languagehat.com

Robyn Creswell, who teaches comparative literature at Brown and is poetry editor of the Paris Review, has an essay in the February 13 NYRB (archived) that is ostensibly a review of two new versions of the Qur’an but spends much of its time on a useful summary of the history of such attempts. It begins:

‘Umar ibn al-Khattab, the second caliph and conqueror of Jerusalem, was initially one of the prophet Muhammad’s fiercest enemies. According to early Muslim historians, ‘Umar was an exemplary pagan Arab: physically imposing, short-tempered, and somewhat sentimental, he was a lover of gambling, wine, and poetry. His conversion occurred in 616, three years after Muhammad began preaching to the polytheists of Mecca. One night, the story goes, ‘Umar was looking for drinking companions when he came across the prophet at prayer near the square shrine of the Kaaba (then a site of pagan pilgrimage). ‘Umar slipped under the great cube’s black covering and listened. Hearing the words of the Qur’an for the first time, he later reported, “My heart softened, I wept, and then Islam entered me.”

‘Umar’s experience was, it seems, typical. Early biographies of the prophet include stories of poets—the tribunes of pagan culture and Muhammad’s political rivals—who immediately renounced their art upon hearing the prophet’s revelations. Other stories recount the conversion of Abyssinian and Byzantine Christians who accepted the Qur’anic message even though they didn’t understand a word of Arabic. In the most extreme cases, hearing Qur’anic verses caused fainting, terror, ecstasy, and even death. In the eleventh century, Abu Ishaq al-Tha‘labi published a collection of such tales, The Blessed Book of Those Slain by the Noble Qur’an, Who Listened to the Qur’an and Subsequently Perished of Their Listening. Al-Tha‘labi wrote that people who died in this fashion were “the most virtuous of martyrs.”

Creswell points out that “Many Islamic authorities—and indeed many translators—believe that the Qur’an, as the word of God spoken to Muhammad via the angel Gabriel, is strictly speaking untranslatable” and continues:

Leaving theology aside, the Qur’an isn’t a book Muslims have historically encountered through reading. Instead it is recited, memorized, and used in devotional practices. ‘Umar converted after hearing the prophet recite the Qur’an; al-Tha‘labi’s martyrs were listeners, not readers. And this is only the beginning of the translator’s difficulties.

He goes on to discuss Robert of Ketton’s twelfth-century Latin version, Ludovico Marracci’s 1698 translation (also Latin), George Sale’s 1734 translation (“the most popular in English for some two hundred years”), Muhammad Ali’s 1917 The Holy Qur’an: Containing the Arabic Text with English Translation and Commentary (adopted by Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam), Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall’s 1930 The Meaning of the Glorious Koran: An Explanatory Translation (still widely used), Abdullah Yusuf Ali’s The Holy Qur’an: Text, Translation, and Commentary (1934-37), Arthur J. Arberry’s The Koran Interpreted (1955), and Michael Sells’ Approaching the Qur’án (1999) before getting to the books under review. For many of them, he provides their versions of Surah 100, al-‘Adiyat, which is a convenient way to compare their qualities. (I wish he’d included my own go-to edition, Muhammad Asad’s The Message of The Quran with its superb commentary, but you can’t have everything.) Here’s a sample passage on M.A.R. Habib and Bruce Lawrence’s new The Qur’an: A Verse Translation:
[Read more…]

I recently ran across a reference to someone’s “battel” at Oxford, and of course went straight to the OED, where I found an entry (from 1885; not yet revised) so redolent of posh Victorian England I had to share it:

1. † A prebend. Obsolete.
[…]

2. In Univ. of Oxford: (a) college accounts for board and provisions supplied from the kitchen and buttery; (b) (in looser use) the whole college accounts for board and lodgings, rates, tuition, and contribution to various funds, as ‘My last term’s battels came to £40’; also attributive, as battel-bills.
The word has apparently undergone progressive extensions of application, owing partly to changes in the internal economy of the colleges. Some Oxford men of a previous generation state that it was understood by them to apply to the buttery accounts alone, or even to the provisions ordered from the buttery, as distinct from the ‘commons’ supplied from the kitchen: but this latter use is disavowed by others. See the quotations, and cf. those under battel v. and batteler n., which bear that battels applied in 17–18th centuries to provisions supplied to members of the college individually at their own order and cost, i.e. to battelers, who had no commons, but were charged their ‘battels’ only, and to commoners as extras ‘above the ordinary stint of their appointed commons’: but whether the battels were originally the provisions themselves, or the sums due on account of them, must at present be left undecided.

