languagehat.com

Courtesy of JC, this enjoyable Wikipedia page features Old English words that did not survive into Modern English (although they really mean Standard Modern English, since a number survive in dialects, e.g. Old English āðexe ‘lizard’ survives as “rare/dialectal ask“). It’s divided into sections (Animals, Body parts, Colours, Other words); herewith one entry from each:

dūfedoppa: ‘pelican’.
earsgang: ‘anus’ (literally arse-exit).
weolucbasu: ‘purple’. Literally ‘whelk-purple’.
hæmed, liger: ‘sex’.

(Cf. “we’ll get ’em all back.”) Thanks, John!

Johanna Hanink, an associate professor of Classics at Brown University, has a fascinating discussion of classicists and translation at Eidolon; it’s so full of good things I’m going to have a hard time extracting representative samples, so if you like the bits I quote, go read the whole thing:

Yet our pedagogical reliance on translation habituates us to thinking about language learning in strange ways. In a brief overview of the history of translation, Juliane House observes that “At the end of the eighteenth century the teaching of Latin had turned into a highly formalized ritual, the idea being to instil discipline into students’ minds.” Two and a half centuries later, not much seems to have changed. I remember sitting in high school Latin class with a copy of Mandelbaum’s Aeneid under my desk, feeling like a kid in the outfield praying the ball never flies her way. For me, the “ritual” of in-class translation became linked early on with fear of humiliation.

This kind of pedagogy also hinders the development of real comprehension, since, among other things, it encourages students to translate Greek and Latin into their native languages even when they read on their own. We know that’s not how you learn a language; it’s also a hard habit to break. […]

In 2015, I met a journalist named Konstantinos Poulis in Greece. Poulis is also a talented fiction writer who had published a well-received collection of short stories called Thermostat the previous year. When I read the first story, “The Leonardo DiCaprio of Exarcheia,” I was so compelled by the narrative that I wanted more people to be able to read it too. Over the next couple of years, Poulis and I spoke often about finding an English-language translator for his work. When that proved difficult, I decided to try for myself.

As much as I had loved reading “Leonardo,” translating it was another story. This was the first time I had ever attempted a literary translation, a translation stripped of quotation marks. Before, when I had “translated” Greek and Latin passages as part of my scholarly work, I had mostly been concerned with showing readers how — and even simply that — I understood the texts. But with Poulis and Thermostat, something more was at stake. I wanted to do justice to my friend’s writing and help him to build his reputation in the Anglophone literary world. Euripides and Plato had never needed anything like that from me. […]

Soon after “The Leonardo DiCaprio of Exarcheia” appeared in English, I met Rob Tempio, an executive editor at Princeton University Press, and he suggested to me that something from Thucydides could work well for the Press’s “Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers” series. I was heartened to hear him agree that he, too, was puzzled by the exalted position that Thucydides’ Athenians enjoy in American political discourse. The prospect of retranslating and reintroducing Pericles’ funeral oration and the Melian Dialogue — and of gently subverting the “ancient wisdom for modern readers” concept —did seem like a productive and creative way of encouraging people to revisit their assumptions about the text.

She gets accepted to a workshop at Princeton in literary translation and wound up “on an unforgiving daily schedule of translating Thucydides after breakfast and Poulis after lunch”:
[Read more…]

A clever initiative from Australia — indigemoji. From the About page:

This project began with a tweet. A tweet featuring a list of emojis with Arrernte words next to them. A tweet the internet couldn’t get enough of.

A few of us had recently been discussing why there weren’t any Indigenous Australian emojis out there. We didn’t have a good answer, except perhaps for the obvious – that no-one had made any yet. And then we saw the tweet and we knew it was time, so we rang Joel. Soon we had a team of emoji bosses in place – Joel Liddle Perrule, Veronica Dobson Perrurle and Kathleen Wallace Kemarre and together we began dreaming of what a set of emojis from Central Australia could look like. […]

Indigemoji is now a sticker set of 90 emojis representing life, culture and language of Arrernte Country in Central Australia, closely considered and guided by our emoji bosses. Each has an Arrente name, the traditional language of Mparntwe/Alice Springs, words we hope you’ll learn. We’ve also developed emojis for special totemic species, either endangered or extinct. A simple emoji of a bilby or a bandicoot promotes their memory, their name, their places in the landscape where they sprang into existence in the Altyerre and where they moved about on their epic journeys. This way they remain in our landscape.

There are links to Apmere angkentye-kenhe, a site about Central/Eastern Arrernte, and a Māori emoji site. (Arrernte previously at LH: tongue twister, Dreaming.) Thanks, Bathrobe!

