His bright rays bear him up aloft, the God who knoweth all that lives,
Surya, that all may look on him.The constellations pass away, like thieves, together with their beams,
Before the all-beholding Sun.His herald rays are seen afar refulgent o’er the world of men,
Like flames of fire that burn and blaze.Swift and all beautiful art thou, O Surya, maker of the light,
Illuming all the radiant realm.Thou goest to the hosts of Gods, thou comest hither to mankind,
Hither all light to be beheld.With that same eye of thine wherewith thou lookest brilliant Varuna,
Upon the busy race of men,Traversing sky and wide mid-air, thou metest with thy beams our days,
Sun, seeing all things that have birth.Seven Bay Steeds harnessed to thy car bear thee, O thou farseeing One,
God, Surya, with the radiant hair.Surya hath yoked the pure bright Seven, the daughters of the car; with these,
His own dear team, he goeth forth.Looking upon the loftier light above the darkness we have come
To Surya, God among the Gods, the light that is most excellent.Rising this day, O rich in friends, ascending to the loftier heaven,
Surya remove my heart’s disease, take from me this my yellow hue.To parrots and to starlings let us give away my yellowness,
Or this my yellowness let us transfer to Haritala trees.With all his conquering vigour this Aditya hath gone up on high,
Giving my foe into mine hand: let me not be my foeman’s prey.[Rigveda I.50, translated by Ralph T. H. Griffith]
Looking for the story of The Fox and the Grapes, I found this lovely site run by Dean Laura Gibbs of the University of Oklahoma. The Æsopica is part of a larger myth and folklore site. Here’s the tale I was looking for:
Fame coacta vulpes alta in vinea
uvam adpetebat, summis saliens viribus.
Quam tangere ut non potuit, discedens ait:
“Nondum matura es; nolo acerbam sumere.”
Qui, facere quæ non possunt, verbis elevant,
adscribere hoc debebunt exemplum sibi.
[Phædrus Fabulæ Æsopiæ IV.iij.]
And it was just happenstance that the translation provided was by Christopher Smart whose strange masterpiece Jubilate Agno was written while Smart was in the Bethnel Green madhouse. In the poem, there is a lengthy section on his Cat Jeoffry: “For the Lord commanded Moses concerning the cats at the departure of the Children of Israel from Egypt. / For every family had one cat at least in the bag.”
Which reminds me of another famous cat in literature (I’m sure there are many) Céline’s Bebert in his musette bag.
An hungry Fox with fierce attack
Sprang on a Vine, but tumbled back,
Nor could attain the point in view,
So near the sky the bunches grew.
As he went off, “They’re scurvy stuff,”
Says he, “and not half ripe enough—
And I’ve more rev’rence for my tripes
Than to torment them with the gripes.”
For those this tale is very pat
Who lessen what they can’t come at.
[Christopher Smart The Fables of Phædrus]
Ein niedriges Gebirg umzäunt, wo wir sie sahen, die Küste von Kalifornien und verhindert den Blick, in das innere zu dringen. Dasselbe hat kein vulkanisches Ansehen. Der Hafen von San Francisco, in welchem Burney (T. 1., p. 354) mit gelehrter Kritik den hafen von Sir Francis Drake erkennt, dringt durch ein enges Thor ein, nimmt Flüsse aus dem Innern auf, verzweigt sich hinter den Höhen und macht eine Halbinsel aus dem südlich des Einganges gelegenen Lande. Das Presidio und die Mission von San Francisco liegen auf diese Landzunge, die mit ihren Hügeln und Dünen das wenig günstige Feld war, welches sich zunächst unsern Untersuchungen eröffnete.
[Adalbert v. Chamisso Reise um die Welt, zweiter Teil]
A low mountain range enclosed the coast of California, wherever we saw it, and obstructed our view into the interior. It does not have a volcanic appearance. San Frasncisco Bay, in which Burney as the result of a learned investigation recognizes Sir Francis Drake's harbor, passes through a narrow gate, absorbs rivers from the interior and makes a peninsula out of the land situated south of the entrance. The presidio and the mission of San Francisco are built on this neck of land, which, with its hills and dunes, was the not very favorable field that was first open to our investigations.
[Adalbert v. Chamisso A Voyage Around the World, second part, translated by Henry Kratz]
Well, better late than never. Crooked Timber, Keywords, Languagehat, and Language Log (with reply from Dr Beard) have all commented on this strange list of 100 most mispronounced words in English. In the main, it concentrates on regional pronunciations and steers clear of such shibboleths as to err and flaccid. Why? And, how long does a particular pronunciation exist before it’s blessed by Beard et al.?