[1557
Ad solvendum debita seu batillos sociorum.
Reg. Exeter Coll. 41]
[…]
1706
For sometime kept a name in yᵉ Buttery Book; at wᶜʰ time Dr. Charlett was sponsor for discharge of his Battles.
T. Hearne, Remarks & Collections (1885) vol. I. 220
1792 The word battel, which..signifies to account, and battels the College accounts in general.
Gentleman’s Magazine August 716
1842 Their authority might be exerted to compel payment to tradesmen with nearly the same regularity as they exact their own battells.
T. Arnold in Life & Correspondence (1844) vol. II. x. 305
[…]
1882 Receipts..in respect of battels, room rent and tuition fees.
Spectator 18 March 352

3. Elsewhere: (see quots.).

1805 Battel—(a term used at Eton for the small portion of food which, in addition to the College allowance, the collegers receive from their Dames,).
J. H. Tooke, Επεα Πτεροεντα (ed. 2) vol. II. iv. 123
[…]
[a1883 Every boy had a shilling a week pocket-money, which we called battels [This is an error of the author: the Winchester term is battlings], and which was advanced to us out of the pocket of the second master.
A. Trollope, Autobiography (1883) vol. I. 13]

A brisk rap on the knuckles for poor Trollope! (But let’s face it, he attended Harrow as a day pupil who didn’t pay fees before haring off to Winchester; what can you expect?) And the etymology is equally chatty and supercilious:
[Read more…]

Nick Nicholas has been traveling through Greece and Albania and is now in Cyprus, and he’s been posting lots of observations (and photos) on Facebook; I thought this one was interesting enough to reproduce here (in its entirety, so those of you without FB access aren’t missing anything but a couple of menu images):

Burger, transliterated as berker in Cypriot Greek, instead of bernger. Cypriot Greek has a 3-way contrast of kk, k, ng: k is actually the closest the dialect phonology has to a g, whereas Greece Greek increasingly is dropping the n in ng, and has always used NG anyway. Same for nd vs t and mb vs p.

Yes, that is a double tt at the start of ttavas. It’s aspirated word-initially: t(h)avas. Here they make it with rice: in the Nicosia region where my aunt and uncle are from, they use onion instead, so Lefkara ttavas weirds them out. It’s unfamiliar to me, so I’m in.

Ttavas is the Cypriot for tava, the Indian through to Turkish pan that it is prepared in. (Metal in India, clay here.) Turkish t ends up in Cypriot as tt. Hence also eg Turkish kele “head” > Cypriot Greek kkele.

(I’ve added itals and links ad libitum.)

As promised in my earlier post, here are some passages from Veltman’s Virginie (all from the inserted correspondence, which constitutes at least half the text) that provide ironic takes on Russian literacy in the early 19th century; I’ll put the Russian originals after the translations (probably still with uncaught OCR errors). The first is from a social gathering:

At dinner I wound up sitting next to a young man who was submerged in a weighty jabot; I started a conversation with him, wanting to acquire some information about Russia, but imagine my surprise: he seems to have no more knowledge of Russia than I do. Here’s our conversation:
I. – What an extraordinary talent for learning languages Russians are endowed with; I have never seen a European nation that spoke French so fluently.
He.—Yes; but all those who want to be educated are forced to do so.
I don’t understand; please explain it to me.
He.—It’s quite clear; we don’t have our own language. Would you believe that in Russian it is not possible to put two decent words together in a salon, not to mention that the Russian language has absolutely no words for expressing ideas; it is impossible for an enlightened person to express his thoughts in Russian.
I. – That’s remarkable; I had imagined that the Russian language was one of the richest.
He. – You are mistaken. The Russian language exists only among the common people. It is a crude language, the very simplest.
I. – But the written language? the language of Russian literature?
He. — All Russian literature is written in the Slavic language, that is, in the Church language. This language is even worse: no one learns it except the clergy and scribes; for even our legal proceedings are in the Slavic language.
I. – But surely someone is engaged in the development of the Russian language?
He.— Absolutely nobody; all decent people speak and write French, they know English, German, Italian.
I.- But I seem to remember reading that in Russia there are the poets Lamanousoff, Dershavni….
He – Lomonosov is famous only because he was the first to write the vilest poems in Russian… And as for Minister Derzhavin. . . He is a Minister, therefore, it was not difficult for him to make himself famous . . . and what did he write? some odes; but they are also in the Slavic language, which, I confess, I do not understand, and therefore I cannot be enraptured by Russian works. In any case, I have no need of them, like any educated person who can read European works… I’d rather open the charming Delille, the sublime Racine, Corneille, Voltaire! …
Is it possible to express in Russian, for example, the verse when Assur says to Semiramis: “Madame! c’est à vous d’achever votre ouvrage”?
I asked him to translate the verse into Russian; my interlocutor thought for a long time, and finally translated it. I wrote it down, and here it is:
“Sadarina, eto vam prinadlejit kontchit vasch rabоto.”
My God, is it even possible to compose something decent in Russian? continued the Russian youth.
Judging by his words, and by the general conversation of society in French, one must assume that the Russian language will completely die out and be replaced by French.

