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 Et