Was heading back to Pitesti yesterday and as I went down into the metro at Unirii I stopped at the covrigarie (pretzel stand) to get a pastry. A covrigarie usually sells pretzels (covrigi--the big doughy kind, not like chips) but generally you can get donuts or other things like that.
Here's the fun part: this particular covrigarie is called Simit's. Now it just so happens that I recently heard a man with a bunch of pretzels on his head in Turkey yelling simit! simit! simit! And it was on the side of the cart of another man selling them and other similar things.
And! Not only is this Turkish word hanging out on a sign in Romania, but it's had English grammar applied to it, not Romanian. It's Simit's, not simitului or simituri, depending on whether you're assuming the 's was actually meant as possessive or just supposed to have been plural.
And this is only the beginning of the overlap. There won't be too much, it won't be mutually intelligible, but there's a good list of cognates going. With my very very minimal knowledge of Turkish, I would like to humbly add to that list:
cearsaf--carsaf* (sheet)
musafir--misafir (guest)
dulap--dolap (wardrope)
habar--haber (news in Turkish, but in Romanian used more like idea/knowledge)
And I'm sure a whole ton of others. Yep, all kinds of fun :)
*please note that I'm writing both Romanian and Turkish words without the proper letters--feel free to pretend there's a chka on the bottom of more than one s and c.
Showing posts with label languages. Show all posts
Showing posts with label languages. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Sunday, March 10, 2013
adventures from a class on old english
So I've been going through some old stuff on my external hard drive tonight and stumbled across what appears to be my very casual take-home final from probably my favorite class in college. I only ever actually took one linguistics class (Spanish phonetics--sadly there very few ling. classes and most were online) but did take Old English. As evidence to what a trip our professor was--he made us blame everything on 'the damn French' and 'the damn Yankees'--I present to you:
1. Schwa – When a vowel in a word goes schwa, over time it disappears because it is unstressed. In Old, Middle, and Modern English, emphasis has tended to be on the first syllable of a word so it’s often the second (or whichever is unstressed) syllable that disappears. Since Old English, we have lost parts of whole words because of this. For example, the old word for witch, wicca, lost the a because the a was unstressed and turned into what we now know as witch (spelling courtesy of the damn French).
2. Great Vowel Shift – the great vowel shift happened between the 15th and 17th centuries when all the sounds for vowels moved up in the mouth. For example, e went from /e/ to /i/. The vowels so high they couldn’t go any higher turned into diphthongs. The great vowel shift happened as English spelling was (slowly) being standardized so some spellings that made sense in Old English with the same pronunciation make Present Day English seem spelled funny (besides, again, the weird spellings the damn French put in).
5. Christianity – Christianity affected English greatly. For one, they were the ones writing down the language. English then was very unstable spelling-wise so writing it down helped to stabilize it some, make it more concrete. Also, it meant that readers of English were reading Christian texts, and much of what is still preserved is Christian. Also, Christian beliefs made their way even into the English language. I remember pudenda (as in impudent) being the Latin for genitals, which literally translated as ‘that which you should be ashamed of,’ which astounded me, and I also found really interesting.
AND!
10. (eth)inum: dative, plural, masculine/neuter
ealdormannum: dative, plural, masculine
11. sealde: past tense, singular, 3rd person, weak I verb (long)
12. spearwa is nominative, singular, masculine, and hus is accusative, singular, neuter. The difference is that spearwa is the subject (and therefore nominative) and hus is the direct object. The (eth)aet in front of hus gives it away, as opposed to an in front of spearwa.
13. / h r [ash] l i ç w /
That last bit is both way more familiar and way more foreign than it was in 2007. And at this point half of what I've written could be altogether wrong and I wouldn't remember, honestly. The really great thing about this class was that he had as read out loud from a book in Old English (so presumably at one point I understood the words in numbers ten through thirteen). We would translate later, or before, but weren't allowed as we went and it taught us to think in the language, and it was definitely a foreign one. I remember rereading Surprised By Joy later and coming across the part where C. S. Lewis is made to do the same thing in Greek. I'm convinced by it, through and through. Can't imagine ever being able to learn a language if you're constantly having to translate it to yourself, so it's probably harder this way at first, but way more effective.
Anyway, such a fun find.
1. Schwa – When a vowel in a word goes schwa, over time it disappears because it is unstressed. In Old, Middle, and Modern English, emphasis has tended to be on the first syllable of a word so it’s often the second (or whichever is unstressed) syllable that disappears. Since Old English, we have lost parts of whole words because of this. For example, the old word for witch, wicca, lost the a because the a was unstressed and turned into what we now know as witch (spelling courtesy of the damn French).
2. Great Vowel Shift – the great vowel shift happened between the 15th and 17th centuries when all the sounds for vowels moved up in the mouth. For example, e went from /e/ to /i/. The vowels so high they couldn’t go any higher turned into diphthongs. The great vowel shift happened as English spelling was (slowly) being standardized so some spellings that made sense in Old English with the same pronunciation make Present Day English seem spelled funny (besides, again, the weird spellings the damn French put in).
