candide - 2/11/2000 10:26:56 PM

Bruce Biggs says:
"Pronounce wh either as in when, or simply as F.

3477. hashke - 2/11/2000 10:48:22 PM

Irv:

Good one! Hawaii you doing, anyway? Anything Niue to report?

Maui or less the same, Iban if I do say so.

3478. hashke - 2/11/2000 10:52:33 PM

Candide:

You speak the Raratonga?

Not in Ilongo time.

3479. profemeritus - 2/11/2000 10:54:45 PM

Pak hashke

Did you Taiwan on, Urdu you always talk that way?

3480. hashke - 2/11/2000 11:03:07 PM

Pak Gurubesar:

I hate to Boro you with it, and I don't want to Dutch the issue but as Jukun see it's almost time to go Tibet.

3481. Candide - 2/11/2000 11:40:49 PM

hashke and Profemeritus

U Rawhiti.

3482. hashke - 2/11/2000 11:49:22 PM

Candide:

You're not Rawang about that.

3483. hashke - 2/11/2000 11:49:53 PM

Vedic lever.

3484. Candide - 2/11/2000 11:58:19 PM

hashke ...tenuously

Ngai Tuahriri crever.

3485. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/12/2000 12:15:57 AM

Candide:
I saw your message in Int'l, but didn't have a response to make. Countries often think their people aren't ready for democracy. Maybe the people haven't been educated, but everyone is ready for democracy.

Bruce Biggs is wrong about the "wh" in Maori. Pronouncing it as "f" is acceptable, but "wh" is way off.

I hope your friend in Whangarei can shed some light on the dialectal changes in Maori.

Hashké:
Sorry I wasn't around for most of the puns. I had to take Apia. Please give us Moorea.

3486. hashke - 2/12/2000 12:19:31 AM

Irv:

You had a Fula bladder?

3487. Candide - 2/12/2000 12:20:02 AM

IrvingSnodgrass

You'll have to slug it out with Bruce Biggs. At the time of publication he was Head of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Auckland.

He did say that the "wh" was as New Zealanders pronounced it. It was a pronunciation guide for New Zealanders.

3488. Candide - 2/12/2000 12:25:05 AM

No I won't make a pun using "Waipu". There are limits.

If you're Ngati Hauiti you are doesn't mata whero are.

sorry

3489. hashke - 2/12/2000 12:25:12 AM

A too Fula bladder is an Afa feeling.

3490. Candide - 2/12/2000 12:31:33 AM

Especially if there's not hinemoa Pai pa.

3491. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/12/2000 12:35:12 AM

Candide:
"Anthropology"?? I rest my case. Gimme a good linguist any day. It doesn't matter if some Kiwis say a "wh"... the "f" is closer to the original.

Hashké:
Asmat as I'd like to stay, I've Garo go now. Tuvalu!

3492. hashke - 2/12/2000 12:40:32 AM

Candide:

Vayu Goan?

3493. Candide - 2/12/2000 12:46:45 AM

hashke

Otamarakau dinner.

3494. Candide - 2/12/2000 7:06:34 PM

IrvingSnodgrass

yes, the F IS closer but the WH is closeish.

3495. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/12/2000 11:21:23 PM

Candide:
But a "w" or a "p" is even closer than "wh." I can give you the linguistic reasons, if you wish.

3497. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/12/2000 11:31:57 PM

Candide:

I have found some interesting sites which are devoted to the unique nature of Australian speech. I haven't looked at all of them closely, but I noticed that most of them list expressions which are common to most varieties of English. But there are plenty of great Australianisms listed.

I'd be interested in your opinion of these sites, and how you would rate them against each other. I plan to link them to this thread.

The invitation for comments also goes out to our Kiwis.

Aussie Slang Source

Strine

Outrageous Aussie Sayings

Larry’s Aussie Slang and Phrase Dictionary

Australian Slang Dictionary

Feather Foot’s Aussie Slang Page

Australian Dictionary

Australian Slang (with ‘Waltzing Matilda’ playing in the background)

Australian Idiom and Slang

Aussie Slang

Aussie Slang and Sayings Page

(If anyone is wondering where the deleted post went, I tried posting these links, but had a curly quote instead of a straight quote on the "new" label, and it screwed up the entire page. What a mess.)

3498. hashke - 2/12/2000 11:41:50 PM

Really grouse stuff, Irv! Thanks!

3499. SnowOwl - 2/12/2000 11:42:43 PM

Irving,

I've just had a quick glance at the first site. The thing that strikes me immediately is that a lot of the words listed are not slang, or at least not what I'd regard as slang, for example, words like aluminium. biscuit, balaclava, and bitumen.

Is there some definition for slang?

3500. Candide - 2/12/2000 11:46:57 PM

IrvingSnodgrass

I will look at the site.

I have a small crisis of conscience. I have translated from Italian a short piece about globalisation in which he raises the problem of glbalisation of language and culture. I shouldn't really post it on the Mote at all, but if I do, should I put it here or on International do you think? He wrote it after Davos.

3501. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/13/2000 12:08:20 AM

SnowOwl:
Yes, I noticed that, too. I think some of the sites are trying to include any words which are specifically Australian, whether they be colloquial or not. The words you give as examples have different meanings in Oz than in other English-speaking nations.

Some of the sites apear to be better than others, too, and I'd like feedback from Antipodeans on this.

Candide:
The best thing to do is post it on a website and link to it from both threads. I, for one, would be very interested in it.

If you don't have a website, I'll be glad to put it up on my site. E-mail me if you're interested.

3502. Candide - 2/13/2000 12:17:30 AM

IrvingSnodgrass

Email sent.

Have studied Outrageous sayings -insults.
Many I suspect are apocryphal but have an authentic style. The ones I knew for certain were :
May your chooks turn into emus and kick the dunny down.
You little bugger
Ya bloody galah

and numbers: 225;237;229;179;121;117;97;70;61.

3503. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/13/2000 12:31:30 AM

Candide:
Got your e-mail. I'll put it up on my site now. Would you prefer to post the link, or should I?

I really like the first of the insults above. The second ("You little bugger") is pretty common in all forms of English (but I love the way Australians say "buggah").

3504. Candide - 2/13/2000 12:33:05 AM

Irving

Second email sent. I saw one of the pars that would most interest you and it was a mess. Not brilliant now but better. It was almost untranslatable.

3505. Candide - 2/13/2000 12:34:43 AM

And untranslateable.

It was a buggah.

3506. Candide - 2/13/2000 12:37:48 AM

IrvingSnodgrass

You know I can't do links. I WILL ----but not yet.

If you think it sufficiently interesting, would you post it if you don't mind?

3507. SnowOwl - 2/13/2000 12:42:02 AM

Irv,

I think the outrageous Aussie sayings site is probably not as genuine as some of the others. I don't mean that nobody has ever used some of the phrases, just that they're certainly not all well known. And a hell of a lot of them are actually Cockney rhyming slang.

I'm interested that you said the words I listed above have different meanings in Oz than in other English speaking places. I thought they were the common meanings in everywhere but the USA.

3508. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/13/2000 1:01:17 AM

Here is the link to Candide's translation:

Umberto Eco on Globalisation

Geocities isn't working very well at the moment, so please keep trying.

3509. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/13/2000 1:05:23 AM

SnowOwl:
I'm interested that you said the words I listed above have different meanings in Oz than in other English speaking places. I thought they were the common meanings in everywhere but the USA.

Are you saying the USA is not an English-speaking place? Note that I didn't say "all other English-speaking places."

Some of the terms (aluminium) are simply differences between US/Canadian and British/Antipodean English. They certainly don't belong on a site like this. Others (biscuit, for example) seem to have a different meaning in Australia than in other English-apeaking nations I am aware of.

3510. Candide - 2/13/2000 1:05:36 AM

IrvingSnodgrass

The Australian idiom is fairly genuine. They had one of a set so I thought I'd tell you some others. My husband knows them all I think - I don't - but he's undisturbable at the moment.
Queenslanders are called "Banana benders" (included)
West Australians are called "Sand gropers"
South Australians are called "Crow eaters".

Underground mutton was a coomon name for "rabbit meat."
Pigs! for 'nonsense!" was more usually
"Pig's arse".
I remember the Dunedin educated and New Zealand-born Australian of the Year, the saintly Dr Fred Hollows who saved the sight of millions of Eritreans and others, when being interviewed about a subject about which he felt passionately, roared repeatedly into the ABC microphone "Pigs Arse!" He was in the last stages of cancer at the time and didn't suffer fools gladly at the best of times. He was distressed because all sorts of political sensitivities were preventing people from admitting that certain traditional Aboriginal practices made them extremely vulnerable to HIV. He called a spade a bloody shovel.

3511. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/13/2000 1:10:27 AM

Candide:
Great comments. Keep 'em coming.

3512. Candide - 2/13/2000 1:11:14 AM

IrvingSnodgrass

Biscuit in the USA is what we call a "scone".

3513. SnowOwl - 2/13/2000 1:12:36 AM

Well, I wouldn't go so far as to say that they don't speak English in the States, but there's got to be something wrong with people who don't know their biscuits from their scones.

I think biscuit means the same in the UK, NZ and Australia.

3514. SnowOwl - 2/13/2000 1:15:28 AM

Rabbit here is mmore commonly called underground chicken. An interesting thing I've found is that Americans don't seem to know the term hogget (an older lamb)..and probably would never use the term "mutton dressed as lamb" (an older woman trying to act/look younger).

3515. SnowOwl - 2/13/2000 1:18:33 AM

There are some slight differences in usage between Australia and NZ. he's a bit of a dag is always used affectionately here, to mean he's a character. I see it can have a more derogatory meaning in Australia.

3516. Candide - 2/13/2000 1:18:56 AM

SnowOwl will know the answer to this.
When I was a New Zealand resident, those rubber sandals were known in NZ as "jandals". I don't know whether they still are.

In Australia they're called "thongs" and are looked down on by genteel establishments that often display a sign saying that people improperly dressed (no shirt or a singlet) and wearing thongs will not be admitted.

A friend from Paris was astonished to see signs in elegant Sydney department stores requesting people not to eat while in the store. "Would people do that?" he asked.

3517. Candide - 2/13/2000 1:23:03 AM

"Dag" was used affectionately in New Zealand, meaning a funny or amusing person. In Australia it can mean a totally revolting person.

NZ usage: "You're a bit of a dag."

Aussie usage: "She's really daggy."

3518. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/13/2000 1:32:40 AM

SnowOwl:
I was under the impression that "biscuit" meant something different in Australia than in England. And I know that it is different from the US (where it has a variety of meanings, but never means "cookie").

It's not surprising that Americans don't know words like "hogget" or use idioms relating to lambs. Because of cultural factors, lamb is rarely consumed in the US, and sheep farming is very rare... very different from the Antipodes.

"Dag" is one of my favorite Australianisms. I wonder if Americans know where the word comes from.

Candide:
Those rubber sandals are called "thongs" in the US, too. I think they're more accepted in the US than in most nations. Here in Indonesia, no one would ever wear them outside of the home, as they are considered shower sandals.

3519. Candide - 2/13/2000 1:37:15 AM

IrvingSnodgrass

Larry's Aussie slang and phrase dictionary is pretty genuine. I didn't know them all but even the unfamiliar rang true.

I was reminded of "Mexican" for Victorian. I had never heard New South Wales people being called "cockroaches" but since I'm one, how would I?

3520. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/13/2000 1:38:33 AM

Candide and SnowOwl:
I'm really enjoying your commentary on Antipodean terminology. Please continue!

Candide:
The Eco article is interesting. It represents what I take to be a typical European reaction. He seems to think that having a global language means that existing tongues will suffer. This is a silly, though not unheard of reaction. A global language (English, of course) is a useful tool for peoples of all nations to use to communicate, but is not going to replace existing languages and cultures.

3521. Candide - 2/13/2000 1:40:50 AM

The "scone" question is even more complicated. There are those who call it (as I do) SKON. And there are many in Britain who call it SKOAN. It's not just a Scottish difference. People in various English counties say SKOAN.

3522. SnowOwl - 2/13/2000 1:40:53 AM

Well, rattle me dags. Yes, Candide, thongs are still called jandals here and I've never known why. I have wondered if perhaps the original manufacturer here was called the Jandal Company or something similar as there seems no reason that I can think of that they'd get a name like that.

3523. Candide - 2/13/2000 1:42:25 AM

SKOAN to rhyme with JOAN.

3524. cmboyce - 2/13/2000 1:46:55 AM

This American, at least, doesn't know what "dag" means. What does "dag" mean?

But lamb is not so rarely eaten here, and there are plenty of sheep ranchers in America, if not to compare at all, per capita, to either of the Antipodean countries. As for "hogget", it sounds like a pretty technical term; it might take a sheepman to say whether it is current or not.

3525. Candide - 2/13/2000 1:48:01 AM

I actually can answer the "jandal" question. They were from Japan when they first appeared and they were thought of as Japanese sandals. They well may have been called that commercially. But Jandals stood for Japanese sandals.

3526. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/13/2000 1:48:03 AM

SnowOwl:
In Southeast Asia, thongs are called "Japanese sandals." Perhaps "jandals" is a contraction of that term?

Candide:
Interesting. I've never heard anyone but ignorant Americans call them "skoans." I've always heard "skon."

If you really want to confuse people, tell them it rhymes with "shone" (American "shoan," British "shon").

3527. SnowOwl - 2/13/2000 1:50:56 AM

cmboyce,

A dag is the messy bit that sticks around the rear of a sheep.

3528. Candide - 2/13/2000 1:51:19 AM

Irving
Italians have always felt very cut off from the English speaking world. I was always being reminded that the AngloSaxons (all English-speakers) were arrogant and knew nothing of Latin or much Asian, and African literature and ideas. Very true at the time actually.

It is true that the book publishers in Italy fall over themselves to get translations of all the newest books from all over the world.

3529. cmboyce - 2/13/2000 1:53:54 AM

The Webster's Third has "hogget" as "chiefly British", and defines it with a cross-ref to "HOG 2", which is sure enough a young sheep (&, apparantly, by extension the young of other domestic animals as well, as in "a hogg colt; a hogg bullock" [hogg is said to be the more ordinary spelling]. Hogg is from ME.

Well, can anyone say why a term that is used for pigs is also used for sheep? Does this not seem gratuitously obscurantist, if not downright hoggheaded? 'Scuse me: hogheaded.

3530. SnowOwl - 2/13/2000 1:54:36 AM

cmboyce,

Hogget is a technical term, but it's in wide use here. Sheep meat here is sold as lamb, hogget (2-tooth lamb, I think) or mutton (from older animals). In fact, most NZers prefer hogget to lamb, it has more flavour than lamb yet is not tough like mutton.

3531. Candide - 2/13/2000 1:57:15 AM

cmboyce

Yes we have all heard of the drama of the sheepmen versus the cattle men. And Australian sheep farmers are pretty cross with American sheep farmers at the moment because of their successful lobbying to exclude most Australian sheep meat.

Hogget is one year-old (yes Snowowl?) mutton. Not quite mutton but too old for lamb. many people consider it to have a superior flavour. It's rarely on the market nowadays but during my childhood was very common.

I have a wonderful idiomatic cook book written by an Australian Chinese cook in quaint English. he writes of "sheep-rank" and what to do to remove this unpleasant stink and flavour. It is his main preoccupation when handling sheep-meat.

3532. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/13/2000 2:03:59 AM

Candide:
I see you beat me to the "jandals" definition by 2 seconds.

CM:
In case SnowOwl's definition is unclear, "dags" are the bits of wool which stick together around a sheep's butt, full of encrusted shit, twigs and dirt.

CM, SnowOwl:
Lamb is not nearly in the same league as other meats in the US (beef, pork, chicken, turkey). I'm sure the boycott by American consumers of Antipodean lamb (however ill-conceived and stupid) is not as harmful as if they boycotted Aussie beef.

3533. cmboyce - 2/13/2000 2:04:49 AM

I think we'd just call that lamb. Mutton is very little eaten here, though I think it's possible that at least some of what is sold here as lamb might qualify as mutton elsewhere. I think "lamb" can legally refer to the meat of an animal up to 2 years old.

In the OED, "hog", apparantly the earliest form, is of quite obscure origin. In one of their enjoyably long etymological notes, the Murrylites, after dismissing several theories on what seem quite reasonable grounds, observe that the word comes in a group of terms, among the others hoggster and hogget (the former of which is the earliest of the group to appear), which refer to sheep and, apparantly, other animals as well. Moreover, the idea of "yearling" or at any rate "youth" is present in most examples. So they conclude that the term originally meant "young livestock" and speculate on its possible relation to "hag", a verb meaning "castrate".

3534. Candide - 2/13/2000 2:05:19 AM

The book which is a priceless gem is called Chinese culinary in plain English by W. Sou San.

An extract:
"Although it may be, nevertheless, that beef and mutton consuming is very trivial, I will translate and present a few recipes of their method of beef dishes in comparison of perchievement, where perfection differs."

3535. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/13/2000 2:06:13 AM

Candide:
Interesting comments on Italian attitudes. Yes, it's true that English speakers don't take much note of world literatures. But then again, most books in the world are published in English, and there is already plenty to read.

3536. cmboyce - 2/13/2000 2:07:30 AM

Snowowl and Irv, thanks for the daggy explanations.

3537. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/13/2000 2:08:22 AM

You'll all be aghast to know that in India and Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia), "mutton" refers to goat meat.

3538. SnowOwl - 2/13/2000 2:10:04 AM

Very interesting, cmboyce, thank you. And thanks Irv and Candide for the jandal explanation. If I ever knew that it is long forgotten.

3539. Candide - 2/13/2000 2:12:25 AM

Some more Chinese culinary:
"Peek at lamb periodically, careful of the juice gradually drying." ...."If goat's meat, the rank taste is not so distinctive."

"If must be thoroughly removed, otherwise mars the flavour and dampens your enthusiasm."

"Here is another option of Chinese method of sheep or lamb cuisine. In fact, in China, slaughter of goats for human consumption. ....As for sheep and lamb, they are not very keen of its sheepish rank."

3540. Candide - 2/13/2000 2:13:42 AM

Irving

They DID boycott Aussir beef! Election year!

3541. cmboyce - 2/13/2000 2:14:26 AM

BTW, am I reading Message # 3526 aright? Do British English speakers pronounce the name of that delicious bread/muffin/whateveritis, as rhyming with "yon" (as in "hither and yon")? And the past tense of "shine" similarly?

3542. Candide - 2/13/2000 2:16:59 AM

Irving

AussiE

Goat is on sale in Sydney in certain "ethnic" suburbs.

3543. Candide - 2/13/2000 2:19:17 AM

cmboyce

In most British zones scone rhymes with Don. But in many, including Scotland scone rhymes with Joan. I suspect that SKOAN is the older pronunciation of the two.

3544. SnowOwl - 2/13/2000 2:20:32 AM

I'm not too aghast, Irv. Since goat meat is impossible to buy here I often use mutton as a substitute when I'm making West Indian curries.

3545. Candide - 2/13/2000 2:20:47 AM

cmboyce

Horrors! Are you telling me that in the US the past tense of shine rhymes with JOAN?

3546. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/13/2000 2:21:04 AM

Candide:
Beef, too? How insane. Australian beef is better than American beef, so the American consumer loses out.

Thanks for the gems from the Chinese cookbook!

Goat is on sale in Sydney in certain "ethnic" suburbs.

But they don't call it mutton, do they? Goat meat is a staple of most Asian cuisines. It's pretty good, actually, especially when the whole goat is grilled over a slow fire.

CM:
Yes, "shone" and "scone" rhyme with "yon" in England (and the Antipodes).

3547. SnowOwl - 2/13/2000 2:23:27 AM

Candide,

I have no idea what part of Scotland you were in, but the Scots I knew pronounce scone, skon. My husband tells me he's always thought of the pronunciation skoan as being an affected English pronunciation.

3548. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/13/2000 2:23:43 AM

Horrors! Are you telling me that in the US the past tense of shine rhymes with JOAN?

Indeed it does. This is one of those words which surprise speakers on both sides when they first hear it. I guess the word isn't that common that everyone knows the "other" pronunciation.

3549. cmboyce - 2/13/2000 2:24:15 AM

Irv, you are of course right that lamb is far less popular than beef in the US, but in 1997 we consumed 333 million pounds of it. And I may have eaten 10 or 20 of it myself.

That figure is from the 1999 NYT World Almanac, and it comes with an amusing footnote on a definitional question: "Consumption (also called total disappearance) is estimated ..."

3550. Candide - 2/13/2000 2:26:53 AM

Another Chinese culinary reference to mutton:

"Standardly this is goat's meat dish. As goat's meat is seldom seen in city or even country shop [This was jears ago' Candide] therefore usance of lamb in preference. But do not use mutton, the rankness is more prominent."

3551. Candide - 2/13/2000 2:29:32 AM

SnowOwl

It's not an "affected" pronunciation. They genuinely believe that's how it's said and get quite fierce if you argue with them.

I'll accept your Scottish SKON. My mum said SKON and her family was basically Scottish.

I've heard SKOAN near the border.

3552. cmboyce - 2/13/2000 2:29:56 AM

Well, anent "shon", I am indeed surprised. Otoh, "scon" seems entirely straightforward; one just says it somehow or other. But a past tense ought to be some sort of regular, eh? And then I think, well, what do other verbs in "-ine" do, and I can't think of any that don't go to "-ined"; so we're both weird.

(As who is not, after all? Hee hee!)

3553. Candide - 2/13/2000 2:33:35 AM

In Italy one feels a beast, to coin a phrase, but the Romans cook sucking lamb, barely beyond fetus stage. They cook it with the liver attached and lots of rosemary and garlic and potatoes baked with it and even a vegetarian would succumb.

It's extremely delicate and I felt like offering myself as an apologetic sacrifice to the great sheep god the next day, but it was truly wonderful. It was cooked by a man who appears in La Dolce Vita

3554. Candide - 2/13/2000 2:36:00 AM

Irving

I have eaten goat.

Next incarnation I WILL be a vegetarian.

3555. cmboyce - 2/13/2000 2:36:43 AM

Did he learn to cook ovine fetal matter on the set?

3556. Candide - 2/13/2000 2:40:45 AM

Irving

My Husband says that last century NSW people called Victoria "the cabbage garden"

Tasmanians are known as "Taswegians".

3557. Candide - 2/13/2000 2:45:44 AM

cmboyce

No,. He was a famous restaurateur.

The term for sucking lamb is:
Abbàcchio.
Lamb is: agnèllo
and mutton is: montóne

3558. Candide - 2/13/2000 2:49:39 AM

cmboyce

Silly me. Not La Dolce Vita but Satyricon by Fellini.

He was caled Moro. The restaurant is called "Al Moro".

3559. cmboyce - 2/13/2000 2:53:21 AM

Well, I hope I'll remember that next time I'm in Rome. That sure did sound delicious.

Three o'clock approaches....

and I recede...

G'night all.

3560. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/13/2000 2:57:59 AM

CM:
So long. And please remember to remove the dags before consuming lamb or mutton.

3561. Angel-Five - 2/13/2000 3:14:04 AM

'Taswegians'? Are you serious?

3562. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/13/2000 3:41:26 AM

The Tasmanians I know (a weird lot, actually) refer to temselves as "Tazzies" (or maybe it's spelled "Tassies").

3563. Angel-Five - 2/13/2000 3:49:03 AM

I've only ever seen it written with the z.

3564. Candide - 2/13/2000 6:14:22 AM

A brief post-prandial return to say that Tassies, as Irving observed is written with two Ss.

3565. PelleNilsson - 2/13/2000 6:46:46 AM

Since the discussion of "The quick brown fox ...." and similar I have learnt that a sentence that contains all the letters in the alphabet is called a pangram, and the shorter the better. Here are two short ones:

Pack my box with with five dozen liquor jugs.

Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz

And here is the shortest known Swedish pangram:

Yxskaftsbud ge vår wczonmö iqhjälp

Translation:

yx(a) = axe
skaft = handle
bud = person who delivers things.
ge = give
vår = our
wc = WC
zon = zone
mö = young girl, preferably virgin
iq = IQ
hjälp = help.

3566. Candide - 2/13/2000 6:49:32 AM

Hjälp is impossible in such a situation.

3567. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/13/2000 6:59:20 AM

Pelle:
I'm sure that ax-handle-deliverymen and WC-zone-virgins are extremely common occupations in Sweden. And who better to turn to for intellectual guidance for the latter than the former?

3568. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/13/2000 7:13:44 AM

Pelle:
Here are some other pangrams in English (thanks for remembering the term for these... I had forgotten):

1. Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
2. Quick wafting zephyrs vex bold Jim.
3. The five boxing wizards jump quickly.
4. Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz.
5. Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs.

All of these are more compact than "The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog."

The most compact is the first, which uses the 26 letters of English in 28 letters (u and i are repeated). It is slightly less compact than the Swedish one Pelle gave, which uses the 29 letters of Swedish in just 30 letters (only the s is repeated).

3569. alistairconnor - 2/14/2000 6:43:27 AM

Pelle,
Surely you've got a painting to illustrate the wise and foolish WC virgins? Don't disappoint us...

Irving,

Cwm fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz?

3570. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/14/2000 7:28:26 AM

Alistair:
I think one of the requirements of a pangram is that it mean something.

3571. Dusty - 2/14/2000 8:20:57 AM

Irv, are you trying to say you don't know what that means? Tell 'em A-5.

3572. Dusty - 2/14/2000 8:24:36 AM

I read it as "I'm getting agitated waiting for a symbolic quiz on geographic features."

3573. cmboyce - 2/14/2000 11:08:25 AM

... a symbolic quiz on geographic features:

What geographic feature was made famous by a man whose name sounds like a fart in a bathtub?

3574. Dusty - 2/14/2000 11:16:04 AM

penisula
De Soto

3575. Dusty - 2/14/2000 11:16:24 AM

oops, peninsula

3576. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/14/2000 11:19:08 AM

Gee, and I thought he was referring to Arnold Pfffft-Blupp.

3577. cmboyce - 2/14/2000 11:22:40 AM

Dusty, pretty good, though not what I had in mind. I'm thinking of a particular place—as Florida is a particular place, though this one is small enough to contain no smaller ones—made famous by... (and his name sounds more like a fartinabathtub).

3578. Dusty - 2/14/2000 11:23:05 AM

Escarpment
Sir John Bluthwaite

3579. Dusty - 2/14/2000 11:23:37 AM

oops, need to refresh.

3580. Dusty - 2/14/2000 11:24:52 AM

Lake Titicaca.
Fields.

(OK, so this isn't right, but I'm always looking for an excuse to guess Lake Titicaca.)

3581. cmboyce - 2/14/2000 11:25:31 AM

Irv:

Would that be the Arnold Pfffft-Blupp of the East Palm Beach Pfffft-Blupp's, after whom the Arnold Seamount is named?

3582. Dusty - 2/14/2000 11:26:51 AM

Wrong bathroom fixture. Fields name sounds more like a toilet.

3583. cmboyce - 2/14/2000 11:28:15 AM

Dusty,

as you surmised, Lake Titicaca is indeed wrong.

Who is Sir John Bluthwaite? (The first half of his name certainly does the trick.)

3584. Dusty - 2/14/2000 11:30:04 AM

Juan de Fuca ?

Juan de Fuca Ridge - Gorda Ridge -
Axial Seamount

3585. cmboyce - 2/14/2000 11:30:41 AM

Right. W. C. Fields sounds like a slow, subtle fart in anticipation of the big #2.

(I seem to recall an exchange in the F place about the Indonesian (was it?) term for taking a shit. What was that, does anyone else recall?)

3586. Dusty - 2/14/2000 11:32:32 AM

ERATOSTHENES SEAMOUNT?

3587. cmboyce - 2/14/2000 11:33:05 AM

That is (), wrong. (I too should refresh.)

Juan de Fuca... hmm. Not like in my bathtub, at least.

3588. Dusty - 2/14/2000 11:34:34 AM

Asaron Seamount?

3589. cmboyce - 2/14/2000 11:36:20 AM

That parenthesis in Message # 3587 was meant to enclose "Message # 3584". (I should preview, too.)

3590. cmboyce - 2/14/2000 11:37:55 AM

Message # 3588

Whoowhee!! He's great. Who be he?

3591. Dusty - 2/14/2000 11:39:18 AM

Damn, I thought for sure I had it when I found this site:

Helmut in the distance is an exclamation point beneath his own column of expanding bubbles.

3592. cmboyce - 2/14/2000 11:39:59 AM

Message # 3588

Whoowhee!! He's great. Who be he?

3593. Dusty - 2/14/2000 11:41:24 AM

He now travels around chessboard America.

(Whatever that means)

Wide Load of Poetry

3594. Dusty - 2/14/2000 11:42:19 AM

Message # 3593 is more info on Asaron Seamount

3595. cmboyce - 2/14/2000 11:43:15 AM

I just read the link on the Eratosthenes Seamount. Interesting (though I am grateful it was just an abstract). I found the last sentence oddly moving: "Then, during Pliocene–Pleistocene time, the Eratosthenes Seamount was thrust beneath Cyprus because of [the] collision of the African and the Eurasian plates."

3596. Dusty - 2/14/2000 11:45:19 AM

How much longer before we are expelled for being off-topic?

Am I correct in looking for someone associated with seamounts?

3597. cmboyce - 2/14/2000 11:46:08 AM

Message # 3593

I think we may be glad that, in Asaron's case,

"
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
[an error occurred while processing this directive] "

3598. cmboyce - 2/14/2000 11:47:49 AM

No. No seamounts. I've give a clue: Teddy Roosevelt has something to do with this particular feature.

3599. Dusty - 2/14/2000 11:48:42 AM

Something in San Juan?

3600. cmboyce - 2/14/2000 11:49:51 AM

Nope. Within the Continental 48.

3601. Dusty - 2/14/2000 11:50:57 AM

Oops, I meant San Juan Hill in Cuba, but that's wrong.

3602. cmboyce - 2/14/2000 11:51:28 AM

Another clue: Crazy Horse, the Indian chief, is also connected (rather tangentially) to this feature.

3603. Dusty - 2/14/2000 11:51:31 AM

Yosemite? (Not the answer, just checking to see if I am warm)

3604. cmboyce - 2/14/2000 11:54:43 AM

Well, warmer, I guess.

A last clue (if this doesn't do it, I'll just have to render (as well as typescript allows) the fartinabathtub sound): Think South Dakota.

3605. Dusty - 2/14/2000 12:01:02 PM

Well, there's the Bad Lands and Wind Cave. No name that seems right, yet.

3606. Dusty - 2/14/2000 12:04:50 PM

Gutzon Borglum ?

3607. Dusty - 2/14/2000 12:05:34 PM

If that ain't it, I give.

3608. cmboyce - 2/14/2000 12:14:23 PM

YEAH!!!That's it!

Congratulations. You win the prize, which is: "Gutzon BORghlum".

3609. Dusty - 2/14/2000 12:16:36 PM

Whoo-hooo!!

Good question. I thought I was going to have to give. Thanks for the hints.

Now we return you to your regularly scheduled language thread.

3610. Candide - 2/14/2000 6:22:29 PM

A new class of television warning appeared recently before a program on an Australian television channel.

We warn viewers that the following program contains mild language.

3611. DanDillon - 2/14/2000 9:28:55 PM

I prefer spicy. What is mild language anyway? Stuff like "doodoo head," "darn whipper-snapper," "dang nabit," and "flap crap"? New lows, folks. New lows.

3612. hashke - 2/14/2000 9:38:54 PM

7068. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/14/00 11:14:34 AM
A5:

There's a quick, easy way (and the results are much, much, more enjoyable).

I simply placed the text in Alta Vista's translator, and, voila!

Hehehe, Irv. Simply place the following everyday German into the same translator and see what you come up with.

Das ist fast Reibungslos über die Bühne gegangen, denn es an den Nerv der Sache rührte. Bei solche Übersetzungen kónntest du dich eine goldene Nase verdienen!

3613. hashke - 2/14/2000 9:43:45 PM

Irv:

I posted the above also in International where it originated. An interesting exercise with online translators. Your original was reasonably on track.

3614. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/14/2000 9:59:12 PM

Hashke:
We might as well keep it here.

Here is what I got:

"That could be done almost to smooth over the stage, because it to the nerve of the thing agitated. With such translations kónntest you a golden nose earn themselves! "

I still have no idea what it means.

3615. Candide - 2/14/2000 11:01:23 PM

Very Culinary. hahaha

3616. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/15/2000 7:31:11 AM

I got an inquiry at my business site recently from a person asking if he could write in Italian, since he didn't feel too comfortable with English. I said sure, since I figured if there was anything I couldn't understand after running it through Alta Vista, then Candide or Hashké could help me here.

Well, today I got my first message in Italian, and promptly ran it through the translator. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that "Bali" means "Male baby minders"!

And what is this "blank" for the greeting?

Here is what I got:

Salve,
Sto per aprire in Italia a Roma un negozio in un centro commerciale, mi piacerebbe vendere oggetti particolari artigianali per arredamento. Presto andrò direttamente a Bali per vedere personalmente quali prodotti possono essere interessanti per l'importazione in Italia.
Intanto se voi possedete un catalogo sarei grato se lo poteste spedire al seguente indirizzo:

And here is the thoroughly understandable translation (except the "Male baby minders" part):

Blank,
I am in order to open in Italy to Rome a store in a commercial center, would appeal to to me to sell handicraft particular objects for furnishing. Soon I will go directly to Male baby minders in order to see personally which products can be interesting for the import in Italy.
While if you possess a catalogue I would be pleasing if you could send it to the following address:

3617. DanDillon - 2/15/2000 8:58:21 AM

Perhaps the greeting "Blank" is some polite address fit for a form letter. Or the sender forgot to do a mail merge. Either way, you have nothing to worry about because he said it himself -- he would be pleasing.

3618. hashke - 2/15/2000 9:30:02 AM

Irv:

Hahaha! 'Balì' is the Knight Commander of a military order. 'Balia' is a wet nurse. Otherwise he is going to Bali, period. Anything else you need translated here? 'Sto per aprire...' means 'I am about to open..."

3619. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/15/2000 9:39:13 AM

Hashké:
I assume "Bali" also means "male baysitters" as well, or else why would it come up? I tried the word on its own and got the same translation.

The encouraging thing is that the meaning comes through on the translator. I'm glad I told the guy I would be replying in English, because I wouldn't trust it to make my reply any less mangled.

3620. hashke - 2/15/2000 10:29:53 AM

Irv:

'Bali' as 'male baby minders' ('bale maybe binders')? Hmmmm...never heard of such, but possible.

The reason that the letter translated into somewhat acceptable English is that it is written for the most part in unidiomatic Italian. The German that I posted above is an example of what happens to idiomatic usage when ground through the 'translator'.

Das is fast reibungslos über die Bühne gegangen -- that is almost frictionless over the stage gone -- i.e., 'it went without a hitch'.

denn es an den Nerv der Sache rührte -- because it on the nerve of the thing touched -- 'because it got to the heart of the matter'

bei solche Übersetzungen könntest du dich eine goldene Nase verdienen -- by such translations could you yourself a golden nose earn -- 'you could earn yourself a lot of money with such translations'.

Not only can the gizmo not handle idiomatic expressions, it cannot seem to do reflexives such as 'dich', 'sich', etc., having above translated 'dich' as 'themselves', 3rd person plural, rather than '(for) yourself', 2nd person singular.

3621. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/15/2000 10:58:16 AM

Hashké:
He is probably using simple constructions because he realizes I'm not exactly Mr. Italian-speaker (like, without Alta Vista, I'd be sending you e-mails).

I used simple English in my reply to him as well. Who knows, maybe he is using Alta Vista too!

I tried translating a part of my reply into Italian using Alta Vista. How is the Italian?

Grazie per le informazioni. Vi auguro il successo nel vostro nuovo negozio a Roma! Penso che molta gente sia interessata negli artigianato e nell' arredamento venderete.

3622. hashke - 2/15/2000 12:26:45 PM

Irv:

The following is a bit more businessletterish, but mainly just nit-picking:

Vi prego gradire i miei ringraziamento per...

Vi auguro buona fortuna...

...arredamento che venderete

Run your Italian back through the translator to English for a laugh.

3623. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/15/2000 12:37:47 PM

Hashké:
I wouldn't actually send anything which Alta Vista produced... I'd be too afraid of accidentally saying the wrong thing.

For some reason the translator is down right now. I'll try running the Italian through to get back to English later on.

3624. Candide - 2/15/2000 3:27:51 PM

IrvingSnodgrass

hashke is much better than I could be. I can't write idiomatic letters at all. I write letters and I'm told that people hold dinner parties to read them aloud and have a good laugh. You've got the gist and won't make any mistakes.
The man would like you to send him a catalogue. Basta. You understand the rest.

3625. Candide - 2/15/2000 4:07:21 PM

Is Alta Vista a computer program?

3626. CalGal - 2/15/2000 4:14:51 PM

Alta Vista is a search engine primarily, but it also has a Babel translator option, or something.

It's a good search engine, although Google is my new love.

3627. Candide - 2/15/2000 4:20:34 PM

bali s.m. invar. see balivoMedieval high magistrate/ or an order of knighthood one grade above a commendatore.

3628. Candide - 2/15/2000 4:21:29 PM

CalGal

Thanks. I'll hunt it down.

3629. tmachine - 2/15/2000 5:21:12 PM

Salve is actually Latin, but I suppose you know that--I didn't know it was ever used in modern Italian but I suppose it could well be a very formal letter salutation (which of course is what it means, "salute"). Greetings, that is. Salve is the form when you address one person ("Salve, Caesar"), Salvete for more than one ("Salvete, Romani"). It's an alternative to "Ave"--as in "ave atque vale."

3630. cmboyce - 2/15/2000 5:38:36 PM

Maybe by way of a little male-baby-sitter humor, the appellation of a "medieval high magistrate" is idiomatically applied to such employees. At least by the Alta Vista folks.

3631. Candide - 2/15/2000 5:52:51 PM

tmachine

I had one year of latin when I was 11 years old. I read latin backwards through modern Italian.

Salve is a greeting, often informal "salve amico greetings friend" . My Italian/English dictionary says the American equivalent would be "hi". It can of course in the older usage be "hail". In Italian the 'ete' ending is for second-person plural. Mussolini tried to reintroduce the Roman usage of 2cnd person plural in order to rid the language of the established (now re-established) polite feminine address for any formal relationship of 3rd person singular. Fascists were required to address each other, singular or plural, using "voi" (you) instead of "lei" 'polite you'. Voi is now used for plural "you". 'Voi altri" might be likened to the American "You-all".

Have I made myself clear. No I thought not.

3632. ScottLoar - 2/15/2000 5:59:49 PM

What's wrong with Salutations!, a greeting common to Romance languages?

3633. ScottLoar - 2/15/2000 6:03:43 PM

For the Kind Attention of IrvingSnodgrass;

Salutations! Actually I'm in need of the Indonesian equivalent for "straight talk". A problem has arisen, and I must make the Indonesian distributor understand by this phrase that what I am saying is direct, sincere and incontrovertible. What phrase can be interjected into my English letter by which he will understand all that I have said is God's awful truth backed by my position and sincerity?

3634. CalGal - 2/15/2000 6:09:06 PM

What's wrong with Salutations!, a greeting common to Romance languages?

And spiders. Or pigs, depending on your POV.

3635. ScottLoar - 2/15/2000 6:20:24 PM

Is Message # 3634 intentionally opaque or an example of your ill-considered spontaneity?

3636. hashke - 2/15/2000 6:22:13 PM

For some reason I had not even noticed the salutation. 'Salve' is better used as a salute to Mussolini.

'Salute' just means 'health' --(like Spanish 'salud', as I lift a toast to you with my margarita).

The salutation to use here is simply 'Signore', or 'Gentile signore'.

Candide, you are so modest about your really excellent written Italian!

3637. Candide - 2/15/2000 6:38:41 PM

hashke

I'm truly not, but thank you. I have proof. I just received a letter in culinary English from an Italian friend who had mistaken the information I had given him concerning a niece, for information about my husband. Enough said.

I substitute vocabulary and grammar (OK CalGal- a gift) with hand gestures. My husband observed me walking across a piazza with an Italian friend. He (the excitable Italian) was upright and correct and reserved in facial and bodily movements. I (the icily controlled Anglo-Saxon) was gesticulating wildly and generally comporting myself like Chico Marx.

3638. CalGal - 2/15/2000 6:46:52 PM

Scott,

It's unintentionally opaque. I assumed a general familiarity with Charlotte's Web. I am not calling you a spider or a pig.

3639. CalGal - 2/15/2000 6:57:59 PM

Although the part about the pig might not translate. But that would still be unintentional opacity. I don't do it on purpose.

3640. Candide - 2/15/2000 7:13:44 PM

CalGal

I DID wonder why you were being so rude.

3641. hashke - 2/15/2000 7:16:27 PM

One occasionally makes opaque of oneself.

3642. CalGal - 2/15/2000 7:22:18 PM

Sigh.

Charlotte's Web is on the short list of finest children's books ever written. It is the story of a Wilbur, a pig and his best friend, Charlotte, a spider.

Charlotte always said, "Salutations!" instead of "Hello!"

Wilbur picked up on it and at the end of the book greets Charlotte's children in the same fashion.

3643. DanDillon - 2/15/2000 8:00:43 PM

ScottLoar Message # 3633,

You might consider using Percayalah, which translates as "Believe me." and is something akin to bringing God into the mix and swearing by It (if I'm not mistaken).

3644. Candide - 2/15/2000 8:09:17 PM

CalGal

I knew of the book and its reputation. It just missed me. I will try and read it although I'm a bit big for it. I think great children's books are great books.

3645. ScottLoar - 2/15/2000 8:09:49 PM

Thanks, Dan.

3646. ScottLoar - 2/15/2000 8:13:20 PM

The reference to Charlotte's Web completely escaped me as I have no knowledge of the book.

3647. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/15/2000 8:50:21 PM

Candide:
The Alta Vista translator shouldn't be hard to find. All you have to do is look in the links section on the butterscotch bar for this thread, where it has been all along.

ScottLoar:
Although Dan has correctly identified "percayalah," and it is a common phrase, unfortunately in Indonesian it strikes as false a note as in English (are you more inclined to believe someone who says "believe me"?). The phrase you want is terus terang, which means "all bullshit aside" or "speaking frankly" (literally "straight clear"). It signifies that what follows is the way someone tryuly feels (and is the best way to introduce an unpleasant topic which it is necessary to broach).

Hashké:
"Salve" is the greeting the Italian used in his letter to me. I assume it is not uncommon in modern Italy. For some reason, Alta Vista translated it as "blank."

3648. tmachine - 2/15/2000 8:51:18 PM

1. I used "salute" only in the sense it's used in English--to point up the Latin's relationship to the root of words like "salutations." not as the Italian for "health." sorry, didn't make it clear.

2. I know they look plausibly similar to second person Italian present tense verb forms, but "salve" and "salvete" are examples, in Latin, not of the second person singular and plural but of the imperative singular and plural. The Latin second person singular and plural would be "salvis" and "salvetis."

3649. tmachine - 2/15/2000 8:53:14 PM

p.s. in other words, a more literal translation of "salve" would be something like "be greeted!"

3650. Candide - 2/15/2000 9:00:56 PM

tmachine

I realised there was no grammatical parallel.

Salve is more less "hello". Friendly no nonsense sort of stuff.

3651. Candide - 2/15/2000 9:02:03 PM

ps

In Italian.

3652. DanDillon - 2/15/2000 10:18:16 PM

ScottLoar,
I concede to the authority that is IrvingSnodgrass.

3653. CalGal - 2/15/2000 10:44:48 PM

The reference to Charlotte's Web completely escaped me as I have no knowledge of the book.

Apologies for confusing you.

You have children, I think? If they are older than 8, you may want to find out if they have read Charlotte's Web. If they haven't, you may want to add it to their reading list. Even if they're 20.

3654. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/15/2000 11:07:06 PM

Dan:
But you have intrigued me... how did you know of "percayalah," which was a most appropriate answer in terms of meaning (though not as appropriate for the usage ScottLoar intends)?

3655. hashke - 2/16/2000 12:34:17 AM

Irv:

The translator may have looked into one of my Italian dictionaries -- where it is not even listed -- and therefore translated it as 'blank'.

Obviously it is used in Italy, how widely as a salutation on a 'business' letter, I have no idea.

My other dicitionary does have a listing for the greeting:

salve! inter. Hail! Salve Regina, prayer to Our Lady beginning with those words.

3656. Candide - 2/16/2000 12:39:25 AM

hashke

My Garzanti Italiano/Inglese - Inglese/Italiano dictionary gives:
inter. hail; (fam.) hello; (amer.) hi!

3657. DanDillon - 2/16/2000 9:03:13 AM

Irv,

I must confess: I found the answer to ScottLoar's question in the phrasebook you sent me some time ago. My resources the options therein limited, I figured it'd be best to offer up what I had. (And "Believe me" was far better than "Again! Only this time harder and faster!")

3658. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/16/2000 9:06:39 AM

Dan:
Aha! How appropriate for that phrasebook... I can just picture a guy wheedling "Believe me!" to a thoroughly unconvinced woman.

3659. DanDillon - 2/16/2000 9:10:16 AM

And the unconvinced woman screeching back, "Mengapa kaulakukan ini padaku? Jangan ganggu aku lagi!"

3660. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/16/2000 9:29:46 AM

Yes, that would fit.

Keep using that book, Dan. You'll learn all you ever need to know about the language.

3661. DanDillon - 2/16/2000 10:33:19 AM

As a commentary on social mores, that's downright scary.

3662. ScottLoar - 2/16/2000 11:19:26 AM

CalGal, I have one child, a 14-year old daughter (almost 15! as I'm reminded), who although no longer dressing like a waistgunner on a B-17, listens to music unintelligible to me but does show promise of achieving literacy. I mean, she likes Chiddiock Tichburne's death poem, which speaks volumes to me.

3663. CalGal - 2/16/2000 11:27:23 AM

Scott,

Could you ask her if she read Charlotte's Web when she was somewhere in 4th or 5th grade? I'm wondering if it has dropped off the required reading list.

3664. ScottLoar - 2/16/2000 11:32:35 AM

Sure, she's in school now, Honours French if I'm right about the hour. Legions of snooty waiters in France will one day quake and quail.

3665. Ronski - 2/16/2000 4:43:04 PM

The PBS program last night on the Search for the First Americans suggested that Kennewick Man and peoples on the coast of South America have more in common with the Ainu than any other ethnic group, and that these Ainu-like people arrived long before the Clovis people because a coast line along the western Americas appears to have existed even in the Ice Age. The revision of the Clovis theory was not new to me (there have also been new theories about Americans arriving by boat), but the link to the Ainu was.

Also, they showed some photos of Ainu which they used to show Caucasion features (hairiness, in particular), but once again these relatively pure-blooded Ainu people looked very much like Australian aboriginals to me, something I've remarked on before, except of course for the skin color and hair. I have read that some have proposed a link between the Aborigines and the Ainu, an Austronesian "race," if we are still thinking in terms of race at all these days.

Any comments?

3666. ScottLoar - 2/16/2000 4:52:44 PM

Odd, I thought Australoids to be a distinctive race unlike Ainu who are considered Mongoloid. Still, I've seen both (although the Ainu were clothed and the Australoids not quite so) and they look nothing like each other, neither in physique or facial structure.

3667. PincherMartin - 2/16/2000 5:01:47 PM

Scott Loar --

Anything that makes the French quake, I'm for.

3668. Ronski - 2/16/2000 5:06:54 PM

The Ainu are traditionally considered Caucasoid, not Mongoloid, that is, those of pure blood are (of whom few remain).

I'll see if I can dig up some of these photos for comparison. Hopefully some are on the web.

3669. ScottLoar - 2/16/2000 5:09:17 PM

Ainu are Caucasoid? Odd, I thought Mongoloid. Anyone else to weigh in with opinion or, better yet, definitive reference?

3670. Ronski - 2/16/2000 5:22:18 PM

What they were suggesting in the PBS show was that the Ainu were perhaps genetically close to human beings who had not quite yet differentiated into the three traditional races, if I followed the program correctly (while I was busy preparing orange roughy with dill, capers and some sharp cheddar cheese).

3671. Candide - 2/16/2000 5:37:06 PM

I'm no expert but I thought that genetics were the way they now investigated such things and terms like Caucasoid and Mongoloid were no longer in the vocabulary.

ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA
Australia, history of
Prehistory

Genetically Aborigines show considerable diversity but are quite distinct from groups outside Australia. They came originally from somewhere in Asia and have been in Australia for at least 40,000 years. (In 1990 a date of 60,000 years was suggested for a rock shelter in
the Northern Territory, but the finding, based on the use of a recently developed technique called thermoluminescence, is still being evaluated.) The first settlement would have occurred during an era of lowered sea levels, when there was an almost continuous land bridge between Asia and Australia, but watercraft must have been used at some points. By 30,000 years ago most of the continent was occupied, including the southwest and southeast corners (Tasmania became an island when sea levels rose sometime between 13,500 and 8,000 years ago and isolated the Aborigines who lived there from the mainland) as well as the Highlands of the island of New Guinea. Archaeological evidence suggests that much of the interior of Australia was abandoned by Aborigines during a period of harsh climatic conditions between 25,000 and 15,000 years ago and reoccupied after conditions improved.

3672. Candide - 2/16/2000 5:38:17 PM

toys

3673. PincherMartin - 2/16/2000 5:39:05 PM

Ronski and Scott Loar --

Originally, I had heard that Ainu were a caucasoid race, but recently I read a contrary opinion. I'll see if I can find a reference.

3674. Ronski - 2/16/2000 5:50:28 PM

Pincher,

Please do. Thanks in advance.

3675. Candide - 2/16/2000 5:53:33 PM

Did somebody speak?

3676. arkymalarky - 2/16/2000 6:18:55 PM

I had always thought they were caucasoid.

My Kyrgyz student handed in her language lessons, Kyrgyz/English. It's going to take some study and her casette tape (which she hasn't made yet) for me to make heads or tails of it.

It's interesting in Sr Lit this year teaching Brothers K with two Russian-speaking students hearing me butcher the Russian pronunciations. They're really helping me out, though.

3677. Candide - 2/16/2000 6:21:07 PM

I'm out of here.

3678. PincherMartin - 2/16/2000 6:25:48 PM

This selection is taken from the abridged paperback edition, The History and Geography of Human Genes by L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Paolo Menozzi, and Alberto Piazza.

The Ainu have always attracted great anthropological interest and were considered Caucasoid by early (European) anthropologists. Those least acculturated or mixed are very few (Omoto 1972,1973) and live on Hokkaido, the northern Japanese island, with a few on Southern Sakhalin (USSR, 1500). They were in Japan before the arrival of modern Japanese, and there may have been a reciprocal gene flow. The major physical characteristic that differentiates them from other Northeast Asian people, with whom they are tied genetic and linguistic similarities, is their hairiness as well as their hair form. This was probably the major reason for thinking of them as a Caucasoid origin, but there are also other isolated Mongoloid groups other than the Ainu who shows hairiness (Alexseev 1979). The Caucasoid origin is still a popular suggestion in classical anthropology, but other hypotheses have been advanced, for example, that they are an independent "race" whose genetic similarity to Japanese is due to extensive admixture. Direct estimates of "purity" by analysis of pedigrees of the last three to four generations indicated an overall non-Ainu component of 40% in a sample studied by Omoto (1972, 1973). It is not clear whether it is necessary to invoke sexual selection to explain the survival of a few, most probably genetic, traits characteristic of the Ainu like hairiness or hair shape. For the rest, the Ainu show no clear trace of Caucasoid ancestry. Omoto has also shown that the Ainu are Mongoloid, not Caucasoid, on the basis of fingerprints and morphology.

continued...

3679. PincherMartin - 2/16/2000 6:26:21 PM

It is also possible that the Eta, the outcaste untouchables of Japan are related to the Ainu (at least as judged by their hairiness). Etas were strictly endogamous by law and are, or were, by profession butchers, tanners, executioners, and sweepers; the caste has not disappeared to this day and deserves study. Ryukyuans and Atayal aborigines from Taiwan were also thought to be related to the Ainu. The neighbors from whom the Ainu show the smallest genetic distance are the Hokkaido Japanese; the next closest are the Ryukuans. In the tree, however, the Ainu are outliers.

When the Ainu are not with the cluster of Northeast Asian populations, they are only slightly external to it, as outliers of a group including other Eastern populations, but, unlike Tibetans, they never join a Caucasoid group. It seems reasonable to discard the myth of a Caucasoid origin

3680. PincherMartin - 2/16/2000 6:31:08 PM

Errata -- corrections in brackets:

"The major physical characteristic that differentiates them from other Northeast Asian people, with whom they are tied [by] genetic and linguistic similarities, is their hairiness as well as their hair form."

"This was probably the major reason for thinking of them as [having] a Caucasoid origin, but there are also other isolated Mongoloid groups other than the Ainu who shows hairiness (Alexseev 1979)."

3681. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/16/2000 7:57:34 PM

Ronski Message # 3665:
The theory posited that people related to the Ainu settled the Americas first goes against the genetic data compiled by Cavalli-Sforza and linguistic data compiled by Greenberg, the two of which correlate nicely, and seem to present a clear picture of human settlement patterns.

Relating either of these groups to Australian aboriginals is not supported by genetic or linguistic evidence either. Prevailing evidence supports the evidence presented by Candide from Britannica. The peoples of Australia and New Guinea are the most divergent genetically of all human populations, indicating the longest isolation from the rest of humanity. This is supported by linguistic evidence.

Finally, I take issue with your use of the term "Austronesian," which correctly refers to the linguistic group covering the island peoples of the Pacific, Southeast Asia and Madagascar, a group which is genetically and linguistically unrelated to the peoples of Australia, New Guinea and mainland Asia (not to mention the Americas).

It should also be noted that the division of humanity into "races" is somewhat discredited these days, as, technically, all of humanity is of one race. It is possible, however, to group peoples into regional or genetic classifications by shared physical characteristics, but these don't fall neatly into three groupings.

The most interesting development of the studies of human genetics and human settlement patterns done by Cavalli-Sforza and his colleagues is how clearly one can follow the dispersal of the human race by genetic data alone, and how cleanly this correlates with linguistic data.

3682. ScottLoar - 2/16/2000 8:05:06 PM

Yes, yes, all men are brothers, but Australoids are a group unto themselves and quite distinct from all other races, yes? And the Ainu are Mongoloids, yes? And if disallowed the convenience of the traditional "races" (Mongoloid, Caucasoid, Negroid, Australoid) then how are we to proceed in describing them?

3683. ScottLoar - 2/16/2000 8:06:57 PM

re Message # 3663: Charlotte's Web was current to my daughter's third grade (fully nine grades ago) and she pronounces it "an excellent book".

3684. ScottLoar - 2/16/2000 8:10:15 PM

Dscontent with these racial categories the US federal government seeks ever-finite definition for those who are not white Europeans, rather perversely so in my opinion yet seemingly in the name of equity.

3685. CalGal - 2/16/2000 8:10:54 PM

Phew. I couldn't believe it had been dropped from the list that quickly.

And she is right. It is an excellent book.

3686. ScottLoar - 2/16/2000 8:12:51 PM

CalGal, it was not required reading then (thus my choice of words) but may be so now.

3687. ScottLoar - 2/16/2000 8:22:27 PM

No, I don't believe the burakumin (former eta) are physically distinguishable (buttressed by the following source) but discrimination persists by reason that

lists of burakumin locations and the services of private detectives are routinely used by employers and families to determine whether a job applicant or marriage prospect comes from a former outcast community.

Moreover, even the Buraku Liberation League does little to effectively promote emancipation of these traditional outcasts who in 1989 numbered some three millions (pp.97-98, The Enigma of Japanese Power, Karel van Wolferem, Macmillan London Limited, 1989 (PAPERMAC paperback edition 1990).

3688. CalGal - 2/16/2000 8:24:03 PM

I didn't mean required reading, I meant summer reading, reading lists, blah blah.

As I mentioned earlier, it has been on the short list of superb children's books since the year it was written. Most kids--particularly girls--have read the book at one time or another in their primary school years.

I was surprised that you hadn't heard of it. Not horrified or contemptuous, mind you, just surprised. So I was wondering if its standing had dropped precipitously in recent years and I hadn't heard.

3689. PincherMartin - 2/16/2000 8:25:00 PM

That's a great book and I believe it -- and you -- are right. I have heard the same thing.

3690. ScottLoar - 2/16/2000 8:27:31 PM

My goodness! And I had thought this jewel of a book remained confidential to myself alone as it has never to my knowledge been quoted before or even casually referenced here.

3691. PincherMartin - 2/16/2000 8:36:27 PM

Scott Loar --

The Enigma of Japanese Power is a modern masterpiece on Japan's lack of accountability, and, indeed, even lack of a center to political power. Karel van Wolferen is (was?) a Dutch journalist who lived in Japan.

3692. ScottLoar - 2/16/2000 8:36:32 PM

Doesn't forensic medicine also defer to race?

3693. ScottLoar - 2/16/2000 8:38:48 PM

The book is a masterwork, encyclopedic in its comprehension, the product of an engaging, inquisitive and insightful mind. One's understanding of modern Japan is incomplete without it.

3694. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/17/2000 3:04:47 AM

ScottLoar:
...but Australoids are a group unto themselves and quite distinct from all other races, yes?

Yes, the Australians (along with the natives of new Guinea) are a separate genetic group.

And the Ainu are Mongoloids, yes?

No. Humanity doesn't break down so neatly. Genetically, northern Asians have little in common with southern Asians. In fact, northern Asians are much closer genetically to Europeans than they are to the peoples of mainland and insular southeast Asia, who in turn are closer to Australians than to any other genetic groups.

And if the convenience of the traditional "races" (Mongoloid, Caucasoid, Negroid, Australoid) then how are we to proceed in describing them?

By genetic groups. These can be as simple or as complex as necessary. There are two main divisions in grouping people: African and Non-African.

On the Non-African side, there are two main groupings: a “North Eurasia” group, with two sub-groups --Caucasoid and Northeast Asia (including American Indians and Inuit), and a “Southeast Asia” group, also with two sub-groups: Mainland and Southeast Asian/Pacific Islander, and Australia/New Guinea.

The physical characteristics and genetic code within each of these groups and sub-groups have more in common than with populations outside the groups. So a Korean has more in common with a Swede than with a Filipino.

The main differences between the actual genetic groupings and the traditional ones which were based solely on skin-level characteristics (skin color and eyes, basically) are that the “Mongoloid” grouping has been shown to not exist at all, and the “Caucasoid” grouping is but a small subset of a larger group.

[continued]

3695. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/17/2000 3:05:49 AM

Doesn't forensic medicine also defer to race?

Forensic medicine uses genetic groupings as above, based on physical characteristics (most of which are deeper than skin-level) and DNA.

The term “race” is still used, but it can refer to any of the groups or sub-groups mentioned above (or even lower-level genetic groupings, such as “Japanese” or “Dravidian”), and has no scientific meaning.

3696. ScottLoar - 2/17/2000 8:27:40 AM

And where do I find a listing of such genetic groups? By the way, I do know -hell, I can see so - that northern Asians have little in common with southern Asians, and that "humanity doesn't break down so easily" (my own child is the result of an inter-racial marriage, remember?), but I am looking for a common and practical categorization that can prevent such tedious explanations. By the way, I don't confuse a Korean for a Swede or even for a Filipino.

3697. ScottLoar - 2/17/2000 8:37:45 AM

By the way, if a skeleton is found, how is an investigator to describe it? Korean? Swede? Filipino? How does he know? From the skeleton the investigator can know age, sex, physical condition and some of the physical history, but how further is he to describe it?

3698. Ronski - 2/17/2000 11:14:28 AM

Thank you for all the interesting posts on the Ainu.

Irv,

Sorry for my error re: Austronesian. I meant Australoid.

I think the point of the PBS show was that Kennewick Man's genetics were only recently identified, and the similarity to Ainu genetics is what tossed everything into the proverbial cocked hat.

3699. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/17/2000 11:27:38 AM

ScottLoar:
And where do I find a listing of such genetic groups?

Any genetics or forensic medicine reference will have them. I got my information above from Cavalli-Sforza, but I also found similar information in a forensic medicine reference I have.

The beauty of genetic classifications is that the ethnicity of a subject can be identified from a very small sample, even a strand of hair or a bone fragment... anything which carries DNA. And such ethnicity can be narrowed down to a fine degree (often to a specific ethnic group) since the data base for genetic identifying is constantly increasing. An investigator can usually indeed say if a person is a Korean or a Filipino or a Swede.

If you prefer a simpler classification of all humanity, you can use one of the three following groupings, which are more accurate than the traditional ones:

A.
• African
• Non-African

B.
• African
• North Eurasian
• Southeast Asian

C.
• African
• Caucasoid
• Northeast Asian
• Mainland and Insular Southeast Asian/Pacific Islander
• Australia/New Guinea

These categories are marked by the following genetic distances: A .030, B .024, C.018. By comparison, the difference between a Korean and a Japanese is .002, the difference between a Filipino and an Indonesian is .006, and the difference between a Swede and an Iranian is .004.

3700. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/17/2000 11:31:31 AM

Ronski:
It's no surprise (to me) that the Kennewick Man's genetic code is not too distant from the Ainu, since all Amerinds, Na-Dene and Inuit groups are within .012 of the Ainu today, and probably were closer earlier in history.

3701. Ronski - 2/17/2000 3:06:04 PM

Fascinating stuff.

3702. Candide - 2/17/2000 5:55:15 PM

Irving

Thanks.

3703. misunderstood genius - 2/17/2000 8:52:31 PM

Irv,
Valare vendapetta Information.

Meaning, Very Useful information , the Language which i have mentioned above is MALAYALAM (One of the languages spoken in India)

3704. ScottLoar - 2/17/2000 10:27:48 PM

Yes, I did want a classification system encompassing all of humanity. Categories A and B are so general ("all men are brothers") as to be pretty friggin' useless.

3705. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/17/2000 10:30:28 PM

MG:
I look forward to your comments on Malayalam, a language which has long fascinated me (along with all of the Dravidian languages).

A close friend of mine teaches Malayalam at a leading American university. He tells me that most of his students are Malayalis born in the USA, trying to learn their parents' tongue.

I've never studied Malayalam, but I did study Tamil for a number of years. Even though I put several years of effort into it, and worked at it, I never got very far beyond learning the alphabet and some simple conversation.

At one point, I picked up a book from India titled "learn Tamil in 30 days." I've had the book for 24 years, and it still hasn't worked. The book starts simply, with numbers, pronounss, and everyday objects, but quickly works its way up to sentences like "The deftness of the hands of the sculptors is something marvellous." ("Antha yaanaiyai uruvakkeya cherrpeyen kaiththerranai annaanpathu.") It never tells one how to get from one point to the other, and I got lost in the middle.

How close are the languages? If someone speaks Tamil, how much do you understand? Have you learned to read Tamil script? What do you think of the ridiculously long new name for Trivandrum?

Sorry for all the questions... I am quite interested. Nandri.

3706. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/17/2000 10:33:31 PM

ScottLoar:
Yes, I did want a classification system encompassing all of humanity. Categories A and B are so general ("all men are brothers") as to be pretty friggin' useless.

Categories A and B encompass all of humanity as well. Why is category B (with three categories) any more useless than the traditional three categories (Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Negroid)? It has the advantage of being accurate, which the traditional categories are not.

3707. misunderstood genius - 2/19/2000 4:00:06 PM

Irving,

Bear with me, as you know English is not my first language, by three or so.

As per Keralite, Malayalam is very difficult to learn and as far as Tamil is concerned it's the easiest language in the southern India. The toughest as far as I believe is Kannada and then is Malayalam followed by Telegu and finally Tamil.

It's the same case for me. As I lived my whole life in Bombay, Hindi and Marathi have not been a problem but as far a Malayalam is concerned, I have just learnt the alphabets and simple sentences. If I am told to read/write a nested (like sql nested commands) sentence, probably I will then see stars.

Southern languages are pretty similar. Like for example, 'velam' in Malayalam means Water whereas the same word in Tamil means Flood. Ahh haa good, close enough, isn't it?

I can understand Tamil, not very well but still I can figure out what the conversation is about. As far as reading goes I am totally poor in Tamil but Malayalam I can at least cross the stream.

As far as Trivandrum's new name goes, I can put it this way...blame it on the government.

For ex.
•Bombay: name given by the British
•Mumbai: name as per the local community
•Bambai: name pronounced in Hindi

So when BJP Government came in, the name got changed to Mumbai and now that congress has come in again (State elections) they would like the name to be changed back to Bombay again.

There is a famous place in Bombay (I am sure you might be aware of) called Bombay VT (Victoria Terminus). That beautiful name was changed to Bombay CST (Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus). what the people of Bombay can do about this...nothing. This same way goes with Tiruvanathapuram (old local name).

No need to feel sorry! Nanni!

3708. DanDillon - 2/20/2000 4:32:59 PM

Steven Pinker was on Book TV earlier today. He spoke about various inflections in English, specifically irregular verbs and plural endings. He's incredibly well-equipped to respond to a broad range of queries as evidenced during the Q & A session following his lecture -- a real testament to his mental acuity.

His latest book, for anyone interested, provides an extremely detailed look at the morphology of English. Some of the theories he advanced on Book TV were intriguing enough, but some were also of questionable rigor, both good reasons to read the thing.

3709. Candide - 2/20/2000 5:03:44 PM

misunderstood genius

Post 3707 is fascinating. If I say I am an avid reader of Salman Rushdie I hope I haven't droped a bomb. Everything I discover about Bombay/Mumbai/Bambai adds to the rich impression I already have of the place. I look forward to reading more of your posts.

3710. ilyavinarsky - 2/20/2000 5:29:51 PM

> We warn viewers that the following program contains mild language.

Reminds me of the John Callahan cartoon of a caveman watching TV: "Warning: the following program contains language."

3711. PelleNilsson - 2/20/2000 5:36:35 PM

ilya

Welcome. Long time ....

3712. Candide - 2/20/2000 6:13:20 PM

Ilya

Where were you?

3713. Candide - 2/20/2000 6:58:09 PM

IrvingSnodgrass

There's some good language stuff that got posted in the Caf. It should be here. Is surgical intervention possible?

3714. RustlerPike - 2/20/2000 7:02:17 PM

3715. RustlerPike - 2/20/2000 7:04:42 PM

3716. Candide - 2/20/2000 7:10:50 PM

IrvingSnodgrass

Posts 9592 in Cafe until 9613 (9605 and 6 could be omitted but will do no harm.)

3717. RustlerPike - 2/20/2000 7:10:55 PM

There's a Yiddish word for website! Who would've thunk it?

3718. RustlerPike - 2/20/2000 7:46:59 PM

Webzaytalach.

3719. RustlerPike - 2/20/2000 7:49:18 PM

In the plural.

3720. DanDillon - 2/20/2000 7:58:36 PM

RP,

What does the suffix -alach mean? Or what does it denote? I see from the phonetics of the word that it's a borrowing, but the ending has me nonplussed. Or is it simply the plural form, and that's what you meant in your #3719? (If it's that simple, please forgive the inane question.)

3721. ilyavinarsky - 2/20/2000 8:06:22 PM

It is webzaytlekh. -lekh is a plural indicator, e.g. a dress kleydl - kleydlakh.

3722. ilyavinarsky - 2/20/2000 8:08:09 PM

Q to the resident linguists.

The Chinese, Korean and Japanese languages are unrelated. Why do all three not distinguish between L and R?

3723. ilyavinarsky - 2/20/2000 8:08:52 PM

Probably -ekh. I am not sure about the l.

3724. DanDillon - 2/20/2000 8:17:28 PM

L = Left?
R = Right?

3725. ilyavinarsky - 2/20/2000 9:55:39 PM

Sounds l and r.

3726. ScottLoar - 2/20/2000 9:58:43 PM

Absurd! Of course Mandarin discriminates between the sound of "l" and "r", as well as Cantonese, Fukienese, Techew, Shanghainese, Taiwanese that I can immediately identify.

3727. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/20/2000 10:03:23 PM

Misunderstood Genius:
No need to apologise for your language. You write better than many native speakers.

Southern languages are pretty similar. Like for example, 'velam' in Malayalam means Water whereas the same word in Tamil means Flood. Ahh haa good, close enough, isn't it?

The word for "water" in Tamil is "Tanir" (or "Tani" in colloquial language). I wonder if there is a cognate word in Malayalam? The Tamil word shows up in English as part of "Mulligatawny," which literally means "pepper water."

Thanks for the explanation of the name changes. The last time I was in India, I visited Madras and Bombay... and now neither of those names exists any more!

I'm not surprised you can understand spoken Tamil, but have a hard time with written Tamil. After all, the Tamil alphabets is different from Malayalam. I am the opposite... I understand some written Tamil but can barely understand anything in spoken Tamil.

Bombay, which I suppose you would call your home town, is one of my favorite cities in the world. It has a vibrancy which reminds me of New York.

Please share more of your knowledge of the language situation in India. You grew up in Bombay, and speak English, Hindi and Malayalam (and some Tamil)... do you also speak Marathi? Any other languages?

The linguistic diversity of India always amazes me.

3728. ScottLoar - 2/20/2000 10:03:43 PM

A good example is the sound of "lou" meaning a storey and "rou" meaning gentle in Mandarin, both second tone.

3729. PincherMartin - 2/20/2000 10:07:55 PM

I think he must have meant Japanese.

3730. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/20/2000 10:08:12 PM

Ilya:
As Scott Loar pointed out, l and r are found in Chinese (like ScottLoar, I know of no dialects in which they aren't both found). The fact that Japanese has no l and Korean has no r is simply a coincidence.

In fact, I would guess that less than half the languages of the world have both an l and an r, possibly far less than half.

3731. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/20/2000 10:12:10 PM

Candide:
Only the host of a thread can move posts to another thread. But I don't see the need anyway. The use of "whom" is a good example of language in change... it adds no meaning to an utterance, and it will soon disappear (English, as an analytic language, has no need of object-position markers). Many people still use it, many don't. I haven't seen any prescriptivists around here demanding it be used, so I personally don't see it as an issue.

3732. ScottLoar - 2/20/2000 10:13:15 PM

No, PincherMartin, read the post that initiated this correction.

3733. PincherMartin - 2/20/2000 10:14:37 PM

Scott Loar --

Thanks, you are correct.

3734. ScottLoar - 2/20/2000 10:15:38 PM

No, you were generously giving the benefit of doubt.

3735. DanDillon - 2/20/2000 10:31:25 PM

Strange that I thought those languages might not discriminate between left and right. I suppose this error shines an embarrassingly bright and direct light on my scant knowledge of Altaic and Sinitic languages.

3736. DanDillon - 2/20/2000 10:34:45 PM

jap v. [orig. alluding to the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941] 1. to attack or assail suddenly or without warning; (broadly) to take by surprise.--usu. considered offensive.

3737. DanDillon - 2/20/2000 10:39:45 PM

Chinese tobacco n. opium. Joc.

3738. DanDillon - 2/20/2000 10:40:20 PM

Nothing for Korea.

3739. SnowOwl - 2/20/2000 10:41:18 PM

Irving,

I've now learnt something about one of my favourite soups. I'll never eat Mulligatawny again without remembering where the name comes from and what it means. Thank you.

3740. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/20/2000 10:44:50 PM

Dan:
Are there any languages which fail to discriminate between left and right?

Here in Bali, the terms for "left" and "right" exist, but everything is oriented to the mountains (north) and the sea (south), so no one says a building is on the left side of the road, but rather positions it geographically: "It's on the south side of the road." This causes endless confusion for all non-Balinese (both those from other parts of Indonesia and those from overseas).

Another interesting tidbit is that Balinese regard all people from outside Bali as belonging to a single category, which they call "Javanese" (orang Jawa). So my wife and I are both referred to as "Javanese," which is always a source of amusement. The Balinese world is divided into two races: Balinese and Javanese (everyone else).

Perhaps your confusion on the la nd r above was because of your knowledge of Altaic and Sinitic languages, i.e., that there is no areal typology causing l/r confusion in the region.

3741. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/20/2000 10:47:43 PM

SnowOwl:
Glad to be of service. It's the small gems of linguistic trivia which first attracted me to linguistics.

3742. DanDillon - 2/20/2000 10:55:12 PM

1736. EricCartman - 2/20/00 3:38:07 AM
Pelle:

"Harp" is slang for harmonica. I have no idea why.

harp n. 1. So. a harmonica.
The first usage citation goes back to 1887 in the OEDS (Supplement to the OED). The word's regional tag (So. for Southern) is news to me. I've heard "harp" used up in Chicago as often as "harmonica."

3743. SnowOwl - 2/20/2000 10:59:26 PM

Mouth organ is what a harmonica's usually called here. When I was a kid my father played a strange instrument called a "Jew's Harp". I've got a horrible feeling now that there were some racist connotations to the name, but I've never met anyone who knew anything about it, so I'm not sure where the name or the instrument originated.

