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I finally got to see Visconti’s Il gattopardo (The Leopard) for the first time in years (it was sold out last weekend, when my wife and I went into Manhattan to see it; see MISCONOSCENZA for links on novel and movie), and I was struck by its vindication of Pound’s famous dictum that “the natural object is always the adequate symbol.” The movie opens with an exterior shot of a grand villa; the camera slowly circles through the brilliant Sicilian light as it approaches and we begin to hear the sounds of a religious service from within. Then the camera enters a window, and we move into a dark room where people are sullenly listening to the thousandth repetition of the Ave Maria. After the Prince brings the proceedings to an abrupt end, he walks into another room; in the course of the following scene the words “È la rivoluzione!” [It’s the revolution!] are spoken, and at that moment the Prince is standing in front of a tall narrow window through which a breeze pushes a filmy white curtain. The sudden incursion of light and air is the perfect image of revolution in the context of this man and this house, where the dark comfort of age-old aristocratic habit is about to be invaded by new people and new ideas—to which the Prince is drawn, as we cannot help being drawn by light and air. But Visconti is no Pollyanna about revolution; the next scene, not in the book, is an extended street battle for Palermo, with Garibaldi’s redshirts frantically trying to drive out the royal troops. It’s long, confused, brutal, full of smoke and noise and the anguished cries of women; we’re left in no doubt as to what revolution means in practice. But the idea of it, the “breath of fresh air,” is intoxicating and seductive.

Later we see the Prince in his observatory; much is made of his astronomy in the novel, but in the movie it’s almost ignored except in this scene, where the sight of his telescopes, without a word being said about them, brings forcibly to the mind the idea that this man sees farther than those about him. There must be a thousand words about his comet-hunting in the book; this picture by itself has the impact of all of them.

Other things are lost, of course; when the Prince’s hunting companion Don Ciccio tells him bitterly that his “no” vote in the Plebiscite was not counted, we miss the author’s remark that “una parte della neghittosità, dell’acquiescenza per la quale durante i decenni seguenti se doveva vituperare la gente del Mezzogiorno, ebbe la propria origine nello stupido annullamento della prima espressione di libertà che a questo popolo si era mai presentata” [part of the sloth for which the South would be reproached in the coming decades had its origin in the stupid annulment of the first expression of freedom this people had ever been allowed] (the entire passage is here in Italian). Books and movies are different things, with different virtues. But a good director can use images to communicate directly and efficiently things that take a writer many words, even pages, if they can be said in words at all.

In the Russian-ruled Transdniester sector of Moldova, authorities are cracking down on use of Latin script:

Now, the Transdniester authorities are cracking down on the last remnant of unregimented social life there: the Latin script. Last month, in the climax of a campaign to compel the exclusive use of the Cyrillic alphabet, authorities decreed the closure of the six surviving Latin-script Moldovan schools. The Soviet-style police have seized several by force, and is besieging several others. The OSCE’s High Commissioner on National Minorities, Rolf Ekeus, coined an appropriate term in condemning this assault on schools: “linguistic cleansing”.
Unfortunately, the OSCE has relegated to the High Commissioner’s office a problem which is not one of national minorities at all. Indeed, Moldovans form the absolute majority of the native population, with Ukrainians the second largest group, and Russians the third largest element.

Thanks go to afrophile for the link.

Everybody and all his brothers and sisters have e-mailed me with various links relating to the infamous German spelling reform and backslidings therefrom, with suggestions (ex- or implicit) that I should post about it. I know it’s a natural LH topic, but somehow (the muggy weather?) I just haven’t been able to bring myself to. It is therefore with considerable relief that I send you to Mark Liberman’s compendium of links, which should tell you everything you need to know about die ganze Chose. Thanks for getting me off the hook, Mark—I owe you one! (My personal reaction is that government bodies should not be telling people how to write their own language, so I approve of the growing rebellion against the “reform.”)