I know you’ve all been waiting with bated breath to learn what I’ve been reading since I finished The Brothers Karamazov (see this post: “And now I have finished my Long March through 19th-century Russian literature…”). First I reread the Strugatskys’ Улитка на склоне (Snail on the Slope), enjoying its grim brio (how did they get away with alluding to so much of the repressed underside of Soviet life in the late ’60s?), and now I’ve started Valentin Kataev’s 1926 novella Растратчики (The Embezzlers), since it’s short and funny (I’ve got a nasty cold and am not up to anything Dostoevskian). I haven’t even finished the first page, but I had to post, because I ran across a letter of the alphabet that startled me more than perhaps any single letter ever has. The novel opens with a “citizen,” very proper-looking and no longer young, approaching a cigarette vendor on the steps of a Moscow telegraph office; the vendor takes one look at him and hands him a package of “Ira” cigarettes. This in itself is a nice touch; that brand was well known in tsarist times, and Mayakovsky wrote a famous couplet for a 1923 ad:

Единственное
        оставленное от старого мира —
папиросы «Ира».

The only thing
        left from the old world
is Ira cigarettes.

(You can see the ad, designed by Rodchenko, here.) If you’re thinking “Ad? Tsarist cigarette brand? What kind of Soviet Union is this??” the answer is that this was the heyday of NEP, the New Economic Policy that brought a watered-down version of capitalism to Russia for a few years and saved the economy from collapse. So our vendor has identified the citizen as the kind of fellow in the market for a classy holdover from the old days rather than a crude proletarian competitor.

But that’s not what startled me. Here’s the first bit of dialogue in the novel, with the translation by Charles Rougle (Ardis, 1975):

– А не будут они мокрые? – спросил гражданин, нюхая довольно длинным носом нечистый воздух, насыщенный запахом городского дождя и светильного газа.
– Будьте спокойны, из-под самого низу. Погодка-с!

“They’re not wet, are they?” the citizen asked, and he sniffed the dirty air, saturated with the smell of rain in the city and lamp gas, with his rather long nose.
“Don’t worry, I took ’em off the bottom. Boy, what weather we’re having!”

It’s not a bad translation, except that it ignores the letter that shocked me, that final -с [-s]. As I said in this 2004 post, it’s “a contracted form of sudar’ ‘sir,’ omnipresent in prerevolutionary literature as an indication of politeness or servility, depending on the situation.” In the Addendum to that post I quoted the third edition (1903-1909) of Dahl, who calls it “a mark of special politeness of former times,” and of course I assumed that if it was “former” in the first decade of the century it had surely died out entirely by Soviet times. But here it is being casually used by a vendor to a citizen on a Soviet street, for anyone to hear! I’m not sure whether it’s taken from actual city life, with holdovers from the old days (less than a decade after the Bolshevik Revolution) using the old forms out of habit, or whether it’s a bit of hyperbole by Kataev to show how NEP was turning the clock back, but in any case the translator should have thrown in at least a “sir,” if not “your honor,” to render the effect.

Cecelia Watson, a historian and philosopher of science who teaches at Bard College, writes for the Paris Review about one of the many lasting products of the Renaissance:

The semicolon was born in Venice in 1494. It was meant to signify a pause of a length somewhere between that of the comma and that of the colon, and this heritage was reflected in its form, which combines half of each of those marks. It was born into a time period of writerly experimentation and invention, a time when there were no punctuation rules, and readers created and discarded novel punctuation marks regularly. Texts (both handwritten and printed) record the testing-out and tinkering-with of punctuation by the fifteenth-century literati known as the Italian humanists. The humanists put a premium on eloquence and excellence in writing, and they called for the study and retranscription of Greek and Roman classical texts as a way to effect a “cultural rebirth” after the gloomy Middle Ages. In the service of these two goals, humanists published new writing and revised, repunctuated, and reprinted classical texts.