3744. DanDillon - 2/20/2000 11:00:15 PM

Irv,

I know of no language that fails to make this distinction. I do, however, know of languages spoken in cultures that give four completely different sets of directions for the quickest route from point A to point B. Picture a group of direction-givers standing on a corner, each pointing to various and unrepeated pockets of breeze. Ah, days of wanderlust and eyedroppers of bleach.

3745. DanDillon - 2/20/2000 11:06:19 PM

SnowOwl,

A Jew's harp is quite different from a harmonica, both in shape and in sound produced. "Mouth organ" for "harmonica," by the way, was cited in Dialect Notes back in 1895. As a sidenote to this term, "mouth organ" can also mean "a spokesman" or even "the tongue."

3746. joezan - 2/20/2000 11:16:05 PM

SnowOwl:

"Jew's Harp" is a bastardization of Juice Harp, so named for the large volume of spit produced while playing it.

I don't believe there's any anti-Semitic relationship, although I also once thought there must be.

3747. SnowOwl - 2/20/2000 11:29:47 PM

DanDillon,

I do realise there is a difference between the two instruments. I've even played the mouth organ myself, very inexpertly. I've never tried playing the Jew's Harp and I haven't seen one around since I was a kid. It's interesting that the term mouth organ goes back so far.

Joezan,

Thanks for the information. I wont feel quite so bad using the term again, not that it comes up in casual conversation very often.

3748. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/20/2000 11:35:03 PM

Dan:
I do, however, know of languages spoken in cultures that give four completely different sets of directions for the quickest route from point A to point B.

Yeah, I live in one of those. Indonesians are too polite to ever say they don't know the way to Point B. So they'll give directions anyway.

3749. DanDillon - 2/20/2000 11:38:22 PM

Irv,
It's a damn good thing that l'waqt meshi mushkeel!

3750. ilyavinarsky - 2/20/2000 11:58:10 PM

I was wrong about Chinese. I don't know where I got the misinfo from.

3751. ilyavinarsky - 2/20/2000 11:59:05 PM

But still: why did the Chinese students I went to school with say 'clystarography'?

3752. ilyavinarsky - 2/21/2000 12:04:19 AM

We used to have a Japanese neighbor with two small kids, who had a "Hiragana-Katakana sounding machine". I was surprised to discover that instead of "ra-ri-ru-re-ro" it said "la-ri-ru-re-ro", if I remember correctly.

3753. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/21/2000 12:10:10 AM

Ilya:
There are many factors which go into creating a foreign accent in any language. Chinese speakers have trouble with consonant clusters, which are very infrequent in Chinese, and I would guess that consonant clusters involving "r" with another letter in English are difficult.

The rhythms of the two languages are very different as well, since Chinese is a tonal language. This can have an effect on pronunciation.

In addition, some dialects of Mandarin (I'm not sure of other Chinese languages), such as in Taiwan, lack the "r" sound in certain environments. This also may affect language learning.

Finally, who knows... maybe they had Japanese teachers?

3754. Candide - 2/21/2000 12:53:40 AM

IrvingSnodgrass

I've just returned from a "Sydney customers may be experiencing difficulties" situation. It wasn't the "whom" I found interesting but the Irish gift of "youse" for plural 'you' in the United States and in Australia.

3755. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/21/2000 1:23:37 AM

Candide:
I'm not sure "youse" originated with the Irish. I need a more reputable linguistic source than Joe for that one.

What is certain is that the various forms prevalent throughout the English-speaking world (youse, y'all, yins) point to a need for a second-person plural in English. You can be certain that before too long there will be an acceptable second-person plural form in standard English.

3756. ScottLoar - 2/21/2000 9:21:01 AM

Referencing direction to mountains or sea is not unique to Bali; the same is done in Oahu and most probably other islands.

3757. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/21/2000 10:22:03 AM

ScottLoar:
I don't think I implied that the orientation in Bali was unique, but it is of interest. Here are some interesting quotes:

"The people of Bali are among the few island people of the world who turn toward the mountains rather than to the sea... Orientation to the great mountain, Gunung Agung, is of great importance in Balinese life in the most mundane of situations. Balinese must sleep with their heads toward the mountain or to the rising sun. It is believed the feet are an unclean part of the body and to point them to the holy mountain would be unthinkable."
(Barbara Walker, Bali Style)

"The ancient Balinese system of direction places kaja (uphill, the realm of the higher spirits) always toward the nearest great mountain. Kelod (downhill, the realm of the netherworld) is towards the sea. Kaja-kelod is the mountain-to-sea radial axis along which villages, temples and pavilions have been aligned since prehistoric times."
(Insight Guides: Bali)

The two axes of Balinese orientation are kaja-kelod (mountain-sea) and kangin-kauh (sunrise-sunset). These correspond to north-south and east-west.

3758. cmboyce - 2/21/2000 1:24:36 PM

Here is Jared Diamond's take on Japanese-Korean-Ainu. And here's a collection of Ainu sites.

3759. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/21/2000 1:49:36 PM

CM:
That article by Diamond was posted in the old place, and I read it at that time. I thought it was originally from "Nature." It's an excellent piece.

3760. RustlerPike - 2/21/2000 1:53:51 PM

Actually, 'Jew's harp' is a bastardization, but not of 'Juice harp'. According to my sources, it is devolved from the term 'Jew's arse'. Why - I know not, but there it is.

Where is hashke when you need someone to decipher a Yiddish phrase?

Oh, and, to the best of my knowledge, the plural ending is lakh. I was also always under the impression that there is a diminutive/sympathetic meaning there as well (though I can't think of the non diminutive plural ending. -im? -s/-es? I could be wrong there).

The singular form of that diminutive is, I believe, -leh: Leah'leh, Moishe'leh, feygeleh (little bird and - at least in modern Hebrew, a sissy), mama'leh, etc. (a marijuana joint is called a tzinge'leh. Why - I know not).

Also kneidlakh, kreplakh, kinderlakh...

3761. cmboyce - 2/21/2000 2:03:50 PM

Two Ainu girls with tattooed mustaches

3762. ilyavinarsky - 2/22/2000 1:16:06 AM

From this New York Review of Books article:

One of Patricia Kuhl's more revealing studies of children is based on tested knowledge of grownups. We've long known that all natural language is constructed of phonemes—that is, a speech sound, a critical change in which changes the meaning of the word of which it is a part, as when we shift from b to p, yielding blot and plot in English. Listening to speech, we ignore sound differences that do not affect meaning, like the difference between an aspirated p as in pin (which can blow out a match held close to the mouth) and an unaspirated p as in spin (which won't even make the flame flicker). Spin remains the same word whether you blow on the p or not.

What shifts in speech sound do ten-month-olds distinguish, even before they've mastered their mother tongue? Are they already tuned to its phonemes, like the grownups who look after them? Patricia Kuhl exposed children to a series of speech sounds a few seconds apart, say l as in lemon, look, light. Kids very soon became habituated, got bored, let their attention wander. But then she slipped a new sound into the series, one that lives on the other side of the English phoneme boundary between l and r, as in going from look to rook. A ten-month-old raised in an English-speaking environment, bored with the succession of l sounds, will snap right back to attention when an r appears. But not a Japanese ten-month-old: to him, as to his parents, l and r are the same old thing, lot and rot interchangeable, indistinguishable. So how do you master the phoneme structure of your native language before you start speaking it? That is still not fully understood. What Kuhl found is that kids babble in the phonemes of their own language before they talk it. But how do kids under ten months accomplish that? By listening to Motherese, perhaps?

3763. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/22/2000 6:21:48 AM

Ilya:
Fascinating research! I look forward to seeing what follow up research determines. At what age do infants begin to recognize the phonemes of their language? The conclusions of the research don't surprise me at all, and fit nicely with Pinker's work on language acquisition. But quantifying when the steps occur is meaningful.

3764. hashke - 2/22/2000 11:19:27 AM

Rustler bubeleh:

Yiddish? What phrase? What?

3765. Ronski - 2/22/2000 12:04:21 PM

Speaking of "youse," which is still a fairly common usage in parts of Brooklyn, I have long wondered whether "dese, dem, dose" for "these, them, those" is descended from the Irish accent, or whether the original Dutch of Brooklyn had an influence, or whether there is some other derivation.

Some Dutch do replace the "th" sound with a "d" when speaking English, while at least some of the Irish accents that do not pronounce "th" replace it with the softer "t'" rather than a "d."

And I mourn the loss of the eth and the thorn.

3766. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/22/2000 12:18:44 PM

Ronski:
I'm not sure of the origins of the disappearing "th" in NY speech, but it probably has to do with the fact that English is one of the few languages in the world that has either of these two sounds, and the only language I know of that has both of them. As such, it is a hard sound for language learners to make, and the large number of immigrants in NY over its history are a likely factor.

As English increasingly becomes a language of global communication, the edh and thorn are probably doomed. But it won't happen in our lifetime.

3767. Ronski - 2/22/2000 12:49:08 PM

Irv,

I hadn't even thought of the sounds going the same way as the symbols. Now I'm really depressed.

Icelandic and modern Greek retain something resembling edh and thorn, yes? Are there others?

(I mourn the loss of thee and thou, as well.)

3768. ScottLoar - 2/22/2000 12:55:43 PM

Yet my understanding was that "thee" and "thou" by the time of say, the King James Version, was reserved for honorifics or formal speech, excluding the Quakers who consciously continued the use up through the last century. Addresses reserved for formal speech and honourifics seem doomed to extinction do they not as the colloquial overwhelms them?

3769. ScottLoar - 2/22/2000 12:57:09 PM

I include, of course, thine, hast, hath, etc.

3770. Ronski - 2/22/2000 1:04:18 PM

Can anyone comment on the changes in usage of honorifics in Japanese, among the younger folk there?

3771. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/22/2000 1:10:06 PM

Ronski:
Sure, there are a number of languages which have one or the other, but no others which I know of which have both. Arabic has thorn, and Tamil and Fijian have edh as phonemes (for example) and Spanish has edh as an allophone (meaning that it is not a separate sound in Spanish, but rather an intervocalic variant of "d"). Those examples are in addition to the two you gave. There are others, but not too many.

And mourning the loss of thee and thou is really living in the past.

ScottLoar:
Yes, exactly. It happens eventually in all languages.

3772. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/22/2000 1:12:29 PM

Oh yes, Castillian Spanish has thorn as well, so in a way, it has both thorn and edh, but not phonemically, which is what matters.

As for the Japanese honorifics, PE once gave a very insightful view of these and how they're changing at the old place. I wish I could remember what he said.

3773. Ronski - 2/22/2000 1:12:44 PM

Irv,

I know. They (thee-thou) just sound so nice.

3774. PelleNilsson - 2/22/2000 2:06:04 PM

ScottLoar -- Message # 3768

I have always assumed that 'thou' was the informal mode of address because of its similarity with the Norse 'du'. Am I wrong?

3775. Ronski - 2/22/2000 2:27:26 PM

Pelle,

You're right. "Thou" was the informal, but fell out of common usage and was replaced by the formal "you," which was thereafter used both in formal and informal situations.

"Thou" lingered on for a while in the cases noted above. Today one hears it only in the movies, in Biblical and literary references, and so on.

I don't know what reason is given for its disappearance.

3776. Candide - 2/22/2000 2:45:03 PM

ScottLoar#3756

And not unknown in New Plymouth in New Zealand where before Mount Egmont changed back to being calledTaranaki everything in the town was called 'Egmont'. Since the province is called by the same name as the mountain now I don't know how they're handling it. But the Fujiyama of the south was central to the local psyche, not the many lovely braches.

3777. Candide - 2/22/2000 2:55:57 PM

IrvingSnodgrass #3771

I think people have to be allowed to mourn the loss of familiar things or even things of legend. This is not the same thing as trying to prevent change. If a loved home is burned down it does not mean that the mourner is hostile to modern architectural developments. Loved ways of speaking are very close to the womb.

Actually, thee and thou are very useful in Italian and signify intimacy. They still use thee (as you know) in parts of England. I had a theatrical land lady in Sunderland (Yorkshire by origin) who always said thee and thah. I also actually heard her say :"Ee, it were gradely".
Meaning "It was lovely".

3778. Candide - 2/22/2000 3:05:13 PM

3776

and not just the braches, the beaches as well.

3779. Thoughtful - 2/22/2000 8:50:48 PM

Don't the Quakers continue to use thee and thou? Or was that only in the movie.

Also, from personal knowledge, Dad and his brothers, who all grew up speaking Polish before they learned English, are all deese and dem'ers. Another affectation shared by my friend's parents who were Eastern European Jews (Russian & Lithuanian) for whom English was a second language was fil-m (2 syllables) for film, pal-m for palm, and el-m for elm.

3780. Thoughtful - 2/22/2000 8:55:24 PM

Mrs. Malaprop (my administrative assistant) continues to surprise me with her doozies:

She never ceases to amaze me -- or ceases to amaze me as she would say.
A conversation about women going through 'the change' had her talking about "ministration". Gives a whole new meaning to the term administrators!
Her hubby had muscle pain so she said the doctor prescribed inflammatories.
Something that had to be stopped right away, she wanted to nip it in the butt.
And my favorite, she was changing her breakfast to oakmeal. When I asked why, she said because it has so much fiber!

That last one, I could barely keep a straight face!

3781. DanDillon - 2/22/2000 10:34:22 PM

Thoughtful,
She never ceases to amaze me -- or ceases to amaze me as she would say.

What's the difference here? The rest, by the way, are very funny. She deserves the name you've given her!

3782. alistairconnor - 2/22/2000 10:43:48 PM

Question of the Day:

How do you pronounce the town of Coxsackie, NY?
(If you're looking for it on a map, I believe it's close to Climax.)

And more importantly, what do you call the locals?

3783. CalGal - 2/22/2000 11:38:09 PM

Cox- o is the sound in "father" (or mop, if you're american)
sa- a is the short a like in cat.
kie- e is the long e.

I believe the emphasis is on the second syllable.

Coxsackians, I suppose.

3784. CalGal - 2/22/2000 11:40:56 PM

My nephew called me with a ridiculous crossword puzzle that is irritating me.

Synonym for "meek"--8 letters.
_ _E _ _ _ _ H

Specialized vocabulary term--11 letters.
_ _ _ _ I _ _ _ O _ _

3785. candide - 2/22/2000 11:44:41 PM

CalGal

That's the way to treat impertinent French New Zealanders. Ask him whether he lives near the mythical French village called Condom.

Thoughtful
Oakmeal would nip you in the butt.

3786. alistairconnor - 2/22/2000 11:51:20 PM

Condom is by no means a mythical village, but a small town in the rugby heartland of the south-west. And not lacking a sense of humour, the municipality has established La musee du preservatif... the museum of.... French letters.

3787. candide - 2/23/2000 12:00:33 AM

Alistair

Couldn't find it in the atlas so I left myself an out -also, myth doesn't mean imaginary. A myth, like this one, can be true.

Really? "La musee du preservatif...
the museum of.... French letters."

Brits who come to Oz and ask for Durex are amazed to be given sellotape.

3788. candide - 2/23/2000 12:04:02 AM

toys

3789. candide - 2/23/2000 12:04:56 AM

toys?

3790. cmboyce - 2/23/2000 12:13:58 AM

Message # 3784

Cal, the second of your Xwords might be "terminology". Not much of a definition (as too many Xword clues aren't), but passable, I guess. Have him see what that "y" does.

3791. cmboyce - 2/23/2000 12:15:12 AM

"sheepish".

3792. CalGal - 2/23/2000 12:34:39 AM

Ah! Terminology it is. I'm not sure about sheepish, though. Although it does fit.

These clues were incredibly annoying, and it was one of those puzzles where at most you'd fill in two letters of an 8 letter word. And then I was helping out over the phone. I got five words, and the last two have been plaguing me. Thanks for the help.

What I find particularly annoying is that this kid is in 6th grade, and there was no context. Just a crossword puzzle out of the blue. I'm not completely stupid, and if I found them difficult, what are the 6th graders thinking? It's not like there was any way to just point him in the right direction and let them figure it out.

3793. CalGal - 2/23/2000 12:36:28 AM

I just looked it up--meek does mean sheepish. Good call! Thanks.

3794. PelleNilsson - 2/23/2000 8:37:45 AM

I have now collected our old stories and have made up a table of contents. The page is not very nice because I'm still grappling with the design issues. It looks different when I preview in the editor to when I access the site.

Before I start to link in the actual stories I would like you to have a look here and tell me if

you want another title for your story
you think your story should be in another category
you want to delete a story
there is anything else I should consider

If you want you can mail me.

3795. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/23/2000 8:40:30 AM

Candide Message # 3777:
I'm not sure what brought this on, but I never indicated anything of the sort. I was merely teasing Ronski about missing a feature which passed out of common English usage 400 years ago.

3796. PelleNilsson - 2/23/2000 8:40:55 AM

alistairconnor

Angel-Five

Bubbaette

Candide

ChristiePeters

CigarLaw

ConnieMack

CuriousPluck

Diva

DocBrown

GlendaJean

hashké

IrvingSnodgrass

LadyChaos

Lucky

marjoriebanks

Niner

PelleNilsson

PhillipDavid

SpaceTec

Uzmakk

Webfeet

vonKreedon

3797. DanDillon - 2/23/2000 9:08:02 AM

Pelle Message # 3796,

What's with the chart?

3798. PelleNilsson - 2/23/2000 9:10:37 AM

Sorry, there should have been a reference to #3794. The chart shows the authors to the stories.

3799. hashke - 2/23/2000 9:28:29 AM

The story setup looks good Pelle!

As I remember the original foco desnudo was an earlier story of mine about Mexico (not the Pachanga, but there was one about a taxi with the bulb and I believe even an earlier one -- both of which introduced the term 'foco desnudo') and was followed by Pak marj's tale.

I could be wrong, and it doesn't really matter. In any event, Pak marj may know.

3800. PelleNilsson - 2/23/2000 9:57:43 AM

hashke

As you have seen, the archives are not amenable to fast and easy searches. The earliest mention I found was this:

1156. hashke -May 12, 1999 - 4:03 PM PT

In Mexico there is the phenomenon of 'el foco desnudo' ('la bombilla desnuda') -- 'the naked bulb'. Even in well-to-dohouses the family gathers to the garish effulgence thrown off by this flickering, undraped sphere, which ususally hangs from the ceiling and is of extremely low wattage. La gente mejicana eats, drinks, socializes, dreams within its phantasmal glimmer.

It may be that it is a metaphor for the unrealized, the inadequate, el mal gusto.

This post will go into the "Intro" for the foco desnudo stories.

3801. hashke - 2/23/2000 10:58:25 AM

Pelle:

Your sleuthing is indeed impressive!!!

3802. ProfEmeritus - 2/23/2000 1:51:23 PM

Pak hashke

I know I have been out of touch. I have missed our fun exchanges. I am not a linguist in any sense, but I try to be a funster/punster. I just changed "am" to "try to be."

3803. PelleNilsson - 2/23/2000 2:36:32 PM

This is from the IHT:

... the bomb plot, whose target has not been made public ...

In school I was taught that 'whose' cannot be used to reference things. The above should have been written "the bomb plot, the target of which".

Is the IHT usage generally acceptable? It certainly simplifies things.

3804. cmboyce - 2/23/2000 2:42:27 PM

I think (my recall of those dim days is not what it might be) that I was first taught the same, Pelle; then, later, I learned (I think in a classroom) that usage had changed and the convenience of "whose" was allowed in most instances. Including, I'd think, this one.

3805. PelleNilsson - 2/23/2000 2:54:04 PM

Thanks cm.

BTW in #1757 in Arts is an attempt to answer a question of yours.

3806. cmboyce - 2/23/2000 2:59:11 PM

Thanks, Pelle. I saw it this morning. Sounds good. (The original discussion was in Books; but no matter. I think last night's interruption of the Mote's usually impeccable service doubtless derailed the conversation.)

3807. PelleNilsson - 2/23/2000 3:12:34 PM

It derailed some minds too. Temporarily, as usual, one hopes. I'll copy the post to Books.

3808. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/23/2000 7:07:45 PM

Pelle Message # 3803:
The "whose" construction is the normal one in English, despite prescriptivists' best efforts to outlaw it based on an argument that "whose" can only refer to people (since when does logic enter into language use?). The alternative sounds unnecessarily stilted.

3809. ilyavinarsky - 2/23/2000 8:30:19 PM

The expression "to duke it out" is used here for example.

3810. hashke - 2/24/2000 12:50:12 AM

Pak Gurubesar #3802:

We'll have to get back into the swing one of these days. You have always been a top punster/funster.

I think Pak marj is too busy with his bambino's butt and bottle to join in.

So have I have been out of touch, and can't think of even a single pun. There's just that feeling of being left in the lurk.

3811. PelleNilsson - 2/24/2000 3:45:40 AM

Irv

I would like to discuss the need or otherwise of prescriptivist approach when teching/learning English as a second language, but I'm short of time. I hope to return to the subject during the weekend.

3812. DanDillon - 2/24/2000 9:05:28 AM

That's one I'd like to participate in as well, Pelle. Being an English teacher, a former ESL instructor, and a novice linguist I'll be able to shed some light on the prescriptivist discussion. Looking forward to it.

3813. profemeritus - 2/24/2000 10:35:34 AM

Pak hashke

That's pretty good! By lurching, we don't leek our secrets, dewy.

3814. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/24/2000 10:46:27 AM

Pelle/Dan::
The role of prescriptivism in ESOL (or in learning any language, for that matter) seems like a pretty easy question to me. There are enough issues in teaching English as a foreign or second language without burdening students with outmoded rules which do not reflect the language as it is used.

Fortunately, prescriptivism went out of fashion in the field of ESOL (or EFL/ESL, if you prefer) many years ago (before WWII, in fact).

Dan's experience in the academic end of the field of ESOL is more recent than mine, but I have been involved in the applied end for nearly 25 years.

Pelle, I hope you are not confusing teaching prescriptivism with teaching students how to write accurately and clearly, which is a very different thing.

3815. hashke - 2/24/2000 11:05:27 AM

3813. profemeritus - 2/24/00 3:35:34 PM
Pak hashke

That's pretty good! By lurching, we don't leek our secrets, dewy

Yeah, but it's a rather decimal prospect.

3816. DanDillon - 2/24/2000 11:09:17 AM

...confusing teaching prescriptivism with teaching students how to write accurately and clearly...

Good. I'm glad you laid this out early and clearly. I hope this will help us work with better defined terms as the discussion progresses.

Gotta run.

3817. ProfEmeritus - 2/24/2000 12:05:10 PM

Pak hashke

Yes, it is decimal without Pak marj, but his present duties are too chard to allow mushroom to beet us. He is probably about to kohlrabi for his son.

3818. hashke - 2/24/2000 12:11:45 PM

Call a rabbi? Is marj Jewish? Next thing you know he'll make a mountain out of a mohel.

3819. ProfEmeritus - 2/24/2000 12:25:47 PM

Pak hashke

You are very clever. That rabbi thing was so far-fetched I thought it would turnip on the crap heap.

3820. hashke - 2/24/2000 12:31:06 PM

Pak Gurubesar:

That would turnip it into crapnip.

3821. PelleNilsson - 2/24/2000 12:49:39 PM

Irv

I think we must eliminate a potential misunderstanding. In the first para of Message # 3814 you seem to equate prescriptivism with outmoded rules which do not reflect the language as it is used. And if you use that definition, the answer becomes easy. But it wasn't what I had in mind.

The point I'm departing from is that while native speakers assimilate the language, non-native ones need some props upon which to build, and the question is: from where do these props come?

Mustn't descriptions of how native speakers use the languague be used to develop prescriptions to aid the non-native ones?

And mustn't both description and prescription depart from a norm?

3822. ProfEmeritus - 2/24/2000 12:58:31 PM

Pak hashke

Pray tell
what is mohel?
is it like Pelle?
or a buxom belle?

3823. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/24/2000 1:09:09 PM

Pelle:
You are indeed laboring under a misconception of what prescriptivism is. I encourage you to read Pinker -- since he's the best available source for the layman (though there is a wealth of information out there) -- to understand what the term "presciptivism" means. My definition which you highlight above is an accurate one.

Of course non-native speakers need to learn the rules of the language. Only children can learn language by exposure, and anyone over the age of 12 needs to learn a language acadmically. An important part of this is learning the rules and grammar of the language as it is spoken and written. Without this, the language produced will never approach comprehensibility, especially in written language.

There was an experiment in the ESOL field back in the 70s (the "functional/notional approach") which tried to teach language through examples and functional usage, through which learners were expected to somehow absorb the rules of the language. The approach failed miserably, and has been supplanted by approaches which (correctly) involve teaching the rules of the language.

But the rules taught do not (and should not) include prescriptivist rules. These rules do not reflect how language is actually used and will only confuse learners. Learners have enough to cope with in learning how to accurately use a new language.

3824. PelleNilsson - 2/24/2000 1:31:29 PM

Irv

You fail to address the issue at hand because of your hang-up with prescriptivism and your uncritical acceptance of Pinker's definition of it.

You say that the language taught should be the language actually used. I completely agree. But used by whom? Which group is the reference? Gangsta rappers? Oxford dons? Cockney taxi drivers? Does it matter?

3825. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/24/2000 1:41:21 PM

Pelle:
I mentioned Pinker because he's the most accessible authority in print, but it is not his definition of prescriptivism.

Forget Pinker. Read any ESOL textbook or journal or speak to any English teacher. The meaning of prescriptivism is not a matter of dispute.

I gather that you are unfamiliar with the world of English teaching. The target language in all the textbooks (and language programs) I have ever seen is standard English, with minor variations in spelling and use for British and American English. No one is teaching students how to speak like rappers or taxi drivers. And no one is teaching archaic prescriptivist rules, either.

There is really no controversy over what standard English is, either. Check out any grammar of English or ESOL textbook, and you'll find the rules are the same. Standard English -- standard written English -- is basically the same throughout the English speaking world. With a solid grounding in standard English, learners can communicate in speaking or writing with speakers from around the world. There is no point in teaching learners dialectal variations.

You are still confusing prescriptivism (the attempt to prescribe rules which are not a natural part of the language) with the teaching of correct English grammar and usage. These are two completely different things.

3826. hashke - 2/24/2000 1:48:02 PM

Pak Gurubesar:

A mohel (Hebrew) is the religious functionary who performs the circumcision rites. It's a hel of a job.

Relatedly, as I pointed out in a recent bad limerick, Pelle lost his propelle to that damn chain saw that he keeps waving around.

3827. PelleNilsson - 2/24/2000 1:54:30 PM

Irv

OK, I'll go along with you and use the P-word as you define it, which means I have to mull on things a bit.

I saw a book by Pinker today; How the Mind Works. I was tempted to buy it but I thought it better to take your advice first. Have you read it or seen reviews of it?

3828. profemeritus - 2/24/2000 4:40:01 PM

Pak hashke

Terima kasih. Sekarang saya tau; saya tidak mau jadi mohel.

3829. hashke - 2/24/2000 5:04:09 PM

Pak Gurubesar:

Terima kasih. Sekarang saya tau; saya tidak mau jadi mohel.

Hahahaha!

Apakah Anda emoh jadi mohel?

Jadi mohel mahal dan muhal.

3830. profemeritus - 2/24/2000 6:17:54 PM

Pak hashke

Ya, emoh dan takut. Kalau salah, anak tidak ada kemaluan lagi.

3831. hashke - 2/24/2000 7:00:00 PM

Takut karena mohel mentakuk, dan kalau salah anak salak.

3832. Candide - 2/24/2000 7:46:36 PM

Ilya#3809

"Duke it out" would be understood by British-based speakers of English but would seem quaintly American. A British-based English-speaker would only use it for exotic effect.

3833. DanDillon - 2/24/2000 10:04:05 PM

Pelle,

Perhaps it would help convince you that prescriptivism is indeed what Irv claims it to be if I provided a few concrete instances of prescriptivist thinking.

Prescriptists are heavily resistant to change in language. An example of such resistance comes from a fellow named Robert Lowth, an Englishman who lived some 300 years ago. He belonged to a "royal society" that attempted to impose a state of exceptionlessness on the English language. In order to do so, Lowth and his ilk subjected English to many of the grammatical rules of Latin. The sentence John's victory made him a household name is a very clear syntactic and semantic unit. But according to Lowth, the "him" in this sentence would not refer to "John," but, because of an over-reliance on Latin-based rules, it would refer to "victory," itself a masculine noun in Latin. This is clearly non-intuitive and goes against an English speaker's better judgment. English vocabulary may be heavily Latinate, but its grammar is not.

Another example of prescriptivist thinking comes in the form of relative pronouns. The two cnadidates "that" and "which" can both be used preceding a restrictive or a non-restrictive relative clause. The prescriptivist would assert that only "that" should be used for restrictive relative clauses, and "which" should be reserved for the non-restrictive. This is tosh. Using one or the other does not impede one's understanding of what is being said, and therefore the distinction between the two relative pronouns is quite nearly useless.

There are hundreds of additional examples of this sort of nonsense, and you see that so long as communication is occurring, no one is going to stop the English language learner and say, "Oops! Excuse me, but I believe you dropped this m from your 'whom.'"

3834. DanDillon - 2/24/2000 10:04:28 PM

Just like Oscar Wilde said, "Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast."

As for the Pinker book, I haven't read that one yet, but I recommend (and I'm sure Irv would, too) The Language Instinct. (And his newest: Words and Rules : The Ingredients of Language.)

3835. Candide - 2/24/2000 10:17:31 PM

This is a prescriptivist clanger which I dropped in the Mote.

This is the prescriptivist clanger that I dropped in the Mote.

3836. cmboyce - 2/24/2000 10:44:44 PM

This is the potato that I am going to eat
This is the potato that is a tuber native to South America.

There is a need for the distinction traditionally (prescriptively?) made between uses of which and that.

3837. Candide - 2/24/2000 10:50:54 PM

This is the point at which I get out of the way and let those that really care duke it out.

3838. cmboyce - 2/24/2000 10:51:07 PM

Or at least a use. A comma will serve for the need. But that's a rather antique-sounding rule too.

3839. cmboyce - 2/24/2000 10:52:02 PM

Candide! Those who, surely!. (g)

3840. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/24/2000 10:52:19 PM

Dan:
Thanks for the examples supporting the definition of prescriptivism.

Pelle:
I have "How the Mind Works" on my bookshelf, but I haven't read it yet. I've also ordered Pinker's new book, so I expect I'll be reading plenty of Pinker this year. As Dan pointed out, the Pinker classic I recommend is "The Language Instinct."

I've seen reviews of both of the newer works, and they both appear to be as informative as "The Language Instinct."

Candide:
"Duke it out" would be understood by British-based speakers of English but would seem quaintly American. A British-based English-speaker would only use it for exotic effect.

I agree, and I would add that "duke it out" even seems "quaintly American" to Americans.

This is a prescriptivist clanger which I dropped in the Mote.

This is the prescriptivist clanger that I dropped in the Mote

Clear proof of Dan's statement.

CM:
What need is that?

3841. Candide - 2/24/2000 10:52:22 PM

My editors associate which with a comma.

3842. Candide - 2/24/2000 10:53:32 PM

I live in terror of whiches.

3843. cmboyce - 2/24/2000 11:01:05 PM

Irv, the need to distinguish between a reference to a characteristic of a particular potato and one of a generic one. The thing itself and the concept that refers to it. That is, of course, to the restrictive and the non-restrictive. Those terms exist because there are differing sorts of mental activity that they designate. And while, sure, one can dope out which is meant by context, that's also true (vacabulary aside) for gangsta. So the "rule" (no one gets tried and convicted) is as useful, if perhaps not altogether as necessary, as inversion for interrogative or whatever.

It is in fact descriptive! That is the way English speakers have traditionally made the said distinction. Prescriptive is when, as in the example given by Dan, a formulation is insisted on that is not an evolved way for English speakers to make a distinction.

3844. cmboyce - 2/24/2000 11:03:16 PM

Of course, the reason Candide's editors want those commas, is because they make the same signal.

The reason why all "prescriptivist" insistences should not be deleted from one's sense of the language is that some of them prescribe good things.

3845. Candide - 2/24/2000 11:04:55 PM

cmboyce

Who indeed!

3846. cmboyce - 2/24/2000 11:06:51 PM

"... as useful, if perhaps not altogether as necessary..."

Of course, none of them are strictly speaking necessary. I imagine the formulators of grammar only arose after language had been in use for quite some time, and a great many people never become aware of grammar and communicate entirely adequately to their needs. But some desire more elaborate language, capable of greater discriminations.

3847. Candide - 2/24/2000 11:07:28 PM

drboyce

well prescribed.

3848. cmboyce - 2/24/2000 11:15:29 PM

Thank you, Candide. I'm all in favor, btw, of letting those who don't give a shit how they talk, do it any way they like. Ditto write. But, if one intends discourse, then you need a more elaborated set of parameters or something.

3849. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/24/2000 11:17:13 PM

CM:
I can't think of a single instance where the use of that instead of which would cause confusion.

In actual practice, that and which are not used in their prescriptivist roles in English. And mass confusion doesn't result.

The reason why all "prescriptivist" insistences should not be deleted from one's sense of
the language is that some of them prescribe good things.

If a "prescribed" rule makes an actual difference and is used by speakers of the language (as opposed to being an attempt by someone who thinks they know better to imply order on the language) then it is not a prescriptivist rule at all. It is part of the language.

The difference between prescriptivist and descriptivist is a simple one.

A descriptivist describes the language as it is used (and, contrary to what some to think around here, a descriptivist describes rules of the language, which are the foundation language is built upon).

A precriptivist attempts to tell people how they should speak, ignoring what they actually do.

Lanuguage is a living thing. Usages which make no difference disappear. New usages which establish differences which didn't previously exist also appear. The key to language is communication, and language naturally follows the easiest path to communication, changing to meet the needs of society. Prescriptivists don't seem to "get" this, and think they can or should shape language.

3850. cmboyce - 2/24/2000 11:17:55 PM

That brown was intended as somewhat ironic. I don't wish to support the insistors upon "whom". There's just a shibboleth of people whose self-image involves sounding like someone from Barsetshire who would know how to receive the tug of a forelock.

3851. Candide - 2/24/2000 11:19:55 PM

I am in awe of American scholarly speakers and writers. There is a baroque quality about their language which must grow from a classical preparation. I have discussed this with Italians who find that their preference for complex language is better met in America than in England where stark simplicity is the desired aim.

3852. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/24/2000 11:22:22 PM

CM:
You're falling into the traditional prescriptivist trap. There's no reason why one can't write clearly and "elaborately" without using unnatural presciptivist rules. There are rules for writing in any language, which are a part of the language, and this doesn't in any way mean that "anything goes."

Any "discriminations" made by prescriptivist rules are only accessible to those who believe in them, and are not a part of the language. If there was a true need for such rules, they would exist in the language.

3853. cmboyce - 2/24/2000 11:24:16 PM

I have no real difference with your 3849, Irv. But I do think that usages that do make a difference and can disappear. I know you don't intend any disparagement of rules; I don't intend any insistence on them. But "which" and "that" are useful tools, each available for a slightly different application. That the most influential users of English don't bother with this—a feature of the age, it would seem—does not mean they should not be described as such.

3854. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/24/2000 11:25:07 PM

CM:
But, if one intends discourse, then you need a more elaborated set of parameters or something.

What is wrong with using the proper grammar of the language? Why add unneeded rules? I like to see language clearly, even artfully, used. And such can be done within the existing parameters of the language (which I suppose is the "something" you refer to).

3855. cmboyce - 2/24/2000 11:30:38 PM

Irv, that "dog" refers to a four-legged mammal of a certain class is only accessible to those who believe it. The syllable is meaningless to a Marathi speaker, say (unless it means something else). The which/that distinction is not unnatural; it is merely subtle. The rule distinguishing their uses is not unnatural; it does exist in the language. It may cease to, but it does. And a rule that describes it and permits the use of the distinction consistently is a good thing, imo.

3856. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/24/2000 11:31:36 PM

CM:
Usages disappear when they are no longer needed to make way for new usages which are needed.

I not only don't intend any disparagement of rules, I glorify them. Rules are the most essential part of language, and communication could not exist without them. There is nothing more pleasing than fine writing, and prescriptivist rules have nothing to do with an individual's ability to express him/herself in writing.

But please note the distinction between the rules which exist in a language, and those which are artificially tacked on.

I would posit that over 90% of English users fail to make a distinction between "which" and "that," and, despite your claim that this is a "feature of the age," they never have. You claim they are "useful tools," but I haven't seen any evidence of their usefulness.

3857. cmboyce - 2/24/2000 11:34:35 PM

Irv (yes, it is; the "or something" was meant to cut the pedantic tone I seemed to be taking; I am a little embarrassed to be seeming prescriptivist.) when was the which/that distinction imposed on English by someone who felt "they can or should shape language"?

3858. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/24/2000 11:35:11 PM

CM:
The rule only exists in the language because prescriptivists say so, and as such it is unnatural. The subtlety of the distinction is one tacked onto the existing body of the language.

Your example of what "dog" means to a Marathi speaker is irrelevant; it has nothing to do with prescriptivism.

3859. cmboyce - 2/24/2000 11:35:31 PM

(That parenthesis answers yours in 3854. Fast moving talk, here!)

3860. cmboyce - 2/24/2000 11:38:02 PM

My remark on "dog" was in response to your "Any "discriminations" made by prescriptivist rules are only accessible to those who
believe in them, and are not a part of the language. If there was a true need for such rules,
they would exist in the language."

I submit that the usage referred to in the which/that "rule" does exist in the language.

3861. Candide - 2/24/2000 11:39:31 PM

It's interesting to compare the language of (American) Henry James(1843-1916) with that of (English) Anthony Trollope (1815-82). Trollope's language is far simpler than the language used by James.

3862. cmboyce - 2/24/2000 11:39:42 PM

3863. cmboyce - 2/24/2000 11:43:19 PM

There is a Gongorist strain in the American ethos, Candide, though it be little recognized. Something about the wide open spaces, probably. Or perhaps hyper-everything necessarily includes language.

3864. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/24/2000 11:43:52 PM

CM:
I don't have a source (perhaps Dan can help us), but the rule was most probably one of the rules added in the 18th and 19th centuries, when prescriptivism was all the rage.

3865. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/24/2000 11:47:06 PM

CM:
I submit that the usage referred to in the which/that "rule" does exist in the language.

Well, yes, it does exist, but it is an artificial rule used by a tiny percentage of users of the language.

3866. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/24/2000 11:49:50 PM

As evidence that "that" and "which" have long been interchangeable in English, I submit this passage from the King James Bible:

"Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass."

3867. cmboyce - 2/24/2000 11:57:23 PM

Well, Irv, after looking around a bit, I will concede that I may be ascribing too much natural-law character to what may indeed be another prescriptionist's shibboleth: Here's Fowler's on the subject (Fowler (2d) (1926)): "The relations between that, who, and which, have come to us from our forefathers as an odd jumble, and plainly show that the language has not been neatly constructed by a master-builder... if writers would agree to regard that as the defining [his term for restrictive] relative pronoun, and which as the non-defining, there would be much gain both in lucidity and in ease. Some there are who follow this principle now; but it would be idle to pretend that it is the practice either ofj most or of the best writers."

3868. cmboyce - 2/24/2000 11:58:38 PM

Nice quote, Irv. But you really need one that has both, used oppositely. (g)

3869. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/25/2000 12:09:03 AM

CM:
I see Fowler tossed in his opionion (as he occasionally did) that maintaining a difference would add "lucidity." I still don't see it as anything but the most minor of differences. There is so much bad writing out there (as a glance at most threads around here will show you) that to worry about such a tiny distinction is missing the larger problems.

As for the quote, it wasn't meant to be anything more than a refutation of your earlier "feature of the age." And it served that purpose nicely.

3870. cmboyce - 2/25/2000 12:15:55 AM

Yep. I concede. If it was good enough for Lancelot Andrewes, then I guess it's good enough for the weathergirl.

3871. Candide - 2/25/2000 12:18:18 AM

Gongorist. What a wonderful word.

3872. cmboyce - 2/25/2000 12:21:51 AM

Yes. It almost is itself (especially when used by a modern American, in which such obscurities are typically grotesque, due no doubt to the difficulties inherent in living in Anarchia all these generations).

3879. DanDillon - 2/25/2000 9:21:14 AM

That the most influential users of English don't bother with this—a feature of the age, it would seem—does not mean they should not be described as such.

But yes, it does mean that they should be described as such. That's precisely the role of the descriptivist: he describes the language as it is used (Irv's words). Some mere "feature of the age," as you put it dismissively, is nothing more (or less) than language changing. The prescriptivist would try to halt such a change, and the descriptivist would merely say, "Hmm. Look. People are using 'that' and 'which' pretty much interchangably now."

Of special note: Your posts are riddled with instances of broken prescriptivist rules, cmboyce. I'm beginning to wonder whose side you're really on.

Perhaps we need something right in the middle. A deprescriptivist?

3880. DanDillon - 2/25/2000 9:30:25 AM

No split infinitives. Another grotesquely misguided prescriptivist rule (analogized from Latin, again). They are now officially allowed according to the editors of the OED. Have been for about a year now. I gotta tell ya, I really appreciated the permission. Thank god. I'd always felt so guilty about unapologetically splitting my infinitives. I'd always think to myself, "What to do? What to fucking do?"

3883. RustlerPike - 2/25/2000 2:11:20 PM

Mohel cadets (mohalim actually) practice on cucumbers. They really do.

3884. RustlerPike - 2/25/2000 2:17:47 PM

Mohells are actually very bad motels.

3885. CharlieL - 2/25/2000 2:20:48 PM

Sounds like the man who had the job circumcising elephants. The pay wasn't much, but the tips were tremendous...

3887. RustlerPike - 2/25/2000 2:29:49 PM

CharlieL!!!!

Believe it or not I was asking myself where the f*$k you'd gone to. Have you been here all along?

3888. hashke - 2/25/2000 2:39:41 PM

Circumcising an elephant would be akin to standing on the edge of a prepuce.

3889. profemeritus - 2/25/2000 2:47:45 PM

Pak hashke

as one glans would tell you.

3890. profemeritus - 2/25/2000 2:55:30 PM

and the elephant must be prostate because he has a vast deferens.

3891. hashke - 2/25/2000 3:15:10 PM

Sounds like he is as trunk as a lord's bastard.

3892. hashke - 2/25/2000 3:16:02 PM

Someone must have taken him to tusk.

3893. hashke - 2/25/2000 3:17:08 PM

I gajah on that one!

3894. profemeritus - 2/25/2000 3:21:17 PM

Pak hashke

Here is one only you will get:

you gaja me mada.

3895. hashke - 2/25/2000 3:36:54 PM

Pak Gurubesar:

Baik-baik! Pandai sekali!

I hope that this is not gading boring.

3896. RustlerPike - 2/25/2000 3:39:17 PM

Pakmen:

It's called trunkation, if you must know, and it's performed by mohelephants.

3897. profemeritus - 2/25/2000 3:40:03 PM

Pak hashke

It won't be boring if we add a gadis gajah.

3898. profemeritus - 2/25/2000 3:46:24 PM

Pak hashke

It won't be boring if we add a gadis gajah.

3899. profemeritus - 2/25/2000 3:51:30 PM

Pikeman

That's pretty good. I am waiting for Pak hashke to translate it into a language I can understand.

3900. RustlerPike - 2/25/2000 3:54:54 PM

Prof:

I have been waiting for pakshke to translate the Yiddish I linked to from Forwards around post number 3715 or so, but it's taking him so long the links are dying.

3901. RustlerPike - 2/25/2000 3:59:27 PM

Yiddish is a dying language you see.

I'm serious though - the links are dying out.

3902. hashke - 2/25/2000 4:24:30 PM

Sorry Rustleh, but I did not see that. And I asked you a short while back what you had in mind by a Yiddish phrase. Lemme check it out, and I'll get back to you.

3903. hashke - 2/25/2000 4:25:46 PM

Pak Gurubesar:

A mohel would do a sunatan if he was outside in good weather.

3904. PelleNilsson - 2/25/2000 4:42:59 PM

Rustler

Yiddish is a protected minority language in Sweden.

3905. hashke - 2/25/2000 4:52:23 PM

Pikeleh:

#3715 stumps me because there are a couple of very unconventional letters there, the last letter of the 1st word and the fourth 'letter' of the last word. Mebbe they occur in Hebrew. If you know those renditions of the conventional oyses, let me know and I can probably translate for you.

In the meantime I'll write to 'der farverts', ha!

3906. hashke - 2/25/2000 4:54:29 PM

The other Yiddish phrase is:

'Websites with a stray leaf of Yiddish'.

3908. CharlieL - 2/25/2000 6:20:26 PM

"If you know those renditions of the conventional oyses, let me know and I can probably translate for you.

Oyses are red, tie tacks are blew, what in the Hell am I talking about, Hugh?

(OK, so the meter wasn't too great, I exchanged it for feet, and now the Hugh is on the other foot.)

3909. hashke - 2/25/2000 6:28:08 PM

It is necessary with these kinds of feet and meter to Hugh the line.

3910. hashke - 2/25/2000 6:30:13 PM

Mohelephants in spite of the population explosion.

3911. hashke - 2/26/2000 2:12:55 AM

Pak Gurubesar:

Mengenai permainan kata-kata dengan 'gajah' dan 'mohel', dan sebagainya ada langgam bahasa dalam bahasa Jerman aus eine Mücke einen Elephanten machen, terjemahan harfiah nyamuk menjadi gajah, yaitu sekepal menjadi gunung

3912. hashke - 2/26/2000 2:14:12 AM

Bukan?

3913. rustlerpike - 2/26/2000 4:32:29 AM

Hashkel:

The one I wanted you to help out with is the one that expired. I can handle the other two:

Message # 3715 seems to say "Webdesign: Evan Stein and Shalom Berger".

Message # 3717 actually comes with a translation. It says webseitalach mit a shayakhus zu yiddish. 'Shayakhus' is from Hebrew and here means roughly 'having to do with'. Those letters you don't recognize are simply two letters which, to the average Nava-Joe's eye, seem to be one, I think: careless fontmanship I guess.

3914. profemeritus - 2/26/2000 9:29:37 AM

Pak hashke
Message # 3911 Yes, I think that is true. There are many in English, but I am too sleepy to come up with any at the moment.

3915. Seguine - 2/26/2000 10:43:53 PM

For Snodgrass, an excerpt from Jared Diamond's "Taiwan's Gift to the World", Nature, 2/17/2000:

"[Robert] Blust's analysis yields an astonishing pattern. Those 1,200 Austronesian languages fall into ten subgroups, of which nine (containing only 26 languages) are spoken only by the non-Chinese aborigines of the island of Taiwan. The tenth subgroup encompasses all Austronesian languages outside Taiwan, from Madagascar to East Polynesia--all 1,174 of them. It is as if the Indo-European language family consisted of 1,174 closely related Slavic languages, spoken from Britain to Sri Lanka, with all nine other Indo-European language groups--Germanic, Celtic, Hittite, Italic and the rest of them--being confined to Ireland. Previous studies had recognized several distinctive Austronesian language groups on Taiwan, but it had not been appreciated that the number was so high."

The author also says linguistic development apparently points to two "long pauses" in population expansions, the first in the expansion out of Taiwan after Austronesian colonization; and the second between the initial colonization of, and then the expansion throughout, Polynesia.

And here's Diamond's intriguing concluding sentence:

"The multilingualism of Aboriginal Taiwanese and Australians represented the norm for almost all of human history; we Nature readers who grow up in big monolingual nations are an aberration of modern times."

FWIW, Diamond's email address is included with the article. It is:

jdiamond@mednet.ucla.edu

3916. DanDillon - 2/26/2000 10:50:09 PM

we...who grow up in big monolingual nations

Yeah. (read: Americans)

3917. RustlerPike - 2/26/2000 10:50:29 PM

Hey, let's all spam Diamond with e-mail!!!

Yeah! Yeah! Psych!

3918. RustlerPike - 2/26/2000 10:58:53 PM

hash:

The foith letter in the last woid in Message # 3715 is gimel and the last letter in the foist woid is final nun. It is preceded by a double yod which has a line under it for some reason: either to show it is a yod and not a vav or maybe because the double yod is one of the names of God.

Which gets me thinking (for some reason): if they only had html when they wrote the Bible...

3919. DanDillon - 2/26/2000 11:04:10 PM

RP,
if they only had html when they wrote the Bible...

But doesn't "html" stand for His Truly Masterful Lord?

3920. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/26/2000 11:13:08 PM

Seguine:
Thanks for posting that. I really want to read the whole article.

The linguistic diversity in Taiwan isn't that surprising, as it was the Austronesian homeland, and the original location of a language family is always the most diverse. Diamond has his example for Indo-European backwards (no doubt so he can keep the small island analogy). It would be more accurate to posit the 9 other groups in the IE homeland (north of the Black Sea), and the other languages (belonging to one group) throughout the rest of the IE-speaking world.

Great stuff... please post more (or send my the darn article).

3921. RustlerPike - 2/26/2000 11:26:50 PM

DD:

< amen >God bless you.< /amen >

3922. hashke - 2/27/2000 12:03:33 AM

Pikeleh:

Thanks for that nun,. The double yod has the two lines under them to represent the sound /ay/, as in 'pie'. Without the line they represent the Yiddish sound /ey/, as in 'say'.

I figured out the strange gimel. In fact I drank one garnished with a slice of lime just before dinner this evening.

3923. RustlerPike - 2/27/2000 1:18:43 AM

Hashk'l:

Ahhh, thanks for explaining. I didn't recognize that patakh or kamatz - whatever that line is called. It's usually stubbier-looking.

As for the final letter: < bad nun pun > who said Judaism doesn't have nuns! < /bad nun pun >

3924. Seguine - 2/27/2000 1:50:11 AM

"please post more (or send my the darn article)."

Will do what I can. (I'll try logging onto the site again.)

3925. RustlerPike - 2/27/2000 1:55:20 AM

PS Hashke - < attempt to show off knowledge >you do know where gimel got its name...?< /attempt >

3926. RustlerPike - 2/27/2000 1:58:23 AM

Actually hash, the patakh should have appeared under the preceding consonant, not under the double-yud, should it not? As it is - and assuming it is indeed a patakh, shouldn't it be read /ya/ rather than /ay/?

3927. Seguine - 2/27/2000 2:15:15 AM

Irv, the article doesn't appear to be online yet. (However I'm happy to report that I can finally access most other stuff. They seem to have done something of a rehab of the site.)

Um... abysmal font size and color here.

3928. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/27/2000 2:18:21 AM

Seguine:
It was on-line when I checked earlier. it was in the previous issue.

I really appreciate your posting this... it's my favorite topic.

3929. CalGal - 2/27/2000 3:31:08 AM

I saw Jared Diamond on the 14th--he's a delightful speaker. He mentioned that he'd sent his first email the other day, and it was because his son did it for him. So unless he was making that up, I'm not sure that emailing him will do much good.

3930. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/27/2000 4:27:44 AM

Cal:
So, what was Diamond speaking about? How about a report?

3931. hashke - 2/27/2000 11:14:34 AM

Pikeleh:

Gimel=camel, no? Modern Hebrew 'gamal', almost like Arabic, except the Hebrew word is stressed on last syllable? 'Gamaal' in Arabic means 'beauty', and 'gimaal' is plural of 'gamal', vs. Hebrew 'gamalin'. But I have no business talking about Hebrew, because I don't know diddly squat about it.

Note that the first word of that line is 'vebzaytlekh' (websites), the letters 'ay' representing the underlined yodim. The same holds for the fourth word, shaykhes, the marking being conventional in Yiddish.

The letters 'khaf' and 'vav' are run together in that fourth word --probably by a shikkered typesetter -- so that the combination looks something like a 'mim', which is how I inadvertently read it when I translated.

The only other letter with a single underline in Yiddish is 'alef'.

3932. seguine - 2/27/2000 2:16:13 PM

"It was on-line when I checked earlier. it was in the previous issue."

May have been in a TOC, but search doesn't locate it in archives. Lots of other Diamond pieces, though--but you probably know he regularly writes and is cited in Nature.

If you email me your snail or a POBox I'll copy the article (it's just a one-page+ News and Views thing) and send it to you.

3933. hashke - 2/27/2000 4:12:43 PM

...aus einer Mücke...

3934. Candide - 2/27/2000 7:01:58 PM

IrvingSnodgrass

The Maori word maru and the Japanese word maru have long intrigued me. Is there any link? As I understand it the Japanese word maru means 'ship'.

I used to think that the Maori word meant the same but looking in my inadequate Maori dictionaries I find that "maru" can be used in a great many unrelated ways and there are other words meaning ship.
My school house was named after the Maori canoe Tokomaru. I see in an early Maori dictionary that komaru means 'sail' although my modern dictionary gives the word rere as 'sail'.

3935. profemeritus - 2/27/2000 8:08:38 PM

Pak hashke

I wouldn't have known the difference between einer and eine. The only word in that German sentence I couldn't figure out (from my Dutch) was "Mucke". I had to call up a german-english distionary from Yahoo! to learn that it meant gnat. Is that right?

3936. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/27/2000 8:56:49 PM

Candide:
There is no direct relation between Maori and Japanese... they are as distant as English and Thai, or English and Australian Aboriginal tongues (0.24 on the scale I mentioned a few weeks ago).

The word maru in Maori means tree, and takes various forms to mean related things (marumaru="shade"). The similarity in form with the Japanese word is pure coincidence.

3937. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/27/2000 8:59:48 PM

Seguine:
I'll send you an e-mail. I was hoping it was a longer, in-depth, article, like Diamond's piece on Japanese. And thanks for pointing out this article!

3938. Candide - 2/27/2000 9:09:09 PM

Irving

As I feared. For a moment there I felt a touch Kontiki-ish. The dreaded Bruce Biggs dictionary gives the northern Maori for tree as raakau.

Since Maori canoes are carved out of mighty tree trunks, may that be the reason for my having made such an association? The H.W. Williams dictionary gives tree among a huge variety of meanings - too many for this place- , I think depending on placement in the sentence.

Maru meanings include: Gentle, easy, calm, low in tone; a low rampart between two higher ones; killed; cooked; Power, authority; shadow, shelter; Mark, sign; a glow in the heavens; attended by an escort; proof against rain,mamaru Sun; komarusail etc. etc.

3939. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/27/2000 9:15:24 PM

Candide:
Since Maori canoes are carved out of mighty tree trunks, may that be the reason for my having made such an association?

It sounds likely.

I found my information in the Maori on-line dictionary, which I have always found reliable. I'm sure the Williams dictionary is more comprehensive.

3940. CalGal - 2/27/2000 9:58:16 PM

Irv,

It was a marvellous talk, in a conversation format--a local hotshot SF lawyer came out and chatted with him for an hour, and then we were able to ask questions.

For the most part, he reviewed the content of Guns, Germs, and Steel, summarizing the key points. My friend hadn't read his book, and found it most informative--he asked a few questions that showed he'd picked up on things and was making the next steps. So clearly, it was a good overview for the uninitiated as well.

He also told an amusing story: it seems that Bill Gates is a big fan, and he invited Diamond to come speak at the Microsoft campus. The upper management team was very excited to meet him, and told him that they'd all read his book, and had all come to the same conclusion: that Microsoft was more like European societies, who colonized America and Australia, took the technological lead, and dominated the political and economic scene in world history.

He got that far in his story when the lawyer began to laugh, and said, "No, no, you're in the wrong place to tell that tale."

And someone from the audience shouted, "Bullshit. Microsoft is China!!!"

The audience erupted into applause.

3941. CalGal - 2/27/2000 10:12:48 PM

The last 20 minutes of his talk was devoted to his next project, and this came as somewhat as a surprise to me.

He didn't have children until relatively late in life (his oldest son is 12, and I'm pretty sure he's close to 60), and he says he held off because he was not sure he had enough hope for the world--we waste resources, over-populate, and have no concern for the environment. His next book will address these issues, and demonstrate the historical lessons that we're ignoring.

I was surprised because he's always struck me as an extremely original thinker, and this view--whether one agrees with it or not--is relatively old hat.

However, there was no mistaking the depth of his sincerity. He said several times that he considered killing himself, rather than having children, because he couldn't find any reason for hope. I suppose he could have been joking, since he tossed it off lightly as a joke. But the humor seemed rooted in truth.

It was only the recent innovations of computers, of our ability to rapidly communicate information from one point on the globe to another, that seems to give him any hope at all. That, too, surprised me--I would have thought someone like him would find hope in history.

Then I realized that it was the complete lack of hope he found in history that had brought him to such despair, and only an invention that completely eradicated a problem throughout history, that of ignorance due to lack of information, would give him any cause to think that history might not repeat itself.

3942. ilyavinarsky - 2/28/2000 2:54:02 AM

I translated my first prose piece from Ukrainian into English here. Antonenko is the Ukrainian Shalamov.

3943. Candide - 2/28/2000 3:19:49 AM

Ilya see Message # 36869

I hope this first attempt at a link works.

3944. Candide - 2/28/2000 3:21:44 AM

Ilya
Hoho

Failure. I'm cooking at the same time. (Excuse?) Poetry #869.

3945. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/28/2000 5:39:23 AM

Cal:
Thanks for the report and the comments. I'm sure that whatever project Diamond tackles, he will provide a new way of looking at things.

I'm surprised he pins so much hope on the new ability to communicate rapidly, considering he is reportedly not using e-mail yet himself.

I wish I could've been there and heard him. He is one of my heroes (along with Pinker, Cavalli-Sforza, Greenberg, and Ruhlen) of the emerging sythesis of human development.

3946. stostosto - 2/28/2000 6:29:43 AM

Cal:
Thanks for the Diamond session summary. Just wanted you to know I appreciate it too.

3947. Angel-Five - 2/28/2000 6:31:59 AM

Diamond was here last year and gave an incredible talk. In a room that was within three-wood range of the place I lived last year, and is within eight iron range of where I'm now staying. I found out after he'd been here and I was quite hot about that. I don't buy everything he says, including some of his dates for the first colonization of the Americas, but he's a brilliant man.

3948. Uzmakk - 2/28/2000 6:32:02 AM

I don't check in here often enough. Good stuff(IMHO).
3941, Calgal, re: Jared Diamond

I was surprised because he's always struck me as an extremely original thinker, and this view--whether one agrees with it or not--is relatively old hat.

Have you never heard of wisdom, Cal? This also brings to mind a quote from Neils Bohr. He was asked, after he had been spreading the gospel of quantum mechanics for a while whether he got tired of saying the same thing over and over again. He replied that he never got tired of stating the truth.

The above is from memory, but I think I got the sentiment right.

3949. Uzmakk - 2/28/2000 6:44:37 AM

So my wife says to me, she says, "I really would like to get that teak furniture this year."

3950. CharlieL - 2/28/2000 7:50:52 AM

Hashké:

"I figured out the strange gimel. In fact I drank one garnished with a
slice of lime just before dinner this evening."

That was a lower-case gimel, known as a gimlet. Too many of those and you'll be falling on your shins.

Uzmakk:

"So my wife says to me, she says, "I really would like to get that teak furniture this year."

Wait a few years, it'll be anteak furniture...

3951. Uzmakk - 2/28/2000 7:56:03 AM

That's true CharlieL, but if I could get it this spring it would be fantasteak.

3952. DanDillon - 2/28/2000 8:59:05 AM

Just make sure you don't get tricked into buying the imitation stuff... you know, plasteak.

3953. Angel-Five - 2/28/2000 10:11:57 AM

Steak to the topic.

3954. cmboyce - 2/28/2000 10:19:29 AM

Irv

"the emerging sythesis of human development."

Gotta love it. (Btw, I ordered The Language Instinct; I'm looking forward to it.)

Cal

ditto your reportage. Thanks.

3955. hashke - 2/28/2000 10:36:32 AM

Yes, CharlieL, I was playing on 'gimel', but the 'shin' was a good one. I take my khet off to you.

3956. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/28/2000 10:36:37 AM

CM:
Every library should have the following:

1) The Language Instinct (I haven't read Pinker's other works, but will soon)
2) Guns, Germs and Steel
3) History and Geography of Human Genes (Cavalli-Sforza)
4) The Origin of Language (Ruhlen)

I've ordered Joseph Greenberg's latest work on Eurasiatic languages, and it will probably join the list.

3957. hashke - 2/28/2000 10:40:31 AM

Irv:

Not to mention Kamus Dialek Jakarta, Abdul Chaer.

3958. DanDillon - 2/28/2000 10:41:03 AM

My addendum to Irv's bold Every library should have the following:

a dictionary, preferably hardbound and thicker than each of the books Irv listed.

3959. hashke - 2/28/2000 10:46:10 AM

Pak Gurubesar #3935:

Yes, gnat or mosquito.

A good Basque equivalent is bost zentimetroko pupua eta hamar zzntimetroko trapua -- 'a five centimeter wound with a ten centimeter bandaid'.

3960. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/28/2000 10:48:47 AM

Dan:
That goes without saying. My recommended reference library is a different animal from the human development library listed above.

3961. cmboyce - 2/28/2000 10:56:01 AM

With the Pinker, I'll have 3 out of 4, Irv. Though I haven't finished the Ruhlen yet.

3962. CharlieL - 2/28/2000 11:51:37 AM

Hashké:

"I take my khet off to you."

Is that aleph-handed compliment?

3963. hashke - 2/28/2000 11:57:46 AM

Charlie:

No, but it gave me a resh and I got aleph out of it.

3964. CharlieL - 2/28/2000 12:07:31 PM

As long as aleph us got the joke...

3965. hashke - 2/28/2000 12:34:58 PM

I must leave now because I khaf sofeet.

3966. CharlieL - 2/28/2000 1:10:32 PM

Tau tau for now...

3967. hashke - 2/28/2000 1:32:26 PM

I asked the dalet lamed about it and he said to just keep mim

3968. ProfEmeritus - 2/28/2000 1:38:51 PM

Charlie L

I'll beta buck theta few got it.

3969. Dantheman - 2/28/2000 1:39:48 PM

These jokes are second to nun.

3970. ProfEmeritus - 2/28/2000 1:44:15 PM

and to kappa it all off we need a nu theme.

3971. CharlieL - 2/28/2000 2:02:14 PM

'S omega me an offer!

3972. hashke - 2/28/2000 2:21:01 PM

I've never delta in this sort of tomfoolery before.

3973. hashke - 2/28/2000 2:21:51 PM

What could it all sigma phi?

3974. ProfEmeritus - 2/28/2000 2:22:40 PM

Pak hashke

Iota lot of this to you.

3975. hashke - 2/28/2000 2:23:02 PM

It's giving me a headache, so I'm gonna take some epsilon salts.

3976. ProfEmeritus - 2/28/2000 2:23:38 PM

I gotta go pi.

3977. hashke - 2/28/2000 2:23:55 PM

Pak Gurubesar:

Omicron!!!

3978. ProfEmeritus - 2/28/2000 2:24:40 PM

I gotta psi about my rhoboat

3979. hashke - 2/28/2000 2:25:27 PM

I gotta take in on the lamba, too.

3980. ProfEmeritus - 2/28/2000 2:26:43 PM

and you wouldn't believe that I eta phiza

3981. ProfEmeritus - 2/28/2000 2:29:07 PM

and you wouldn't believe that I eta phiza

3982. hashke - 2/28/2000 2:29:42 PM

It makes me wanna chi.

3983. Uzmakk - 2/28/2000 2:29:42 PM

I am curious to know what Irv's steak is on the world wide teak shortage.

3984. hashke - 2/28/2000 2:30:46 PM

Uzmakk:

Wood that he would only answer.

3985. IrvingSnodgrass - 2/28/2000 2:30:52 PM

I nu it. Iota start a sub-thread for puns.

Uz:
Patience, my man. Soon.

3986. hashke - 2/28/2000 2:31:39 PM

My ghamma would have loved this punning.

3987. ProfEmeritus - 2/28/2000 2:31:45 PM

Don't phi me any more of this stuff.

3988. ProfEmeritus - 2/28/2000 2:34:30 PM

Hi, Irv

Ain'tcha supposed to be sleeping? Ain'tcha mu?

3989. hashke - 2/28/2000 2:35:06 PM

Waw, now that we have raped and pillaged Greek and Hebrew, onward to Arabic. There's nothing dal about it.

3990. ProfEmeritus - 2/28/2000 2:38:08 PM

Pak hashke

Did you psi that Indonesian word in 3988?

3991. hashke - 2/28/2000 2:40:24 PM

Pak Gurubesar:

Were you referring to Irv yang muda?

3992. CharlieL - 2/28/2000 2:41:43 PM

.left to right puns do can't I .Arabic in good any be won't I

3993. ProfEmeritus - 2/28/2000 2:42:11 PM

Pak hashke

Muda atau kamu

3994. CharlieL - 2/28/2000 2:42:27 PM

Snup! goes the weasel.

3995. hashke - 2/28/2000 2:43:39 PM

I gotta take in on the lamba, too.

3996. hashke - 2/28/2000 2:43:40 PM

I gotta take in on the lamba, too.

3997. ProfEmeritus - 2/28/2000 2:43:53 PM

Charlie L's been drinking again. Who is going to hit 4000?

3998. CharlieL - 2/28/2000 2:44:22 PM

Uzmakk, is the shortage becoming criteakal?

3999. hashke - 2/28/2000 2:44:31 PM

Pak Gurubesar:

Irv doesn't pun much. Mebbe he's not in the muda.

4000. PelleNilsson - 2/28/2000 2:45:07 PM

Teak it easy you guys.

4001. Uzmakk - 2/28/2000 2:45:08 PM

Thanks, Irv. I'll take those few words as your guaranteak.

4002. hashke - 2/28/2000 2:45:32 PM

moi!

4003. PelleNilsson - 2/28/2000 2:45:33 PM

Ha!!!

4004. hashke - 2/28/2000 2:46:37 PM

There is a certain misteak about tique.

4005. ProfEmeritus - 2/28/2000 2:47:03 PM

I missed 4000 so I'm out of here. How in the hell did that Swede get into the middle of our pun run?

4006. hashke - 2/28/2000 2:48:43 PM

How Swede it is, eh Pelle?

4007. PelleNilsson - 2/28/2000 3:01:09 PM

Tajming, ProfE, is de ki to söckses.

4008. Candide - 2/28/2000 3:10:54 PM

Irving #3956

I got "Guns, Germs and Steel" from the library yesterday.

CalGal
Thanks CalGal. One of those books round the corner from my mind that I never quite got to.

I see his latest title is something like "Why Sex is Enjoyable".

4009. CalGal - 2/28/2000 3:12:18 PM

Why is Sex Fun? The Evolution of Human Sexuality--yes, that came out in 98.

4010. Candide - 2/28/2000 3:47:00 PM

CalGal

That's next.

4011. CalGal - 2/28/2000 4:20:33 PM

You didn't know why sex was fun?

Hmm.

4012. DanDillon - 2/28/2000 5:26:22 PM

Yes, I suppose the reference library would be a different entity entirely. Silly me.

4013. Candide - 2/28/2000 7:05:29 PM

CalGal

No comment.

4014. PelleNilsson - 2/29/2000 5:25:19 PM

Irv

Today at university we discussed "the limits of science" against the background of a lively and heated discussion that took place in Germany towards the end of the 19th century. It was part of a wider debate known as the "Kulturkampf" or Cultural Strife about the role of church and state in the newly unified Germany.

In 1874, a German scientist with the un-German name du Bois Raymond published a book entitled (in rough translation) The Seven Eternal Questions, where he posited questions to which we will not and cannot know the answer. On of them is "The origin of language".

Are we any closer to an understnding now than 130 years ago? I don't mean instrumental explanations along the line that language has an evolutionary advantage. That was well understood at the time.

And even if we are closer now, will we ever understand completely?

4015. stostosto - 2/29/2000 5:38:48 PM

will we ever understand completely?

That was probably another one of the seven. But I think I have the answer: No.

4016. PelleNilsson - 2/29/2000 5:46:53 PM

sto

It was not another one. The complete list:

What is force?

What is materia?

What is consciousness?

How did life emerge?

Does nature (and by implication history) have a purpose?

How did language emerge?

Do we have free will?

4017. DanDillon - 2/29/2000 10:19:24 PM

Pelle, sto, Irv, et al.,

There are several theories for the origin of language, many of them very colorful. We've discussed this topic a few times in the old place, but the question raised by the Franco-German fellow is a fun one to bandy about. And just to get the ball rolling, I'll name a few of the theories that attempt to answer duBois' sixth question: bow-wow; ding-dong; la-la; pooh-pooh; yo-he-ho.

The field of study that most closely relates to this discussion is glossogenetics, which involves a wide range of contributing sciences, including biology, anthropology, psychology, semiotics, neurology, primatology, and, of course, linguistics.

4018. cmboyce - 3/1/2000 1:50:27 AM

## 4, 5, and 7 suggest a background, or perhaps I mean groundbass, of religious concern. Posit God and 4 and 5, at least, are moot; ask them and one may seem (at least) to un-posit God.

## 1 and 2 strike me as pretty much answered now, with the proviso that if we have to know how they began then all bets are off. (However, I lack the physics to justify the initial observation. That's just my impression from the science-lite I take from the media.)

# 3 seems in principle answerable, and the question is certainly getting plenty of attention; I will guess that a generally satisfactory answer (ie, satisfactory to most of the scientific community that addresses the question) will emerge in a generation or two, maybe rather less.

"How did language emerge?" is in principle unanswerable, the event being so remote in time and irreproducible. None of the variously soundable theories enunciated by Dan seems any less plausible than any other. It also strikes me as one of the less interesting of these questions, since the answer would not seem to have any bearing on the subsequent development of language.

I find #5 the most interesting, and I'll undertake to answer it right now. No. "Purpose" is not possible in (nor can a purpose be the object of) entities that have no consciousness with which to formulate it. And the universe at large does not remotely seem to have such, being, as I understand it, a congeries of more or less active particles most of which seem to behave only in response to physical forces. (One may suppose the whole business rendered active by a god or what have you, but then it is the god that has the purpose; in any case,

[more]

4019. cmboyce - 3/1/2000 1:52:17 AM

in any case, this hypothesis seems fairly useless here, but see my first paragraph, above.) The same thing is true of history; only the scale and the limitation of concern to humanity, differ. One may go so far as to say "The purpose of X people was/is to Win The War and preserve their freedom from the horrible Ys" but all of history is a turmoil of such purposes, each like the hydrogen atom blown across space by a solar flare, etc. etc. This question, in its attribution of human motivation to nature and history, is a metaphor, and a presumptious one.

4020. PelleNilsson - 3/1/2000 4:35:15 AM

Irv

I will respond to the above later today, but I will do it in the Slow Thread.

4021. IrvingSnodgrass - 3/1/2000 7:59:33 AM

Pelle:
I'd rather keep it in this thread, as it is related in a way, and not much is happening in this thread, anyway, right now.

Also, I haven't had time to post my own answer to your question (though Dan got us off to a good start).

Would you mind keeping it here?

4022. DanDillon - 3/1/2000 10:15:36 AM

Al Gore declined an interview with Univision, the Spanish-speaking T.V. network here in the USA, saying that he was once "completely fluent."

You don't use it, you lose it. Even if you're the Vice President.

4023. ScottLoar - 3/1/2000 12:01:31 PM

Has anyone heard Gore speak Spanish? I've heard him address a crowd with a few words which pronunciation or flow did not strike me as coming from a man who was once fluent in the language. Yes, without practice our vocabulary atrophies and our address becomes halt but yet there must remain some trace of a former fluency. I've been addressed in Mandarin by the now-hoary sons of missionaries born in China now half a century removed from the language and yet underneath the rust still lies some fine stuff.

4024. RustlerPike - 3/1/2000 3:12:18 PM

My grandfather became completely fluent just before he croaked, poor guy.

4025. hashke - 3/1/2000 4:14:35 PM

Rustler:

He was a frog -- nearly fluent in Ranidae, I take it.

4026. PelleNilsson - 3/1/2000 4:23:59 PM

cmboyce

Thanks for your interesting reply. For ease of reference here are the questions that du Bois Raymond posited as unanswerable by science:

1.What is force?
2.What is materia?
3.What is consciousness?
4.How did life emerge?
5.Does nature (and by implication history) have a purpose?
6.How did language emerge?
7.Do we have free will?

You say that #1 and #2 "strike me as pretty much answered now". I completely disagree. I don't think anyone knows what gravitation is in a scientific sense. The dualism of quantum theory and the paradoxes it gives rise to suggests that the nature of matter is beyond our understanding or that the theory is flawed.

On #3 you say that "I will guess that a generally satisfactory answer [...]will emerge in a generation or two, maybe rather less." I agree that it might be possible but I do have great difficulties believing that we will be able to chart the physiological processes at work when the conscious mind reflects on its own consciousness.

You don't comment on #4. I think we will know.