I was lazing on a Sunday afternoon, watching a Farsi-language TV program with a local film critic showing excerpts from such diverse films as Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and Donya, when I picked up a book I’d bought remaindered a while back, Linguistic Thought in England: 1914–1945 edited by Roy Harris, and flipped to the first article in it: “Murray, Moore, and the Myth”. That’s James Augustus Henry Murray of OED fame and George Moore the British philosopher. The myth is that of a standard English. Both Henry Sweet and Daniel Jones make guest appearances.
Moore, in his work, uses terms like “the best English usage”, “common speech”, and “ordinary speeh”, but in the end he relagates the writing of definitions to the lexicographers, who are merely describing the standard language, while he—after some hand-waving—is content to a vague atomistic semantic theory of the sort that breaks down the word “brother” into “male” and “sibling”, but this leads to monstrous, tautological statements like:
But what to do? At this point in the plot, I expected Wittgenstein to convince Russell that all of mathematics was nothing but tautologies that need to be passed over in silence. But then Harris caught my wandering attention with an artistic device (or gimmick), the sci-fi equivalent of a screwball comedy meet-cute (i.e., teleportation or 3D faxing).
This brings us to a rather different philosophjical version of the “standard English thesis” which Moore himself never articulates, although it may have been lurking in the background of his thought. This version is of quite venerable antiquityin the philosophical tradition; of far greater antiquity than any talk of “standard English”. It is part of a general theory of communication which assumes (i) that the function of linguistic communication is telementation (i.e. thought transference from one mind to another), and (ii) that successful telementation requires a process which causes identical thoughts to arise in the speaker’s and the hearer’s minds. This latter requirement is usually assumed to be capable of fulfilment only if the speaker and hearer share a “fixed code”. Thus communication is actually assumed to presuppose a standard language: because otherwise it would be impossible in a linguistic community for the sender and receiver of a message to reach a common understanding in any regular, systematic way.
But people speak dialects, and foreigners have accents, and people lie to one another or mispronounce words, and this is why the Guardians of Grammar must stand vigilant ... Luckily, at this point my post-prandial nap kicked in, the book slipped from my fingers, and I dreamt of a world in which everybody lived in peace and spoke a standard and unambiguous interlanguage.
If it weren’t so scary, it’d be funny. Minister of War Donald Rumsfeld caught lying on videotape about his statements of the immediate threats of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq to the security of the USA. [via De Rerum Natura]
[from the friday five via Redwood Dragon] If you ...
- ... owned a restaurant, what kind of food would you serve?
Ligurian, but I’d rather not be a restaurateur.
- ... owned a small store, what kind of merchandise would you sell?
Since my mother’s brothers and father are / were haberdashers and because I've worked in the IT industry so long, I’d be likely to open a wearable computer store, but I’d rather not work retail.
- ...wrote a book, what genre would it be?
Postmodern, utopianist, fabulist encyclopedia of imaginary languages. I’m working on it right now. Well, not right now, because I’m procrastinating by writing in my blog. Maybe it’d be a bit bloggish, too. I also would like to write a Zeneise-Kölsch dictionary of invective.
- ... ran a school, what would you teach?
Linguistics, especially comparative-historical linguistics and its application to the grammar of artificial languages.
- ... recorded an album, what kind of music would be on it?
I’ve written a libretto for an opera. It has been performed in Austria and the USA, and it was both times recorded. For more information or MP3 files to download, see the composer’s website. I’m working on a couple of other libretti, when I’m not procrastinating on the great American novel.
Mos erat antiquus niveis atrisque lapillis,
his damnare reos, illis absolvere culpa;
tunc quoque sic lata est sententia tristis, et omnis
calculus inmitem demittitur ater in urnam.
Quae simul effudit numerandos versa lapillos,
omnibus e nigro color est mutatus in album,
candidaque Herculeo sententia numine facta
solvit Alemoniden.[Ovid Metamorphoses xv. ll.41-8.]
Translation by Brookes More.
It was an ancient custom of that land
to vote with chosen pebbles, white and black.
The white absolved, the black condemned the man.
And so that day the fateful votes were given—:
all cast into the cruel urn were black!