The Daily Star reprints Keki Daruwala’s “engaging account—originally a talk delivered at Internationale Literaturtage in 1988 at Erlangen, West Germany and which he said was ‘a cursory attempt to explain to a German (and international) audience what Indian poetry in English was all about’—of his own ongoing tussle, and delight, with the English language”; it describes the progress of his encounter with the language of the former colonial power, beginning with his father’s library and continuing in various schools (at one of which he was mocked for speaking more correct English than his classmates):

The next threshold was crossed when one encountered boys from public schools. These were situated in the mountain sanctuaries of Murree and Simla and Nainital. The boys wore blue blazers and school neckties. Their speech was more clipped, their smiles more condescending. They even spoke their Hindustani with an anglicized accent. They could hardly pronounce the names of the towns they lived in. Nainithal, as it is pronounced in Hindustani, got twisted to ‘Nainitoll’. And they used slang. It was old slang of course, shipped some three decades ago, which had got lost on the seas, then lay rotting on the docks like dry fish, till it was dispatched by steam rail and later on mule back to those public schools in the mountains. But the fact is that they used slang and if you did not latch on to a phrase, you were held in contempt.

And then came my first conversation with an Englishman. He had to repeat himself three times to make himself understood. What an exotic accent, I thought. Why couldn’t the fellow speak English as she ought to be spoken?

No other trauma intervened for the next fifteen years or so. Then as one started publishing poetry in English, critics shook their heads in disapproval. Yes, fiction, essays, articles, even pornography one could write in English, they said (though nothing like Punjabi for robust abuse). But poetry was another cup of tea. You could write it only in a language you had imbibed with mother’s milk. This line of argument gave rise to what I chose to call the Lactatory School of Literary Criticism. Another august body called the Royal School of Dreamy Criticism asked me if I dreamt in English. The trouble was I dreamt in images mostly and seldom in language. My dreams were often silent movies. When once in a while, they did turn into Talkies, they were like me, multi-lingual…

He goes on to describe the problems of using subcontinental English for poetry:

Admitted that the Indian has his own way with English syntax, but it is no way comparable to the Caribbean patois. The Indian way of speaking English is to mix the languages—half a sentence in English and the other tattered half in Hindi or Marathi or Bengali. Writing in that manner could bring on numerous problems. Pidgin is fine but a half-Hindi-half-English amalgam becomes impractical.

The whole essay is well worth your while. And I quite like his poetry; here’s the end of “Requiem For a Hawk“:

…The small bustard is clever, he knows the kestrel
is aloft, dawn-sniffing; manoeuvres with half-wing flaps
and evades both hawk and the printer’s devil.

Not so the Great Indian bustard (poor bugger,
often mispronounced), he can’t cope with the attack.
He flies in the hawk’s shadow, till falling shadow
and hawk meet rasping on his back.

You don’t need effort here, you merely descend
when dogs flush out the game, and if it lunges
for cover, the Sheikh himself will bend

and serve you the bird. But it’s dusk and the Sheikh claps;
low whistles follow; the trainer looks up and cries
as if speaking to Allah. The falcons fall
into a lowering gyre and leave the skies.

The dark hood falls and obscures the view.
As the scrub returns to its solitude and crickets,
accept, as token, this requiem for you.

My thanks to Grant Barrett for the link.

Addendum. See Bemsha Swing for examples and counterexamples of “lactatory criticism.”

Introduction to Yakuza Japanese:

If you’ve ever watched Japanese gangster movies, or had the misfortune of running into a yakuza in person, you know they speak a seemingly incomprehensible form of Japanese. As outcasts and deviants from society, gangsters have their own language with a unique and specialized vocabulary suited to their organizational culture and occupation. Yakuza Japanese runs the gamut from honorifics to epithets, with major regional variations. This webpage is designed as a primer to gangster Japanese, as used in movies, focusing on the Kansai (Osaka, Kobe, Kyoto) and Tokyo varieties. Kansai dialect is important to organized crime, as the nation’s largest syndicate, the Yamaguchi-gumi is headquartered in Kobe…

Yakuza vocabulary is characterized by colorful and euphemistic words. Many words are obscure in meaning or come from Korean or Chinese words. This slang makes it difficult for ordinary Japanese or police to understand what yakuza are saying, and reinforces the separateness of yakuza from society. Yakuza movies tend to use only the most common slang so as to give the dialogue an authentic air, but not baffle the viewers. For real underground Japanese, read Peter Constatine’s Japanese Slang Uncensored.