#5 is indeed interesting and I agree with what you say. If I would put up an counterargument it would be as follows. We draw conclusions by observing a sample of one. Suppose we could look at a thousand planets with the same physical characteristics as ours and at different stages of development. Then, perhaps, we could observe some deep structures, inherent in life itself, which drive development. But I think that what du Bois Raymond had in mind is that we cannot prove or disprove the existence of God, and therefore we cannot judge the question of purpose.

I agree on #6 too. I didn't understand DanDillon's comment. Maybe it was a joke? Let's see what Irv has to say.

You didn't comment on #7. I invite you to. Assuming that there is no super-natural entity who controls our actions do we then have free will?

4027. RustlerPike - 3/1/2000 4:59:23 PM

hashke:

No, actually, he was a Rumanian Jew (though we prefer to say he was Russian - being Rumanian doesn't sound so good in Israel. The Rumanians are stereotyped as thieves). He could fart with the best of them, old Saba Nyuma could.

Now that I have written it down, Saba Nyuma (the Yiddish form of Binyamin) means 'seven backwards' in Kiswahili. My other saba was named 'Akiva, which means shit-all in Kiswahili, though akiba does mean a saving or store of some sort. His 'diminutive' (what the hell are those called? They aren't exactly nicknames) was Kajik.

4028. PelleNilsson - 3/1/2000 5:16:49 PM

Ruatler

Would you please take the trouble to link to the post you are referring to so that others can follow the line of discussion? Is that too much to ask?

4029. PelleNilsson - 3/1/2000 5:17:24 PM

Rustler that is.

4030. hashke - 3/1/2000 10:11:52 PM

Yes, Pelle, we are discussing serious matters of language here.

Tak so mycket.

4031. hashke - 3/1/2000 10:27:30 PM

Rustler:

Are you referring to sobriquets?

What do you mean by 'seven backwards'?

I have been unable to find cassettes of Kikuyu. It would be nice while driving about and learning Kikuyu to also hear the sounds of a singing brook.

4032. DanDillon - 3/1/2000 10:28:08 PM

Pelle,
Wrt #6, I didn't understand DanDillon's comment. Maybe it was a joke?

It wasn't. But, curiously, I'm laughing now. The theories for the origin of language do indeed bear such silly sounding names as bow-wow, ding-dong, la-la, pooh-pooh, and yo-he-ho. I don't appreciate the snub. After all, if you fail to understand something I've posted, I hope you would address me directly to request clarification. I'm enough of a regular in this thread that I'd be able to quickly respond to any confusion you may be experiencing.

If you'd prefer I could happily careen into a discussion on the role of the standard-plan supralaryngeal airway or the functional branch-point theory. Of course, no answer to duBois' #6 would be complete without mentioning Messrs. P. Lieberman and E. de Grolier.

4033. IrvingSnodgrass - 3/2/2000 12:13:37 AM

Pelle:
Everything Dan says is accurate, if a bit inaccessible to the non-linguist.

Of all the questions posed, in fact, I'd say that we've come further toward an answer to #6 than any others.

In addition to the oddly-named theories of language genesis, the work of Noam Chomsky (Universal Grammar), Steven Pinker (The "Language Instinct") and Derek Bickerton has made real strides toward an answer.

I wish I had time to give examples and explanations, but this is a very busy week for me. I am following your discussion with interest, and wanted to add my two cents worth on the language question.

4034. PelleNilsson - 3/2/2000 2:45:04 AM

Dan

My post was in no way intended as a snub. If you read it as such I apologise.

4035. DanDillon - 3/2/2000 8:51:37 AM

Thanks, Pelle. No harm, no foul.

hashke,
How would you say the above in Arabic? She bess makane.

4036. hashke - 3/2/2000 12:56:56 PM

Dan:

She bess makane

Is that a Moroccan expression? How does it break down? 'Makana' usually indicates ability or strength --'mumkin', 'makaana', etc.

A common Modern Standard Arabic expression is 'ghair muhimm' -- 'it is of no importance, no big deal, no great matter'.

In Egypt one always hears 'ma`aliish' -- 'no problem, no matter, nothing, don't worry about it'. This originates from 'ma' -- 'not', `alaihi' --'on it', 'sha'ii' -- 'thing'.

4037. RustlerPike - 3/2/2000 1:11:39 PM

hashk:

Are you referring to sobriquets?

No. I guess I'm referring to standard nicknames, sort of like Chuck and Dick. The Yiddish form of Binyamin is Binyumin, from which one gets Nyuma. Grandpa Akiva was called Kajik (with a soft j), which I'm pretty sure is a non-Jewish Polish name or nickname, and my Grandma Sarah was called Stefa.

What do you mean by 'seven backwards'?

Saba is Kiswahili (and Arabic, as you know) for seven, and nyuma means 'backwards', or 'back'.

I have been unable to find cassettes of Kikuyu.

I don't know of any either. Bummer!

4038. hashke - 3/2/2000 1:18:33 PM

Pikeleh:

Your wife should do a Kikuyu text with cassette. I'll be a first buyer!

4039. RustlerPike - 3/2/2000 1:24:51 PM

My complete pseudo-Arabic vocabulary:

kul-shi, sodha, ba'araf-sh, shu-ismo?, kwayes, mush kwayes, kunbula, jundi, jesh a-difaa, al kuds, haram a sharif, bukra fil mishmish, yaum asal yaum basal, mushkileh, istana shwaye, muhim, hawiyeh, musalsal, saidati wa sidati, ma'a salame, lesh?, mush mumkin, yimken, kul nas ajenas ajenas, jarak al karib wala ahuk al b'id, shukran fik, sharmuta, il'an abuk, kus emkum, il'an rabak, il'an dinak, yallah b'surra.

4040. RustlerPike - 3/2/2000 1:27:47 PM

hash:

I can ask her to do it and send it to you. She could record a conversation with a friend. But what would you be able to learn from that?

4041. PelleNilsson - 3/2/2000 1:31:51 PM

Rustler

Even I know more Arabic words and phrases than that. No, I won't list them.

4042. cmboyce - 3/2/2000 1:46:41 PM

Pelle,

I think you're right about ## 1 & 2; I'm afraid I didn't think at all clearly about that one (they're really one), in my haste to get to the language and God ones. It may well be that we are incapable of actually perceiving nature fully, being among its current buds; it would be like looking back up your own optic nerve.

Accordingly, I think that, just as with language so with life (& question 4), we may be able to make increasingly well-informed surmises as to life's emergence (if any; life may be inherent in matter-energy), but, having occurred in a world so ancient as to be qualitatively different from our own, and irreproducible (except possibly as thought-experiment), we can only surmise.

As to #7: assuming no supernatural agency, do we have free will? Only within certain parameters, so, technically, no. We cannot will to transmogrify ourselves into, say, a lover's boudoir, let alone to past or future; we cannot undo what's done; we cannot, in short, violate the "laws" of nature. But, accepting that we are animals of a certain sort, we have a great deal of freedom from the dictates of instinct, far more (it would appear) than even the most intelligent of our fellow mammals, let alone the paramecia. We can as they say, overrule our genes. And I'm not referring to science's capacity to manipulate 'em (this is a technical question, more closely related to those attending slash-and-burn agriculture than to that of "free will"), but rather to the ability each of us has—and some of us use, some of the time—to overcome such apparantly inherent impulses as selfishness, lust, xenophobia, etc., etc., by exercising our capacities to observe, calculate merits both moral and practical, and alter behavior that is in all probability genetically stimulated, the genes in question having evolved in the hunter-gatherer-scavenger mammals of, say, the Miocene through Pleistocene.

4043. cmboyce - 3/2/2000 1:53:26 PM

Whoops. Sorry. My Message # 4042 was in response to your Message # 4026. (I mistook the page I was on when I wrote it.)

Anyway, to approach more nearly the thread topic, it occurs to me that among the tools that permit "our capacities to observe, calculate merits both moral and practical, and alter behavior...", indeed premier among them I suppose, is language.

4044. hashke - 3/2/2000 4:24:57 PM

Pike:

Thanks for that kind suggestion, but don't go to the trouble. No, what I had in mind is a really good textbook from which, in conjunction with cassette recordings, one could gain substantial fluency with the language. There is a real vacuum here with regard to learning materials for the Kikuyu language.

4045. DanDillon - 3/2/2000 9:02:27 PM

hashke,

Yes, ma`aliish is often heard in Morocco as well, perhaps even more commonly than my she bess makane. That expression breaks down as she = "some" bess = harm (as in labess) and makane = there isn't. Put it all together and you get "there isn't any harm." I believe the negative marker sh that normally belongs at the end of makane drops off on analogy with makane bess, where the actual predicate nominative replaces the sh ending.

4046. DanDillon - 3/3/2000 10:48:18 AM

I wasn't very hungry for breakfast this morning.

One egg was just un oeuf.

4047. hashke - 3/3/2000 10:59:24 AM

Dan:

That's an old yoke.

Did you know that 'love' in tennis comes from 'l'oeuf' -- the near-shape of zero.

4048. theDiva - 3/3/2000 11:00:56 AM

Hashke

Oh, don't be so hard boiled. Dan is sOvary charming.

4049. Absensia - 3/3/2000 11:03:06 AM

THUD! I had a pun, but chickened out posting it!

4050. Dusty - 3/3/2000 11:05:24 AM

You guys crack me up.

4051. hashke - 3/3/2000 11:05:30 AM

You should ovoid trying.

4052. Absensia - 3/3/2000 11:06:33 AM

It would be most fowl to egg you on!

4053. Dusty - 3/3/2000 11:06:43 AM

It is so appropriate to tell egg jokes on Fry-day.

4054. IrvingSnodgrass - 3/3/2000 11:07:06 AM

Hashke's etymology of "love" reminds me of a tasteless joke sweeping Indonesia these days:

Q: "What's the definition of endless love?"

A: "Gus Dur and Stevie Wonder playing tennis."

4055. theDiva - 3/3/2000 11:07:34 AM

quit poaching my best lines.

4056. Dusty - 3/3/2000 11:07:37 AM

Knock, Knock!

Who's there?

Omelette.

Omelette who?

Omelette smarter than I look!

4057. theDiva - 3/3/2000 11:08:11 AM

Now that's fowl.

4058. hashke - 3/3/2000 11:08:51 AM

Irv:

Ouch!

4059. Dusty - 3/3/2000 11:09:25 AM

Irv

one of my favorite jokes (in its original form).

If I rembber correctly, I saw it in a Harvard Lampoon article Why This joke isn't funny.

4060. Absensia - 3/3/2000 11:10:33 AM

Time to head for work so I can bring home the bacon. See you in awhile, with latte in hand.

4061. hashke - 3/3/2000 11:11:16 AM

I like my eggs ovary-done.

4062. Dusty - 3/3/2000 11:11:32 AM

But to bring it back on topic, I would guess that if Gus Dur and Stevie played tennis, they'd have to do a lot of scrambling.

4063. hashke - 3/3/2000 11:12:05 AM

Clinton works in the oval orifice.

4064. Dusty - 3/3/2000 11:12:09 AM

And neither would do a lot of poaching.

4065. hashke - 3/3/2000 11:13:01 AM

Or sometimes they're good ovary easy.

4066. Dusty - 3/3/2000 11:14:45 AM

Absensia

Don't be so rasher

4067. theDiva - 3/3/2000 11:16:28 AM

Dusty

You are sausage to give her that advice.

4068. hashke - 3/3/2000 11:20:54 AM

Diva:

Weenie, weedie, weekie.

4069. theDiva - 3/3/2000 11:25:34 AM

That's the wurst pun I've ever heard.

4070. hashke - 3/3/2000 11:28:21 AM

They say that too much punning can make your liverwurst.

4071. theDiva - 3/3/2000 11:29:19 AM

No!

Such news is a steak through my heart.

4072. hashke - 3/3/2000 11:31:12 AM

To be frank, you have to look no furter.

4073. Dusty - 3/3/2000 11:34:16 AM

A little ribbing going on?

4074. Dusty - 3/3/2000 11:36:23 AM

We need chuck

4075. Thoughtful - 3/3/2000 11:39:41 AM

These puns go over easy...eggs-actly right...er... eggs-actly white.

4076. Absensia - 3/3/2000 12:21:34 PM

Hmm, well I'm glad to see you've all gone on to other things and aren't frittata-ing away the day!

4077. Thoughtful - 3/3/2000 12:59:20 PM

Either that or they just chickened out.

4078. IrvingSnodgrass - 3/4/2000 2:42:04 AM

Continuing the series on the linguistic adventures of George W. Bush...

The following is from the "This is True" website by Randy Cassingham:

HOW? Presidential hopeful George W. Bush is following in his father's footsteps in more ways than one -- by following in his verbal missteps. Appearing at an elementary school in Nashua, N.H., he told students "This is Preservation Month. I appreciate preservation. This is what you do when you run for president. You've got to preserve." The students were actually observing "Perseverance Month". At another campaign stop, he told voters about growing up during the Cold War. "When I was coming up, it was a dangerous world and you knew exactly who 'they' were. It was us versus them and it was clear who them was. Today we are not so sure who the they are, but we know they're there." (Reuters) ..."The most important question to ask about education is, 'Is your children learning?'" --G.W. Bush

That last one is my favorite. "Is your children learning? 'Cause I sure isn't. But I will continue to preserve!"

4079. hashke - 3/4/2000 9:40:33 AM

Irv:

Very common today in the you ess of ey to to use singular form with plural subject. 'There's a lot of problems', 'There's several of them over there', etc., ad nauseum. Bush has gone to the extreme with the question form.

4080. dusty - 3/4/2000 10:11:49 AM

Lot is plural?
Why?

We would say there is a group of people, right?
There is a gaggle of geese.
There is a set of elements.

We should say:
There are lots of problems.

But I think it is correct (not simply in the descriptive sense) to say:
There is a lot of problems.

I'm thinking of the use of "lot" in the M-W sense:
parcel of articles offered as one item

Is this use of "lot" restricted to items that belong together, in a set? Or can I use it generally as a synonym for group or set?

4081. ScottLoar - 3/4/2000 10:42:12 AM

Perhaps I'm missing something for not being able to follow the confusion, but lot can be used as a measure word meaning group, so "there is a lot of problems" means there is one bunch of problems, while "there are lots of problems" means there are bunches of problems.

4082. hashke - 3/4/2000 11:05:39 AM

Dusty:

'A lot', when it is synonymous with 'many' should use a plural verb form. Using it in a question would you say 'Is there a lot of books over there?'? With a unit such as 'butter' or 'gasoline', use singular 'is': 'there is a lot of butter', etc. But, 'there are a lot of (many) people'. Otherwise, you are in G.W.ville.

4083. DanDillon - 3/4/2000 11:42:41 AM

Here's news fer ya: "lot" ain't singular nor plural like. It's the big scrape o' dirt my house is go-inna occupy.

(Pay close attention to what's bold.)

4084. hashke - 3/4/2000 12:22:12 PM

'News' is a singular abstract noun. 'Is' works. And we ain't talking about 'lot', but rather 'a lot'.

Is that Kansas dirt you're going to build on, Dan? Do you have a tornado cellar planned?

4085. CalGal - 3/4/2000 12:46:02 PM

Hashke,

The online M-W recognizes "a lot" as a phrase in its own right--"to a considerable degree or extent"("this is a lot nicer") and "often, frequently" ("he runs a lot every day"). I'm at work right now, so I can't check any other dictionaries.

And, just to toss more oddness into the mix, I say "There are a lot of problems", but would say "There is a lot of confusion". I don't think that's unusual, but there's no one at work to check with.

4086. PelleNilsson - 3/4/2000 1:22:19 PM

"There is a lot of people who are ... "

"A lot of people are ..."

4087. DanDillon - 3/4/2000 2:05:25 PM

hashke,
Yep, prime Kansas dirt. We've got a basement and insurance.

"There are a lot of problems."
"There is a lot of confusion."
There's a perfectly solid explanation for the change in verb. Agreement is made between the verb and the noun at the end of the complement. Hence, there is no confusion at all, and there are certainly no problems either.

4088. CalGal - 3/4/2000 2:09:56 PM

Oh, I must have misunderstood Hashke--or Dusty, I suppose.

4089. PelleNilsson - 3/4/2000 2:30:13 PM

Dan

Do you write "there are a lot of people.."?

4090. DanDillon - 3/4/2000 2:42:01 PM

Pelle,
Yes, I would write "There are a lot of people." I suppose my decision would be based upon the scenario I illustrated above in my Message # 4087. When I speak, however, I'm sure I would speed up the same idea and express it as "There's a lot of people" or, even better, "there's a lotta people."

This serves as a convenient example of how the written language is often a far cry from the spoken language. And, of course, this phenomenon is not unique to English.

4091. hashke - 3/4/2000 3:17:31 PM

CalGal: The second paragraph in your #4085 is exactly illustrative -- using different lexicon -- of my point.

4092. CalGal - 3/4/2000 3:19:44 PM

Hash,

Yes, I reread yours after I saw Dan's post. Sorry for the confusion.

4093. Candide - 3/4/2000 3:23:57 PM

An Australian equivalent to "there's a lotta people" would be "there's lots of people".

4094. hashke - 3/4/2000 3:24:41 PM

Pelle:

Don't write 'there is a lot of people'. Strictly G.W.burg. My initial statement was that there is an epidemic in this country of that kind of usage, at least in spoken form. It grates on the ears.

4095. CharlieL - 3/7/2000 1:26:14 PM

That is just grate on the ears.

4096. ProfEmeritus - 3/7/2000 6:49:50 PM

Charlie L

Don't fuel around like that.

4097. CharlieL - 3/8/2000 6:36:46 AM

I gas you told me!

4098. CharlieL - 3/8/2000 6:37:27 AM

I haven't been here much lately, so I haven't benzine in a while.

4099. CharlieL - 3/8/2000 6:40:15 AM

I have a question about an odd phrase I heard on the radio on the way in to work this morning. I had to come in early, so I heard a news broadcast that had been produced in Europe, and at the end, the announcer said, "Until next time, it's goodbye."

When did the phrase "It's goodbye" begin, and what is its history?

4100. PelleNilsson - 3/8/2000 6:58:23 AM

Main Entry: good-bye
Variant(s): or good-by /gud-'bI, g&(d)-/
Function: noun
Etymology: alteration of God be with you
Date: circa 1580
1 : a concluding remark or gesture at parting -- often used interjectionally
2 : a taking of leave

I think I have seen it in Pepy's Diary (late 17th century) expressed approximately thus:

Then it was good-bye, and so home to dinner.

4101. DanDillon - 3/8/2000 10:41:26 AM

Chuck,

I've checked a number of sources, and none has any reference to "It's goodbye." Pelle correctly identifies the etymology of the salutation alone, but the expression you're wondering about seems to be nothing special, or at least undeserving of any citation in my books. The radio announcer may simply have uttered the "it's" before the "goodbye" in order to sound more jovial, or perhaps inane. I can't attest to his goals.

4102. ScottLoar - 3/8/2000 11:07:19 AM

Yeah, like "I'm gone", just a quirky phrase that some people affect.

4103. PelleNilsson - 3/8/2000 2:24:00 PM

It's not a "quirky phrase". It's British usage. I listened carefully to program endings on the BBC the last three hours. I heard "it's good-bye for now" two times and "it's bye for now" once.

4104. ScottLoar - 3/8/2000 2:34:20 PM

It is a quirky phrase, peculiarly English. Just aching for argument, are you?

4105. ScottLoar - 3/8/2000 2:36:06 PM

And, PelleNilsson, if you had paid more attention to the example I gave in Message # 4102 you'd know it was peculiarly American yet still a quirky phrase, exactly why I gave that example.

4106. PelleNilsson - 3/8/2000 2:58:17 PM

No objection. If British English is commonly understood as being "peculiar" how could I possibly disagree? But I didn't know that until just now.

4107. ScottLoar - 3/8/2000 3:30:55 PM

No, despite your attempt at sarcasm I'm yet moved to advise you but a little deeper. It is peculiarly British and yet not a standard colloquialism although universally understood. You explained it away as British English which is less than half an explanation.

Tired yet?

4108. PincherMartin - 3/8/2000 3:47:56 PM

A couple of questions:

When the synedoche a factory employing 500 hands is used, how many people are employed in the factory? 250 or 500?

Does anyone here have an objection to the phrase "take care" used as a general farewell, even if you expect to see the person again soon?

4109. PincherMartin - 3/8/2000 3:48:43 PM

That's "synecdoche"

4110. ScottLoar - 3/8/2000 3:52:37 PM

I expect "a hand" to mean one worker as in a hired hand, and so 500 hands would be 500 workers.

"Take care" is just generally solicitous of another's well being and perfectly appropriate, an expression of care. I would wish it on almost everyone even though I expected to see or correspond with them again soon (excepting PelleNilsson from whom I'm doubtlessly doomed to hear more).

4111. PelleNilsson - 3/8/2000 3:53:03 PM

ScottLoar

I'm almost worn out. But as I said I heard the expression thrice on BBC in three hours. Yet you say it's not standard, meaning, I suppose, somewhat unusual. So be it then.

4112. ScottLoar - 3/8/2000 3:54:01 PM

PelleNilsson,

Take care.

4113. PincherMartin - 3/8/2000 3:54:43 PM

Scott Loar, Thanks.

4114. ScottLoar - 3/8/2000 3:57:12 PM

Well, Pincher, as this last exchange shows, don't take my opinion as definitive for Christ's sake.

4115. ScottLoar - 3/8/2000 3:57:43 PM

But it is surely commonsensical.

4116. PincherMartin - 3/8/2000 4:04:30 PM

Scott Loar --

But it is surely commonsensical.

I agree. I was of the same opinion on both questions. As a habit, I say to almost everyone "take care" when I leave their company, even if it's just for a few hours. Recently someone told me that they thought it odd I always say "take care" as a farewell because they associated it with a long farewell, something you would say to someone who was about to go on a trip, for example.

The "500 hands" question was of similar nature. I nver doubted that it was a figurative meaning rather than a literal counting of hands, until someone told me they thought otherwise.

4117. ProfEmeritus - 3/8/2000 7:23:22 PM

In my opinion you say "take care" to good friends, not to casual acquaintances. It makes no difference how long the period of separation will be.

4118. wonkers2 - 3/8/2000 7:53:32 PM

A question for the experts--What is the logic behind using an apostrophe s after numerals, e.g. the decade of the 1960's? That is the numerical form the of "nineteen sixties." So, why not save ink with 1960s or B-52s rather than B-52's which is like saying two plane's. I see it done both ways, but using the apostrophe seems to be more common.?????

4119. IrvingSnodgrass - 3/8/2000 8:00:26 PM

wonkers:
Both form are acceptable. Different publicatons adopt different standards, which is fine as long as they stick to them. I would guess those that prefer the apostrophe (which carries no meaning) do so simply because it looks better.

4120. IrvingSnodgrass - 3/8/2000 8:01:08 PM

that should be forms.

4121. wonkers2 - 3/8/2000 8:15:25 PM

Irving, Thanks! I'll stick with no apostrophe, then!

4122. IrvingSnodgrass - 3/8/2000 8:31:52 PM

wonkers:
That's my preference, too.

4123. DanDillon - 3/8/2000 9:24:53 PM

I'm with you guy's... ahem guys.

4124. DanDillon - 3/8/2000 9:27:17 PM

I suspect those who write such things as "the 1960's" and "B-52's" are also those who invent words like "your's" and "persons." shiver

4125. cmboyce - 3/8/2000 9:46:40 PM

On that apostrophe, Fowler's 3d (ie, the new editor, R. W. Burchfield) observes, "Though once commonly used in the plural of abbreviations and numerals (QC's; the 1960's), the apostrophe is now best omitted in such circumstances: MAs; MPs; the 1980s; the three Rs... except ... where its omission might possibly lead to confusion, eg, dot your i's and cross your t's; the class of '61"

But as to why "now best omitted" he doesn't say. Simple cleanliness will do for justification, I'd say. (Of course, that's no better than—indeed, no different from—using the meaningless apostrophe "because it looks better".)

He speaks of the origins of apostrophe use (16th c. for contractions/omissions; 17th for singular possessives; 18th for plural poss.) and adds, "Since then gross disturbances of these basic patterns have occurred in written and printed work... Such instability suggests that further disturbances may be expected in the 21c." No doubt, no doubt. Disturbances abound.

4126. cmboyce - 3/8/2000 9:58:42 PM

Message # 4124

Dan, I suppose "persons" must perforce have been invented, but the people who did it are long past shivering over. (g) I remember a hymn, probably written in the 18th or 19th century but presumably based on older texts, with the line "God in Three Persons, Blessed Trinity [Episc. Hymnal's caps, as I recall.]".

The OED has it as early as Coverdale's Bible (1535). (And it may be older; I didn't try going through all the instances of "person"—they are many—to find plurals, but just scanned til I found one.)

4127. cmboyce - 3/8/2000 10:01:07 PM

The hymn—"Holy, Holy, Holy"—was written by one Reginald Heber (1783-1826).

4128. cmboyce - 3/8/2000 10:08:43 PM

Burchfield, I find, is a New Zealander, editor of (inter alia) The New Zealand Pocket Oxford Dictionary. Ring any bells with antipodean Moties?

His big deals, it appears, are co-editor with C. T. Onions and another, of The Oxf. Etym. Dict. (1966) (I would guess that, as with Fowler's, this is a remake of Onions' original) and, by himself, the 1972-86 supplement of the OED. "He was awarded the CBE in 1975." His several other works come after that, so I guess he's a Sir (is that right, for the CBE?) by virtue of his work on the OED.

4129. DanDillon - 3/8/2000 10:17:54 PM

cmboyce Message # 4126,

Leave it to the religious right to perpetuate such poor usage. (g)

4130. cmboyce - 3/8/2000 10:26:56 PM

Dan, hahahaha! Yeah, that Laud, what a moron!

4131. SnowOwl - 3/9/2000 2:31:14 AM

cmboyce,

Unless Burchfield has been awarded a new honour, he's no Sir. The CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) is not a knighthood.

4132. PelleNilsson - 3/9/2000 3:30:11 PM

Today's date (Antipodeans excepted) is 3/9/00 for Americans. For most of the rest of the world it is 9/3/00. Some countries (Sweden included) has adopted the ISO recommendation and use 00-03-09. ISO is the International Standards Organisation.

In his latest column, Safire ponders this issue. Brief excerpts:

To resolve this problem before it discombobulates trans-Atlantic e-mail and drives the editors of the IHT to distraction, ISO recommends that we all start with the year, followed by the month and finally the day.

As they like to mutter in the Pentagon, I nonconcur. Who are these cookie-pushing cookie cutters of an unelected international bureaucracy to tell America's native speakers that we must conform to the linguistic dictats of Continental Common Marketeers and sovereignty grabbing European Unionists?

I reject this backdoor attempt to force American check writers to date our support of the International Monetary Fund in a way alien to our ways. If being a sole superpower does not give us hegemony in the writing of dates, why go to the expense of being a superpower at all?

4133. ScottLoar - 3/9/2000 3:44:44 PM

The US military - which I assume includes the Pentagon - and US government agencies all use day/month/year sequence.

4134. PelleNilsson - 3/9/2000 4:29:35 PM

ScottLoar

Safire mentions the US military. I didn't know about government agencies. Government usage often becomes the norm. Any ideas why this hasn't (so far) been the case in the US.

What about Canada, by the way?

4135. ScottLoar - 3/9/2000 7:51:13 PM

The US military and government agencies (look at government forms) took to the day/month/year sequence to avoid confusion I wager, the US military at least several decades ahead of Customs Bureau as I having penned forms for both, and the only reason why the US public hasn't taken to it is habit. We say "March ninth" and rarely if ever "ninth March" so the written form seems to follow the spoken habit. Usage follows habit and custom.

I can't answer for Canadians, and they would be piqued if I did.

4136. DanDillon - 3/10/2000 10:19:49 AM

When writing a personal letter, I favor a "10 March 2000" arrangement in my heading. This eliminates the need for commas and seems cleaner all around. I use the common mm/dd/yy arrangement only when directed to do so, as on a tax form or some other official document.

4137. ScottLoar - 3/10/2000 10:59:53 AM

Do US federal tax forms ask for mm/dd/yy?

4138. tmachine - 3/10/2000 2:15:54 PM

as far as i know, the only US forms that ask for dd/mm/yy are those usually filled out by non-U.S. citizens (I'm one of them): the immigration form you have to submit when you arrive in the United States from abroad, the applications for green cards, citizenship, etc.

if anyone thinks that the immigration into the U.S. is encouraged, try something I had to do recently: (a) finding the INS website (clue: it's a subsite of another federal agency), then (b) finding the correct form to download to apply for citizenship, (c) imagine what this task would be like if you spoke little or no English

4139. CalGal - 3/10/2000 2:29:03 PM

Pelle,

I'm with Safire, myself. I think Scott is right about the reason--we write the date in the same order we say it.

And we haven't changed to metric, for heaven's sake, and that's been around for much longer. What makes you think we're going to adopt something that has no real advantage other than everyone else does it? Hell, let the rest of the world change if it's so important.

(ugly American rant over.)

4140. PelleNilsson - 3/10/2000 2:58:18 PM

CalGal

I knew you would go with Bill. In fact I thought of you when I read his piece. Here is the ending of it:

I say: By jingo, let's stick to our slashes and hold fast to the American Way of Dating. To the standardizers, we should refuse to give a centimeter. Write today's date as 3/6/00 and let the rest of the world complain about us being out of date, out of step, out of time and out of sorts. So what if we miss a few appointments? We will be striking a blow for dialectical uniqueness, iconoclastic individuality, national sovereignty and international confusion.

4141. CalGal - 3/10/2000 3:12:32 PM

Ha! It's Bill and me against the world!

4142. IrvingSnodgrass - 3/15/2000 11:46:32 AM

Linguistic Adventures in Bali:

4143. ScottLoar - 3/15/2000 12:00:02 PM

This miraculously falls just short of profanity. With so many letters the probability seemed determined.

4144. ScottLoar - 3/15/2000 12:01:12 PM

I just got the census form yesterday and note the date sequence as mm/dd/yy, contrary to the US military and Immigration Services.

4145. PelleNilsson - 3/15/2000 12:51:27 PM

That's funny, Irv! "Tropical fishes from wood", a whole new form of propagation.

But the Swastika reference points to a serious lack of market research as to the sensitivities of English-speaking customers. I see an opening for you as market consultant and linguistic advisor.

4146. DanDillon - 3/15/2000 4:14:13 PM

Swastika Bali has some of the best fish in the world. The meatier varieties, like shark and tuna, go great with a little kraut. Of course, all the pendants and other jewelry they make have been in safe keeping and are due to be returned to their rightful owners.

Post more those, Irv. That sort of stuff makes my day.

Semiotic note: the swastika was a benign and positive symbol up until the 1930s when the Nazi Party adopted and modified it for use as their emblem. (They tilted it 45 degrees to create the illusion of forward motion.)

4147. Ronski - 3/15/2000 4:42:59 PM

They also reversed the image of the ancient swastika. More:

Swastika Post Card

History
of the Swastika

Swastika Acres, Colorado -- Which I did not visit on my recent trip to that state

4148. PelleNilsson - 3/15/2000 4:47:23 PM

I assumed that the learned audience of this thread knew all about the swastika and its origins. Otherwise I would have elaborated. It is interesting to note that it frequently appears in ancient Swedish embroidery works.

4149. ScottLoar - 3/15/2000 7:48:11 PM

As on Plains Indians quill embroidery and bead work, and in China the swastika or fylfot is a Buddhist symbol (pronounced wan, fourth tone) embodying "the accumulation of lucky signs possesing ten thousand efficacies", further differentiated as being the sauvastika with crampons to the left and svastika with crampons to the right (Sanskrit etymology)(Outlines of Chinese Symbolism and Art Motives,C.A.S. Williams, Charles E. Tuttle Company, third revised edition 1941, etc. pp. 381-382).

4150. hashke - 3/16/2000 10:53:02 AM

The nasties, who emblazoned it into the consciousness of the twentieth century called it das Hakenkreuz -- 'hooked cross'.

4151. pseudoerasmus - 3/21/2000 10:07:21 AM

whatever happened to snirvgrass? I've a question for him. is it true that Dardic languages are now being considered a separate branch of Indo-Iranian languages, on par with Iranian and Indic?

4152. theDiva - 3/21/2000 10:10:50 AM

He's in Florida watching spring training baseball with PP.

4152. PelleNilsson - 3/21/2000 10:10:50 AM

PE

He is somehere in the US, Florida perhaps, watching baseball.

4153. theDiva - 3/21/2000 10:11:41 AM

And the answer to your other question is yes.

4154. theDiva - 3/21/2000 10:12:01 AM

oh man. Pelle, people will talk.

4155. PelleNilsson - 3/21/2000 10:19:51 AM

They do already, I understand.

4156. DanDillon - 3/21/2000 10:32:59 AM

pe Message # 4151,

Allow me. The Dardic languages (spoken in Pakistan, Kashmir, and Afghanistan) are indeed sometimes considered a separate branch of Indo-Iranian, placed by some philologists within the Indo-Aryan branch, a.k.a. Indic (Northwestern group, also including Panjabi, Sindhi, Lahnda, and the Pahari languages).

4157. Stumbo - 3/21/2000 12:25:10 PM

They are not! Are you out of your fucking mind?

4158. PelleNilsson - 3/21/2000 2:11:01 PM

The other day I was looking for something in a box of old papers and came across this fine little example of the slightly stilted English in use on the sub-continent:

Date: 3/7/82

Ref, No. CRE:- MSP:LC008

Dear Sir:

We refer to your recent stay with us and hope you have enjoyed it.

Our bill for your stay was settled at the time of your departure at our Cashiers counter. However, the charge of Rupees 204.00 incurred by you was received by our Cashiers only after you had checked out from the hotel and hence the same could not be recovered at that time.

We are now enclosing our bill along with this late charge and request you to send us your payment in settlement of the same.

Regretting the inconvenience caused and assuring you of our best cooperation always.

Thanking you,

Yours faithfully,
For Taj Mahal Hotel,

M. S. Pikle
Credit Manager

We stayed there (in Bombay) a couple of days in April. Talk about late charge!

4159. CharlieL - 3/21/2000 3:56:23 PM

Catching up:

One of the reasons that year-month-day is coming into acceptance (with the year displayed as four digits, the month and day both as two digits) is ease in computer sorting items by date with a simple numerical sort.

4160. DanDillon - 3/21/2000 5:48:43 PM

Stumbo Message # 4157,
Are you out of your fucking mind?

Nope.

4161. ScottLoar - 3/21/2000 7:28:09 PM

But, PelleNilsson, my wife and I stayed at the Taj in Bombay a year ago January! Did you stay in the new wing or old wing? Did you sample the Indian restaurant on the first floor? Have tea poolside? It's really too bad that I cannot recall or find the bit of subcon bureaucratese that freighted a signboard in our Delhi hotel, posted in the previous forum I think.

4162. ProfEmeritus - 3/21/2000 7:42:24 PM

Pak hashke

I posted a quiz (Food and Drink) in the Quiz Thread which you might like to look at. Especially, you may wish to try #14, which I am sure that Irv can get.

4163. pseudoerasmus - 3/23/2000 7:32:30 PM

Dillon, here's that Moroccan singer neighbour of mine I told you about:

4164. PincherMartin - 3/23/2000 10:23:35 PM

Small Pop Quiz that I'm sure most of the regulars of this thread can pass without too much trouble (but it's worth a try to see if I can sneak one by them):

Which Sub-Saharan African country is the only country on that continent with Spanish as one of its official languages?

4165. pseudoerasmus - 3/23/2000 10:33:31 PM

Equatorial Guinea

4166. PincherMartin - 3/23/2000 10:36:47 PM

Correct. Did you already know or did you look it up?

4167. Candide - 3/23/2000 10:37:09 PM

Equatorial Guinea or The Republic of Equatorial Guinea.

4168. Candide - 3/23/2000 10:37:56 PM

Damn. Beaten by a nose. I looked it up.

4169. pseudoerasmus - 3/23/2000 10:39:56 PM

PM: "Name the Spanish colonies in Africa", by the very rarity of Spanish colonies in Africa, is a common trivia question.

4170. DanDillon - 3/24/2000 7:58:46 AM

pe,
Never heard of her, nor have you ever told me about her. (If you did, I missed it.) Do you have any of Saida's music? Is she any good? Looks like a young hippie who tried to "get out" but kept turning left. Where is she you neighbor? Stateside? Over there somewhere? You really should have her over for tea.

4171. PelleNilsson - 3/24/2000 8:33:13 AM

ScottLoar

Sorry about the long delay in responding to your Message # 4161.

Yes, we stayed in the old wing, had dinner in the Indian restaurant and tea poolside.

Later on we stayed in a classical hotel in Delhi, the name escapes me. The second day we were met by this notice on the door:

Dear Guest,

As part of our Pest Control Services we spray our premises regularly. Your room has been sprayed today. We apologise for the temporary inconvenience caused to you due to the smell. Kindly bear with us.

Thank you for your understanding.

The smell was awful. The notice now sits on the door to our guest bedroom.

4172. pseudoerasmus - 3/24/2000 8:38:15 AM

dillon, she and her husband have an apt right above mine, we have tea all the time, though i prefer the moroccan coffee with cinnamon and cardomom.

4173. ScottLoar - 3/24/2000 9:41:25 AM

Nice sign. I have maid's notice in Chinese hanging from the doorknob to my daughter's room, DO NOT DISTURB or (obverse side) CLEAN THE ROOM.

4174. marjoribanks - 3/24/2000 9:47:16 AM

I have the following signs:

Danger: Leopards
DO NOT GO FURTHER ON THE TRAIL (in Hebrew Arabic and English)
-stolen in Israel

Zealots Dwelling Chambers (in Hebrew, English and French)
-stolen at Masada

Bombs: Be Alert
-stolen in Ireland

The full tube map
-stolen in the UK

Next Teller Now
-stolen from a bank in Connecticut

I also have a gavel I stole from a judges chamber in India.

4175. marjoribanks - 3/24/2000 9:50:59 AM

I tried for three nights running to steal a sign from the gates of Rodin Museum in Paris. Alas, the military cops across the road at Les Invalides consistently thwarted me with their vigilance. It remains a regret of mine, the timed plan for prying it off was so cleverly devised, so elegant.

4176. theDiva - 3/24/2000 9:55:45 AM

Banks, dear, I'm concerned about these tendencies of yours. Seek help.

4177. marjoribanks - 3/24/2000 10:05:42 AM

Eh, these were youthful indiscretions Diva. But, honestly, the sign from Masada, the Israeli stronghold, is one of my most prized possessions.

4178. theDiva - 3/24/2000 10:08:45 AM

It's a good one, I have to admit.

4179. marjoribanks - 3/24/2000 10:11:05 AM

Ah Pest Control. How I miss that scent of my childhood.

4180. theDiva - 3/24/2000 10:11:07 AM

Which verb form is correct?

Recommendation - is that the Board of County Supervisors approvesthe attached resolution.

OR

Recommendation - is that the Board of County Supervisors approve the attached resolution.

4181. marjoribanks - 3/24/2000 10:14:34 AM

The first.

4182. cmboyce - 3/24/2000 10:15:21 AM

Deev: the latter.

4183. theDiva - 3/24/2000 10:16:08 AM

hoo boy.

I thought it was the latter, too.

4184. cmboyce - 3/24/2000 10:16:33 AM

What? No, it's the subjunctive. (But the beginning of that line should be altered to make the whole a sentence.)

4185. theDiva - 3/24/2000 10:16:49 AM

But is it the Board approving, or the Supervisors approving? They're one and the same, how do I distinguish?

4186. MizPhys - 3/24/2000 10:17:19 AM

Since the board is singular, use approve.

4187. theDiva - 3/24/2000 10:17:27 AM

cm

I agree WRT changing the sentence, but unfortunately this is the bulleted, numbered format in which these bureaucrats want their stuff.

4188. cmboyce - 3/24/2000 10:18:16 AM

My "what" was of course directed to Marjoribanks (and good morning, Marj, I might add). I'd suggest: Recommendation: that the ... approve... ; or something on the order of: "The recommendation is made that ...

4189. theDiva - 3/24/2000 10:19:38 AM

two outta three geeks say 'approve'. I'm running wit dat.

4190. CalGal - 3/24/2000 10:22:34 AM

Yeah, I think it's approve, too.

4191. cmboyce - 3/24/2000 10:24:13 AM

Message # 4187

Well, at least get rid of the "is"; not, of course, that the b'crats will notice, but it might, however incrementally, clear their constipated brains a bit.

It doesn't matter as to singular or plural, it's the subjunctive: the action of the verb is sort of suspended--in that the action isn't actually happening but is hypothetical. Therefore (I guess) the number isn't a consideration. Anyway, the subj. is "approve".

4192. theDiva - 3/24/2000 10:28:01 AM

The 'is' has been excised, purged, deleted, BURNED. I hate doing these frickin' things. They get dozens of them to read, and they want them in this absurd format because it supposedly is easier to digest.

4193. marjoribanks - 3/24/2000 10:47:01 AM

Of the two choices orignially submitted, dear boyce, the former is so much clearer and is therefore preferable.

4194. ScottLoar - 3/24/2000 11:21:16 AM

The Board is singular, a single body, no matter how many supervisors or lesser folk comprise it. "The Board approves" is correct, just as "The Board of Petty Pashas and Lesser Potentates likewise approves".

4195. CalGal - 3/24/2000 11:27:19 AM

It's the "that" that makes me think it's "approve".

"I recommend that he approve the bill", even though it's "he approves the bill".

4196. pseudoerasmus - 3/24/2000 11:34:35 AM

"approve" without S is correct because "recommendation" entails the subjunctive.

who really cares, however.

4197. theDiva - 3/24/2000 11:35:51 AM

well, damn. I do, obviously. Sheesh.

4198. theDiva - 3/24/2000 11:37:13 AM

and thank you, one and all, for your valuable input. I knew I could count on my favorite group of yentas, er, I mean, experts.

4199. pseudoerasmus - 3/24/2000 11:37:26 AM

diva, you should interpret that to mean "it shouldn't really matter". One can say "board of supervisors"is or are.

4200. theDiva - 3/24/2000 11:38:39 AM

dammit, and I was trying to get you to call me an idiot.

4201. Candide - 3/25/2000 1:33:37 AM

marjoribanks #4175

When I was dying of quinsy (as mentioned in my el foco desnudo tale) I was in the room of a friend when a socially distinguished medico came to see whether I was worth saving.

Above the door of my friend's room was an exquisitely painted sign saying The Deanery. My friend was innocent. It had been stolen by another friend who later became a Professor of FILM in London.

The Doctor said: "The Dean is a personal friend of mine and has been searching for this sign. I will not report you to the police but I will return this property to the Dean immediately". And then he gave me an injection in my bottom with a blunt needle.

4202. Candide - 3/25/2000 1:54:19 AM

Approve.

4203. Jenerator - 3/27/2000 11:35:32 AM

Will someone translate this for me, please.

Benedicite omnia opera domini domino

Omnes best ae-et pecora

Omnia ovae move ntvr in aovis

Omnes volv cres coeli

4204. pseudoerasmus - 3/27/2000 11:48:23 AM

You're missing a couple of letters

"Praise (or bless) all the work of the Lord
all the beasts and cattle (= "all animals wild and tame")
all the eggs stir in (?)
all winged beetles"

4205. pseudoerasmus - 3/27/2000 11:49:09 AM

Praise (or bless) all the work of the Lord unto the Lord

4206. Jenerator - 3/27/2000 11:52:19 AM

PE,

Have I told you recently how much I love you? Btw, the above was written on the inside of St. Paul's Cathedral. Are there any q's in Latin? At first glance, I thought that AOVIS was AQVIS.

4207. Absensia - 3/27/2000 11:59:26 AM

Jen, Might be "qu" not "qv."

4208. Jenerator - 3/27/2000 12:08:04 PM

Absensia,

One of these days, I'll take an intro to Latin course too.

4209. Dantheman - 3/27/2000 12:11:30 PM

Jen,
Q was a very common letter in Latin. U's tended to be written as V's (which were a separate letter).

4210. Absensia - 3/27/2000 12:12:14 PM

Jen,

Just get one of those old, old Catholic Missals..Latin on one side, English on the other1

4211. Jenerator - 3/27/2000 12:13:56 PM

I bought myself a complete guide to Latin, circa 1928, Harvard University. About two pages into it, I realized I needed a living, breathing instructor to answer my many questions.

4212. pseudoerasmus - 3/27/2000 12:16:11 PM

U was always written as V in Latin.

aqvis = the waters

"Omnia ovae move ntvr in aqvis"

I've no idea what "ovae" is supposed to be, but if "omnia" is correct then it must be "eggs" ("ova"). But "all the eggs stir in the waters" doesn't make much sense.

"Omnes oves moventur in aqvis" means "all the sheep stir in the baths".

Have I told you recently how much I love you?

I've always known....

4213. Jenerator - 3/27/2000 12:25:33 PM

Dump your babuschka, run away with me, and let's live on a ranch in the heart of Texas raising long horn cattle. I promise to throw away all of my hairspray, and warmly welcome any instruction you want to share.

Can you say that in Latin?

4214. pseudoerasmus - 3/27/2000 1:03:29 PM

Should be something like:

Abice anum tuam, effuge mecum, et in cordem Texas in latifundiam vivamusque longis cornibus pecores educamus. Omnem capillis caligonem proicere polliceor. Calide fervideque exspecto ut mentulam in me recondas.

Your last sentence is translated with extreme liberty.

4215. Jenerator - 3/27/2000 1:13:37 PM

If I promise to name our first child Damion, will you translate the last sentence for me?

4216. PelleNilsson - 3/27/2000 1:48:50 PM

I have a vague memory that Robert Graves allows Claudius to claim he invented 'U'.

4217. Dantheman - 3/27/2000 1:51:54 PM

Pelle,
I recall that he had Claudius proposing it, but it wasn't adopted. I took it with a large grain of salt.

4218. CalGal - 3/27/2000 1:54:38 PM

let's live on a ranch in the heart of Texas raising long horn cattle

I can see our Pseuder now, spitting baccy juice. Drawling his a's and neglectin' his g's. Wearing a ten gallon hat that he has to take off in order to see past the brim. Getting lynched when he's caught riding his palomino sidesaddle.

4219. DanDillon - 3/27/2000 2:51:23 PM

Glad to see Jen has moved on now that I'm married and all.

Raise some cattle for me, too.

4220. PelleNilsson - 3/27/2000 2:57:57 PM

Dan

It all worked out well. Any amusing glitches?

4221. PelleNilsson - 3/27/2000 2:58:49 PM

God! I hope it all worked out well.

4222. DanDillon - 3/27/2000 3:05:04 PM

Pelle,

No need to call me God, depite my being married to a goddess. DanD will suffice.

Not one single glitch to speak of. The entire weekend was superb, weather, ceremony, food and all. Anything that went even slightly wrong (something must have, though I never noticed) had no effect on our mood or our guests' good time. The party lasted well into the night -- 3 a.m. it's reported. Anne and I retired at around 8:30 p.m.

4223. PelleNilsson - 3/27/2000 3:18:31 PM

That's good DanD. Were guests invited to espy you in the conjugal bed?

4224. stostosto - 3/27/2000 5:41:36 PM

Pelle! What kind of a question is that?!

4225. pseudoerasmus - 3/27/2000 6:06:40 PM

I guess applying the epithet "dour, humourless ___" was a mistake. It belongs to Stostosto, the dour humourless Dane...

Sto: that's a custom in many peasant societies. Ask your grandfather.

4226. hashke - 3/27/2000 7:22:07 PM

4213. Jenerator - 3/27/00 5:25:33 PM
Dump your babuschka, run away with me, and let's live on a ranch in the heart of Texas raising long horn cattle. I promise to throw away all of my hairspray, and warmly welcome any instruction you want to share.

Can you say that in Latin?

Yes: estrus

4227. hashke - 3/27/2000 9:22:49 PM

For even the remotely curious, themote Merriam Webster has the entry for this one-word translation.

4228. Candide - 3/27/2000 10:37:18 PM

hashke

A Spanish poem in Poetry awaits your attention. Leave these lewd and loitering lollards.

4229. Jenerator - 3/28/2000 8:04:43 AM

DanD,

It was your current nuptials that put me in the mood for love. I must make an honorable cowboy out of PE before I die. Btw, congratulations to you and Anne. Honestly, I am so thrilled for you two. It's wild to think that you met her while all of us were getting to know you online! I wish you all the best, I know that you have so much fun and love ahead of you.

4230. Jenerator - 3/28/2000 8:10:51 AM

Hashke,

Yikes, estrus focuses on more of the physical aspect, whereas I was thinking of agapE in a sweeter way.

4231. DanDillon - 3/28/2000 8:49:25 AM

Jen,

Thanks for the well wishing. One correction: I met Anne in college some eight years ago, not while all of you were getting to know me online. Our courtship, however, has lasted about that long -- since autumn 1996. (I believe I first became aware of your and everybody's existence sometime in March 1997.)

Btw, I'm certain you're destined to find love as rich and as deep as mine. Happy hunting. Yee-haw!

Back to things linguistic!

4232. Jenerator - 3/28/2000 9:11:02 AM

Dan,

I coulda sworn you met Anne back when the Fray was in existence. Wasn't it sort of a whirlwind romance, too? Something about meeting her, dating her for a month (week?) and then proposing and having a long engagement... In any case, c'est formidable, et je suis très heureuse. Muy bueno! Bella! Bravissima!

4233. tmachine - 3/28/2000 10:57:55 AM

I think it's "all things that move upon the waters"--what jenerator read as "ovae" was probably something like "quae," with what she thought was an o being a q, and v a u (as pointed out earlier)

4234. Seguine - 3/28/2000 12:27:57 PM

ScottLoar, in International: "...business associates (the euphemism for people you'd love to do without but can't as you're all thrown together for commercial convenience even while busy advancing over each others' mistakes and weaknesses)"

I wonder if this witticism of Loar's indicates to anyone else that it's about time for us to construct a Mote Dictionary of Special Terms and Interpretive Insights.

4235. Seguine - 3/28/2000 12:34:20 PM

To such a dictionary the term fervideque exspecto would have to be included.

4236. janjon - 3/31/2000 5:51:26 PM

A Mote Dictionary of the type described would be fun. And different. Therefore, very valuable.

4237. DanDillon - 3/31/2000 9:00:02 PM

Splendid idea. A gentle madness right here in The Mote. Let's make that slave to drudgery Johnson proud. Lexicographers unite!

4238. PelleNilsson - 4/1/2000 5:53:30 AM

Welcome back Irv!

I hope you had a good trip with lots of baseball and good business.

4239. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/1/2000 9:33:40 AM

Pelle:
It was lots of business, and a single afternoon of baseball. I'm still recovering from the travel. I haven't caught up on this thread yet, but I'll get there.

4240. Candide - 4/1/2000 4:48:24 PM

IrvingSnodgrass

Went to a secondhand book shop and came out with the Oxford Dictionary of New Zealand English: New Zealand words and their origins. The Jumbo-sized volume for $16.00. Not a lot of call for it in Australia. Several pages devoted to the word kiwi.

4241. Candide - 4/2/2000 9:00:03 PM

While browsing through Byron's Don Juan I came upon this line that would cause blood to rush to the head of the Language dept. of Atlantic Monthly
Canto 11 verse CLXVII
Return we to Don Juan. He begun
( To hear new words, and to repeat them;)

4242. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/3/2000 1:39:23 AM

Candide:
I am issuing Byron with a posthumous citation, courtesy of the word police.

4243. Candide - 4/3/2000 2:14:37 AM

IrvingSnodgrass
Hahaha.

He was an uncontrollable varmint.

4244. stostosto - 4/3/2000 7:33:40 AM

Pseuder #4225:

Unfortunately my grandfathers are not only dour and humourless, they are also dead. (Which condition seldom hampers said traits).

4245. arkymalarky - 4/3/2000 11:12:15 PM

I got my basic lessons in Kyrgyz, Russian, and Spanish from my kids (exchange students) the other day, with audio tapes to go along. I wish I'd thought to get them to make flash cards, but since the assignment is done, I don't guess it would be fair to make it a retroactive requirement. They really did a great job and I'm looking forward to studying them this summer and making them available for my other students.

4246. DanDillon - 4/4/2000 8:53:13 AM

What sorts of lessons did your students create? Are they simply listen and repeat drills? What expressions did they use? Were they to follow some model (an audio lesson from their foreign language textbok)?

Reciprocity, you know, is the newest idea in bilingual ed. You're ahead of your time, arky.

4247. arkymalarky - 4/4/2000 5:52:44 PM

Hi Dan! How's married life?

The lessons are very simple and basic, starting with alphabets and pronunciation and going from there to simple and common words, phrases (I don't remember what phrases for each language yet, since I've only looked through them once) explanations of major rules for constructing simple sentences, and ending with a short conversational sample of about three or four paragraphs.

4248. arkymalarky - 4/4/2000 5:55:06 PM

BTW, they had no model and no textbook. They created them entirely on their own. I'm hoping to use them in the future to introduce a little of other languages to my classes (as time permits) and to learn some things for myself.

4249. pseudoerasmus - 4/4/2000 6:08:53 PM

Did your Kirghiz student show you the Latin, Cyrillic or Arabic alphabet for Kirghiz?

4250. ChristinO - 4/4/2000 7:04:00 PM

What's it called when a sentence reads the same forward and backward?

4251. hashke - 4/4/2000 7:11:17 PM

4250. ChristinO - 4/5/00 12:04:00 AM
What's it called when a sentence reads the same forward and backward?

Illiteracy.

4252. SnowOwl - 4/4/2000 7:38:08 PM

Christin,

It's a palindrome.

4253. ChristinO - 4/4/2000 7:47:17 PM

SnowOwl,

Thanks! I thought palindrome was only for numbers.

Hashke,

funny...very funny

4254. Uzmakk - 4/4/2000 8:03:24 PM

Snodgrassian teak is hard to come by.

4255. arkymalarky - 4/4/2000 8:10:38 PM

PE,
She used Cyrillic.

4256. Candide - 4/4/2000 8:10:54 PM

Who in their right mind wants to say "Able was I ere I saw Elba"?

4257. pseudoerasmus - 4/4/2000 8:13:30 PM

Has Candide been reading O V Michaelson?

4258. pseudoerasmus - 4/4/2000 8:14:07 PM

A far more appripriate palindrome for Candide:

I roamed under it as a tired, nude Maori.

4259. pseudoerasmus - 4/4/2000 8:14:30 PM

Eros? Sidney, my end is sore

4260. arkymalarky - 4/4/2000 8:16:18 PM

Also, PE, I had to persuade her to do Kyrgyz (her spelling--I guess that's just phonetic?) since I already had Russian. She felt she didn't know the language well enough, and I'm like, I'm going to know enough to notice that?

4261. arkymalarky - 4/4/2000 8:17:17 PM

Oh my. PE is going to be to palindromes what Hashke is to puns.

4262. pseudoerasmus - 4/4/2000 8:23:14 PM

I take it your Kirghiz is not an ethnic Russian? There are still many Russians, Ukrainians, Caucasians, etc. left in Kirghizstan.

But even the Kirghiz in the cities tend to know more Russian than Kirghiz, simply because that was the universal language of politics and education under the Soviets. In Kazakstan, the Kazaks barely know any Kazak.

Did you know that the longest epic poetry in the world is in Kirghiz? These "manas" are recited by minstrels in a trance-like state which continues for hours and hours.

4263. Candide - 4/4/2000 8:26:35 PM

Pseudoerasmus

hahahaha

You've found my old diaries.

4264. arkymalarky - 4/4/2000 8:33:21 PM

No I didn't know that. That's fascinating. I've been concentrating so much on my end with the exchange students I haven't learned much, though the Russian and I have talked quite a lot. She was great help and very informative in my English class when we were reading The Brothers Karamazov My Kyrgyz student is also shy, but I need to visit with her before she leaves and get some information that I can put with her lessons.
And you're right, she's not ethnic Russian. I've been very taken with her personality--extremely respectful but very pleasant--and she's the most conscientious of the ten exchange students I have.

4265. pseudoerasmus - 4/4/2000 8:33:26 PM

Tüshünbödüm nege qol jughuch tëqëlëp qalëlëpter.

"I don't understand why the sink is blocked" in Kirghiz.

4266. arkymalarky - 4/4/2000 8:34:09 PM

Haha. That was to PE, of course.

Although I'm sure Candide's old diaries are fascinating, too.

4267. arkymalarky - 4/4/2000 8:35:04 PM

Hmm. I'll see if she has that in her lesson. Would that be a handy phrase for one travelling in Kyrgystan?

4268. pseudoerasmus - 4/4/2000 8:35:22 PM

I've been studying Turkish since December, which is very similar to Kirghiz. It's a deceptively simple language, completely alien to any other language I know, except for the presence of European and Asian loanwords.

4269. pseudoerasmus - 4/4/2000 8:36:50 PM

In the former Soviet Central Asia one has no need for anything but Russian. Even the nomads in the mountains speak it. Without Russian, what you can do by way of travelling is severely limited.

4270. arkymalarky - 4/4/2000 8:39:00 PM

When she told me it was a Turkish language, that was the main reason I wanted it and persuaded her to try it instead of Russian.

4271. pseudoerasmus - 4/4/2000 8:41:03 PM

I have a Dictionary of Turkic Languages, which is a list of about 5000 English words and their equivalents in Turkish, Kirghiz, Kazakh, Uighur, Tatar, Turkmen, Azeri and Uzbekh. Although I knew these were all very closely related languages, I'm still surprised at how little lexical difference there is among these far-flung languages. Almost every entry is simply a repetition of the first word listed.

4272. pseudoerasmus - 4/4/2000 8:43:27 PM

For example, "name" is either "at" or "ad" in these eight languages. Country = millet or millat (from the Arabic). Blood = qan or gan. And on and on and on.

4273. arkymalarky - 4/4/2000 8:46:50 PM

Then with you studying Turkish you'll be able to use it in many areas enough to be understood, right?

She didn't give the Latin phonetic spelling of the word, so I'm going to have to learn the Cyrillic alphabet before I read it (which she already provided, with phonetic pronunciations). Her audiotapes are very clear, though, and they follow the written lessons.

4274. pseudoerasmus - 4/4/2000 8:50:41 PM

Well, I've met people who've gotten by travelling in Iran using their Turkish with Azeri speakers. (Azeris are about a quarter of Iran's population.) An Armenian at TT who speaks Azeri says he can understand and be understood by Turks without a problem.

The Cyrillic alphabet can be learnt in about 10 minutes.

4275. arkymalarky - 4/4/2000 8:59:35 PM

I've got her paper here and I just noticed that in her phonetic pronunciation of the alphabet, for the Cyrillic "D" she used the example of the English word "gigolo." I wonder where in sam hill she got that word.

4276. pseudoerasmus - 4/4/2000 9:03:20 PM

In Kirghizstan, I was told that if you spoke Kazakh to a Kirghiz, he'd ask you why you are speaking Kirghiz in a Kazakh accent....

4277. arkymalarky - 4/4/2000 9:08:15 PM

I was going to make a funny about Arkies and Texans, but it isn't quite analogous.

4278. hashke - 4/4/2000 11:34:10 PM

4275. arkymalarky - 4/5/00 1:59:35 AM
I've got her paper here and I just noticed that in her phonetic pronunciation of the alphabet, for the Cyrillic "D" she used the example of the English word "gigolo." I wonder where in sam hill she got that word.

My daughter-in-law took a university Spanish course given by a Korean who pronounced 'Méjico' as 'Mejijico', 'j' as in 'jiggle'.

4279. Candide - 4/6/2000 3:31:57 AM

For connoisseurs of linguistic soup, from La RepubblicaMarch 25, 2000, the entertainment section:

"Queers, il punk-rock dal New Hampshire"

4280. DanDillon - 4/6/2000 10:16:52 AM

A thoroughly inane list of the most common words in the English language from two to ten letters long. Click at your own risk.

4281. cmboyce - 4/6/2000 10:59:47 AM

Message # 4280

DanDillon, that is indeed boggling. One wonders what the corpus of texts was, that includes "ho" and "zymurgies" among the most common words. Haw!

4282. Ronski - 4/6/2000 11:16:05 AM

Some relationship to an inner-city brewary?

4283. Ronski - 4/6/2000 11:35:07 AM

False Friends

4284. PelleNilsson - 4/6/2000 3:35:42 PM

That's a very interesting link, Ronski.

4285. ScottLoar - 4/6/2000 3:43:04 PM

The word list Message # 4280 may benefit Scrabble players but does prove anyone can post on the internet and pose as an authority.

4286. Dusty - 4/6/2000 4:31:24 PM

Dan, the site is in error.

4287. DanDillon - 4/7/2000 9:08:05 AM

I warned you.

Posing as an authority, to borrow ScottLoar's phrase, proves awfully easy these days. And not surprisingly, far too many topics garner expert opinions that once never required such punditry. How much do we honestly need to know about the ins and outs of some strategic remedy for an orphaned castaway residing in the care of a step-uncle?

4288. theDiva - 4/7/2000 9:10:08 AM

language mavens, a question:

What does the Hebrew word 'Nephilim' mean?

4289. KuligintheHooligan - 4/7/2000 10:33:45 AM

A silly question.

I was told by someone that the word "dork" as in "he is such a dork" actually comes from a vulgar term used to describe the penis. Can someone either confirm or disprove this? And if it is true, what language exactly does it originally come from?

4290. KuligintheHooligan - 4/7/2000 10:36:52 AM

Deev, I am by no means a Hebrew expert, but if I recall correctly, "Nephilim" is a transliteration of the Hebrew, and the reason why it has been transliterated is because we don't know really what the word meant! "Giants" or some such thing is how the King James translated it, I believe.

4291. hashke - 4/7/2000 10:39:10 AM

Diva:

I'm no Hebrew maven, but one of my Hebrew dictionaries yields 'nefel' -- 'aborted fetus', 'nefalim'-- 'aborted fetuses'. I hope that this embryonic definition does not fall short.

Where the heck is Rustler? Hey, Pike!

4292. theDiva - 4/7/2000 10:44:40 AM

KtH

You know the passage I mean....Genesis 6:4, I think.

Hashke

Hm. That wouldn't quite work. But thanks for looking it up.

4293. Indiana Jones - 4/7/2000 10:45:49 AM

Kuligin:

"The word is first recorded in 1964 with the meaning "penis". By 1972 it had come to mean "a fool" and that is the meaning that is most often intended today. Though the word's origin is not known with certainty, it is thought that it might be a variation of dick (slang for "penis) with the influence of dirk (a small knife)."

Source

4294. KuligintheHooligan - 4/7/2000 10:49:46 AM

Diva,

I know the passage. It is a difficult one, one of the most difficult to understand in the entire OT. What does "sons of God" mean in the passage, and how exactly were these "giants" produced is the sons of God were angels? And so on.

Indy, thanks both for the explanation and the useful source.

4295. pseudoerasmus - 4/7/2000 11:26:57 AM

I'm reminded by Ronski's link in # 4283 about false cognates, that the French actor Gérard Depardieu was a victim of one. Back in the early 1990s, he was nominated for an Academy Award. But before the Oscars, he gave an interview, in French, to an American or a Brit in which he said "j'ai assisté à un viol". The idiot interviewer misunderstood this to mean that Depardieu was boasting that he had helped rape a woman, instead of saying what he actually said, that he had witnessed a rape. There was an uproar and Depardieu lost his chance for an Oscar. Why didn't they get someone other than some American or Brit to interview him?

4296. tmachine - 4/7/2000 11:47:45 AM

surely an American or a Brit who spoke reasonable French could have coped. but perhaps they're a little thin on the ground in Hollywood.

4297. stostosto - 4/7/2000 7:05:18 PM

hashke #4291:

Where the heck is Rustler? Hey, Pike!

My feelings exactly. Some time ago he got mad at Pelle because he moved some of his posts from International to Inferno and he hasn't posted since. But that's probably just as much to do with him being very busy tending to business. I have corresponded with him a little and I am sure he will be back eventually.

4298. Candide - 4/7/2000 8:21:20 PM

"The Australian English Pocket Oxford Dictionary" gives dork as stupid or ineffectual person (US dork penis.)

4299. Candide - 4/7/2000 8:28:04 PM

Italians in Australia display signs saying "Io sopporto il partito laburista".
(I support the Labor Party)

To an Italian-Italian they read, "I can endure the Labor Party. The laburista is an Italo/Australian version of 'Labor'.

Instead of sopportare they should say appoggiare.

4300. Candide - 4/7/2000 8:29:24 PM

I wish Rustler would come back.

4301. Candide - 4/7/2000 9:24:52 PM

I looked up Indiana Jones's link and found this:
Those who know "Alice in Wonderland" will remember the Mad Hatter's tea party, during which the dormouse begins a tale of three sisters who live in a well. When asked what kind of a well, the dormouse replies "It was a treacle well". The absurdity of this statement may be lost on an American reader who is unaware that treacle is British for molasses.
I was confused by this information because my husband and I (pauses to bow)both remembered treacle and molasses as different tastes. Finally I looked up the estimable Tom Stobart and came up with this:
"Molasses is the liquid residue in sugar-making which is separated by centrifuge from the crystals of brown sugar. Whilst most molasses is made from sugar cane, some may come from specially processed sugar beet, although molasses produced from beet in normal sugar production is inedible to humans.
Baking molasses still contains a large amount of crystallizable sugar, while blakstrap molasses is the lowest grade of all and has lost all the sugar that can be ecomically be extracted. Treacle is partly decolourized molasses, and is usually sweeter than molasses."

As a child in New Zealand, treacle was a bribe and molasses was a punishment. Americans must use the word 'molasses' for the stage English people call treacle. Trivia.

4302. Candide - 4/9/2000 3:07:21 AM

A story about an appearance by Toffler from a Singapore newspaper:
"Thirty years ago, when we wrote the Third Wave, the New York Times made fun of us. Now more and more people are working at home," he told a rapped audience.

4303. PelleNilsson - 4/9/2000 4:17:07 AM

This is copied from Movies where I asked about the difference between 'competence' and 'competency'.

7792. pseudoerasmus - 4/9/00 3:12:15 AM
There is a subtle difference, less in definition than in usage. One would say "competency requirements" but not "competence requirements"; "incompetence" but not "incompetency". One might evaluate "competency to stand trial" (at least in UK parlance) but not "competence to stand trial". The plural is almost always of
"competency". But if you want to say someone's really capable, you'd say "he has competence", not competency.

7793. dusty - 4/9/00 4:34:12 AM
PelleNilsson

This isn't exactly right, but it is something like the difference between "temperature" and "hot". "Competence" is a measure, of which one can have a lot or a little, but "competency" implies a level.

Also, I've noticed a bit of a trend, both in the US and in Europe, to use "competency" as in "Our firm has competencies in the following
areas:"

Thank you both.

I have seen the pural 'competencies' in promotional material from Swedish firms and I seriously thought it to be the usual Swedish mangling of English. So it is not. But for some reason I find it ugly.

4304. Candide - 4/9/2000 4:47:44 AM

I am currently discussing with an American friend the American past tense for shine, apparently shined.

British-based speakers would always say shone.

It seems shined is an older usage.

4305. PelleNilsson - 4/9/2000 6:08:41 AM

I worked with an elderly Englishmen once who insisted on writing 'shewed' instead of 'showed'.

4306. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/9/2000 8:15:42 AM

Candide:
"Shined" is a new usage, and is part of the pattern in which irregular past forms are slowly being regularized in English (a process which has been taking place for hundreds of years). Other words are further along in the transition: "learned" has almost completely replaced "learnt" in the USA, and "dived" is used as often as "dove," for example.

Although "shined" is probably now an acceptable form, "shone" is still by far the most common form in the USA, and the only form in other English-speaking countries. As we have previously discussed, it is pronounced differently in American English (it rhymes with "bone," as opposed to other varieties of English, in which it rhymes with "gone").

4307. Candide - 4/9/2000 9:08:10 AM

IrvingSnodgrass

And my friend is an EDITOR!

4308. pseudoerasmus - 4/9/2000 9:18:48 AM

I don't think I've ever seen "shined", at least I've never noticed it.

4309. pseudoerasmus - 4/9/2000 9:21:58 AM

A linguistic observation from Hindooostan.

I was in Hyderabad for two days, and in looking at the Urdu newspaper there, I noticed something strikingly different from the Urdu of Pakistani newspapers: the many aspects of Arabisation that are found in standard Urdu, and are rigidly overdone in written Pakistani Urdu, are not to be found at all in Deccani Urdu.

For example, in standard Urdu, the Arabic spelling of Arabic loanwords is faithfully preserved, even when the spelling has absolutely nothing to do with the pronunciation. For example the final H of the Arabic loanword qissah (story) is silent and is pronounced as though it were simply qissaa. But there are native Indic words whose endings are pronounced exactly alike but whose spelling ends in -a.

In Pakistan, there is a tendency to arabise the endings of native words ending in -a, so that "ghanta" would be spelt "ghantah" even though the H is unsounded. In Hyderabad newspapers, the precise opposite was true! Words like "waalidah" (mother) or "dafah" (time), which are written with the silent haa' à l'arabe in standard Urdu, drop the silent haa' and Indicise them.

4310. dusty - 4/9/2000 9:53:19 AM

test

4311. tmachine - 4/10/2000 11:48:08 AM

re "shined/shone" etc. Irv is right--most Americans say "shone" (pron. like SHOWN), except, of course, when they're using it to mean polishing shoes, when it is ALWAYS "shined."

I believe I have commented before on the fact that occasionally American English has retained old-fashioned forms that have already disappeared in British English, such as "dove" for "dived"--in GB "dove" is entirely archaic, a shame as it is a lovely form. I daresay "gotten" is one of these too, another form that isn't used in Brit. English. Conversely, "tread," "trod" and "trodden" are basically archaic in America--I've noticed that when Americans do use them they frequently get the forms mixed up and say things like "he has trod on me." the Am. Eng. for "tread," of course, is the comparatively boring "step on."

4312. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/10/2000 11:59:04 AM

tm:
Excellent observations. The use of "shined" for shoes had escaped me. It's like "flied out" (no one would ever say "flew out"). It's interesting that British English and American English are regularizing irregular verbs separately (though the trend continues in both languages). "Gotten" and "dove" are the older forms, still current in the US, while the older forms "learnt" and "trod/trodden" are still found in British English.

4313. tmachine - 4/10/2000 12:18:50 PM

I agree, Irv, it's fascinating that Brit and American English have retained different irregular verb forms. why on earth does this happen? is there anywhere one can look up theories about this kind of thing?

4314. pseudoerasmus - 4/10/2000 12:20:39 PM

What on earth is "flied out"?

I say "flew out". I flew out of Narita.

4315. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/10/2000 12:32:12 PM

tm:
I suppose it's because the irregular forms in question aren't terribly common (very few people realize, for example, that Americans pronounce "shone" differently from other English speakers).

PE:
"Flied out" is strictly a baseball term: Griffey flied out to center in the fourth inning. Given your aversion to sports, it is not surprising that you are unfamiliar with the term.

4316. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/10/2000 12:33:39 PM

Actually, "disinterest in" is probably more accurate than "aversion to."

4317. tmachine - 4/10/2000 12:37:53 PM

irv, i'm afraid i'm one of those fuddy-duddy people who believe that "disinterest" means "impartiality" rather than "lack of interest." but i still love you.

4318. pseudoerasmus - 4/10/2000 12:39:16 PM

I've no particular "aversion" to sport, it's just team sports, especially American team sports like baseball and football which give me the creeps. Brit bovver boy sports like football, I find even worse.

Cheers to those Turks! Exterminate the brutes. It's kind of appropriate that the site of the incident in Istanbul was right near the Hippodrome, the scene of the Nika revolt, when 30000 were put to death.

4319. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/10/2000 12:40:41 PM

Fuddy-duddy is not the right word. Prescriptivist is the term you're looking for. I was using "disinterest" in its common American usage. The only time, in common usage, it means "impartial" is in the frozen phrase "disinterested parties."

4320. pseudoerasmus - 4/10/2000 12:43:20 PM

How about "disinterested observer"? Is that to pass from a term worthy of use in the philosophy of science to the attitude of some gen-Xer who lacks passion?

The distinction between "disinterested" and "uninterested" is worth preserving.

4321. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/10/2000 12:47:44 PM

PE:
"Disinterested observer" is another frozen phrase which is still with us. In fact, the difference which has been lost tends to be in the noun form "disinterest" rather than in the adjectival form, where the distinction tends to be preserved (and makes more of a concrete difference in meaning).

Differences worth preserving will usually be preserved, as that is how language operates.

4322. pseudoerasmus - 4/10/2000 12:51:26 PM

Differences worth preserving will usually be preserved, as that is how language operates.

You sound like an exponent of extreme laissez-faire economics....

4323. AceofSpades - 4/10/2000 12:57:37 PM

"uninterested" means bored. "Disinterested" means not having an agenda.

4324. pseudoerasmus - 4/10/2000 7:58:39 PM

re the shined/shone thing. Is it "shone" when the verb is used intransitively and "shined" when it's transitively used?