5. Christianity – Christianity affected English greatly. For one, they were the ones writing down the language. English then was very unstable spelling-wise so writing it down helped to stabilize it some, make it more concrete. Also, it meant that readers of English were reading Christian texts, and much of what is still preserved is Christian. Also, Christian beliefs made their way even into the English language. I remember pudenda (as in impudent) being the Latin for genitals, which literally translated as ‘that which you should be ashamed of,’ which astounded me, and I also found really interesting.
AND!
10. (eth)inum: dative, plural, masculine/neuter
ealdormannum: dative, plural, masculine
11. sealde: past tense, singular, 3rd person, weak I verb (long)
12. spearwa is nominative, singular, masculine, and hus is accusative, singular, neuter. The difference is that spearwa is the subject (and therefore nominative) and hus is the direct object. The (eth)aet in front of hus gives it away, as opposed to an in front of spearwa.
13. / h r [ash] l i ç w /
That last bit is both way more familiar and way more foreign than it was in 2007. And at this point half of what I've written could be altogether wrong and I wouldn't remember, honestly. The really great thing about this class was that he had as read out loud from a book in Old English (so presumably at one point I understood the words in numbers ten through thirteen). We would translate later, or before, but weren't allowed as we went and it taught us to think in the language, and it was definitely a foreign one. I remember rereading Surprised By Joy later and coming across the part where C. S. Lewis is made to do the same thing in Greek. I'm convinced by it, through and through. Can't imagine ever being able to learn a language if you're constantly having to translate it to yourself, so it's probably harder this way at first, but way more effective.
Anyway, such a fun find.
Saturday, February 23, 2013
ten things i learned in the last ten days
1. The way to beat jet-lag is drugs. Let's say you're prescribed muscle relaxers and pain killers due to some recent bumps and bruises and let's say their effect on you is to make you floppy and then to pass out. You'll sleep all the way across the Atlantic, through your layover and your next flight and then after making it all the way home, you'll sleep during the night like you're supposed to. Normally I can't take that stuff because it makes me so loopy but I'm telling you, nicest flight ever.
2. If you haven't regularly spoken a language in a good while and have forgotten a few random words, when you relearn the word in a third language (and accompany it with a grinning almost-three-year-old who's got it stuck all over his face), it'll become the better word. Rice became orez and is now pilav.
3. Speaking of language-learning, I knew this one already, but if you get stuck in an apartment (the good kind of stuck) with two people, one big and one itty bitty, the itty bitty with more English than the big one, you will learn quick. Well, relative to what you knew before, anyway. Beautiful to listen to, and nearly incomprehensible to me, which means I can still listen to the music of it.
4. If you ask for 800 grams of pistachios instead of 1000, you will get laughed at.
5. If you get a freakish swollen throat for the space of thirty six hours and then fly with it, something that I think is called your eustachian tube will close up (or get stuck open?) and your ear will feel like it's going to explode mid-flight. Not so fun.
6. Izmir is a crazy beautiful city. And I'm no food expert, but that was really really good too.
7. The call to prayer also sounds beautiful.
8. Fifty minutes is not enough time to make a connection at Sabiha Gokcen in Istanbul on a Friday night. Don't try it. You'll need miracles to get through, and you may get them, but it's frazzling.
9. Leaving a country where you don't know the language and coming back into one that you do still know but used to be as foreign as the other is a unique and wonderful feeling. Who would have ever guessed two years ago that hearing Romanian again I'd relax and be relieved and feel at home in a language I know. It's all relative, I suppose. Grateful for this one.
10. Number ten would be the one where I say something icky about why I was there in the first place and how that went, something that I learned. There was certainly plenty, I will say that. And plenty more, from the looks of things... :)
2. If you haven't regularly spoken a language in a good while and have forgotten a few random words, when you relearn the word in a third language (and accompany it with a grinning almost-three-year-old who's got it stuck all over his face), it'll become the better word. Rice became orez and is now pilav.
3. Speaking of language-learning, I knew this one already, but if you get stuck in an apartment (the good kind of stuck) with two people, one big and one itty bitty, the itty bitty with more English than the big one, you will learn quick. Well, relative to what you knew before, anyway. Beautiful to listen to, and nearly incomprehensible to me, which means I can still listen to the music of it.
4. If you ask for 800 grams of pistachios instead of 1000, you will get laughed at.
5. If you get a freakish swollen throat for the space of thirty six hours and then fly with it, something that I think is called your eustachian tube will close up (or get stuck open?) and your ear will feel like it's going to explode mid-flight. Not so fun.
6. Izmir is a crazy beautiful city. And I'm no food expert, but that was really really good too.
7. The call to prayer also sounds beautiful.
8. Fifty minutes is not enough time to make a connection at Sabiha Gokcen in Istanbul on a Friday night. Don't try it. You'll need miracles to get through, and you may get them, but it's frazzling.
9. Leaving a country where you don't know the language and coming back into one that you do still know but used to be as foreign as the other is a unique and wonderful feeling. Who would have ever guessed two years ago that hearing Romanian again I'd relax and be relieved and feel at home in a language I know. It's all relative, I suppose. Grateful for this one.
