The Pleasure of Not Understanding.

Keith Kahn-Harris, featured here in The Languages of Kinder Surprise earlier this year, writes for Psyche about the pleasure to be had in not understanding a language:

[…] I haven’t lost this heady, even mystical, faith in the possibilities of meeting and talking with the other. But more recently I’ve sought to understand how similarly transcendent possibilities can arise from not talking with the other, or even being able to understand their voice. Philosophically and theologically, I’ve subscribed to Martin Buber’s ideal of working towards ‘I-Thou’ encounters, in which we each meet the other mutually as authentic individuals, without objectification or qualification.

Here we come back to the Kinder Surprise. I love to peruse scripts I cannot understand, signs I cannot parse: Czech diacritics, the loops and curves of Georgian, the intricacies of Chinese characters, the elegant fluency of Arabic. In my book The Babel Message: A Love Letter to Language (2021), I went further, commissioning dozens more translations of the Kinder egg message into tongues as out of the way as ancient Egyptian and Klingon. My passion for not understanding language releases me from the effort of comprehension, freeing me to revel in the manifold sounds the human mouth can make, the tiny nuances the pen produces on paper. It made me wonder if Buber’s ‘I-Thou’ encounter might not require any dialogue at all? What if his concept of ‘dialogue’ – which he contrasts with the ‘I-It’ instrumentalism and objectification of ‘monologue’ – could be taken non-literally? […]

This may all seem abstract and high-minded, but the pleasures and potential of not understanding languages are very real. Consider this rendering of the Kinder Surprise warning into Dzongkha, the national language of Bhutan, written in a version of Tibetan script:

ཉེན་བརྡ། ཨ་ནིཡི་གུ་འདི་ ལེགས་ཤོམ་སྦེ་ ལྷག་ཞིནམ་ལས་ བདག་འཛིན་ཐབས་སྟེ་ བཀའ་དྲིན་བསྐྱང་གནང་། ཨ་ལུ་སྐྱེས་ལོ་གསུམ་མན་ཆད་ཚུ་གིས་ དོན་ལུ་འོས་འབབ་མེད་ཨིན། ག་དེམ་ཅིག་སྦེ་ རྩེདམོ་རྩེད་བ་ཅིན་ རྩེདམོ་གིས་ཅ་ཆས་ཚུ་ ལྐོད་མར་གཏང་ནི་ ཉེན་ཁ་ཡོདཔ་ཨིན།

To me, this is as delightful to contemplate as any art form. Its elegance and delicacy completely belie the dreary austerity of the message it communicates. To someone from Bhutan, it’s an everyday message; to me – who cannot understand it – it is a startling reminder of how, to put it in non-Levinasian terms, human beings are awesome. Maybe I am reminded of my own awesomeness too; since my everyday language may, to an other, be an incomprehensible delight.

Nothing comes without danger though. Finding pleasure in the incomprehensible language of others, no matter how profound a Levinasian/Buberian encounter it offers, can be twisted into the very objectification both philosophers abhorred. A middle-aged white man extolling Dzongkha script risks repeating the patronising discourse of imperialism, and treating the non-white other as someone capable of producing beauty almost despite themselves (while incapable of telling us anything that would challenge our superiority). In a small way, I know what it is to be linguistically patronised: on visits to the US Midwest, people have told me how much they love my English accent. I have no doubt it is genuinely felt, but it feels like I am being treated as a pet.

Appreciating languages we do not understand takes work, if it is to contribute to a Levinasian encounter with otherness. That work involves interrogating the associations that an incomprehensible language holds, in order to release oneself from them. Aware of the dangers of orientalism and imperialism, I try to purge myself of images of snow-capped mountain tops and chanting monks when I contemplate Dzongkha. I try to see it as functionless, placeless art. While that effort can never be entirely successful, like Levinas’s entire ethics, it is an effort worth making because it opens the door to ‘linguistic civility’. […]

To work towards linguistic civility is to work towards overturning the Babel myth. It is to see the confusion of tongues as a reminder of our mutual capacity for language, not as a reproach to our common humanity. From the vilest online troll to the saintliest of peacemakers, we are all other to each other, and, when we speak without being understood, we celebrate the possibility of otherness to highlight our connectedness.