4325. AceofSpades - 4/10/2000 8:02:29 PM

Yes, the sun shone, but you shined your car.

4326. CalGal - 4/10/2000 8:13:19 PM

Shined your shoes. Waxed your car. Or buffed it.

Regarding "disinterested" and "uninterested"--I think it is an important distinction and not prescriptivist at all.

4327. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/11/2000 12:14:09 AM

CalGal:
Any time one attempts to fight the tide of language change, it is being prescriptivist, no matter how justified one may feel in preserving a distinction.

And the meaning shift in "disinterest" (as opposed to "disinterested," as I pointed out above -- please make note of the distinction) is a very real thing in American English.

Here, for example, is a passage I came across in Carl Hiaasen's "Sick Puppy":

Dick Artemis mistook Lisa June's silence for discretion, when in truth it was plain disinterest.

4328. joezan - 4/11/2000 12:25:22 AM

Irv:

I heard a story recently, and want to confirm something:

What does Kloote mean, in Dutch?

4329. CalGal - 4/11/2000 12:25:55 AM

Irv,

There is also such a thing as plain ol misuse. I don't think that citing Hiassen doesn't conclusively prove that most Americans use the "disinterest" in that fashion. It could just as easily mean that Hiassen has it wrong.

Besides, "plain disinterest" is incredibly awkward--very bad phrasing. Further reason to doubt Hiassen.

So if it's a sign of change, it's a long ways away.

4330. CalGal - 4/11/2000 12:27:19 AM

Ack. Quick rewrites when I'm almost out the door are never a good idea. Scratch the "doesn't" and add an "s" to "prove".

4331. pseudoerasmus - 4/11/2000 12:28:27 AM

And the nitwit parsing marathon with Calgal begins....

The more people "misuse" a word, the more correctly used it becomes...the central paradox of descriptivism.

I certainly agree with Irving that almost "disinterest" and "disinterested" are now largely used to mean "lack of interest" and "uninterested".

I disagree with this usage, but there it is.

4332. CalGal - 4/11/2000 12:33:12 AM

Oh, Erasmus, eat shit.

I'm not a prescriptivist, and I'm not being definitional. If there comes a time when this usage is common, I certainly won't object. But it is not common at this time. Unless you wish to argue that you are more familiar with American vernacular than I am?

4333. pseudoerasmus - 4/11/2000 12:37:52 AM

Do a search on "disinterest" and "disinterested" in a search engine, exclude all those pages where the usage of the word is discussed, and I wager that 99% of the time "disinterest" is used the meaning is "lack of interest" and 80% of the time for "disinterested".

4334. Jenerator - 4/11/2000 12:42:45 AM

Um, how are y'all? and what are you doing up this late?

...just curious...

4335. Jenerator - 4/11/2000 12:43:26 AM

Um, how are y'all? and what are you doing up this late?

...just curious...

4336. Jenerator - 4/11/2000 12:43:48 AM

Weird.

4337. CalGal - 4/11/2000 12:53:59 AM

I just did, and was about to tell you my results when I reread Irv's Message # 4321 and realized I'd misunderstood. It was the "disinterested/uninterested" distinction that needs to be kept, and he's said that it has been and will be. My original search was on those terms, and the search results support that distinction--by far more than the near even split you predict.

I hadn't really thought about the "disinterest/uninterest" merge until then. While I still think Hiassen's usage sounds dreadful, I am not as sure about that as I am of the other, so I shall back off that assertion. "Plain disinterest" just sounds awkward, as I said, so I may have been responding to that.

Howeve, the search results on "disinterest" show a very large number of non-American sites, while "uninterest" shows primarily American sites. I have no idea what that might mean, but I mention it because it seemed odd.

4338. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/11/2000 1:45:25 AM

Joe:
I've never come across the word "kloote" and it isn't listed in my dictionary. The closest thing I know is "kloot" which means ""ball" (and "klotzak" means "scrotum," though it isn't listed either). perhaps the word "kloote" does exist and simply isn't in my dictionary (perhaps for the same reason "klotzak" isn't). Grammatically, "kloote" would be the adjectival form of "kloot," but I have no idea what it would mean... "ballsy"?

CalGal:
I applaud the fact that you, a bit belatedly, caught my distinction between "disinterest" and "disinterested." I was making the distinction based on my personal intuitions, but I was encouraged to see that the dictionary backs me up:

disinterest 1. lack of interest; indifference; unconcern: What Kafka typifies, of course, is a disinterest in character as such. (American Scholar) 2. disinterestedness; impartiality...

disinterested 1 free from selfish motives; impartial; fair... 2 not interested; unconcerned; uninterested...

The primary meaning is what I would have predicted for each. I would hope that the distinction continues for disinterested, but to insist on it would be prescriptivist.

4339. joezan - 4/11/2000 6:58:57 AM

Irv:

Ah. I've just checked, and it is Kloot (although there are some Klootes. I asked a guy at work the meanings of some of the Dutch name prefixes (Ver, Den, De, Ten, Ter, etc) and he went on to explain how the Dutch never used last names until the French invaded and forced them to. He said that besides simply adopting the names of the towns they were from, or names that described their work, many took on the names of body parts. He was especially happy to inform me that the name of one of our high-ranking county officials (Kloot) means testicle in Dutch.

Unfortunately, this Kloot guy did not inherit his forebears' sense of humor, so I didn't dare ask him about it.

4340. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/11/2000 8:01:42 AM

Joe:
The meaningless "e" at the name of some Dutch names is fairly common in the USA, and dates back to before Dutch spelling was regularized in the early part of this century. People in the Netherlands regularized the spelling of their names at that time, but those who had emigrated to the USA (and elsewhere -- the same thing is found in South Africa) retained the old spellings.

...the Dutch never used last names until the French invaded and forced them to. He said that besides simply adopting the names of the towns they were from, or names that described their work, many took on the names of body parts.

The same process is true of English names and names from most European countries (indeed, from most countries where family names are found). Some groups (the Welsh, for example) have only begun to use family names in the past century or so.

It is fun to think that "Kloot(e)" may have originated from the word for "testicle," but it probably isn't true. The word originally meant "ball" or "globe" and only over time began to mean "testicle" exclusively. A person named "Kloot" is comparable to an English person named "Ball."

4341. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/11/2000 8:06:19 AM

By the way... to avoid confusion, I should make it clear that "the early part of this century" above means the "early part of the 20th century." The next century won't start for about 8 months.

Also, I forgot to point out that "Kloot" should rhyme with "coat," although it has probably changed among Dutch Americans.

4342. PelleNilsson - 4/11/2000 8:43:08 AM

In Iceland where they are conservative in everything related to language, the old Nordic custom survives. If Karin is the daughter of Eskil her name will be Karin Eskilsdottir and it will not change at marriage. On the other hand, they don't use the surname.

4343. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/11/2000 8:52:20 AM

Pelle:
I'm familiar with the Icelandic system. Are there any other European cultures which do not use surnames? How long have Swedes used surnames?

4344. DanDillon - 4/11/2000 9:12:50 AM

Pinker explains why "flied out," as in baseball, is preserved, while "flew" is the correct or perhaps expected preterit form of the verb "fly." A very elaborate explanation it was; I'm unable to recall any of it now. I should add, though, that there are several verbs that operate on this same analogy.

4345. PelleNilsson - 4/11/2000 9:19:37 AM

We have used surnames in the same manner as the Icelandic, i.e. the surname changed in each generation. But everyday use was first name plus a geographic identifier, for example 'Pelle i Backarna' (the place where we have the summer cottage. When urbanisation started 1880-90 this became impractical (although it is till used in rural areas). At the same time the surnames became fixed from generation to generation.

The above applies to the 'masses'. Persons of stature followed other rules.

4346. tmachine - 4/11/2000 1:13:18 PM

re pe's message 4324: the difference between "shone" and "shined" is largely intransitive vs. transitive, but not entirely. An American would never say "he shone his shoes," but he might say "he shone the flashlight on my face" (OR "he shined the flashlight on my face").

re Icelandic names: one of my favorite facts about Icelandic names is that the Reykjavik phone book is listed alphabetically by FIRST name.

4347. PelleNilsson - 4/11/2000 1:23:22 PM

tmachine

Regards to your brother from a fascinated reader.

4348. tmachine - 4/11/2000 3:33:00 PM

thanks pelle! i can tell him in person as he is arriving for a month's visit in the States on friday, the book's pub date over here is May 1 so imagine reviews will start showing up fairly soon, cross your fingers that the vibe is good.

4349. pseudoerasmus - 4/11/2000 3:51:05 PM

tmachine, I bought your brother's book in December while I was in London, haven't got around to it yet, but I just wanted to let you know I did my bit toward his enrichment.

4350. pseudoerasmus - 4/11/2000 6:55:07 PM

Hashke, you're from one of those Western states in the USA formerly part of the Spanish Empire / Mexico, yes?

Perhaps you can answer. What happened to all those Spanish and Mexican inhabitants of territories annexed by the USA? Did they all stay? Did they leave? Driven out? Ethnically cleansed? What happened?

4351. Max Macks - 4/11/2000 7:11:12 PM

Speaking as one who probably knows less than Hashke.

Some of the Spanish land grants were I think recognized by whoever
did the recognizing in the State of California after 1850.

4352. CalGal - 4/11/2000 7:42:54 PM

No, they weren't. A key part to the peaceful resolution of the war between the Californios and the Americans was the guarantee that they'd be able to keep their property.

But no one was planning on the gold rush. In practice, the Californios ability to keep their land depended on their lawyers, and many ranchers lost huge sums of money in litigation fees.

4353. Max Macks - 4/11/2000 10:55:48 PM

But C. gal I have heard of Californians who trace their property to a Spanish landgrant. At least in Northern Calif. which had the Spainish Presidio.

Probably most of land grants were stole by the gringos , but
not all.

But since I don't have one I really do much care. Tho I probably should read more Calif.history. But even if I did would this question
be answered do you think?

4354. Max Macks - 4/11/2000 11:06:04 PM

cal gal, my search engine Senor Barney Google lists many land grants, e.g. Granted May 10,1837 by Gov. Alvardo to Jose Ruiz, Patented March 1866 9,998 acres.

All the grants that were "patented" ( and I dont know what that obviously legal term means), but the grants were patented at a date always
in the 1860's or 70's after Calif became a US state.

4355. CalGal - 4/11/2000 11:20:26 PM

Ms,

You know, I answered this question in International too, where you can see I said that not all Californios lost their land. I was responding to Max's comment, which suggested that the government recognized their right to the land.

4356. MsIvoryTower - 4/11/2000 11:30:33 PM

?

Was that comment directed at me?

Was my doppleganger running loose again?

4357. CalGal - 4/11/2000 11:32:03 PM

No, I haven't been sleeping enough lately. Sorry about that.

4358. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/12/2000 8:45:09 AM

I finally got caught up on the posts I'd missed while I was travelling last month, and found only one question to answer:

4151. pseudoerasmus -3/21/00 3:07:21 PM
whatever happened to snirvgrass? I've a question for him. is it true that Dardic languages are now being considered a separate branch of Indo-Iranian languages, on par with Iranian and Indic?

I haven't seen this division. My sources list Dardic as a sub-branch of the Northern India branch of the Indic languages (the other branches are Romany and Sinhalese-Maldivian).

I'd be very interested in seeing where and why a case is being made for listing the Dardic tongues outside of the Indic grouping. I don't know enough about the classifications to offer any opinions from my own knowledge.

4359. DanDillon - 4/12/2000 10:36:34 AM

Irv,

Welcome back. Good to see you.

4360. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/12/2000 10:50:46 AM

Thanks, Dan. I've been back for over a week, but my appearances have been rare (and will continue to be).

I missed your return while I was away. Congrats!

4361. tmachine - 4/12/2000 11:18:33 AM

pe: so glad you bought the book although i'm sorry to say that you also bought a lot of typos--they really rammed it into print and it showed. i went through the whole thing with a toothcomb and sent my copy to misha's american editor at viking covered in post-its so they could fix the mistakes for the u.s. edition. which reminds me that he hasn't sent the copy back to me yet (signed by the author...)

4362. PelleNilsson - 4/12/2000 2:19:39 PM

hashke

It's a long time since I posted a translation puzzle. This one is a Danish rhyme, some 150 years old. It talks about the aftermath of a suicide by a Swedish corporal, who did it by shooting himself out of a canon.

En finger blev fundet ved Skagen
et øye og næsen ved Lund
et dygtigt stykke av bagen
neddumped i Øresund.

4363. tmachine - 4/12/2000 2:31:59 PM

Here is my guess (total, as I have never learned any Swedish) for the first two lines:

One finger was found in Skagen,
The eyes and the nose in Lund

trying to figure out the next two now

4364. Dusty - 4/12/2000 2:42:07 PM

PelleNilsson

Did he die when he fell off the clef?

Or did he cut himself on something sharp?

4365. PelleNilsson - 4/12/2000 3:02:55 PM

tmachine

You are right on track. Danish is easy!

4366. hashke - 4/12/2000 3:37:35 PM

Pelle:

'and able bits of bakery were dumped in Oresund'???

You are right. It's too easy when just any ole body can translate it. (g) Back to the Eddas!

tmachine:

What is the name and subject matter of your brother's book?

Are you still studying Yiddish?

4367. hashke - 4/12/2000 3:40:05 PM

or 'bits of bag'

4368. PelleNilsson - 4/12/2000 3:42:22 PM

hashke

And you,on the other hand, is completely off track. There is no bakery involved. And where would it come from in the first place?

4369. hashke - 4/12/2000 4:04:17 PM

Well, you gotta assume the guy ate breakfast, for chrissake.

4370. PelleNilsson - 4/12/2000 4:19:04 PM

Yeah, sure. But as in the first two lines it is about a part of the body.

4371. hashke - 4/12/2000 4:35:34 PM

Well, German 'Magen' is 'stomach'. Could Danish 'bagen' mean 'gut' or somesuch.

Btw, you did not, in your typically straight-faced way, laugh at my breakfast comment.

Have you seen the statuary on Easter Island?

4372. hashke - 4/12/2000 4:39:17 PM

...Islands

4373. PelleNilsson - 4/12/2000 4:46:41 PM

I have seen the statues (not IRL) and I have always thought that behind those stern visages is an inner smile.

I'm off to bed soon. 'Bagen'= behind, butt, ass.

4374. hashke - 4/12/2000 4:49:50 PM

And Pelle, the correct English is not 'You...IS completely off the track', but rather 'You...BE completely off the track'.

4375. PelleNilsson - 4/12/2000 4:59:00 PM

I'm crushed into oblivion.

4376. PelleNilsson - 4/12/2000 5:08:11 PM

And I'm sure I missed something subtle in #4373 but it has not been a good day. Lots of Meetings with Morons (IRL, not here).

4377. PelleNilsson - 4/12/2000 5:08:58 PM

#4374 I mean.

4378. theDiva - 4/12/2000 5:19:57 PM

oh, he must have (this sounds so awful)

shoved a stick up his ass and ended up in the Oresund.

4379. tmachine - 4/12/2000 5:29:13 PM

Danish, of course! sorry, pelle...

And his [something] penis and ass
Were dumped in the Oresund.

I can't figure out what "dygtigt" is.

hashke: Misha Glenny, The Balkans
(a history of, 1800-1999)

4380. hashke - 4/14/2000 11:10:38 AM

tmachine:

Thank you. I'll probably buy it.

4381. tmachine - 4/14/2000 11:26:42 AM

I would be thrilled if you bought it. and so will Misha.

they couldn't lay on a second-level Yiddish course for us locally so I would have had to continue doing it in Manhattan which I didn't manage to organize myself into. but I intend to try again before I've forgotten absolutely everything. I try to practice by reading the storefront shop and synagogue signs (my biggest problem, embarrassingly, is remembering the alphabet) when I go through Borough Park in Brooklyn on my way to the supermarket. I've got good at fast recognition of words like "hillel" and "mazel"!

a side development to all of this is that I am now able to help my daughter when she has to do Hebrew translations for Sunday school--she's faster on the alphabet but I'm better at figuring out the case and conjugation changes and remembering things like "ha" means "the" so that the word has to be looked up minus the prefix.

4382. Ronski - 4/14/2000 12:00:50 PM

Are you studying it at Workers Circle?

4383. tmachine - 4/14/2000 12:05:01 PM

The Manhattan center for it is Workers Circle--our class, organized by them, was held at our synagogue in Park Slope in Brooklyn. but they don't usually do more than the first beginners course outside Workers (is it called that now? I thought it was Workman's) Circle proper.

4384. Stumbo - 4/15/2000 11:47:23 PM

From anekdot.ru:

Istoriya sluchilas' s moim drugom, kotoryi zhivet v Anglii.

Kak-to raz on sidel v kitayskom restorane s druzyami. Pod zanaves uzhina k ikh stolu podoshel ofitsiant-kitaets i sprosil: "Chay nesti?" Rebyata, konechno, udivilis' tomu, chto on ikh sprosil po-russki, no znaya, chto mnogie kitaytsy uchilis' v SSSR, otvetili: "Nesi." Ofitsiant sdelal kruglye glaza (naskol'ko eto vozmozhno dlya kitaytsa) i povtoril vopros. Potom esche raz. Tol'ko s tretyego raza do rebyat doshlo, chto on sprosil ne po-russki, a po-angliyski. No vopros, sobstvenno, byl tot zhe samyi: "Chinese tea?"

4385. PelleNilsson - 4/16/2000 4:18:28 PM

The OED is now available online for anybody who is prepared to put up $550 per year.

I wonder what a second-hand copy costs. Last year I got hold of a Swedish Encyclopedia from 1910-20 in 26 volumes and in excellent shape for $600.

4386. tmachine - 4/17/2000 12:06:59 PM

cute anekdot!

I got my OED in 1977 for $19.95 for joining the Book of the Month Club when I was a graduate student. I never bought any other books and in fact never paid my $19.95 (not that I am proud of this). The BOMC eventually gave up sending me dunning letters after I had moved a few times.

4387. PelleNilsson - 4/17/2000 1:14:43 PM

$19.95?? But it's 20+ volumes with the etymology of each word going back to Ye Olde English and with lots of examples.

4388. tmachine - 4/17/2000 3:21:55 PM

but pelle, surely you've encountered the compressed two-volume OED with the microscopic type. that's why the BOMC used it as a promotion--it came out in the format in the mid-70s. it comes with its own magnifying glass in the boxed set. Its the entire OED, shrunk. not as enjoyable to read as the normal size, but it's all there.

4389. pseudoerasmus - 4/17/2000 3:29:45 PM

I own the OED on CD-ROM and it cost me $300.

4390. Dusty - 4/17/2000 4:07:55 PM

tmachine

I loved hearing your story.

I have the same version. I also got it by joining the BOMC, although I did pay for mine. We did have a spat over some books they claimed they sent, but I never received, so I dropped my membership.

Mine is missing some pages—is yours?
I don't recall which ones at the moment—I discovered it when trying to look up a word. Quite a few pages were missing. In the back of my mind, I wonder if the printer discovered the problem, and sold them at a discount to BOMC, on the theory that the odds were low anyone would catch it.

On a lark I called BOMC last year to see if I could get a replacement. needless to say, they weren't sympathetic.

4391. tmachine - 4/17/2000 7:06:07 PM

gosh, dusty, i have no idea if any pages are missing in my copy. i've never come across them while looking something up, and as far as i know no one in my family has either. and the idea of paging through to hunt for them is impossibly daunting! but it sounds eminently possible--I've had more business with Oxford University Press than I would ever have liked to (they are a very stingy company) and the idea that they would push substandard copies on BOMC is very believable! and pretty crafty in the circumstances, since the OED is not a book where you will stumble easily on a missing page.

4392. ScottLoar - 4/17/2000 8:28:49 PM

I don't quite understand. You mean the pagination showed gaps or the vocabulary?

4393. pseudoerasmus - 4/19/2000 9:00:08 AM

Irving: I've been meaning to ask you this for like a year but I've kept on forgetting. Why did you once claim that the KH phoneme in Indian languages was borrowed from Arabic? It exists in Sanskrit.

4394. Dusty - 4/19/2000 9:06:40 AM

ScottLoar

I went to look up some word (I'm kicking myself for not recording it) but could not find it. Then I looked closer and realized there was a gap in the vocaularly. Looking closer I realized a few pages were missing.)

As tmachine points out, and I thought at the time, if deliberate, it was crafty. Unlike a novel, where missing pages will be noticed by anyone who reads the book, the odds of stumbling across a few missing pages in a dictionary is fairly low. If they were very crafty, they would save a few good copies, and quietly replace those who stumpbled across the error early on.

The real story is probably less nefarious, but it's fun to hypothesize.

4395. cmboyce - 4/19/2000 10:05:44 AM

I too have a BOMC OED, and I've used it a lot and never found anything missing. This is not to say there isn't, of course; that's a lot of territory. After listening to OUP "defend" itself for dumping the poetry list, I'm quite prepared to believe they knowingly let bad copies go to BOMC.

But Pseudo, where/how did you get the CD-ROM for $300? Can I do it too?

Also, a question I think I asked (at large) once last year, but I don't think was responded too by anyone: is the 2d ed simply the 1st plus all its supplements, or is there more? And if so (as I suspect is so), is it just neologisms, or is there more ancient lore?

4396. pseudoerasmus - 4/19/2000 10:12:58 AM

I got it for $300 on discount from $400, which is what the current price is at Amazon.com.

4397. cmboyce - 4/19/2000 10:22:30 AM

Well, I'm glad to know that. Thanks. But upon reconsideration (the rather ominous specter of my still-owing estimated taxes has reared its mangy head), I don't think I could even go for the discounted version. I'll just get along with OED-BOMC for a while longer. (Probably, indeed, the whole way.)

4398. DanDillon - 4/19/2000 10:31:40 AM

cmboyce,

The second edition of the OED, published in 1986, I believe, is indeed the first edition integrated with all of the supplements.

4399. hashke - 4/19/2000 10:33:12 AM

tmachine:

Not really a bad thing no second class in Yiddish. Classes are usually far too slow. Your best bet, if you are strongly motivated, is self-study, lots of reading and frequent conversations with the Yiddish speakers in your community there. Uriel Weinreich's 'College Yiddish' and his great dictionary are both valuable. Schoenhof's has a few literary works in Yiddish, also.

4400. pseudoerasmus - 4/19/2000 10:35:05 AM

Yiddish is still spoken?

4401. PelleNilsson - 4/19/2000 10:40:57 AM

It's a recognised minority language in Sweden. There are four more:Sami, Finnish, another variant of Finnish and Romi.

4402. hashke - 4/19/2000 10:57:41 AM

Yiddish is still spoken?

Zikher.

4403. PelleNilsson - 4/19/2000 11:05:27 AM

Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote in yiddish.

4404. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/19/2000 11:06:32 AM

PE:
I've been meaning to ask you this for like a year but I've kept on forgetting. Why did you once claim that the KH phoneme in Indian languages was borrowed from Arabic? It exists in Sanskrit.

I was referring to the phoneme written [x] in linguistic notation (a velar fricative), which is often romanized by "kh" for Arabic and Urdu words. It is very different from the phoneme [kh] (an aspirated voiceless velar stop), which is native to Indian languages. The [x] phoneme is only found in borrowed words in Hindi and Urdu (and some, though not all, other languages of the subcontinent).

4405. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/19/2000 11:09:46 AM

PE:
Yiddish is still spoken?

It is, but, sadly, it probably won't last much longer as a viable native tongue. New York is one of the last bastions of the language, where there is a sizeable, though aging, Yiddish-speaking community. The only other Yiddish-speaking communities of note are in Israel.

4406. Ronski - 4/19/2000 11:33:32 AM

Irv,

Don't the think the Yiddish being spoken by young Hasidics in New York City and SE NY state has some life in it? Hasidics do make rather large families, as a rule.

4407. Ronski - 4/19/2000 11:41:08 AM

Pelle,

What is the other variant of Finnish? Karelian? Or do you mean Estonian? And Romi is Romani or Gypsy?

4408. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/19/2000 11:42:29 AM

Ronski:
Certainly, the Hassidic community is the core of the Yiddish-speaking community, and is just about the only place children grow up speaking the language. But how long can it continue, as an isolated island in American society? The historical experience of other minority languages doesn't lead to a very encouraging picture.

4409. Ronski - 4/19/2000 11:53:43 AM

Irv,

The other sadness is that when Yiddish was widespread as a second language in places like New York City, non-speakers were able to hear a bit of it, even learn to speak and use a few expressions, and enjoy its great richness. As a language reserved for a generally insular community, this will no longer be true.

4410. tmachine - 4/19/2000 11:54:32 AM

thank you for the advice, hashke. i've been meaning to get the Weinrich book and dictionary anyway, so will try to get it together! I used to love going to Schoenhof's when I was at graduate school--it's where I bought my Soviet ed. collected works and letters of Chekhov on subscription 25 years ago! i read the other day that the store was expanding, which was heartening news in this amazon.com day and age.

4411. Ronski - 4/19/2000 11:57:54 AM

tmachine,

RE: an earlier question, I think you're right, and it is still officially Workmen's Circle.

4412. tmachine - 4/19/2000 12:01:00 PM

I would say that today most New Yorkers are entirely familiar with the meaning of words like "schlep," schmooze," "schmuck," "chutzpah," "oy vey," "schmear"--and many, even non-Jews, could probably identify "makher," "meshuge," "nebbish" etc. And wasn't it that lovely Long Island Catholic Al d'Amato who called Chuck Schumer a putz? believe me, everybody in this city knew what he meant.

4413. Ronski - 4/19/2000 12:03:44 PM

tmachine,

Yes, and that's the beauty of it. But a hundred years from now, from what Irv is saying (and I tend to agree with), it is unlikely that any additional Yiddish words (or Yiddish neologisms) will be entering English.

4414. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/19/2000 12:06:00 PM

Ronski:
Indeed, Yiddish words and expressions have enriched American English.

Here is a portion of a quiz I posted in the old place a few years ago (as I recall, tmachine got all the answers). Give the English meaning of each Yiddish word:

1. Schmaltz
2. Schnozzle
3. Schmo
4. Shtick
5. Fin
6. Jot
7. Chutzpah
8. Nudnik
9. Tush
10. Spritz
11. Schlock
12. Kibitz
13. Kishke
14. Kvetch
15. Chotchke
16. Mensh
17. Bubkes
18. Gelt
19. Glitch
20. Maven
21. Handle
22. Mechia

(A lot of these words do not have standardized spellings. The spellings above are taken from Isaac Asimov, who constructed the list)

4415. stostosto - 4/19/2000 12:06:13 PM

Irv

I spoke to an eminent Danish historian the other day (newly appointed director of the newly established Danish Holocaust Center). He claimed that European minority languages are on the rise. He had several examples, one was Gaelic, another, I think was Welsh, another was some French one (Bask, or Breton, or Occitanian... I forget).

He was very emphatic, and very sweeping. I am certain he would claim that Yiddish will be preserved too.

I asked him if these were real developments or just an expansion of these languages as a kind of hobby pastime, to be studied for fun and preserved in a museal manner.

He said, yes, and so what?

4416. Ronski - 4/19/2000 12:09:34 PM

I would spell Handle as Hondle, as in Honda automobiles.

4417. hashke - 4/19/2000 12:11:34 PM

tmachine:

Yes, Schoenhof's is still there and with a website. www.schoenhofs.com Still on Mt. Auburn.

I bought a lot of books there as an undergrad and have ordered many since. In fact, this digression toward Yiddish prompted me to order just now a collection of Sutzkever's stories in Yiddish. Books in Yiddish seem to be hard to come by. There is a site -- whose name I have forgotten -- which claims a large collection, but when I've gone there it has always been 'under construction'.

4418. hashke - 4/19/2000 12:17:43 PM

The National Yiddish Book Center at www.yiddishbooks.com

Still under construction as of 30 seconds ago.

4419. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/19/2000 12:20:02 PM

sto:
There is a very large difference between preserving a language, and maintaining a viable linguistic community. Once a language is no longer used on a daily basis, it is pretty much finished (the only exception is Hebrew, which was revitalized after not being used as a daily language for centuries).

4420. tmachine - 4/19/2000 12:23:05 PM

1. chicken fat--and, by extension, gooey sentimentality
2. nose--often shortened to "schnoz"
3. an average stiff--"Joe Schmo"
4. an act, a style
5. is "fin" yiddish?
6. is "jot" yiddish?
7. nerve, balls
8. a pain in the (9) tush
10. spray, shower
11. trash, as in "romantic schlock"
12. commenting on the sidelines
13. guts
14. complain
15. knickknack
16. a decent person
17. nada
18. money
19. a hitch
20. an aficionado
21. bargain (verb)
22. don't know!

4421. tmachine - 4/19/2000 12:25:07 PM

and a git yontiff to all...

4422. pseudoerasmus - 4/19/2000 12:30:32 PM

# 4404

That gobbledygook means absolutely nothing to me, but let me say this. In Urdu, the transliterated KH in the words "khana" (food) and "khub" (good) represent different sounds. The first is like a K with a slight H afterward, and the second, somewhat like the CH in the German "doch". The Arabic script reflects the difference in pronunciation. "Khana" is spelt with K + an H called "do chasmi He", while "khub" is spelt with the Arabic letter khe.

Now, I know for a fact that in spelling, Hindi does not distinguish between the KH of "khana" and "khub". Why is that?

4423. pseudoerasmus - 4/19/2000 12:32:33 PM

# 4414

From those allegedly English language words, I only know five or six. I doubt the others are used all that much, except maybe by New York Jews.

4424. hashke - 4/19/2000 12:35:46 PM

If 'handle' is imputed as 'commerce' it should be 'handl', spelled 'he', 'aleph' with subscripted patach, 'nun', 'daleth', 'lamed'. 'Aleph' with subscripted kamatz would render 'hondl'.

4425. hashke - 4/19/2000 12:46:00 PM

#22 may be 'mechaye', or 'mekhaye', a great joy or pleasure.

4426. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/19/2000 12:48:28 PM

TM:
1. chicken fat--and, by extension, gooey sentimentality correct
2. nose--often shortened to "schnoz" correct
3. an average stiff--"Joe Schmo" Asimov defines it as "fool"
4. an act, a style correct
5. is "fin" yiddish? yes, according to Asimov
6. is "jot" yiddish? yes, according to Asimov
7. nerve, balls correct
8. a pain in the (9) tush correct
10. spray, shower not the meaning Asimov gave
11. trash, as in "romantic schlock" correct
12. commenting on the sidelines correct
13. guts Asimov defines it as "sausage"
14. complain correct (though I prefer "whine")
15. knickknack correct (a favorite of mine, since I'm in the chotchke business these days)
16. a decent person correct
17. nada correct (or something small and unimportant)
18. money correct
19. a hitch or "mechanical defect"
20. an aficionado I prefer Asimov's definition: "know-it-all"
21. bargain (verb) correct
22. don't know! I didn't know this one either. Asimov defines it as "real pleasure, life-saver"

4427. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/19/2000 12:49:20 PM

I see Hashke nailed #22. Well done, both of you!

4428. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/19/2000 12:54:44 PM

PE:
That gobbledygook means absolutely nothing to me, but let me say this. In Urdu, the transliterated KH in the words "khana" (food) and "khub" (good) represent different sounds. The first is like a K with a slight H afterward, and the second, somewhat like the CH in the German "doch". The Arabic script reflects the difference in pronunciation. "Khana" is spelt with K + an H called "do chasmi He", while "khub" is spelt with the Arabic letter khe.

I would have hoped you had learned some basic phonetics by now, at least the four points of articulation (velar, palatal, alveolar/dental, labial) or the difference between a stop and fricative. That's about all there is to phonetic descriptions.

The [x] is the german sound you describe, and the [kh] is the aspirated k (with "a slight h" afterward). The former is a borrowed sound in Hindi/Urdu. The latter is native.

Now, I know for a fact that in spelling, Hindi does not distinguish between the KH of "khana" and "khub". Why is that?

Probably due to the English, who spelled both "kh." In linguistics, the Arabic sound is spelled "x," and in my sources, the Urdu letter is called "xe."

4429. hashke - 4/19/2000 12:56:15 PM

Thanks Oiv!

4430. pseudoerasmus - 4/19/2000 1:09:54 PM

Probably due to the English, who spelled both "kh." In linguistics, the Arabic sound is spelled "x," and in my sources, the Urdu letter is called "xe."

The English? What do they have to do with the spelling in the Devanagari script? I'm saying that in the Devanagari script of Hindi, the first sound of "khana" and "khub" is represented by the same letter.

4431. tmachine - 4/19/2000 1:15:23 PM

and a happy pesach to my tchotchke-loving oiv!

4432. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/19/2000 1:21:36 PM

Yes, I'm aware of what you're saying. I'm even familiar with the Devanagari letter you refer to (which is called both "kha" and "xa"). I have no idea how far back the convention for using the same letter for the two very different sounds goes back. Since English does the same thing, it is not unreasonable to suggest that English had an influence on Hindi spelling, especially since literacy was almost nonexistent before the British came to India (not that India or Pakistan have great levels of literacy now).

4433. pseudoerasmus - 4/19/2000 1:50:38 PM

Irving, what you're saying is impossible. The Devanagari script was used to write Hindi-Urdu before hundreds of years before the English ever showed up.

4434. PelleNilsson - 4/19/2000 2:41:18 PM

Ronski

Finland was Swedish territory up to 1809 when we lost it to Russia. If you have access to a map you will se that the land border in the north runs in the Torne river, which of course is very practical. But the linguistic border is further west. So the peace treaty left a native Finnish-speaking community on the Swedish side.

There was not a lot of contact between them and the Finnish side during the Russian era lasting to 1917. As a consequence their language developed differently from mainstream Finnish, partly because of influence from Swedish, partly "on its own. At the same time it retained structures which are obsolete in modern Finnish.

4435. PelleNilsson - 4/19/2000 2:45:04 PM

hashke

Commerce is 'handel' in Swedish. Maybe a borrowing from yiddish?

'Att handla' means 'to buy' or 'to shop' giving rise to the Swedicism:

"I was in town today."

"Did you handle anything?"

4436. stostosto - 4/19/2000 2:47:37 PM

Pelle
Yiddish is basically a German dialect.

4437. stostosto - 4/19/2000 2:48:37 PM

...just as Swedish is.

4438. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/19/2000 2:49:05 PM

PE:
Irving, what you're saying is impossible. The Devanagari script was used to write Hindi-Urdu before hundreds of years before the English ever showed up.

It's entirely possible. Languages influence other languages all the time, and colonial languages, as the vehicle for education, are particularly apt to influence the written language.

I'd have to see how Arabic loan-words were handled in languages using the Devanagari script before the British came, if they were used at all (writings in Devanagari script might have avoided Arabic loans altogether). The most common script for written expression in India in those centuries (between the Muslim advent in India and the coming of the British) was the Persian script, after all.

Without a historical study of how loans were treated, it's all conjecture, and my hypothesis is certainly possible. I'm not saying that's what happened, but it may have happened.

4439. pseudoerasmus - 4/19/2000 3:00:33 PM

I'd have to see how Arabic loan-words were handled in languages using the Devanagari script before the British came, if they were used at all (writings in Devanagari script might have avoided Arabic loans altogether).

Irving, there is a whole tradition of Urdu ghazals in the Devanagari script. Arabic loanwords could not have been avoided in those.

The representation of the (x) and (k-h) by the same letter in Devanagari has nothing to do with the British. That is for sure.

4440. PelleNilsson - 4/19/2000 3:10:15 PM

sto

Yes, but let's not talk about it openly. Norse is so much nobler.

4441. hashke - 4/19/2000 3:18:21 PM

Pelle:

Som fra Norsk for Utlendiger: Et loppemarked er en sted hvor de selger gamle ting som f.eks. klaer, sko, möbler osv. Alle disse tingene er billige. Ikke alt er like bra, men noen ganger kan du vaere veldig heldig. Det er i hvert fall billigere å handle der enn i en forretning.

4442. ilyavinarsky - 4/19/2000 3:19:44 PM

> Perhaps you can answer. What happened to all those Spanish and Mexican inhabitants of territories annexed by the USA? Did they all stay? Did they leave? Driven out? Ethnically cleansed? What happened?

They stayed, but by 1860 they were completely overwhelmed by the influx of the Anglo immigrants (and immigrant laborers from Latin America).

4443. hashke - 4/19/2000 3:22:29 PM

Baloney. They stayed but were not overwhelmed. Half the state legislature is Hispanic, and small town governments in New Mexico and Arizona are more often than not also Hispanic.

4444. hashke - 4/19/2000 3:24:02 PM

Also huge, very huge, areas of land are owned through land grants by contemporary Hispanic ranchers and farmers.

4445. stostosto - 4/19/2000 3:35:27 PM

That Danish song Pelle posted above starts like this:

Nu vil jeg indvie jer i
historien om en person
en svensk konstabel fra Sverrig
som skød sig med en kanon

(Where do you know that from, Pelle? Spooky...)

4446. ilyavinarsky - 4/19/2000 3:35:46 PM

I am thinking about Texas and California.

4447. ilyavinarsky - 4/19/2000 3:47:04 PM

There was some discussion of Yiddish upthread. Basically, the contemporary situation with Yiddish is as follows. It is spoken by children only in the Hasidic communities in the NY/NJ area, where it is heavily contaminated by English (e.g. in a kosher store 'chicken' is spelled in Hebrew letters because nobody can remember what the bird was called in the Old Country), and in Israel, where the ultrapious believe that Hebrew is only appropriate for conversing with G-d, while Yiddish should be the kitchen tongue, and where it is heavily contaminated by Modern Hebrew. Outside the Hasidim, Yiddish is adopted by radical American lesbians and others who self-consciously reject mainstream culture, and also survives as a hobby language. There are a few pockets of Yiddish speakers remaining in Europe, too, for example in the city of Antwerp. I was in Kharkiv for two weeks this month, and bought a bilingual Russian-Yiddish children's book, which had a print run of 500, appropriate for the Chukchi language with 15000 speakers. Overall, children of the speakers of Yiddish have adopted Hebrew, Russian, Spanish and English, and have contributed a great deal to Israeli, Russian and American cultures (don't know enough about Argentine), which sort-of compensates for the loss of language.

4448. ilyavinarsky - 4/19/2000 3:47:49 PM

If I write an essay about the contemporary state of the Ukrainian language, will anybody read it?

4449. ilyavinarsky - 4/19/2000 3:48:42 PM

If I write a narrative about my second visit to Kharkiv, will it be posted to The Mote? Please write to ilyavinarsky@hotmail.com .

4450. ilyavinarsky - 4/19/2000 4:05:12 PM

An excerpt from the future narrative:

When I told Mark about honorable Pseudoerasmus, he told me that a few days before, he examined a Pathan woman who spoke pretty good Russian. He says that there are many Pathans living in the former Soviet Union, who collaborated with the invading Soviets, worked in the pro-Soviet government, or studied in the Soviet Union, which made them unwelcome in the subsequent governments of Afghanistan. They cannot go back to Afghanistan, the West doesn't want them, Ukraine doesn't give them citizenship, just a residence permit that expires and has to be renewed using bribes - and no right to work or study. So the Kharkiv Pathans trade at the enormous flea market near Barabashov subway station - even engineers and Ph.D.'s. Mark agreed to treat them for free, but didn't realize how many of them are coming.

4451. ScottLoar - 4/19/2000 4:06:02 PM

re Message # 4448 any essay well written, well thought out, well presented will be well received here.

4452. PelleNilsson - 4/19/2000 4:18:15 PM

loppemarked - flea market - loppmarknad (SWE) seem to be an international term. One wonders about origins. Oald things = fleas.

Many years ago I saw trained and performing fleas at the Tivoli in Copenhagen. If I remember righ one paid the fee and got a magnifying glass to see the fleas pull small carts, jump through loops and things. I wonder if it is still there.

4453. PelleNilsson - 4/19/2000 4:38:15 PM

ilya

Long time no see.

I think many would be delighted to read your account of your last trip. Your are welcome to post it in International. You could also post in the Stories thread where there is less daily activity but possibly a wider readership.

A bit of friendly advice, Ilya. Last time you kind of flooded the sub-thread with a large number of posts in one fell swoop. Don't do that. I becomes too much. You complained at the time that nobody commented. Divide the story into episodes of a few posts and post daily.

4454. stostosto - 4/19/2000 4:39:31 PM

Scott
What a ringing encouragement.

4455. PelleNilsson - 4/19/2000 4:40:54 PM

sto

I came across the rhyme in Dagens Nyheter. It has a page devoted to trivia and odd points of view.

4456. stostosto - 4/19/2000 4:41:23 PM

And ilya:
It will be read. But you'll garner the most comments if you post it drippingly rather than in a large chunk like you did last time. (And I read it all last time, thank you. Good stuff).

4457. ScottLoar - 4/19/2000 4:42:20 PM

Yes, sto3, and I wish you could meet that expectation.

4458. stostosto - 4/19/2000 4:46:51 PM

Pelle, I know that song (what is English for vise?) from my home. My father loves it as did his father and grandfather.

4459. stostosto - 4/19/2000 4:49:18 PM

Well, thank you so much ScottLoar. Perhaps you could show me how?

4460. ScottLoar - 4/19/2000 4:52:53 PM

You obviously have failed to learn from my many examples.

4461. stostosto - 4/19/2000 4:56:06 PM

True.

4462. PelleNilsson - 4/19/2000 4:57:00 PM

If the Mote had a Real Audio server we sto or his father could record that vise for our enjoyment.

4463. PelleNilsson - 4/19/2000 4:57:41 PM

Delete 'we'.

4464. ilyavinarsky - 4/19/2000 8:00:59 PM

Q for kakashke (and others).

I recently visited the Quileute reservation, which is located on the Olympic Peninsula in WA state. It was Sunday, very windy and rainy, and the reservation school, which is located less than 100 yards from the Pacific Ocean, was empty. Curious, I looked inside through the windows, but could not see anything different from an ordinary American school, and no traces of languages other than English. Ethnologue says that the language has "10 speakers possibly out of 300 population (1977 SIL)." Who is to blame - the boarding schools? Television?

4465. sakonige - 4/19/2000 8:13:24 PM

Message # 4464

The Quileutes' language is an isolate. Many of the the people who live on the Quileute reservation belong to more than one tribe, and may speak some other, more widely-used native language. It's a nice accomplishment that the elders have kept the Quileutes' language in use at all, with so few people to speak it.

4466. pseudoerasmus - 4/19/2000 8:42:38 PM

Welcome back from Ukraine, Ilya!

Your report of Pathans in Ukraine, while fascinating and welcome, does not shock me. Many times in Russia have I asked after the collaborationist Afghans who fled with the Soviet army. And I've found some -- Tajiks, Uzbeks, etc., but no Pathans. I wonder if your friend actually met Pathans, or some other kind of Afghans. I'm leaving again for Russia (et al.) on May Day, and your report inspires to make a quickie train ride from Moscow to Kharkhiv near the end of summer.

4467. hashke - 4/19/2000 10:27:22 PM

Ilya Govnosky (compliments of 'kakashke')

'Basically, the contemporary situation with Yiddish is as follows. It is spoken by children only in the Hasidic communities in the NY/NJ area, where it is heavily contaminated by English...

...and where it is heavily contaminated by Modern Hebrew'

The linguistic term, poor as it is, is 'borrowing' or 'assimilation'. 'Contamination' is not valid terminology.

'Yiddish is adopted by radical American lesbians and others who self-consciously reject mainstream culture, and also survives as a hobby language.'

What is your source for this tripe, Mein Kampf, Das Wannsee-Protokoll?

4468. PincherMartin - 4/20/2000 11:22:10 AM

Is "underappreciated" one word?

What does G.I. stand for: government issue, general issue, or galvanized iron (for the material garbage cans in the war were made of)?

4469. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/20/2000 11:46:33 AM

Pinch:
Is "underappreciated" one word?

Yes.

What does G.I. stand for: government issue, general issue, or galvanized iron (for the material garbage cans in the war were made of)?

All three, at one time or another, according to my sources, with "Galvanized Iron" appearing first, and "Government Issue" being the latest and most common.

4470. PincherMartin - 4/20/2000 11:52:03 AM

Thanks, Irv. This damn Microsoft word program has me double-guessing my own first instincts. (It underlines in red "underappreciated" and my desk dictionary didn't have it.)

4471. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/20/2000 12:01:08 PM

Ilya:
If I write an essay about the contemporary state of the Ukrainian language, will anybody read it?

It would be very welcome in this thread. Please do.

I would also be interested in a report on your second visit to Kharkiv.

sakonige:
The Quileutes' language is an isolate.

If you mean it is a language isolate, you are mistaken. The Quileute language is related to 26 other living languages in the Mosan sub-family of the Almosan family (which itself has 44 living languages). Some of its better known relatives in the Mosan sub-family are Kwakiutl, Makah, Squamish, Tilamook, Chehalis, and Okanagan.

The Almosan languages are part of the Almosan-Keresiouan languages, which in turn are classifed under the Northern Amerind branch of the Amerind Macro-family.

4472. ilyavinarsky - 4/20/2000 12:04:01 PM

> What is your source for this tripe

Mendele, the Yiddish language & culture mailing list, to which I subscribed for almost a year two years ago.

4473. ilyavinarsky - 4/20/2000 12:05:23 PM

Please give me another subthread here, then. My original thread is frozen, and I don't know how to reactivate it.

4474. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/20/2000 12:05:36 PM

Pinch:
Yeah, I've had similar experiences with a number of common words. I don't see why "underappreciated" would be marked, but a quick check shows that MS gives it a red underline in Outlook Express as well.

4475. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/20/2000 12:08:22 PM

Ilya:
I'm not fond of sub-threads, as I feel they are too often overlooked. I would be very happy to see your reports on the current state of the Ukranian language right here in this thread.

4476. ilyavinarsky - 4/20/2000 12:18:06 PM

I meant "the subthread about my visit".

4477. ilyavinarsky - 4/20/2000 12:21:02 PM

> The Quileute language is related to 26 other living languages

If these languages are living, Yiddish must be positively flourishing.

4478. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/20/2000 12:23:46 PM

Ilya:
Ah, well, that will be up to Pelle and Sto, since it relates to their thread. I look forward to both your reports.

4479. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/20/2000 12:27:51 PM

Ilya:
"Living," in the linguistic sense, in that there are still native speakers. Yiddish is very much a living language at present.

Yiddish and most North American Amerind languages are among the 2000 or so threatened languages, facing extinction within 100 years.

4480. pseudoerasmus - 4/20/2000 12:37:45 PM

Irving: During my three weeks in Hindoooostan, I began compiling a list of everyday words where Urdu and Hindi differ. At first I just chanced upon them by using the Urdu word and either getting blank stares or being understood but told that in Hindi the word is such and such. But since I've returned I've been adding to the list systematically.

Here are some examples. The Hindi words are in parentheses:

west: maghrib (pashim?)
kiss: bosa (chumban)
dictionary: lughat (kosh)
elections: intakhabat (?)
family: khandan (parivar?)
day: roz (din)
border: sarhad (sima)
government: hukumat (sarkar)

In my not-quite-scientific but not-entirely-unscientific estimate, I think the lexical divergence between Urdu and Hindi in the colloquial stock of words could be 10% or maybe 20%.

4481. pseudoerasmus - 4/20/2000 12:40:14 PM

Probably not 20%.

But I suppose in a case like this, you'd have to come up with a frequency distribution. Such as, what % of the 2000 most common words in both Hindi and Urdu are different; what % of the 10 000 most common words, etc.

4482. pseudoerasmus - 4/20/2000 12:41:51 PM

Oops, in light of the previous exchange with Irving, I should note that the KH and GH in the Urdu words are not aspirated consonants, but what he called "x" and the gh is rather like a gagging sound.

4483. sakonige - 4/20/2000 12:52:37 PM

Irving,

re: Message # 4471

It's often repeated that Quileute is unrelated to other languages, as it is in this note from an exhibit:

The Story of the Quileute Tribe

The language of the Quileute Nation, related to no other language, is a complex tongue typified by clicked sounds and tongue-knotting strings of consonants.

I assumed Quileute must be what I have heard described as a language isolate. The unrelatedness of Quileute to neighboring languages in the region is a hisorical puzzle I have wanted to explore further.

4484. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/20/2000 12:58:02 PM

PE:
That is a fascinating list. I would imagine the languages are diverging more and more over time, especially since they are the official languages of separate political entities.

It is interesting that the Hindi word for day is possibly of Arabic origin (since din means "light" in Arabic), but that Urdu has a different word.

I wonder if anyone has done a study of the divergences in core vocabulary. 20% sounds high to me as well for the core vocabulary. The divergences are certainly much greater once one gets into scientific, academic or religious vocabulary.

It is also interesting to see the cognate words among loan words in indonesian, and how the meaning has shifted: cumbu (pronounced "chumbu") means to flirt, woo, or pet, logat means "dialect."

I should note that the KH and GH in the Urdu words are not aspirated consonants, but what he called "x" and the gh is rather like a gagging sound.

The "gh" sound of Arabic (and Urdu loan words) is represented linguistically by the letter gamma. It is the voiced variant of [x], and describing it as a "gagging" sound is accurate for how English ears hear it (just as English ears hear [x] as a throat clearing sound).

4485. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/20/2000 1:00:28 PM

sakonige:
The information that Quileute is unrelated to other languages is incorrect. It is demonstrably related to other Amerind languages of the Pacific Northwest, and not too distantly related, either.

4486. pseudoerasmus - 4/20/2000 1:11:40 PM

It is interesting that the Hindi word for day is possibly of Arabic origin (since din means "light" in Arabic), but that Urdu has a different word.

Actually, both Hindi and Urdu use "din" and "roz", but differently. If you want to say "day by day" in Hindi, it is (I believe) "din ba din". In Urdu you'd use "roz".

Din is indeed Arabic, as in "shams-ud-din". Roz is Persian.

describing it as a "gagging" sound is accurate for how English ears hear it (just as English ears hear [x] as a throat clearing sound).

What you write as the g, I would say, is closer to the French R.

4487. pseudoerasmus - 4/20/2000 1:13:26 PM

(I refer, of course, to the Arabic letter ghayn.)

4488. pseudoerasmus - 4/20/2000 1:16:31 PM

On the other hand, you'd say "do din bad" for "in two days" in Urdu, so it's somewhat unpredictable.

4489. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/20/2000 1:24:09 PM

PE:
What you write as the g, I would say, is closer to the French R.

The point of articulation is basically the same. The French sound is a voiced trill (written with an upside-down R), and the Arabic sound (the g) is a voiced fricative. The difference is minimal.

4490. pseudoerasmus - 4/20/2000 1:28:26 PM

the other day someone told me an excellent way to tell the difference between "voiced" and "voiceless" consonants. If you cover up your ears and utter a voiced consonant, you should be able to hear (and feel) a buzzing sound. With a voiceless consonant, it's all smooth. Try that with Z and S.

4491. pseudoerasmus - 4/20/2000 1:29:15 PM

or with G and K.

4492. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/20/2000 1:30:48 PM

PE:
Quite true. The buzzing sound is the voicing (which is nothing more than vibrating vocal cords).

4493. ilyavinarsky - 4/20/2000 1:35:05 PM

What body part do you have to cover to hear the difference between aspirated and unaspirated consonants?

4494. ilyavinarsky - 4/20/2000 1:38:27 PM

Here is a Ukrainian joke.

"Petro, why did you kill your dog?"

"He is a Russian."

"How did you find out?"

"All dogs bark, gaw-gaw, and he -g¢aw, g¢aw."

[¢ stands for the "little h"]

4495. pseudoerasmus - 4/20/2000 1:38:58 PM

The one linguistic term which I have never required any explanation for, is aspirated/unaspirated. The first time it was described to me as a slight release of breath after a consonant, I knew what it referred to immediately. I'm not sure why this is, because I've never understood linguistic terms without mounds of explanation and even then I'm never quite sure.

4496. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/20/2000 1:41:13 PM

Ilya:
What body part do you have to cover to hear the difference between aspirated and unaspirated consonants?

Your mouth. Seriously... if you put your hand in front of your mouth, you'll feel a puff of air for aspirated sounds, and no puff for unaspirated ones.

4497. pseudoerasmus - 4/20/2000 1:47:15 PM

The Greek letters f and q are aspirated consonants, therefore not like the English Ph and Th -- more like P or T + release of breath.

4498. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/20/2000 1:57:07 PM

PE:
The Greek letters (phi) and (theta) [I'm too lazy to do the font thing] are aspirated consonants, therefore not like the English Ph and Th --more like P or T + release of breath.

I don't know much about Greek, so that information is useful for me.

In linguistics, the two symbols are used for different sounds from the Greek sounds (and, in the case of "phi," different from how English speakers read the symbol as well). The phi symbol represents an unvoiced labial fricative (the only example I can think of offhand is Fijian "f"), and the theta represents an unvoiced dental fricative (like the voiceless English th).

4499. ilyavinarsky - 4/20/2000 2:04:10 PM

In response to Pseuder's question about Greek letters n and q in pre-1918 Russian spelling:

They are analogous to letters w and x in Estonian: though unused in Estonian words, they are used in loanwords from languages that use them, such as Karl Marx and New York.

4500. pseudoerasmus - 4/20/2000 2:19:22 PM

I was speaking of ancient Greek, naturally. c (chi) was the same way: not (x) as in the German "doch" but K + release of breath. The differences in sound between modern and ancient Greek are very fascinating, actually.

	Ancient	Modern
b	B	V
g	G	G or Y
d	D	Th (those)
q	T + breath	Th (think)
u	German Ü	I (machine)
f	P + breath	F
c	K + breath	ch in "doch"

4501. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/20/2000 2:22:45 PM

PE:
Your notes on Greek led me to look up some info on Greek pronunciation. According to Brian Joseph in Bernard Comrie's "The World's Major Languages," f was an aspirated [p] in ancient Greek, but is pronounced as an [f] in modern Greek. Likewise, q was pronounced as an aspirated [t] in ancient Greek, but has become a voiceless dental fricative (like the voiceless English th) in modern Greek.

The process of stop > aspirated stop > fricative is not uncommon, so it makes sense.

This has also occurred with the following:

x: aspirated [k] to [x]
b: [b] to [v]
d: [d] to {d]
g: [g] to [g]

4502. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/20/2000 2:23:42 PM

Interesting cross post!

4503. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/20/2000 2:28:17 PM

PE:
The gamma in ancient Greek has become a gamma sound (Arabic "gh") in modern Greek, except before i and e, where it has become a [j] (pronounced as an English "y").

The sound changes in Greek are very systematic:

aspirated voiceless stop > voicless fricative
voiced stop > voiced fricative
unaspirated voiceless stop > no change (p, t, k).

4504. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/20/2000 2:30:51 PM

I don't know where that weird symbol came from in Message # 4501.

The line should read:

x: aspirated [k] to [x]

4505. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/20/2000 2:31:53 PM

It appeared again.

Let me try one more time:

x: [k] to [x]

4506. pseudoerasmus - 4/20/2000 2:32:35 PM

The gamma in ancient Greek has become a gamma sound (Arabic "gh") in modern Greek...

It has not. Your source is wrong or there is some gap in understanding.

A friend of mine at university, a Greek from Thessaloniki, studied Arabic and kept on complaining he could not pronounce certain sounds, including, I remember vividly, the letter ghayn. I kept on trying to coach him on that sound.

4507. ilyavinarsky - 4/20/2000 2:33:31 PM

In response to Pseuder's question, Which Turkic language is written in Hebrew alphabet.

The language spoken by the Karaim of Trakai, Lithuania, and Crimea.

I've heard an amusing story about the Crimean Karaites. When the German occupied Crimea and started massacring the Jews, the elders of the Karaite communities went to the Germans with their ancient books, and proved that they are not Jews. When the Soviets came back and started deporting the Crimean Tatars, the Karaite elders went to the Soviets with their ancient books, and proved that they are not Tatars.

4508. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/20/2000 2:33:58 PM

I ended up using an italic "x" instead of the symbol font for x (which was what I was doing wrong: it should have been the symbol font for "c" for some reason). What is that strange symbol, anyway?

4509. pseudoerasmus - 4/20/2000 2:37:14 PM

#4507

Yes, those are the ones I had in mind. I don't even remember my script trivia questions. Where did I post them?

4510. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/20/2000 2:37:43 PM

PE:
My source is quite clear on this. It says the sound has become g except before i and e in modern Greek (according to Brian Joseph, professor of Greek Linguistics at Ohio State University). Do you have a source which shows otherwise?

Ilya:
Where are these questions of PE's coming from?

4511. pseudoerasmus - 4/20/2000 2:41:06 PM

# 4510

I have no source, other than what I recounted about my friend, plus having been in Greece on half a dozen occasions and never having detected such a sound.

4512. pseudoerasmus - 4/20/2000 2:43:16 PM

I know a professor from Greece here, and I'm meeting him in a couple of hours. So I'll ask him, but I'm pretty sure your source has got a typo or he doesn't know what the Arabic Gh sounds like.

4513. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/20/2000 2:44:06 PM

PE:
I have a friend who is both a Greek and a noted linguist. I'll send him an e-mail to get to the bottom of this. I don't know anything more than what I read in my source, which, although it has proven to be quite accurate, is by no means infallible.

4514. pseudoerasmus - 4/20/2000 2:44:21 PM

I may be seeing him in a couple of hours, rather.

4515. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/20/2000 2:46:10 PM

My source doesn't mention the Arabic "gh"... it uses linguistic notation (the gamma symbol). It says the sound in modern Greek is [j] before i and e, and [g] elsewhere.

4516. pseudoerasmus - 4/20/2000 2:47:23 PM

The Y sound before E and I, yes. But not "ghayn".

4517. pseudoerasmus - 4/20/2000 2:52:35 PM

I'm going to write down the the following word and ask the Greek prof to read it aloud:

B A G.

bagh means "garden" in Persian, Urdu and Hindi, and the last sound is the Arabic letter ghayn.

4518. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/20/2000 2:53:05 PM

PE:
The sound in question is a voiced velar fricative, denoted linguistically by the gamma symbol. It's simply the fricative form of [g]... when [g] is pronounced, there is a stop, when [g] is pronounced, the airflow continues. Both sounds are articulated at the same point. According to my source, [g] occurs in modern Greek in all enviroments other than before [i] and [e].

4519. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/20/2000 2:54:47 PM

That example won't work well, since fricatives are often indistinguishable from stops in word-final position.

Find an example where [g] occurs before a vowel other than [i] or [e].

4520. pseudoerasmus - 4/20/2000 2:58:57 PM

#4518

You've already said that, and if that means the modern Greek letter gamma (except before I and E) is pronounced like the Arabic letter ghayn, then I don't buy it. It's not true.

I wager this is some inadequacy of the phonetic symbol. Perhaps the phonetic symbol g captures a wider range of sounds than I understand.

4521. pseudoerasmus - 4/20/2000 3:03:27 PM

Here, I've found my fat (modern) Greek dictionary (The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Greek, by J T Pring. It gives the phonetic value of gamma as g, but the example it gives is of the G sound in Spanish fuego, which while not quite the same as G in English, is hardly equivalent to the Arabic ghayn. I think what I said in #4520 must be true.

4522. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/20/2000 3:05:08 PM

PE:
I'm no expert on Arabic sounds, which can be quite unusual.

The [g] sound should be fairly specific, while allowing for minor variations between languages. The Greek sound reported by my source should be pretty much the same as Arabic [g]ayn, at least in an intervocalic environment (between vowels).

The sound also occurs in Spanish, as an allophone of [g] in intervocalic enviroments in casual speech (but not in "citation" speech). It is not phonemic in Spanish (meaning Spanish speakers (except linguists) will tell you the sound doesn't exist in Spanish).

4523. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/20/2000 3:06:26 PM

Another interesting cross-post!

The "g" in fuego is indeed the [g] sound, at least in casual speech, and phonetically it is the same as Arabic [g]ayn.

4524. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/20/2000 3:07:54 PM

In other words, the "g" in fuego is a fricative, not a stop... the airflow continues, at the same point of articulation as a "g."

4525. pseudoerasmus - 4/20/2000 3:09:00 PM

The "g" in fuego is indeed the [g] sound, and phonetically it is the same as Arabic [g]ayn.

The G in "fuego" is a little bit guttural compared with the G in English "ago", but it is NOT the same as the Arabic "ghayn". If they are "phonetically" the same, then phonetics must be useless.

4526. pseudoerasmus - 4/20/2000 3:12:21 PM

(I'm basing my knowlege of the pronunciation of ghayn from Urdu, Persian, Pashto, etc., not directly from Arabic, since I don't know any Arabic except as loanwords elsewhere, but I can't imagine the ghayn in Arabic could be less guttural than found in these other languages.)

4527. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/20/2000 3:24:22 PM

The G in "fuego" is a little bit guttural compared with the G in English "ago", but it is NOT the same as the Arabic "ghayn". If they are "phonetically" the same, then phonetics must be useless.

They are identical sounds (allowing for slight variations in on- and off-glides). That is what phonetically the same means.

They are not phonemically the same, which means that speakers of the languages do not hear the sounds the same.

Phonetics is a science, while phonemics involves cultural and psychological factors. I guess it depends on how you view things as to which is more useful.

"Guttural" is not a linguistic term, and is meaningless. The only thing which matters here is the difference between a stop and a fricative. The "g" in fuego is a fricative, which the Enbglish "g" never is. The Arabic gayn is also a fricative, pronounced at exactly the same point of articulation as "g."

4528. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/20/2000 3:25:32 PM

4529. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/20/2000 3:26:38 PM

Hope that fixed the open tag.

4530. pseudoerasmus - 4/20/2000 3:30:49 PM

I'm going to have the Greek guy pronounce the following words:

gallos (Frenchman)
angali (hands)
garsoni (waiter)
Anglia (England)
agape (love)
agora (market)
tragodia (tragedy)

If he reads enough words he'll get out of citation pronunciation mode.

4531. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/20/2000 3:32:20 PM

PE:
That should do it. If my source is right, citation mode shouldn't matter.

4532. pseudoerasmus - 4/20/2000 3:32:45 PM

Everyone (with the apparent exception of linguists) knows what "guttural" means.

4533. pseudoerasmus - 4/20/2000 3:36:42 PM

They are not phonemically the same, which means that speakers of the languages do not hear the sounds the same.

Do you think the fact that I've heard the ghayn sound all my life causes me to refuse to consider the gamma in Spanish and Greek as the same sound? You are saying that a monolingual English speaker (or someone else who did not grow up with a ghayn sound) would hear the identical sound in Spanish, Greek, Arabic, Urdu, Persian, etc.?

4534. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/20/2000 3:37:05 PM

Well, what does "guttural" mean then?

The gamma sound is a voiced velar fricative, pronounced at the back of the mouth (the vellum), the same place [k], [g] and [x] are pronounced. It is the same wherever it appears.

Arabic also has pharyngeal sounds, which are pronounced in the throat. gayn is not one of these.

4535. pseudoerasmus - 4/20/2000 3:40:27 PM

When someone refers to a sound as similar to the French R and calls it guttural (which it is), then everyone but linguists knows what he's talking about.

What's pharyngeal? That is, which Arabic letter is described as pharyngeal?

4536. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/20/2000 3:41:52 PM

PE:
Do you think the fact that I've heard the ghayn sound all my life causes me to refuse to consider the gamma in Spanish and Greek as the same sound? You are saying that a monolingual English speaker (or someone else who did not grow up with a ghayn sound) would hear the identical sound in Spanish, Greek, Arabic, Urdu, Persian, etc.?

I have no idea why you hear the sounds differently. Perhaps the "ghayn" sound is pronounced differently in the languages you know than it is in Arabic.

All I know is that it is a fact that the same sound occurs in Spanish, Greek and Arabic, and that the sound is a voiced velar fricative, which is represented linguistically by g. This is not a disputable fact. If you hear it differently, it can only be due to two things: it is different in the languages you know (Urdu, Pashto, etc.), or phonemic interference. I would guess the latter.

4537. pseudoerasmus - 4/20/2000 3:45:10 PM

Yes, but would an Arab hear your "voiced velar fricative" in Spanish as identical to his ghayn?

4538. pseudoerasmus - 4/20/2000 3:49:27 PM

Well, I suppose then that my Greek friend and his Arabic instructor were also obstructed by "phonemic interference".

4539. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/20/2000 3:52:42 PM

PE:
When someone refers to a sound as similar to the French R and calls it guttural (which it is), then everyone but linguists knows what he's talking about.

Well then, why are you unable to say what it means? Do you mean a sound pronounced in the velar position (at the back of the mouth)? If so, then, yes, the French R, the German "ch," and the Arabic "ghayn," are similar, along with English [g] and [k]. Or does it mean a fricative sound pronounced at the back of the mouth? How can a sound be "more guttural" if it is pronounced at the same point? Do you mean more emphatic? I would suppose the Arabic sound (since it occurs in all enviroments, unlike Greek and Spanish) is more emphatic.

What's pharyngeal? That is, which Arabic letter is described as pharyngeal?

I don't know how to reproduce the symbols here, either in Arabic or in phonetic script. One is written phonetically with n h with a line through it, and has a "numerical value" of 8 (in case you are familiar with Arabic numerical values). There is another one pronounced even further back, which is written phonetically like a backwards question mark without the dot, and has a numerical value of 70.

The first is called ha in Arabic (imagine the h has a line through it) (not to be confused with ha?, the name for a simple "h" in Arabic). The second is called ?ayn (imagine the question mark is backwards with no dot).

4540. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/20/2000 3:54:49 PM

PE:
Yes, but would an Arab hear your "voiced velar fricative" in Spanish as identical to his ghayn?

Interesting question. Probably not.

Well, I suppose then that my Greek friend and his Arabic instructor were also obstructed by "phonemic interference".

Almost certainly, since the allophonic environments differ.

4541. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/20/2000 3:58:28 PM

PE:
Another note on the Arabic pharyngeals, since I believe you have some familiarity with Arabic writing. The "ha" sound is written almost the same as the "jim" and "xa?" sounds... although the former has a dot over the symbol and the latter has a dot inside the symbol. The ?ayn symbol is written almost the same as the ghayn: the ghayn has a dot over the symbol lacking in the ?ayn.

4542. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/20/2000 4:02:47 PM

PE:
This has been interesting, but I have to get to bed (it's 4 AM). Please report on your encounter with the Greek professor when you have a chance.

4543. pseudoerasmus - 4/20/2000 4:05:24 PM

Is the laryngitis you're talking about this letter?

.

Another note on the Arabic pharyngeals, since I believe you have some familiarity with Arabic writing.

Snirving, I have more than "familiarity" with the Arabic script. I can both read and write it. See #283 of the Pakistan thread and #85 of the Persian thread in TT.

4544. hashke - 4/20/2000 4:11:34 PM

Arabic 'ghayn' and Greek 'gamma' are both uvular or velo-uvular fricatives (check Comrie) as is the sound in French represented by the letter 'r'. There may be small differences, of course, such as a slight shift toward the velar with the 'gamma'. The letter 'g' in Spanish represents also a velar tending toward uvular sound.

`ayn and ghayn are totally different sounds articulated in distinct parts of the oral cavity -- the former being widely defined as laryngeal.

4545. pseudoerasmus - 4/20/2000 4:18:44 PM

I don't understand. How did 'ayn come up? I thought Snirvgrass was talking about Haa'.

4546. pseudoerasmus - 4/20/2000 4:20:15 PM

The French R and the Arabic ghayn are indeed quite close, but the idea that these are close to the Greek gamma and the Spanish G in "fuego" could only be true for linguists.

4547. pseudoerasmus - 4/20/2000 4:21:19 PM

(Irving must be as irritated as I get when I hear people tell economists are divorced from reality.....)

4548. pseudoerasmus - 4/20/2000 4:23:57 PM

So far, all I hear from the linguists is stuff about ovaries and laryngitis and velours. But if the modern Greek gamma and the Arabic ghayn are the same sounds, then (1) why did my Greek friend have such a problem pronouncing it to the satisfaction of his Arabic instructor; and (2) would someone who has never heard Greek or Arabic find the two sounds identical?

4549. pseudoerasmus - 4/20/2000 4:50:23 PM

By the way, to make it more interesting, I'm going to have my Moroccan neighbour pronounce a bunch of Arabic words for me, as soon as I come back from having the Greek prof do the same thing. These are the words I have in mind. (I've left out the transliteration for the Greek.)

If someone were to instruct me in the best method by which I might transfer a tape recording of these people onto a manageably sized file format, then I will even make the comparison available on my website.

4550. pseudoerasmus - 4/20/2000 5:01:44 PM

I will also pronounce each word in both columns, using my understanding of the sound of (gh) and asking them to pay specific attention to it.

4551. hashke - 4/20/2000 5:11:30 PM

Strictly speaking, the translits for the first three should be 'ghulaam', 'baalegh', and 'baghdaad', the longer vowel sounds of the Arabic alifs represented by the doubled English vowel letters.

I, like Irv, have no idea why your friend should have such a frightful time with his noble 'ghayns'. So little to lose, so much to ghayn -- unless he suffers from a cleft uvula, a very unpalatable thought.

4552. ilyavinarsky - 4/20/2000 6:00:09 PM

This discussion reminds me of this joke. I will represent uvular r with Â.

Rabinovich goes to the dairy store, and sees an announcement: sour cream isn't sold to the Jews. He asks the store clerk:

"How so? I, Soviet Jew Âabinovich, went to the stoÂe to buy some souÂ cÂeam, and see that souÂ cÂeam isn't sold to the Jews!"

The clerk tells him to talk to the store manager. Rabinovich goes to the manager.

"How so? I, Soviet Jew Âabinovich, went to the stoÂe to buy some souÂ cÂeam, and see that souÂ cÂeam isn't sold to the Jews!"

The store manager tells Rabinovich that this directive came from the regional distribution center. Rabinovich goes there, too.

"How so? I, Soviet Jew Âabinovich, went to the stoÂe to buy some souÂ cÂeam, and see that souÂ cÂeam isn't sold to the Jews!"

At the distribution center, Rabinovich is told that they are obeying an order from the ministry. Rabinovich requests an appointment with the deputy minister.

"How so? I, Soviet Jew Âabinovich, went to the stoÂe to buy some souÂ cÂeam, and see that souÂ cÂeam isn't sold to the Jews!"

The deputy minister looks at Rabinovich, thinks a little... "This souÂ cÂeam - have you tÂied it???"

4553. ilyavinarsky - 4/20/2000 6:00:37 PM

4554. ilyavinarsky - 4/20/2000 6:01:03 PM

Rabinovich goes to the dairy store, and sees an announcement: sour cream isn't sold to the Jews. He asks the store clerk:

"How so? I, Soviet Jew Âabinovich, went to the stoÂe to buy some souÂ cÂeam, and see that souÂ cÂeam isn't sold to the Jews!"

The clerk tells him to talk to the store manager. Rabinovich goes to the manager.

"How so? I, Soviet Jew Âabinovich, went to the stoÂe to buy some souÂ cÂeam, and see that souÂ cÂeam isn't sold to the Jews!"

The store manager tells Rabinovich that this directive came from the regional distribution center. Rabinovich goes there, too.

"How so? I, Soviet Jew Âabinovich, went to the stoÂe to buy some souÂ cÂeam, and see that souÂ cÂeam isn't sold to the Jews!"

At the distribution center, Rabinovich is told that they are obeying an order from the ministry. Rabinovich requests an appointment with the deputy minister.

"How so? I, Soviet Jew Âabinovich, went to the stoÂe to buy some souÂ cÂeam, and see that souÂ cÂeam isn't sold to the Jews!"

The deputy minister looks at Rabinovich, thinks a little... "This souÂ cÂeam - have you tÂied it???"

4555. sakonige - 4/20/2000 6:02:36 PM

4556. sakonige - 4/20/2000 6:03:09 PM

**#!!

4557. ilyavinarsky - 4/20/2000 6:03:55 PM

4558. ilyavinarsky - 4/20/2000 6:04:22 PM

4559. ilyavinarsky - 4/20/2000 6:04:30 PM

???

4560. ilyavinarsky - 4/20/2000 6:04:44 PM

4561. ilyavinarsky - 4/20/2000 6:19:44 PM

Pseuder, my friend used the word 'Pushtun' with me. If you would like to, I can give you his e-mail address.

Hashke, you haven't answered my question - what brought about the decline of the indigenous languages of the Pacific Northwest?

4562. hashke - 4/20/2000 9:20:10 PM

I know nothing about the languages of the Northwest, nor of specific reasons for decline there. Generally speaking, a major cause of language decline and death is the presence of overwhelming majorities of speakers of another dominant language. Statistics printed in the '80s show only seven or eight percent of speakers in Washington and Oregon to be non-speakers of English. New Mexico, in contrast, had forty-four percent of non-speakers of English.

Funny joke, Vinarsky, in both the transliterated Greek version and the English with the uvular 'r'.

