languagehat.com

Jonathon Delacour is back and better than ever after his extended hiatus. His latest post describes his efforts to decipher a four-character Chinese sign on a Darlinghurst Road strip club; it provides an excellent example of the difference between Chinese and Japanese, even though “they use the same characters.” Intercultural understanding isn’t as simple as all that, even when it comes to strip joints.

A useful collection of scholarly summaries of subjunctive use in English (as in “I wish I were a bird” or “God save the Queen”). (Via graywyvern.)

Addendum. Jim at UJG has a good post on the history of modal verbs.

I’m a city boy, having lived most of my life in major metropolitan areas, and I feel strongly that cities provide a congenial home for what is best and most hopeful about humanity (although of course humanity’s worst features find expression there as elsewhere). This essay by Aleksandar Hemon about his native city Sarajevo puts it well:

One of the things in the nationalist imagination is the belief that the city spoils the purity of the people who come to live in it, which is exactly what I liked about Sarajevo…
You cannot keep cities pure ethnically or in any other way. They cannot be clean.
Sarajevo, in that sense, was very impure, both because it had the biggest percentage of so-called mixed marriages, and because throughout history a lot of people ended up there…
Villages vanish and suburbs vanish – not enough of them! But cities don’t die.

Hemon’s essay is part of a BBC series called “Sense of the City,” which also includes Ingrid Bengis on St. Petersburg, which I had already read thanks to Beth, and half a dozen others, which I look forward to. (Via Moorishgirl, who is well worth reading in general; she recently linked to an interesting Guardian story about Russian bureaucrats “trying to keep literature dealing with the purges of the Soviet era away from schoolchildren.”)

An online version of Herman Rempel’s Kjenn Jie Noch Plautdietsch? A Mennonite Low German Dictionary; the introduction goes into the history of the language, and the guide to use gives some basic grammar and pronunciation, highlighting the differences between the Old Colony and Molotschna Mennonites. A useful resource for a little-known dialect. (Via Scott Martens, whose ancestors spoke it.)

A Baltimore Sun story [scroll down to #4, “Drawn to tattoos’ secrets”] describes how Danzig Baldayev has compiled a 166-page book called Tatuirovki zaklyuchennykh (“Prisoners’ Tattoos” or, as the publisher renders it, “Criminal Tattoo Encyclopedia”; to be published in English as Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopedia), analyzing the designs to be seen on the skin of graduates of the Russian penal system:

Baldayev, 75 and retired, used his time as a guard to observe the tattoos prisoners here apply to each other.

“It was like a foreign language,” Baldayev says, “so I started to collect it.”…

A prisoner who has a tattoo of a cat smoking a pipe is a successful thief, Baldayev says. A snarling tiger or wolf means the thief is particularly powerful. A murderer might have a tattoo of a warrior in armor standing on severed heads or a tattoo of a sword piercing a skull.

Some prisoners have tattoos of churches. The number of domes on the churches represents the number of years spent in prison.

The whole story is fascinating, with a striking anecdote about Lev Gumilyov‘s prison experience. (Via things magazine.)

Monty Python in French? Say no more, say no more! Of producer Rémy Renoux’s staged version, Michael Palin says “Sometimes they hit the mark exactly, sometimes they miss the mark, and sometimes they miss it so completely that it is quite extraordinary.” And the French go wild:

Les sketches ont plus de vingt ans et sont toujours d’une actualité et d’un réalisme époustouflant sans doute parce qu’il aborde l’essentiel, le sens de la vie avec l’humour à la tronçonneuse des Monty Python. En effet, quoi de plus réaliste que le débat sur l’au-delà avec ceux qui connaissent le mieux le sujet, les morts ? Quoi de plus actuel que le ministère des démarches ridicules ? Quoi de plus caustique que le marathon des incontinents ? Et puis, il y a la troupe des cinq comédiens, comiques, clowns et mimes qui s’amusent en scène tout en connaissant leur texte au rasoir et affrontent toutes les situations et toutes les postures sans un bégaiement, sans un malaise, sans une seule fausse note de la complainte des feux rouges à l’ode aux chinois !