We all have it in us to find ways of revelling in languages we do not understand. It can happen in humble ways, such as enjoying the unfamiliar speech of the radio station playing in a taxi. Or in those moments of being overwhelmed and awestruck at the incomprehensible street in a foreign land. It can happen when we linger on the Chinese characters in a restaurant, rather than on their English translation. All that is required is releasing oneself from the pressure to achieve literal understanding, and letting oneself embrace a much deeper understanding.

He gets carried away with his own rhetoric to the point of verging on woo, but it’s still interesting stuff to think about, and that Dzongkha is indeed a pleasure to contemplate. Thanks, Jack!

Comments

  1. David Eddyshaw says

    Curious that Kahn-Harris references the book of Jubilees for the Babel story. That’s just showing off (odd in an article otherwise so utterly free of pretentiousness …)

    I don’t buy his disclaimers: he’s merely saying he gets a frisson from simple exoticism alone. So what? It’s not remotely comparable to the genuine satisfaction that comes with trying really to understand (even when you fail.)

    Pfui.

  2. ə de vivre says

    So I decided to translate the Kinder Surprise message into Sumerian. Because Sumerian didn’t really have punctuation, I’ve separated the message into four lines:
    1. Warning
    2. Read and keep
    3. Toy not suitable for children under 3 years
    4. Small parts might be swallowed or inhaled

    Kinder Surprise: A translation with commentary:
    1. 𒄑𒌆𒉿 𒃻𒌝
    ŋeštug ŋarum
    Place ear!
    2. 𒊬𒀀 𒈾𒀊𒊒𒂗
    sara nabšuben
    Read, don’t get rid of it
    3. 𒌉𒌉 𒈬 𒐈𒀀 𒇲𒀀 𒃻𒈪𒉭𒂵𒄰
    dumudumu mu 3a lala niŋgigakam
    (This) is unsuitable for children less then three years
    4. 𒃻 𒌉𒌉𒁉 𒄘𒀀 𒄩𒁀𒀭𒄃𒂊 𒍣 𒄩𒁀𒅆𒅁𒉺𒀭𒉺
    Niŋ turturbe gua ḫabangilime zi ḫabašibpaŋpa
    Its little things may get caught in the throat, may be breathed in

    Line 1. The ear being the site of one’s awareness (where your tutelary deity whispers instructions to you), the more idiomatic translation would be, “pay attention!” This form is the unmarked imperative construction. Like French, Sumerian verbs are mostly prefixing but put all their morphology after the verb in imperative forms.

    A more polite imperative possibility would be “ŋeštug umueŋar.” The basic meaning of this construction would be “once you have paid attention (then…),” but sometime in the early second millennium BC, it took on a polite imperative meaning.

    Line 2. There’s probably a more idiomatic way to translate “keep,” but due to the idiosyncratic nature of the surviving Sumerian-language corpus, basic vocabulary isn’t always easy to identify.

    Sumerians had balls and games, but I’m not sure if there’s a generic word for a child’s plaything. So I cheated and left the subject implied.

    Line 3. This sentence is based on an analogy with greater-than comparative constructions using “dirig” (“more than,” “to exceed”). AFAIK, less-than comparatives aren’t attested in the existing corpus. You could rephrase it as “dumudumu mu 3a nudiriga niŋgigakam” (“unsuitable for children not over 3-years-old”).

