languagehat.com

David Shulman in The New Republic discusses the sad state of awareness of Sanskrit literature: “The astonishing fact is that cultivated readers of [European] tongues may have never heard of Kalidasa, or of the no less important Bhavabhuti, Bharavi, Magha, and Sriharsha.”

Happily, help has now arrived. In the last decade, a new library of translations from Sanskrit has begun to appear. It is called the Clay Sanskrit [Library], named after the generous donor who has made it all possible, John P. Clay, who took a degree in Sanskrit from Oxford University many years ago. More than thirty volumes have already appeared in this extraordinary project, with another twenty or more in the pipeline. And so, for the first time in English, we have the beginnings of a representative canon of Sanskrit literary works, for the most part well translated and accessible to a wide public.
The Clay volumes are patterned after the justifiably celebrated Loeb Classical Library for Greek and Latin: small, elegant books, beautifully printed, sparsely annotated, and bilingual—the Sanskrit, transliterated into Roman characters in a system devised by the Clay editors, sits on the left page, facing the English translation on the right. This arrangement naturally delights students of Sanskrit, who may dispense, at least temporarily, with their dictionaries and grammar books; but you do not have to know Sanskrit to enjoy reading these volumes. Indeed, their raison d’être is to win for the Sanskrit classics an audience outside India, and certainly beyond the limited scholarly circles that have, for the last two centuries or so, studied these works, produced critical editions and philological commentaries, and sometimes also translated them into Western languages, almost invariably badly.

This is an excellent thing, and I wish these volumes had been around when I was sullenly studying Sanskrit 35 years ago. Thanks, Kári!

My pal Paul has sent me a link to an essay by Lucy Kellaway that struck me with its pure essence of language lunacy. It’s basically your standard purist rant, and is nicely summed up by its first sentence: “For the last few months I’ve been on a mission to rid the world of the phrase ‘going forward’.” You get the picture: I hate this newfangled phrase, I hear it all the time, I can’t make it stop but at least I can vent about it. So far, so tiresome. But the thing is, she knows better. She says so. But she rants anyway. As I wrote to Paul:

She knows on some level she’s being an idiot — “You could say
this orgy of pedantry was not only tedious, but also pointless.
Language changes” — but she continues “Yet protesting feels so good.
Not only does it allow one to wallow in the superiority of one’s
education, but some words are so downright annoying that to complain
brings relief.” Rarely have I seen the pathological nature of
language gripery displayed so openly. She quotes Swift, understands
that he was foolish to object so strongly to “mob,” but then says “By
contrast there is so much more to object to in ‘going forward’.” If
that’s not tongue-in-cheek, it shows a degree of blindness that makes
one despair for the human race.

I understand being annoyed by other people’s usage, and I’ve shared some of my own annoyances in the past (“may have” for “might have,” “disinterested” to mean “uninterested”). What I don’t understand is taking such annoyance seriously. How can you know that language changes, that Swift thought “mob” was ruining the language but he was wrong, and yet think that your own pet peeves are somehow different? On a gut level I dislike the new that use of “disinterested,” but intellectually I know that people will communicate just as well however they use it, just as they communicated perfectly well after they dropped the inflectional endings of Old English (a far more disruptive change than any of our modern peeves). Language changes, we get used to it, we go on as before. Why is this so hard to assimilate?

After her language rant she goes on to rant about what a heading calls “Misplaced passion”; she means by this “the new business insincerity: a phoney upping of the emotional ante,” but it applies equally well to overheated reactions to language change.

Courtesy of LH reader Trevor, here’s a ditty by Flann O’Brien (remembered here and elsewhere) which will delight anyone who’s ever studied Old Irish; it begins:

My song is concernin’
Three sons of great learnin’
Binchy and Bergin and Best.
They worked out that riddle
Old Irish and Middle,
Binchy and Bergin and Best.
They studied far higher
Than ould Kuno Meyer
And fanned up the glimmer
Bequeathed by Zimmer,
Binchy and Bergin and Best.

My favorite couplet: “They rose in their nightshift/ To write for the Zeitschrift.”

These limericks take advantage of especially odd mismatches between spelling and pronunciation, usually involving family names like St. John “SIN-jǝn” and Menzies “MING-eez” (not the only pronunciation, but the one used here). A sample:

There was a young fellow named Cholmondeley,
Whose bride was so mellow and colmondeley
That the best man, Colquhoun,
An inane young bolqufoun,
Could only stand still and stare dolmondeley.

I should note that the one beginning “At the art of love…” cannot be deciphered until you reach the last line. Thanks, Trevor!