One of these humanists, Aldus Manutius, was the matchmaker who paired up comma and colon to create the semicolon. Manutius was a printer and publisher, and the first literary Latin text he issued was De Aetna, by his contemporary Pietro Bembo. De Aetna was an essay, written in dialogue form, about climbing volcanic Mount Etna in Italy. On its pages lay a new hybrid mark, specially cut for this text by the Bolognese type designer Francesco Griffo: the semicolon (and Griffo dreamed up a nice plump version) is sprinkled here and there throughout the text, conspiring with colons, commas, and parentheses to aid readers. […]

Nearly as soon as the ink was dry on those first semicolons, they began to proliferate, and newly cut font families began to include them as a matter of course. The Bembo typeface’s tall semicolon was the original that appeared in De Aetna, with its comma-half tensely coiled, tail thorn-sharp beneath the perfect orb thrown high above it. The semicolon in Poliphilus, relaxed and fuzzy, looks casual in comparison, like a Keith Haring character taking a break from buzzing. Garamond’s semicolon is watchful, aggressive, and elegant, its lower half a cobra’s head arced back to strike. Jenson’s is a simple shooting star. We moderns have accumulated a host of characterful semicolons to choose from: Palatino’s is a thin flapper in a big hat slouched against the wall at a party. Gill Sans MT’s semicolon has perfect posture, while Didot’s puffs its chest out pridefully. (For the postmodernist writer Donald Barthelme, none of these punch-cut disguises could ever conceal the semicolon’s innate hideousness: to him it was “ugly, ugly as a tick on a dog’s belly.”)

There are images, including a side-by-side comparison of the various early varieties, and a discussion of “hand-wringing sages [who] forecast a literary apocalypse precipitated by too-casual attitudes about punctuation”; Watson warns against mistaking the –que abbreviation for a semicolon, something that is rarely a problem in these days of fallen Latinity. (Semicolons previously on LH: 2002, 2004, 2008, 2009, 2012 — inter, haud dubie, alia.)

The British Library’s Medieval manuscripts blog has a nice post about why “the number of classical writings that have actually survived is surprisingly low”; there are no new revelations, but it’s useful reading for those who aren’t au courant:

Traditionally, barbarian invasions and Christian monks have been blamed for intentionally destroying works of the classical past. The image of burning books and libraries is often evoked in scholarship, fiction and films alike. While this may have occasionally occurred, the biggest deciding factor for the survival or disappearance of classical texts is actually likely to be their use in medieval school education.

The reason for this is that works that made it onto school curricula tended to be copied more, so medieval scribes preserved them in large numbers. Texts that proved to be too difficult or unsuitable for use in schools were more prone to being lost. For example, of the 142 books of Livy’s exceptionally long work, The History of Rome from its Foundation, from the 1st century BC, only 35 books have survived intact, with the rest preserved only in extracts abridged for school use.

School curricula also explain why ancient grammatical literature was transmitted in surprising quantities across medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, including educational material for the study not only of Latin but also of ancient Greek. Popular texts, such as Priscian’s 5th-century Institutes of Latin Grammar, survive in large numbers, sometimes annotated with glosses or notes added in classrooms, as in this example from 11th-century France.

Although schools filtered the classical tradition rather heavily, omitting a number of texts that we would now be eager to read, the ancient schoolmasters had a surprisingly broad literary grasp. We have works on ancient mythology such as Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and encyclopaedic works such as Pliny’s Natural History. The works of Homer in the Eastern Mediterranean and Virgil, Cicero, Horace and Ovid in the West all survived thanks to their inclusion in late antique and medieval secondary education.

This key role of schools in the transmission of the classical past sheds a special light on other surviving texts, too. Ancient Roman plays, for example, have come down to us not as scripts for theatrical performances but rather as school manuals. […]

There are some wonderful images. For Priscian, see this 2013 post.

I normally try to avoid posting stuff relating to politics, especially emotion-laden politics, but this is so funny I can’t resist. Kate Connolly reports for the Guardian:

Germany’s Social Democratic party has backed down after becoming locked in a blame game with a florist and a printer over who was responsible for misspelling “fascism” on a war memorial wreath so that it resembled the word “fuckup”.

The error was only spotted once the wreath had been laid on Memorial Sunday, 17 November, when Germany traditionally commemorates the victims of war and fascism. Instead of the word “Faschismus” (fascism) the word “Verschissmuss” had been used. Although the word doesn’t exist, it closely resembles the word “verschissen” – a vulgar term for seriously messing up, close to “fucking up” in English. […]

“It has now emerged that the error on the ribbon of our wreath was not a sabotage attempt but down to human error,” the local party wrote. “There was an unfortunate chain of unlucky events where, despite several people handling it, nobody noticed the mistake … […] Heinz-Jürgen Jahnke, who specialises in ribbon printing, told the newspaper Bild: “We received the order by fax on 12 November. Everything was clearly written and perfectly legible. I print whatever the customer wants,” he said. As to why he didn’t notice the odd spelling and alert the customer, he said: “We sometimes print Arabic, Italian and Polish texts. How can I check if they are correct?” The only reason for calling back a customer, he said, would be “if something is illegible”.