Ne les ratez pas !

(Via Taccuino di traduzione.)

Addendum. Des, in the comments, links to this earlier Guardian story, which gives an actual sample of translated Python: “Je suis un bucheron et ca me rejouit, je travaille le jour et je dors la nuit.”

A story [from a parody “news” site] about an unexpected entry in the field of specialized glossaries:

It was becoming a common annoyance. Curious German tourists were visiting evangelical churches in the U.S., and had no idea what was being said. A German travel agency finally issued a 55-page Evangelical English Dictionary which sells thousands of copies a month to Germans vacationing in the U.S.
“I think I speak English pretty well,” said Lerner Bosch, 33, from Frankfurt. “But I was clueless sitting there in that pew [in a Nazarene church in Minot, North Dakota]. Then my wife handed me the phrase translator and the whole service started making sense.”
Bosch found himself in the foyer shaking hands and receiving first-time visitor brochures from greeters. When a man slapped his back and said, “God bless you, brother,” Bosch used his phrase translator and responded, “Amen, brother. God bless you.” Another woman told him that with Jesus, “whatever you’ve done is under the blood.” Bosch went pale momentarily before looking up the phrase and finding it means “everything’s cool, so forget about the past.”
“At first I thought she was talking about Germany’s history in the World Wars, and I was embarrassed,” he said. “Then I realized she was telling me to take it easy. That was much nicer. Without the translator, it could have been a moment of cultural misunderstanding.”
Lerner told the woman, “Leave it at the cross,” which the book translates as, “Don’t sweat it.” He also gave her the “hang loose” sign.
“In German schools, they teach you mainstream English, but not this wonderful dialect,” said Bosch’s wife, Gira, 34.

Not true, but funny anyway. (Via wood s lot, with a brain assist from Rakko in the comments.)

“Perhaps the most marked trend in paranoia is that towards a complete seizing of the world through words, as though language were a fist and the world lay in it….”
—Elias Canetti

(Via alembic.)

I recently looked up Ventura in the superb book California Place Names, by Erwin G. Gudde (pronounced “goody”), and discovered that it was shortened from San Buenaventura in 1891 by the Post Office, which was tired of dealing with the confusion caused by its resemblance to San Bernardino. The entry includes this plangent obituary for the name, by Z.S. Eldredge:

And now comes the Post Office Dept., which is the most potent destroyer of all. I have spoken before of the injury done the people of San Buenaventura. They cling to that name and use it among themselves. But they are doomed. Mapmakers, from the Director of the Geological Survey to the publisher of a pocket guide following the lead of the post office, call the place Ventura, and the historic name will be lost. (San Francisco Chronicle, Apr. 10, 1905)

This is how I feel about enforced name changes, as regular readers know, and I am glad to see it so well expressed.

Avva recently had a couple of entries that provoked typical firestorms of criticism, in which self-appointed defenders of the purity of the great and mighty Russian language took severe issue with his acceptance of “incorrect” usage as simply products of normal linguistic development that hadn’t yet been accorded social acceptance. What particularly struck me was this entry (in Russian), in which he pointed out a disingenuous ploy routinely used by the self-appointed defenders in which they loudly deprecate not the actual usage they disapprove of, which might not sound that bad to the fence-sitters, but an exaggeration of it which is guaranteed to offend the ear. Thus the verb zvonit’ ‘to ring; to call (on the telephone)’ is officially end-stressed in all its forms: zvoNYU, zvoNISH, zvoNIT, and so on. Now, there is a common pattern of conjugation in which the first-person singular has end stress but the rest have stem stress: eg, tsenit’ ‘to value’: tseNYU, TSEnish’, TSEnit. For some speakers, this pattern has attracted zvonit’, so that they say ZVOnit ‘he/she rings.’ Tsk, tsk! But, as I say, this doesn’t automatically sound that bad, since it fits a common pattern (which is why it’s said in the first place). So the self-appointed defenders instead make fun of a stem-stressed infinitive ZVOnit’ (palatalized final t), used by few if any speakers. This sort of intellectual dishonesty is not restricted to Russian-speakers or to discussions about language.