    “Niŋgig” is a really interesting word (see this article). It occupies a semantic space much like Latin “sacer.” It can refer to personal improprieties that offend the gods (pouring beer without washing your hands and leaving your spit uncovered are niŋgig of Utu, the god of the sun and justice), or to something off limits (120 years is niŋgig of mortal humans), or to something set aside for religious use (high-quality flour is a niŋgig of gods), or to a disease or affliction. The word was loaned into Akkadian as “ikkibu(m),” which has some really cool clues about Sumerian phonology: (1) The initial /n/ has disappeared (niŋgig > iŋgig): This happens a lot word initially in later Sumerian, often when the following vowel is /i/. One suggestion is that there’s some kind of palatalization at play (ni > nji > ji > i). Unfortunately no one’s been able to look at the phenomenon systematically, taking place and time into account. (2) The final /g/ in Sumerian shows up in Akkadian as /b/: There are quite a few g~b alternations in Sumerian (both across monolingual texts and in Sumerian–Akkadian loanwords), which suggests a labiovelar at some point in the history of Sumerian dialects. Some object to this on the grounds that labiovelars are typologically uncommon in languages without a contrastive /w/, a sound that Sumerian is not normally reconstructed as having. I’d put my money on there being more to discover about the distribution of labial sonorants in Sumerian.

    Line 4. Again, not sure if there’s a good equivalent for “parts.” So I went more general.

  3. David Eddyshaw says

    All by itself, ə’s comment makes the post worthwhile …

  4. the pleasure to be had in not understanding a language

    It’s real. It’s there to be had, and (pace David Eddyshaw) it coexists on equal terms in our hedonic repertoire with “the genuine satisfaction that comes with trying really to understand“.

    Do not all charms fly
    At the mere touch of cold philosophy?
    There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:
    We know her woof, her texture; she is given
    In the dull catalogue of common things.
    Philosophy will clip an Angel’s wings,
    Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
    Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine—
    Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made
    The tender-person’d Lamia melt into a shade.
    Lamia, Keats

    “Unweaving” the rainbow is odd (as noted before, chez LH?), because the rainbow is itself an unweaving – of what we are pleased, conditioned by our biological makeup, to call white light. Into its glorious polychrome strands. That aside, it’s plain that many charms survive unweaving by science. And of course, many new charms emerge from that analysis. Science strives to understand birdsong, to advance our delight; but without waiting for cold philosophy’s enlightenment, we already reap profound reward on hearing the nightingale and the Eurasian golden oriole.

    Keats and Kahn-Harris are right: many charms are independent of any analysis (inbuilt in our senses, or formalised in science), and some are in fact dispelled by it. Compare Oliver Sacks, on the special insight gained by patients listening to politicians once they had lost the power of conventional language comprehension.

  5. It does indeed. But:

    I don’t buy his disclaimers: he’s merely saying he gets a frisson from simple exoticism alone. So what? It’s not remotely comparable to the genuine satisfaction that comes with trying really to understand (even when you fail.)

    I don’t think he’s saying it is. So what? Are you seriously maintaining that you have absolutely no idea what he’s talking about, that you’ve never admired writing you didn’t understand? If so, then this piece is not for you. But I confess I detect a whiff of priggishness that surprises me coming from you.

  6. David Eddyshaw says

    Hmph. Grumble …

    But ə inspires me to say

    Kɛn’ɛsʋgʋ nwa!
    Karimi sɔbkaŋa nwa sʋ’ʋŋa. Da basiya!
    Li pʋ nar ye bibanɛ pʋ gaad yʋma atan’ di’em nɛ gɛlbamma nwaa, ban nyaŋe vɔl bɛɛ fiank bʋnbilbanɛ bɛ gɛla pʋʋgin la zug.

    This is a warning!
    Read (ye) this writing well; don’t throw it out!
    It is not appropriate that children who have not passed three years should play with these eggs, on account of their being able to swallow or inhale the little things which are inside the eggs.

  7. J.W. Brewer says

    There’s a very special frisson that comes from reading (or trying to read but in fact merely letting them wash over you) texts that are clearly written in your own L1 but which you are absolutely unable to make any sort of coherent sense out of. They’re stuck in some sort of uncanny valley. I refer, of course, in my own experience to the delightfully weird sensation associated with reading cricket coverage in the “sport” section of quality London broadsheets, but no doubt other Anglophones with different starting points would have different examples?

  8. I am not sure if not understanding and an attempt to understand are comparable: the former is a momentary state, the later is a direction of change.