10. Number ten would be the one where I say something icky about why I was there in the first place and how that went, something that I learned. There was certainly plenty, I will say that. And plenty more, from the looks of things... :)
Monday, November 19, 2012
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
language craziness and what the heat's really doing to us all
One more reason learning a new language is an adventure:
This past weekend I was at a wedding and was one of the greeters/lead-you-to-your-seat-ers at the reception. After spending half the day in heels, my feet were hurting, so before anyone really got there, I took my shoes off. And once they did get there, I kept doing what I was doing without putting my shoes on. My gensec rebuked me later, barefooted pagan that I am, and made me go put them back on. And so I was telling this story to a(n American) friend last night over skype and got to the part about my gensec coming up to me and this is what came out of my mouth:
"Yeah, and then he came up to me and rebuked me for running around naked."
NOT SURE WHERE THAT CAME FROM. Barefoot! Not naked! Really red Sarawr.
There is a logical explanation--one I'm not fully convinced of--but there's this: in Romanian, for barefoot, you say picoarele goale. Bare feet, naked feet. If you were naked, you'd say gol--the plural feminine then is goale. (If anyone else wants to geek out with me about etymology here, feel free--although apparently our word goal comes from Middle English... and the sense of empty, like an empty goal, like a place you put a ball has nothing to do with bare/empty... kind of a stretch I guess but it's what my brain put together and made a lot of sense until I looked it up just now.)
The only thing that leaves me unconvinced is that when I'm talking about being barefoot in Romanian, I don't think 'being naked footed' or anything--I think not having shoes or socks on. I expect this is a good thing because it means I'm not translating in my head.
However that still leaves us with no explanation for why I said naked. Theories abound, some about American expressions, others more speculative. Powers of analysis. We'll get there.
But let's be real, y'all. It's hot here. And I have a deep love for pantslessness (and descriptivism, zing!). And my poor roommate and I are surviving the 100 degree days and 85 degree nights and no AC or fan (which is totally fine except that the apartment is not built for keeping cool), so this is clearly about a) brain addled from the heat and b) brain's suggested solution to relieve heat and prevent addling.
Well then. Suggestion noted. Will take into consideration.
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
language, memories and a wide dusty field
It's raining now. Hard rain, the sky and the blocs all the same steel grey. It's strange to live in a place where the seasons exist as we learned them from books in elementary school, from the decorations in the halls. April showers really do bring May flowers. Who knew?
So it's been raining a lot, but a few weeks ago we had a hot week, a summer-without-humidity week. It was perfect. On the first of May--a national holiday here--the student group had a cookout at this place called Platou Trivale. Let me tell you something. It's a big empty field in the middle of a forest/park in Pitesti, and it has been instrumental in the peace-making between me and Pitesti. We played volleyball for a little while before the ball busted, kicked it around a bit, and resumed volleyball once we found another ball.
Standing there in the dusty heat, the twelve-year-old tomboy in me delighting in being a little sweaty and sending a ball that plops rather than soars flying to the other end of the field, and taking pride at the words mama ce form are! and se pricepe la fotbal--words like delighting come to mind and you wonder if you'll write about this later. You run after the ball, kicking up dust, wondering whether you're already that brown this early in the year or if you're just getting dirty, and you think, this is a good day. I will be silly with my students, play volleyball with them, do handstands, get filthy and just generally run and romp about.
The whole day--the wide field and the yellowness of the light--made me think of a short story I read some six years ago in my first fiction class. Bullet in the Brain by Tobias Wolff. It's better than the title would lead you to believe, for this reason:
It reminds me of home, of the many different places and ways that word evokes. Wilmington, two scrappy little kids in our beat up neighborhood, one saying to the other, who's wearing a Fedora, "Yo, let's go throw rocks at some cars." My brother and I as kids, "we was down playin by the ditch," knowing how to say it right but using the correct form selectively because that's not how you talked. 'They is' is my favorite, all its variations, really. Anywhere there becomes they. I love it in hiphop, I love it in little kids, those brilliant linguistics who wrap their minds and mouths around any language you throw at them. A little girl in a home video twenty years old, hiding behind a pine and saying, I coughed on the tree, ah caw-uffed on da tree-uh!
I love my language, its music, its possibilities and innovation. And I thought about that the other day, dry and hot, high sun, wondering at the ways these two languages are merging in me. And standing there, dizzy from hours of volleyball and not enough to drink--struck either by dehydration or surprise that so many things from so many different places had come together on a plateau in Arges, Romania. That a thought can stretch across twenty separate years and make a single succinct thing of it all.
So it's been raining a lot, but a few weeks ago we had a hot week, a summer-without-humidity week. It was perfect. On the first of May--a national holiday here--the student group had a cookout at this place called Platou Trivale. Let me tell you something. It's a big empty field in the middle of a forest/park in Pitesti, and it has been instrumental in the peace-making between me and Pitesti. We played volleyball for a little while before the ball busted, kicked it around a bit, and resumed volleyball once we found another ball.
Standing there in the dusty heat, the twelve-year-old tomboy in me delighting in being a little sweaty and sending a ball that plops rather than soars flying to the other end of the field, and taking pride at the words mama ce form are! and se pricepe la fotbal--words like delighting come to mind and you wonder if you'll write about this later. You run after the ball, kicking up dust, wondering whether you're already that brown this early in the year or if you're just getting dirty, and you think, this is a good day. I will be silly with my students, play volleyball with them, do handstands, get filthy and just generally run and romp about.