Incidentally, I was saddened to see that among the hundreds of comments, none (that I noticed) supported his view, or showed any awareness of the rudiments of linguistic science (for instance, the idea that language is contained in the minds of its users, not the pages of dictionaries and grammars). I’m used to fighting this battle, which I’ve done more than once on MetaFilter, but I’m also used to having people chime in and support my arguments. I can only hope the science of language begins making inroads among the speakers of the great and mighty Russian language.

Speaking of which, I can’t resist sending you to this hilarious Duma report on a meeting that devolved into a discussion of bad language:

The deputy Alexander Fedulov did nothing bad, but only once swore in the boardroom. For that he was denied the right to speak, and was being discussed in mass-media for a week. The Duma philologists set to the organization of round table with mind and scope. They invited leading experts from Institute of the Russian language and faculty of journalism of Moscow State University. And not to yell them get puffed up from the rendered honor, they also invited Barrie Alibasov with Detzl. There were also the author of « Encyclopedias of Russian bad language » Alexander Plutser-Sarno, and one of the developers of the law « On state language of the Russian Federation », the deputy of the fraction “The Unity” Alexey Alekseev. Due to the law, as it is known, bad language, at least in public sphere, is forbidden.

It appeared, that the Russian language had been attacked by insidious foreigners, and therefore it might be good to replace foreign words by primordially Russian. It was offered to use mutiny instead of revolution, community instead of communism, whore instead of prostitute, fuse for some reason instead of condom. After that, Vladimir Volfovich without a shadow of constraint deepened into definition of the word “her” [Wiktionary] which turned out to come from the German “Herr”, that means “sir”. The audience which predominantly consisted of students-philologists, was already squealing with enthusiastic laughter. The speech was proceeded with a joke about the riches of the Russian language. « It is for relaxation », -Vladimir Volfovich explained. Then he passed to the analysis of other abusive words and expressions. « I say It to encourage the speakers not limit themselves while speaking out ». At these words the director of the Institute of the Russian language Vladimir Vinogradov blushed and showed no desire to speak out during the round table. The raper Detzl turned out to be one more supporter of language freedom. « Hm-hm, – he began, – it is not necessary to forbid anything, any child will understand, when it is possible to swear, and when it is not. And let deputies be engaged in more serious problems ». The philologist Vladimir Krysin started to protect the honor of scientists. He told the deputies, that the language is not adjusted by laws, and it is time for them to liquidate total linguistic illiteracy. But the deputies who received the mandate for free expressions from the chairman of round table Girinovskiy, decided not to surrender. The member of the fraction of Union of Right Forces Andrey Wolf said that « bad language is very tasty », and therefore it is necessary to legalize it immediately. « And then I shall swear from tribunes of the State Duma with great pleasure », – he said with hope.

Why can’t Congress have debates like this?

Addendum. A quote from Tsypkin’s Summer in Baden-Baden which seems somehow relevant here:

…at this period in his life [Dostoyevsky] had been writing a particularly prolific amount about the Slavonic Question, emphasizing the God-given role of the Russian people whose vocation it was to free the rest of Europe, the basis of this chosen destiny being, in his opinion, the special, unique nature of the Russian national mentality and character which, amongst other things, was demonstrated in the use of unprintable words, pronounced in various ways and with various shades of meaning, which were employed by the common people not, of course, to insult others or abuse them, but to express the subtle, profound, and even saintly feelings buried in the soul of every genuine Russian.

Update (June 2024). I have replaced some of the links with archived ones and others with Wikipedia entries (and added a couple of links).