4563. hashke - 4/20/2000 9:40:52 PM

But why do you use 'chi' to represent /s/ ('center', for example) when 'sigma' is available? And there are other strange representations there, no?

4566. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/20/2000 10:27:24 PM

PE Message # 4543:
Is the laryngitis you're talking about this letter?

.

Yes, that is one of the two pharyngeal sounds.

Arabic also has two laryngeal sounds, which are very distinct from the pharyngeal sounds (though neither is a difficult sound: [h] and the glottal stop).

So, assuming I understand what you mean by "guttural," Arabic has a wealth of such sounds: 4 velar/uvular consonants, two pharyngeals, and two laryngeals. No other language I know of even comes close.

Snirving, I have more than "familiarity" with the Arabic script. I can both read and write it. See #283 of the Pakistan thread and #85 of the Persian thread in TT.

I was under the impression that you read and wrote Urdu and Persian, which have a different set of letters than Arabic. Since you are familiar with Arabic script, then the numerical values I gave above should be helpful, plus the letter names for the velar/uvular, pharyngeal and laryngeal sounds (which, in some cases, do not exist in Persian/Urdu, even in loan words).

4567. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/20/2000 10:30:23 PM

Hashke Message # 4544:
I omitted the reference to uvular sounds to avoid confusion, as the technical terminology seems to give PE headaches already. But, in fact, the Arabic and French sounds are uvular, while the Greek and Spanish sounds are more velar. The linguistic symbol for the sound remains unchanged, however.

PE Message # 4545:
I don't understand. How did 'ayn come up? I thought Snirvgrass was talking about Haa'.

I clearly mentioned two separate pharyngeal sounds in my earlier post: Haa' and ?ayn. (I cannot bring myself to use an apostrophe to represent two seperate sounds: I will use it to denote the glottal stop, but I'll use ? to denote the ?ayn).

:
The French R and the Arabic ghayn are indeed quite close, but the idea that these are close to the Greek gamma and the Spanish G in "fuego" could only be true for linguists.

Only if linguists are the only ones who aren't distracted by phonemic confusion.

If you produce voice prints (graphic machine-produced representations) of the sounds in the four languages, they will appear nearly identical, and will clearly differ from any other sounds.

Message # 4547:
(Irving must be as irritated as I get when I hear people tell economists are divorced from reality.....)

At least I expect it will happen... that is the interesting part of phonemics (the perceptions people have of what they are saying) as opposed to phonetics (what people really are saying).

[continued]

4568. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/20/2000 10:31:17 PM

You'll find most English speakers don't realize they produce different sounds for the "t" sound in "stop" and "top," or that there are two completely different "l" sounds in English (both found in the word "lull"). The same sort of thing is true for all languages (Spanish speakers will swear their language has no g or d.

Message # 4548
So far, all I hear from the linguists is stuff about ovaries and laryngitis and velours.

I've tried explaining the terms and processes in layman's terms. You, otoh, have been unable to say what "guttural" means.

But if the modern Greek gamma and the Arabic ghayn are the same sounds, then (1) why did my Greek friend have such a problem pronouncing it to the satisfaction of his Arabic instructor;

I've explained that. Due to phonemic confusion, he probably never realized the two sounds were the same, since the Greek sound is an allophone, not a phoneme.

and (2) would someone who has never heard Greek or Arabic find the two sounds identical?

Probably, especially if they are unfamiliar with any language with similar sounds. A monolingual English speaker (Mr. Socko, for example) would probably hear them as the same sound.

Message # 4549:
Unfortunately, when you peform your linguistic experiments, they will be passing through your phonemically-tainted ears. But you'll probably do a better job of filtering out phonemic "noise" than most people, since you're aware it's there.

Ideally, you'd record him on a tape and then produce voice prints of the results, which is not likely, unless you want to visit the linguistics department of the university.

I look forward to the results of your experiments.

4569. sakonige - 4/20/2000 10:33:50 PM

I know nothing about the languages of the Northwest, nor of specific reasons for decline there.

I'm sure the use of Pacific Northwest native languages is increasing. The Northwest tribes are experiencing a tremendous surge in political and cultural influence in the region. They are blessed with treaties that are being respected, and by not having been moved very far or for very long. Northwest tribes are among the best organized and most politically influential tribes in the US. Everyone around here gets on their knees when the Indians talk about water.

4570. sakonige - 4/20/2000 10:40:46 PM

This evening's local news had an article that included a video of the Makah whaling team paddling hard in the open Pacific, just before a woman from Seattle on a jetski rammed their canoe and was in turn run over by the Coast Gaurd crew in a Zodiac.

4571. ScottLoar - 4/20/2000 10:43:57 PM

Well, the Irish have tried to revive Gaelic with mandatory instruction in schools at the upper and university levels with little success as testify graduates who think it a waste of time (I invite figures to the contrary) but an entirely dead language had been reconstructed and become the national tongue of Israel. I don't see how the Northwest Coast tribes can advance their native tongues into common use unless their people multiply, the culture undergo a renaissance, and each tribe become economically and politically independent of their American neighbors which would be a reversal of practice over the last 150 years or so.

4572. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/20/2000 10:52:48 PM

ScottLoar:
Agreed. Reviving a dead or dying language requires the language to have relevance in the society. Cultural pride and solidarity just aren't enough. The case of Hebrew in Israel remains the only instance of a language being revived successfully, and the factors at play there do not exist in other language revival situations, such as Gaelic in Ireland or Native American tongues in the Pacific Northwest (or anywhere else in the USA, for that matter). In both of these examples, English is the dominant language for education, culture and business, and is not about to be supplanted.

We can lment the loss of languages, and wish they weren't dead or dying, but that won't affect language use. People will continue to use the language which benefits them the most.

4573. sakonige - 4/20/2000 10:54:13 PM

ScottLoar,

The language revival is part of a much larger cultural revival that is nearing reverse-assimilation, in some ways. The mainstream American culture of the Pacific Northwest is becoming more strongly influenced by the increasing wealth of Northwest tribes, and by treaty and environmental laws that impact water, as the population increases. Their people are multiplying.

4574. sakonige - 4/20/2000 10:56:37 PM

I'm becoming one of them, for example. I'm taking NW basketweaving classes. The woman who teaches the class speaks Lummi.

4575. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/20/2000 11:02:15 PM

sakonige:
The day Native American children stop learning English, I'll eat my hat.

I admire the cultural revival among Native American peoples. It is important to have a cultural identity, and their cultures certainly deserve a boost in self-esteem after the way they've been treated. I join you in celebrating the cultural wealth and diversity of Native Americans.

But quite apart from that, there are linguistic realities which must be recognized. And I can't see any of the languages of the PNW becoming viable tongues again.

4576. jonesatlaw - 4/20/2000 11:02:58 PM

Loar, Irv,

I understand that Scots Gaelic is actually doing better than Irish. Hawaiian is in a similar decline despite political and cultural efforts to revive it, and pigin has largely disappeared. I doubt that any of the Native American languages will revive in the manner of Hebrew as well.

4577. sakonige - 4/20/2000 11:07:26 PM

IrvingSnodgrass,

We'll see. The Indians remembering and speaking those languages aren't all dead yet.

4578. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/20/2000 11:11:50 PM

Jones:
Scots Gaelic has a few strongholds on the outer islands of Scotland, but its ultimate fate is not in doubt.

Hawaiian is all but gone already, and it's hard to find a fluent speaker of the language (particularly among younger people).

I can't see any Native American language reviving in the nature of Hebrew, unless a sovereign nation were created for a particular group, and that isn't in the cards.

The most widely-spoken North American Native American language, Navajo, is in the best shape, with widespread usage and some monolingual speakers. But, as Hashké has reported, even Navajo is in decline among the younger generation.

4579. jonesatlaw - 4/20/2000 11:16:30 PM

Irv, I am afraid you are right wrt to Gaelic whether in Ireland or Scotland. The interesting thing is to compare the role of official policy in promoting it. I understand that Welsh is another "official" language which is the subject of many governmental aids, and is dying despite all efforts to save it. If you wanted to bet on a language revival in Europe, your best bet might be Basque, and that is longer odds than any horse I ever bet.

4580. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/20/2000 11:20:54 PM

sakonige:

We'll see. The Indians remembering and speaking those languages aren't all dead yet.

Of course there are still native speakers. In fact, there are still native speakers for nearly 200 North American languages.

Unfortunately, these languages lack two essential things:

1) A sufficient number of speakers to make a viable community possible (with the exception of Navajo).

2) Relevance in the society. There are no Native American languages which one needs to know for any purpose. The Native American languages studied today are learned (usually in schools, not at home) for academic or cultural reasons.

It isn't enough.

4581. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/20/2000 11:23:57 PM

Jones:
If the Basques ever get a homeland, the language will survive (at least for a while longer).

Of the native tongues of the British Isles, Welsh has the most speakers, by far, and has a sizeable number of monolingual speakers. It is in a much stronger position than Irish or Scots Gaelic (despite official efforts to revive these tongues). But even with Welsh, the language is doomed.

4582. ilyavinarsky - 4/20/2000 11:44:17 PM

Richard Wilbur. To the Etruscan Poets.

Dream fluently, still brothers, who when young
Took with your mothers' milk the mother tongue,
In which pure matrix, joining world and mind,
You strove to leave a line of verse behind,

Like a fresh track upon a field of snow,
Not reckoning that all could melt and go.

4583. ilyavinarsky - 4/20/2000 11:45:53 PM

I cannot persuade little Nikita Mogilevsky to learn Russian - a language of 200 million speakers!

4584. ilyavinarsky - 4/20/2000 11:46:14 PM

Microsoft Office 2000 is localized for Basque. Is Lummi next?

4585. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/20/2000 11:51:31 PM

Ilya:
Well, Russian is certainly a language in no danger of extinction. If you visited Russia, little Nikita would be fluent in a matter of weeks.

Maintaining bilingual families is a challenge. I have had no problems maintaining my children's English here in Indonesia, but if they had grown up in the USA, maintaining their Indonesian would have been a serious challenge.

Another Motie, who is visiting here at the moment, has spoken with me quite a bit about the challenges of maintaining his children's bilingualism (in English and French).

If you're interested in the subject, I recommend the book "The Bilingual Family," published (I believe) by Oxford University Press. It talks about the challenges of building and maintaining bilingualism, and strategies for doing so.

4586. sakonige - 4/20/2000 11:56:21 PM

IrvingSnodgrass,

Relevance in the society

You clearly don't understand the relevance of those words have to the society you are talking about.

4587. sakonige - 4/20/2000 11:57:32 PM

some of those words...

4588. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/21/2000 12:04:07 AM

sakonige:
I have no idea what you mean. English is the dominant language in American society. It is impossible for any other language to have significant relevance in American society as a whole. The best you can hope for is relevance in a community, and that does not make a language viable in the long run.

4589. jonesatlaw - 4/21/2000 12:05:46 AM

sakonige- I recognize the cultural importance of language to native peoples, but Irv is right, unless you are seeing a large number of KIDS speaking the language as their first choice when by themselves. If the younger generation does not use the language save to communicate to grandmothers/fathers or in cultural ceremonial events, it will be lost. My wife's eldest brother was fluent in Polish as a young man, and none of his kids speak or understand it, and he has largely forgotten it as well. As a child and young man, there were many native speakers in his neighborhood, and now there are nearly none. The kids understood their grandparents, but spoke English amongst themselves.

4590. sakonige - 4/21/2000 12:10:21 AM

jonesatlaw -

I recognize the cultural importance of language to native peoples

You think so?

4591. jonesatlaw - 4/21/2000 12:13:19 AM

Sakoige- Yes.

4592. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/21/2000 12:22:09 AM

About 90% of the languages spoken in the world today will be gone in 100 years.

There wll be a great deal of hand-wringing, but these language communities will continue to shift to languages which give them political and economic power.

This trend is nothing new, and will only continue to increase. In 100 years, there will only be about 50 languages with significant vitality, and maybe another 500 in decline.

I expect someone will point out that saying this is being heartless, or unappreciate of native cultures, or some such. But it's not anything of the sort... it's merely being realistic. I have great appreciation for all languages and cultures, but no one can stop this trend.

4593. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/21/2000 12:29:48 AM

Some languages which will be gone (or in the last stages of dying) in 100 years:

All 626 Native American languages
All 901 Australian and Indo-Pacific languages
Over 1,000 pf the 1,175 Austric languages
All 29 Uralic-Yukaghir and Chuckchi-Kamchatkan languages
40 of the 63 Altaic languages
70 of the 144 Indo-European languages
36 of the 38 Caucasian languages
220 of the 241 Afro-Asiatic languages
Over 100 of the 138 Nilo-Saharan languages
Over 800 of the 1,064 Niger-Kordofanian languages
All 31 Khoisan languages

4594. sakonige - 4/21/2000 12:30:09 AM

Irving,

Anyway, I suspect you underestimate the meaning of Pacific Northwest languages that are thriving in Pacific Northwest culture. You've forgotten how to speak the names of these rivers as you traverse them.

4595. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/21/2000 12:32:21 AM

I accidentally left out a couple of language families:

220 of the 258 Sino-Tibetan languages
24 of the 28 Dravidian languages

4596. pseudoerasmus - 4/21/2000 12:33:13 AM

Well, I've now spoken with both the Moroccan and the Greek, and have had them read the words in question, and myself have read the words to them.

The Greek (an Athenian) clearly used a sound for G which was different from the (gh) found in Arabic, Persian, Urdu and Pashto.
I deliberately pronounced the Greek words using the (gh) sound that exists in Urdu, Persian and Pashto. He said I sounded like a Cypriot, not "normal Greek".
I had the Moroccan first read a bunch of Urdu, Persian and Pashto words containing "ghayn". He pronounced the ghayn exactly as it is uttered in those languages.
When the Moroccan read the Arabic words, his ghayn was clearly harsher and deeper than the G as uttered by the Greek.
I pronounced the Arabic words in front of him, first by substituting the Spanish G in "fuego" for the ghayn; and second by using the ghayn sound I know from Urdu, etc. His reaction to the first was: "il faut se gagariser un peu plus fort" ("you must gargle a little bit more"); to the second, "c'est ça".

I realise this was not scientific, but I think I'll believe my ears and theirs.

But it turns out I had not been hallucinating even according to Snirvgrass when I said the Arabic ghayn and the French R are not the same as the Greek G and the Spanish G in "fuego"! Snirvgrass said in #4567:

But, in fact, the Arabic and French sounds are uvular, while the Greek and Spanish sounds are more velar.

What on earth possessed him to persist in saying otherwise if he knew already they were not the same???!!!

4597. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/21/2000 12:34:28 AM

sakonige:
I don't think you and I share the same meaning of "thriving." There are no young native speakers of any PNW languages.

4598. sakonige - 4/21/2000 12:40:04 AM

Irving, I've met a few who know some important words of their native language. Don't presume to judge how important those words are.

4599. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/21/2000 12:40:22 AM

PE:
The results of your experiment are not surprising. As I mentioned, the Arabic sound is more emphatic than the others, since it is phonemic and not merely allophonic.

What on earth possessed him to persist in saying otherwise if he knew already they were not the same???!!!,/i>

I never said otherwise. They are the same sound. There is always some variation from language to language. A [t] in French does not sound the same as a [t] in Indonesian, although they are both voiceless dental stops. No two languages pronounce any two sounds exactly the same, and I indicated hat several times above.

4600. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/21/2000 12:42:37 AM

sakonige:
Irving, I've met a few who know some important words of their native language. Don't presume to judge how important those words are.

I am talking about native speaker fluency in a language, not knowing a few important words. I have no interest in judging how important a selection of words may be.

4601. pseudoerasmus - 4/21/2000 12:43:03 AM

#4566
So, assuming I understand what you mean by "guttural," Arabic has a wealth of such sounds.

Yes. Everyone knows that. So what?

....Urdu and Persian....have a different set of letters than Arabic.

Urdu, Persian and Pashto use all the Arabic letters, plus native additions, but since they don't have some of the Arabic sounds, some letters are pronounced differently. For example, the Arabic letters Saad and Daad are sounded as S and Z in all three Persian, Urdu and Pashto.

...then the numerical values I gave above should be helpful...

They were of no help whatever. The Arabic letter names would suffice.

4602. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/21/2000 12:43:13 AM

Sorry!

4603. pseudoerasmus - 4/21/2000 12:49:14 AM

#4568
You'll find most English speakers don't realize they produce different sounds for the "t" sound in "stop" and "top,"

I hear a distinction.

4604. pseudoerasmus - 4/21/2000 12:51:11 AM

The reason I refuse to learn the linguistics terminology is that I don't trust it and don't want to contaminate my head with such perversions....

4605. pseudoerasmus - 4/21/2000 12:52:19 AM

Velours and aviaries and pharyngitis sound so...communist, right along with vegetarians and animal-rights activists.

4606. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/21/2000 12:55:39 AM

If you understood it, you would trust it, since it makes complete sense, and is an effective way of labelling sounds and how they relate to one another.

I remind you that I don't speak any of the languages in question, and am relying on information from several sources, all of which confirm one another.

Hashké, who does speak several of the languages in question, also confirms what I posted.

But I suppose all the sources (plus Hashké and I) are wrong.

4607. pseudoerasmus - 4/21/2000 1:01:37 AM

But I suppose all the sources (plus Hashké and I) are wrong.

Well, yes and no.

To the extent that you both say they are the same sounds, when I have just confirmed with my own ears in front of native speakers they are not, you two and your sources are wrong.

To the extent that the linguistics terminology in question seems to classify two different sounds as the same for some arcane reason important only to linguists but not to actual speakers of languages, then you two and your sources are right.

But you've already admitted that they are different sounds: But, in fact, the Arabic and French sounds are uvular, while the Greek and Spanish sounds are more velar. All you're doing is calling different sounds the same sound for some strange unfathomable reason.

4608. sakonige - 4/21/2000 1:03:38 AM

kill the whales

4609. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/21/2000 1:08:59 AM

PE:
It's not a strange and unfathomable reason. If we had to label each sound separately, there would be millions of sounds, since no two languages produce sounds exactly the same.

What phonetics does is divide sounds into categories which break the sounds of the world's languages into manageable groupings. Since no language has both a voiced uvular fricative and a voiced velar fricative, this is not a meaningful enough distinction to separate it from other sounds. Another distinction of this nature is the dental [t] as in French and the alveolar [t] found in English.

There are ways to denote all of these minor differences in phonetics, but they aren't relevant when comparing the languages of the world. The sound found in Greek, Spanish, Arabic, etc. is a voiced velar/uvular fricative. It cannot be mistaken for any other sound in any of the world's languages.

4610. hashke - 4/21/2000 1:13:18 AM

4567. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/21/00 3:30:23 AM
Hashke Message # 4544:

I omitted the reference to uvular sounds to avoid confusion, as the technical terminology seems to give PE headaches already. But, in fact, the Arabic and French sounds are uvular, while the Greek and Spanish sounds are more velar.

I believe that I intimated that in #4544. In fact no two utterances are likely to sport the luxury of having the tongue articulate at exactly the same spots for any given sound. In the velar/uvular categories there will probably always be some variance, however slight, between the two, from utterance to utterance -- and from speaker to speaker. In Spanish, velar /k/ is a bit more forward than velar /g/, hence my statement that it /g/ tended toward the uvular somewhat.

Regarding PE's thrashings about over the simplest of linguistic explanations, could this be a matter of an ignorant enjoyment being better than an informed one?

4611. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/21/2000 1:18:18 AM

Hashké:
I believe that I intimated that in #4544.

Indeed you did. I had left it out of my earlier explanation to avoid confusing the issue with yet another term, but, in retrospect, I should have pointed it out at the time.

4612. hashke - 4/21/2000 1:30:15 AM

I clearly mentioned two separate pharyngeal sounds in my earlier post: Haa' and ?ayn. (I cannot bring myself to use an apostrophe to represent two seperate sounds: I will use it to denote the glottal stop, but I'll use ? to denote the ?ayn).

Irv, note that I used not an apostrophe but a minute mark or accent grave to represent `ayn. The question mark is fine, but seems somewhat clumsy with its semi-serpentine swoop and the excremental speck beneath.

Both are used, as is the reverse question mark without the dot, for instance in Peter Abboud's Beginning Cairo Arabic

Also, the use of the apostrophe for the glottal stop is very common.

4613. pseudoerasmus - 4/21/2000 1:30:29 AM

If we had to label each sound separately, there would be millions of sounds, since no two languages produce sounds exactly the same. What phonetics does is divide sounds into categories which break the sounds of the world's languages into manageable groupings. Since no language has both a voiced uvular fricative and a voiced velar fricative, this is not a meaningful enough distinction to separate it from other sounds.

Irving, get real now.

I've said persistently that the Greek G is not the same as the Arabic ghayn.

You have kept saying it's the same sound, from a linguistic point of view.

All you had to say from the very beginning was that the sound in one language is X and the sound in the other was Y, but that linguistics considers X = Y, or X in the same class of sounds as Y.

I would have accepted that, as long as you had made it clear it was just a classificatory convention, rather than asserting that -- in the esoteric linguistic sense that no one but linguists care about -- they were the same sound.

What is the use -- in ordinary conversation -- of claiming that two sounds people hear differently are the same?

4614. pseudoerasmus - 4/21/2000 1:34:02 AM

If you told an Arab learning Greek to just use "ghayn" for the G in Greek, because linguistics says they're the same sound, would that not be a disservice to the Arab?

4615. pseudoerasmus - 4/21/2000 1:37:01 AM

(Now, linguists must understand how economists feel when snotty-nosed autodidacts challenge economic theory....)

4616. pseudoerasmus - 4/21/2000 2:40:46 AM

Oh, re raising bi-/multilingual children, what is so hard? Just send them for the whole summer every summer to be with relatives, as my parents did with me and my brother.

4617. pseudoerasmus - 4/21/2000 2:41:27 AM

...and from as early an age as possible.

4618. EricCartman - 4/21/2000 3:05:39 AM

Pseudo:

You know, my folks tried that tactic -- but unfortunately, all of our relatives lived in either southern California, Texas, or Ireland. And we couldn't afford to go to Ireland and learn Gaelic.

But I can lapse into either a Texas twang or a serviceable level of ebonics with the best of them.

4619. pseudoerasmus - 4/21/2000 3:16:11 AM

If you understood it, you would trust it, since it makes complete sense, and is an effective way of labelling sounds and how they relate to one another.

But how can it possibly be an effective or useful way of labelling sounds when it says sounds I and others distinguish are the same! What is the point of it outside conversations among linguists?

4620. pseudoerasmus - 4/21/2000 3:36:44 AM

What phonetics does is divide sounds into categories which break the sounds of the world's languages into manageable groupings.

I'm sure this has a quite spectacular and legitimate purpose for linguists, but I just don't see it here, in our context.

Since no language has both a voiced uvular fricative and a voiced velar fricative, this is not a meaningful enough distinction to separate it from other sounds. Another distinction of this nature is the dental [t] as in French and the alveolar [t] found in English.

I'd say that analogy exposes the limited utility of scientific phonetics in our particular context.

If you are talking about the fact that in many languages (not just French) the T (and often D) is pronounced with the tip of the tongue touching somewhere near the back of the upper teeth, while in English the tongue seems to hit near the roof of the mouth, then that's not some trivial difference. It's a meaningful distinction. A foreign speaker of English, no matter how good his accent, almost always betrays his foreignness through such things as the T. A telltale sign of Americanness in Spanish speech is the American's failure to manipulate his tongue sufficiently when pronouncing the T.

4621. ScottLoar - 4/21/2000 6:45:19 AM

Message # 4593 a sadness creeps over me reading that list, perhaps because I harbour some old things, out of their time and lost to their place. Sad, really.

4622. ScottLoar - 4/21/2000 7:07:22 AM

Bilingual or multilingualism in children can best be done if both parents are fluent in the languages and the child's life is necessarily made to encompass both language spheres. The child must have formal study in both languages (reading, writing and speaking), gains new knowledge in both languages, and should have distinct environments which excludes the other language.

Simply put, learn'em well, and put'em with friends and relatives so that have to speak.

4623. DanDillon - 4/21/2000 7:19:30 PM

Fuck. I miss all the fun.

4624. Seguine - 4/23/2000 3:39:50 PM

Irvgrass, or anyone:

I'm curious about the derivation of the Maori/Polynesian name for the supreme deity, Io or Iao, which like the Semitic(?) Iao (Yaweh) may not be spoken aloud. (A couple other aspects of the deity also appear to be identical.)

4625. PincherMartin - 4/23/2000 8:35:39 PM

How come I haven't been able to access the Ethnologue website the last three days? Does anybody know?

4626. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/23/2000 10:03:33 PM

Seguine:
The word derives from the third person singular pronoun in Austronesian. By comparison, God is referred to as Ia in Indonesian (when the pronomial form is used, that is). The word has clear cognates in most Austronesian languages.

There are other cultures in which the name of the supreme deity may not be spoken. It's certainly just coincidence that Maori culture and Jewish tradition share this feature. Socko once posted a list of very silly reasons given for claiming the Maoris are a lost tribe of Israel, none of which held water. The Maoris are simply an Austronesian group, who settled New Zealand around 1000 years ago, having linguistic and cultural features in common with other Austronesian groups.

By the way, thanks to Alistair Connor, I now have a comprehensive Reference Grammar of Maori. I expect in will come in handy around here.

4627. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/23/2000 10:05:29 PM

Pinch:
I'm having the same problem accessing Ethnologue. No idea why, but I expect it to start working again before too long (at least I hope so... it's the best on-line language reference around, by far).

4628. Seguine - 4/24/2000 12:34:17 PM

"It's certainly just coincidence that Maori culture and Jewish tradition share this feature."

No, it's not Jewish tradition I'm interested in, but Sumerian. The chief deity there--the one who was most lofty and could overrule all the others--was Ea, who is known from (I think) the third millennium BCE. I assume, but don't know, that there may be a connection to Iao with Ea. As for the unpronounceability of the Hebrew name, that is probably an Egyptian influence (priestly initiation rituals involving chambers within chambers, special information & secret knowledge, etc.). But again, i don't know, the practice may have had multiple roots or branches in Canaanite religion or Mesopotamia.

Re the 12 tribes: it's been suggested there never actually were twelve, just two (Israel and Judah). I was simply surprised to see an apparent Polynesian similarity with fertile crescent deities, and wondered whether there might be a very ancient connection.

4629. ScottLoar - 4/24/2000 12:40:15 PM

Yes, a very ancient connection by way of Atlantis.

4630. Seguine - 4/24/2000 12:56:01 PM

Loar, have you ever seen this famous inscription, discovered in the mid-1960s by the famed archaeologist, Donovan?

Way down beneath the ocean
Where I wanna be
She may be

4631. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/24/2000 12:59:59 PM

Seguine:
No, it's pretty clearly coincidence, in the case of the Maoris. The name is demonstrably Austronesian in origin, and traceable back to its Austronesian roots. Maori traditional religion is very similar to other Austronesian traditional religions as well, so I think you can rule out any Sumerian influence.

Unless of course, we count the Atlantean connection ScottLoar speaks of.

4632. Seguine - 4/24/2000 1:52:18 PM

"Unless of course, we count the Atlantean connection ScottLoar speaks of."

Oh yeah. And I had thought the Austronesians migrated down from Red China.

Seriously, have you any info on the origin of the Sumerians? Last thing I read says no one knows where they came from.

4633. Seguine - 4/24/2000 2:17:21 PM

I should mention, by the way, that there were apparently Asians in the near east by at least 2000 BCE or earlier. They may in fact have been the Hyksos, whom the Egyptians routed in the 1500s, a little before Akhenaten established his monotheistic religion at Amarna.

If there's any historical basis to the Exodus story, it's possible that certain rival Canaanite peoples surrounding Egypt, and exiled Atenists, formed a group which worshipped a single deity whose aspects were influenced in turn by Sumerian or other deities (Iao and El primarily), and probably Babylonian as well as Egyptian myths and law.

It may be far-fetched to speculate, and I'm sure it's not possible to confirm, but if Asiatic deities were a part of the fertile crescent mix before the Hebrews emerged, then perhaps certain gods didn't vanish completely over time.

4634. Seguine - 4/24/2000 2:19:07 PM

(And of course that's why I was wondering about this Polynesian Iao/Io thing.)

4635. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/24/2000 2:19:30 PM

Seguine:
Indeed, Sumerian is a language isolate -- one of only nine such languages, living or dead, of the thousands spoken on the planet.

The fact that linguists have been unable to establish cognates for Sumerian with other languages is largely a result of the incomplete data, but no one really knows what other languages Sumerian may have been related to.

Maybe it was related to Atlantean.

Austronesian's roots are placed in Southern China, preceding a migration to Taiwan and the famous Austronesian diaspora from that location. It has also been established that Austronesian is related to Daic (Thai), Austro-Asiatic (Khmer, Vietnamese) and Mao-Yiao (Hmong) in the Austric super-family. Beyond that, it's hard to establish any connections. Who knows, maybe the Sumerians were an off-shoot. But even if Sumerian were part of a pre-Austric group, it is scarcely likely that the word for God would be cognate with an Austronesian third person pronoun. (Austronesian deity terms often derive from pronouns, btw, as witness the well-known Polynesian aku-aku, which is from proto-Austronesian aku, the first person pronoun).

4636. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/24/2000 2:22:49 PM

A more likely source of Asian-Middle Eastern religious contacts is the Elamite peoples of Iran, who were Dravidian linguistically, and related to the pre-Aryan peoples of Iran and the subcontinent. I have no idea of what kinds of influences flowed in either direction, though.

4637. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/24/2000 2:28:30 PM

oops.

4638. pseudoerasmus - 4/24/2000 2:29:28 PM

Snirvgrass: Do you know of any article or book which deals with the expansion of the Altaic peoples? The history of IE migrations is of course the subject of the most intense linguistic & archaeological scrutiny, and the Austronesians got a nice treatment in that Diamond book. Yet I don't know of any comparable treatment for the Altaic and in particular the Turkic peoples, even though their movements are arguably the second most important migration in world history.

4639. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/24/2000 2:38:31 PM

PE:
No, I don't, and it is indeed a hole in English-language historical linguistics. I have heard there are some good works on the subject available in Russian, though I don't have any references available.

I agree with your characterization of their movements as the second most important in world history (and quite possibly the least known or understood by western scholars).

Does the Grousset book on the History of Central Asia touch on this topic? (I have the book on my bookshelf but haven't looked at it yet.)

4640. pseudoerasmus - 4/24/2000 2:46:03 PM

The Grousset book of course touches on the subject of the migration of Altaic peoples -- the book is after all a history of Central Asian nomads, Altaic or non-Altaic. And there are plenty of such histories. But none of them are comparable with the kind of inquiry undertaken in IE studies, i.e., an inquiry into the origins, the expansion and the branching-out of a whole people using linguistics and archaeology especially in the preliterate age. As far as I know, where the Altaic homeland originally was, is even less well established than the IE homeland.

Last summer, when I was in Kazan, I heard about a bookstore devoted to Turcology but I couldn't find any.

I would think there must be a lot of Turkish scholarship in addition to the plentiful Russian one.

4641. pseudoerasmus - 4/24/2000 2:46:48 PM

...couldn't find IT...

4642. pseudoerasmus - 4/24/2000 2:47:59 PM

Should you chance upon any Russian references in some bibliography, could you please tell me?

4643. pseudoerasmus - 4/24/2000 2:52:56 PM

When you think about the fact that the Altaic peoples span an area as far west as Eastern Europe and the Balkans, as far south as the Persian Gulf and northern India, as far east as the Sea of Japan and as far north as the Arctic Circle, you begin to think there is serious neglect!

4644. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/24/2000 3:01:42 PM

PE:
Serious neglect sounds about right. I'll check on Russian and Turkish sources. I know I've come across references for Russian works which were highly regarded.

Among the language families of the world, only IE has had more than a smattering of thorough comparative and historical studies, and most families haven't had any real work done on them. Russian linguists are far ahead of any others in this field for most language families, and I often wish I could read the language.

I know I've read something somewhere on an Altaic homeland, but I can't recall where or what conclusions were reached.

4645. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/24/2000 3:30:00 PM

PE:
I found three Russian sources listed in a bibliography, but, oddly enough, all three are from the 1920s. There isn't much in English for this topic (except for what appears to be translation of a German work, and an article in a well-regarded German text). I also found one well-regarded Turkish work, but I have no idea what the title means. Nothing listed is less than 28 years old, and most are much older.

Polivanov, E.D. 1927. "K voprosu o rodstvennyx otnoshenijax koresjkogo i altajskix jazykov," Izvestija Akademii Naux (Leningrad).

Samojlovich, Alexandr N. 1922. Nekotorye dopolnenija k klassifikatsii turetskix jazykov. Petrograd.

Vladimirtsov, B.J. 1929. Sravnitel'naja grammatika mongol'skogo pis'mennogo jazyka i xalxaskogo narechija. Leningrad.

Poppe, Nicholas. 1965. Introduction to Altaic Linguistics. Wiesbaden.

Menges, K.H. 1959. 'Classification of the Turkish Languages, II,' in Deny, J., K. Grønbech, H. Scheel and Z.V. Togan (eds.) 1959 Philologiae Turcicae Fundementa, vol. 1 (Steiner, Munich).

KaramanlIloglu, A. 1972. Türk Dili -- Nereden Geliyor, Nereye Gidiyor (= Harekat YayInlarI, no. 46, Istanbul).

I also found a number of other German language articles, but they were all on grammar, rather than classification or history (and for all I know, the Russian and Turkish ones are as well), as well as German and Russian sources for the classification of Korean and Japanese within the Altaic group.

4646. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/24/2000 3:33:29 PM

Also, there's an article by Bernard Comrie on "Altaic Languages" in The Languages of the Soviet Union (a book edited by Comrie). Comrie's The World's Major Languages is a favorite reference of mine, and I would guess the other book is also well-done, but more of a comparison of syntax and phonology than a historical study.

4647. Seguine - 4/24/2000 3:38:05 PM

PE, Irvgrass, who were these Altaic peoples?

Also, PE, when you mention the "Turkic" peoples, which millennium and where...? That is, who exactly?

4648. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/24/2000 3:41:43 PM

I'll let PE amswer that, as he has more knowledge of the Altaic peoples than I do (not to mention the languages), and I'd be very interested in his take on it.

4649. pseudoerasmus - 4/24/2000 3:54:55 PM

Irving: those Russian references aren't really historical. The first is about cognates in Altaic and Korean; the second about classification among Altaic languages, and the third is about the comparative grammar of written Mongolian and Khalkass dialects.

4650. AytchMan - 4/24/2000 3:59:43 PM

What's the proper pronunciation of the Dutch word "fluyte"? I'm not sure that's the exact spelling but it's some kinda 16th century ship. Is it "flite" or more like "floyte" or one of those imperfectly translatable European deals that bumfuzzle us Yankees? Anybody know?

4651. pseudoerasmus - 4/24/2000 4:06:26 PM

Seguine: The Altaic peoples refer to the current & former speakers of Turkic, Mongolian and Manchu-Tungusic languages. (I say "former" because the 10+ million Manchurians don't speak Manchurian anymore.) Of this group, the Turkic peoples are the most widespread, found everywhere, in the Balkans, the Baltics, in the Volga and Urals regions of Russia, in Central Asia, in Siberia, in the Arctic, in Afghanistan, in the Caucasus, in China, in Iran (a quarter of Iran's population are Turkic), in Pakistan and northern India (where they have been assimilated into the local population).

Many Siberian "aboriginals" are also Manchu-Tungusic peoples.

Of course the ravages of the Mongols from Korea to Hungary are also part of the Altaic expansion, even if most of the "Mongols" in the Golden Horde were probably Turkic.

The ten centuries of Muslim invasions of India were carried out primarily by Turkic warlords.

The last great expansion of Turkic peoples destroyed not only the Byzantine empire, but also ended up subjugating the whole of the Mediterranean, the Middle East and the Balkans.

Even before the advent of the Ottomans and the Seljuks, the Turkic Mamlukes were central to Middle Eastern history.

I think the Turkic migrations are at least as significant in world history as the Germanic migrations.

4652. pseudoerasmus - 4/24/2000 6:12:40 PM

I should say, all of the Mediterranean save Iberia, southern France and the Italian peninsula.

4653. Seguine - 4/24/2000 7:11:27 PM

"I think the Turkic migrations are at least as significant in world history as the Germanic migrations"

Sounds that way.

4654. DanDillon - 4/24/2000 9:07:20 PM

The paucity of published research in English on the Turkic migrations is indicative of the West's fundamental myopia. We know so little of the world around us. So as not to go off sounding like a nut, I'd like to propose an experiment. I suggest each Language regular undertake one research topic, as narrow or as broad in scope as one likes, and all of us, in turn, use the posted findings as a springboard for discussion. We can accomplish two things by doing so: deepen (or broaden, as the case may be) our knowledge of things linguistic; and keep this thread humming.

We're surely a motivated enough bunch to attempt such a task, no?

4655. DanDillon - 4/24/2000 9:08:58 PM

It's precisely this sort of enrichment available in great quantity here that keeps me a Motie.

4656. Seguine - 4/24/2000 9:31:05 PM

Anyone ever heard about the stone temples of Malta?

4657. pseudoerasmus - 4/24/2000 9:38:50 PM

By the way, it's ironic that the Turks themselves, so infected with pan-Turkism and strident with secularism, were the last to really conceive of themselves as a Turkic people and had to resurrect an ethnic consciousness that they had long subordinated to a pure Muslim identity.

The name Turkey has been given to Turkish-speaking Anatolia almost since its first conquest by the Turks in the eleventh century -- given, that is, by Europeans. But the Turks themselves did not adopt it as the official name of their country until 1923.... The people had once called themselves Turks, and the language was still called Turkish, but in the imperial society of the Ottomans the ethnic term Turk was little used, and then chiefly in a rather derogatory sense, to designate the Turcoman nomads or, later, the ignorant and uncouth Turkish-speaking peasants of the Anatolian villages. To apply it to an Ottoman gentleman of Constantinople would have been an insult. Until the nineteenth century the Turks thought of themselves primarily as Muslims; their loyalty belonged, on different levels, to Islam and to the Ottoman house and state. The language a man spoke, the territory he inhabited, the race from which he claimed descent, might be of personal, sentimental, or social significance. They had no political relevance. So completely had the Turks identified themselves with Islam that the very concept of a Turkish nationality was submerged... Among the common people, the rustics and the nomads, a sense of Turkishness survived and found expression in a rich but neglected folk literature. The governing and educated groups, however, had not even retained to the same degree as the Arabs and the Persians an awareness of their identity as a separate ethnic group and cultural group within Islam. 4658. pseudoerasmus - 4/24/2000 9:39:12 PM
...It is curious that while in Turkey the word Turk almost went out of ue, in the West it came to be a synonym for Muslim, and a Western convert to Islam was said to have 'turned Turk', even when the conversion took place in Fez or Isfahan. [Turk and Muslim were so suffused in the Ottoman consciousness that] one may speak of Christian Arabs -- but a Christian Turk is an absurdity and a contradiction in terms. Even today, after thirty-five years of the secular Republic, a non-Muslim in Turkey may be called a Turkish citizen, but never a Turk.

[Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey.]

(Lewis's other books, particularly The Muslim Discovery of Europe, The Jews of Islam and Race and Slavery in the Middle East cannot be recommended too highly.)

4659. pseudoerasmus - 4/24/2000 9:39:47 PM

so infected with pan-Turkism and strident with secularism TODAY

4660. Seguine - 4/24/2000 9:55:58 PM

Irv:

"Discoveries suggest that the Harappan [aka pre-Aryan Indus Valley, ca 3000-2500 BCE] civilisation had extensive trade relations with the neighbouring regions in India and with distant lands in the Persian Gulf and Sumer (Iraq)."

(From http://www.indiagov.org/culture/history/history.htm)

4661. Seguine - 4/24/2000 10:01:02 PM

Perhaps a useful timeline

4662. ilyavinarsky - 4/24/2000 10:58:48 PM

What kind of name is 'Yerbolat'?

4663. pseudoerasmus - 4/24/2000 11:04:56 PM

It's a common first name in (Turkic) Central Asia.

4664. hashke - 4/25/2000 11:17:29 AM

Irv:

Dalam kata ambrin, apakah tekanan terletak pada suku-kata yang terakhir? Anak perempuanku ingin nama ini untuk kucingnya.

4665. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/25/2000 11:43:29 AM

hashké:
Ucapan yang benar adalah "AMbrin." Dalam Bahasa Indonesia, tekanan selalu pada sukukata yang kedua dari belakang ("penultimate syllable") dengan dua perkecualian: 1) kata dengan akhiran (-an, -kan, -i), yang mana tekanan biasanya pada sukukata ketiga dari belakang (penDIdikan, memperLAkukan), 2) Apabila sukukata yang seharusnya mendapatkan tekanan berisi vokal e yang lembut (seperti "besar," "depan," dll.), tekananan diletakkan pada sukukata berikut: dePAN, memperbeSARkan, dll. Jelas?

Kata "ambrin" jarang diketemui dalam bahasa Indonesia. Lebih umum kita dengar "sayang."

4666. tmachine - 4/25/2000 12:27:12 PM

well, I can't help it--I am VERY jelas when I can't understand a word except "penultimate syllable."

4667. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/25/2000 12:29:46 PM

PE Message # 4649:
Irving: those Russian references aren't really historical. The first is about cognates in Altaic and Korean; the second about classification among Altaic languages, and the third is about the comparative grammar of written Mongolian and Khalkass dialects.

Thanks for the translation. The one on classification would certainly shed light on historical factors. But it is evident that we still haven't found the kind of work you have indicated interest in (I'd be quite interested in it, too) if it exists.

AytchMan Message # 4650:
What's the proper pronunciation of the Dutch word "fluyte"? I'm not sure that's the exact spelling but it's some kinda 16th century ship. Is it "flite" or more like "floyte" or one of those imperfectly translatable European deals that bumfuzzle us Yankees? Anybody know?

The usual spelling is "fluijte" ("y" and "ij" are used somewhat interchangeably in Dutch). Conveying the correct pronunciation is a bit harder, since there is no similar sound in English to this diphthong in Dutch. I suppose the closest English pronunciation would be "floy-tuh." You nailed it by calling it "one of those imperfectly translatable European deals that bumfuzzle us Yankees."

PE:
Excellent recap on the Altaic peoples. You have underscored the need for a real study of the origins and linguistic history of these peoples. So many questions, so few answers.

4668. Dusty - 4/25/2000 12:30:27 PM

IrvingSnodgrass

Could you comment on the number of languages in the world as a function of time?

Based upon recent posts, I gather that some are dying out (are any new ones being created?). Is the total number generally decreasing? If so, when did this trend start?
Can we identify a time when we think there was a single language, or is that not a sensible question?

If you have hard data, I'd be interested in a graph with time as the x-axis (last two million years, I guess) and number of languages as well as population on the Y-axis.

I suppose someone has already done this analysis, so if you can point me to a site, I'd like to check it out. (Other variables seem relevant, such as the log of settled area, and the length of time it take to move from one place to another, but I assume someone else has already considered those.)

4669. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/25/2000 12:31:53 PM

Seguine:
I've never heard of the Malta stone temples... pretty amazing, considering their antiquity. Why aren't they better known?

Message # 4660:
I'm always a bit sceptical about information on the Harappan civilization emanating from the subcontinent, as I've seen some real howlers, but I think it's quite certain that this probably Dravidian civilization had trade links of some kind to the middle eastern civilizations of the time.

tm:
Hashké asked a question on stress in Indonesian, and I explained that it is usually on the penultimate syllable, with two exceptions. "Jelas," btw, means "clear."

4670. hashke - 4/25/2000 12:34:00 PM

Irv:

Terima kasih, kawanku! Echols menamakan kata ini ucapan yang dipakai sehari-hari. Ungkapan ini akan memenuhi apa yang dimaksud untuk anak perempuanku, sungguhpun jarang diketemui. Aku mendapat kesenangan dari membaca bahasa Indonesia yang menulis!

4671. pseudoerasmus - 4/25/2000 12:34:43 PM

irving, the following is the book description from Amazon of Languages and History. Japanese, Korean and Altaic by Roy Andrew Miller

Summarizing what is known of the history and prehistory of Korean and Japanese, a problem that necessarily involves their possible genetic relationship to the Altaic (Turkic, Mongiol, Tungus) languages, the author examines--and demonstrates that it is necessary to reject--arguments now dominant in most Western scolarship that would attribute all similarities among these languages to borrowing rather than genetic relationship. He argues that the now widely accepted truism that "Korean and Japanese cannot be Altaic laguages" because "there are no Altaic languages" can no longer seriously be maintained. Korean and Japanese both possess important early written records, until now either ignored or largely misrepresented by those who dismiss the Altaic hyphotesis. The author shows that these texts, when approached with proper philological precision, bolster the Altaic hyphotesis in much the same way that the discovery of Tokharian and Hittite materials earlier stimulated and clarified Indo-European historical linguistics

What is this business about "there are no Altaic languages" and the "Altaic hypothesis"? Is it the case there isn't even consensus that there is such a family of languages as the Altaic? And if so the inclusion of Korean and Japanese is necessary to strengthen it???

4672. pseudoerasmus - 4/25/2000 12:36:53 PM

I've never heard of the Malta stone temples... pretty amazing, considering their antiquity. Why aren't they better known?

Maybe because Malta is an open-air museum of historical and prehistorical antiquity of several dozens different periods, and someone forgout about the stone temples?

I'm always a bit sceptical about information on the Harappan civilization emanating from the subcontinent.

Good policy. Should look at all subcon historical and archaeological claims with a jaundiced eye.

4673. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/25/2000 12:45:30 PM

Dusty:
I don't know of any studies on this, but there has been an emerging consensus among many scholars over the past 20 years that all human languages are derived from a single tongue spoken about 100,000 years ago in Southern Africa.

Human languages then diverged as populations spread out across the globe, till there were perhaps ten thousand separate tongues spoken.

Due to political consolidation of various regions of the world over the past two thousand years or so, and the ongoing and unprecedented Indo-European diaspora, the trend has reversed itself, and many languages have disappeared and will continue to disappear. This trend has been greatly amplified in the past 200 years, as improved travel and communication, as well as political factors (which I suppose I could list, but they should be pretty evident) have created a situation where a relatively few languages are dominant globally. These include three categories: languages which are used as the primary tongues in multiple nations (English, Spanish, French, Arabic), languages in large nations with huge population bases, which are overrunning local tongues (Russian, Chinese, Hindi, Indonesian), and languages from largely monolingual nations which have established themselves as fully-developed national tongues, and which are under no threat from the outside (Japanese, Italian, Turkish, Thai, Polish, and many others).

In 100 years, there will be few languages outside of these three categories, except in Africa and the Indian subcontinent, and less-spoken tongues will disappear in these regions as well.

4674. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/25/2000 12:56:44 PM

PE:
Miller's book sounds very intriguing, and I plan to order it.

There has been a great deal of debate over the inclusion of Japanese and Korean in the Altaic languages, though the evidence I've seen arguing for their inclusion has been quite convincing, so I would tend to accept Miller's reasoning.

I'm not really sure why some scholars have rejected the inclusion of these languages (after all, they obviously descended from somewhere), and, although I have seen refutations of an Altaic grouping, these have not made much sense to me, and I certainly don't think they represent a current linguistic consensus.

The work in the past 15 years of linguists like Greenberg and Ruhlen, geneticists like Cavalli-Sforza, and people like Diamond have thrown a wrench in the hypotheses of people who refuse to look beyond recent history when describing linguistic history. Strangely enough, early Indo-Europeanists met with the same rejection. As with any new theory, scepticism is healthy, and convincing evidence should continue to be found, though I find it hard to understand those who continue to reject new theories in the face of evidence.

Good policy. Should look at all subcon historical and archaeological claims with a jaundiced eye.

Hahahaha! Do you remember some of the absurd claims we've seen in this thread (or more properly, its predecessor)?

4675. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/25/2000 12:59:25 PM

hashké:
Walaupun "ambrin" memang jarang diketemui masa kini, silakan gunakkan julukan itu untuk kucing anakmu dengan bangga!

4676. Dusty - 4/25/2000 1:09:05 PM

IrvingSnodgrass

Thanks, that was helpful.

Would I be reading too much into your comments to assume that the high point, in terms of number of languages spoken, was reached roughly two thousand years ago?

If ten thousand is the high point, what is the comparable number today?

4677. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/25/2000 1:23:29 PM

Dusty:

1) The high point was probably two to three thousand years ago, before larger political states started to exist. On the other hand, several larger diasporas had yet to peak (or even occur) at that time (the Austronesian diaspora, with over 1000 languages, was in midstream; the Altaic diaspora, though with fewer tongues, hadn't happened yet; the Bantu diaspora (almost 1000 languages) was yet to occur).

Without more study, it's hard to say. Let's put the limits between three and one thousand years ago. These are just guesses, as there are many factors at work (while population is growing (which could lead to more languages), political units are being consolidates (leading to fewer tongues)).

2) Ruhlen puts the number of living languages at 4736. I have seen other estimates ranging from 5000 to 6000. It depends how one defines "language," of course. The trend toward fewer languages, however, is quite clear.

4678. pseudoerasmus - 4/25/2000 1:26:38 PM

What local tongues are being overwhelmed by Russian, other than those of aboriginal peoples in Siberia?

But I wonder whether the decline and extinction of aboriginal languages around the world has more to do with the dwindling of aboriginal populations due to disease and killings, than to do with being overwhelmed by languages of the dominant group.

When I look at minority languages around the world, this is the pattern I see: those minorities who did not face extinction and continued to survive in significant numbers, speak languages which are not threated by the languages of the dominant group. This may simply be because a few million speakers provide the minimum threshold for the perpetuation of the language.

Maybe a disproportionate number of languages which have gone extinct are those belonging to what I would call "Diamond minorities" -- ethnic & linguistic minorities who were conquered and largely killed off by disease or persecution, like the aboriginal populations around the world.

Just openly speculating.

4679. ScottLoar - 4/25/2000 1:26:52 PM

"Living language" I suppose, being one by which an identifiable number of persons use so to communicate every day which would preclude, for example, many of the Amerindian languages save Cherokee or Cree?

4680. ilyavinarsky - 4/25/2000 1:33:10 PM

> What local tongues are being overwhelmed by Russian, other than those of aboriginal peoples in Siberia?

Lak, which is one of the Daghestani languages, is one. The two Karelian tongues (Ludician and Livvician), and other minority Finnic tongues of the St. Petersburg area, Ingrian and Veps, are four. Not to mention Yiddish (my father's parents' native language) and Belarusian.

4681. pseudoerasmus - 4/25/2000 1:38:09 PM

Well, I was considering Finno-Ugric tongues of the North akin to aboriginal languages.

In Europe outside Russia, Yiddish is a classic case of a language being driven to extinction or near extinction through depopulation. How many people continued to speak Yiddish in Russia after the war?

When was there a widely spoken separate Belarussian language, as opposed to a language which was just in a blurred dialectical continuum with other Slavic languages and as opposed to an artificial intellectual's language?

4682. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/25/2000 1:49:33 PM

PE:
What local tongues are being overwhelmed by Russian, other than those of aboriginal peoples in Siberia?

Not only those, though they are definitely a good part of the total. I would include all 5 Chuckchi-Kamchatkan tongues (Chuckchi, Kerek, Koryak, Alyutor, Kamchadal), About 20 Uralic-Yukaghir languages (Yukaghir, Nenets, Enets, Nganasan, Selkup, Xantsy, Mansi, Udmurt, Komi, Mari, Mordvin, plus 8 Baltic Finnic languages), and about 20 Altaic languages (16 Tungus languages, plus some others), as well as Ket (an isolate) and a few North Caucasian languages (though I only see one Caucasian language surviving in 100 years, Russian is not the primary threat to most).

I agree that the "Diamond miniorities" are a factor, and that having a large population base makes a language's survival more likely (any language with a million speakers is certainly going to survive for, at the very least, another few hundred years). However, I see the population bases of languages without political power as dropping over time until these languages are no longer viable. I already see this process happening (albeit slowly) in Indonesia.

The key to language vitality is becoming political power, more and more, over time. Without it, the dominant language in a nation becomes the sole means for economic and educational advancement, which leads to things like widespread intermarriage and physical relocation, which have disastrous effects on minority language vitality.

ScottLoar:
"Living language" I suppose, being one by which an identifiable number of persons use so to communicate every day which would preclude, for example, many of the Amerindian languages save Cherokee or Cree?

A living language is any language with even one native speaker. Cherokee and Cree are living languages.

4683. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/25/2000 1:54:36 PM

In countries where the dominant language is basically the only language used in education and literacy, the effects on minority languages are devastating. This is true in Russia, China and Indonesia (and, to a lesser extent, the Philippines). India, where it is not true, shows the opposite effect.

One other note on Russia: there are no Slavic languages threatened in Russia (the only Slavic tongues destined to disappear in the not-too-distant future are in Eastern Europe).

4684. pseudoerasmus - 4/25/2000 1:54:43 PM

#4682

Except for Udmurt, Mari, Mordvin the Turkic and the Baltic languages, the languages you list in the first part of your posts are the languages of nomads, reindeer herders, forest peoples, essentially the same as "aboriginal languages".

I don't think Udmurt, Mari and Mordvin are in danger of extinction.

4685. pseudoerasmus - 4/25/2000 1:57:24 PM

Which non-Tungus Altaic languages and which Caucasian languages are threatened with extinction in Russia?

Ilya said Lak for the Caucasian languages, but I've no idea about that.

Tungusic languages in Russia are spoken entirely by forest dwellers and nomads.

4686. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/25/2000 1:59:17 PM

ScottLoar:
Oops, I misread your reference to Cherokee and Cree. There are around 200 "living" native American languages in North America, although most of these are barely surviving. The one with the most speakers (by far) is Navajo.

4687. hashke - 4/25/2000 2:01:32 PM

Irv:

Benar! Anakku terutama suka bunyi kata, dan artinya cocok sekali. Terima kasih!

4688. Dusty - 4/25/2000 2:08:37 PM

IrvingSnodgrass

Thanks, I understood that it would depend on how you define a language (A dialect with an army?) but I wanted something consistent with the ten thousand estimate. Whether the number is 4700 or 6000, in round terms the number has halved in the past one to three thousand years.

Another, more dramatic way of looking at it is that we are losing a language every six months or so.

If I had to guess, I would guess that the extinction rate is accelerating. What would you say?

What are the negative effects of fewer languages?

4689. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/25/2000 2:16:27 PM

PE:
I'm not sure of the exact geographic distribution of the Altaic and Caucasian languages. The Altaic languages are found in Russia, Ukraine, the former-Soviet Central Asian nations, Mongolia and China, while the Caucasian languages are found in Russia, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.

With this proviso, the following languages are threatened in those nations:

Altaic (Turkic):
Chuvash
Khalaj
Gagauz
Crimean Turkish
Qashqay
Salar
Bashkir
Karachay
Karaim
Kumyk
Tatar
Baraba
Crimean Tatar
Nogai
Karalkapak
Yakut
Dolgan
Khakas
Altai
Northern Altai
Chulym
Shor
Tuva
Karagas

Altaic (Mongolian) -- a couple of these are not as threatened in the immediate future, but their long-term status is in doubt:
Moghol
Dagur
Monguor
Yellow Uighur
Pao-an
Santa
Oirat
Kalmyk
Buriat
Khorchin
Ordos

Caucasian:
Svan
Mingrelian
Laz
Ubyx
Abxaz
Abaza
Adygh
Kabardian
Bats
Chechen
Ingush
Avar
Andi
Botlix
Godoberi
Chamalal
Bagulai
Tindi
Karata
Axvax
Xvarshi
Dido
Hinux
Bezhta
Hunzib
Lak
Dargwa
Archi
Xinalug
Lezgi
Tabasaran
Agul
Rutul
Tsaxur
Kryts
Budux
Udi

4690. pseudoerasmus - 4/25/2000 2:21:54 PM

#4689

Based on what do you say the languages you list are threatened with extinction? Some self-evidently are, because they number only a few thousands, but the claims for others are ridiculous.

Chechen? Kalmyk? Uighur? Tatar? Chuvash? Bashkir? Ingush? Adygean?

Except now for the Chechens, all these people have their own republics, literary academies, newspapers, books, etc.

Karakal

4691. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/25/2000 2:23:41 PM

Dusty:
If I had to guess, I would guess that the extinction rate is accelerating. What would you say?

Absolutely. I read somewhere that we are losing 100 languages a year, as the last speakers die off.

What are the negative effects of fewer languages?

For linguists, the chance to study and learn about human language and language history. For anthropologists, losing the unique character of ethnic groups. For the members of the dying communities, their cultural identity. Politically and economically, nothing much.

4692. pseudoerasmus - 4/25/2000 2:32:14 PM

For linguists, the chance to study and learn about human language and language history....For the members of the dying communities, their cultural identity.

These are really the only losses, in my opinion.

For anthropologists, losing the unique character of ethnic groups.

Oh, please. Quite a few of those thousands of different languages are spoken by anthropologically identical peoples and represent no loss to anyone but linguists and the self-same speakers for whom every trivial idiosyncrasy constitutes a precious cultural distinctiveness.

4693. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/25/2000 2:32:31 PM

PE:
I have made my reasoning clear about the languages I feel are facing extinction over the long term. I don't think an ethnic group without political power has a long-term future.

Obviously, I could be wrong about any of these, but these are the ones which fit the definition I gave. The ones you list are among the most likely to survive, and certainly won't be disappearing any time soon. But they are a small percentage of the list.

I did not list Uighur, which I think will maintain its vitality, though I guess it fits my definition for a threatened language. It's just that I see the Uighurs as so "un-Chinese," that I can't see them switching to Mandarin. The "Yellow Uighur" language is in an entirely different branch of the Altaic family, and is almost gone.

4694. pseudoerasmus - 4/25/2000 2:36:19 PM

But the ones I listed (and some more) do have the sort of political power that matters, in the sense that they have been allowed quite a bit of cultural autonomy. Even Tuvans, whom I didn't name, and the Altai, have cultural autonomy.

By the way, Kurds have never had political power. Yet their language has survived an extremely long time.

4695. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/25/2000 2:37:01 PM

PE:
Oh, please. Quite a few of those thousands of different languages are spoken by anthropologically identical peoples and represent no loss to anyone but linguists and the self-same speakers for whom every trivial idiosyncrasy constitutes a precious cultural distinctiveness.

I don't dispute this. I was merely trying to list the possible reasons people might give. Personally, and I know I'll be labelled hard-hearted for this, I feel that once the language has been thoroughly catalogued linguistically, there's no real loss.

4696. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/25/2000 2:42:14 PM

But the ones I listed (and some more) do have the sort of political power that matters, in the sense that they have been allowed quite a bit of cultural autonomy. Even Tuvans, whom I didn't name, and the Altai, have cultural autonomy.

True enough, for now. But how long will this last, especially for the smaller groups? The larger groups may attain political sovereignity, at which point the languages will have a reason to continue.

Your point is especially valid, though, in that these languages are used for education in these regions. So I guess they shouldn't be included.

At any rate, they are a few from a long list.

By the way, Kurds have never had political power. Yet their language has survived an extremely long time

Sure, and there are others. But I don't think they will continue to survive in the future. Global political realities have been undergoing major shifts, and will continue to.

Who knows, though? There could be a nuclear war, and in 500 years we'd find 20,000 languages. This is all just guesswork, and none of us will be around to see what really happens.

4697. pseudoerasmus - 4/25/2000 2:47:16 PM

Personally, and I know I'll be labelled hard-hearted for this, I feel that once the language has been thoroughly catalogued linguistically, there's no real loss.

Hahahahahaha!

4698. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/25/2000 2:57:15 PM

PE:
Your point about the Kurds brings up an interesting point I've noted. There are far fewer IE languages in danger of extinction than in any other family. This is largely due to three related factors: 1) There are fewer IE languages (144, of which 93 are Indo-Iranian) than there are in many families, 2) Many IE languages have very large population bases, 3) More languages from IE than from any other language family have political sovereignity.

4699. Jenerator - 4/25/2000 3:07:44 PM

"The dead bird does not leave the nest." Said by an aging Winston Churchill when told that his fly was open.

4700. ScottLoar - 4/25/2000 3:15:32 PM

To define a "living language" as one with even a single native speaker is charitable. It may be the term applied by professors of philology but I confess it does beggar common sense to say Mandan is a living language when most speakers died out in the middle of the last century. Or compare Hawaiian as a "living language" to robust Tahitian.

4701. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/25/2000 3:30:49 PM

ScottLoar:
Agreed. It's one of the reasons I started this discussion, to try and look at those languages which have vitality and will live on (Tahitian, for example, which is not threatened, versus Hawaiian, which will be gone soon).

I don't think many native American languages will last another half century, beyond the big ones (those with more than 20,000 speakers): Navajo (150,000), Ojibwa (35,000), Cree (35,000), Cherokee (22,500). And all will continue to decline. Mandan, for example, is limited to six elderly speakers (according to Ethnologue). It will be dead in a few years.

Ethnologue lists one speaker for Northeastern Pomo. Who does he/she speak to?

4702. Seguine - 4/25/2000 3:36:21 PM

"The key to language vitality is becoming political power, more and more, over time."

Are you sure that's not actually economic power? I imagine it's hard to distinguish one factor from the other, at least historically.

4703. Seguine - 4/25/2000 3:47:18 PM

Irv, PE:

I'm ignorant of the basis for your skepticism re Harappans. Please critique in detail, if possible:

"From the beginning of the 4th millennium BC, the individuality of the early village cultures began to be replaced by a more homogenous style of existence. By the middle of the 3rd millennium, a uniform culture had developed at settlements spread across nearly 500,000 square miles, including parts of Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Baluchistan, Sind and the Makran coast.

This earliest known civilisation in India, the starting point in its history, dates back to about 3000 BC. Discovered in the 1920s, it was thought to have been confined to the valley of the river Indus, hence the name given to it was Indus Valley civilisation. This civilisation was a highly developed urban one and two of its towns, Mohenjodaro and Harappa, represent the high watermark of the settlements. Subsequent archaeological excavations established that the contours of this civilisation were not restricted to the Indus valley but spread to a wide area in northwestern and western India. Thus this civilisation is now better known as the Harappan civilisation. Mohenjodaro and Harappa are now in Pakistan and the principal sites in India include Ropar in Punjab, Lothal in Gujarat and Kalibangan in Rajasthan.

(cont.)

4704. Seguine - 4/25/2000 3:48:27 PM

Occupations

Evidence also points to the use of domesticated animals, including camels, goats, water buffaloes and fowls. The Harappans cultivated wheat, barley, peas and sesamum and were probably the first to grow and make clothes from cotton.Trade seemed to be a major activity at the Indus Valley and the sheer quantity of seals discovered suggest that each merchant or mercantile family owned its own seal. These seals are in various quadrangular shapes and sizes, each with a human or an animal figure carved on it. Discoveries suggest that the Harappan civilisation had extensive trade relations with the neighbouring regions in India and with distant lands in the Persian Gulf and Sumer (Iraq).

Society and Religion

The Harappan society was probably divided according to occupations and this also suggests the existence of an organized government. The figures of deities on seals indicate that the Harappans worshipped gods and goddesses in male and female forms and has also evolved some rituals and ceremonies. No monumental sculpture survives, but a large number of human figurines have been discovered, including a steatite bust of a man thought to be a priest, and a striking bronze dancing girl. Countless terra-cotta statues of Mother Goddess have been discovered suggesting that she was worshipped in nearly every home.

By about 1700 BC, the Harappan culture was on the decline, due to repeated flooding of towns located on the river banks and due to ecological changes which forced agriculture to yield to the spreading desert. Some historians do not rule out invasions by barbarian tribes of the northwest as the cause of the decline of the Harappan civilisation. When the initial migrations of the Aryan people into India began about 1500 BC, the developed Harappan culture had already been practically wiped out."

4705. pseudoerasmus - 4/25/2000 4:02:44 PM

Irving and I were merely saying that a lot of nonsense comes out of the subcontinent, not just about the Harappans, but anything remotely ancient.

By the way, I've seen Moenjodaro. It is possibly the least interesting archaeological site in the world. It's barren of features, anything of interest has already been carted off to museums, and the remaining rubble could only fascinate archaeologists or melancholic civil engineers. Besides, it's dangerous and isolated. The whole site is guarded by an army unit, because outside the little town where Moenjodaro is located, there are bandits and dacoits ready to rob and then kill anybody.

4706. ilyavinarsky - 4/25/2000 7:14:00 PM

> When was there a widely spoken separate Belarussian language

When the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a major European power, its official language was "Rusky" or Old Belarusian, since the titular nationality of the reign was culturally backwards compared to the Slavs it conquered. However, everything changed when Lithuania united with Poland...

[in Gore Vidal's Creation, it says that the Persian bureacracy used Babylonian, Elamite and some other language, I think Aramaean, rather than Persian - is this a similar phenomenon?]

On the web, I found the site of a club that tries to revive the Old Belarusian language, cleansing Belarusian of Hellenisms and Latinisms. Meanwhile, bus drivers in Mensk announce bus stops in Russian.

4707. pseudoerasmus - 4/25/2000 8:17:27 PM

That sounds like a question for Kia.

bus drivers in Mensk announce bus stops in Russian.

During my one brief stop in Belarus (about a week in 1995), I became convinced the Belarussian language doesn't exist and never existed....and I'm only half joking.

You didn't answer my other question: how many Yiddish speakers were left after the war, particulary in the Soviet Union?

4708. ilyavinarsky - 4/25/2000 8:31:52 PM

> how many Yiddish speakers were left after the war, particulary in the Soviet Union?

A couple of millions. However, they did not transmit the language to their children.

4709. pseudoerasmus - 4/25/2000 8:36:30 PM

But that must be unprecedented, for millions of people who speak a language to simply stop transmitting it to their children.

I'm trying to think of another distinct ethnic minority, with a large enough community, which has done this.

4710. ilyavinarsky - 4/25/2000 9:20:16 PM

From this article by Academician Boris Ioffe.

Ioffe argues that Stalin wanted to start a new world war in the mid-1950s, which was the impetus behind the Soviet nuclear program - get the bomb so the United States would think twice before intervening.

> In order to achieve the designated goals, two extremely difficult objectives would have to be achieved: the military one -creating atomic weaponry, and the political one - to rouse the people to fight. The latter goal was especially difficult, and Stalin understood it perfectly well: to rouse the people to fight a new war only eight or ten years after the end of the toughest and bloodiest war in the history of Russia, and in addition against the former ally - the United States, was impossible using the usual propaganda means, even terror probably wouldn't work here. You had to awaken the people's rage. But not the abstract rage directed at somebody overseas about whom ordinary people only hear on the radio. It was necessary for everyone to see the object of his hatred nearby, next to himself, knew that he threatens himself and his family, and the enemies are directed and lead from overseas. It wasn't difficult to find the appropriate object of popular hatred - these were the Jews. The Jews fit this role perfectly well: everyone saw a Jew, everyone could have an object of his hatred nearby, and the old Russian traditions of anti-Semitism hadn't been completely forgotten.

[to be continued]

4711. ilyavinarsky - 4/25/2000 9:24:07 PM

> From the second half of the 1940s on, Stalin and the apparatus of the Party and the state, subordinate to him, intentionally instilled anti-Semitism in the people (the struggle with the so-called cosmopolitans, the arrests and the executions of Jewish cultural figures, the execution of the group of "saboteurs" at the ZIS automotive plant etc.) The anti-Semitic campaign, which was increasing in intensity up until Stalin's death, was not just one episode in Stalin's policy of repressing peoples inconvenient to him - it was the means to a far-reaching end.

[to be continued]

4712. ilyavinarsky - 4/25/2000 9:33:16 PM

> The new and very important milestone on the way to this goal was the "Doctors' Plot". In late 1952, a group of professors, world-class stars of medical science, was arrested. All of them except one or two were Jews. They were accused of trying to assassinate the leaders of the Party and the Soviet Government in the guise of treating them, on behalf of an American Jewish secret organization "Joint". As soon as the first reports of the "Doctors' Plot" appeared, it became clear to me that this was a forgery, fabricated on Stalin's instructions, and that this is the beginning of a new campaign. Unfortunately, by no means everyone understood that the "Doctors' Plot" is an outright forgery, even among the intelligentsia. The "Doctors' Plot" had a far-reaching goal: it meant to show that even the members of the noblest profession - doctors - were killers among Jews. Not just the two dozen arrested an imprisoned prominent doctors: rumors were spread that all doctors-Jews were enemies of the people and criminals. I myself have heard several times on the street, in the stores etc. sayings like, "In our polyclinic the doctor is a Jew. I won't go to him - he's going to poison me," or "Such-and-such died in a hospital - a doctor-Jew killed him." This hatred spread not only to the doctor.

4713. ilyavinarsky - 4/25/2000 9:43:23 PM

> The further scenario was to be the following. The arrestees in the "Doctors' Plot" were to be publicly executed. Simultaneously, "spontaneous" riots against the Jews were to break out. Then, a group of prominent representatives of this people was supposed to write a letter to Stalin and the Soviet government, which would admit collective responsibility of the Jewish nation for having brought up such monsters in their midst, and speak of just anger of the people. In addition, the authors of the letter would ask to resettle the Jews to the Far East as a measure of protection against popular anger [3]. The appropriate labor camps were either already built, or in the process of being built. According to the plan, "spontaneous" demonstration were to take place along the route of the trains. It is easy to predict the reaction of the United States, which would of course come to the Jews' defense. Western Europe would support the United States. Then, according to Stalin's plans, the popular rage would be switched from the internal enemy to the external one.

4714. ilyavinarsky - 4/25/2000 9:46:29 PM

> footnote 3. As far as I know, such a letter already existed - historian of CPSU Academician I. Minz wrote it - and was even signed by a few people. I know the names of two people who - under extreme duress, of course - signed it. These people are long dead, and I will not name them, so as not to disturb their memory. I will name a courageous man who refused to sign the letter - Ilya Ehrenburg.

4715. ilyavinarsky - 4/25/2000 9:47:11 PM

I just translated the long quote in order to show that the postwar USSR was not the best place and time for the Jews to show their ethnic distinctiveness.

4716. pseudoerasmus - 4/25/2000 9:53:22 PM

Well, Stalinist antisemitism is well known, but can that really explain the total loss of Yiddish in Russia and Ukraine?

Note: English needs a -tion noun which means "the act or process of forgetting". I nominate dimentication.

4717. DanDillon - 4/25/2000 10:57:40 PM

oubliation

4718. DanDillon - 4/25/2000 10:58:56 PM

You'd think that with the half a million some words we do have, there'd already be one for what you need.

4719. pseudoerasmus - 4/25/2000 11:37:19 PM

Well, if you want to draw from the French, then oublition seems more natural than "oubliation", on account of the noun oubli.

Olvidation is another possiblity, having the virtue of being sound closer to the Latin root (from which oblivion also comes).

4720. pseudoerasmus - 4/25/2000 11:37:53 PM

...virtue of sounding...

4721. mandolin - 4/25/2000 11:47:21 PM

There's the gerund 'forgetting' -- no need to get all latinate.

4722. pseudoerasmus - 4/25/2000 11:51:06 PM

Why not?

I've never understood the silly reverse snobbery against latinate words, particularly among those who think themselves poets.

English is rich in part because it frequently has both Latinate and Anglosaxon words for very similar ideas or sometimes the very same one.

4723. pseudoerasmus - 4/25/2000 11:52:02 PM

Just as Kuhn has been abused by pseudo-philosophers, so Orwell (and his "Politics and the English Language") has been done.

4724. mandolin - 4/26/2000 12:01:07 AM

If there were a Latin-derived noun in English for 'forgetting,' I'd have nothing particular against it.

The prejudice among some poets probably comes from the facts that it's fairly easy to rhyme many such words, and that they lend themselves to comedy -- and both rhyme and comedy are considered not quite something or other. Now there's a word I miss, or maybe I'm just tired.

4725. pseudoerasmus - 4/26/2000 12:09:27 AM

Anyway, this topic was inspired when I was writing the following sentence:

Can Stalinist antisemitism really explain the total loss of Yiddish in Russia and Ukraine?

I don't think it sounds quite right to say:

Can Stalinist antisemitism really explain the total forgetting of Yiddish in Russia and Ukraine?

4726. mandolin - 4/26/2000 12:21:46 AM

"obliteration" won't work there either, though it's got the right root. Bed time for me.

4727. mandolin - 4/26/2000 12:25:59 AM

I know I said I was going to bed, but will "abandonment" work?

4728. pseudoerasmus - 4/26/2000 1:17:15 AM

obliterate doesn't have the right root at all. Its root is "littera", or something written.

4729. mandolin - 4/26/2000 1:53:14 AM

you're right (briefly awakened by an escaped hampster)

4730. marjoribanks - 4/26/2000 10:14:15 AM

Seguine,

There is absolutely nothing controversial or suspicious in what you have posted about the Harappans. In fact, there has been a great deal of very interesting work done on that period and those sites in the past few years. Unfortunately, this work has been interpreted in any number of suspicious and convoluted ways by those with various vested interests. I'm still awaiting a reputed scholarly interpretation, I understand that one has been published last month but I've forgotten the name/source.