The whole day--the wide field and the yellowness of the light--made me think of a short story I read some six years ago in my first fiction class. Bullet in the Brain by Tobias Wolff. It's better than the title would lead you to believe, for this reason:
Then the last two boys arrive, Coyle and a cousin of his from Mississippi. Anders has never met Coyle’s cousin before and will never see him again. He says hi with the rest but takes no further notice of him until they’ve chosen sides and some asks the cousin what position he wants to play. “Shortstop,” the boy says. “Short’s the best position they is.” Anders turns and looks at him. He wants to hear Coyle’s cousin repeat what he’s just said, but he knows better than to ask. The others will think he’s being a jerk, ragging the kid for his grammar. But that isn’t it, not at all – it’s that Anders is strangely roused, elated, by those final two words, their pure unexpectedness and their music. He takes the field in a trance, repeating them to himself.
It reminds me of home, of the many different places and ways that word evokes. Wilmington, two scrappy little kids in our beat up neighborhood, one saying to the other, who's wearing a Fedora, "Yo, let's go throw rocks at some cars." My brother and I as kids, "we was down playin by the ditch," knowing how to say it right but using the correct form selectively because that's not how you talked. 'They is' is my favorite, all its variations, really. Anywhere there becomes they. I love it in hiphop, I love it in little kids, those brilliant linguistics who wrap their minds and mouths around any language you throw at them. A little girl in a home video twenty years old, hiding behind a pine and saying, I coughed on the tree, ah caw-uffed on da tree-uh!
I love my language, its music, its possibilities and innovation. And I thought about that the other day, dry and hot, high sun, wondering at the ways these two languages are merging in me. And standing there, dizzy from hours of volleyball and not enough to drink--struck either by dehydration or surprise that so many things from so many different places had come together on a plateau in Arges, Romania. That a thought can stretch across twenty separate years and make a single succinct thing of it all.
Monday, April 23, 2012
quote-of-the-day
"My thinking has led me to believe that there is a collective cultural consciousness or memory which is related to words. I would suggest that there are two parts to it: a collective memory of a specific race, and a collective memory of all men as to what man is and what reality is.
Thus man, in his language, "remembers" (regardless of his personal belief) that God does exist. For example, when the Russian leaders curse, they curse by God, and not by something less; and atheistic artists often use "god" symbols. This, I believe, is a deeper yet simpler explanation than Jung's view of god as the supreme archetype arising (according to him) out of the evolution of the race. Moreover, in man's language, man also remembers that humanity is unique (created in the image of God), and therefore words like purpose, love, morals carry with them in connotation their real meaning. This is the case regardless of the individual's personal worldview and despite what the dictionary or scientific textbook definition has become.
At times the connotation of the word is deeper and more "unconscious" than its definition. The use of such words trigger responses to a greater degree in line with what the specific race has thought they mean and how it has acted on their meaning, and to a lesser degree in line with what really is and what man is. I would further suggest that after the worldview and experiences of the race form the definition and connotation of the words of any specific language, then that language as a symbol system becomes the vehicle for keeping alive and teaching this worldview and experience.
It would therefore seem to me that the whole matter is primarily one of language, as man thinks and communicates in language. I would say that in this context the division of languages at the tower of Babel is an overwhelmingly profound moment of history."
--Francis Schaeffer, in a footnoote in The God Who is There
(I would just like to add that he is quickly becoming for me now what C. S. Lewis was for me in high school and college. Blowing my mind, seriously.)
Thus man, in his language, "remembers" (regardless of his personal belief) that God does exist. For example, when the Russian leaders curse, they curse by God, and not by something less; and atheistic artists often use "god" symbols. This, I believe, is a deeper yet simpler explanation than Jung's view of god as the supreme archetype arising (according to him) out of the evolution of the race. Moreover, in man's language, man also remembers that humanity is unique (created in the image of God), and therefore words like purpose, love, morals carry with them in connotation their real meaning. This is the case regardless of the individual's personal worldview and despite what the dictionary or scientific textbook definition has become.
At times the connotation of the word is deeper and more "unconscious" than its definition. The use of such words trigger responses to a greater degree in line with what the specific race has thought they mean and how it has acted on their meaning, and to a lesser degree in line with what really is and what man is. I would further suggest that after the worldview and experiences of the race form the definition and connotation of the words of any specific language, then that language as a symbol system becomes the vehicle for keeping alive and teaching this worldview and experience.
It would therefore seem to me that the whole matter is primarily one of language, as man thinks and communicates in language. I would say that in this context the division of languages at the tower of Babel is an overwhelmingly profound moment of history."
--Francis Schaeffer, in a footnoote in The God Who is There
(I would just like to add that he is quickly becoming for me now what C. S. Lewis was for me in high school and college. Blowing my mind, seriously.)
Saturday, December 17, 2011
fake english and other language fun
A quick post to say that I just heard the Albanian language for the first time and good gracious it just confused the heck out of me. It was playing in the background and something caught my attention and for a split second I thought I was hearing Spanish with a weird accent, but then I realized I was also recognizing words I know from Romanian. And for the life I couldn't figure out what this language was and why it seemed like I should be understanding it but couldn't.