Soon as that urn inverted poured forth all
the pebbles to be counted, every one
was changed completely from its black to white,
and so the vote adjudged him innocent.
By that most fortunate aid of Hercules
he was exempted from the country’s law.
Miladus has responded to my first Saint Patrick’s Day [thanks Mr BaliHai] entry by hauling out the big guns. (Perhaps Lévy-Strauss, jeans or not here in San Paco’s town on the Barbary Coast, but perhaps somebody else.) Parole is not only incorporation, but also expulsion. Langue is (of) a privy matter. The word is formed by the vocal tract and expelled.
Mais cette négation reste partielle: car le fantasme de l’incorporation est une affaire strictement privée, quasiment muette, immergée dans les profondeurs du sujet et de ses représentations imaginaires de la survivance de l’objet d’amour perdu.
[
Anon. Miladus ipse.]
And the Wolf Man’s illusive heir writes:
Si toute cette éloquence sur la signature en forme de cheval la fait chier, tant pis. Le seing tombe aussi comme un excrément sous scell&eactue;
Magnifier l’étron, glorifier ce qui échoit coupé (stronzo, stronzare, strunzen) sous la selle, ériger l’étalon de sa signature, ou faire tomber l’érection de cheval, la roi du trône, voilà qui serait équivalent.
Reste—à savoir—ce qui fait chier.
[J. Derrida Glas, p. 46b.]
Translations:
But this negation remains partial; because the phantasm of incorporation is a strictly privy matter, almost mute, immersed in the depths of the subject and its imaginary representations of the survival of the object of lost love.
[Le Bel Inconnu à la Citée gâtée]
If all this eloquence about the signature in the form of the horse makes him shit, too bad. The seing also falls (to the tomb) like excrement under seal [sous scell&eactue;].
To magnify the turd [l’étron], to glorify what falls cut (stronzo, stronzare, strunzen) under the saddle [sous la selle], to erect the stallion [étalon], the standard [étalon] of his signature, or to cause the erection to fall from the horse, the king from the throne—all that would be equivalent.
Remain(s)—to (be) know(n)—what causes shitting.
[J. Derrida Glas, translated by John P. Leavey, Jr. & Richard Rand, p. 37b.]
The Wolf Man was a Russian emigré whose nurse had been English and whose analysts were Austrian and German. He was not Lawrence Talbot as portrayed by Creighton Chaney. This entry is for Miladus ad Usum delphinorum:
Ich liege zu Ihren Füssen. Ich bin mit Ihnen in einem Wolkenkratzer dessen einziger Ausgang ein Fenster ist. Von diesem Fenster führte eine Leiter in die unheimliche Tiefe. Um aus dem Wolkenkratzer herauszukommen, muss ich durchs Fenster.
a) “I am lying at your feet.” (Ich liege zu Ihren Füssen.) [R. M. Brunswick’s emphasis]
To be at someone’s feet means to be at his disposal, at his service. Let us translate: I am lying according to your wishes! But also: foot, Fuss: truth. I am lying the truth according to your wishes.
b) “I am with you in a skyscraper where the only way out is a window.” (Ich bin mit Ihnen in einem Wolkenkratzer dessen einziger Ausgang ein Fenster ist.)
“I am with you in gouflik-tieret (Wolkenkratzer, skyscraper; the first syllable, Volk, when heard in Russian equals “wolf” = gouflik, “fly” as in the main nightmare; kratzen, scrape = tieret), you are the only witness. (Ausgang, exit = issue is close in English “ is you”; window = witness.) If you tell me to say the truth (“the witness is you”) wholeheartedly, you do not disqualify me as I once was (“the witness is not you”; see chapter 3, section 3). But what will happen to me? I am not going to lose my magic word pure and simple. Fine, there is “fly” and “rubbing,” I witnessed it.
[Nicolas Abraham & Maria Torok The Wolf Man’s Magic Word, p. 70.]
The phrase ‘Wolfsonizing language’ comes from the name of Louis Wolfson (1931- ), the Jewish American schizophrenic who could not bear to hear or read his maternal tongue, English, and developed an intricate technique of instant translation according to sound, before writing his memoirs in French. Like Brisset, Wolfson does violence to the sentences he compulsively analyses, and sometimes re-analyses. But there is an important difference. He respects the words of the original text, he does not cut them up into syllables. Rather, he ‘translates’ them, using homophony between languages and not just within a language, and combines these translations into sentences that, being written in several languages, are linguistic monsters. Thus, when he hears some workmen saying about him ‘he’s a screwball’—we can understand the urgent necessity of defusing the aggressive potential of the sentence through translation—he produces the following sentence:
H(o)(u) i(l) (est | ist | yest) (un | ein | odin | schab) (écrou | Schraube) (Ball | balle),
where we recognize words in French, German, Hebrew, and Russian, and where I have placed variants he gives between [parentheses], because any variation will do, providing it is not an English word.