When we last saw our heroes in the “war” part of War and Peace, they were hightailing it east, away from the victorious French, in the autumn of 1805, hoping to meet up with the reinforcements coming from Russia before Napoleon could trap and destroy them as he had the hapless Austrians. As the Battle of Austerlitz approached, I decided I wanted to know more about the history, so I sent off for 1805: Austerlitz: Napoleon and the Destruction of the Third Coalition by Robert Goetz. He goes into more detail about the exact disposition of the various battalions and squadrons than I really need, but that’s OK—I take what I need and leave the rest, and he describes the changes in fortune and resultant switches in strategy very well, starting with the collapse of the Peace of Amiens and Napoleon’s lightning-fast conversion of the Army of the Ocean Coasts (intended for an invasion of England) into the Grande Armée, which crossed the Rhine and surrounded Mack at Ulm before he knew what was happening.

My main complaint is one that would seem trivial to the vast majority of readers: insufficient explanation of place names. As longtime LH readers know, I love alternate geographical names (see, for instance, here and here, and compare this annoyed post), and it doesn’t bother me that the author uses the old German names of the places his armies march through (mostly now replaced by Slavic ones), since those were the ones used at the time and in the vast majority of histories. It would be silly to talk about the Battle of Slavkov, and similarly it makes sense to use Pressburg for what’s now Bratislava (the capital of Slovakia) and Laibach for Ljubljana (the capital of Slovenia).

But the names should be matched with their modern equivalents somewhere, either in an appendix or in the index. In the first place, not everyone is aware of the fact that the names are now changed, and a reader might get frustrated trying to use a modern map to follow the action. And even those, like me, who are on top of the issue can be confused. At the start of Chapter 3, talking about the situation after Kutuzov had managed to join up with his reinforcements and Napoleon had halted his advance at the city of Brünn (now Brno), he says that the Austrian Army of Italy under Archduke Charles and the remnants of Archduke John’s Army of Tyrolia, both marching east, “converged at Marburg.” Poring over the map, I could see no Marburg, but I knew there was a German city of that name; when I looked it up, however, I discovered it was far in the northwest, in Hesse, and couldn’t possibly be the intended location. Fortunately, the Wikipedia entry mentioned a disambiguation page, and that pointed me to Maribor in Slovenia, whose German name is Marburg an der Drau (“on the Drava”). This made perfect geographical sense, and (muttering) I added it to the map. But the reader should not be forced to jump through hoops; the first time the town is mentioned, it should be “Marburg (now Maribor).”

Incidentally, the most famous feature of Brünn (Brno) in the nineteenth century was its old castle, used by the Habsburg emperors as a place to stash political prisoners like pesky Italian nationalists; it’s where Emperor Francis put the unfortunate General Mack until he decided Mack’s surrender at Ulm was the result of stupidity rather than treason. It was a byword for dread dungeons in Austria, much as the Bastille was in France. Its name? Spielberg (now Špilberk). I wonder if Steven knows?

Ever wonder who writes the subtitles and how it works? Guy La Roche is happy to tell you:

First of all, people process spoken information faster than written information. Subtitles follow the pace of spoken language. The amount of text used in subtitles therefore needs to be reduced so that the reading speed matches the speed of the dialogue. The faster a character speaks, the more the translator needs to reduce his text. Most of the time it is simply impossible to do a word for word translation. You, the people who watch tv and movies, simply cannot read fast enough….

Lots of interesting stuff, including a long disquisition on the surprising problems of translating porn (“In this case the story was about some bimbo trying to make it through college…. to my great horror, she mentioned a 15th century Spanish book. And she gave the title in Spanish. … I was so upset that I made it a point of honour to find that book. And I did. After several hours trawling the internet I found exactly ONE webpage that mentioned the book and its Spanish title. That one subtitle alone, invoice value seventy eurocents, cost me hours of work and precious time”). Thanks for the link go to frequent commenter Kári Tulinius.

Reading Troyat’s biography of Tolstoy can be trying, although it’s very well written and illuminating, simply because Tolstoy was such a jerk. A common phenomenon, of course, but still, it’s a relief when I run across something that makes me feel closer to him, like this passage (on p. 323) about Tolstoy’s sudden decision to learn Greek:

He sent for a theological student from Moscow to teach him the rudiments of the language. From the first day, the forty-two-year-old pupil threw himself into Greek grammar with a passion, pored over dictionaries, drew up vocabularies, tackled the great authors. In spite of his headaches, he learned quickly. In a few weeks he had outdistanced his teacher. He sight-translated Xenophon, reveled in Homer, discovered Plato and said the originals were like “spring-water that sets the teeth on edge, full of sunlight and impurities and dust-motes that make it seem even more pure and fresh,” while translations of the same texts were as tasteless as “boiled, distilled water.” Sometimes he dreamed in Greek at night. He imagined himself living in Athens; as he tramped through the snow of Yasnaya Polyana, sinking in up to his calves, his head was filled with sun, marble and geometry. Watching him changing overnight into a Greek, his wife was torn between admiration and alarm. “There is clearly nothing in the world that interests him more or gives him greater pleasure than to learn a new Greek word or puzzle out some expression he has not met before,” she complained. “I have questioned several people, some of whom have taken their degree at the university. To hear them talk, Lyovochka has made unbelievable progress in Greek.” He himself felt rejuvenated by this diet of ancient wisdom. “Now I firmly believe,” he said to Fet, “that I shall write no more gossipy twaddle of the War and Peace type.”