Wikipedia tells me that Latin was a big influence on the language and that in the 9th and 10th centuries, Romanian borrowed a ton of words from Albanian. Good to know!
A similar thing happened for different reasons a couple of years ago. I remember listening to a song in Greek and feeling my head was about to explode because, hey, that sounds just like Spanish but that is most definitely not Spanish. I couldn't understand at all why I couldn't understand it. Really disorienting until I figured out what was going on.
Anyway, in the same vein, was linked to this video recently, I think through Language Log, and have been meaning to post it. I love listening to the sounds of languages when they're just sounds, separated from meaning, when you're just hearing the music of it. So here's English mostly that way:
Wikipedia tells me that Latin was a big influence on the language and that in the 9th and 10th centuries, Romanian borrowed a ton of words from Albanian. Good to know!
A similar thing happened for different reasons a couple of years ago. I remember listening to a song in Greek and feeling my head was about to explode because, hey, that sounds just like Spanish but that is most definitely not Spanish. I couldn't understand at all why I couldn't understand it. Really disorienting until I figured out what was going on.
Anyway, in the same vein, was linked to this video recently, I think through Language Log, and have been meaning to post it. I love listening to the sounds of languages when they're just sounds, separated from meaning, when you're just hearing the music of it. So here's English mostly that way:
Sunday, November 6, 2011
an addendum
to the recent post about bezna and light and meaning. This, from a novel that takes place in Congo (The Poisonwood Bible):
"Nommo is the force that makes things live as what they are: man or tree or animal. Nommo means word."
Now I don't know much about the Kikongo language, only what I've learned from this book, but here we are again.
Once more from John 1: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made."
In the paragraph above the quote from the book, it talks about various words with the stem -ntu, which means something like being. Actually, I'll just quote it for clarity:
I should should say clearly that I'm not trying to make a theology out of all this. Not trying to fit it into something else, make a sort of New Age anything. But specifically that part tying the word and being together, that part of that language having nothing to do with the writer's philosophies and beliefs--and then, without the word nothing was made that has been made.
I'm just thinking out loud here, following the rabbit trail, but I wonder what significance names really have. Of Abram being renamed Abraham, father of many nations. Simon becoming Cephas--Peter, meaning Rock.
Just thoughts.
"Nommo is the force that makes things live as what they are: man or tree or animal. Nommo means word."
Now I don't know much about the Kikongo language, only what I've learned from this book, but here we are again.
Once more from John 1: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made."
In the paragraph above the quote from the book, it talks about various words with the stem -ntu, which means something like being. Actually, I'll just quote it for clarity:
"Muntu is the Congolese word for man. Or people. But it means more than that. Here in the Congo I am pleased to announce there is no special difference between living people, dead people, children not yet born, and gods--these are all muntu. So says Nelson. All other things are kintu: animals, stones, bottles. A place or a time is hintu, and a quality of being is kuntu: beautiful, hideous, or lame, for example. All these things have in common the stem word ntu. 'All that is being here, ntu,' says Nelson with a strug as if this is not so difficult to understand. And it would be simple, except that 'being here' is not the same as 'existing.' He explains the difference this way: the principles of ntu are asleep, until they are touched by nommo. Nommo is the force that makes things live as what they are: man or tree or animal. Nommo means word. The rabbit has the life it has--not a rat life or a mongoose life--because it is named rabbit, mvundla. A child is not alive, claims Nelson, until it is named."
I should should say clearly that I'm not trying to make a theology out of all this. Not trying to fit it into something else, make a sort of New Age anything. But specifically that part tying the word and being together, that part of that language having nothing to do with the writer's philosophies and beliefs--and then, without the word nothing was made that has been made.
I'm just thinking out loud here, following the rabbit trail, but I wonder what significance names really have. Of Abram being renamed Abraham, father of many nations. Simon becoming Cephas--Peter, meaning Rock.
Just thoughts.
Friday, October 28, 2011
cool linguistic discovery of the day
Last night I watched a (fantastic) film called No Man's Land and it's mostly in Serbo-Croatian. There are a lot of shared words between it and Romanian so as I was watching I'd catch words I'd understand, all ones with Slavic roots.
One of them was bezna, which in Romanian means complete darkness, the kind where you can't see anything, pitch black, no light at all. DEX tells me that figuratively it means something like ignorance. But of course! And I heard the word in a context where there was clearly some underlying shared sense, so I looked it up and it turns out the word means meaningless.
Once again, but of course! We see that in words like lucid. So the same kind of thing is happening not only in Latin, in languages rooted there, but also in Slavic-based languages.
I'm thinking of John 1:
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world." (bolding mine)
So we see how our languages reflect this--that light represents something life-giving and darkness maybe a lack of that. Let's say the word here (Jesus) does what regular words do for us everyday: they reveal meaning. Jesus reveals God, comes down to earth as a man and we start to understand what this God is all about, Jesus as friend, as savior, defender of the poor, as the just one who will make all things right (this being very far from an exhaustive list). And life, the light of all mankind.