Neither, apparently, did the florist notice anything when she picked up the wreath and delivered it, as requested by the SPD, to the memorial site. SPD members only noticed the highly embarrassing faux pas once the ceremony was under way.

I feel bad for the florist and for anyone who was upset by seeing it, but damn, “Verschissmuss” is hilarious. Thanks, Trond!

Kasia of Polish Language Blog had a post on Mar 6, 2012, called Przekleństwa – curse words that’s just what it sounds like:

When it comes to Polish translation, in certain contexts, the swear words (curse words), przekleństwa, have their both prominent and well-deserved role to play. True, English is not completely toothless in this respect, but still there is no comparison. The Poles lead by far.

Sex related swear words are most useful and most common. Let’s see, the so called four letter word, or to be explicit, “f***” – no need to be prudish here – after all it is a linguistic exercise we are involved in corresponds rather well to its Polish counterpart, although, already from the beginning Polish has an advantage here – with a whole nine letter-word.

I am, of course, amused by “f*** – no need to be prudish,” but it’s a fun list. Thanks, Kobi!

A reader writes: “At a concert yesterday, Verdi’s Brindisi from La Traviata playing, I thought, that’s a funny name for a toast! According to Wikipedia, from German, but mangled to sound like the Italian town, to which it is completely unrelated.” That of course caught my attention, and sure enough, Wikipedia says:

The word is Italian, but it derives from an old German phrase, (ich) bringe dir’s – “(I) offer it to you”, which at one time was used to introduce a toast.[1] The transformation of that phrase into the current Italian word may have been influenced by similar-sounding name of the Italian city of Brindisi, but otherwise the city and the term are etymologically unrelated.

That footnote says: “O. Pianigiani, Vocabolario Etimologico della Lingua Italiana, s.v. brindisi. See also OED, s.v. brendice.” And yes, Pianigiani says “dal ted. BRING DIR’S,” and the OED (entry unrevised since 1888) says “< Italian bríndesi, bríndisi, ‘a drinking or health to one’ (Florio); according to Diez perverted (by popular etymology) from German bring dir’s , i.e. ich bringe dir’s zu ; whence also French brinde”… but I don’t believe it. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but it sure sounds like something that Diez thought up and that has stuck because it’s a clever idea and nobody’s had a better one. Anybody know anything more? (Thanks, Adrian!)

Sophie Hardach reports for the NY Times:

[…] In 2009, Dr. [Kathleen] Wermke’s and her colleagues made headlines with a study showing that French and German newborns produce distinctly different “cry melodies,” reflecting the languages they heard in utero: German newborns produce more cries that fall from a higher to a lower pitch, mimicking the falling intonation of the German language, while French infants tend to cry with the rising intonation of French. At this age, babies experiment with a wide variety of sounds, and can learn any language. But they are already influenced by their mother tongue.

Today, Dr. Wermke’s lab houses an archive of around a half-million recordings of babies from as far afield as Cameroon and China, where a team of graduate students armed with recording equipment paced the corridors of a Beijing hospital around the clock. […] Quantitative acoustic analysis of these recordings has produced further insights into the factors that shape a baby’s first sounds. Newborns whose mothers speak tonal languages, such as Mandarin, tend to produce more complex cry melodies. Swedish newborns, whose native language has what linguists call a “pitch accent,” produce more sing-songy cries.

These studies underpin the lab’s broader effort to map the typical development of a baby’s cries, as well as vocalizations like cooing and babbling. Knowing what typical development looks like, and what factors can influence it, helps doctors address potential problems early on. […]

“Imagine you’re thrown into a new language environment, which is what happens with the newborn,” said Judit Gervain, a senior research scientist at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris who studies early speech perception. “There’s just so much going on: There are all the words, there’s all the meaning, all the grammar, all the sounds, all of it. You can’t do it all, it’s just too much. One way prosody helps is it gives them nice little chunks that are the right size.”

In English, for example, a stressed syllable is often a cue for the start of a word, as in: English language. In French, a lengthened syllable signals the end of a sentence, as in: “Bonjour Madame!” Long before they can speak, babies begin to recognize patterns like these. “A lot has to happen before that first word is produced,” said Janet Werker, a developmental psychologist at the University of British Columbia who studies early language acquisition.

There’s lots more good stuff, including the soothing effect of maternal howling on infants. Thanks, Eric! (Incidentally, we discussed newborns and language in 2007 and 2011, and I note that the researchers featured in those posts were named Weikum and Werker; together with today’s Wermke, they constitute a cluster at least as impressive as the monosyllabic Indo-Europeanists — Rask, Bopp, et al. — we’ve discussed on occasion.)