[Jean-Jacques Lecercle The Violence of Language, p. 63.]
Languagehat posted this entry on the artifical language Klingon. It was about Semantic Compositions’ coming to terms with the warrior’s language. And it also mentions two blogs written in tlhIngan Hol: bo logh and jIqel’s Journal. QaQqu'!
I’ve always been interested in constructed languages from Hildegard von Bingen’s divine tongue through Bishop John Wilkins’ Real Character to Schlayer’s Volapük and Zamenhof’s Esperanto. Besides I always had a fondness for Marc Okrand’s Klingon. It wasn’t just that we studied linguistics at the same place, but that he had gone out of his way to create a credible language on contract to Hollywood.
I have copies of Shakespeare’s Hamlet translated into both Klingon and Esperanto. Here’s a speech in both versions from Act One:
Horatio: As thou art to thyself:
Such was the very armour he had on
When he the ambitious Norway combatted;
So frown’d he once when, in an angry parle,
He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice.
’Tis strange.
Not the Bard’s best, but I wanted to see how the two different translators would handle the blason populaire. First Zamenhof’s version:
Horacio: Ne malpi multe, ol vi al vi mem.
Jes, gxuste tian portis li armajon
En la batalo kontrau la Norvegoj,
Li gxuste tian vidon havis glavon
En la glacion batis. Strange!
He handles the national slur by elision. His elder Hamlet simply fights with his sword on the ice. Now Nick Nicholas’ version:
Horey'So: bIrur'egh je!
DuraS pIn tlhIvqu' Hay'taHvIS je ghaH,
yoDSutvetlh'e' tuQ. qejmeH qabvetlh 'ang ghaH,
chuchDaq yoDDuj qInSaya qIpDI' je,
QeHtaHvIS ja'chuq. Hujqu'.
He leaves in both the King of Norway and the Polish soldiers, but their names have been changed to ones that presumably a Klingon would be more familiar: Duras (a Klingon usurper) and Kinshaya (an alien race that fought the Klingons during their early imperialistic years). Here’s a more literal translation of the Klingon version:
Horatio: You also look like yourself.
And while he was dueling an insubordinate boss, Duras,
he wore that very armor [shield-clothing]. He showed that face in anger,
when he struck the Kinshaya sleds on the ice,
and while he was angry, they spoke with one another.
Quite strange.
My Klingon is pretty rusty, but I’m sure somebody can correct any of my solecisms.
Ic on wincle gefrægn weaxan nathwæt,
þindan ond þunian, þecene hebban.
On þæt banlease bryd grapode,
hygewlonc hondum, hrægle þeahte
þrindende ŝing þeodnes dohtor.[Old English riddle xlv (K-D.) of the Exeter Book]
I have heard of a thing, waxing in a corner,
swelling and standing up, raising its covering.
A proud woman seized that boneless thing with her hands;
the lord's daughter covered that swelling thing with her dress.[translated by F. H. Whitman]
If I had before me a fly and an elephant, having never seen more than one such maginitude of either kind; and if the fly were to endeavour to persuade me that he was larger than the elephant, I might by possibility be placed in a difficulty. The apparently little creature might use such arguments about the effect of distance, and might appeal to such laws of sight and hearing as I, if unlearned in those things, might be unable wholly to reject. But if there were a thousand flies, all buzzing, to appearance, about the great creature; and, to a fly, declaring, each one for himself, that he was bigger than the quadruped; and all giving frequent and contradictory reasons; and each one dispising and opposing the reasons of the others—I should feel quite at my ease. I should certainly say, My little friends, the case of each one of you is destroyed by the rest. I intend to show flies in the swarm, with a few larger animals, for reasons to be given.
[Augustus de Morgan A Budget of Paradoxes p. 1.]
This is too cute to let by. Just what everybody needs: a cinematic vademecum in Aramaic. Thanks, Trevor at Kaleboel. Oh, and Feelmaa haanaa tpeelaw! Proo’ lee ksef dmaa.