I wonder then if all our languages don't point to this reality: that meaning (perhaps by extension, our purpose) and life are bound in this Father of heavenly lights, that without him, there isn't any. (That reference comes from this baller verse: "Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows." James 1:17) I wonder if maybe on some level we know this, intrinsically.
Well then, maybe it's just common sense, but that doesn't that bring us back to the question of where that common sense comes from? And what makes it true? And by extension the whole old argument about where our sense of right and wrong comes from? Of course that opens the doors to relative morality and a whole slew of questions. Good conversation--by the way, Tim Keller's book _The Reason For God_ is great if you're interested in that. So is Mere Christianity (C. S. Lewis).
Anyway, the point I'm getting to is that I think this sort of thing is in us already, this idea of the light being related to meaning and life. And if we recognize that, I wonder if it's not worth asking where it came from.
One of them was bezna, which in Romanian means complete darkness, the kind where you can't see anything, pitch black, no light at all. DEX tells me that figuratively it means something like ignorance. But of course! And I heard the word in a context where there was clearly some underlying shared sense, so I looked it up and it turns out the word means meaningless.
Once again, but of course! We see that in words like lucid. So the same kind of thing is happening not only in Latin, in languages rooted there, but also in Slavic-based languages.
I'm thinking of John 1:
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world." (bolding mine)
So we see how our languages reflect this--that light represents something life-giving and darkness maybe a lack of that. Let's say the word here (Jesus) does what regular words do for us everyday: they reveal meaning. Jesus reveals God, comes down to earth as a man and we start to understand what this God is all about, Jesus as friend, as savior, defender of the poor, as the just one who will make all things right (this being very far from an exhaustive list). And life, the light of all mankind.
I wonder then if all our languages don't point to this reality: that meaning (perhaps by extension, our purpose) and life are bound in this Father of heavenly lights, that without him, there isn't any. (That reference comes from this baller verse: "Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows." James 1:17) I wonder if maybe on some level we know this, intrinsically.
Well then, maybe it's just common sense, but that doesn't that bring us back to the question of where that common sense comes from? And what makes it true? And by extension the whole old argument about where our sense of right and wrong comes from? Of course that opens the doors to relative morality and a whole slew of questions. Good conversation--by the way, Tim Keller's book _The Reason For God_ is great if you're interested in that. So is Mere Christianity (C. S. Lewis).
Anyway, the point I'm getting to is that I think this sort of thing is in us already, this idea of the light being related to meaning and life. And if we recognize that, I wonder if it's not worth asking where it came from.
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
limba romana, for lack of a better title
Since we're on a language-related roll...
Last night those of us on the coordinating team for OSCPi (said something like ohs-che-pee) had a meeting on Skype, mostly to do with the budget and other related financial things. And I don't think I've ever done anything harder in Romanian. Add to the fact that you're discussing a topic which is already generally a stressful one and do it without being able to see the people and in not-your-language, and you surely have yourself a task. One in which you will become very agitated very quickly.
But this isn't to complain about the language or to bemoan the fact that I wasn't bam! fluent in two months. Rather, I've observed some surprising things happening with regard to it and its effects on my equal parts stimulated and turned-to-toast brain.
Since I've been in Pitesti it's been all Romanian all the time. Over the summer more of my work was with fund raising and conferences, most of the students being gone, so except for a few weeks at camp or at church, I spoke mostly in English. Three months of plateau. But then here, no more American family, no more English with the roommate. However, a curious thing happened in September at Formacion.
I always expected that when you finally get to the point where you can communicate only (or 90+%) in another language, after a full day or week of it, you'd have a strange relationship with your own language. By that I mean that there'd be some gap, some lack--I'm missing it completely. I thought it would feel different to be totally in another language in some way I'm failing to explain at the moment--imagine speaking yours and everything is green, but speaking theirs everything is red. But I realized it really doesn't. The thing is, for so long this language was (and barely) just in my head. It never made it to my heart. It felt removed, dry meaning filtered from significance in the deeper sense. And then suddenly it occurred to me that now that I can finally do it, being all in Romanian feels exactly the same as all in English. Which raises lots of questions to be asked and addressed later.
Anyway, since being here, it's like a switch has been flipped on--there are off days, for sure, stumbling through halty sentences, and bah! What's the word? Want to guess how many times I've said n-am inteles, ever :) ? But then there are good days, or rather, good parts of the day, and it feels like I get to participate in some dance I'd only been watching. Imagine an ensemble all dancing together, fluid and graceful, one big movement seen from above, and I get to be part of that, an arm or a leg of a body.
That said, for those who love to laugh, there's plenty cause. A few of many mistakes as of late:
--"Am scorat!" I wanted to say that I'd scored. Cat e scorul means 'what's the score,' so I figured, well if it's a cognate, borrowed, anything like that, it should go as the verb as well! Nope.
--Porumbel, porumb, porunca. Pigeon, corn and commandment and I never get them straight. You can imagine.
--When you meet somebody, the proper thing to say is imi pare bine which literally means 'it seems well to me' but is something like 'pleased to meet you.' Without thinking, Sarawr the Dinosaur said imi pare rau: 'it seems bad to me,' or basically I'm sorry.