    As for eggs (or situations like one year ago, when people were painting and otherwise repairing the wall behind my window, talking in a Turkic langauge and listening to central asian music and I was very happy that the conversation is not in Russian and the music is not Russian pop), they do, maybe, remind that there is beauty in Russian texts/conversations/pop that I do not notice and Vulcans do.

  9. PlasticPaddy says

    @de
    Please do not take this as a passive-aggressive (or indeed any kind of) attack. Have you considered you might be a bit too sensitive to cultural appropriation by persons having a superficial acquaintance (and lacking either the ability or will to deepen that acquaintance) with the culture in question? I would also have a tendency in this direction with regard to what are for me cruder or more inaccurate imitations of Irish culture. Just count yourself lucky that our English neighbours do not have the same repertoire of Welsh jokes as they do of Irish jokes.

  10. David Eddyshaw says

    You may well be right, PP.

  11. @PP, neighbours is a differnet matter…

    If they joke about Russians in Zimbabwe, that is just great.

    P.S. but it is easier for me to be thick-skinned, partly because of the Iron Curtain. A foreinger is as interesting as an extra-terrestrial. As I already said, travelling, talking to people and having close foreign friends only made me exoticize myself as well.

  12. David Eddyshaw says

    I don’t object to exoticism as such by any means; only at stopping at exoticism.

    Do not all charms fly
    At the mere touch of cold philosophy?

    No.
    (Stick to the poetry, John …)

  13. John Cowan says

    Jespersen described the sound of Russian as “insinuating grace”. I tend to agree.

  14. John Cowan says

    Lojban version of the warning (unchecked):

    ba’e .i dei kajde
    (emphasis) This-utterance warns

    ba’e .i ko tcidu .ije ko ralte
    (emphasis) 2SG-IMP read. And 2SG-IMP retain

    .i le va selkei na mapti lo verba pe nanca li me’i
    Specific plaything (false statement) suitable-for [lit. fits] nonspecific child which year-duration number-article less-than three

    .iki’u le cmalu pagbu ka’e se tunlo ja se sakyva’u
    Because specific small parts innately-capable (inverse voice) swallow short-scope-or (inverse voice) inhale [lit. suck-breathe]

  15. I am a simple person and usually derive pleasure from understanding what is said or written in languages that I know. Sometimes I am awestruck with my ability to understand other people through speech and writing and their ability to understand me and others. Didn’t figure out how to monetize it yet.

    I think Victor Mair had a series on using Chinese writing for its visual qualities from people tattooing some meaningless or stupid things on themselves to presenting a laundry bill as an example of ancient wisdom.

  16. Hi everyone. Someone told me about this thread and I wanted to say that there is a complete list of translations of what I call The Message on my website here – https://kahn-harris.org/translation-list/ I already have Lojban and Sumerian but I’d be happy to post alternate versions too. I didn’t get the language David Eddyshaw used!

    As for the wider debate about my article, I am happy to leave this to you all to debate!

  17. ə de vivre says

    Didn’t see that there’s already a Sumerian translation of the Kinder Surprise message on Kahn-Harris’s page. Ironically, it’s by Mark Geller, who wrote the article on “niŋgig.” Here’s a breakdown of his translation, with a comparison to mine:

    galga šid-ba-e du8-ba-e
    galga šid-ba-e duḫ-ba-e
    instructions read-MED-LOC use-MED-LOC
    Read and use (the) instructions
    Geller translates “Warning” as a noun to identify what the text is rather than an exhortation to the reader. I got my read/write verbs mixed up. My second line should be “šida nabšuben.” Geller also uses the mediopassive verbal affix “ba” (probably with a self-benefactive meaning along the lines of “read for yourself”) with his “read” imperative, whereas I used the unmarked imperative marker “a.” Although the meanings of the three “conjugation prefixes” (mu-, ba-, i-; one (or sometimes more) of which is (almost) always present in a finite verb) are increasingly well understood, it’s still not always clear what conditions their distribution. According to the electronic Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary (ePSD), “i-“ is the most common conjugation prefix for “šid” (usually in economic texts), followed by “mu-,” then “ba-.” This might represent a split between “šid’s” meaning as “count” versus “read/recite,” but I don’t have time for a lunchtime corpus study, unfortunately.