4731. marjoribanks - 4/26/2000 10:16:36 AM

4732. marjoribanks - 4/26/2000 10:19:09 AM

Oops. Anyway, here is the kind of suspicious, even downright wild-eyed, claim that Pseuder and Psnod rightfully sneer at.

4733. marjoribanks - 4/26/2000 10:23:45 AM

Oops. Anyway, here is the kind of suspicious, even downright wild-eyed, claim that Pseuder and Psnod rightfully sneer at.

4734. marjoribanks - 4/26/2000 10:25:49 AM

WTF. I'm not doing anything I swear.

A very nice (legit) Harappa site.

4735. Seguine - 4/26/2000 11:32:12 AM

"There is absolutely nothing controversial or suspicious in what you have posted about the Harappans."

Thanks, Banks, I didn't think it sounded controversial, but one never knows what subtle assumptions are built into ordinary-sounding claims about the past.

BTW, I too am awaiting a book on new archaelogical info, something interesting-looking written by a WSJ mideast correspondent, The View From Nebo.

We should perhaps exchange reports on our respective material once we've had time to read and digest.

4736. ilyavinarsky - 4/26/2000 1:04:21 PM

> blurred dialectical continuum with other Slavic languages

Is Spanish a blurred dialectal continuum between Portuguese and Occitan?

4737. ilyavinarsky - 4/26/2000 1:16:18 PM

www.tbm.org.by has a great deal of material about the Belarusian language... but it is all in Belarusian.

4738. ilyavinarsky - 4/26/2000 1:17:00 PM

Make it http://tbm.org.by

4739. pseudoerasmus - 4/26/2000 1:21:36 PM

Is Spanish a blurred dialectal continuum between Portuguese and Occitan?

More like between Portuguese and Catalan.

Well, yes, at least the dialects from which Standard Spanish derives are.

But the difference is that a very large number of people speak standard Spanish, but is there anybody who speaks "Standard Belarussian"?

4740. pseudoerasmus - 4/26/2000 1:22:39 PM

that URL took me to....Tom Brown's Ministries.

4741. pseudoerasmus - 4/26/2000 1:25:04 PM

or was there anybody who ever spoke a "Standard Belarussian".

You instanced the language spoken in the 14th century in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Was that language really an organic ancestor of modern literary-artificial Belarussian, or just a language which might arguably be the medieval ancestor of any East Slavic language?

4742. ilyavinarsky - 4/26/2000 2:07:25 PM

this article argues that the official language of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which was recognized as such by laws promulgated in 1566 and 1588, is the organic ancestor of modern-day Belarusian.

The history of the three (Western Ukrainian dialects and Carpatho-Rusyn are a special case) East Slavic languages is very intertwined. In the last 200 years, Great Russian was dominant, exerting a one-way influence upon the others. However, it wasn't always so; in the 17th century, when Czar Alexis decided to bring the Russian Orthodox Christian Church up to the standard (which precipitated a schism), and the people who were tasked with it were Ukrainian (as were the missionaries who spread Christianity to Siberian aborigines). One artefact of this is that although the Great Russians say "kavo, chivo", they write "kogo, chego" because the first grammar of Russian was composed by the Ukrainian cleric Miletius SomethingOrOther, who experienced interference from his native tongue.

4743. pseudoerasmus - 4/26/2000 6:48:15 PM

One artefact of this is that although the Great Russians say "kavo, chivo", they write "kogo, chego" because the first grammar of Russian was composed by the Ukrainian cleric Miletius SomethingOrOther, who experienced interference from his native tongue.

What is the source for this?

If this is true, why do the other Slavic languages have the -go in the gentive cases of certain words? When did Russian lose them (before reacquiring them in writing)?

4744. pseudoerasmus - 4/26/2000 6:57:59 PM

genitive

4745. ilyavinarsky - 4/26/2000 7:13:55 PM

> What is the source for this?

My friend Vladimir Ulyanets, who is a Kharkiv University InYaz (Department of Foreign Languages) graduate.

4746. stostosto - 4/27/2000 5:10:18 AM

PE #4716:
Note: English needs a -tion noun which means "the act or process of forgetting". I nominate dimentication.

Demembrance?

4747. stostosto - 4/27/2000 6:16:52 AM

ilya #4710-15

Thank you for taking trouble translating and posting that article. It's very fascinating. But this theory of Stalin being bent on starting WWIII using the Jews as an instrument - I am highly incredulous. Of course, Stalin did many unimaginable things, and he likely grew ever more paranoid, isolated and, possibly, insane. But Ioffe's theory sounds a bit too speculative, is my immediate reaction.

As if persecuting Jews wasn't bad enough in and of itself (and a firmly well-established pastime for centuries to boot, not least in Russia), Ioffe trumps this by presenting it as part of nothing less than a scheme of the Ultimate Evil.

Do you know how well-established this theory is? The piece talks about Stalin's "plan". But was this plan written down, or has it been documented in other ways?

(Incidentally, where else has one heard about the concept of conflating a goal of military world dominance with zealous persecution of Jews..?)

4748. ScottLoar - 4/27/2000 9:33:28 AM

Good. Sto3 expresses incredulity at Stalin's master plan for WWIII rather than dismissing it in silence as so much dog squeeze as I have.

4749. stostosto - 4/27/2000 9:39:45 AM

ScottLoar:
Was that your way of telling me we agree?

4750. ScottLoar - 4/27/2000 10:30:02 AM

Sto3. I agree. You said you find the master plan hard to believe. I compliment you on your expressed sincerity. I find the master plan hard to believe but said nothing. I said nothing because I think it dog squeeze. End of exchange.

4751. Wombat - 4/27/2000 10:57:56 AM

From what little I've read, Stalin's death prevented a large-scale campaign against the Jews, of which the "Doctors' Plot" was the precursor. The closest Stalin came to World War III was when he set in train the events leading up to the Berlin Airlift.

4752. stostosto - 4/27/2000 11:16:25 AM

ScottLoar

I will humbly abstain from commenting on your majestic style of silently dismissing dog squeeze.

I have long since realised that when you sometimes deign to make a comment on something, it's an honour bestowed. Even when it happens simultaneously to announce your merciful silent dismissal of other posts which would otherwise risk going sadly unappreciated.

Well, Loar. Not by me, rest assured. Accepting full well my own lowly stature, I do take pride in being capable of recognising true greatness when I don't see it.

4753. marjoribanks - 4/27/2000 11:18:34 AM

Happened across yet another doubter of the Ayan Invasion Theory. I wish these fuckers wouldn't all rely on the same discredited "scholars" like Frawley and Kak and Chopra.

4754. marjoribanks - 4/27/2000 11:28:13 AM

For sheer entertainment value, though, check out this wonderful set of essays which "prove" that the Harappans, Dravidians, Olmecs and the first Chinese civilizationists are all African.

4755. ilyavinarsky - 4/27/2000 12:13:26 PM

From the Ioffe article, the paragraph immediately before the one I translated:

> Recently, important confirmations of this point of view have appeared. The article of Lieutenant General N. N. Ostroumov, who was then the deputy head of operations of the Air Force staff, says that in the spring of 1952 Stalin ordered the creation of 100 new divisions of tactical bombers. In Ostroumov's view, this was preparation for a new war. In the Czech Republic, General Cepicka's memoirs have been published. Cepicka was the Minister of Defense of Czechoslovakia in the Communist government in the late 1940s-early 1950s. In Cepicka's book it is told, among other things, that in 1952 Stalin assembled the ministers of defense of the Communist countries of Eastern Europe. At this meeting, Stalin declared that a new world war would break out within a year or two, and demanded that they prepare for it.

[I also heard that Stalin told the same to heads of Communist Parties of the Soviet satellite states in the early 1950s - I.V.]

4756. ilyavinarsky - 4/27/2000 12:13:34 PM

4757. ilyavinarsky - 4/27/2000 12:14:01 PM

somebody, please remove the dupe.

4758. ScottLoar - 4/27/2000 2:00:26 PM

Sto3, I don't know what the hell you're talking about and really don't want you to explain. Carry on.

4759. Ronski - 4/27/2000 2:07:29 PM

ilya,

In what way are Rusyn and related West Ukrainian dialects a special case?

4760. pseudoerasmus - 4/27/2000 2:13:29 PM

Well, because I cannot believe the explanation put forward by Ilya for why the genitive case ending -go in Russian is pronounced -vo, I went searching in the database of the library. I discovered that volume 1 from 1997 of The International Journal of Slavic Linguistics and Poetics contains an article by Kenneth Shields called "On the Origin of the Slavic Pronominal Genitive Singular Ending -go". Alas, some faculty fuck (the only people with right to check out journals) has checked out the volume containing the issue. So I won't be able to read it before I leave on Monday.

4761. ilyavinarsky - 4/27/2000 2:13:52 PM

The populations speaking them were not under Russian rule until 1939-45, and some (in Slovakia and Romania) never were. Even now they have no love lost for the Russians. In Lviv, Lermontov Street was renamed Dudaev Street a few years ago.

4762. ilyavinarsky - 4/27/2000 6:07:02 PM

> I'm trying to think of another distinct ethnic minority, with a large enough community, which has done this.

German-Americans, with a little help from Woodrow Wilson.

Kurt Vonnegut has (or had) a friend who would get drunk, and sling dirt at Wilson.

4763. AytchMan - 4/28/2000 12:03:31 AM

Irv--

A belated thanks for the Dutch pronunciation. I just found it.

4764. stostosto - 4/28/2000 4:44:18 AM

Ilya
Perhaps also many other hyphen-Americans. I have family in the States, owing to my grandfather's brother and his wife who emigrated in the 40's or 50's. They still speak Danish, but their children don't. And certainly not their grandchildren.

But on second thought I don't think immigrants' situation in the U.S. corresponds to that of an ethnic community with century old roots like the Jews in Russia.

4765. pseudoerasmus - 4/28/2000 4:51:58 AM

I'd think the difference is in two things: (1) in intermarriage between immigrant groups and natives (or with other immigrant groups); and (2) the size & concentration of the immigrant community.

If you have too much of the first, or too little of the second, or a combination of the two, then there is no reason for the foreign language to survive past the second generation.

I wager German immigrants, at first concentrated in certain areas, began dispersing and/or intermarrying, which ever came first.

That's probably why they lost German.

4766. pseudoerasmus - 4/28/2000 4:57:05 AM

But on second thought I don't think immigrants' situation in the U.S. corresponds to that of an ethnic community with century old roots like the Jews in Russia.

Well, that may be true for most ancient ethnic minority communities in most countries.

But based entirely on personal impressions I wager intermarriage between Russian/Uke/Belarussian gentiles and Jews have been relatively high; and, indeed, they have been dispersed, not concentrated as when they were back in the days of the pale or the ghetto.

4767. jonesatlaw - 4/28/2000 2:24:27 PM

I wager German immigrants, at first concentrated in certain areas, began dispersing and/or intermarrying, which ever came first.

That's probably why they lost German.
Most German language was lost with the arrival of WWI, more than any other reason.

4768. ilyavinarsky - 4/28/2000 3:26:46 PM

So Kurt Vonnegut's friend is right in badmouthing Wilson?

4769. pseudoerasmus - 4/28/2000 3:42:58 PM

I wager what Jonesatlaw says is folkloric.

4770. jonesatlaw - 4/28/2000 4:00:56 PM

Pseudo- no, it's family history. My maternal grandmother was born in 1898 in Nebraska and spoke German at home. Her grandfather came to Wisconsin from Lippe-Detmold, Germany, and her father was raised in the US. Many people spoke German in day to day business in the small river town she grew up in. Her church conducted services exclusively in German, and her baptismal certificate is in German. No one taught their children German following WWI. Towns even changed their names- Berlin, Nebraska became Otoe, Nebraska. The Nebraska legislature passed a statute forbidding the instruction of schoolchildren in foreign languages because there were many that still conducted classes in German. Make no mistake about it, German died in the midwest with the conflicts with Germany.

4771. pseudoerasmus - 4/28/2000 4:10:14 PM

Until 1997, Turkey suppressed the Kurdish language among its millions of Kurds rather harshly -- instruction in Kurdish was forbidden, preaching in mosques could only be conducted in Turkish, Kurdish newspapers & radio suppressed, and even the existence of Kurdish as a language unrelated to Turkish denied.

Yet a distinct Kurdish language (separate from the one in Iraq) continues to exist and is vibrantly spoken.

Languages do not necessarily disappear because they are not taught at schools.

There is more to heaven and earth than is contained in Jonesatlaw's folkloric history.

4772. pseudoerasmus - 4/28/2000 4:12:18 PM

No one taught their children German following WWI.

Children are not "taught" the language of their parents. They simply pick it up at home.

Who did your maternal grandmother marry?

Who did her children marry?

4773. jonesatlaw - 4/28/2000 4:19:51 PM

Pseudo- you're not this dense. People in many towns in the midwest quit speaking German in public and eventually at home because of anti-German feeling over the war. People certainly do teach their children languages, by example and express instruction. Meyer vs. Nebraska is a famous Supreme Court case involving parental rights revolving around the instruction of children in a "foreign" language. My Grandmother told me of these events and was 18 years old when the war started for the US.

4774. jonesatlaw - 4/28/2000 4:21:21 PM

to Pseudo cont'd- My grandmother's younger siblings did not speak German because they were born after it had fell out of favor.

4775. mandolin - 4/28/2000 4:24:18 PM

true that kids don't have to be taught the language spoken at home -- but in my family's hometown,Louisville, another midwestern city with a large German population, many people stopped speaking German at home because of WWI. German disappeared from my father's family after WWI.

4776. pseudoerasmus - 4/28/2000 5:34:37 PM

Look, people, I do not deny it is possible that people just stopped speaking German to their children because of anti-German hostility. But I still think this could be folkloric wisdom which just happens to be a historical canard.

I wander if any historical sociolinguist has investigated this. And the Yiddish thing.

4777. pseudoerasmus - 4/28/2000 5:36:00 PM

Jonesatlaw, who did your grandmother marry?

4778. jonesatlaw - 4/28/2000 5:51:18 PM

My grandmother married an American of English decent, although they had been in the US for many many years. One brother married a woman who was entirely German, as did one sister, while the remaining sister married an American of English decent. None of them spoke any German,(save for my grandmother) other than a few christmas carols and nursery rhymes that they remembered from early childhood. What I would note is that for Germans in the midwest, a good number of them had held onto the language for several generations before WWI.

4779. pseudoerasmus - 4/28/2000 6:00:16 PM

The brother and the sister who married Germans, did they marry German speakers?

By the way, "German" refers to the modern standard High German used in the literature of the last three centuries and taught at the schools of the modern Federal Republic of Germany. But since German immigrants to America were rural and/or not terribly educated, they are likely to have spoken the modern standard High German of literature and the schools. They probably spoke the regional dialects.

And German dialects, especially before the post-war era, were not necessarily mutually intelligible. A Swabian and a Silesian in the America of the 19th century would not have been able to understand each other.

So if a Silesian immigrant and a Swabian immigrant got married, they probably resorted to English in order to communicate.

4780. pseudoerasmus - 4/28/2000 6:00:57 PM

they are UNLIKELY to have spoken the modern standard High German of literature and the schools.

4781. stostosto - 4/28/2000 6:00:58 PM

Pseud:

I wander if any historical sociolinguist has investigated this. And the Yiddish thing.

I don't doubt it. You seem consumed by Wanderlust. Tee hee!

---

Pseud:

It puzzles me a little that you first appear to think it strange, that Yiddish disappeared in Russia, to the point of surmising it unique, and then go on to put forward some - very probable, imo - reasons why minority languages in general are likely to vanish. Which latter position you then take to defend in the face of an alternative, or at least supplementary, explanation of suppression from the surroundings leading to or combining with self-censorship.

I think the Midwestern Germans' situation are much different from the Turkish Kurds'. The MW Germans had chosen a new country and decided to play by the rules. It's understandable if there was an element of consciously distancing themselves from the enemy of their adopted new country. And of course, the attitude from the surroundings, including that of President Wilson would be liable to add inducement to such a behaviour. It sounds plausible to me.

4782. Ronski - 4/28/2000 6:02:24 PM

I don't believe anyone can understand a Swabian.

4783. pseudoerasmus - 4/28/2000 6:06:15 PM

It puzzles me a little that you first appear to think it strange, that Yiddish disappeared in Russia, to the point of surmising it unique, and then go on to put forward some - very probable, imo - reasons why minority languages in general are likely to vanish. Which latter position you then take to defend in the face of an alternative, or at least supplementary, explanation of suppression from the surroundings leading to or combining with self-censorship.

(Are people forbidden to evolve opinions in a matter of two days?)

Yes, I did think it strange and unique that Yiddish just disappeared in a poof from Russia/Ukraine/Belarus.

But the fact of the matter is that it did.

I am disinclined to believe that Stalinist antisemitism alone could account for it, just as I am incredulous that anti-German sentiments from WWII could account for the disappearance of German from among German-Americans.

So I gave a "theory" of why minority languages might disappear in #4765.

4784. stostosto - 4/28/2000 6:07:49 PM

Are you really sure about the mutual unintelligibility of Swabian and Silesian?

My great-grandfather travelled in all of German-speaking Europe as a blacksmith before WWI. He went all over Germany as well as Switzerland and Austria-Hungary. He knew standard German and was able to communicate everywhere.

4785. pseudoerasmus - 4/28/2000 6:10:35 PM

Stostosto, Germany right before WWI had seen literacy rise to massive levels, becoming the most educated country in Europe.

I know some Schwitzertütschi, and it is not intelligible to a speaker of Standard German.

4786. stostosto - 4/28/2000 6:15:37 PM

PE #4785

Okay, point taken. It's a question of when standard German had spread sufficiently.

I also take Ronski's earlier: "I don't believe anyone can understand a Swabian."

4787. Ronski - 4/28/2000 6:19:36 PM

The Jews I have seen immigrate to the U.S. in the last decade or so from Russia and Ukraine appear to speak no Yiddish. They certainly don't use it on the streets of Brooklyn.

This is decidedly different from those who came here in the early 1900s, all of whom used a form of Yiddish. (German Jews of the period, however, tended not to use it, but used German instead; Yiddish was considered low-rent, according to several extended family members.)

4788. pseudoerasmus - 4/28/2000 6:21:30 PM

But when I expressed amazement that Yiddish was not a completely dead language, somebody mentioned that it's still spoken in the USA.

4789. stostosto - 4/28/2000 6:23:03 PM

"low-rent"...?

---
Is Yiddish much more than just another German dialect?

4790. pseudoerasmus - 4/28/2000 6:23:10 PM

Why did the Bukharan Jews not lose their Persian despite living in the same USSR, despite being educated in Russian, and despite living in an ocean of Uzbeks (speakers of a Turkic language)? Did the Asian part of the USSR experience less antisemitism?

4791. pseudoerasmus - 4/28/2000 6:24:18 PM

Stostosto: where do you get the idea that Yiddish is a mere dialect of German? It's as much a separate language as the gibberish-patois you people speak.

4792. pseudoerasmus - 4/28/2000 6:27:00 PM

To boot, the Bukharan Jews were a much smaller community than the Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern Europe.

4793. stostosto - 4/28/2000 6:32:23 PM

Pseud
I don't have the idea about a great similarity between Yiddish and German from anywhere in particular. Probably mostly from words like 'putz' and 'schmuck' which are frequently flung about in Woody Allen movies and New York politics. While maybe not standard German, they could easily be dialect.

4794. pseudoerasmus - 4/28/2000 6:40:58 PM

Yes, but by that reasoning English might also be a dialect of German.

Anyway, two related languages, when written, always look more intelligible than they really are. But the spoken language is not. This is obvious with Portuguese: any speaker of Spanish can read Portuguese and understand 95% of it, but spoken Portuguese is totally unintelligible, sounds completely otherworldly, if you have only Spanish and never studied Portuguese.

4795. stostosto - 4/28/2000 6:50:46 PM

More on #4791:

And our "gibberish-patois" (?) is possibly not much further from standard German than switzerdütt, or many other dialects. By the middle of 19th century it's likely that many Danes, e.g. in Jutland spoke a dialect which was easier to comprehend for a Schleswiger or Hamburger than for a Copenhagener. There was a development in Denmark completely in parallel with the German language standardisation. Compulsive schooling was begun in 1813, I believee (rather earlier than in Germany), but at that time the kingdom comprised the German duchies of Schleswig and Holstein - plus I believe some other German parts. A sizeable portion of the population (I've read a third) are said to have been German speakers. But I think the linguistic border was not very clear-cut.

My understanding is (and I am no expert) that language didn't become a national issue until 1848 when the German parts' attempt at greater independence was quashed. This gave rise to a tidewave of nationalistic enthusiasm and breast-beating, and many of our most patriotic songs hail from that era. Of course, breast-beating was soon enough turned into a nagging minority complex when Bismarck's Prussians did the bad thing to us in 1864 and grabbed the German parts for his new Grossdeutschland - and then some. But that's a different story, if still a branch on the same stem.

4796. stostosto - 4/28/2000 6:53:43 PM

..er, I think "breast-beating" should be "breast-thumping" in my #4795.

4797. stostosto - 4/28/2000 6:54:41 PM

...er, make that CHEST-THUMPING.

!!!!!

4798. pseudoerasmus - 4/28/2000 6:54:45 PM

As I said to Stostosto during his very first week of the Fray....

I still think the inclusion of the Dansko-Prussian war in the chain of incidents leading to German unification is a conspiracy by Danes to insert themsevles into the history curricula of Western countries, in order to give a semblance of importance in world affairs that they lack.

4799. pseudoerasmus - 4/28/2000 6:55:38 PM

(the war with Denmark was hardly vital to German unification...)

4800. ScottLoar - 4/28/2000 6:55:52 PM

Breast-beating is lyrically and customarily correct.

4801. pseudoerasmus - 4/28/2000 6:57:06 PM

stostosto, don't you mean chest-slapping and breast-whipping?

4802. pseudoerasmus - 4/28/2000 7:01:10 PM

Stostosto, have you ever sat on a bus in Vienna and listened to the Viennese babbling? It's difficult to understand. But if you ask them something in standard German, they jump out of their Viennese dialect and make themselves completely comprehensible.

4803. stostosto - 4/28/2000 7:01:20 PM

And I still say, as I did then, - and still implore you to listen carefully -that we have never had conspirational relations with that purpose --- inserting ourselves into the historical curricula of Western countries.

Besides, if we were that bloody insignificant why couldn't they just leave us be??? Harrrumph!

4804. stostosto - 4/28/2000 7:05:00 PM

#4802
No, but I have sat on one of those - whatsitsname - rail trolley wagons (that's not its name), and had exactly that experience. But I've had similar experiences with dialect-speaking Danes.

4805. pseudoerasmus - 4/28/2000 7:07:43 PM

Because the Schleswig-Holsteiners were oppressed by the Danish autocratic yoke and their fellow Germans in the German confederation could hardly stand by watch some Danes impose their rule on Germans.

4806. pseudoerasmus - 4/28/2000 7:08:58 PM

Strassenbahnwagen?

Yes, I meant one of those, not a bus.

4807. stostosto - 4/28/2000 7:09:52 PM

Damn you Pseud. You are on to us. I am glad you are going to Urumqi.

4808. PincherMartin - 4/28/2000 7:39:02 PM

I have a lenghty cite that I would like to post on German Americans. Please do not post anything here during the next two minutes as my cite will run over a few posts and I will have it in blockquote, smaller-sized font.

4809. PincherMartin - 4/28/2000 7:41:31 PM

Whether rural or urban, Germans in the nineteenth century tended to retain their culture, as their predecessors had done earlier in the centuries. The German language could be heard spoken on the streets of Cincinnati or St. Louis and German-language newspapers appeared daily in 15 American cities. These daily newspapers ranged across the country, from Die New Yorker Staats-Zeitung to the Cincinnati Volksblatt, the Chicago Abendpost, the Louisville Anzeiger, and the Deutsche Zeitung in New Orleans. Approximately four-fifths of the entire foreign language press in America was German. There were innumerable German associations, whether gymnastic, musical, social, or literary. These existed not only in urban areas but even in such agricultural regions as the hill country of Texas.

4810. PincherMartin - 4/28/2000 7:42:07 PM
All in all, it was possible for many German Americans to live for generations in German enclaves, whether rural or urban, never having to venture into the English-speaking world for education, church, recreation, or marriage partners. Not all did so, by any means, for American-born generations were attracted toward the cultural mainstream of the United States, even as the massive inflow of new German immigrants kept alive the culture of Germany. However, even the cultural mainstream of America began to take on features once peculiar to Germans. These included not only such old country traditions as lager beer, cole slaw, delicatessen, and the Christmas tree, but also such German improvisations on American soil as oatmeal and those "all-American" foods deriving their names from German cities, frankfurters and hamburgers....

German immigration to the United States peaked in the decade of the 1880s, when more than 1.4 million arrived on American shores. By the first decade of the twentieth century, however, German immigration had fallen to less than a fourth of that. The pioneering struggles of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries gave way to very different kinds of adversity in the twentieth century. Economically, the rise of mas-production industry devalued and superseded many of the artisan skills among the German workers, including many crafts associated with horse-and-buggy transportation, shoemaking, and furniture production. The rise of the meat-packing industry reduced the role of the German butcher shops, as the rise of mass marketing in general through department stores and supermarkets likewise eclipsed the German speciality shopkeepers. The declining importance of family farms and the rise of mecanized, mass-production agriculture also could not help adversely affect the vast number of German family farmers scattered across many states.

4811. PincherMartin - 4/28/2000 7:42:26 PM
International political developments likewise had their impact on German Americans. The outbreak of the First World War in Europe in 1914 brought much condemnation of Germany in the United States. German Americans were adversely affected, in part because of a generalized hostility to Germans and German culture, and perhaps more so because German American spokesmen tended to justify the actions of their ancestral homeland, which was waging a war of aggression in Europe. When the United States ultimately joined the war against Germany, feelings ran higher still among Americans in general, though German Americans loyally served in the U.S. military forces and America's leading fighter pilot was of German ancestry -- Eddie Rickenbacker. Nevertheless, the German language was banished from many high school curricula, as German music was banished from concert halls. Some marriage ceremonies no longer used wedding marches by Mendelssohn or Wagner. German books were removed from library shelves and German newspapers were boycotted by advertisers and readers. While this anti-German hysteria did not reach the levels it reached in other countries, such as Russia, Brazil, or Australia, it was real enough and painful enough to German Americans. These attacks also hastened the demise of many German American associations. Some of these organizations simply dropped any reference to Germany in their titles, as the Germania Life Insurance Company of New York changed its name to the Guardian Life Insurance Company, for example.

While the anti-German hostility subsided quickly after the war, it nevertheless contributed to the already existing trend of declining cultural and social cohesion among the Germans in the United States.

Source: Migrations and Cultures: A World View by Thomas Sowell, 1996.

4812. PincherMartin - 4/28/2000 7:43:28 PM

Okay, you're free to post now.

4813. Seguine - 4/28/2000 11:21:03 PM

"But when I expressed amazement that Yiddish was not a completely dead language, somebody mentioned that it's still spoken in the USA."

Where? Crown Heights? I'd be somewhat surprised.

If Yiddish is still spoken here, as a language and not a smattering of clubby expressions, my bet is that it will be for all intents and purposes dead within another 20-30 years.

4814. ScottLoar - 4/29/2000 9:09:47 AM

Compare the number of Yiddish theaters (and the archive of Yiddish songs and scripts) and newspapers from the US of the '30s to that today. What was once a language has all but disappeared save in that "smattering of clubby expressions".

4815. ScottLoar - 4/29/2000 9:14:18 AM

Knowing some may be tempted to remark that theater in the US has declined I am at pains to explain the decline of legitimate theatre does not reflect the popularity of the language for a viable language would be expressed in other art forms.

4816. Seguine - 4/29/2000 12:51:38 PM

"What was once a language has all but disappeared save in that "smattering of clubby expressions". "

Loar, I should emphasize I was referring to the US. I don't know whether Yiddish is already gone in Israel or if there are enclaves where it's spoken. (Consult the scarce Pike.) Moreover, it's possible Yiddish is still spoken by some orthodox sect or other; I just don't know. As of maybe 10 years ago I heard it spoken in the NY garment district. But it was pretty well mixed with Hebrew, the speakers may not have been Americans, so it's hard to say to what extent the usage wasn't equivalent to the way Yiddish is used by English speakers today (i.e., as a reservoir for certain expressions).

You're right to note that there used to be a thriving Yiddish theatre, which no longer exists. There were also several Yiddish newspapers in NY alone.

4817. ScottLoar - 4/29/2000 12:55:07 PM

Seguine, now I must emphasize to you that I was referring to the US, and so my examples were emphatic.

4818. Seguine - 4/29/2000 1:16:53 PM

Hmm, I just realized you already mentioned Yiddish newspapers, Loar. Inattentive of me.

4819. uzmakk - 4/29/2000 1:22:50 PM

My best high school friend's grandfather owned a Yiddish theatre in Florida.

4820. uzmakk - 4/29/2000 1:32:11 PM

I just finished mowing the lawn, I have poured a golden monkey into my fine crystal mug which reads --

Mit guten Freunden:
Das einzig wahre Warsteiner

Oi, life is good in America.

The only thing my back yard is missing is the Snodgrassian Teak. What a disappointment.

4821. uzmakk - 4/29/2000 1:34:13 PM

The Season of the Hamburger is upon us and one man stands in the way of perfection.

4822. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/29/2000 1:34:31 PM

The Forward, a Yiddish-language newspaper is still published in New York (It has been published for 103 years, having celebrated its anniversary last week), complete with an on-line edition. As a sign of its decreasing Yiddish-speaking readership, it launched an English version in 1990, and a Russian-language edition in 1995. At one point, the Yiddish-only newspaper had a daily circulation of 250,000. These days, it has become a weekly, with separate editions in Yiddish, Russian, and English.

4823. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/29/2000 1:36:12 PM

Uzmakk:
Soon. soon.

4824. uzmakk - 4/29/2000 1:39:06 PM

Who is this man? I ask for the name of distributor in Philadelphia and get skwat. Too busy? I don't think sooooooo.

4825. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/29/2000 1:40:39 PM

Better yet, Uzmakk, write to this address for your teak. I have informed them about you.

4826. uzmakk - 4/29/2000 1:42:34 PM

Soon, soon? The seasoon is upon us, Snoddy.

4827. uzmakk - 4/29/2000 1:44:21 PM

For god's sake, Irv, thanks.

4828. uzmakk - 4/29/2000 1:49:36 PM

You realize, Irv, that it means a lot to me to have Snodgrassian teak. Besides, the selection can't be beat. Beautiful designs.

4829. jonesatlaw - 4/29/2000 11:02:03 PM

Pseudo-My great grandfather was a implement and harness shop owner who read, wrote and spoke High German. My mother was most emphatic about this, and there seems to be some family pride to the matter. The siblings that married Germans were the younger ones and they did not speak German. Neither of their spouses were fluent in German, although I think that they may have been able to understand it and speak it a bit. My great uncle was notable linguistically only for his ability to speak pidgin english after he moved to Hawaii in the 1940's.

4830. pseudoerasmus - 4/29/2000 11:24:58 PM

Jonesatlaw, if you don't mind, please answer the following questions.

(1) when did your great-grandfather arrive in the USA and from where in Germany?

(2) what was the nationality of his wife, and, if German, where in Germany was she from?

(3) Please list the first names of their children (just to keep them straight), approximately when they were born, and which one(s) spoke German and which didn't.

(4) Name the children which married fluent speakers of German.

4831. Seguine - 4/30/2000 12:03:01 AM

Wow, Irvgrass, I didn't realize the Forward was still published in Yiddish at all.

4832. PincherMartin - 4/30/2000 12:40:19 AM

I'm surprised that no one mentioned the Sowell cite that I provided. Perhaps it was too long and not direct enough for everyone to read through it. If Sowell is right, however, the decline of the German language in the States was probably happening before WWI rolled around and was mainly related to the drop in German immigration from its high point in the 1880s. While the actions taken against Germans during the war strongly contributed to this disuse in German language usage, the trend was already established by the drop in German immigration

4833. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/30/2000 3:59:46 AM

Pinch:
I didn't mention it because I wasn't involved in the discussion. But I found the Sowell passage informative, well-balanced, and relevant, and completely in line with the principles of language use decline I am familiar with. As you pointed out, WWI was a factor in the decline of German language use among immigrant communities, but there were other important factors.

4834. pseudoerasmus - 4/30/2000 4:03:13 AM

What do you think of my comments, Irving?

4835. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/30/2000 4:07:13 AM

PE:
I agreed with your comments, and I think Sowell clearly supports what you said. WWI is but one of the factors involved, as I recall you mentioned. Other factors were more important. and the loss of German in the immigrant community (indeed, the eventual loss of all immigrant languages in the USA) is inevitable and entirely predictable.

4836. IrvingSnodgrass - 4/30/2000 4:16:17 AM

By the way, PE, I wish you a memorable and enjoyable journey. I hope you have a chance to let us know of your experiences while on the road. You'll be missed around here.

4837. uzmakk - 4/30/2000 12:28:18 PM

PM:

I read your Sowell post at least twice. Didn't comment on it because I am here mainly to get my teak furniture.(Thanks, Irv, have sent e-mail.) But the season of the hamburger is derived directly from your Sowell post. I ignore no one, least of all you, PM.

4838. uzmakk - 4/30/2000 12:30:36 PM

And a good journey to you, pseudo. I look forward to your return.

4839. uzmakk - 5/1/2000 6:26:38 AM

Read Sowell's column on pride and self-reliance this morning. Think I will order Belloc's The Servile State.

4840. uzmakk - 5/1/2000 6:27:22 AM

Ta.

4841. tmachine - 5/1/2000 11:18:27 AM

Yiddish is still alive and well among the fundamentalist Orthodox sects in Brooklyn. I don't know what the number of Yiddish speakers is, but I do know that the Hasidic population is growing, not declining. You can hear it on the street (and see it everywhere on store signs, etc.) in Borough Park, Midwood and Crown Heights.

4842. Ronski - 5/1/2000 11:41:37 AM

An example of how the decline in German immigration led to the virtual demise of German as a spoken language in America is New York City. In the Yorkville section, there is now hardly a trace of its history as an enormous German-speaking neighborhood right up until WW2.

Germans, and other descendents of northern Europeans, fled American cities after WW2 to the suburbs. Because northern Europe was peaceful and back on its feet economically quite soon after the war, there were few economic and political incentives to cause people to seek their fortunes in America as they had in previous decades.

With no replenishment of fresh immigrants, places like Yorkville, or, for another example, the Norwegian section of Brooklyn -- Bay Ridge -- simply changed their character, either becoming expensive urban real estate as in the case of Yorkville, or the home to new immigrants from poorer countries in southern Europe, Asia, and Latin America.

4843. PincherMartin - 5/1/2000 1:59:51 PM

I have to thank Irving Snodgrass for his recommendation of The Origin of Language: Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue by Merritt Ruhlen. It was a superb book, one of the best I have read, comparable in its effect on me to Guns, Germs, and Steel.

Ruhlen accomplishes a great deal in just 200 pages. He introduces the reader to the methods used by linguists to classify languages and, indeed, has the reader do the classification (in a shorthand fashion on a convenient set-up) on all the major regions of the world by themselves. He also introduces the reader to the current state of comparative linguistics by stating what is agreed upon and what is not. Finally, by introducing the topic of where there is debate in the field of comparative linguistics, Ruhlen makes an argument for where he stands on the controversy of a mother tongue for the world's languages. And it is here that the genius of his book becomes apparent. By first introducing the reader to the basic techniques of comparative linguistics, Ruhlen has made the reader a sort of amateur linguist, one who is better able to follow Ruhlen's arguments in the end. In fact, Ruhlen does such a good job clearly making his arguments that I finished the book wondering how any reasonable person could disagree with him, let alone a linguist. Since I'm so unfamiliar with the field, I should probably distrust this feeling, but there it is.

Finally, after reading about the contributions of Joseph Greenberg to the filed of linguistics, I'm sure that if Ruheln is only half-right about how important this man's accomplishments are, then he is still one of the great scientists of the twentieth century.

This is a great and important book. I can't recommend it highly enough. Even if you have no idea what the field of linguistics is about, you will enjoy reading this book.

4844. PincherMartin - 5/1/2000 2:00:16 PM

Uzmakk and Irv --

Thanks for your replies. I didn't know if my long cite of Sowell had confused more than it had enlightened because it didn't go directly (in two or three sentences) to the heart of the debate.

4845. PelleNilsson - 5/1/2000 2:13:23 PM

PM

I just now ordered Ruhlen's book from WH Smith.

4846. PincherMartin - 5/1/2000 2:18:29 PM

Pelle --

You won't be disappointed. Because of this book, I'm looking forward to reading more of Irv and Hashke's recommendations in this field that they gave to me sometime ago. I also bought Ruhlen's book on Classification.

4847. IrvingSnodgrass - 5/1/2000 2:42:37 PM

Pinch:
I'm really glad you enjoyed Ruhlen's book. It took me a long time to accept his premises (a few years, in fact), as I had to undo years of learning, but everything he says checks out pretty well, and I have tested his methods and theories continually in the 6 years since I read the book.

I think at times he goes a bit too far in generalizing. but I only really have a problem with Chapter 5, on global cognates. Nevertheless, I think he's right about the facts. I only question the evidence.

I would recommend you follow up by reading the works of Cavalli-Sforza, who, while he is not a linguist, has done work which confirms and extends Ruhlen's (and Greenberg's).

Ruhlen's book on Classification is a favorite of mine as well, and I am certain you will enjoy it.

Greenberg is a genius. I recently ordered his new book on the Eurasiatic languages, and I look forward to reading it.

There are a number of scholars who are doing this ground-breaking work in a number of related fields, and doing it in a way which is accessible to laymen. I would include Ruhlen, Greenberg, Cavalli-Sforza, Diamond, and Pinker in this category.

4848. PelleNilsson - 5/1/2000 2:57:17 PM

Irv

Which of Pinker's books should I start with?

4855. IrvingSnodgrass - 5/2/2000 10:03:11 AM

Sorry about the html screw-up above, which was my fault. Here are the posts I removed while clearing it up (the other posts removed are not worth saving):

4849. IrvingSnodgrass - 5/2/00 2:08:41 AM
Pelle:
Easy Question. Without a doubt, I recommend The Language Instinct.

4850. DanDillon - 5/2/00 2:20:24 PM
And I suggest steering clear of his latest Words and Rules, a protracted treatise on regular and irregular English verbs. It seems to me that a more level-headed treatment of the morphology of English might have better served both his reading public and the scholarly community. [shrug]

4856. PelleNilsson - 5/2/2000 10:07:02 AM

test

4857. PelleNilsson - 5/2/2000 10:08:54 AM

Interesting. Before I posted the home page said that the last post was 4855 by Irv.

4858. IrvingSnodgrass - 5/2/2000 10:14:26 AM

Read my post, Pelle, and you'll discover what happened.

4859. PelleNilsson - 5/2/2000 10:19:30 AM

I see it now. I didn't think of looking for #4855 before #4850.

4860. PelleNilsson - 5/2/2000 10:24:23 AM

By the way, I ordered Pinker's book. It's in reprint as of March at 5.45 sterling plus handling.

4861. DanDillon - 5/2/2000 10:41:52 AM

Pelle,

You're bound to reap great insight from Pinker's scholarship. He has a wonderful way of explaining his assertions, each one a pleasant and satisfying explanation for what we say and how we say it (physiologically, bot stylistically).

Interesting story: While I was cooped up at my apartment on the north side of Chicago, frantically scouring books and hammering keys to complete my master's degree, Anne sauntered off to the Printer's Row Book Fair. (It's always held in late spring, mid-May usually.) I instructed her to pick up anything remotely linguistic and thumb through it, not for the purpose of finishing my M.A. but simply for my own pleasure. Several hours later, she returned with an armful of books, one of which was a first edition of The Language Instinct. I had never even heard of Pinker at the time and was thrilled to see such a tome. Wouldn't you know it, I set aside my tractate on Theodor Adorno and his dialectic of the Enlightenment and began perusing Pinker. I was rapt. If memeory serves, I ended up citing Pinker's book once or twice in the very essay I had been writing at the time. That was nearly three years ago. Of course, my now-wife had no idea whatsoever that she was procuring such a mind-bending work. Ah, sweet memory.

4862. PelleNilsson - 5/2/2000 10:48:43 AM

Dan

What a fantastic coincidence. Just today we had a seminar on that very text by Horkheimer & Adorno.

4863. Dusty - 5/2/2000 2:41:30 PM

Talking to Strangers

A longish, but interesting article touching on a number of subjects, but primarily about translation. Along the way, brief mentions of Turing and Babel Fish and Catepiller Service Manuals and Pinker and Alice in Wonderland.

4864. DanDillon - 5/2/2000 3:55:17 PM

Pelle,

Too weird indeed. What did you think about the seminar? Do you side with Adorno and Horkheimer? Was the Enlightenment simply a new swath of wool pulled over the eyes of those stupid enough to buy in? Or did it provide a legitimate system of beliefs and new theories worthy of being tested?

4865. PelleNilsson - 5/2/2000 4:38:14 PM

Dan

I wouldn't dream of engaging in a discussion of H&A with someone who has written a Master's thesis on them. They are not immediately accessible, to put it mildly. The course I'm taking relates to the philosopy of science and one of the themes is the limits of knowledge. The Enlightenment denies that there are such limits except temporal ones, i.e. there are things we don't understand now, but given time we will. What we came up with in the seminar was that H&A argues the opposite: that there are things that are important to us although they cannot be expressed in rational Enlightenment terms - such as the arts.

It is difficult to understand H&A but they write wonderfully well and their critique of how our civilisation has developed is au point even if I don't share their deep pessimism.

I fear that I have now revealed myself as being shallow and naive, but so be it. It's not that easy to be confronted with H&A after a rather perfunctory one-hour introduction.

4866. PelleNilsson - 5/2/2000 5:20:41 PM

Didn't we discuss dialects, etc. in France a while ago? Interesting map:

4867. Ronski - 5/2/2000 5:24:06 PM

Nice map, but aren't the Vlaamsch speakers going to resent being called Dutch?

4868. ilyavinarsky - 5/2/2000 6:45:18 PM

According to E J Hobsbawm's Age of Revolution, on the eve of the French Revolution, only 50% of Frenchmen spoke French.

4869. DanDillon - 5/2/2000 7:47:25 PM

Fair enough, Pelle. And you haven't exposed yourself as anything, except perhaps brave.

4870. dusty - 5/2/2000 9:05:02 PM

PelleNilsson

I saw that map this morning. Interesting article.

4871. ilyavinarsky - 5/2/2000 10:53:19 PM

Is Alsatian and Swiss German the same language?

4872. IrvingSnodgrass - 5/2/2000 11:09:50 PM

The first thing I noticed about the language map of France is the absence of Gascon, a language of southern France with 250,000 speakers. One of the professors when I was in school had done her PhD research on Gascon, so the language is firmly imprinted in my memory (I sat through several courses in subjects like Sociolinguistics and Historical Linguistics where a majority of the examples were drawn from Gascon).

It appears that Gascon has been categorized as "Occitan" on the map, along with several other dialects, which are not mutually intelligible.

For a true picture of the language situation in France, I recommend the Ethnologue entry on France. The numbers in Ethnologue are probably more accurate (the map underrepresents Breton, and overrepresents "Occitan," for example).

Here are the major languages of France, according to Ethnologue:

French (51 million)
Alsatian (1.5 million)
Italian (1 million)
Portuguese (750,000)
Breton (500,000)
Corsican (281,000)
Catalan (260,000)
Gascon (250,000)
Provençal (250,000)
Dutch (90,000)
Basque (two varieties) (76,200)

There are a number of dialects for which no numbers are given by Ethnologue, due to a fractured dialect situation, and I assume these are included with "Occitan" on the map. These include Auvergnat, Languedocien, and Limousin.

4873. ilyavinarsky - 5/3/2000 1:58:22 PM

Can somebody explain to me: was D'Artagnan a Basque?

4874. PelleNilsson - 5/3/2000 3:32:15 PM

Ilya

Why should he have been?

4875. ilyavinarsky - 5/3/2000 6:24:54 PM

A Native American language is now taught in a local hiskool

4876. sakonige - 5/3/2000 6:38:05 PM

Ilya, did you notice, this man Duane Niatum, doesn't look much like those women? It's impolite, but I couldn't help notice.

4877. ilyavinarsky - 5/3/2000 6:46:39 PM

I don't think he looks like these women at all. He looks very much like my Telugu-speaking supervisor, though.

[what language is that, sakonige? and where do people speak it?]

And my supervisor's father is a teacher of another language, which is distantly related to Russian.

[which would be what?]

4878. ilyavinarsky - 5/3/2000 6:47:55 PM

I don't know if the Belarusian language really exists, but for the past few days I've been downloading pieces of this rock opera in Belarusian, and enjoying it very much. As a speaker of Russian and Ukrainian, I understand 95% of it.

4879. sakonige - 5/3/2000 6:50:46 PM

[what language is that, sakonige? and where do people speak it?]

I could do a search, if it matters. You could do a search, if it matters to you.

[which would be what?]

Whatever you are talking about, I suppose.

4880. Ronski - 5/4/2000 11:24:05 AM

ilya,

Alsation and Swiss German are related. It is interesting to note that when Charlemagne's kingdom was divided among his three heirs, both Alsace and what became the Swiss federation were in the middle kingdom, Lothar's, if I have my history right.

4881. ilyavinarsky - 5/4/2000 5:40:51 PM

Somebody is trying to revive the Old Belarusian language.

4882. PelleNilsson - 5/8/2000 3:49:27 PM

This is from the Economist:

Death threats to white farmers continue, as to beatings to their staff.

I would have written 'beatings of'. Am I wrong?

4883. marjoribanks - 5/8/2000 4:52:54 PM

Yes. You're also wrong in your transcription of the line.

----

Actually,"of" wouldn't be wrong per se. It's a whole lot less English though.

4884. Ronski - 5/8/2000 5:20:07 PM

"To" is correct to the extent that one can say "a beating was administered to someone."

But in the sentence in the Economist story, "of" sounds better to my American ear.

4885. PelleNilsson - 5/8/2000 5:35:33 PM

So here is the correct quote

Death threats to white farmers continue, as do beatings to their
staff.

Ronski

When I read it I wondered if there was some kind of suppressed "administered" involved. A clumsy example

'as does the suffering of their staff'

'as does the imparting of suffering to their staff'

4886. ilyavinarsky - 5/8/2000 11:29:50 PM

I don't speak Belarusian, but in the last few days I've been listening to Belarusian rock, and enjoying it greatly.

4888. sakonige - 5/9/2000 1:40:51 AM

Ilya, in your exploration of Pacific Northwest American Indian languages, you might enjoy visiting the
Yakama Library, the Yakama Museum.

4889. sakonige - 5/9/2000 1:43:25 AM

Yakama Library and...

4890. ilyavinarsky - 5/9/2000 8:02:42 PM

I just searched for "Paul Wexler" on www.amazon.com. The man seems to be full of weird ideas. I know Slavic languages, Slavic languages are friends of mine, and Modern Hebrew and Yiddish are no Slavic languages!

4891. ilyavinarsky - 5/9/2000 8:07:53 PM

An abstract of a report by Paul Wexler

4892. PelleNilsson - 5/10/2000 1:16:05 PM

To sto with the compliments of Swedish dairy company Arla - the rverse side of a milk carton I just emptied:

For the non-Herringistas: the text is a Danish children's poem. Pity Hashke is not here. Anyone know his whereabouts? In any case, the kid is happy that he has his shadow with him all day but by night it is gone.

4894. PelleNilsson - 5/10/2000 1:22:41 PM

Double post with heavy graphics!

Excuse me, I have to self-flagellate a bit.

4895. IrvingSnodgrass - 5/10/2000 1:35:31 PM

Pelle:
I've fixed it. No need to self-flagellate (unless, of course, that is what you're into).

4896. PelleNilsson - 5/10/2000 3:45:18 PM

Thanks Irv!

4897. stostosto - 5/10/2000 6:13:32 PM

Pelle
How sweet of Arla to have Danish children poems on their cartons. Halfdan Rasmussen is the old master of this genre with his exquisitely elegant rhymes and often extremely funny and imaginative absurd turns. I was brought up on poems like

Norske nisser nyser ikke;
når det blæser koldt fra nord,
låser de med nissenøgler
deres nissenæsebor.

And

Citroner er sure og gule
cigarer er fulde af røg
Charlotte er cyklet til Thule
med to kasesr øl og et løg
- så hun har nok tabt sig en smule.

Now I do the same to my kids - with great success.

4898. hashke - 5/11/2000 4:19:08 PM

Pelle:

Thanks for asking! I've only had time for some lurking in recent weeks. The milk carton verse is härlig!

Fra: Barnerim o regler.
Gåsmorvers
Bokklubbens barn

1,2, Snör min sko
3,4, Kom Elvire
5,6, Tegn en heks
7,8, Ris til en rotte
9,10, Höna er blid
11,12, Spa i mold
13,14, Piker i porten
15,16, Piker ved peisen
17,18, Piker om natten
19,20, Mat til en due.

4899. IrvingSnodgrass - 5/12/2000 2:50:15 AM

The following is copied from The Quiz Thread, as I think we can give this subject better treatment here. I thank Cart for bringing up this interesting topic.

5759. EricCartman - 5/12/00 6:31:00 AM
Irv Message # 5751:

Ever heard of the "Great English Vowel Shift"?

No. That must have happened last summer, while I was busy campaigning for President. Seriously, no, and a brief explanation or link would be appreciated.

If you think pronunciation mirrors spelling, check out your own pronunciation of "comfortable," [kumfterbel]....

Actually I pronounce it exactly the way it's spelled. But I understand your point, and to an extent I agree with it. I simply don't understand the transposition factor, or the adding of "phantom" sounds, as in "warsh".

There's no linguistic reason why "ask" should not become "aks" over time.

Again, I honestly do not understand why this is so. I mean, you can't get any more straightforward than "ask". A-S-K. How does one look at this short simple word, and think "aks"? And how would such a thing come to be expected by linguists? And even if expected, how and why would it ever rise above the linguistic "rank" of mere phonological error? This is what I am simply unable to grok. It does not make sense to me.

I realize that languages are constantly evolving, but it seems that the most important part of that phase is the addition of contemporaneous words, phrases, and expressions. Not the alteration of spelling and pronunciation due to regional proclivities. That just seems very odd to me, and tends to defeat the purpose of instruction in a standardized orthographic system.

4900. IrvingSnodgrass - 5/12/2000 3:22:03 AM

Cart:
I was all set to write a detailed response, and I discovered I don't need to! The following FAQ page, from The Linguistic Society of America says everything I had planned to say, and more.

Is English Changing?

Although I might add, that if languages didn't change their pronunciation, we'd all speak the same language today. Languages such as French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese are all descended in a clear path from Latin, over the past 2000 years or so. Are these people wrong? Should they still be speaking Ancient Latin? Language changes.

I also might add that spelling is a servant of the language, not the other way around. The way a word is spelled reflects its pronunciation at a particular time and place, but doesn't lock that word into a spelling or pronunciation forever.

For more on the Great English Vowel Shift:

The Great Vowel Shift

Great Vowel Shift chart

And, guess what I found? Here is some info on the ongoing "California Vowel Shift" whereby the "aw" sound becomes [a] and the [uw] sound (as in "moon") is becoming a high mid vowel (like a schwa on steroids). The latter shift is less noticeable since it is not using a sound which already exists in English:

The California Vowel Shift

All in all, a very productive half-hour on the search engines.

4901. DanDillon - 5/12/2000 9:06:20 AM

...you can't get any more straightforward than "ask". A-S-K. How does one look at this short simple word, and think "aks"? And how would such a thing come to be expected by linguists? And even if expected, how and why would it ever rise above the linguistic "rank" of mere phonological error?

And you can't get any more starightforward than "bird," right? Well, guess what that word looks like in OE... bridde. As Irv mentioned, there is a precedent for change with all of the examples you express surprise at. Spelling, however, has become one of the highly standardized aspects of language, thanks mainly to the proliferation of the printing press. Before Gutenberg, though, authors, writers, and scribes would spell any one word a number of various ways. I haven't done any research on this, but perhaps those early variations in orthography account, in part, for variations in pronunciation, regional and otherwise.

One of the primary reasons for a word shifting from "ask" to "aks" or from "bridde" to "bird" is ease of articulation. The lazy mouth, paradoxically, often becomes the dominant mouth, and a word changes over time into its easier manifestation. It's simply easier to articulate the sound "bird" than it is "bridde." No initial consonant cluster to mess with and the intermediate vowel allows one to slide more effortlessly into the /r/. In fact, one need not even fully form the /r/ in its current position; as part of a consonant cluster though, one would have to pronounce it more fully. The same goes for "ask." It requires more effort to move from /s/ to /k/ than it does to move from /k/ to /s/. Try repeating both veriosn aloud and see for yourself which word is more effortlessly articulated.

Ease of articulation accounts for kids saying things like "busketti" for "spaghetti," and adults saying "warmpth" for "warmth" and "athelete" for "athlete." No one is immune. Fascinating stuff.

4902. tmachine - 5/12/2000 12:01:24 PM

A Robert Louis Stevenson poem from "A Child's Garden of Verses" that I used to love when I was little:

XVIII
My Shadow

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.

The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow--
Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;
For he sometimes shoots up taller than an india-rubber ball,
And he sometimes goes so little that there's none of him at all.

He hasn't got a notion of how children ought to play,
And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.
He stays so close behind me, he's a coward you can see;
I'd think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!

One morning, very early, before the sun was up,
I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,
Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.

4903. tmachine - 5/12/2000 12:04:31 PM

And another one that was particularly poignant because so much part of my own experience. I've found with my own children that (a) I let them stay up too late so it wasn't often still daylight when they went to bed and (b) At New York's more southerly latitude it gets dark earlier in summer than in England where I grew up...

4904. tmachine - 5/12/2000 12:05:52 PM

Sorry--forgot to post the poem!

I
Bed in Summer

In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light.
In summer quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.

I have to go to bed and see
The birds still hopping on the tree,
Or hear the grown-up people's feet
Still going past me in the street.

And does it not seem hard to you,
When all the sky is clear and blue,
And I should like so much to play,
To have to go to bed by day?

4905. PelleNilsson - 5/12/2000 2:22:25 PM

A naive question. We read that in Chaucer's time so-and-so was pronounced so-and-so. How do we know?

4906. hashke - 5/12/2000 3:22:26 PM

Pelle:

You asked of my whereabouts and got an answer and a posting. The resulting silence suggests that we are playing musical Pelle here.

:-))

4907. hashke - 5/12/2000 3:23:39 PM

Irv:

The new SSILA url is www.ssila.org

The above link doesn't work, at least for me.

4908. DanDillon - 5/12/2000 3:57:26 PM

Wonderful poems, tmac. Make me feel like a kid again.

Pelle,
We read that in Chaucer's time so-and-so was pronounced so-and-so. How do we know?

Well, the wax cylinders we have, of course!

In all seriousness, your question is not a naive one. Often the most seemingly elementary problem reveals great, eternal truths. This one, actually, deals with nothing more than poetic rhyme schemes. Chaucer wrote in verse that rhymed in a particular fashion. We would know the pronunciations of certain ME words based on how they were paired in his verse. In fact, the Great Vowel Shift that Irv and cart have been discussing stems from research into this very thing.

I don't have my resources here at work with me, but I can offer you a detailed breakdown of ME pronunciation and how it got that way if you'd like.

4909. PelleNilsson - 5/12/2000 4:37:45 PM

Dan

Thank you very much. That was a new insight to me. Of course one can deduce pronounciation from rhyme schemes. But I never thought about it before.

4910. PelleNilsson - 5/12/2000 4:45:09 PM

hashke

Please don't scold me. I don't really understand poetry and I seldom comment.

Is the Project coming to fruition?

4911. stostosto - 5/12/2000 5:05:58 PM

hashke #4898 - Pelle

Everything in that Norwegian rhyme is readily understandable to a Dane. Everything except "11, 12, spa i mold" on which I haven't got a clue. Whatever does it mean???

4912. stostosto - 5/12/2000 5:53:58 PM

An attempt at an English version of Halfdan Rasmussen's milk carton rhyme:

My shadow walks
and loves to wear
my shoes and it's
so nice to share

It follows me
from early dawn
it's sometimes short
and sometimes long

But when I sleep
I'm not aware
the slightest shadow
of it's there

4913. hashke - 5/12/2000 6:36:26 PM

Pelle:

Nonono, I wasn't scolding, only kidding (another little bit of humor gone askew) and not referring to poetry, but to the Norwegian 'Regle'.

Gottseidank, the Project is nigh finished, and I hope soon to hold in my hand the book. Tålamod!

4914. hashke - 5/12/2000 7:15:57 PM

sto:

Sorry, I didn't see your post until now.

Spa i mold=spade in soil

4915. EricCartman - 5/12/2000 9:01:48 PM

Irv Message # 4900:

Thanks for the links, especially the ones on the Great English Vowel Shift, which sounds like what happens to someone after eating too much limey cuisine. Very interesting.

Anyway, the first link had me and then lost me toward the end, with its complete reluctance to evaluate even teen slang as any lesser of a form of English than the the standardized form. I'm not suggesting that rankings of regional offshoots be composed, establishing some sort of weird pecking order within the category of dislectic English. But at the same time, I don't see the point in legitimizing things which are clearly caused by inattention to the orthographic standard, such as "aks", or spelling "opera" with a "y".

It seems that many of these things are caused, pure and simple, by sheer inacquaintance with much in the way of printed material. You don't hear well-read or -educated people saying "aks". This is especially borne out in the "teen talk" mentioned in the link, where "she goes", "I'm like", and "he's all" swirl in an inchoate format with null placeholders such as "you know" and "I mean". (Or the big one, "You know what I mean?".) It's like, you know, a generation weaned on, like, Dawson's Creek and stuff? Furshirr, as we say in Valley Girl-speak.

By that standard, Pig Latin is a language in its own right.

4916. EricCartman - 5/12/2000 9:09:50 PM

Dillon Message # 4901:

Ease of articulation accounts for kids saying things like "busketti" for "spaghetti,"....

Yeah, that's exactly the feeling I get when I hear "aks" or "athalete". It's cute coming out of a four-year-old, but when I hear an adult say it, I start to wonder. And I see no need to devolve the standard for perfectly easy words to four-year-old level. Most of us grow out of that, we learn to read, we learn to speak clearly. This sort of thing is on a par with the increasingly common (and inexplicable) trend of people abbreviating et cetera as "ect.".

Otherwise, why bother having an orthographic standard in the first place? Mind you, I am not speaking at all of new words, expressions, idioms or anything like that. I am specifically speaking of the basic building blocks of phonology and orthography -- spelling and pronunciation. These blocks are not terribly difficult to learn or utilize.

4917. DanDillon - 5/13/2000 9:16:48 AM

cart,

Spelling is one of the most reslient aspects of language, since there is an authoritative reference source for standardization. This does not mean, however, that it is entirely resistent to change. (Consider British spellings of certain words that have filtered into American English, and vice versa!) Also, there are societies, organizations, clubs, committees and the like lobbying for the orthographic simplification of English at this very moment. (This is a fun one, too.)

4918. IrvingSnodgrass - 5/13/2000 11:37:24 AM

Cart:
That which is considered the standardized form of any language is just a dialect which gained power through historical accident. There is no ruling body which adjudicates on language change, establishing what is allowed and what isn't. The simple fact is that languages change. There's even a term for language which stops changing. It is called a dead language.

Languages change through the people who use and speak them, and the masses who use any language don't care a whit about the printed word.

If the teen terms which aggravate you ever become standard in English, it will only be because a majority of users feel they serve a useful purpose in communicating. Prescribing what one can or cannot do or what is or isn't "correct" is completely futile tilting at windmills.

But at the same time, I don't see the point in legitimizing things which are clearly caused by inattention to the orthographic standard, such as "aks", or spelling "opera" with a "y".

Do you say "bird" or "bridde"? If you use the former to indicate a winged creature, you are guilty of accepting the legitimization of something clearly caused by inattention to orthographic standard.

The fact of the matter is that orthographic standard means less than nothing to users of a language. A spelling reflects how a word was once pronounced at a particular place in time. Nothing more.

Does it bother you that people no longer pronounce the "k" in "knight" and "knife"? Do you lose sleep over the fact that we don't pronounce the "gh" any longer in "though" and "taught"? And what is that "oe" doing representing an "oo" sound in shoe?! Too much inattention to spelling standards!

4919. IrvingSnodgrass - 5/13/2000 11:45:26 AM

Otherwise, why bother having an orthographic standard in the first place?

To make written communication easier among speakers of disparate dialects. The written language is the last place to incorporate changes to the spoken language, usually reacting long after a word or usage has become widely-used in the spoken language.

And that is how it should be. Most spoken usages never do catch on, and it would be madness to be continually revising the written language.

English has been largely frozen in the spelling current 500 years ago. It doesn't cause too many difficulties. Other languages have a much harder time of it: written Arabic bears very little relation to spoken Arabic and is usually considered a separate language altogether, as it was frozen in the dialect spoken in the southern Arabian peninsula 1400 years ago.

But, even with English, new innovations in spelling and usage eventually find their way into the written language. If they didn't, eventually we would suffer the same fate as Arabic.

4920. CalGal - 5/13/2000 12:17:46 PM

Irv,

Neat link about the California vowel shift, but I'm surprised that it's only considered 10+ years old. I don't remember a time when I didn't pronounce "caught" and "cot" the same way, and I'm far too old to have been in high school (or college) in 87.

Pelle,

Actually, we had an example of the rhyming/pronunciation issue here in this thread, when we wrote limericks. I wrote one that revealed that I pronounce your name incorrectly unless I take several seconds to think about it. And Sto's limerick about my name revealed the different ways we pronounced "banal".

4921. IrvingSnodgrass - 5/13/2000 12:25:02 PM

Cal:
Yeah, that's weird. I was told about the California vowel shift when I studied linguistics in the 70s.

Maybe the process of fronting was only defined 10 years ago or something. But it's definitely older than the past 10 years. I'd guess it had its roots at least 50 years ago.

4922. JudithAtHome - 5/13/2000 12:26:12 PM

CalGal:

How do you pronounce Pelles name? I've always said it as Pell-e.

4923. IrvingSnodgrass - 5/13/2000 12:33:35 PM

Seeing Judith here reminds me: I should look for a link on the Texas Vowel Shift, in which short i and short e have merged (pin and pen). I saw a friend of mine today who left Texas 30 years ago and has made great (and largely successful) efforts to overcome his accent, but he still can't say these sounds as two separate sounds.

4924. JudithAtHome - 5/13/2000 12:41:03 PM

Irv:

People often tell me I don't sound like a Texan and I thank them for the compliment.

So, how do we say Pelle?

4925. IrvingSnodgrass - 5/13/2000 1:06:51 PM

Judith:
I'm no expert on Swedish phonology. I would guess it's either "pell-uh" (with a schwa-like sound at the end) or "pell-ay" (like the soccer star). But I'm sure Pelle will let us know.

4926. JudithAtHome - 5/13/2000 1:08:35 PM

Thanks Irv....I'll check back tomorrow to see what he says! Or writes, rather....

4927. CalGal - 5/13/2000 1:08:57 PM

Judith,

You pronounce it correctly, I think. Me, whenever I see his name, I hear it internally as "Pell", which is how all other "elle" words are pronounced. If someone were to ask me how to pronounce it, I'd give the correct response. But I quite often "hear" words differently if I read them than say them.

I'm not using this as an example of a legitimate pronunciation changes, you understand. Only to demonstrate how my idiocy was revealed through a limerick rhyme.

4928. JudithAtHome - 5/13/2000 1:48:15 PM

My sister once pronounced "facade" as Fack-aid...that is how she read it.

4929. PelleNilsson - 5/13/2000 3:53:02 PM

On the correct pronounciation of Pelle

Both 'e's are as in 'get'. Equal stress, or a little more on the first one. Definitely not on the second one like for the soccer star Pelé.

I remember the limericks.

4930. PelleNilsson - 5/13/2000 4:31:59 PM

Irv

written Arabic bears very little relation to spoken Arabic and is usually considered a separate language altogether

It is my understanding that there are three 'levels' of Arabic.

Colloquial Arabic is the common spoken Arabic. It differs greatly from region to region. It is normally not written except for literary effect as when an author throws in a couple of lines of Cockney or Texan.

Standard Arabic is the language of the media and education. It is used on all formal occasions. It marks the user as an educated person.

Classical Arabic is the language of the Koran and it is immutable. Outside the mosque it can be used for rhetorical effect. The late king Hussein of Jordan was said to be a master of this.

4931. ilyavinarsky - 5/13/2000 4:55:47 PM

My boss says that every Arab, even illiterates, is exposed to enough classical Arabic via the mosque to keep the linguistic innovation in check.

4932. PelleNilsson - 5/13/2000 5:02:50 PM

Ilya

I don't see how the one follows from the other. Does exposure to the Torah stifle innovation in Hebrew?

4933. EricCartman - 5/13/2000 7:04:46 PM

Irv Message # 4918:

There is no ruling body which adjudicates on language change, establishing what is allowed and what isn't.

No, and I'm not suggesting there should be. This isn't France, fer cryin' out loud. But is it safe to say that across the modern US, English speakers are generally taught the same standards of spelling and pronunciation in school? I'm under the assumption that the answer is "yes", so I am curious as to how these peculiar discrepancies arise and become commonplace.

Prescribing what one can or cannot do or what is or isn't "correct" is completely futile tilting at windmills.

Well, those are two completely different things. People can do or say whatever they want, however they want, and I'm not suggesting otherwise. But the point of having standards is, at the very least, to establish what is and isn't "correct", wrt usage and form. At least that is my understanding of it; apparently I'm wrong about that.

4934. EricCartman - 5/13/2000 7:06:19 PM

Does it bother you that people no longer pronounce the "k" in "knight" and "knife"? Do you lose sleep over the fact that we don't pronounce the "gh" any longer in "though" and "taught"? And what is that "oe" doing representing an "oo" sound in shoe?! Too much inattention to spelling standards!

Indeed. I cry myself to sleep most nights, weeping profusely for the day when the entire world converses in the same inflection of Esperanto, that universal titan of phonetic spelling and asshole-tight standards of pronunciation. Instead of the Playmate of the Month, I have a poster of Merriam and Webster scowling severely at students, forcing them to recite the "i before e except after c" rule over and over again, on threat of a nasty paddling.

The English language, she is an abusive mistress, with all of her orthographic irregularities. Which I actually like, because it's my impression that these are due to all the varied lingustic sources of English words. They make the language more interesting, and I'd hate to see them altered just because some folks can't be bothered to learn them.

And that is how it should be. Most spoken usages never do catch on, and it would be madness to be continually revising the written language.

Agreed.

4935. EricCartman - 5/13/2000 7:11:25 PM

But, even with English, new innovations in spelling and usage eventually find their way into the written language. If they didn't, eventually we would suffer the same fate as Arabic.

Agreed also. Maybe five years of proofreading court documents has hardwired the jaundiced eye of the nattering word policeman into my brain, but I think perhaps you and I simply disagree on what is an "innovation".

I don't expect English to remain perfectly static and dead for all time. (That was actually news to me; I thought "dead" specifically meant that the language was no longer used outside of academia, not that it wasn't changing anymore.) I just don't understand the utility of the language standards responding to x number of people who are unwilling to suss out the phonological sequence of a-s-k.

But that's fine. I can see we're on opposite sides of this fence, and you're the linguist, so I'll drop it.

4936. EricCartman - 5/13/2000 7:27:11 PM

Dillon Message # 4917:

Thanks for the links. Interesting stuff; the first one sort of reminds me of the Flat Earth Society. As I already indicated to Irv, I like the irregularities of English spelling; they make you think about whence the word in question may have originated. That is the strength of English -- it is built of a mass of other languages, borrowed to and fro.

On the other hand, I have heard that the only languages more difficult than English for a non-speaker to learn well are Finnish and Chinese (which dialect? The article didn't say -- I assume Mandarin, but I know absolutely nothing about Asian languages). I don't know if this is true or not, but no European language I've ever studied seemed to have as many irregularities in spelling as English. So I can understand why a non-native speaker would welcome a simplified orthographic system.

Again, I freely concede that years of proofreading and spelling bees as a kid has probably ruined my ability to appreciate the nuances in the evolution of the language. It became hardwired long ago, and the "building block" parts of the language -- spelling and pronunciation and the phonological functions of the letters -- are very mechanical, to my perception. They have prescribed functions, and I simply find it puzzling that these functions are not apparent to mass quantities of people, as I had a reg'lar public school edumacation like everyone else, and have less than a year of college. So this is not ivory tower officiousness, believe it or not. More like blue-collar perplexity.

4937. stostosto - 5/13/2000 8:03:06 PM

hashke #4914

"spa i mold = spade in soil"

Ah! In Danish: Spade i muld. Perhaps I should have guessed - but there is no context to clue one in, which means you almost have to know the words by themselves and small differences can trick you.

Here's a demonstration of the similarity of (written) Norwegian and Danish:

1,2, Snör min sko ----- 1,2, Snør min sko
3,4, Kom Elvire ----- 3,4, Kom Elvire
5,6, Tegn en heks ----- 5,6, Tegn en heks
7,8, Ris til en rotte ----- 7,8, Ris til en rotte
9,10, Höna er blid ----- 9,10, Hønen er blid (but it doesn't rhyme..)
11,12, Spa i mold ----- 11,12, Spade i muld (do.)
13,14, Piker i porten ----- 13,14 Piger i porten
15,16, Piker ved peisen ----- 15,16, Piger ved pejsen
17,18, Piker om natten ----- 17,18, Piger om natten
19,20, Mat til en due. -----19,20, Mad til en due. (But no rhyme).

4938. IrvingSnodgrass - 5/13/2000 8:05:51 PM

Cart:
Why drop a good discussion? I certainly don't claim my training as a linguist makes me right, or makes anyone else unqualified to discuss language.

But the point of having standards is, at the very least, to establish what is and isn't "correct", wrt usage and form.

Certainly we have standards in language use. But these change over time. This is a natural feature of all human languages. Today's "error" may become tomorrow's standard usage. There are hundreds of examples in English where this has happened, and it will continue happening.

The English language, she is an abusive mistress, with all of her orthographic irregularities. Which I actually like, because it's my impression that these are due to all the varied lingustic sources of English words.

There are a significant number of borrowed words in English, but, for the most part, it is not these words which cause spelling oddities. It is the older core words of English, the spelling of which has remained unchanged as the language has changed, which cause learners distress.

Oddly enough, it is having these words which makes older written English accessible to us today. So it's a toss-up. Personally, I would not like to see English spelling changed to match pronunciation. Although it would making language learning a bit easier, it would cut us off from the wealth of written English out there.

4939. stostosto - 5/13/2000 8:06:11 PM

Oh, and by the way, the Norwegians do not have the 'ö' as you have it in

"9,10, Höna er blid"

They use the 'ø' like we do in Denmark. The sound is pretty much the same, though.

4940. IrvingSnodgrass - 5/13/2000 8:06:59 PM

I think perhaps you and I simply disagree on what is an "innovation".

I'm not sure where. An innovation is a change in language usage, which, over time, becomes accepted by the majority of language users and becomes standard. Your example of "aks" is a good one. This pronunciation is not standard at present, and clearly marks a speaker as a user of a non-standard dialect of English. But there's no reason why this form might not some day gain acceptance, a process which hundreds of words and usages you consider standard once went through.

I'm not saying you should use "aks" (I certainly won't be using the form). All I'm saying is we can't stop language change. It will happen.

My point: only dead languages do not change.

On the other hand, I have heard that the only languages more difficult than English for a non-speaker to learn well are Finnish and Chinese

Whoever said this is wrong. First of all, Chinese, with its highly analytical grammar, is one of the easiest languages to learn. The writing system is daunting, but can be learned without too much pain (I did it myself), but the language itself is a breeze compared to Indo-European, Dravidian or Ural-Altaic languages with intricate case systems and grammars (Finnish is one of these). Secondly, English is simply not hard to learn. It has the simplest (most analytic) grammar of any Indo-European language. It also has a large stock of Latinate borrowings which are familiar to speakers of many languages, especially Romance languages. Third, it has an enormous language teaching literature and a huge number of teachers throughout the world.

If you want to see languages which are hard to learn, have a go at Hashké's books on Navajo, or try learning Tamil, or Javanese (which has three separate vocabularies, depending on who one is speaking to), or Japanese.

4941. IrvingSnodgrass - 5/13/2000 8:07:38 PM

the "building block" parts of the language -- spelling and pronunciation and the phonological functions of the letters -- are very mechanical, to my perception.