The worst though has come from the lack of spoken English. If I'm by myself, I think out loud, and after spending a whole day only speaking Romanian, a strange thing happens to the way sentences are formed. Basically they keep their English structure for the most part. But I always substitute Romanian verbs (I would love to know why this happens). However, since we like to -ing everything (see what I did there?) (I'm doing homework, I'm eating eggs) instead and Romanians do homework and eat eggs, you get sentences like this: I'm fac-ing homework acum (I'm do-ing homework now). Except fac is pronounced something like fock, so you see the predicament.
And also, I've come to realize that if you learn these, used in abundance here, you can do practically anything: a face, a da, ma, to do, to give and something kind of like yo or man. We'll make a verb out of any noun (I'm vacuuming the living room), but here, if you just put a da in front of it, you're good (dau cu aspiratorul). And ma, well I don't know that it's quite as useful grammatically as the other two, but you do hear it every five seconds :)
Anyway, always an adventure.
Last night those of us on the coordinating team for OSCPi (said something like ohs-che-pee) had a meeting on Skype, mostly to do with the budget and other related financial things. And I don't think I've ever done anything harder in Romanian. Add to the fact that you're discussing a topic which is already generally a stressful one and do it without being able to see the people and in not-your-language, and you surely have yourself a task. One in which you will become very agitated very quickly.
But this isn't to complain about the language or to bemoan the fact that I wasn't bam! fluent in two months. Rather, I've observed some surprising things happening with regard to it and its effects on my equal parts stimulated and turned-to-toast brain.
Since I've been in Pitesti it's been all Romanian all the time. Over the summer more of my work was with fund raising and conferences, most of the students being gone, so except for a few weeks at camp or at church, I spoke mostly in English. Three months of plateau. But then here, no more American family, no more English with the roommate. However, a curious thing happened in September at Formacion.
I always expected that when you finally get to the point where you can communicate only (or 90+%) in another language, after a full day or week of it, you'd have a strange relationship with your own language. By that I mean that there'd be some gap, some lack--I'm missing it completely. I thought it would feel different to be totally in another language in some way I'm failing to explain at the moment--imagine speaking yours and everything is green, but speaking theirs everything is red. But I realized it really doesn't. The thing is, for so long this language was (and barely) just in my head. It never made it to my heart. It felt removed, dry meaning filtered from significance in the deeper sense. And then suddenly it occurred to me that now that I can finally do it, being all in Romanian feels exactly the same as all in English. Which raises lots of questions to be asked and addressed later.
Anyway, since being here, it's like a switch has been flipped on--there are off days, for sure, stumbling through halty sentences, and bah! What's the word? Want to guess how many times I've said n-am inteles, ever :) ? But then there are good days, or rather, good parts of the day, and it feels like I get to participate in some dance I'd only been watching. Imagine an ensemble all dancing together, fluid and graceful, one big movement seen from above, and I get to be part of that, an arm or a leg of a body.
That said, for those who love to laugh, there's plenty cause. A few of many mistakes as of late:
--"Am scorat!" I wanted to say that I'd scored. Cat e scorul means 'what's the score,' so I figured, well if it's a cognate, borrowed, anything like that, it should go as the verb as well! Nope.
--Porumbel, porumb, porunca. Pigeon, corn and commandment and I never get them straight. You can imagine.
--When you meet somebody, the proper thing to say is imi pare bine which literally means 'it seems well to me' but is something like 'pleased to meet you.' Without thinking, Sarawr the Dinosaur said imi pare rau: 'it seems bad to me,' or basically I'm sorry.
The worst though has come from the lack of spoken English. If I'm by myself, I think out loud, and after spending a whole day only speaking Romanian, a strange thing happens to the way sentences are formed. Basically they keep their English structure for the most part. But I always substitute Romanian verbs (I would love to know why this happens). However, since we like to -ing everything (see what I did there?) (I'm doing homework, I'm eating eggs) instead and Romanians do homework and eat eggs, you get sentences like this: I'm fac-ing homework acum (I'm do-ing homework now). Except fac is pronounced something like fock, so you see the predicament.
And also, I've come to realize that if you learn these, used in abundance here, you can do practically anything: a face, a da, ma, to do, to give and something kind of like yo or man. We'll make a verb out of any noun (I'm vacuuming the living room), but here, if you just put a da in front of it, you're good (dau cu aspiratorul). And ma, well I don't know that it's quite as useful grammatically as the other two, but you do hear it every five seconds :)
Anyway, always an adventure.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
more language: american dream
Sort of in the same vein as the post about Turkish. This song, actually, to me is really sad. A lot of the Romanian music I like usually is. Just as an aside, for this reason I like good hiphop, I like how it's political, its observations of the state of things, its social commentary. True for this as well.
Anyway, here are some verses and their translations from the song below. (Full lyrics here.)
Acum nu te mai duci la munca, te duci la job
You don't go to work anymore, you go to the job
Nu mai avem cartiere naspa, avem ghetou
Raperii au flow, sunt underground yo
Totul este cool, nimic nu e misto
We don't have crappy neighborhoods anymore, we have the ghetto
Rappers have flow, they're underground, yo
Everything is cool, nothing's misto*
Tre' sa fii in trend, altfel nu e de gluma
"Is this the life" nu suna asa bine-n romana
*from what I understand, misto actually comes from the language Gypsies speak?