    za-na-e lú tur-ne-ra nu-ub-du7
    zana-e lu tur-ene-ra nu-b-duř
    doll-ERG person small-PL-DAT NEG-3.NH-be.suitable
    The doll is not suitable for young children
    Geller translates “toy” as “doll,” which also presents problems, but I think it’s fair to say that a Kinder Surprise would be culturally unintelligible to late-third-millennium Mesopotamians. He also translates “child” as “small/young people,” emphasizing their age (and avoiding the need to translate “less than 3 years”). This highlights the ambiguity in English “child,” which has a primary meaning of “offspring,” but with strong age-related connotations (although “adult child” is not necessarily a contradiction or a comment about someone’s maturity). Sumerian “dumu” also means “offspring,” but with perhaps fewer (though not without) age connotations. For example, “dumu of placename” was the normal way of saying that someone was from a certain place or belonged to a certain organization, regardless of age.

    He also pluralizes “children” with the pluralizing suffix “-(e)ne” rather than with reduplication (“dumudumu”). The suffix is the normal way to pluralize human-gender nouns. My though was to use the reduplicated plural for its distributive or quantifier meaning (e.g., “not suitable for any children under 3”), but apparently reduplicated human nouns, limited in distribution but attested in the third millennium, became ungrammatical in the early second millennium.

    níg tur nam-ba-da-ab-gu7 zi nam-ba-da-ab-pa-ág
    niŋ tur nam-ba-da-b-gu zi nam-ba-da-b-paŋ
    thing small NEG.MOD-MED-ABIL-3.NH.ERG-eat breath NEG.MOD-MED-ABIL-3.NH.ERG-breathe
    May its parts not be able to be eaten or breathed
    In one of the rare overlaps in our translations, Geller and I land on the same translation for “part” (niŋ tur, “little thing”) and for “inhale” (zi paŋ). However, he uses the negative epistemic prefix “nam-” and the ability prefix “da-” to phrase the warning as “may the parts not be capable of being breathed.” I used the positive epistemic prefix “ḫa-” to phrase the warning as “the parts may be breathed in.” Reduplication appears to be rare for nouns in the absolutive case, which is usually expressed by a reduplicated verb, so my last line should probably have been “Niŋ turbe gua ḫabangilimgilime zi ḫabašibpaŋpapaŋpa.” (Bálint Tanos is the main expert in Sumerian reduplication, I’m sure there’s a more nuanced opinion in her publications)

  18. Fascinating, thanks for adding that explanation!

  19. David Eddyshaw says

    I didn’t get the language David Eddyshaw used!

    Kusaal, the One True Speech (apart from Sumerian, obvs.)
    Better version (also with two spelling mistakes corrected):

    Kɛn’ɛsʋgʋ nwa!
    Karimmi sɔbkaŋa nwa sʋ’ʋŋa. Da basiya!
    Li pʋ nar ye bibanɛ pʋ gaad yʋma atan’ di’em nɛ gɛlbamma nwaa, bɔzugɔ bilies tun’e vʋl bɛɛ fiank bʋnbilbanɛ bɛ pʋʋgin la.

  20. ə de vivre says

    Bantu and Sumerian both seemed to follow typologically similar development of massive verb-prefixing morphology from humbler beginnings. This is obviously evidence for a Sumero–Niger-Congo family.

    (a corrected version of my translation, with morphological glossing)

    1. 𒄑𒌆𒉿 𒃻𒌝
    ŋeštug ŋarum
    ŋeštug ŋar-um
    ear place-VEN
    Place ear! (Pay attention!)