And in reading the gossipy twaddle itself, I’ve come across another puzzle (like the покой-ер-п one discussed here), which I hope my Russian-speaking readers may be able to solve. In Book One, Part III, Chapter 3, cranky old Prince Bolkonsky, noticing that his timid daughter Marya is looking terrified of his mood as usual, says: “— Др… или дура!…” Which is to say: “— Dr… or fool!…” I’m wondering what that first “Dr” might be; it looks like he’s starting to say something and then substituting “fool,” and my guess is дрянь [dryan’] ‘trash; good-for-nothing person,’ but I’d be curious to know how Russian readers interpret it. (Ann Dunnigan simply translates “Fool!”)

Mark Liberman provides the best discussion you are likely to see of the tangled history of these words, and specifically of the use of “personal infer,” the oldest example Mark could find being “Why, in the name of all that’s consistent, you don’t mean to infer that you love this fellow?” from John Brougham’s play Flies in the Web (Mark couldn’t find a date for the play, but it’s clearly before Brougham’s death in 1880). Mark’s conclusion:

So whatever is going on with infer as “imply”, it’s not just a recent mistake in linking similar words to complex concepts. There’s a long history of erratic specialization (from the original sense “bring in” to the much more limited meaning “deduce”) and sporadic generalization (from contexts where “deduce” might be taken to mean “suggest”).

I was amused to see had thought that the first comment is was classic prescriptivist panic: “You’re right it is interesting, but I’ll bet you’re not going to start using non-personal infer instead of ‘imply’ yourself, are you? There’s no reason to do so.” Danger! Danger! Unacceptable usage sighted and possibly defended—fire the torpedoes!… but it turns out it was by our old pal Arthur “A.J.P.” Crown, and was not intended as prescriptivist panic at all. Once again my lovely rhetoric is shot out of the sky!

I’m not going to get into the politics of the mess in the north Caucasus except to say that there are no good guys, but I have to get a minor linguistic gripe off my chest: all the news broadcasts are talking about “ah-SET-ee-ə” and the “ah-SET-ee-ənz.” What’s next, cro-AT-ee-ə? ve-NET-ee-ən art? I realize none of the broadcasters and reporters have ever heard of Ossetia before, but you’d think the patterns of English spelling would clue them in to its proper pronunciation, ah-SEE-shə. I suppose it’s another case of hyperforeignification, like “bei-ZHING.”

Incidentally, Ossetian (as every schoolboy knows) is an Iranian language, and the Ossetian name for Ossetia is Iryston, based on Ir, the self-designation meaning ‘an Ossetian’ (well, actually it specifically refers to the majority group of Ossetians, and the minority Digors resent the use of that name for the whole people, causing some Ossetes to identify with the medieval Alans and call Ossetia “Alania,” but let’s set that aside—if you’re interested in the messy politics of Caucasian ethnic nomenclature and the Alans, read “The Politics of a Name: Between Consolidation and Separation in the Northern Caucasus” [pdf, html] by Victor Shnirelman); it used to be thought that Ir was derived from *arya- ‘Aryan’ and thus related to Iran, but Ronald Kim denies this in “On the Historical Phonology of Ossetic: The Origin of the Oblique Case Suffix,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 123 (Jan. – Mar. 2003), pp. 43-72 (JSTOR); the relevant discussion is on p. 60, fn. 42. Kim says it may be from a Caucasian language, or it may be descended from PIE *wiro- ‘man.’ (The word Ossetian is based on a Russian borrowing of the Georgian term Oseti.)

Update. A couple of weeks later, having heard the SET pronunciation approximately six thousand times and my favored pronunciation not once, I am giving up and reconciling myself to the fact that, for whatever stupid reasons, the new pronunciation is firmly established and I might as well accept it. Already I hear it with indifference, and soon I’ll probably start saying it myself; in a few years I’ll look back at this post with amusement and try to remember what it was like to experience the shock of the new. Such is language change.

“The Orwell Prize is delighted to announce that, to mark the 70th anniversary of the diaries, each diary entry will be published on this blog exactly seventy years after it was written, allowing you to follow Orwell’s recuperation in Morocco, his return to the UK, and his opinions on the descent of Europe into war in real time. The diaries end in 1942, three years into the conflict.” The first entry begins: “Caught a large snake in the herbaceous border beside the drive. About 2’ 6” long, grey colour, black markings on belly but none on back except, on the neck, a mark resembling an arrow head (ñ) all down the back. [N.b.: They seem to have screwed up the formatting, since an ñ does not resemble an arrowhead. –LH] Did not care to handle it too recklessly, so only picked it up by extreme tip of tail. Held thus it could nearly turn far enough to bite my hand, but not quite.” Today’s reads, in its entirety, “Drizzly. Dense mist in evening. Yellow moon.” Should be good reading. Thanks, Paul!