This is very true. The myth about English spelling is that it is inconsistent. In fact, it is very consistent. I once saw a list of 12 spelling rules which covered 99% of English words. Once you accept the fact that English spelling doesn't match pronunciation letter-for-letter, it is not that hard, even for second language learners.

4942. ilyavinarsky - 5/13/2000 8:16:23 PM

What is Karlsson-on-the-roof's opponent's name? Frøken Bokk?

4943. stostosto - 5/13/2000 8:26:57 PM

Ilya,
I don't remember exactly... 'Frøken' (Swedish 'Fröken') for 'Miss' is definitely right. If she's a 'Mrs', it's 'Fru'. But her name 'Bokk'... I am not sure that's her name in the Danish translation at least. I will have to look in my kids' book collection tomorrow.

Do you read it in Russian?

4944. ilyavinarsky - 5/14/2000 12:32:19 AM

Yes, I read it in Russian. So she is Fröken Bokk.

4945. hashke - 5/15/2000 11:16:56 AM

sto:

Thanks for the very interesting comparison of the Danish with the Norwegian. I use 'ö' because the slashed 'o' for Norwegian is not on my keyboard.

4946. EricCartman - 5/15/2000 5:53:44 PM

Irv:

I certainly don't claim my training as a linguist makes me right, or makes anyone else unqualified to discuss language.

Oh, no. I merely meant that, considering you are actually trained in the field, compared to my middling experiential knowledge, chances are you are right about this. Also, I seem to be having more and more trouble articulating my point here. This usually indicates to me that I am probably finessing it too much, and devolving into perfectionist hair-splitting. But I'll keep mulling it over, and see if I can come up with a better way to address it.

Today's "error" may become tomorrow's standard usage. There are hundreds of examples in English where this has happened, and it will continue happening.

Right. I was wondering how errors tend to become so commonplace, especially in an age of (fairly) universal education standards. Whether public school or private, we're all taught the same rules of orthography and grammar, and it is somewhat curious (imo) that x amount of people can arrive at the same error.

Once again, "aks" is a useful example of this. If you encounter an unfamiliar word, what do you do? You sound it out, slowly and in a linear fashion; i.e.; you don't arbitrarily transpose things. So if "ask" is unfamiliar to you, how do you arrive at "aks" instead of just looking at the sequence? More importantly, how would such a thing be anticipated by linguists (as was implied at the beginning of this discussion)?

4947. EricCartman - 5/15/2000 5:54:23 PM

An innovation is a change in language usage, which, over time, becomes accepted by the majority of language users and becomes standard.

Okay, I look at "innovation" as more of a tangible improvement, something which facilitates ease of communication, or a different creative idiom, or something along that line. So a seemingly non-linear reading of a word, like "aks" or "busketti", seems more like clutter, to me. Because the orthography has changed on what amounts to an arbitrary basis; there simply is no practical reason, from a lexicographic POV, to classify such a thing as an "alternate usage".

I realize that I am attempting to set in stone that which is inherently fluid and to an extent abstract, which indeed probably amounts to tilting at windmills. At the same time, it is also a large-scale question of wondering how a large group of folks come around to ignoring the same linguistic rule in the exact same fashion.

To my understanding, languages morphed quite a lot in the past due to things like new contact with other languages, immigration, invasion, lack of unified standards in education and in orthography, lack of printed material to establish said standards, things like that. Well, none of those things are really factors anymore, so it becomes a matter of linguistic calculus -- observing and analyzing the causes and rates of change in what is essentially a glacial process.

Does that make sense, or am I completely off the mark here?

4948. EricCartman - 5/15/2000 5:54:51 PM

...Chinese, with its highly analytical grammar, is one of the easiest languages to learn.

Since I have very little experience with it, I'll take your word for it. Lately I've been reading the J.H. Huang translation of The Art of War, which is very heavily annotated. Many of the footnotes discuss the specific usage and placement of Sun Tzu's exact phrasings, and the nuances of the vocabulary. It's very interesting, but since my only linguistic experience is with Western European languages and Russian, it seems very foreign to what I'm accustomed to.

4949. IrvingSnodgrass - 5/16/2000 8:46:40 AM

Cart:
Okay, I look at "innovation" as more of a tangible improvement, something which facilitates ease of communication, or a different creative idiom, or something along that line. So a seemingly non-linear reading of a word, like "aks" or "busketti", seems more like clutter, to me. Because the orthography has changed on what amounts to an arbitrary basis; there simply is no practical reason, from a lexicographic POV, to classify such a thing as an "alternate usage".

It's not arbitrary. Language change is never arbitrary. Check out Dan's excellent explanation from earlier about why "aks" is a tangible improvement (to use your phrase) over "ask" -- it is easier to articulate. Language is a constant process of change to improve communication, and easier articulation improves communication.

As I've pointed out previously, the orthographic form has no influence on language change (except perhaps to slow it down). The forces causing language change are all found in the spoken language, and ease of articulation is an important one. Why else would English speakers kave stopped pronouncing the "k" in "knight" and "knife."

4950. IrvingSnodgrass - 5/16/2000 8:48:34 AM

Cart:
(I'm presenting your arguments out of order, to make my response flow better... my apologies...)

Once again, "aks" is a useful example of this. If you encounter an unfamiliar word, what do you do? You sound it out, slowly and in a linear fashion; i.e.; you don't arbitrarily transpose things. So if "ask" is unfamiliar to you, how do you arrive at "aks" instead of just looking at the sequence? More importantly, how would such a thing be anticipated by linguists (as was implied at the beginning of this discussion)?

"Ask" is not a word which anyone will ever come across for the first time in its written form. It is precisely the most common words -- those spoken by non-readers (young children and semi-literates) -- which are most likely to change. Words which educated speakers first come across in written form are not likely to change. You seem to think we learn language by reading. Nothing could be further from the truth. A three-year old has 90% of the day-to-day vocabulary s/he will have as an adult.

it is also a large-scale question of wondering how a large group of folks come around to ignoring the same linguistic rule in the exact same fashion.

Spelling rules are not linguistic rules. A linguistic rule is something like "speakers will gravitate toward pronunciations which are easier to articulate." In the case of "aks," speakers using this form are following a tried-and-true linguistic rule.

To my understanding, languages morphed quite a lot in the past due to things like new contact with other languages, immigration, invasion, lack of unified standards in education and in orthography, lack of printed material to establish said standards, things like that.

Only the first three of those factors have had a profound effect on most languages. The others relate to education, which has little effect on spoken language usage.

4951. IrvingSnodgrass - 5/16/2000 8:51:15 AM

Does that make sense, or am I completely off the mark here?

It makes sense, but it's still off the mark. You are giving too much import to the written word.

it [Chinese] seems very foreign to what I'm accustomed to.

I would guess those are cultural factors rather than linguistic ones.

4952. DanDillon - 5/16/2000 9:18:22 AM

Irv,

If I may be so bold as to improve upon one of your statements?

Language change is never arbitrary.

I would suggest, for the sake of keeping this discussion within the bounds of useful and indeed definable terms, we use the notion of "unconditioned change" in language versus the proposed "arbitrary." An unconditioned change has no obvious or immediate cause: OE hlud becomes ModE loud; OE mus becomes ModE mouse; OE hus becomes ModE house; OE munt becomes ModE mount. While there is a pattern here, no particular reason has been determined for the diphthongization of /u/ to /ou/. Other OE words with the medial /u/ have maintained that monophthong, as in "hug," "mud," "hurl," and "hunt."

4953. IrvingSnodgrass - 5/16/2000 9:30:59 AM

Dan:
What I was getting at (and didn't think it necessary to get into in depth) is that language change, to a certain extent, is predictable. A [t] might shift to [k] or [d] or become a dental fricative or gain aspiration, but it will never become [ng] or [j]. There are things we know might happen, and other we know won't happen. "ask" might become "aks," but it sure won't become "ska" or "kas." In that sense, language change is not arbitrary.

4954. DanDillon - 5/16/2000 10:26:03 AM

"I see," said the blind man as he picked up his hammer and saw.

You have a way of making things so damn accessible. (Delusions of Pinkerdom?)

4955. IrvingSnodgrass - 5/16/2000 10:37:58 AM

(log-rolling time)

Dan, I felt the same way when I saw your earlier reply to Cart. You explained it better than I could have.

I really appreciate Cart for bringing this topic up, and for asking such good questions (and being so damn friendly and reasonable as I try to shoot down his theories).

4956. ChristinO - 5/16/2000 9:05:14 PM

My dialect changes depending on what I'm hearing. I never had a Southern accent when I lived there, but I certainly do when hear it or I go back to visit. More even than the dialect what I notice is something I don't know the name for. It's like the pattern of speech or something, but there's bound to be a real term for it.

This is an exaggeration but it's like the difference between "I don't know" and "Why, I just couldn't even imagine what that might mean."

The latter screams American South and almost exclusively female. I don't know that I could even say it without an accent, but it's the choice of words even more than how they are pronounced that mark it as Southern.

I've picked up a lot of California-isms in my speech, but the "bought/caught" thing isn't one of them. The thing that strikes me as most annoying about SoCal speech is the lack of articulation. There's a traffic chick on one of my local stations who hasn't moved her upper lip in over five years. I can't stand to listen to her.

4957. arkymalarky - 5/16/2000 10:03:34 PM

I like that description, Chris. We have Southern female dj's here who try a fake California-cool accent which bugs the crap out of me. There's one I just bet is a 45 year old Winston smoker who I can hardly stand. She loves to play Led Zeppelin, the Stones, Pink Floyd, and Alice Cooper. Someone needs to call in and inform her that she's at least three decades behind.

4958. PincherMartin - 5/18/2000 4:59:40 PM

Irv --

What do you know about the Thai language, both the written and spoken forms? I have read that the written language is related to some South Indian scripts. Also, why do most Thai words seem incredibly long or do they differentiate between them in some fashion that I wasn't able to see?

4959. IrvingSnodgrass - 5/18/2000 8:48:23 PM

Pinch,
I'm not terribly familiar with Thai. The written script is indeed derived from old South Indian scripts, though there has been a lot of change. I can still recognize some letters which carry the same values as Tamil letters.

I've heard that the long Thai words (especially place names and personal names) are borrowed from Sanskrit, though you'd never know it to hear them, since they tend to drop about half the syllables. Thai, like Chinese, tends to be made up of mostly monosyllabic morphemes, but they get stuck together commonly to form compound words.

Historically, Thai is a member of the Daic family in the Austric macro-family (hence, it is related to Indonesian and Vietnamese, but not Burmese and Chinese). The language most closely-related to Thai is Laotian, which is mutually intelligible.

Due to regional typology, Thai (and the other Daic languages) have developed an intricate tonal system.

Thai also has some very interesting phonological features, though I can't recall them offhand. It's not an easy language to learn, from all reports, because of the phonology, the tones, and the divergence between the spoken and written language.

I'll have more to say when I can check my references in a few days. At the moment I'm travelling in Central Java.

I'd be very interested in your impressions of the language. I've read with great interest your reports on your visit in the International thread, and I look forward to seeing more.

4960. EricCartman - 5/19/2000 1:27:17 AM

Irv:

It is precisely the most common words -- those spoken by non-readers (young children and semi-literates) -- which are most likely to change. Words which educated speakers first come across in written form are not likely to change.

That's pretty much what I had suspected, but I couldn't think of a way to phrase that theory without coming off like a pompous asshole. I can cop to the "asshole" part, but not the "pompous". But that's ironic, looked at that way -- that everyday linguistic change is essentially spearheaded by young children and semi-literates. Odd, but entirely believable.

4961. EricCartman - 5/19/2000 1:30:42 AM

You seem to think we learn language by reading. Nothing could be further from the truth. A three-year old has 90% of the day-to-day vocabulary s/he will have as an adult....You are giving too much import to the written word.

That may be the crux of the biscuit right there, because that is precisely the way I have always processed things linguistic -- spoken/colloquial pronunciations (not accents or expressions) which deviate from written standardized form are essentially "slang", not an "alternate form" or a "variant".

This is reflective of two things: 1) what I was actually taught in school (early-mid '70s); 2) I started reading pretty early on and concentrated quite heavily on that as a kid, much more so than the spoken. As you say, most of the day-to-day language is picked up already at a very early age. So if you want to expand your skills and facility, obviously you have to read a lot. And I did.

Also, I am probably a bit more rigid on the definition and function of "standards" than most people. So it's probably an idiosyncratic thing to begin with.

I really appreciate Cart for bringing this topic up, and for asking such good questions (and being so damn friendly and reasonable as I try to shoot down his theories).

Well, I appreciate you putting up with what I was beginning to think were rather goofy questions. As for my being "reasonable", I was back on my heels for most of this argument, not a reliable position for me to be my usual cheerfully abusive self. But it was fun and interesting.

But I still say I'm right about the millennium thing, and Seinfeld agrees with me, so it must be true. So there's that, anyway.

4962. PincherMartin - 5/19/2000 5:52:45 AM

Irv --

I've heard that the long Thai words (especially place names and personal names) are borrowed from Sanskrit, though you'd never know it to hear them, since they tend to drop about half the syllables. Thai, like Chinese, tends to be made up of mostly monosyllabic morphemes, but they get stuck together commonly to form compound words.

Is this the reason Thai is a difficult language to romanize? According to my guidebook, "no wholly satisfactory system [of writing Thai in roman script] has yet been devised to assure both consistency and readability."

Historically, Thai is a member of the Daic family in the Austric macro-family (hence, it is related to Indonesian and Vietnamese, but not Burmese and Chinese). The language most closely-related to Thai is Laotian, which is mutually intelligible.

Due to regional typology, Thai (and the other Daic languages) have developed an intricate tonal system.

I didn't know that. I had assumed that the tones in Thai were related in some way to Chinese tones.

What does your final sentence mean when you say "Due to regional typology..."?

4963. PincherMartin - 5/19/2000 5:56:11 AM

According to the guidebook, one interesting feature of Thai's written script is that vowels can be placed before, after, above, below, or around consonants. Is this true of the South Indian scripts as well?

Also, Chinese characters are all over Bangkok. I didn't go anywhere where I didn't see them. On some buildings, they are the sole, clear identifier of the building.

4964. IrvingSnodgrass - 5/19/2000 8:32:51 AM

Cart:
But that's ironic, looked at that way -- that everyday linguistic change is essentially spearheaded by young children and semi-literates. Odd, but entirely believable.

Indeed, that's the way it is.

Also, I am probably a bit more rigid on the definition and function of "standards" than most people.

I think you need to more clearly separate spoken standards and written standards. Many things which are acceptable in spoken English are simply wrong in written Engliash. ("aks" is a good example.)

Well, I appreciate you putting up with what I was beginning to think were rather goofy questions.

No, they aren't goofy in the least. These are things many people wonder about, as witness the FAQ I linked to earlier.

But I still say I'm right about the millennium thing, and Seinfeld agrees with me, so it must be true.

You've lost me. What millennium thing?

4966. EricCartman - 5/19/2000 12:25:40 PM

Irv:

You've lost me. What millennium thing?

Oh, I was just screwing around with you; believe me, it's one of those dumb things where there's not enough of a payoff to sit through the actual explanation. Just a dumb joke.

4967. ilyavinarsky - 5/19/2000 1:18:57 PM

> What does your final sentence mean when you say "Due to regional typology..."?

Genetically unrelated Romanian, Albanian and Bulgarian/Macedonian have suffix articles.

4968. IrvingSnodgrass - 5/19/2000 8:39:05 PM

Pinch:
Is this the reason Thai is a difficult language to romanize? According to my guidebook, "no wholly satisfactory system [of writing Thai in roman script] has yet been devised to assure both consistency and readability."

No, I think it points more to the inefficiency of the Indian syllabary for writing Thai. Neither Indian nor Roman scripts are ideally suited to writing a tonal language. If Thais were serious about adapting a Roman script to Thai, they would be best off using Vietnamese as an example.

I didn't know that. I had assumed that the tones in Thai were related in some way to Chinese tones.

What does your final sentence mean when you say "Due to regional typology..."?

Regional typology is the term for areas of the world in which unrelated languages share features. There are many examples of this, with Asian tonal languages being one of the most obvious. Other examples are intricate case systems in European languages, analytical syntax in Asian languages, and shared phonology in Native American languages.

According to the guidebook, one interesting feature of Thai's written script is that vowels can be placed before, after, above, below, or around consonants. Is this true of the South Indian scripts as well?

Indeed it is.

Also, Chinese characters are all over Bangkok. I didn't go anywhere where I didn't see them. On some buildings, they are the sole, clear identifier of the building.

This is a reflection of the large and economically-important Chinese community in Thailand.

4969. IrvingSnodgrass - 5/19/2000 8:39:55 PM

Ilya:
Genetically unrelated Romanian, Albanian and Bulgarian/Macedonian have suffix articles.

This is a good example of regional typology, though the three languages in question are not genetically unrelated. They are from three very distantly-related branches of the Indo-European family (Romance, Albanian, and Slavic). The similarities are due to regional typology and not their genetic relationship.

We had a long and spirited discussion of regional typology in the old place about a year ago.

4970. PincherMartin - 5/20/2000 3:57:16 AM

This is a reflection of the large and economically-important Chinese community in Thailand.

According to the CIA handbook, Thailand's Chinese are 14% of the total population ( I have read 20% in other sources). They are well-integreted with the Thai majority, making Thailand one of the few places in SE Asia where the Chinese population intermarried with the local population significantly. Because of this, I assumed that the cultural aspects of the Chinese would be diluted somewhat. Apparently not, however, as the characters all over Bangkok show.

4971. PincherMartin - 5/20/2000 4:17:55 AM

Here is what my The Encyclopedia of the Chinese Overseas says in the section on Thailand:

Where the community begins and ends is one of the most challenging aspects of studying the Chinese in Thailand as a group. Estimates of their population today are at best guesswork. It would be hard to survey by surname, since most Sino-Thais (as they are often called) have taken Thai names. Enumeration is made all the harder by the high rate of intermarriage between Chinese and Thais. Estimates range from 4.5 million to 6 million, or 10 per cent of the country's population of almost 60 million.

This statistical ambiguity is further complicated by the close relationship between Chinese and Thai culture, and the latter's incorporation of Chinese traditions as part of its own cultural heritage. Indeed, many observers see Sino-Thai (or "Jek") culture as a constitutive part of Thai culture.. There was a time in history, moreover, when Thais did not consider Chinese as foreigners. Yet, during the Cold War, when political ideology and security ties with the West kept China apart from much of Southeast Asia, the historical closeness of Thais and Chinese was downplayed. As non-Communist states like Thailand battled local Communist insurgencies backed by Beijing and relied on the United States for aid and security, the Chinese community assumed a low profile that obscured its cultural distinctiveness and lent weight to assimilationist arguments.

The last two sentences in this cite are somewhat contradictory (how can the Cold War help to both downplay the historical closeness of the Thais and Chinese and, yet, also lend weight to assimilationist arguments?), but the entire selection is interesting, nevertheless.

4972. PincherMartin - 5/20/2000 4:20:04 AM

Given this fusion of Thai and Chinese culture as well as the intermarriage of Thais and Chinese, I hadn't expected to see as much of the Chinese language as I did.

4973. IrvingSnodgrass - 5/20/2000 10:36:12 PM

Pinch:
Thanks for the info on Chinese in Thailand. I'd heard they were better received and integrated than in most Southeast Asian nations, and your info confirms it.

Perhaps it is just this acceptance which leads to the common use of Chinese characters. In many other nations, the use of Chinese writing is stigmatized, or even outlawed (as it was in Indonesia until last year). In Thailand, it seems, use of Chinese writing may be a plus, rather than a minus, for a business.

4974. PincherMartin - 5/21/2000 10:12:50 AM

Irv --

In many other nations, the use of Chinese writing is stigmatized, or even outlawed (as it was in Indonesia until last year). In Thailand, it seems, use of Chinese writing may be a plus, rather than a minus, for a business.

I agree. I also wonder to what degree there is simply a cachet in using Chinese. I would be willing to bet there are many Sino-Thais who neither speak nor read Chinese well, if at all, and yet maintain the appearance of their cultural connection to China. I doubt business among the Thai Chinese is conducted in Mandarin or any other Chinese dialect or has agreements drawn up in Chinese. But that's just a guess. How do the Chinese in Malaysia and Indonesia conduct business among themselves? Surely not in Chinese, I would think.

I don't remember seeing Chinese characters in Kuala Lumpur, but it was just a two-day trip and I didn't get around much. Are there restrictions on their use in Malaysia?

4975. Jenerator - 5/21/2000 10:35:33 AM

Dr. Lin Yutang claims that his mother could write Chinese in pure Roman script because at the time, it was considered very advanced to be that western.

4976. IrvingSnodgrass - 5/21/2000 10:57:52 AM

Pinch:
How do the Chinese in Malaysia and Indonesia conduct business among themselves? Surely not in Chinese, I would think.

Very few Indonesian Chinese speak any form of Chinese, and when they do, it is usually a simple form of Hokkien. So, when Indonesian Chinese communicate with their business associates in Malaysia and Singapore, they use English, and, to a lesser extent, Chinese. The teaching of Chinese was outlawed until recently. But nowadays, with the ban lifted, Indonesian Chinese are flocking to Mandarin courses, and things may change before long.

I don't remember seeing Chinese characters in Kuala Lumpur, but it was just a two-day trip and I didn't get around much. Are there restrictions on their use in Malaysia?

There are no restrictions on Chinese characters in Malaysia. KL is a mostly Malay town, and Chinese writing is not as prevalent there as in Chinese-dominated towns such as Penang and Ipoh, but you'll find Chinese writing in KL, too.

I would be willing to bet there are many Sino-Thais who neither speak nor read Chinese well...

I have the same feeling. This reminds me of an interesting discovery I made in Singapore a number of years ago. In Singapore, official announcements must be written in four languages (English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil). Since most of the Singaporean Indians I know are not exactly fluent in Tamil, I wondered where they found the Tamil speakers to write these announcements. So, just out of curiosity, I began reading the Tamil announcements everywhere. I'm not very good at Tamil, and I have to sound out the words slowly. But I found something very interesting. In almost every case, including public announcements, street signs, store names, etc., the words were in English, but written in Tamil script! An Indian explained to me that this is because there are Indians who can speak English but can't read it, but that nobody spoke only Tamil.

4977. ilyavinarsky - 5/21/2000 7:24:32 PM

A college friend, a Chinese from Sabah, says there is only one town in Malaysia with a Chinese name, Taiping (peace).

The then-19-year-old had two native languages, Malay/Indonesian and Mandarin (the language his parents spoke to each other), and also knew his father's Fujianese, his mother's Cantonese, English and German.

Ei-San, where are you?

4978. ilyavinarsky - 5/21/2000 7:25:07 PM

should be 'said there is'.

4979. IrvingSnodgrass - 5/21/2000 8:29:30 PM

Ilya:
Taiping is the only town in Malaysia I know of with a Chinese name. There are more towns with English names (Georgetown, Butterworth, and Port Dickson come to mind).

A couple speaking Mandarin is still a rarity in Malaysia. Most Chinese households speak Hokkien, Cantonese, Hakka or Teochew. Where a married couple has speakers of two languages, they usually use the more common one in the area they live (Hokkien or Cantonese).

Mandarin as a household language has come into vogue in Singapore in the last 20 years, pushed by a strong government program which tells people to "speak Mandarin, and avoid "dialects"." (The various Chinese languages are not in fact dialects, but are separate languages in their own right.)

4980. DanDillon - 5/22/2000 10:15:12 AM

This may be best suited for hashke, but whoever would like to field it may give it a shot.

I read that two-thirds of the Ojibwemowin word stock comprises verbs, and for each verb there are as many as 6,000 forms.

Now how in the world does a language arrive at 6,000 verb forms? An inflection infection?

4981. ilyavinarsky - 5/22/2000 11:50:18 AM

> 6,000 forms

Russian. Forms of 'to lead', vodit'.

To lead - vodit', vesti.
To start leading - povesti.
I lead -vedu.
Thou lead - vedyosh'.
He, she, it leads - vedyot.
We lead -vedyom.
You lead - vedyote.
They lead - vedut.
Masculine I etc. led - vyol.
Feminine led - vela.
Neutral led - velo.
Carpatho-Rusyn also has persons in the past tense; we led would be velyzhme, and you led - velyzhte.
Ukrainian also has distinct imperfect future tense forms; I will lead will be vodytymu, and thou will lead - vodytymesh. In Russian, and in Ukrainian as an alternative form, only the auxiliary verb is conjugated - budu vodit',
I will start leading - povedu.
Thou will start leading - povedyosh.
He, she, it will start leading - povedyot.
We will start leading - povedyom.
You will start leading lead - povedyote.
They will start leading lead -povedut.
That's 18 forms already.
He who leads - veduschiy (6 cases).
She who leads - veduschaya (6 cases).
It that leads - veduscheye (6 cases).
He who is led - vedomyy (6 cases).
She who is led - vedomaya (6 cases).
It that is led - vedomoye (6 cases).
That's 54 forms already.
While leading - vedya (as in leading a dissolute life - vedya rasputnyy obraz zhizni). Imperfect form vodya is not used with the stem verb, but is with many prefixes; for example, perevedya is having led across, and perevodya is while leading across.
That's 55 forms; I cannot think of more.

Note that there are many prefixes that apply to this word; for example, perevesti is to lead across (perevesti babushku cherez dorogu is to help a grandmother cross the road), and uvesti is to lead away (uvesti muzha is to steal somebody's husband). If you consider them variants of the same stem word, you'll have another factor.

4982. Raskolnikov - 5/22/2000 11:59:10 AM

The goddamn verbs were the toughest thing about Russian. Second toughest was remembering the fucking case that each verb and preposition caused (missing a technical term - antecedents?) following words to take.

4983. ilyavinarsky - 5/22/2000 1:01:15 PM

You should consider yourself lucky you didn't have to study Ojibwemowin.

4984. hashke - 5/22/2000 3:50:18 PM

Dan:

6000 verb forms in any language sounds like apocryphal a rye to me.

4985. DanDillon - 5/22/2000 3:57:07 PM

I thought so, too. Despite ilya's illustration, albeit still paltry. It must have been a typo, what I read.

4986. hashke - 5/22/2000 4:00:26 PM

Dan:

V's 55 verb forms are a helluva long way from 6000.

Where did you read it, Dan?

4987. DanDillon - 5/22/2000 4:09:47 PM

In "The Living Arts" section of the NYT. Just this morning.

4988. hashke - 5/22/2000 4:15:17 PM

Thanks Dan. I'll check it out later.

4989. Ronski - 5/22/2000 4:22:59 PM

Amerindian Words in English

4990. ilyavinarsky - 5/22/2000 4:37:33 PM

Thou leadst

4991. ilyavinarsky - 5/22/2000 4:41:42 PM

leading a dissolute lifestyle

4992. ilyavinarsky - 5/22/2000 4:48:36 PM

I left out quite a few forms: vodyaschiy is one who is leading, like veduschiy, but the emphasis is more on the process of leading and less on the goal. E.g. Partiya Lenina, veduschaya nas k kommunizmu (the Party of Lenin, which leads us to Communism) but Partiya Lenina, vodyaschaya nas za nos (the Party of Lenin, which is pulling us by the nose = pulling our legs). Also vodivshiy etc. - one who has led.

4993. ilyavinarsky - 5/22/2000 4:59:10 PM

Even if Ojibwa has 6000 word forms, all or almost all of them must be formed very regularly.

Remember that every human language is simple enough for an average 4-year-old to be able to grasp the gist of it.

4994. ilyavinarsky - 5/22/2000 5:00:37 PM

Ojibwa may have 6000 verb forms, but I bet it doesn't have 6000 morphemes associated with them.

4995. hashke - 5/22/2000 7:03:17 PM

Very nice article Dan! But she makes little follow-up or support of her topical statement that each verb in the language has 6000 forms. The many rich and varied subtleties of the language are also apparent in Navajo and Apache, the only Native American languages that I am familiar with -- except for smidgins of Zuni and Hopi.

The below are interestingly compared with a few similar Navajo examples of nomenclature:

"Anaamibiig gookoosh, the underwater pig, is a hippopotamus.
Nandookomeshiinh, the the lice hunter, is the monkey."

Navajo -- na'ashch'idí -- the one who scratches, the badger.

"Aiibiishaabookewininiwag, the tea people, are Asians. Agongosininiwag, the chipmunk people, are Scandinavians."

Navajo --Anáá'ádaalts'ósí -- skinny eyes -- Asians

"There are words for e-mail, computers, Internet, fax."

Navajo -- chidí naat'a'í bitl'id -- car/the one that flies/its fart

Anybody care to guess what the English equivalent of that last Navajo
expression is.

4996. ilyavinarsky - 5/22/2000 7:29:32 PM

exhaust

4997. ilyavinarsky - 5/22/2000 7:31:26 PM

Does 'exhaust pipe' become 'car penis'?

4998. hashke - 5/22/2000 9:23:05 PM

Not quite exhaust. It is the contrail made by a high-flying jet plane.

Exhaust pipe -- bii' l/idí -- in it there is smoke

4999. IrvingSnodgrass - 5/22/2000 10:15:26 PM

I always distrust non-linguists' claims about linguistic facts. The claims made by Erdritch seem rather far-fetched. And, due to the public's lack of familiarity with Ojibwe, she can get away with it. It seems to me another example of the romantic searching for "roots," whereby people study their ancestral languages without actually learning much.

A friend of mine teaches Malayalam at a major American university. He says most of his students are second-generation Malayalis who study the language to discover their roots. He has found this is never sufficient motivation, and they give up after a term or two, without really learning anything.

Ronski:
Thanks for posting that very interesting list of Amerind words in English. I do note that a number of words in the list are of questionable derivation (though not so noted in the list). For example, it seems unlikely to me that "shark" comes from Mayan.

It is interesting, though, that there are far more common words from Central and South American languages (especially Tupi and Nahuatl) than from North American languages.

5000. IrvingSnodgrass - 5/22/2000 10:17:38 PM

I saw that "grouper" is attributed to Ge-Pano-Carib. I had always thought it was from this part of the world, where the word is "garupa." I looked it up, and discovered "garupa" is from Portuguese, although my source attribtes the ultimate origin to Tupi, rather than Ge-Pano-Carib.

5001. IrvingSnodgrass - 5/22/2000 10:25:16 PM

I looked up the Ojibwe group that Erdritch mentions. Their web site is described as "history oriented comic books and accompanying educational aids based on Native American heroes as well as information on the Grand Casinos that they manage.." Very scholarly stuff.

5002. ilyavinarsky - 5/22/2000 11:16:30 PM

Irving,

Why would anybody else learn Malayalam?

5003. IrvingSnodgrass - 5/22/2000 11:25:21 PM

Ilya,
Well, my friend did, after all. Basically, only those who live in Kerala, those interested in Dravidian linguistics and those who want to read the literature written in Malayalam need learn the language. And it isn't even essential for those living in Kerala, as most educated Malayalis speak fluent English (and most Malayalis are educated).

Is our Malayali Motie out there to confirm this?

5004. PelleNilsson - 5/23/2000 1:36:57 AM

I posted this in the Quiz thread but it got buried under aircraft technicalities:

What do these words have in common?

hobnob, leapfrog, mountaineer

5005. PelleNilsson - 5/23/2000 2:05:54 AM

This is a machine translation into Norwegian of the first paragraph of hashke's #4995:

Meget hyggelig artikkel Dan! Men hun lager lite oppfølging eller støtte av hennes aktuell uttalelse som hver verb i språket har 6000 former. De mange rike og varierede subtilitetene av språket er også tydelig i Navajo og Apachede eneste Innfødte Amerikanske språkene som jeg er fortrolig med unntatt midgins av Zuni og Hopi.

This is not bad at all. The German and French translations also looked better than those produced by AltaVista.

Check out the site!

5006. IrvingSnodgrass - 5/23/2000 4:46:11 AM

Pelle:
Why Norwegian and not Swedish (with twice the number of speakers)?

As for the effectiveness of the translations, it's a toss-up:

Spanish original:
Si me das la mano, te llevo conmigo. Juntos lograremos un mundo de amor.

FreeTranslation.com:
If you give me the hand, I carry you with me. Juntos will achieve a world of love.

Alta Vista:
If it give the hand me, I take to you with me. Together we will obtain a love world.

Correct Translation:
"If you give me your hand, I'll take you with me. Together we shall achieve a world of love."

5007. PelleNilsson - 5/23/2000 4:54:50 AM

FreeTranslation looks superior to me. It misses out on 'juntos' but the syntax is much better.

Yes, why Norwegian? Of course it covers Danish too. The two languages are practically identical in writing.

5008. ilyavinarsky - 5/23/2000 2:19:50 PM

> hobnob, leapfrog, mountaineer

They are all calques?

5009. marjoribanks - 5/23/2000 2:32:53 PM

There is a Malayali among us?

Irva's statement about his friend rigs totally true with all the other Indian languages. I have an acquaintance who makes end meet by giving Hindi tutions to second-generation Indians here in NYC. He reports that 95% of his students last about three months, they fight their way through into learning the script and then give up. One barely needs to understand Hindi to watch the Bollywood flicks after all.

I bet the drop-out rate is a lot lower for Tamil and Tamilians, however. Somehow, I find lots and lots of second and third generation Tamilians who're apparently pretty adept at the language. Lots of them have studied carnatic dance and music as well. It's some kind of cultural Tamil thing they have.

5010. IrvingSnodgrass - 5/23/2000 9:40:19 PM

Marj:
There is a Malayali among us?

See Message # 3703.

I agree with your view of Tamils. I too have noticed they hang on much longer to their language and culture than other Indian groups. Though evenTamils also lose their language eventually. I have Tamil friends in Malaysia, Singapore and the USA who don't speak a word of the language.

5011. PelleNilsson - 5/24/2000 1:08:48 AM

What do these words have in common?

hobnob, leapfrog, mountaineer

They first appear in works of Shakespeare.

Source.

5012. IrvingSnodgrass - 5/24/2000 1:21:35 AM

Pelle:
I see "This week's featured Shakespearean words" was last revised in January, 1998.

The biggest surprise there for me was "skim milk."

5013. PelleNilsson - 5/24/2000 1:49:30 AM

The biggest surprise for me was "lonely".

5014. DanDillon - 5/24/2000 10:15:39 AM

I don't have a concordance handy, but I would venture to guess that the "skim milk" citation is misleading. Whoever spake the words was most probably using "skim" as a verb and "milk" as its object, as opposed to the compound noun "skim milk." It should also be noted here that "skim" is a variant of "scum." Never drink the stuff.

5015. ilyavinarsky - 5/24/2000 1:59:20 PM

My flesh is fishified.

5016. ilyavinarsky - 5/24/2000 2:01:39 PM

I know Pushkin coined name Tatyana, but offhand I can't think of any words he'd done.

5017. PelleNilsson - 5/24/2000 2:55:26 PM

Dan

If you go to the source I linked you will see your thesis refuted.

5018. DanDillon - 5/24/2000 7:10:29 PM

Fair enough, Pelle. Now we know who the lazy one really is.

5019. PincherMartin - 5/28/2000 12:54:17 PM

Irv --

Have you ordered this book yet?

5020. IrvingSnodgrass - 5/28/2000 1:36:56 PM

Pinch:
Indeed I have. I ordered it a few months ago when I first heard of it, but I haven't received it yet. It takes a while for these things.

5021. IrvingSnodgrass - 5/28/2000 1:42:15 PM

Pinch:
A link on the Amazon page you linked led me to this book, which I plan to order, and which you also may find of interest:

The Languages of China

5022. PincherMartin - 5/28/2000 6:35:32 PM

Irv -- Message # 5021

I've had that book for a few months now. PE referred to it sometime ago when he mentioned some books he picked up at a bookstore. I ordered it from Amazon and I've read some parts of it, but I'm so backlogged with books to read that I still haven't gotten to it yet. Hopefully, I'll be able to read it sometime this summer.

5023. IrvingSnodgrass - 5/31/2000 5:03:32 AM

Here's an interesting article, from the Wall Street Journal (copied without permission):

What Good is a Degree in Linguistics?

5024. DanDillon - 5/31/2000 9:52:13 AM

The WSJ article reflects the very setiment I had when I decided as an undergrad not to major in linguistics. Ten years ago it was a dead-end proposition. But alas, things change. The most seemingly obscure knowledge rears its pretty head, gets invited to the ball, dances a few waltzes, and then, surprise of all surprises, gets laid. Such a nice story. The heartbreaking sub-plot, though, reveals that none of those plum jobs are available (if even heard of) in the midwestern U.S. I am teacher. Hear me whimper.

5025. IrvingSnodgrass - 5/31/2000 11:40:37 AM

Dan:
I managed to make a very good living for 20 years in the field of Applied Linguistics, and so have a number of friends from my school days, so it has not been as hopeless as it might seem outside of academia. The WSJ makes it sound as if there were no practical uses for a linguistics degree until the internet came along, and this is silly, since Applied Linguistics has been a useful field for a long time.

I'm surprised at your complaint, since from my own experience (and my work for the past three years), your location should have little or nothing to do with your ability to earn big bucks through the internet. Have you checked out the sites mentioned in the article? There may be a lucrative and appealing career waiting for you out there.

5026. DanDillon - 5/31/2000 11:57:48 AM

Irv,

I, too, have worked in the field of Applied Linguistics, and I never meant to insinuate that such linguistic knowledge has been virtually useless until recently. Of course one is able to make good use of a background in languages and linguistics. The internet has simply given rise to new good uses.

I did check out the sites mentioned in the article. Did you perhaps fail to notice that all of the companies mentioned therein are on either coast? Furthermore, The Linguist List has zero listings for positions in either Missouri or Kansas.

5027. IrvingSnodgrass - 5/31/2000 12:05:52 PM

Dan:
I, too, have worked in the field of Applied Linguistics, and I never meant to insinuate that such linguistic knowledge has been virtually useless until recently.

It wasn't you insinuating that... it was the WSJ article. They missed the point.

As for the jobs in the Linguist List, I am truly shocked that these jobs would require a person to be physically present in an office loaction for this kind of work. In this day and age, a person can do a job effectively on the other side of the world (say, in Bali, for example). All of the positions described in the WSJ article don't seem to require a person's physical presence.

5028. cmboyce - 6/8/2000 1:56:25 AM

Hello, all. I'm delighted to find the Mote back on the air. Unfortunately, I can't stay tonight—early doings manana with the kid—but I happened to take another shot at it, and here you are!

Message # 5011 However, before retiring, I cannot fail to note, Pelle, that yr Shakespeare site really eats it. I've been there before and it's really trashy. Take "skim milk", for instance. The line they cite reads: "It is too full o'th'milk of human kindness" [Lady M's reservations about her husband, pre-murder]. These clowns took their newspaper clipping to be Shakespearean!! Lazy reader is about the best one can say for them.

See y'all!

5029. CalGal - 6/8/2000 2:02:18 AM

Hey! Missed seeing you around.

But we've not been down in a long time, other than brief outages (10 minutes or so). Have you not been able to get here?

5030. ycmeehan - 6/8/2000 3:32:18 PM

Hashke,
Où êtes-vous? Que faites-vous?

5031. PelleNilsson - 6/8/2000 3:43:06 PM

cm

Good to see you back!

ycmeehan

You too!

All

I'm reading Pinker and would like to share some thoughts but my connection is excessively bad tonight (at 9.6K it's not good to start with).

5032. pseudoerasmus - 6/12/2000 11:33:37 AM

Irving, I had written on my site a page called the "varieties of arabic script" and linked to it here before I left. Did you check it out?

5033. IrvingSnodgrass - 6/12/2000 11:53:55 AM

PE:
I guess I missed that. I'll look back in this thread for the link.

5034. IrvingSnodgrass - 6/12/2000 1:12:39 PM

PE:
I went back more than two months, to your return from your last hiatus, and did not find any link such as you described. In fact, I didn't find any links at all posted by you in this thread.

If you have the link handy, please post it.

5035. DanDillon - 6/12/2000 9:44:40 PM

In D.C. this past week, I visited the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery where an exhibit on "The Islamic World" was being held, actually a rather myopic survey of 13th - 15th century Persian articacts, mostly metalwork, ceramics, and glass. An impressive display by any measure, but not very broad in scope. A few of the displayed items addressed the very thing pe refers to as "varieties of arabic script," and these proved to be the most enlightening artifacts. It seems I was a few weeks too late for what would have been an exceptionally rewarding exhibt.

Folio from a Koran. Spain or northern Africa,
15th–16th century. Ink, opaque watercolor,
and gold on parchment; 25.8 x 18.6 cm.

5036. ilyavinarsky - 6/13/2000 3:23:45 PM

Karlsson is back!

Karlsson zaletel i zhdet malysha.

5037. ilyavinarsky - 6/13/2000 3:26:34 PM

Pseuder, your homepage says it is "forthcoming".

5038. pseudoerasmus - 6/13/2000 5:42:02 PM

Hmmm well i thought i had made a link to it. I don't have the URL in my laptop, and I stupidly forgot to include the link
on my homepage, so I'm going to have to excavate the various Geocities accounts I have
to find it. irving i'm sure you'llfind it interesting.

ilya, hello, the road between sochi and rostov has roadblocks manned not by the army but by "cossacks". of course these are completely illegal or perhaps extralegal. they're complete losers allegedly on the lookout for suspicious characters or something. they checked the identity papers of everyone on the bus and when they looked at my surname in my passport this fool who looked like a bandit wanted me to take some other route than to rostov. thank goodness a real police officer came by told him to fuck off.

5039. pseudoerasmus - 6/13/2000 5:45:43 PM

by the way, how many distinctphonemes are there in all the languages of the world?

Which language
has the most phonemes?

How many phonemes are common to all the languages of the
world?

does anybody know the answers to thes e questions?>

5040. ilyavinarsky - 6/13/2000 7:36:15 PM

I don't know if I am revealing too much, but my favorite Salman Rushdie short story has a character with the same name as yours.

5041. sakonige - 6/13/2000 7:38:18 PM

What kind of character is it?

5042. ilyavinarsky - 6/13/2000 7:44:13 PM

> by the way, how many distinct phonemes are there in all the languages of the world?

I don't think the question is correctly formulated. You can count phonemes *within* a language (or between closely related languages), but whether or not a sound sequence in one language is the same phoneme as a sound sequence in another language is impossible to determine. An adult Russian speaker (me) finds it hard to distinguish between Cantonese phonemes, and probably the reverse is true, too.

> Which language has the most phonemes?

I don't know, but some Southern Chinese minority language has 15 tones.

> How many phonemes are common to all the languages of the
world?

As per #1, this is incorrectly formulated. Is French 'ch' the same phoneme as English 'sh'?

5044. IrvingSnodgrass - 6/14/2000 7:26:38 AM

PE:
While I understand Ilya's reservations, I think the questions you posed can be answered. The problem is in distinguishing between a phoneme and a phone. It would be nearly impossible to count all the different phones (or distinct sounds/minor variations on a sound) in all the languages of the world... like English 'sh' and French 'ch.' But if we consider phonemes (which, after all, is the question you posed) and ignore the variations each language throws upon sounds, your questions are answerable, and, indeed, are very interesting questions ("interesting questions" meaning ones I don't know the answers to).

by the way, how many distinct phonemes are there in all the languages of the world?

I have never seen a count, but the number would be quantifiable. I'd guess between 200 and 500. I think I know where I can look this up.

Which language has the most phonemes?

I can't remember the name of the language, but it is generally considered to be a Caucasian language (closely related to Georgian) with over 80 distinct consonant sounds.

The language with the fewest phonemes is Hawaiian, with, if I recall, 12 dstinct phonemes.

How many phonemes are common to all the languages of the world?

I've never seen any analysis of universal phonemes, and there may not be any. Using the phonemes of Hawaiian gives us a start, though, since any universal sounds would be among the 12 sounds in Hawaiian. I've never heard of a language lacking the vowel sound /a/, and it may be universal. All languages I know of also have a front vowel (/i/ or /e/) and a back vowel (/o/ or /u/). I don't know of any language with less than three vowels.

[continued]

5045. IrvingSnodgrass - 6/14/2000 7:27:09 AM

As for consonants, many languages are lacking nasal sounds, and many languages lack /r/ or /l/ or /w/. Some languages lack sibilants (/s/, for example), fricatives (f, th), affricates (ch, j) or voiced sounds (b,d,g,z). That leaves only the unvoiced stops: p, t, k, and Arabic has no /p/, so that one is out.

The bottom line: if there are any universal sounds, they are drawn from /a/, /t/ and /k/. I don't know of any languages lacking any of these sounds, though such languages may exist.

Hope that helps, and makes sense.

Note: Linguistic notation uses slashes to denote phonemes (/p/) as opposed to phones, which are indicated by brackets ([p]). I've been a bit lax in applying this notation in the past, but will attempt to be consistent with my linguistic notation in the future.

5046. pseudoerasmus - 6/14/2000 11:44:43 AM

q12 phonemes in hawaiian? is hawaiian full of terribly long words?

Here it is: varieties of the arabic script. (there are many small graphic images, so it may be slow to load.) I'm
not sure why I began writing the page, but after I started I got carried away and put in uch more detailed information that I had meant to. Note that I haven't proofread them
and there are bound to be omissions and errors.

5047. ilyavinarsky - 6/14/2000 1:40:49 PM

oh mama

5048. IrvingSnodgrass - 6/14/2000 2:03:27 PM

PE:
q12 phonemes in hawaiian? is hawaiian full of terribly long words?

On the contrary, it is full of very short words, often consisting largely of vowels. In Hawaiian, the proto-Austronesian words have dropped consonants right and left, leaving only the vowels.

Some linguists have posited phonemic vowel length in Hawaiian, which would double the number of vowels (and increase the phoneme count by five), but I don't know if this is correct (I also don't know if it's incorrect -- I don't know a lot about Hawaiian.

What I do know is that Hawaiian words can often be easily converted from their Indonesian cognates, by devoicing stops, dropping final consonants, and applying a few simple sound changes. Some words are exactly the same:

langit --> lani 'sky'
buka --> puka 'open'
aku --> aku (first person pronoun)
lima --> lima 'five'

5049. IrvingSnodgrass - 6/14/2000 2:13:40 PM

PE:
Your Arabic scripts page is very impressive, and very helpful for understanding the differences in ways the widely varying languages using these scripts apply the same letters. I read it with great fascination, and, although I don't know much about Arabic scripts, I learned a lot.

It would be much more helpful if you would use the IPA to describe the sounds, or even a consistent method (you use English letters and 'dictionary' phonetics to represent some sounds, but not the vowels). Terms such as "gulping K" and "gurgled g" are not particularly helpful. Using linguistic terminology would allow you to indicate the point and method of articulation (the "gurgled g" is not a stop, though one would think so from calling it a "g", the "gulping k" is articulated well back of the vellum). Using a few terms for points of articulation (labial, dental, alveolar, palatal, velar, laryngeal, glottal), and methods (stop, fricative, affricate, nasal, liquid, voiced, aspirated) would cover all sounds you describe. It's not like you need to learn a lot of terms... about a dozen will cover all eventualities.

5050. IrvingSnodgrass - 6/14/2000 2:15:19 PM

PE:
I've bookmarked the page for future reference. Nice job.

5051. pseudoerasmus - 6/14/2000 2:25:12 PM

if i'd used linguistics jargon or IPA (neither of which I know), only linguists will understand them.

all the same, maybe your javascript is turned off on your browser, because each homey description like "gulping K" is accompanied by a link to a java pop up window. in fact the whole page is riddled with such pop up windows containing mini essays, including a Hindi-Urdu FAQ and some comments on Uighur. there are even links to audio clips for some of the letters.

5052. IrvingSnodgrass - 6/14/2000 2:39:09 PM

PE:
I saw the links, though I didn't try them (my connection is much too slow right now, and your page didn't open in a new window, so I was reluctant to get too far away from where I was).

IPA is used by many non-linguists. It is the standard way to describe sounds across all languages. It's simple and easy to learn.

By not using specific and clear terminology, you ensure that no one, not even linguists will understand exactly what you mean.

5053. IrvingSnodgrass - 6/14/2000 2:49:06 PM

The International Phonetic Alphabet

Download IPA fonts for free here

5054. DanDillon - 6/14/2000 4:40:14 PM

pe,

At least one of your Real Audio examples is incorrect. The sound you have for 'ayn is actually that which should accompany Haa'. I'm not sure if you included any other such misfires. An impressive reference site, to say the least. I've bookmarked it, too.

As Irv pointed out, it's not hard at all to learn the terminology for describing sounds in relation to the speech organ. You've already used a few that you ostensible already do know. Just as we rely on the standard spellings of words, we rely on a standard lexicon for metalanguage.

5055. IrvingSnodgrass - 6/15/2000 8:53:32 AM

An article in this weeks's Newsweek International edition looks at the dying languages of the world, a topic we have raised in this forum a few times. It's interesting to see their take on the situation, and that it differs little from what we've discussed here: "Some prominent linguists predict that half of roughly 6,000 world languages will be silenced by the end of this century, and that 80 to 90 percent will die off within the next 200 years."

You heard it here first.

A chart accompanying the article lists the countries where languages are dying out. The top three (in order): Australia, the USA, Indonesia.

5056. DanDillon - 6/15/2000 9:08:56 AM

No surprise that the top two countries on that list are English-speaking. (Shame on you, by the way, for reading Newsweek.)

5057. IrvingSnodgrass - 6/15/2000 9:21:40 AM

Dan:
I never would have known about the article if a friend hadn't been given the magazine on a flight earlier this evening, and drew my attention to the article.

As for the countries with the most dying languages, the third, fourth, fifth and sixth place countries (Indonesia, Mexico, Brazil, and Papua New Guinea) face similar situations... large numbers of native languages spoken by small tribes. Only in PNG is English (and there it is pidgin English) the language replacing the local tongues.

5058. DanDillon - 6/15/2000 10:29:14 AM

Amazing--a bit perverse even--that pidgin English has outdone several native languages in Papua New Guinea.

5059. pseudoerasmus - 6/15/2000 11:06:05 AM

thanks dillon for the vigilance. though navigating geocities is not fun with a 14.4k connection, i have corrected the misdirection. By the way, the audio clip link for "ayn" was misdirected toward khaa, not Haa.

5060. pseudoerasmus - 6/15/2000 11:09:03 AM

The cricketer/playboy Imran Khan &his British wife are (were?) having a dispute about where eventually to educate their five-year old son.naturally, as part of the Pakistani elite, their son willget educated in English. The family live in Lahore and Islamabad. What this means is that the only local language the boy will learn is Pakistan's official language, Urdu. His chances of learning to speak Pashto arevery slim.And his useless cricketer father, for allhis bloviated boasting about the "warrior race", will probably permit another Pathan to be swallowed up by the Urdu-Hindooo linguistic imperialism. iIn bilingual societies like the non-Russian parts of the Soviet Union, everything state-sanctioned (including education) used to be in Russian(native languages came in later as part of the curriculum but they were treated like foreign languages). Nonetheless the nativelanguages would survive as hearth languages, spoken at home and among friiends of the same ethnicity. But in Pakistan, one of these days only English and Urdu will be spoken/1!uurdu isn't even native to Pakistan, and spoken as a mother tongue mostly by immigrants from Hindooostan. At the time of independence it was made Pakistan's official language ostensibly to accomodate the losers from Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Hyderabad, etc. bbbut why on earth should Urdu have been made Pakistan's official langua
ge? It's not too late. English could be declared the official. Then the twin pressures from Urdu and English on the regional

languages might be relieved. At school the instruction would only be in English and one of the regional languages (Pashto, Punjabi, Sindhi, Baluchi, Kashmiri, whatever). i
n those parts of Sindh where Mohajirs are the majority (Karachi, Sindhi Hyderabad), one could carve out a new state with Urdu as the official provincial language. What might it be called? Mohajirstan? Urdudesh? Naya Bharat?

5061. IrvingSnodgrass - 6/15/2000 11:45:39 AM

PE:
I'm surprised at your predictions for Pakistan's linguistic future, since I was under the impression that the percentage of Pakistan's population speaking Urdu as a mother tongue was miniscule.

I can understand why Urdu was chosen as the national tongue... choosing any other native language as the national language would have been threatening to other groups. Urdu has succeeded in Pakistan just as Indonesian has succeeded in Indonesia for precisely the same reasons, and this is why Hindi has failed in India, and Tagalog has failed in the Philippines.

The option you suggest of English uniting the various language groups in Pakistan is viable, and is what has happened in the Philippines (after the failed efforts to make Tagalog a lingua franca). In the Philippines, a person from Cebu or Mindanao can only communicate with colleagues from Luzon in English. And, despite, dire predictions, this system works quite well. I would imagine it would be equally applicable in Pakistan.

5062. pseudoerasmus - 6/15/2000 1:00:31 PM

well of course urdu still has only a small number of native speakers, but every year pakistan is more and more and more urdufied. There is a 2 million strong pathan community in karachi, but the young ones don't really speak Pashto and the older ones mix Urdu and Pashto. even in the NWFP esp. those districts bordering other provinces Pashto is giving way to Urdu, because of non-Pathan immigrants into the NWFP. Pashto newspapers published in Peshawar often read like translations from Urdu.

Despite the hype
about promoting Sindhi culture & language, Sindhi is now primarily a rural language in Sindh, because the cities are now taken over by Urdu-speaking Mohajirs. You won't find a single Sindhi sign anywhere in Karachi. The same in the cities of Punjab. In Lahore there are no Punjabi signs, even though it's been a Punjabi city for centuries. In fact until quite recently with the Punjabi langugage revival movement, Punjabi had never been
heard outside the home --even the Punjab provincial assembly is
conducted in Urdu.
In order to get anywhere in Pakistan you must at least speak Urdu, but English is also something to aspire to. But it's this twin socio-linguistic pressure which is harming the regional languages.

5063. IrvingSnodgrass - 6/15/2000 1:21:31 PM

The situation you describe in Pakistan sounds similar to Indonesia, where one never sees any signs written in the traditional languages, yet one rarely hears Indonesian spoken, outside of Jakarta. The major difference is that no European language is part of the mix here.

5064. Ronski - 6/15/2000 1:51:38 PM

What will the Timorese end up speaking?

5065. IrvingSnodgrass - 6/15/2000 8:40:14 PM

Ronski:
A good question with no easy answer. I recently read an analysis of the situation, and the three possible languages broke down as follows:

1) Portuguese
plusses
A fully developed international language. This is the choice of likely president-to-be Xanana Gusmão.
minuses
Nobody speaks it. Less than 1% of the populationn can even hold a simple conversation in Portuguese, and far fewer can read and write it. It is associated with the Portuguese colonial era.

2) Tetun
plusses
It is the mother tongue of about half the East Timorese. There are no colonial reminders.
minuses
It has never been a written language, and no published materials are available. It has never been a language of education, government, technology, etc., and developing a language is a major task... perhaps less of a priority than developing the nation.

3) Indonesian
plusses
Everyone speaks it and it is the only real language of literacy. It is a developed language with published materials available in-country and it is the language all of East Timor's teachers are trained to teach in. Many East Timorese, particularly among the half of the nation who are not Tetun speakers, favor it.
minuses
It is associated with Indonesia's brutal rule, and many East Timorese oppose it for this reason.

It is interesting to note that the debate, as it progresses, takes place entirely in the Indonesian language, as it is currently the only lingua franca.

My guess is that, in the long-term, the official language will be Tetun. But Indonesian will continue to be the language of daily communication until the Tetun language is developed and taught in the schools.

5066. PelleNilsson - 6/16/2000 5:52:38 AM

Two phrases from the Economist which caught my eye (my italics):

There is no doubting that the Wilson and the Thatcher years put a substantial dent in the class system.

Just as telling are a taste for loud striped shirts, cuff links, signet rings and Barbour coats - which are definite signs of a toff.

I suppose 'doubting is not wrong as such but I would never write it and I doubt I have seen it before.

The plural in the second phrase is interesting. It must come from the influence of the list (shirts, cuffs, ....) because it gives a sort of implicit plurality to 'a taste'. Still, as I said, It struck my eye as a bit of an oddity. 'Just as telling are tastes

What say the MoteGrammarians?

5067. IrvingSnodgrass - 6/16/2000 8:31:13 AM

Pelle:
The use of "doubting" is quite common, and not unusual in the least.

I agree with your take on the use of "are" above, which is ungrammatical, at least in my dialect. But you never known with those Brits.

Plural agreement is an area which English speakers have always had some difficulty with, and examples such as the one above abound throughout the history of the language. This means it is a prime target for language change (though I know of no dialects in which this feature is regularly found at this time).

5068. DanDillon - 6/17/2000 9:26:03 AM

Pelle,

For someone who claims learning a foreign language, such as Arabic, is beyond his faculties, your mastery of my mother tongue belies any such claim and continues to astound me. T'barkallah a'alik!

5069. RustlerPike - 6/17/2000 9:42:05 AM

5070. pseudoerasmus - 6/20/2000 10:57:52 AM

irving, aren't there newspapers, television or radio broadcasts or contemporary literature (as opposed to traditional) in Javanese or any other major language of Indonesia besides Bahasa Indonesia?

if not, that's terrible. one thing to establish a lingua franca another thing to reduce all other languages merely to spoken ones.

5071. alistairconnor - 6/20/2000 11:40:17 AM

Lordy, Pseud, you must be getting old! Here you are getting all passionate about saving dying regional languages!

(Or perhaps you're just growing up?...)

5072. pseudoerasmus - 6/20/2000 11:55:04 AM

Connard, you mean you just discovered now my interest in ethnolinguistic esoterica?

But you know me so little if you think I am passionate about regional languages per se. Whenever one of these pinko bleeding heart linguist-anthropologist types lament the disappearance of languages & cultues at an accelerating pace, my first reaction is, "Must every possible bloody permutation of phonemes be preserved? Most of these thousands of languages are probably vague derivatives of one another anyway..."

I lament the marginalisation of what had been important cultural languages, but really only those in central Eurasia. I really couldn't care less one way or another about Amerindian languages or some Chatham island dialect or Breton. I really don't care about Javanese either but it is interesting as illustration of what happens or may be happening when you have a too successful lingua franca.

5073. PelleNilsson - 6/20/2000 2:33:55 PM

Dan

A belated thanks. I haven't checked in lately.

5074. alistairconnor - 6/20/2000 3:50:24 PM

Well Pseud, I'm sure Pashtoun has some intrinsic value which makes it more worthy of preservation than inferior languages spoken by inferior peoples. You just went down several rungs in my esteem.

5075. sakonige - 6/20/2000 4:16:55 PM

But he didn't say other languages facing extinction are inferior, just that he doesn't care about them. It's up to those who do value them to preserve those languages.

5076. alistairconnor - 6/20/2000 5:05:04 PM

Sakonige, before your time, probably 4 years ago, I had a run-in with the Pseud on this very subject. I was sentimentally lamenting the extermination of regional languages in France, he maintained it was a good thing. I thought he had had a change of heart since then. Not so. The gentleman has double standards, that's his right.

5077. pseudoerasmus - 6/20/2000 5:26:01 PM

Well Pseud, I'm sure Pashtoun has some intrinsic value which makes it more worthy of preservation than inferior languages spoken by inferior peoples. You just went down several rungs in my esteem.

As though I give a shit for the esteem of some useless Green from Papua New Zealand.

It's not about "intrinsic value" or inferiority/superiority. It's simply cultural interest and preference. For some completely arbitrary reason I find those Eurasian cultures & peoples that are distant from the coastal periphery fascinating, but others totally bore me.

I want Yiddish, Chitrali, Assyrian, Yakut, Pontic Greek, Buryat, etc., to survive and would really be saddened if these languages went extinct.

I would not shed a tear if Maori, Khmer, Welsh, Guarani, Xhosa, Frisian, Saami, Konkani or Hakka vanished without any trace.

I was sentimentally lamenting the extermination of regional languages in France, he maintained it was a good thing. I thought he had had a change of heart since then. Not so. The gentleman has double standards, that's his right.

No, I did not argue the extermination of regional languages was a good thing. I said the adoption of a national language such as French was for the good, and that regional language speakers ought to have been forced to learn them. I hardly advocated their linguistic extermination. I don't care enough about them to advocate anything about them.

Anyway, the vast majority of languages that disappeared were just some trivial local variation on the vulgar Latin, so what difference does it make?

My complaint about Urdu was that it's a bad choice in the context of Pakistan, because you also have English competing for people's linguistic attention. Plus, Urdu has 50 million+ speakers in India.
Isn't that enough? Why must there be more?

There are no double standards, either. I like some flavours of ice cream and not others.

5078. alistairconnor - 6/20/2000 5:31:20 PM

I was wrong. I admit it.

You're not growing up.

5079. IrvingSnodgrass - 6/21/2000 3:54:46 AM

PE:
irving, aren't there newspapers, television or radio broadcasts or contemporary literature (as opposed to traditional) in Javanese or any other major language of Indonesia besides Bahasa Indonesia?

You can find radio and TV broadcasts in many regional tongues, in their respective regions. Printed matter is another thing... except for a handful of monthly magazines in Javanese and Sundanese, and a few religious tracts in Balinese, I have never seen anything published in local languages. This is mostly due to the fact that these languages have no tradition of literacy, and there is simply no market for anything written in regional languages. So, while the written forms are almost non-existent, the spoken forms thrive.

if not, that's terrible. one thing to establish a lingua franca another thing to reduce all other languages merely to spoken ones.

Well, no one is doing any reducing. These languages have no written tradition. The only written tradition at all in Indonesia has developed over the past 50 years, for the national tongue.

There are no official restrictions on printed matter in regional languages... there just isn't a market for these things.

5080. pseudoerasmus - 6/21/2000 10:57:46 AM

but surely javanese has a literary tradition? Did it just stop in its tracks with the adoption of bahasa indonesia?

5081. alistairconnor - 6/21/2000 5:28:31 PM

Around here, the people who speak and write the best French are mostly over seventy. They learned it at school as a second language.
Their children mostly understand the old language but don't speak it. The younger generations speak an impoverished French, with a few quirks of grammar, and a strong regional accent.

Parallel to this, notions of local culture and identity have also faded, leaving a people whose world view is formed, in the best of cases, by the 7.30 news.

This is the shining result of the policy you were so keen on, Pseud, which was to systematically scorn and denigrate the local idiom as "incorrect French", and punish children for speaking it. There was never any argument as to whether or not French should have been taught at school or not, you're making that up.

You undoubtedly understand this sort of process very well, having witnessed it first hand among peoples you care about. What I find disappointing is your unwillingness to extrapolate from the particular to the general. One of the important things one learns in growing up is to transpose personal experience into rules and principles.

Of course, some people never manage this.

5082. alistairconnor - 6/21/2000 5:30:12 PM

(But mainly, you just got pissy because I accused you of two terrible crimes, by your lights: changing your mind, and being sentimental.)

(Tee hee. Papua New Zealand. I must remember that.)

5083. RustlerPike - 6/22/2000 2:00:06 AM

5084. PelleNilsson - 6/22/2000 3:52:16 AM

Rustler

You have a blank space in the name of the .jpg file. It appears that my browser (Netscape) doesn't accept that.

5085. Cellar Door - 6/23/2000 8:18:18 PM

Pinocchio Bore: Guilty as hell
Pinocchio Bore: Guilty as hell
Pinocchio Bore: Guilty as hell
Pinocchio Bore: Guilty as hell
Pinocchio Bore: Guilty as hell
Pinocchio Bore: Guilty as hell
Pinocchio Bore: Guilty as hell
Pinocchio Bore: Guilty as hell
Pinocchio Bore: Guilty as hell
Pinocchio Bore: Guilty as hell
Pinocchio Bore: Guilty as hell
Pinocchio Bore: Guilty as hell
Pinocchio Bore: Guilty as hell
Pinocchio Bore: Guilty as hell
Pinocchio Bore: Guilty as hell
Pinocchio Bore: Guilty as hell
Pinocchio Bore: Guilty as hell
Pinocchio Bore: Guilty as hell
Pinocchio Bore: Guilty as hell
Pinocchio Bore: Guilty as hell
Pinocchio Bore: Guilty as hell
Pinocchio Bore: Guilty as hell
Pinocchio Bore: Guilty as hell
Pinocchio Bore: Guilty as hell
Pinocchio Bore: Guilty as hell
Pinocchio Bore: Guilty as hell
Pinocchio Bore: Guilty as hell
Pinocchio Bore: Guilty as hell
Pinocchio Bore: Guilty as hell
Pinocchio Bore: Guilty as hell
Pinocchio Bore: Guilty as hell
Pinocchio Bore: Guilty as hell
Pinocchio Bore: Guilty as hell
Pinocchio Bore: Guilty as hell
Pinocchio Bore: Guilty as hell
Pinocchio Bore: Guilty as hell
Pinocchio Bore: Guilty as hell
Pinocchio Bore: Guilty as hell
Pinocchio Bore: Guilty as hell
Pinocchio Bore: Guilty as hell

5086. DanDillon - 6/23/2000 9:36:45 PM

Cellar Door,
Please refrain from such idiocy.

On a more relevant note, I thought it might be nice to be reminded that of a site that's both extremely useful and fun to browse. The Dictionaries page is impresssive, but not exhaustive.

5087. RustlerPike - 6/24/2000 6:24:15 AM

Looks like the Cellar Door needs oiling.

5088. pseudoerasmus - 6/27/2000 3:26:27 AM

#5081
Around here, the people who speak and write the best French are
mostly over seventy. They learned it at school as a second language.
Their children mostly understand the old language but don't speak it.
The younger generations speak an impoverished French, with a few
quirks of grammar, and a strong regional accent.

This is prescriptivist gibberish. There is no such thing an
"impoverished" language or the "best _____". Languages just are.

But sometimes linguists and anthropologists tend to become reverse
prescriptivists and cultural absolutists when it comes to threatened
languages & cultures, so maybe this time the linguists here won't
back me up on this

Parallel to this, notions of local culture and identity have also
faded, leaving a people whose world view is formed, in the best of
cases, by the 7.30 news.

Isn't the social criticism of muddle-headed prigs hilarious? Fancy
that! A people whose worldview is formed by television because...
some tyrannical instit in the 19th century or the earliest 20th
century beat their ancestors for saying "vois estes" instead of "vous
?tes". What other scintillating observation have you got? Is this
sort of mindless undisciplined search for truth a characteristic of
Papua New Zealanders?

5089. pseudoerasmus - 6/27/2000 3:32:39 AM

This is the shining result of the policy you were so keen on,
Pseud, which was to systematically scorn and denigrate the local
idiom as "incorrect French", and punish children for speaking it.
There was never any argument as to whether or not French should
have been taught at school or not, you're making that up.

Well, I advocated that it was for the good that people were forced to
learn the national language. What else you inferred from my words,
I can't help.

The only language whose furtherance I care about, out of sentiment
is Pashto. (Not that it's threatened, but...) All other langauges I have
named, I want preserved because I find them fascinating .

The trivial variation on vulgar Latin called Gascon is not interesting
and I cannot make myself lament its death. Not every permutation
of phonemes (language) or adaptation to environment (culture) needs
to survive. The decline of the vibrant medieval Occitan culture is
lamentable because it was a serious and important culture.

What I find disappointing is your unwillingness to extrapolate
from the particular to the general. One of the important things one
learns in growing up is to transpose personal experience into rules
and principles.

Lack principle? Me? What rubbish.

You're just too primitive to realise that "principles" don't have to be
the trivial vulgarisation of the Golden Rule ("do unto others as you
would have others unto you") that's found in your remarks above.
Moral principles are decision rules. They don't require you to care
for some Polynesian savages if you happen to care about Pontic
Greeks.

Here is my principle, my rule, my extrapolation from the particular
to the general:

5090. pseudoerasmus - 6/27/2000 3:33:21 AM

I care about the preservation of languages which attain or have attained linguistic, cultural, historical, anthropological or literary interest.

The complete loss of Yiddish would be a tragedy, for it represented an extremely rich literary and social culture of Eastern Europe, one which has been basically expunged from where it had all begun.

We know all about Romance languages of the West. There are no missing links anymore in Romance linguistics. Most of the dead Romance languages left nothing but modern French people with funny accents. Hence, the silent death of Gascon is of no consequence.

Nor are the languages & cultures of some naked savages whose accomplishment in their entire 50 000 years in Australia amounts to a few scratches on rocks.

(But mainly, you just got pissy because I accused you of two terrible crimes, by your lights: changing your mind, and being sentimental.

On the contrary, these past two years I've changed my mind about so many things I am woozy from indirection! But they're about things you probably don't care about so you don't notice.

5091. Ronski - 6/27/2000 8:36:15 AM

pseudo,

Are there any Celtic languages that meet your criteria?

5092. JayAckroyd - 6/30/2000 10:23:24 AM

"lagniappe" showed up in last Sunday's crossword puzzle. Curious about its etymology, I looked it up in Websters 3rd. Turns out it comes from a quechua word for gift "yapa". New World Spanish "La yapa" turned into lagniappe via New World French.

Aside from trivial cases like quinoa, are there any other English words with quechua roots?

5093. Ronski - 6/30/2000 11:20:15 AM

Jay,

Clink on the link in Message # 4989 for your answer.

5094. PelleNilsson - 7/3/2000 6:18:37 AM

Pincher

It was interesting to pour over the tables in Ruhlen's book. What surprised me was the polemics against the "indoeuropeanists". I had thought that the question of a common origin of all languages was more or less settled (all the more so because the "out of Africa" theory about our origins is now widely accepted) and that any dispute would concern whether or not it is possible to reconstruct it.

This turns out not to be the case. The indoeuropeanists support the theory of "multiregional development", i.e. that language has emerged independantly in several places. This, apparently, goes back to the 19th century German linguists which classified languages as "advanced" and "primitive" and regarded Indoeuropean - the white mans language! - as the most advanced and not related to any other language group.

It is not so long ago that the multi-regional development theory was applied also to the development of homo sapiens. The purpose was the same in my view: to deny any relation between the white race and other peoples.

I'm also reading Pinker. I note he is sceptical about some of Ruhlen's claims.

5095. Thoughtful - 7/5/2000 12:35:38 PM

Hello in here. Just stopped in to point out that the question of the origin of "youse" as in, "Hey, youse guys!" was raised in the cafe. Just in case anyone wanted to weigh in on that one.

5096. PincherMartin - 7/6/2000 2:32:51 AM

Pelle --

I see you've dropped me a note. I'll try and respond tomorrow, but I have my hands full right now in Current Events.

By the way, I've also read Pinker and I noted his less than warm attitude towards Ruehlen. Perhaps Irv -- wherever he is -- can shed some light on that.

5097. RustlerPike - 7/8/2000 8:18:36 AM

Where has Hashke gone??????

5098. ycmeehan - 7/8/2000 9:49:01 AM

Rustler,
I just sent him an email. We will see what happens.

5099. RustlerPike - 7/8/2000 1:48:52 PM

OK.

5100. PelleNilsson - 7/8/2000 1:51:41 PM

That's a good initiative, ycmeehan. Hashke is missed.

5101. PelleNilsson - 7/8/2000 2:11:40 PM

A teaser for hashke:

Kort är hammarens skaft hos den segrande Thor, blott en aln långt är svärdet hos Frej.
Det är nog; har du mod, gå din fiende när! och för kort är din klinga då ej.

När det stormar med makt, hissa seglen i topp! det är lustigt på stormande haf:
låt det gå, låt det gå! den som stryker är feg; förr'n du stryker, gå hellre i qvaf!

Sår är vikingavinst, och det pryder sin man, när på bröst eller panna det står;
låt det blöda, förbind det se'n dygnet är om, men ej förr, vill du helsas för vår." -

5102. ycmeehan - 7/8/2000 2:22:08 PM

Thanks, Pelle
Not long ago, after weeks of silence, you welcomed me back. I thank you for that too.

5103. PelleNilsson - 7/9/2000 6:19:48 AM

As an added attraction(?) you can now listen to the first two stanzas.

5104. Uzmakk - 7/10/2000 2:42:12 PM

Hashke is probably paaling around with Igor.

5105. PelleNilsson - 7/11/2000 2:15:10 PM

William Safire's tips for summer reading:

Eugene Ehrlich, You've Got Ketchup on Your Muumuu
"A breezy look at foreign words." 'Ketchup' is apparently of Chinese origin.

Barbara Wallraff, Word Court
Usage guide.

William Calvin and Derek Bickertopn, Lingua ex Machina -- Reconciling Darwin and Chomsky with the Human Brain
Language and evolution.

Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence: 500 years of Western Cultural Life
"My nonagenarian mentor condemns the severe effects of anything-goes linguistics and derides the loosey-goosey notion that 'no native speaker can ever make a mistake.'"