    2. 𒋃𒁕 𒈾𒀊𒊒𒂗
    šida nabšuben
    šid-a na-b-šub-en
    read-IMP NEG.IMP-3.NH-abandon-2.SG
    Read, don’t get rid of it

    3. 𒊮 𒉭 𒄭𒂵𒅗 𒌉 𒈬𒉌 𒐈𒀀 𒉡𒋛𒀀𒂵 𒃻𒈪𒉭𒂵𒄰
    šag nunuz dugakak dumu mune eša nudiriga niŋgigakam
    šag nunuz dug-a-ak-ak dumu mu-ne eš-a nu-dirig-a niŋgig-ak-am
    inside egg sweet-REL-GEN-GEN child year-POSS.3.H three-LOC NEG-exceed-REL forbidden.thing-GEN-COP
    The contents of the sweet egg are forbidden for a child whose years are not more than three

    4. 𒃻 𒌉𒌉𒁉 𒄘𒀀 𒄩𒁀𒀭𒄃𒄃𒂊 𒍣 𒄩𒁀𒅆𒌈𒉺𒀭𒉺𒉺𒀭𒉺
    niŋ turturbe gua ḫabangilimgilime zi ḫabašibpaŋpapaŋpa
    niŋ tur-tur-be gu-a ḫa-ba-n-gilim-gilim-e zi ḫa-ba-ši-b-panŋpa-paŋpa-a
    thing small-REDUP-POSS.3.NH throat-LOC MOD-MED-LOC-obstruct-REDUP-IPFV breath MOD-MED-ALL-3.NH-breathe.IPFV-REDUP-3.SG
    It is possible that its very small things may get caught in the throat or be breathed in

    ALL: allative
    H: human gender
    MED: mediopassive
    MOD: modal
    NH: non-human gender
    REL: relative
    VEN: ventive

  21. David Eddyshaw says

    Bantu and Sumerian both seemed to follow typologically similar development of massive verb-prefixing morphology from humbler beginnings

    On the off-chance that you don’t already know the paper, this is an interesting and quite plausible reconstruction (by the good and deserving Tom Güldemann) of how the Bantu system may have come about:

    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/300471822_Proto-Bantu_and_Proto-Niger-Congo_Macro-areal_Typology_and_Linguistic_Reconstruction

    This is obviously evidence for a Sumero–Niger-Congo family

    I’m sure someone somewhere must have seriously suggested it …

  22. (Stick to the poetry, John …)

    That will I do with all my heart, dear Friend,
    If thou but vouchsafe not thyself to stray
    From eye-leech labour. Make an end!
    Let Kusaal be thy bound, or cease to play.

    My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
    My sense, as though on Halliday I’d pored –
    While some pretended tɛ̀ŋ-daan beats our brains:
    A tom-tom dull, and Hatters all grow bored.

    The sunlight Newton strove to tease apart,
    But then to prove conjecture sound and true
    The coloured strands he bound anew, by art:
    A cunning pass through prism number two.

    If only he’d left alchymy to fools,
    And prophet-talk to unenlightened folk,
    He’d then bequeathed us only useful tools,
    And not been such a tool himself. A joke!

  23. J.W. Brewer: I tried watching cricket with a Pakistani acquaintance of mine. I got lost almost immediately. I love how the Sumerian renders ok here, at least on my phone. It used to be that even demotic could not.

  24. @ə de vivre : thank you 🙂

  25. David Marjanović says

    This is obviously evidence for a Sumero–Niger-Congo family

    Sumerian substrate in Gaul and eastern Iberia, somehow dormant until the Roman Empire crumbled. You read it here first.

  26. Thanks ə de vivre, thanks David. Can I post your translations and glosses on my website?

  27. The site has an Etruscan version (fragmentary, because kinder eggs don’t preserve very well after 2500 years). Also a Biblical Hebrew version, with many problems, some conveyed to the management and posted as well. I find it nearly unreadable. It’s odd, because its author teaches biblical Hebrew at UCL.

  28. David Eddyshaw says

    Can I post your translations and glosses on my website?

    By all means (it would be nice if it provoked corrections from a L1 speaker, though I’m confident that it is at least comprehensible …)

    My amended version, with a literal translation, would go

    Kɛn’ɛsʋgʋ nwa!
    Karimmi sɔbkaŋa nwa sʋ’ʋŋa. Da basiya!
    Li pʋ nar ye bibanɛ pʋ gaad yʋma atan’ di’em nɛ gɛlbamma nwaa, bɔzugɔ bilies tun’e vʋl bɛɛ fiank bʋnbilbanɛ bɛ pʋʋgin la.