Via plep.

A study just published in Science (scroll down to “Numerical Cognition Without Words: Evidence from Amazonia; Peter Gordon; Published online August 19 2004; 10.1126/science.1094492″—linked article and abstract only available to subscribers; brief Scientific American story, longer Science Daily piece) attempts to test the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in terms of number:

During the late 1930s, amateur linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf posed the theory that language can determine the nature and content of thought. But are there concepts in one culture that people of another culture simply cannot understand because their language has no words for it?
No one has ever definitively answered that question, but new findings by Dr. Peter Gordon, a bio-behavioral scientist at Teachers College, Columbia University, strongly support a “yes” answer. Gordon has spent the past several years studying the Pirahã, an isolated Amazon tribe of fewer than 200 people, whose language contains no words for numbers beyond “one,” “two” and “many.” Even the Piraha word for “one” appears to refer to “roughly one” or a small quantity, as opposed to the exact connotation of singleness in other languages.

[Read more…]

Michael Everson, previously discussed here and here, has a page on The Alphabets of Europe:

The main function of these pages is to present a catalogue of European alphabets. The characters which are, and in some cases were, used to write each of the languages of Europe (as far as it has been possible to find information on them), are included here. Some of Europe’s languages (particularly in the Caucasus) still have no tradition of writing, though other information on such languages is provided here when it is available. Likewise, some languages have used, or continue to use, one or more than one writing system, which may also be reflected here.

The Genetic index of languages goes from Maltese (Afro-Asiatic) to Moksha (Finno-Ugric), the Alphabetic index from Abaza to Yiddish; all language pages are pdf files. (Via the amazing aldiboronti at Wordorigins.)

Christopher Culver is back from his summer travels and after a difficult transition to WordPress is back to regular posting on Nephelokokkygia, “the classical and Indo-European philology weblog.” His latest post, Bulgarian’s interesting verbs, describes the horrors awaiting the student of Bulgarian:

One of the best resources for Bulgarian on the WWW is Katina Bontcheva’s Elementary On-Line Bulgarian Grammar (note that it is still a work in progress). She introduces verbs with this charming metaphor:

[Read more…]

Midrash is a particular form of Torah commentary, often involving excruciatingly detailed verbal analysis and what might appear to be far-fetched comparisons (based on anagrams, numerology, and the like); for examples relating to the Aqedah (the story of Abraham’s interrupted sacrifice of Isaac), see here and here. Even if, like me, you’re not religious, it can be a lot of fun if you enjoy a good argument. Exquisite Corpse has an essay by David Schwartz that serves as a lively introduction to the discipline. It quotes a guy named Ben Bag Bag and has punchlines like “R. Pappa turns out to have rejected Rab’s opinion… before Rab rendered an opinion!” But beyond the fun and games, midrash has wider implications, summarized nicely by Schwarz:

Belonging to an argumentative tradition teaches not only that learning occurs through interaction, but that the consequences of learning ought to be further action. Bickering over minute points, rousing criticism, and arguing is a form of saying: “I like what you are saying. Give me more information. Convince me.” If, indeed, Eleazar needs Yonatan, or Hillel needs Shammai, the criticism of the Israelites (or their leaders as representatives of the people) is a sign of God’s need for the debating sages. Were it not for the criticism, the give and take, there would be no Tanach, and no Torah. There would be, to use the rabbis’ circumlocution, no wisdom.

(Via wood s lot.)

Mark Nodine has put online the beginning of A Welsh Course; since the page was last updated over a year ago, he may have given up on it, but what’s there is still useful:

This course is one suitable for beginners. The main emphasis of the course is in developing conversational skills in Welsh as it is currently spoken (as contrasted with teaching the forms needed for understanding literary Welsh). The material is an indirect descendent of the Cymraeg Byw movement of the 1960s and 1970s. This course does not assume a general proficiency in learning languages, nor any previous background in Welsh. The course is also developed in such a way that it can be distributed either through an ASCII medium wrapped as a setext, or made available in HTML on the World Wide Web.

There’s a good section on “How To Look Words Up in the Dictionary,” among other things. (Via plep [17th August].)