[Read more…]

Dmitry Pruss writes me:

We have an etymology discussion under my Facebook post with ermine pictures. Vasmer says one thing about горностай, Trubachyov another, and wiktionary shies away from it but suggests a paper with discussion.
Does the learned world of the hatters know?

I’ve added links so interested parties can follow up; to summarize, Trubachov says it’s from an Old Saxon *harmenes-tagl- / *harmenes-tail- ‘ermine’s tail,’ while Vasmer calls that idea mistaken (“Ошибочно”) without further analysis, rubbishing another couple of hypotheses in the process (“unacceptable… also unacceptable… absolutely fantastic”), and says Proto-Slavic *gornostajь remains unexplained (“остается необъясненным”). All thoughts welcome!

In 2023, introducing my review of Alexander Veltman’s Предки Калимероса [The forebears of Kalimeros] (1836), I wrote “having since read more Veltman than doubtless all but a handful of Americans, I’ve finally gotten around to one of his early works I missed along the way,” and now I’ve renewed the exploit by reading his 1837 novel Виргиния, или Поездка в Россию [Virginie, or a journey to Russia]. As usual, I have no idea whether anyone else would be interested in it, and even if they were it’s unlikely they’d actually read it because 1) it’s never been translated (and doubtless will never be) and 2) even to read it in Russian you have to download a pdf of the original publication, in pre-reform spelling and often hard to make out (at least that’s the only text I could find). So I will thoroughly spoil the plot in my summary (though plot is always the least important thing in Veltman).

It starts off:

Hector d’Alm, a handsome young Parisian, was compelled as a result of a purchase of land to spend a good deal of time in Briançon and in the environs of that Alpine city.

Парижанинъ Гекторъ д’Альмъ, прекрасный собою молодой человѣкъ, принужденъ былъ по случаю покупки земли, прожить долгое время въ Бріансонѣ и въ округѣ этого Альпійскаго города.

He has no interest in the antiquities of the region (“Что мнѣ до символовъ прошедшаго, я хочу видѣть только настоящее”) and dreams of women, so in the interest of meeting some local members of the fair sex he visits a tree-planting festival. Ignoring the ancient roots of the celebration, he fixates on a beautiful girl and follows her to her home in a nearby village, where he pretends to be interested in the antiquarian researches of her father while casting smoldering glances at the girl, who is, of course, the titular Virginie. She, a virginal and naive fifteen-year-old, responds with the requisite blushes, and eventually, alone with her while her father is rummaging in his storeroom, he seizes the opportunity to give her a kiss. Unfortunately, she melts in his arms, her father dashes in, and before he knows it Hector is officially engaged to the tremulous Virginie. What to do?
[Read more…]

In the course of a LLog post about an xkcd comic, Mark Liberman has some interesting things to say about the history of chemical nomenclature:

As background for these jokes, it’s worth considering that modern chemical nomenclature was linguistically inspired:

Lavoisier, together with Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau, Claude-Louis Berthollet, and Antoine François de Fourcroy, submitted a new program for the reforms of chemical nomenclature to the academy in 1787, for there was virtually no rational system of chemical nomenclature at this time. […]

The total effect of the new nomenclature can be gauged by comparing the new name “copper sulfate” with the old term “vitriol of Venus.” Lavoisier’s new nomenclature spread throughout Europe and to the United States and became common use in the field of chemistry.

Or the new names “ethanoic acid” or”acetic acid” (or CH3COOH) for the old name “vinegar”…

The full proposal was published in 1787 as Méthode de nomenclature chimique (facsimile on Gallica here, on Google here). It starts with Le Mémoire sur la nécessité de réformer et de perfectionner la nomenclature de la chimie, which was written and read to the Académie by Lavoisier on April 18, 1787, and argues that the chemical nomenclature inherited from the alchemists should be methodically revised to make the names reflect the (recently discovered) components of the named substances.

Lavoisier’s argument is explicitly founded on an argument from Condillac’s Logique about the role of language in developing ideas about the nature of the world.

More details, quotes, and links at the Log post; it’s always interesting to see the history behind terms that we take for granted.

Joel at Far Outliers posted excerpts from Conquering The Pacific: An Unknown Mariner and the Final Great Voyage of the Age of Discovery, by Andrés Reséndez (HarperCollins, 2021), and I thought this one was of Hattic interest:

Those who remained reasonably healthy and curious would have been immediately struck by Navidad’s sheer diversity. As the port’s population swelled from a few dozen to several hundred, it turned into something of a Babel of races, nationalities, classes, and occupations. Native Americans were ubiquitous. Coming from nearby towns such as Tuxpan and Xilotlán, they had been compelled to abandon their families, homes, and fields and go to Navidad to work for token compensation according to a system of corvée labor known as repartimiento. For these Indigenous peoples, service at the port was yet another labor sinkhole that they had to endure, like the silver mines or the road construction projects. Also common were African slaves, purchased by the viceroy and dispatched to Navidad to aid in the building effort. Some had been Christianized and spoke Spanish, but many others, the so-called negros bozales, had been imported directly from Africa. Particularly visible was a team of Black slaves constantly moving cargo from various towns into Navidad and managing a train of twenty-seven mules and two horses.