    This is a warning!
    Read (ye) this writing well. Do not discard [it]!
    It is not appropriate that children who have not passed three years play with these eggs, because babies may swallow or inhale the little things which are inside.

    ə, of course, is a L1 speaker, so the issue doesn’t arise there.

  29. ə, of course, is a L1 speaker
    This is great news! I guess Sumerologists now will beat a path to his door 🙂

  30. Just bringing John Milton’s comment from yesterday to readers’ attention, having rescued it from moderation.

  31. [Ahem …] John Keats I think it is, Hat. He of the frayed rainbow. How subtle, by the way, that one line falls short as a tetrameter with the words “Make an end!” Where is such mastery to be found these days?

  32. Woops! I don’t know why Milton popped into my head. Thanks, No!

  33. David Eddyshaw says

    John Keats is evidently just bitter about failing to qualify as a doctor. Sour grapes …

    (I would never tell John Milton to “stick to the poetry.” Wouldn’t dare …)

    Get thee back to thy gallipots!

  34. ə de vivre says

    Unfortunately, as they say in Sumerian, my hand is not equal to my tongue (and my tongue isn’t so hot itself).

    Keith, you’re welcome to use my translation, but here’s an amended one with a spelling fix and a correction to my genitive construction in line three.

    𒄑𒌆𒉿 𒃻𒌝 | 𒋃𒁕 𒈾𒀊𒊒𒁉𒂗 | 𒊮 𒉭 𒄭𒂵𒅗 𒃻𒈪𒉭 𒌉 𒈬𒉌 𒐈𒀀 𒉡𒋛𒀀𒂵𒄰 | 𒃻 𒌉𒌉𒁉 𒄘𒀀 𒄩𒁀𒀭𒄃𒄃𒂊 𒍣 𒄩𒁀𒅆𒌈𒉺𒀭𒉺𒉺𒀭𒉺
    ŋeštug ŋarum | šida nabšuben | šag nunuz dugakak niŋgig dumu mune eša nudirigakam | niŋ turturbe gua ḫabangilimgilime zi ḫabašibpaŋpapaŋpa
    Pay attention | Read, don’t get rid of it | The contents of the sweet egg are forbidden for a child whose years are not more than three | It is possible that its very small things may get caught in the throat or be breathed in

  35. Giacomo Ponzetto says

    I hesitate to criticize, given my lack of credentials, but am I the only one who finds the Latin translation of the Message off?

    Admonitum may translate warning as a noun, but that’s inconsistent with the original Romance versions of the Message, all of which tell the reader to beware, rather than declaring the Message to be a warning. I feel tolerably confident that standard Latin to tell people to beware is Cave! or Cavete! No idea if Romans would have preferred the singular of plural in such a warning. Post-classical Romance legal language tends to the plural.

    Lege et tene need not translate Read and keep. First, I may be too influenced by subsequent Romance usage, but I believe even in Latin teneo already had the primary meaning of holding, not hanging on to. I find it hard to resist the appeal of servo, which means both to preserve and to give heed to. While I’m at it, why not perlego to stress the need for thoroughness?

    Second, would the Romans address the reader in the imperative: Perlege et serva? Here my lack of credentials is severe, but post-classical legal language overwhelmingly refrains from that imperative, and so does the Message in French and Italian. I’m tempted to follow French and state impersonally: To be read and kept. Latin ought to be able to do that in proper lapidary fashion: Perlegendum et servandum.

    Third, is the idiomatic conjunction in this context plain et? I’m not qualified to tell, but such doublets seem to call for ac or atque, and mostly the former if the second half of the doublet starts with s. Which points me to Perlegendum ac servandum

    Crepundium non idoneus liberis minoris tres annis quam est seems grammatically wrong. First, crepundia seems the standard word for children’s miniatures analogous to Kinder surprises, but the traditional understanding is that it’s a grammatical plural even for a single item. Second, idoneus is a regular adjective, so it should match the noun in gender as well as number.