5106. DanDillon - 7/11/2000 4:36:01 PM

I picked up a copy of Lingua ex Machina while I was out of town a few weeks ago, before Safire plugged it. I had the prescience to put it back down before leaving the bookstore. All kidding aside, I paged through the thing, and I was very put off by its lack of perspicuity. When someone succeeds in making the discussion a bit clearer, I'll be glad to read up. After all, the book's premise nearly demands attention. I'd be very curious to learn how the related notions of our beloved Darwin and Chomsky are reconciled. Pinker should have written this one rather than that awful and unnecessary Words and Rules.

5107. PelleNilsson - 7/11/2000 5:01:58 PM

Perspicuity?

5108. tmachine - 7/11/2000 5:35:57 PM

Perspicuity—insight.

Eugene Ehrlich—my father-in-law! very enjoyable book, hurry to your neares online store!

5109. DanDillon - 7/11/2000 6:00:16 PM

Pelle & tmac,

You've been duped. "Perspicuity" = clarity, explicitness, lucidity, intelligibility--all in relation to style, usually prose style.

The oft confused "perspicacity" = keenness in mental penetration or discernment, more akin to your given definition of "insight."

Two tricky but altogether useful words.

5110. tmachine - 7/12/2000 10:23:21 AM

ok, fair enough. but does the book have insight either?

5111. Indiana Jones - 7/12/2000 4:29:10 PM

Via email:

The Washington Post's Style Invitational asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.

1. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the recipient who doesn't get it.

2. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

3. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very high.

4. Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of obtaining sex.

5. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

6. Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.

7. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease.

8. Karmageddon: It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like a serious bummer.

9. Glibido: All talk and no action.

10. Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

11. Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a refund from the IRS, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.

12. Ignoranus: A person who's both stupid & an asshole.

5112. alistairconnor - 7/12/2000 4:48:52 PM

Sargasm : the intense satisfaction of a really good put-down.

5113. PelleNilsson - 7/14/2000 6:15:50 AM

I played around with online translation. In German 'Accelerating feed back loop' became beschleunigenrückkopplungsschleife.

Phew!

5114. Dusty - 7/14/2000 8:26:38 AM

alistairconnor

Excellent!

One other time we posted a similar contest, we ran our own, with some very creative entries. Anyone game?

5115. PelleNilsson - 7/14/2000 10:21:32 AM

Dusty

Yes, but I will probably not be very good at it.

5116. PelleNilsson - 7/14/2000 10:32:18 AM

Did you know that the Harry Potter books are "translated" before they are released in the US. I learnt that form an article in the IHT (can't link, they are damned niggardly about that). The spelling is revised to conform to the American standard (gray for grey, flavour for flavour, etc.), but words are changed too. These examples were given:

pitch	field
sellotaped	taped
fortnight	two weeks
post	mail
boot	trunk
lorry	truck

Is this really doing kids a service?

5117. CalGal - 7/14/2000 10:35:36 AM

You forgot "English muffin" for "crumpet".

5118. PelleNilsson - 7/14/2000 10:39:29 AM

Indeed I did. You read the article in NYT I suppose?

5119. PelleNilsson - 7/14/2000 10:41:40 AM

This reminds that back when I started dabbling in programming, it took me some time to realise that

colour:=grey;

should be

color:=gray;

5120. CalGal - 7/14/2000 10:43:42 AM

It made quite a stir over here. I think the spelling changes are normal, and the only changes I think went a bit too far were "crumpet" and "fortnight", since they aren't quite the same thing at all.

I suppose these changes go on all the time?

5121. PelleNilsson - 7/14/2000 10:51:52 AM

Well I don't know about 'normal'. Wouldn't it be good for kids to know that there is more than one flavour to the language? I'm sure it's not done in the opposite direction.

5122. Uzmakk - 7/14/2000 10:57:49 AM

My folks purchased a first edition of Harry Potter for resale. They paid $17,000 for it.

5123. Uzmakk - 7/14/2000 10:59:23 AM

I think the misprints are a scam. Hope people don't fall for it. It won't last long.

5124. Dusty - 7/14/2000 12:05:09 PM

I'll bite. Why isn't fortnight the same as two weeks?

5125. CalGal - 7/14/2000 8:11:03 PM

Do you know, I thought it was only ten days, for some reason. But I just looked it up and it's 14. I can't think why, now, I must have been thinking of something else. Maybe metric. (g)

Pelle,

Are you sure the spelling changes don't go the other way? I don't know for sure, but it wouldn't surprise me if the English publication of American books didn't add some u's.

I grew up reading English books, and was dinged for mispelling "colour", "harbour", and so on, in my American schools. So I think the spelling changes are acceptable. But I think it would have been much nicer if they'd footnoted the different words and explained their meaning. Given the immense popularity of the books, it might broaden horizons a bit.

5126. CalGal - 7/14/2000 8:25:45 PM

I'm at DisneyWorld this week with my son, my father, and my little sister. We were buying sno-cones and my father, as is his habit, was chattering away with the server, and when she handed him his change, he said, "Merci. See, that's a different language. I thought I'd be classy."

She grinned, and said, "De nada. See, I can speak a different language still."

A different counter guy said, cheerfully, "Gawd, us bi-lingual Americans. Who sez we can't learn no furrin languages?"

And my dad said, "Hey, I can speak even another language. Watch this: Shukran." (sp)

A fourth server further back said, "Afwan!" (sp, again) and turned around to congratulate whoever knew how to say Thank You in Arabic. She said, "[you know any Arabic?]" and my dad said "Ay-wah (sp yet again) habibi" and the next thing the two were chattering away, to the astonishment of the other folks behind the counter, none of whom had known that the young woman had been born in a small town outside of Beirut.

It's A Small World.

5127. arkymalarky - 7/14/2000 8:28:01 PM

(groan!)

5128. arkymalarky - 7/14/2000 8:29:52 PM

PS--guess what I'm whistling now?
Thanks a lot.

5129. CalGal - 7/14/2000 8:41:51 PM

I wanted you to be aware. You know, there's so much that we share.

5130. uzmakk - 7/16/2000 5:34:57 PM

Article in August Harper's--
THE LAST WORD
Can the World's Small Languages Be Saved?
by Earl Shorris

5131. DanDillon - 7/16/2000 8:59:06 PM

I'm rather disappointed in Harper's Magazine's editorial decision to run that article. Without yet having read it, I can tell you with some degree of certainty that it's already all been said and done. I'd hoped the magazine would have taken some variation on the theme and singled out one dying language or perhaps, at most, a dying family of languages--more depth, less breadth. Diving deeper into the wreck, so to speak, would render greater opportunity for exploring social, political, religious, and of course cultural implications of a dying language. Given the recent spate of bad editorial decisions at Lapham's helm, I'm actually not surprised Harper's would write this article. Again.

Secretly, of course, I look forward to delving into the piece... if only to confirm I'm right.

5132. PelleNilsson - 7/25/2000 2:12:56 PM

A fellow named Dave Carkeet is standing in for Safire in the language department. He writes about using the present tense to describe events in the past and says that this is typical for the world of sports. "The referee awards a penalty in the last minute and we lose. What a shame."

But is it really limited to sports. I seem to recall that Damon Runyan writes almost exclusively in the present. Also George V. Higgins in his early books about Eddie Coyle et al. Is it a usage that has found its way from the petty underworld into sports?

5133. Ronski - 7/27/2000 2:13:52 PM

It was reported yesterday that a German newspaper was giving up using "New German," and reverting back to the standard old kind of German.

5134. PelleNilsson - 7/27/2000 3:16:15 PM

I've always thought that the phrase "time is money" was coined in the 20th century - sort of a Henry Ford thing.

I was surprised, therefore, when today I read in a 1848 Swedish pamphlet about railways that "the English have an expression of long standing 'time is money'".

The author went on to say that the present preoccupation with time and speed seems to indicate something new in our civilisation which would be worthy of scientific inquiry.

La plus ça change ....

5135. RustlerPike - 8/1/2000 7:25:17 AM

WHERE IS HASHKE?

5138. RustlerPike - 8/2/2000 12:57:15 AM

Tasting.

5139. RustlerPike - 8/2/2000 12:57:48 AM

Vot happened to ze two prefious messages?

5140. ycmeehan - 8/2/2000 6:29:01 PM

He will be back when he feels better, Rustler.

5141. cmboyce - 8/10/2000 11:10:23 AM

The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs cites, "Remember that time is money" in Ben Franklin's Advice to Young Tradesmen (1748). I'd say that Ben's wording suggests that the phrase already had currency. (Further, the ODEP lists a not-very-close paraphrase from Francis Bacon, and a scrap of Theophrastus (!) which, being in Greek, I cannot read.)

So, 1748, at least, for the particular proverb, but the idea was by no means new, then. I'd have said the idea came with the acceleration of -- of everything, accompanying the industrial revolution, but I guess we peculiar animals have always been interested in riches.

5142. PelleNilsson - 8/10/2000 11:34:10 AM

Is this just a quick in and out cm? After you visited the last time I fixed so I could play the Arctic Loon from my website but now I have forgotten what I did and how I did it and I'm not going to bother if you won't be around.

5143. cmboyce - 8/10/2000 11:53:55 AM

Aargh, Pelle! I'm so sorry!! Yes, this is likely to prove a quick in and out; I must leave for an appointment pretty soon. But I'll be back this afternoon, and I'll be lurking more for at least the rest of the summer. I forget what happened last time; I was called away by something or other... blah blah. And I'm just not on line much these days. I'll try to remember to at least finish an exchange, in future. My apologies.

5144. PelleNilsson - 8/10/2000 11:59:36 AM

That's OK cm. I'm not blaming you for anything, I just wanted to know. If I can put the stuff together again I'll post it in H&G.

5145. cmboyce - 8/10/2000 12:05:18 PM

It sounds neat. But don't put yourself out at all. I shoulda been there, the first time.

5146. PelleNilsson - 8/14/2000 6:14:26 AM

Germany’s new word disorder

Excerpt:

As a test of Germany’s ability to undertake change, the enduring wrangle over language reform is a dispiriting case. The row over just how many consonants can be lined up to make one of those exhausting compound nouns in which German so delights—why talk about coming to terms with the past when the word Vergangenheitsbewältigung will do?—has flared up again thanks to a decision by a leading daily newspaper, the austere Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), to ditch the grammar and spelling reforms introduced last year.

5147. PelleNilsson - 8/14/2000 6:33:46 AM

The above piece translated into German and back by Babelfish

Since test of ability of Germany to take up itself modification which is aushaltene Wrangle over language improvement dispiriting a case -. the series over even how many consonants be aligned it can, in order by those exhaustive assembled article words to form, in those German joys so -- why with coming to the designations with the past as the DO? Word coming to terms with the past you deal with yourselves -- extended, again thanks up to a decision by a prominent daily newspaper, the austere newspaper (FAZ) has itself, to put around around the grammar with a ditch and the orthography of improvements presented last year.

5148. stostosto - 8/14/2000 6:46:52 AM

Thanks, Pelle, I thought about linking that as well. We have a debate along the same lines in Denmark, and I know France has been coming apart over such issues. Is it a European thing? Do you have riots in Sweden when new spelling is introduced? Do you introduce new spelling at all? Are staunch defenders of a Rikssvensk standard up in arms at young people's introduction of English words everywhere?

Here, a number of well-intentioned professor and language types plus, I believe, the minister of culture, are peddling the view that university students and scholars publish in Danish, not in English.

Incidentally, we also had a comma-reform, similar to the German one, which has thrown everybody off-balance. Basically, nobody has a clue about the new rules, anymore, so in practice it's anything goes. I note that this hasn't -yet - been the end to Danish civilisation as we know it (to the extent that we do).

5149. stostosto - 8/14/2000 6:47:28 AM

Leksaker.

5150. PelleNilsson - 8/14/2000 11:22:32 AM

In contrast to what you may think, we uptight Swedes are fairly relaxed about these things. If english terms become popular they become Swedecised like 'site' = 'sajt', 'rave' = 'rejv' and that's the end of the matter.

By contrast, an article in today's paper complains about the bad pronounciation of English exhibited by our young IT entrepreneurs, 'Stockholm English' the journalist calls it referring to the accent. He speculates it may be part of the plan to conquer the world.

Vii hääv desajdid to sprädd dis bjotiifol äkseent all ååver dö vörlld

Translation in white:

We have decided to spread this beautiful accent all over the world

5151. Stuart Crow - 8/14/2000 5:08:08 PM

It must be a generational thing. Ace of Base's English is nowhere near as good as Abba's was. Or was the Norwegian one responsible for that?!

5152. stostosto - 8/14/2000 5:17:29 PM

Pelle:

Whøøt's cøøking?

5153. stostosto - 8/14/2000 5:58:44 PM

Pelle:

I have translated one of your glorious pontificating posts from WWII into proper Swenglish:

"1010. PelleNeelssun - 8/11/00 6:23:32 PM
Hee PE! Yuoo veell lufe-a thees next oone-a. Ebuoot Suceeel Derveenism.

Suceeel Derveenism is ebuoot ixtendeeng Derveen intu zee interecshun betveee hoomuns, impheseezing zee term "soorfeefel ooff zee feettest" (cueened by Spencer, nut by Derveen) vheech in its foolgereezed furm beceme-a "zee soorfeefel ooff zee strungest" oor "zee lev ooff zee joongle-a". Suceeel Derveenism ves eppleeed in tvu erees. Um gesh dee bork, bork! Oon ves oone-a zee indeefidooel lefel.

Tu poot it seemply, sooccess in ecedemeea oor - ebufe-a ell - in booseeness prufed feetness. Um gesh dee bork, bork! It ves reeght, zeereffure-a, thet cepeetelists und pruffessurs shuoold leed zee less feet peuple-a. Thees beceme-a a "sceeentiffic" ergooment egeeenst ixtendeeng zee fruncheese-a vheech vuoold inefeetebly leed tu "mub roole-a". Thees theenking hes nut deeed oooot. Um de hur de hur de hur. Sumeteemes yuoo heer peuple-a sey thet zeey ere-a tured ooff zee "puleeticel sqooebble-a" und vuoold preffer a "gufernment ooff ixperts". Unuzeer leene-a ooff thuooght oon zee indeefidooel lefel ves thet zee imprufement ooff heelt cere-a hed fueeded zee mechuneesms ooff netoorel selecshun.

"Meesffits" cuoold noo soorfeefe-a und prucreete-a vheech vuoold inefeetebly leed tu a degenereshun ooff zee "hoomun metereeel". Thees leed tu rezeer messeefe-a prugremmes ooff stereelizeshun in zee US und Svedee (und prubebly in oozeer cuoontreees tuu) vheech cunteenooed intu zee 1940's. Um gesh dee bork, bork! "

The Dialectizer - at your service

5154. PelleNilsson - 8/15/2000 1:33:56 AM

sto

That's funny! Here is part of yours in Cockney:

Thanks, right, Pelle, I fought about linkin' that as well. We 'ave a debate along the same lines in Denmark, and I know France 'as been comin' apart over such issues.Is it a European fin', luv? Do yer 'ave riots in Sweden wen new spellin' is introduced, then, mate? Do yer introduce new spellin' at all, isit?Are staunch defenders of a Rikssvensk standard up in arms at yung blokes's introduction of English words evrywhere, then, squire?

5155. PsychProf - 8/16/2000 1:06:26 PM

Reasons Why The English Language Is Hard To Learn:
>
> 1) The bandage was wound around the wound.
> 2) The farm was used to produce produce.
> 3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
> 4) We must polish the Polish furniture.
> 5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.
> 6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
> 7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to
> present the present.
> 8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
> 9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
> 10) I did not object to the object.
> 11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
> 12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
> 13) They were too close to the door to close it.
> 14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.
> 15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
> 16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
> 17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
> 18) After a number of injections my jaw got number.
> 19) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
> 20) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
> 21) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

5156. PelleNilsson - 8/16/2000 2:48:58 PM

Funny PP, but not true.

The two most difficult things in English:

(1) The do construct:

Bill saw Mary today.
Bill didn't see Mary today.
Did Bill see Mary today?

In Swedish and most other European languages this is expressed as:

Bill saw Mary today.
Bill saw not Mary today.
Saw Bill Mary today?

(In French the declarative and interrogative form are the same but distinguished by inflexion).

(2) The proper use of the prepositions on, at, in, of.

(3) The irregular verbs.

(4) The poor match between spelling and pronounciation.

5157. stostosto - 8/16/2000 4:13:43 PM

"In Swedish and most other European languages this is expressed as:

Bill saw Mary today.
Bill saw not Mary today.
Saw Bill Mary today? "

Hmmm. I think you are wrong on this. I wager the Herring languages are fairly peculiar in this respect.

For instance:

Bill sah Mary heute.
Bill sah nicht Mary heute.
Sah Bill Mary heute?

Does that sound right?
It may be grammatically correct, but the ususal form is more like

Bill hat heute Mary gesehen.
Bill hat Mary heute nicht gesehen.
Hat Bill Mary heute gesehen?

(What is voire in past tense?)

I also think the French tend to use the passé prochaine (? I am not strong in grammatical notations) instead of outright past tense. Also Italians.

I know nothing about the Slavic languages, perhaps do you?

Where is Toshimitsu-Jahangir Lyapunov when you need him?

And where is our Bali-residing host and one time friend and mentor???

Perhaps he is out practising his British pronunciation of intervocal 't'.

5158. PelleNilsson - 8/16/2000 4:38:32 PM

sto

Yes, I was wrong (partially)

WHat I wanted to say was that the 'do' construct is peculiar to English and therefore difficult to learn.

(vue)

5159. Ronski - 8/16/2000 5:42:39 PM

I think the difficulty with English is not just with the fact that we can say both "I see" and "I do see," but also that we can use "I am seeing." All three constructions have different meanings or shadings, but those differences must seem strange or trivial at first to people learning English.

5160. stostosto - 8/16/2000 6:12:44 PM

I think the most difficult part of learning English is definitely all those English words. They are myriad. Legion. Multitudinous. Manifold. Plenty. Innumerable. Countless. Many.

5161. stostosto - 8/16/2000 6:26:24 PM

And here's cmboyce's incomprehensible link transmogryphied into proper cockney:

Large Intestine
The large intestine, or colon, right, consists of ascendin', right, transverse, descendin', and sigmoid portion. The ascendin' portion extends from the cecum superiorly along the right abdominal wall ter the inferior surface of the bloomin' liver and bends sharply at a right angle ter the chuffin' left at a curve called the chuffin' hepatic flexure. From there, right, it crosses the bloody abdominal cavity as the bloody transverse colon ter the left abdominal wall at the splenic flexure and begins the descendin' colon wich traverses inferiorly along the bloody left abdominal wall ter the bloody pelvic region. The bleedin' colon then forms an angle medially from the pelvis ter form an s-shaped curve called the bloody sigmoid colon. The last few inches of the colon is the bleedin' rectum wich is a storage site for solid werete wich leaves the body by way of an external openin' called the anus wich is controlled by muscles called sphincters.

(cont.)

5162. stostosto - 8/16/2000 6:26:40 PM

Substances wich 'ave not been absorbed in the wee intestine enter the bleedin' large intestine in the chuffin' form of liquid and fiber. The bleedin' large intestine or "bowel" is sometimes called the bloody "garbage dump" of the body, right, because the materials that reach it are of right wee use ter the body and are sent on from 'ere ter be disposed of. The first 'alf of the colon absorbs fluids and recycles them into the blood stream. The second 'alf compacts the wastes into feces, secretes mucus wich binds the bloody substances, and lubricates it ter protect the colon and ease its passage. Of the two ter two and one-half gallons of food and liquids taken in by the bloody average adult, right, only about twelve ounces of werete enters the large intestine. Feces is comprised of about free quarters water. The remainder is protein, fat, undigested food roughage, dried digestive juices, cells shed by the intestine, and dead bacteria. A common disorder of the bloomin' large intestine is inflammation of the bloomin' appendix, or appendicitis. Werete that accumulates in the chuffin' appendix cannot be moved easily by peristalsis since the appendix 'as only one openin'. The bloomin' symptoms of appendicitis include muscular rigidity, localized pain in the chuffin' right lower quarter of the bloomin' abdomen, and vomitin', right? The chief danger of appendicitis is that is may rupture and empty its contents of fecal matter and werete into the bleedin' abdominal cavity producin' an extremely serious condition called peritonitis, init?

5163. DanDillon - 8/16/2000 9:46:48 PM

The most difficult things in English:
(1) The do construct.
(2) The proper use of the prepositions on, at, in, of.
(3) The irregular verbs.
(4) The poor match between spelling and pronounciation.

Pelle,

The do construct is difficult only if you didn't have the benefit of an English teacher who used transformational grammar. As it is known in that discipline, the AUX (short for "auxiliary" and which also includes all manner of "helping" verbs and negation markers) is broken down quite nicely and clearly.

The proper use of prepositions, and certainly that in more analytical languages, is usually very difficult for non-native speakers. I can't tell you the struggles I've endured trying to teach these deceptively difficult little words.

Irregular verbs are hard in any language.

And English is infamous for its odd spellings.

By the way, you've expertly enumerated the problems with learning English.

5164. Ronski - 8/17/2000 10:20:24 AM

Sto is correct that English has an exceptionally rich vocabulary. The English language borrowed from French, Norse, Latin and Greek sources, adding many words to the basic Anglo-Saxon (and Friesian and Jute), also taking a smattering of Celtic and bits and pieces of other languages from all around the world.

5165. tmachine - 8/17/2000 11:58:02 AM

In French the declarative and interrogative CAN be the same (it's usually more colloquial) but there is a specific interrogative form which is inverted. Thus , using your example, you could say:

Bill a vu Mary aujourd'hui.
Bill n'a pas vu Mary aujourd'hui.
THEN
either: (1) A Bill vu Mary aujourd'hui?
or (2) Bill a-t-il vu Mary aujourd'hui?
or (3) Est-ce que Bill a vu Mary aujourd'hui?
or (4) Bill a vu Mary aujourd'hui? (spoken with an interrogative inflection)

5166. CalGal - 8/17/2000 12:02:24 PM

tmac! Nice to see you around.

5167. tmachine - 8/17/2000 12:04:58 PM

hey, CG, same here. I'm afraid i don't get around much anymore. but every now and then attempt to pop in. does anyone know how my old buddy wabbit is doing? or irv? haven't seen much of him lately either.

5168. CalGal - 8/17/2000 12:06:27 PM

Wabbit got married, did you hear? She announced it a few months ago. I think she's working hard, too.

I don't know what's up with Irv--his new businesses might really be taking off.

5169. tmachine - 8/17/2000 2:43:52 PM

wow. I had no idea wabbit got married. CG, could you possibly send me a current email address for her? you can send it to my work email (i don't care who knows that): Tamara_Glenny@primediamags.com

I'd be really grateful if you could do that. I must congratulate her! Um--who did she get married to?

Slavic version of the interrogative exercise:

Bill videl Mary sevodnya.
Bill ne videl Mary sevodnya.
Videl li Bill Mary sevodnya?
OR Bill videl Mary sevodnya? (as with French, the declarative used as interrogative is usually a bit more colloquial)

5170. CalGal - 8/17/2000 3:20:36 PM

Tmac--sent you off an email.

5171. PelleNilsson - 8/17/2000 3:24:09 PM

tmac

Hi!

You are right of course. My French is very rusty these days.

5172. tmachine - 8/17/2000 4:04:29 PM

hi, pelle. the other thing is that the "a-t-il vu" formation I cited would probably, I think, be the commonest and most natural. the "t" part is inserted for ease-of-speech purposes, since it's hard to say "a il".
pelle, who in this thread suggested the Origins of Language book by Meredith Ruhlen (I think that's his name)? I read it. It was simply fascinating, not just because of the fun of being walked through language comparisons, but because there are so few books aimed at laymen that go into the nitty-gritty details of an academic controversy, It took me back to grad school days when we actually discussed that kind of thing for fun!

5173. PelleNilsson - 8/17/2000 4:14:01 PM

tmac

It was PincherMartin who suggested it. I liked it too although I think that his idea that the "ur-language" is recontstructable is a little far-fetched.

5174. PelleNilsson - 8/17/2000 4:14:33 PM

--- reconstructable ...

5175. PelleNilsson - 8/22/2000 1:57:00 PM

I received a book in the mail today ....

5176. PelleNilsson - 8/22/2000 2:08:48 PM

From the foreword:

Some years ago I had the privilege of studying the Navajo language with [Hashké}. [...] I suspect that no one, if he is not born to the Navajo language, penetrates very far beneath its surface. [Hashké] is the exception. I would be remiss in this foreword if I failed to acknowledge his learning, his dedication, and his contributions to linguistic studies, especially those which center on Navajo. Nor is it out of place to speak here of my admiration for this man, in whom learning and compassion, selflessnes and disinterested kindness come together in exquisite balance. I am pleased and proud to place my own few words here among his, and among those he has culled from verbal constellations and made available to us. It is a singular gift.

Momaday is a Kiowa Indian who won a Pulitzer for his 1969 novel House Made of Dawn.

5177. PelleNilsson - 8/22/2000 2:14:53 PM

From Hashkés preface:

The present volume is intended for several groups of readers: the serious as well as the casual language aficionado, the earnest student of languages and linguistics, Navajo learners of English idioms, English-speaking student of Navajo languages, and insofar as idioms in many different languages are represented, foreign speakers of those languages who are students in English and who wish to learn colloquial expressions in English equivalent to those in their own languages.

5178. theDiva - 8/22/2000 2:44:05 PM

So that's where the Silver Fox has been lately. How utterly marvelous.

5179. CalGal - 8/22/2000 3:09:21 PM

Hey, Hashke! Come back soon! Nice to see what you've been up to.

5180. PelleNilsson - 8/23/2000 3:15:44 AM

An interview with Hashke at Amazon.

5181. PelleNilsson - 8/23/2000 3:18:24 AM

And here is the book at Amazon.

5182. tmachine - 8/23/2000 10:48:06 AM

wow. what a wonderful piece of news. CG, I emailed wabbit, haven't heard back--do you suppose she's not looking at the mote email?

5183. marjoribanks - 8/23/2000 10:53:56 AM

Jeez, good news and worrisome news about Pak Hashke at the same time.

What we need to do is spak off a pun session, that illness will pak it in, and we'll be back to the usual you can besar.

5184. ProfEmeritus - 8/23/2000 11:42:36 AM

Pak marj

Bahasa bout getting Pak Hashke well first. Ikan only wait without rekening with him.

5185. ProfEmeritus - 8/23/2000 11:44:58 AM

Pak Hashke via Kaye

I have lost interest in the Mote since I heard several months ago that you weren't well. Please come back soon and make us all happy.

5186. marjoribanks - 8/23/2000 12:18:30 PM

Pak Gurubesar,

I had no idea that Pak Hashke was not his usual spakling self. You kasi that this forum ain't the same without him. This is really terimah.

Pak hashke, we miss you very much.

5187. Cellar Door - 8/24/2000 12:28:38 AM

GAYS RULE!

5188. stostosto - 8/24/2000 7:33:53 AM

CellarDoor
Are you aware that your moniker can be arranged to spell "CarleDrool"?

5189. stostosto - 8/24/2000 7:35:42 AM

I want my
I want my
I want my
hashke back!

5190. Thoughtful - 8/24/2000 5:07:27 PM

Someone sent me this note....I'm assuming it's spanish. Any translations? I'm guessing live each day as if it's your last. Am I close?

Viva cada dia comos e fosse o último.

5191. CalGal - 8/24/2000 5:18:00 PM

Sto,

It can also be rearranged to spell:

LaceDroolr
ClearLordo
RaceDoRoll

5192. benwolf - 8/24/2000 5:34:27 PM

Viva cada dia comos e fosse o último.

Looks more like Portuguese.

5193. CalGal - 8/24/2000 5:38:20 PM

Hi. Are you new? Welcome, if so.

(If you're not new, then I take it all back.)

I keep on wondering if that quote is something complimentary about Bob Fosse.

5194. tmachine - 8/24/2000 6:42:44 PM

No, it's Spanish. It means: "Live each day as if it were your last."

5195. arkymalarky - 8/24/2000 10:15:05 PM

Best wishes to Hashke for a speedy and full recovery. I miss reading your posts.

5196. benwolf - 8/25/2000 12:51:40 AM

Thank you, CalGal. I'm old, but I'm new here. The Mote seems so much more civil than the NY Times forums.

5197. Stumbo - 8/25/2000 3:33:33 AM

corrode all
cellar odor (heh)
cooler lard
colder oral
oracle lord
clear drool
local order
do, or recall?
or local red
earl or clod

5198. Stumbo - 8/25/2000 3:38:45 AM

Deviant, or local Red?! (6,4)

(Just in case CharlieL still reads this, heh. I'm not strong enough of a man to resist the lure of an &lit.)

5199. Stumbo - 8/25/2000 3:40:32 AM

Nice timestamp on #5197, too. (EDT)

5200. Thoughtful - 8/25/2000 9:43:57 AM

tmac, I think it is Portugese.... it was sent from a fellow in Brazil and I dug up someone in the office who lived in Brazil for years and he agreed with the translation -- though the languages are close. I sent him a note back saying I don't speak Portugese and haven't heard from him....we'll see what happens next.

5201. hashke - 8/26/2000 10:37:22 AM

i want to thank pelle for putting my new book in this thread and to extend appreciation to all of those friends who so warmly have expressed concern about my recovery. thank you all for the much needed support! it is wonderful to see the puns flying about again. i hope to join in when i get back on my feet.

the train passed close by, slowed down, but then chugged on -- some kinda extended meaning there, i guess.

5202. stostosto - 8/26/2000 10:59:08 AM

Good to see you hashke!
I am looking forward to see more of you.

5203. PelleNilsson - 8/26/2000 11:00:13 AM

hashke!!!!

Get back on those feet mucho pronto!

5204. profemeritus - 8/26/2000 11:03:40 AM

Pak Hashke

Itu kabar baik sekali. Kami semua tunggu Pak kembali dan jadi guru untuk bekin puns. Tanpa Guru Hashke kami tidak bisa main atau tertawa.

5205. PelleNilsson - 8/26/2000 11:16:01 AM

Trés vite, muito rapido, mit höchste geschwindigkeit, med högsta hastighet, med høyste fart.

5206. IrvingSnodgrass - 8/26/2000 11:17:15 AM

Hashke:
It's sure great to see you here again. This place just hasn't been the same without you.

Saya akan balas suratmu segera. Dan saya sekalian akan ceritakan pengalaman menarikku di negara bagianmu.

5207. DanDillon - 8/26/2000 8:11:58 PM

Pardon me, but has hashke's malady been made known? What have I missed?

In any case, hashke, I hope your recovery is speedy and complete!

5208. IrvingSnodgrass - 8/26/2000 10:12:37 PM

Dan:
You may not have seen this post by Pelle in N&Q about our favorite punster.

5209. joezan - 8/27/2000 9:23:49 AM

Best wishes, Hashke. Hang in there.

5210. hashke - 8/27/2000 10:08:54 AM

there is nothing i'd rather do more than sit in this forum in Dumferling toune and drink with ye the blud-reid wine...

...but my doc says too much sodium

so i settle with pelle's dictum in #5205 to 'hoist the fart' (i know pelle will get the joke, i know he will).

5211. hashke - 8/27/2000 10:24:03 AM

irv:

alamatmu? saya ingin mengirim buku.

5212. ycmeehan - 8/27/2000 1:06:56 PM

Salut, Hashke,
Prenez votre temps. Reposez-vous bien avant de revenir.

5213. PelleNilsson - 8/27/2000 1:17:35 PM

hashke

Hahahaha! Hoist it indeed and keep it high!

5214. hashke - 8/27/2000 4:22:40 PM

ycmeehan,

merci, et tout à fait d'accord. moi, je ne peut plus maintenant.

5215. DanDillon - 8/27/2000 5:41:51 PM

Thanks, Irv.

hashke,
May your recovery be as swift as a haircut painless.

5216. hashke - 8/28/2000 1:00:38 PM

thanks, dan. it took a large bite out of my ass this time.

5217. PelleNilsson - 8/29/2000 3:59:29 AM

Welcome to "Ask Mister Language Person," written by the foremost leading world authority on the proper grammatorical usagality of English, both orally and in the form of words. In this award-winning column, which appears nocturnally, we answer the grammar and vocabulary questions that are on the minds of many Americans just before they pass out.

(Dave Barry)
Today, as is our wont, we begin with our first question:

Q. You have a wont?

A. Yes, but we comb our hair such that you cannot see it.

Q. With regards to the old spiritual song, "Gwine Jump Down, Turn Around, Pick a Bale of Cotton," why is the singer gwine jump down and turn around first?

A. He is hoping that he gwine pull a hamstring, and somebody else gwine have to pick the bale of cotton.

Q. I have trouble remembering the difference between the words "whose" and "who's." Should I put this in the form of a question?

A. In grammatical terminology, "who's" is an interlocutory contraption that is used to form the culinary indicative tense.

EXAMPLE: "You will never guess who's brassiere they found in the gumbo."

"Whose" is the past paramilitary form of "whomsoever" and is properly used in veterinary interrogations.

EXAMPLE: "Whose gwine spay all them weasels?"

5218. PelleNilsson - 8/29/2000 4:01:28 AM

I don't know how "(Dave Barry") came to be where it is. I should be beneath the text in way of attribution.

5219. IrvingSnodgrass - 8/29/2000 12:03:10 PM

Pelle:
Dave Barry is a genius. Thank you for posting his latest thoughts on the usagality of English.

5220. Thoughtful - 8/29/2000 3:42:50 PM

I know I always struggled with those past paramilitary forms along with the future perfect pretenses. It's much clearer now.

5221. cmboyce - 8/31/2000 10:03:40 PM

Hello, Hashké, I too hope you'll be completely sound again soon.

I just got your book from Amazon today. Just glancing through it, I am delighted. Nifty little gizmos everywhere! Congratulations on its appearance and all, as well. You and your collaborators did a fine job.

5222. hashke - 9/1/2000 1:09:20 PM

Wow! Thank you for that, cm!

The book was all time great fun to write and I'm very pleased that you are enjoying it! It is best read in small bites, as I'm sure you have discovered.

The question now is, what's next? I have some ideas, so have to get to work.

5223. theDiva - 9/1/2000 1:10:40 PM

HAIL THE CONQUERING HERO RETURNETH!

It is so good to see you, Hashke. I hope you're well. Welcome back.

5224. hashke - 9/1/2000 3:04:48 PM

Hey, Diva! Thanks. No conquering, no hero, but at least returneth!

5225. Ronski - 9/1/2000 3:12:14 PM

Hello, Hashke, and best wishes.

Which reminds me I must update my particulars at Amazon so I can buy your book.

I will do that today.

I'm looking forward to reading it.

5226. Uzmakk - 9/1/2000 3:15:10 PM

Greetings Hashke.

5227. hashke - 9/1/2000 3:38:14 PM

Hello Ronski and Uzmakk. What is it with amazon? I just tried to order some books and they don't even know me. And they keep pulling off the one-click. Most bloody frustrating! Update particulars? Whazzat?

5228. Uzmakk - 9/1/2000 3:39:41 PM

Oh, btw, Cellared ore is the most useful bastardization of Cellar's name. It refers to the fact that we put him below in the hold of the Mote Boat when we tire of him. It also indicates that he is perhaps valuable cargo. When he is confined below decks the rest of the crew occasionally sings a shanty called Cellared Ore O.

5229. glendajean - 9/1/2000 3:40:40 PM

Hashke -- welcome back!

5230. Ronski - 9/1/2000 4:29:21 PM

Hashke,

In my case it was a matter of my credit card having expired and having to enter a new, updated one. I did that earlier with no problem. And your book is allegedly going to be sent to me very soon.

But even with the expired credit card, they did have all other personal information on file, and seemed to know me.

5231. PelleNilsson - 9/1/2000 4:49:03 PM

hashke

The way this is going you can be content both with your riches and a work well done

5232. hashke - 9/1/2000 5:47:20 PM

Thanks Glendajean!

Good show, Ronski.

Pelle,

No riches expected. I write primarily to learn. Sounds stilted, but is true.

amazon still refractory. Gonna have to order from burnsandnaples.

5233. Jonesatlaw - 9/1/2000 5:56:24 PM

Hashke- hope that all things return to balance and you walk in beauty.

5234. hashke - 9/1/2000 6:11:45 PM

Thanks, Jonesatlaw.

My sudden garrulousness is the result of being on extremely high-dose steroid injections -- 40 min twice a week -- to head off the crab. Very disembodying experience, but I must say that the treament has enabled me to read the Gilgamesh in cuneiform.

5235. hashke - 9/2/2000 12:09:31 PM

Pak Gurubesar,

Saya mencari kesempatan untuk permainan kata-kata disini, tetapi dengan sia-sia.

5236. profemeritus - 9/2/2000 7:26:15 PM

Pak hashke

Tidak apa-apa. I senang sekali Pak sudah kembali disini.

5237. hashke - 9/3/2000 11:44:47 AM

Terima kasih, Pak Gurubesar. Tetapi rupanya sekali sepi disini, agak sedih dan miskin -- terpencil.

5238. ProfEmeritus - 9/3/2000 2:28:55 PM

Pak hashke

Ya, betul. Barangkali sebab Pak Marj terlalu sibuk bekerja dan main dengan anak baru.

Ma'af. Tadi saya lupa dan mengganti kata "saya" dengan kata "I".

5239. hashke - 9/3/2000 4:24:25 PM

Pak Gurubesar,

Apakah Pak masih bersepeda dan bermain tenis zaman sekarang?

5240. profemeritus - 9/3/2000 10:21:03 PM

Pak hashke

Ya, masih main tennis lima kali dalam satu minggu dan berspeda tiap hari kalau hawa bagus (tidak hujan dan bukan terlalu dingin).

5241. hashke - 9/4/2000 12:01:21 PM

Baik,Pak!

"Sepeda = baik", itu semacam permainan kata-kata (dua bahasa), yang gila, bukan?

5242. IrvingSnodgrass - 9/4/2000 1:14:11 PM

Hashke:
Reminds me of a line from Anthony Burgess's famous "Time for a Tiger" (set in Malaysia):

"Ada baik?" (Malay for ""How are you?")
"Ada"
"Motor bike or push bike?"

5243. ProfEmeritus - 9/4/2000 2:51:00 PM

Pak hashke

Bukan gila; pandai saja. Sekarang saya tiap hari baik sebab hawa baik.

5244. Uzmakk - 9/5/2000 11:08:04 AM

Surely Gilamesh is not written in cuniform.

5245. Uzmakk - 9/5/2000 11:08:42 AM

i.e., Gilgamesh

5246. tmachine - 9/5/2000 3:07:13 PM

dear hashke, so glad you're out of hospital. want you to know i bought your book!!! soon i will actually read it!!!

5247. Ronski - 9/5/2000 3:28:29 PM

I believe the Sumerians, who created cuneiform, left no written copies of Gilgamesh. However, the Akkadians borrowed cuneiform to write their own language, and they did write down the epic, in cuneiform.

Could the real linguists around here tell me if I have this right?

5248. cmboyce - 9/5/2000 3:34:46 PM

being on extremely high-dose steroid injections ... has enabled me to read the Gilgamesh in cuneiform.

Man! That's some drug, Hashké! I guess Mark MacGuire can read The Sporting News in cuneiform.

5249. hashke - 9/5/2000 4:13:23 PM

Irv,

Persis!

I assume that 'sepeda' is from velocipede.

5250. hashke - 9/5/2000 4:22:46 PM

Uzmakk,

Ref Gilgamesh, it was a delerium. I meant to say 'Korean'.

These steroids are otherworldly. Was that the head of John the Baptist that just went by on that tray?

5251. hashke - 9/5/2000 4:24:31 PM

Great, tmachine. With your linguistic abilities and interests you should find some intrigue there!

5252. hashke - 9/5/2000 4:31:01 PM

cm,

Hahaha! What steroids is the great man using?

5253. hashke - 9/6/2000 9:31:54 AM

Uzmakk,

Gilgamesh is wirtten on stone tablets, probably some of it in cuneiform. I was just trying to be drole, not thinking of the serious seekers out there. some without yuma.

5254. hashke - 9/9/2000 1:26:46 PM

Irv,

Aku akan mencoba lagi

Anda menghadap disini 'ogni morte di papa' -- dan Anda hilang, dengan tidak jawaban pertanyaan-pertanyaan atau permintaan. Aku akan ingin menhadiahkan kepada Anda dan isterimu karyanya yang buku baru. Anda dan dia apakah dalam penyataan-penyataan tanda terima kasih dalam kata pengatarmu untuk sumbangan-sumbanganmu kepada buku dengan Bahasa Indonesia dan Bahasa Sunda ucapan-ucapan. Tetapi, sayang, aku sudah kehilangan malamatmu. Ingin malamat itu! Kesenangan itu sepenuhnya untukku! Apa rintangan yang aneh??

5255. hashke - 9/12/2000 6:46:14 PM

irv,

parameun obor. adiós.

5256. hashke - 9/12/2000 7:10:05 PM

Pelle,

I found this Swedish translation of Havamal. How does it look to you?
Is this modern Swedish? I find that I can understand most of it but would be hard pressed to translate back or speak it.

Hávamál på svenska (Hávamál in Swedish translation) | Back |

1.
Alla dörrar,
innan in man går,
skarpt skådas skola,
skarpt granskas skola,
ty ovisst är att veta,
var ovänner sitta
borta på salens bänkar.

2.
I givande, hell er!
Gäst är in kommen,
Sägen, var sitta han skall!
Brått har den,
som på bränderna vid härden
skall fresta, vad framgång han får.

3.
Eld behöver,
den in har kommit,
och kall har blivit om knäna.
Mat och kläder
den man tarvar,
som har över fjällen farit.

4.
Vatten tarvar
vandrarn, som kommer till måltid,
handduk och vänlig välkomst;
välvilligt sinne,
om han sådant kan vinna,
samspråk och bjudning tillbaka.

5.
Vett behöver,
den som vida färdas;
lätt är hemma vadhelst.
Mång ögonkast får,
den som intet förstår
och sitter med kloka tillsammans.

5257. PelleNilsson - 9/13/2000 2:51:44 AM

Hashke

I'm off to the countryside for a couple of days. I'll look at this when I'm back Sunday.

5258. DanDillon - 9/14/2000 11:50:36 AM

An observation: It's a sad state of affairs when communiqués from the administration at my place of work are riddled with patent errors in usage, grammar, and--alarmingly--spelling.

5259. mgleason - 9/14/2000 12:02:03 PM

Hi, Dan D Lion.

I've found the book of my dreams in the latest Common Reader catalog:

They Have a Word for It, by Howard Rheingold.

This is the word that won me over:

Schlimmbesserung: a so-called improvement that makes things worse

5260. DanDillon - 9/14/2000 12:06:48 PM

Hey Spritely One,

How we've missed you. Nice to see you popping in, no mater how brief. Believe you me, I've encountered one or two schlimmbesserungs in my line of work. I've seen that book but not yet picked it up. Seems like one of those rather fluffy and fun things that I can't seem to spend money on these days.

5261. arkymalarky - 9/14/2000 6:16:27 PM

Hashke used that word once before I believe--I want to think in conjunction with the Fray's demise--and I wrote it down, thinking it was a very useful word, then promptly lost the paper I wrote it on. It describes the programs of the AR state ed dept perfectly.

I think I've heard of that book. I wonder if it's been mentioned in here before or if maybe Dad has it and mentioned it. Hopefully it's the latter so I can have a look at it.

5262. mgleason - 9/14/2000 6:30:23 PM

It does look like the most delicious bit of fluff, Dan and Arky. I've ordered it, so I'll post some gems when it arrives.

5263. hashke - 9/15/2000 2:51:44 PM

arky,

yes, Schlimmbesserung, an old usage. Schlimm -- bad + (ver)besserung -- improve.

rheingold's book has been around for some time.
its Navajo entry, or entries, were bizarre. chastised publisher at time. no answer. wonder if corrected in later editions.

5264. Uzmakk - 9/16/2000 4:13:28 PM

5253:
Hashke, I think of you as a god, and gods are not allowed to be droll. But they are allowed a bit of yuma from time to time.

5265. hashke - 9/16/2000 10:22:15 PM

uzmakk,

it is with great yumility that i read your words. and remember that pelle is in charge of the gods -- Odin, et al. -- and a droll or two.

5266. IrvingSnodgrass - 9/17/2000 9:38:21 AM

Hashké, kawanku tersayang, emu-mu sudah dibalas, walaupun terlambat. Seribu maaf.

5267. hashke - 9/17/2000 4:50:45 PM

Irv,

Suratmu diterima dengan terima kasih. Saya akan menjawaban segera.

5268. PelleNilsson - 9/18/2000 1:37:12 PM

Pak hashke

Each generation has its outstanding Edda translator and some lesser ones. The printed version I have is from the late 50's or early 60's by Björn Collinder, a professor in Nordic language. I think your version is younger and less accomplished, but perhaps that's because I'm accustomed to Collinder.

In the following posts the Icelandic original is shown first, followed by "your" translation´and then by Collinder's. Finally there is an English version which is from a semi-official Icelandic site so it should be OK.

5269. PelleNilsson - 9/18/2000 1:38:12 PM

Gáttir allar
áðr gangi fram
um skoðask skyli
um skygnask skyli
því at óvíst
er at vita
hvar óvinir
sitja á fleti fyrir
.
Alla dörrar,
innan in man går,
skarpt skådas skola,
skarpt granskas skola,
ty ovisst är att veta,
var ovänner sitta
borta på salens bänkar.

Man skall ingenstans gå in genom dörren
utan att se sig om,
utan att utforska allt,
ty ovisst är det var ovänner
sitta på salens bänk.

The man who stands at a strange threshold,
Should be cautious before he cross it,
Glance this way and that:
Who knows beforehand what foes may sit
Awaiting him in the hall?

5270. PelleNilsson - 9/18/2000 1:38:56 PM

Gefendr heilir
gestr er inn kominn
hvar skal sitja sjá?
Mjök er bráðr
sá er bröndum skal
síns um freista frama

I givande, hell er!
Gäst är in kommen,
Sägen, var sitta han skall!
Brått har den,
som på bränderna vid härden
skall fresta, vad framgång han får.

Hell dem som ge! En gäst har kommit
- var skall en sådan sitta?
Brått har den som på bränslehögen
nödgas fresta sin framgång.

Greetings to the host,
The guest has arrived,
In which seat shall he sit?
Rash is he who at unknown doors
Relies on his good luck.

5271. PelleNilsson - 9/18/2000 1:39:33 PM

Elds er þörf
þeims inn er kominn
ok á kné kalinn
matar ok váða
es manni þörf
þeims hefir um fjall farit

Eld behöver,
den in har kommit,
och kall har blivit om knäna.
Mat och kläder
den man tarvar,
som har över fjällen farit.

Eld tarvar den som in har kommit
och är kall om knäna;
mat och kläder gör den mannen tarv
som har farit över fjäll.

Fire is needed by the newcomer
Whose knees are frozen numb;
Meat and clean linen a man needs
Who has fared across the fells.

5272. PelleNilsson - 9/18/2000 1:40:44 PM

Vats er þörf
þeims til verðar kømr
þerru ok þjóðlaðar
góðs um œðis
ef sér geta mætti
orðs ok endrþögu

Vatten tarvar
vandrarn, som kommer till måltid,
handduk och vänlig välkomst;
välvilligt sinne,
om han sådant kan vinna,
samspråk och bjudning tillbaka.

Vatten tarvar vägfarande gäst,
handduk och hederlig välkomst,
godlynta ord önskar han sig
och tystnad medan han talar,

Water, too, that he may wash before eating,
Handcloth's and a hearty welcome,
Courteous words, then courteous silence
That he may tell his tale.

5273. PelleNilsson - 9/18/2000 1:41:33 PM

Vits er þörf
þeims viða ratar
dælt er heima hvat
at augabragði verðr
sá er ekki kann
ok með snotrum sitr

Vett behöver,
den som vida färdas;
lätt är hemma vadhelst.
Mång ögonkast får,
den som intet förstår
och sitter med kloka tillsammans.

Vett tarvar den som vandrar vida,
allt är enkelt hemma;
smädliga ögonkast får okunnig man
om han kommer med klokare folk.

Who travels widely needs his wits about him,
The stupid should stay at home:
The ignorant man is often laughed at
When he sits at meat with the sage.

5274. PelleNilsson - 9/18/2000 1:45:10 PM

Note how much more compact the Icelandic is. Also how the last two verses hang together in the Icelandic by the first lines "Vats er börf" - "Vits er börf".

5275. RustlerPike - 9/18/2000 1:54:21 PM

Hashke rules all.

Here is a live picture from my office:

5276. stostosto - 9/18/2000 4:43:59 PM

Havamal er nedskrevet bondesnuhed.

5277. alistairconnor - 9/18/2000 4:52:21 PM

Wonderful language, Icelandic. And I've learned a useful term to apply to the sage Pseudoerasmus, should he ever show his snout here again.

The ignorant man is often laughed at, when he sits at meat with the Snotrum.

5278. hashke - 9/18/2000 10:03:20 PM

Pelle,

Thanks for the wonderful look at the Icelandic contrasted to a Swedish translation. Quite fascinating! I've got the entire Swedish translation of the Havamal for study. More fun than study, really.

I knew that there would be a Pellean exegesis of note in response to my question.

And what is this 'bondesnuhed' comment from 3sto? Is he saying that the havamal was written by peasants? Why not?

5279. hashke - 9/18/2000 10:10:29 PM

Rustler,

Hehehe. No, really, that is a picture from my eyeballs as they try to track cantaloups after steroid infusion...like about now.

5280. IrvingSnodgrass - 9/18/2000 10:45:01 PM

That live photo trick is a nice touch, but pretty useless when it's night in Israel, and the lights are out.

Next time leave the TV on in front of the cam or something, Rustler.

5281. quivver - 9/19/2000 12:39:03 AM

I have wanted to pick up Icelandic for some while. Is it as wacky as Welsh (which has the joy of its spoken language diverging utterly from the written form)?

aem.

5282. IrvingSnodgrass - 9/19/2000 12:52:09 AM

Welcome to the thread, quivver.

Please feel free to post any thoughts, observations or questions on language which may come to mind.

Pelle should be able to answer your question, but I'd find it hard to believe there are many languages where spelling and pronunciation diverge more than the Celtic tongues (especially Welsh and Irish).

5283. RustlerPike - 9/19/2000 1:24:33 AM

Irv:

I left the screensaver on, with the time. Didn't it show?

Oh - the computer must have gone into standby mode. How does one prevent that, I wonder.

5284. IrvingSnodgrass - 9/19/2000 3:29:32 AM

Rustler:
No idea... all we saw was a black room, with hints of light from somewhere. Now it has a great shot of your hand. Looks like you've been biting those fingernails.

5285. PelleNilsson - 9/19/2000 4:15:44 AM

quivver

I don't know any Icelandic, but I thinks spelling and pronounciation is quite close. That's why they have those special letters.

5286. PelleNilsson - 9/19/2000 4:17:27 AM

hashke

I think "bondesnudhet" means "peasant wisdom".

5287. hashke - 9/19/2000 11:10:49 AM

Alistair, 5277

Any 'Sage' could benefit from she followiing Havamal:

Medelmättigt klok
var man skall vara
aldrig vara alltför klok.
Sitt öde vete
Ingen på förhand;
då är honom sorglösast sinnet.

Averagely wise a man ought to be,
never too wise
no one may know his fate beforehand,
if he wants a carefree spirit.

5288. hashke - 9/19/2000 11:12:29 AM

Ole Pike,

What is Ed Sutzkever doing standing in that dark photo? I heard his mother tell him to go practice the piano.

5289. Ronski - 9/19/2000 11:15:45 AM

Irv,

I have been amazed at how letters and groups of letters in Gaelic and Welsh seem to bear no relationship to the pronunciation of the those letters in the Germanic, Romance and Slavic languages.

But there is a certain consistency within the Celtic languages themselves, or at least within in each single Celtic language isn't there?

5290. Ronski - 9/19/2000 5:00:55 PM

For anyone so inclined, here is an interesting history of the Delaware Indians, the Native Americans who populated the region of SE New York State, New Jersey, Eastern Pennsylvania, and Delaware, before the arrival of the Europeans. Remants of the tribe now live in Oklahoma in the U.S. and Ontario in Canada.

Link

5291. RustlerPike - 9/20/2000 3:03:37 PM

Hashke,

Actually, that was Ronald Nimkin, from "Portnoy's Complaint". You remember - they found him hanging from the shower... he used his dad's tie for that. They found a note to his mother pinned to his jacket: "Mrs. Leibowitz called - she says she can't come to the mah-jongg game this evening. Ronald."

Remember?

5292. stostosto - 9/20/2000 3:56:03 PM

My dictionary gives 'sly' or 'cunning' for 'bondesnu'. Apparently there isn't such a thing in English parlance as 'peasant sly' or 'peasant cunning' or perhaps 'peasant crafty'.

What I mean by my comment is that Havamal is by no means philosophical, and much of it really does smack of the kind of cunning you could encounter at a peasant pub where people utter platitudes while sending you important and meaningful looks; like

Who comes late to party
may have missed his beer

(I am quite sure it contains a verse like this).

I imagine this has been conveyed amongst the hardened men around the fire accompanied by many solemn nods and meaningful eye-to-eyes.

Hey, I'd like to add some more:

Man with broken leg
shold not race a bird

He who rests on wooly pillows
may well have sweet dreams
but if he has wronged his friend
wool may be too hard
sore his head and stomach

Drink too little
you will thirst
Drink too much
and you will burst
clever is who drinks
sort of in-between

Women should be touched with joy
rolling in the hay is good
he who has the sweetest tongue
knows of poetry and songs
he can make them willing too
but if he is an expert at wrestling that doesn't hurt either

etc.

5293. Ronski - 9/20/2000 4:21:41 PM

We do have street smart, however.

5294. stostosto - 9/20/2000 4:24:05 PM

Iceland isn't big in streets.

5295. Hashke - 9/20/2000 4:26:22 PM

pike,

nimkin, yes, the would-be brain surgeon involved with liver, no? but what's got to do with ed and his piano practice?

5296. Hashke - 9/20/2000 4:27:55 PM

sto3,

Naja, die schlauen Bauern da drunten.

5297. Hashke - 9/20/2000 4:29:30 PM

pike,

send new photo for clarification.

5298. Ronski - 9/20/2000 4:58:14 PM

Geyser smart, then?

5299. stostosto - 9/20/2000 5:00:13 PM

Yeah, or geyser wise. Then if you make a better Havamal verse than me, you would be the geyser wiser guy.

5300. RustlerPike - 9/20/2000 5:14:40 PM

Hash:

No, the guy with the liver was the main protagonist, I don't remember his name. Nimkin was an anecdote he relates somewhere in the course of narrating the book.

Allow me to clarify:

5301. Hashke - 9/21/2000 11:45:02 AM

Pike,

What happened to the pic of the bifurcated guy?

That was Murray Fromkin contemplating the Kikuyu Files, yes?

Both of the above.

5302. PelleNilsson - 9/21/2000 2:38:40 PM

sto

You have perhaps not read all of Havamal. From verse 111 it changes character and from 137 it contains some of the most evocative passages of the Edda:

137. I know that I hung in the windtorn tree
Nine whole nights, spear-pierced,
Consecrated to Odin, myself to my Self above me in the tree,
Whose root no one knows whence it sprang.

138. None brought me bread, none served me drink;
I searched the depths, spied runes of wisdom;
Raised them with song, and fell once more thence.

139. Nine powerful chants I learned
From the wise son of Boltorn, Bestla's father;
A draught I drank of precious mead
Ladled from Odraerir.

140. I began to thrive, to grow wise,
To grow greater, and enjoy;
For me words led from words to new words;
For me deeds led from deeds to new deeds.

141. Runes shall you know and rightly read staves,
Very great staves, powerful staves,
Drawn by the mighty one who speaks,
Made by wise Vaner, carved by the highest rulers.

142. Odin among Aesir, Dvalin among elves,
Dain among dwarfs,
Allvitter among giants.
I myself have also carved some.

143. Know you how to write?
Know you how to interpret?
Know you how to understand?
Know you how to test?
Know you how to pray?
Know you how to sacrifice?
Know you how to transmit?
Know you how to atone?

144. Better not to pray than to sacrifice in excess, gift always tends to return.
Better send naught than waste too much.
Thus wrote Tund for the passage of years,
Where he arose,
Where he came again.

145. I know songs unknown to the wife of the king or to any son of man;
Aid is one, and it can help you
In sadness and sorrow and difficult trouble.

5303. RustlerPike - 9/22/2000 4:24:37 AM

Hash:

Is bifurcation legal in New Mexico?

5304. Ronski - 9/22/2000 11:19:29 AM

Technically no, but it is never prosecuted.

5305. RustlerPike - 9/22/2000 12:41:30 PM

Sexually attracted to the Berlin Wall.

"I also find other constructions sexy, although it has to be the above mentioned artifacts, Fences, Walls, Bridges, Railroad Tracks, Gates, Guillotines ... All these artifacts I got attracted to in the 60's, the Berlin Wall 1961 when he was built. Other Walls also around beginning of the 60's. Followed by Fences and Bridges. The others "came" later in the middle of the 60's. My sexual feelings towards them are very intense. My feelings towards The Berlin Wall are far more deep than most people think."

(This belongs in International. I'll post it there too).

5306. cmboyce - 9/22/2000 8:34:00 PM

Nice link, RustlerPike. I hope the widow has recovered and found herself a new mate. Perhaps the International Space Station. Absentee husbands are so much less trouble.

5307. Nostradamus - 9/22/2000 8:36:14 PM

Is "what're" proper grammar? As in: "What're you doing to my pet turtle?"

Could someone explain to me the usage rules regarding lay and lie (as in assuming a horizontal position)?

Muchas gracias

5308. cmboyce - 9/22/2000 8:51:04 PM

Nostradamus,

Fowler's has (my CAPS where their ital: "In intransitive uses, coinciding with or resembling those of LIE, except in certain nautical expressions, LAY 'is only dialectal or an illiterate substitute for LIE' [OED] ... The principal parts of the two verbs are as follows: LAY (transitive only, = put to rest), past t. LAID, past participle LAID; LIE (intransitive only),- be at or come to rest), past t. LAY, past particple LAIN.... The paradigm is merciless, admitting no exceptions in standard English."

And there's nothing grammatically wrong with "what're"; it's merely a conjunction of a perfectly ordinary noun and verb sequence.

5309. Nostradamus - 9/22/2000 8:54:40 PM

Thanks for the prompt response, cmboyce.

5310. Hashke - 9/23/2000 11:08:05 AM

Pike,

'Is bifurcation legal in New Mexico?'

Only if one of the headlights is out. But people are using a lot of absentee ballets these days around here.

5311. dusty - 9/23/2000 9:32:49 PM

Someone told me last night that Swiss German was more different from German than Dutch was from German.

What do the cognoscenti think?

5312. ScottLoar - 9/23/2000 10:08:16 PM

They're busy cleaning malodorous engine parts.

5313. ycmeehan - 9/24/2000 6:53:05 PM

To everyone'
I found a bible up in the attic this afternoon. I don't recognize the language. I know that it is a bible because the text is peppered with words such as Jezus, Evangelfe, Jeremija, Judom etc. I suspect it is Wendish since the great-grand mother was Wendish. The bible was printed in 1881. It is a beautiful book, covered with leather, the 998 pages are yellowed but still in good shape. What follows is what I transcribe from the third page of the book: SLOVENSKI GOFFINE
Below: Razlaganje cerkvenega leta -- and then:Drusba sv. Mohora v Colovou.
Can someone tell me if it is Wendish or something else, please?

5314. alistairconnor - 9/25/2000 8:58:11 AM

Dusty:
Some random remarks.
I have a friend, a New Zealander, who lived in Switzerland for several years. She spoke only High German, and shopkeepers would sometimes pretend not to understand her - quaint, charming xenophobic scumbags as they are...

She lived in Bern. Her husband is from Zurich, and he says that the Bern and Zurich dialects are not mutually intelligible. On the other hand, I knew a Dutch New Zealander who said that he got by very well in Switzerland on his Dutch.

In general, I suspect that Dutch, the Swiss dialects, and the various other variants of Low German are closer to each other than any of them are to High German, which is more or less an invented language with lots of highly structured grammar. But I don't really know.

5315. KuligintheHooligan - 9/26/2000 7:37:01 AM

This might be a bit of a strange question, but I just came from showing a movie to my church history class about Martin Luther. One of the famous events in his life was his standing before the Diet of Worms.

And then it popped into my mind, "What exactly is a diet, and how does that relate to the diet we talk about in terms of one's eating habit?"

Anybody know what relationship, if any, this word and its different uses has?

5316. stostosto - 9/26/2000 7:46:01 AM

Kuligin,

I had no idea that what Luther stood before was called a diet. But the Japanese parliament also goes by that name. Is that mere coincidence..?

5317. Dusty - 9/26/2000 8:26:07 AM

alistairconnor

Thanks for your observations.

I had thought that Swiss German was a close cousin of German, and Dutch less close, but your examples help confirm that I was wrong.

I had heard incidents where a person would make a reference to German, and someone else would correct it to Swiss German, but I thought it was in the nature of a joke, in the same way someone might say, "No, he doesn't speak English, he speaks American". Perhaps they were making a more serious point.

5318. Dusty - 9/26/2000 8:33:52 AM

stostosto

Both are called imperial diet, so I suspect it is more than a coincidence.

5319. KuligintheHooligan - 9/26/2000 8:37:31 AM

dusty, we had missionary collegues of ours here in Namibia who were Swiss Germans. I can speak German adequately, and their German was I thought far different. The man's mother tongue was Dutch, and they both spoke "regular" German too. English, Dutch and German are sister languages I believe.

Afrikaans is a derivative of Dutch, and I have had some conversations with Dutch-speaking folk where I used Afrikaans. They understood my fine, but I had trouble getting all their words. As one put it, Afrikaans is like "Medieval Dutch," very simplistic in their reckoning.

sto, hopefully someone will be able to give us the etymology of the word "diet."

5320. PelleNilsson - 9/26/2000 8:46:54 AM

I would shudder if I stood before a diet of worms.

5321. stostosto - 9/26/2000 8:48:20 AM

dusty,

do you think the Japanese were influenced by the German imperial diet? Or, is "Diet" a western rendering of some Japanese term for their imperial diet?

I am highly suspicious at that Swiss/Dutch comparison, btw. I have never heard that Swiss is anything but a variant of German - a dialect. (The very ugliest form, imo, as I've posted before; one poster by the name of pseudosomethingorother disagreed, as he found Viennese to be worse). I believe (but won't postulate to know) they use exactly the same written language, but pronounce it in exceedingly ugly ways. Dutch, otoh, is a written language unto itself.

Where is DanDillon? I seem to remember he knows about sources with measurements of the distance between languages. I am sure, Irv does as well.

But I am fairly certain that schwitzerdütt and hoch deutsch are much closer to each other than either to Dutch.

5322. stostosto - 9/26/2000 8:52:34 AM

Pelle

Good one!

5323. DanDillon - 9/26/2000 8:55:03 AM

diet n. 1. The usual food and drink of a person or animal; daily sustenance. [Middle English diete, from Old French, from Latin diaeta, from Greek diaita, mode of life, regimen, diet, from diaitan, to lead one's life.]

diet or Diet n. 1. A deliberative assembly; legislature. [Middle English diete, dyet, day's journey, day for meeting, from Medieval Latin dieta, from Latin dies, day.]

5324. PelleNilsson - 9/26/2000 9:09:13 AM

But isn't Dutch formalised Plattdeutsch, i.e. with a written form? We do need the experts here.

5325. stostosto - 9/26/2000 9:29:23 AM

My Danish-German dictionary has Switzerland as a fully integrate part of the German-speaking Europe. It does indicate by 'SZ' whether a given word is only found in Swiss.

(What was the language of Calvin, btw? He was from Genève, right? If so, that would seem to indicate that he was French-tongued. But he had a large Dutch following...)

5326. KuligintheHooligan - 9/26/2000 9:32:31 AM

Calvin came from France and was French speaking.

5327. KuligintheHooligan - 9/26/2000 9:34:04 AM

Calvin has a "large following" in many European countries. It is for this reason that some believe Calvin to actually be more influential over-all than Luther, but that is obviously debatable.

5328. stostosto - 9/26/2000 10:06:32 AM

Kuligin,

but weren't the Dutch Calvinists exceptionally numerous? Or were they just exceptionally persecuted? Or neither?

5329. DanDillon - 9/26/2000 11:41:43 AM

I am perhaps not the best equipped to answer the Swiss German v. Dutch question, but I'll take a stab. Since both Modern Dutch and Swiss German contain elements related to English, and since Dutch is not a variant or a dialect of any other major relative of English, I suspect Dutch would be more closely derivative of English than Swiss German, a dialect. Many of the words in Dutch that have cognates in English, however, entered English via Latin or Latinate morphemes. So the argument becomes occluded unless we obtain a chronological breakdown of when certain lexemes entered English from the languages in question. A dear friend is currently studying Dutch in Amsterdam. He's exceptionally talented in matters linguistic, and the fruits of his immersion class will perhaps shed some light on the issue. Problem is neither I nor he speaks Swiss German. Perhaps I should defer to Irv, High Priest of Babble.

5330. Hashke - 9/26/2000 12:18:01 PM

ycmeehan,

razlaganje cerkvenega leta = dissolution of the ecclesiastical course. bosnian. also, 'drusba' -- 'in friendship' from so-and-so to so and so. strange find.

wendish? have no idea, although it is a slavic language. 'goffine' is lost on me.

5331. Ronski - 9/26/2000 12:25:52 PM

Swiss German is a dialect of High German, and thus is far closer in origin to standard German than Dutch, which is related to Low German. Some linguists posit an "Alsation" dialect, which includes Alsation, Luxembourgish, Swabian, and Swiss German, or even group them as a separate language, though the latter approach is rare.

It is interesting to note that this corridor of lands roughly corresponds to Lothar's Kingdom, the middle kindgdom created when Charlemagne's three sons divided their father's realm after his death. One son got France, the other Germany, and Lothar the stuff in between.

Swiss is known for its excessive gutturals, and has been derided as "not so much a language as a throat disease." The dialects in this region do vary greatly from town to town. I knew a German woman from the Luxembourg border area who said she had trouble understanding the people in the next village.

Dutch, too, has certain gutturals sounds that have been much softened in standard High German.

As a for a Dutch speaker being understood by the Swiss, that is truly interesting, and I have no explanation for it, but it deserves further investigation.

5332. PelleNilsson - 9/26/2000 12:40:36 PM

Swiss is known for its excessive gutturals, and has been derided as "not so much a language as a throat disease."

Then it must, in fact, be related to Danish.

On the other hand, Dutch is also notorious in this respect.

5333. KuligintheHooligan - 9/26/2000 12:41:25 PM

sto, the Netherlands were generally very "liberal" in the days of the Reformation. They were open to knew ideas and thus Calvinism spread strongly there. Anabaptism also grew strongly in the Netherlands while it was being persecuted in places like Germany.

Because Geneva attracted people from all over because of its high biblical learning, the Reformed faith spread to many countries. People like John Knox from Scotland, for example, came to Geneva to learn while fleeing persecution in his country, and so on.

Of course, the Heugenots in France were also a persecuted bunch that were Calvinists. The persecution in France was one reason why Calvin left that country.

5334. Ronski - 9/26/2000 12:42:01 PM

ycmeehan,

My guess is Sorbian (Wendish). There are two dialects, upper and lower. In any case, it does not look like Polish, Czech, Slovak, or Kashubian. But I am no expert on any of this, not even close.

5335. KuligintheHooligan - 9/26/2000 12:44:59 PM

Afrikaans does not by any means have "excessive gutterals," but they do exist. The "g" in Afrikaans is much like the Achtung of German. I actually enjoy pronouncing it. But there aren't really that many more gutterals. I am surprised Dutch would be characterized as "excessive" in this respect.

If I could throw in my two-cents on the Swiss German of our friends here, in comparison to the "regular" German (high or low). I found the Swiss German to be very ugly sounding.

Obviously that is a highly technical, qualified opinion! :-)

5336. Ronski - 9/26/2000 12:51:44 PM

Kuligan,

But I didn't say Dutch had excessive gutturals, only that Swiss did. That is a widely held view, I would suspect.

5337. KuligintheHooligan - 9/26/2000 12:53:58 PM

Ronski, I was referring to pelle's comment in #5332. I would agree with the comment concerning the Swiss German I have heard though.

5338. PelleNilsson - 9/26/2000 12:54:01 PM

Kuligin

Where is the 'g' in Afrikaans?

5339. Ronski - 9/26/2000 12:58:33 PM

Perhaps I should add that I like gutturals, which also occur in Scots (Scottish Highland English) and the Celtic languages. I do a little singing, and I enjoy songs in dialects and languages that have retained those throaty sounds. It takes some practice to get them reasonably accurate, at least for an American English speaker. It helps that my mother's family was German (both High and Low). Czech, my father's family's language, does not have gutturals, but makes up for it with its paucity of vowels between certain consonants and its "R-ZH" sound, as in "Dvorak."

5340. KuligintheHooligan - 9/26/2000 12:58:33 PM

pelle, your humor never ceases to amuse me!

You are joking, right??

5341. Ronski - 9/26/2000 12:59:14 PM

Kuligan,

My mistake. Pardon.

5342. ycmeehan - 9/26/2000 1:32:14 PM

Hashke, Ronski, thank you.
Yes, Hashke, it is a strange find and I found more books since I posted yesterday. Ronski is right, the language is Wendish, apparently descended from Sorbian. Long ago, in the old Fray, Irv had answered my questions about Wendish. I must look up in the archives what he exactly told me about this subject. There is a phalanx of descendants of Wendish immigrants still living in West-Milwaukee and they have a club, a prof at University of Wisconsin just told me. They may have a library to which I could donate these books if the family's children show no interest in them.

5343. Ronski - 9/26/2000 2:44:18 PM

Wendish and Sorbian are different names for the same language, as it happens. Wend is the German name, Sorbian the Slavic. The Sorbian region is also known as Lausatia, derived from a Latin name for one of the peoples who lived there at one time.

Because there are relatively so few people of Wendish descent in the States, I have read that many were never quite sure of their origin and somehow stumbled upon it.

The same problem of tracking origins is true with the Frisians, who speak a language related to Dutch and English, in the North of Holland and in adjacent islands off of the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark.

Aslo the Ruthenians, or Rusyn, who are sandwiched between Slovakia and the Ukraine.

If your great grandparents were French, German, Italian, etc., it is pretty easy to figure out your ancestors, but not so if they came from a small language or ethnic group.

5344. PelleNilsson - 9/26/2000 3:17:45 PM

Until not so long ago, sometime in the 60's I think, the official title of the king of Sweden was 'Kung över Götar, Svear och Vender'. Isn't the Wendish region in the eastern part of the former Prussia?

5345. KuligintheHooligan - 9/26/2000 3:23:16 PM

pelle check out my post in the Cafe.

v_kuligin@yahoo.com

5346. Ronski - 9/26/2000 3:52:27 PM

Pelle,

I think someone noted that the Wends had asked for protection from the King of Sweden and were granted it, for whatever it was worth. It must have been worth something, since there are still more than a hundred thousand Wends (or Sorbians, as I think they prefer to be called). Their homeland is in the southeast to south central part of the former East German state's boundaries, if you can picture that. They write in Latin script like the other West Slavs, and are much more Catholic than Lutheran.

5347. PelleNilsson - 9/26/2000 4:00:49 PM

Ronski

Yes, I know they asked for protection but that was because the title was already there. I don't know how it came to be there in the first place. I guess it was picked up while Sweden had the status of a European superpower, roughly 1620-1720. The were (are?) other fancy titles as well, Duke of Montecorvo for example.

5348. Ronski - 9/26/2000 4:04:34 PM

Did Sweden own territory where eastern Germany is today (current boundaries)? I know they controlled quite a bit of the Eastern Baltic lands until they withdrew from the lists after that nasty war with Russia.

5349. Ronski - 9/26/2000 4:06:42 PM

I had to look up where Monte Corvo was. It's in Abruzzo.

5350. Dusty - 9/26/2000 4:10:39 PM

Thanks to all who weighed in on my question. I knew I came to the right place.

5351. PelleNilsson - 9/26/2000 4:19:58 PM

Ronski

After the peace of Westphalia in 1648 Sweden had posessions here and there in Germany. Then there were several campaigns in Poland from 1650 onwards. I guess the Wendian lands could have been in the then Poland?

5352. Ronski - 9/26/2000 4:34:52 PM

Pelle,

Not Poland. As a state it never got that far west. My guess is that Sweden owned some or all of Brandenburg, which I believe includes what the Germans called Lausnitz (Lausatia), where the Sorbs live (in two distinct areas, north and south, hence Upper and Lower). Today the Sorbs can be found living south of Berlin and north of Leipzig, I believe.

5353. PelleNilsson - 9/26/2000 4:41:53 PM

Ronski

You may well be right about Brandenburg. I'll have to look it up. But tomorrow.

5354. Ronski - 9/26/2000 5:08:04 PM