Spaniards constituted the largest share of the expeditionaries, as one would expect. The catchall appellation español, however, masked yet more diversity. Friar Urdaneta and Commander Legazpi were both from the Basque Country, so a disproportionate number of voyagers hailed from that region. As Basque is a non-Indo-European language, they enjoyed a private means of communication completely impenetrable to all other Spaniards—far more so than, say, English, German, or Russian. Galicia in the north of Spain, Castile in the middle, and Andalusia in the south were also well represented at Navidad. Although these historic kingdoms were linguistically and culturally closer to one another, the differences between them were greater in the sixteenth century than today and inevitably led to cliques and divisions within the crew and the two companies of soldiers.

A fixture of all early voyages of exploration was the high proportion of non-Spaniards. They could account for as many as a third (according to some regulations) and up to half (as in the case of Magellan’s expedition) of all crew members. The Navidad fleet was no different. The documentation mentions a Belgian barrel maker, a German artilleryman, an English carpenter, Venetian crew members, a French pilot, two Filipino translators, and so forth. Portuguese mariners made up the largest and most conspicuous foreign group: at least sixteen could be counted at Navidad. Spaniards regarded them as rivals but also valued their nautical skills. The Afro-Portuguese pilot Lope Martín, our protagonist, was among them.

(Click through for more on the very interesting Lope Martín.) It makes sense that Basque would have made a good private language.

Louis Menand has a review in last week’s New Yorker (archived) of Zora Neale Hurston’s much-rejected and now finally published novel The Life of Herod the Great; Menand describes her attempts to interest publishers, saying it “was turned down by Hurston’s publisher, Scribner’s, in 1955”:

She continued working on the book. In 1958, it was turned down by another house, David McKay, the publisher of Fodor’s travel guides and Ace Comics. In 1959, she wrote to Harper & Brothers to ask “if you would have any interest in the book I am laboring upon at present—a life of Herod the Great. One reason I approach you is because you will realize that any publisher who offers a life of Herod as it really was, and naturally different from the groundless legends which have been built up around his name has to have courage.” Harper & Brothers was Richard Wright’s publisher—as the reference to “courage” was intended to remind the recipients. But they passed on “Herod.” This was Hurston’s last extant letter.

One is primed to expect a happy ending — guess what, it turns out to be a masterpiece! But alas, Menand agrees with the publishers:

This is the Herod of “Herod,” a superhero of the Levant. He excels at everything, from man-to-man combat to interior design, an impossible combination of rectitude and swagger. When Cleopatra tries to seduce him, he refuses her. He’s a married man! When he has his wife executed, as the real Herod did, his reasoning is unassailable. When Cleopatra’s lover, that dissolute sensualist Mark Antony, sizes him up for a possible same-sex hookup, he can see right away that Herod is not that type. As Hurston describes the moment, “Antony was silently appraising Herod’s masculine perfection, his large, luminous eyes and superb lashes, his muscular limbs well developed by military use. But he did not sense that Herod’s mind would be capable of persuasion.”

The whole book is written like this, in a kind of illustrated-classics prose.

The bandit wheeled and snarled at Herod, exposing his rotting front teeth. He cursed Herod roundly and coarsely, then suddenly gripping his heavy spear, hurled it. But it was a second too late. Herod’s own spear was on the way, it hit Hezekiah fairly in the chest and pinned him to the ground. “Oh, allow me to finish him, Herod,” one of Herod’s young officers begged. “He is finished,” Herod said confidently making his way towards where Hezekiah lay. “I have been practicing that throw since I was ten years old.”

[Read more…]

Grace Dean of BBC News reports on a phenomenon I had vaguely thought was safely in the past:

Before she started university, Beth Beddall had never really thought about her Black Country accent. But when she started attending seminars during her undergraduate course at Durham University in 2022, she began to feel self conscious, and avoided speaking up in front of the other students.

Beth, from Sandwell in the West Midlands, recalls a privately-educated student once telling her: “You don’t sound like you’re from a private school.” When she replied telling him she went to a state school, he said: “You must be intimidated by us and how we speak.”

Like Beth, many university students have high levels of accent-based anxiety, according to a 2022 report on accents and social mobility by sociolinguists for the Sutton Trust. More than a third of over 1,000 university students surveyed said they felt self-conscious about their accent, and 47% said they’d had their accent mocked, criticised or commented on in a social setting. […]

[Read more…]