    Third, why liberi? As the antiquated but easily consulted Lewis & Short dictionary glosses: “in class. Lat. only of children with reference to their parents: pueri = children in general, as younger than adulescentes.” Moreover, since these are children below the age of three, it seems reasonable to stress their young age and immaturity by calling them infantes instead.

    Fourth, the dative plural of minor is minoribus. Fifth, the role of the quam eludes me. Sixth, I’d confidently expect the copula to be implied. Which brings me to: Crepundia non infantibus minoribus III annis idonea.

    Parvi partes inspirentur et sorbeantur again seems grammatically wrong. First, pars is feminine. Second, what is the passive subjunctive doing there? Moreover, the Message says the parts can be swallowed or inhaled, not and.

    Less reliably, post-classical medical terminology favors glutio, while the Message systematically uses the direct derivatives of inhalo. Which brings me to: Parvae partes eius glutiri sive inhalari possunt.

    All in all, I’d try:

    CAVETE. Perlegendum ac servandum. Crepundia non infantibus minoribus III annis idonea. Parvae partes eius glutiri sive inhalari possunt.

    Having said this, I very much suspect the Message is something that could fruitfully be translated into the different styles of legal Latin from various centuries. Needless to say, my knowledge of Latin is not remotely sufficient for that exercise.

  36. Latin is tricky. I don’t speak good Latin, but even I can tell that this Google translation of The Message is unidiomatic:

    Est quasi silvestre sicco illic. Quo magis miror quomodo subiungam.

  37. I feel tolerably confident that standard Latin to tell people to beware is Cave! or Cavete!

    Or Caveto!

  38. David Marjanović says

    seems grammatically wrong.

    I think the idea was to go for quam tribus annis as “than three years” in the SAE fashion – in which case trium annorum would probably be an improvement.

  39. Giacomo Ponzetto says

    @David Marjanović: maybe, but minor XXV annis is the classic legal formula, and I thought the translation was going for that (as I tried to).

  40. Therecigoes says

    @John Cowan

    There is a ‘ci’ missing after your ‘me’i’, I think.

    As for ‘dei kajde’: I’d understand the utterance itself as an instrument of warning, not the event of warning itself. So maybe ‘dei kajde notci’. I’m not sure. I always get confused with Lojban. I don’t know if ‘la’e dei kajde’ makes any sense.

    (The apparent lack of a concise way to say ‘this’, as in ‘this is terrible!’ or ‘I don’t like this!’, referring somewhat ambiguously to the situation/the circumstances of the conversation, not to an utterance or an object, is one of my Lojban-related pet peeves.)

    Since ‘tunlo’ has no x₂, maybe ‘tulcti’? (Just ‘citka’ would be dangerously confusing here.)

    (The x₁ and x₂ of ‘tulcti’ and ‘sakyva’u’ happen to be semantically compatible, according to the dictionary. So the ‘ja’ actually works here, I guess. Because that’s my other pet peeve against Lojban: Most of the time, tanru-internal logical connectives are useless because they mess up the place structure, but nobody seems to care.)

  41. David Marjanović says

    Ah.

  42. John Cowan says

    @John Cowan

    There is a ‘ci’ missing after your ‘me’i’, I think.

    Yes. It was in my first draft (the word for ‘3’) but dropped out somehow.

    As for ‘dei kajde’: I’d understand the utterance itself as an instrument of warning, not the event of warning itself. So maybe ‘dei kajde notci’. I’m not sure. I always get confused with Lojban. I don’t know if ‘la’e dei kajde’ makes any sense.

    I think an utterance is an event.

    (The apparent lack of a concise way to say ‘this’, as in ‘this is terrible!’ or ‘I don’t like this!’, referring somewhat ambiguously to the situation/the circumstances of the conversation, not to an utterance or an object, is one of my Lojban-related pet peeves.)

    I’d use tcini directly, or simple ellipsis if the context establishes that the situation is meant.

    Since ‘tunlo’ has no x₂, maybe ‘tulcti’?

    tulcti ‘gulp-eat’ it is. I saw that issue but somehow lost track of it.

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