**sounds more like they're saying vanity to me, but all the lyrics I read say dignity
Anyway, here are some verses and their translations from the song below. (Full lyrics here.)
Acum nu te mai duci la munca, te duci la job
You don't go to work anymore, you go to the job
Nu mai avem cartiere naspa, avem ghetou
Raperii au flow, sunt underground yo
Totul este cool, nimic nu e misto
We don't have crappy neighborhoods anymore, we have the ghetto
Rappers have flow, they're underground, yo
Everything is cool, nothing's misto*
Tre' sa fii in trend, altfel nu e de gluma
"Is this the life" nu suna asa bine-n romana
*from what I understand, misto actually comes from the language Gypsies speak?
**sounds more like they're saying vanity to me, but all the lyrics I read say dignity
Sunday, October 9, 2011
"later: the face of prescriptive language??"
From "Turkish and Fakelish: Foreign terms and the words that replace them"
"The more enduring suspicion about the new language revolution was the accusation, voiced widely by the press in the wake of Atatürk’s death, that it had produced an “artificial and synthetic language.” The words that were suggested as substitutes, Lewis notes, were archaic words which had long fallen out of use in Turkish, or composites of ancient Turkic roots which were said to equivocate to undesirable Ottoman terms."
and
"Faruk Kadri Timurtaş, a professor at İstanbul University and one of the most vocal opponents of language purism, spoke out against a language that he believed could not be categorized as Turkish any more than German nor considered any more natural than Esperanto. He pejoratively termed the new language uydurmacılık, or “fakelish,” declaring that the aim of the association was “to degenerate and ruin the language, to bring upon anarchy in our culture.” The most persistent argument of opponents to the TDK was that every language contains foreign words. “Every language has foreign elements, the only exception to this rule are the languages of the world’s most isolated tribes,” Timurtaş, declared in 1974."
Interesting stuff. By the way, the title comes from this most excellent comic:
"The more enduring suspicion about the new language revolution was the accusation, voiced widely by the press in the wake of Atatürk’s death, that it had produced an “artificial and synthetic language.” The words that were suggested as substitutes, Lewis notes, were archaic words which had long fallen out of use in Turkish, or composites of ancient Turkic roots which were said to equivocate to undesirable Ottoman terms."
and
"Faruk Kadri Timurtaş, a professor at İstanbul University and one of the most vocal opponents of language purism, spoke out against a language that he believed could not be categorized as Turkish any more than German nor considered any more natural than Esperanto. He pejoratively termed the new language uydurmacılık, or “fakelish,” declaring that the aim of the association was “to degenerate and ruin the language, to bring upon anarchy in our culture.” The most persistent argument of opponents to the TDK was that every language contains foreign words. “Every language has foreign elements, the only exception to this rule are the languages of the world’s most isolated tribes,” Timurtaş, declared in 1974."
Interesting stuff. By the way, the title comes from this most excellent comic:
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
linguistics at subway
I spent most of Friday hanging out with two Dutch friends killing time while waiting for our flights. We ended up at Subway--I could have cried over my six inch spicy Italian on wheat--and after eating began to teach each other language stuff. They taught me some Dutch, I taught them some Romanian.
Just for fun, I started with probably the hardest sound for native English speakers: ɨ (close central unrounded vowel). If you click the link you can listen to it. So Americans usually pronounce a word like pâine (bread) as if it p-w-i-n-e. But after I pronounced it for them I decided to write it down as well and they got really confused. Where's the l? they asked. The l, what? They were hearing an l.
Turns out the l in Dutch is this one: ɫ (velarized alveolar lateral approximant). Think that Russian-y one that sounds like swallowing. They sound much more alike to me when the Dutch one is said after a vowel as opposed to how it's initially pronounced in the link.
Anyway, I don't honestly know enough about this to say much of anything intelligent and it's been four too many years since my linguistics class (in Spanish!), but something at least feels similar in the way I make these two sounds, so even if I can't tell you in technical terms what's going on, I can hear/feel it. However! I looked it up and Wiki tells me that with lateral approximants (like this one: ɫ), the center of the tongue makes solid contact with the roof of the mouth. And of course with ɨ your tongue lifts toward the roof of your mouth (but doesn't touch).
Well of course! That makes so much sense! It made me so excited when they insisted they heard their l. I love this sort of thing, though. Example, with l and r (the tap). The first time I learned to say te extrañare in Spanish, I heard te extrañale and proceeded to say it like that for over a month until I finally heard it again and saw it written out with, to my surprise, an r. It happens in Romanian, too. A word like locurile gets my tongue a little twisted with the l and r that close and I have to slow down about half the time to get it out.
All you linguists, feel free to correct my fumbling descriptions. And language lovers, aren't these sort of things exciting? So much fun! Do any of you switch up sounds like this sometimes?
Just for fun, I started with probably the hardest sound for native English speakers: ɨ (close central unrounded vowel). If you click the link you can listen to it. So Americans usually pronounce a word like pâine (bread) as if it p-w-i-n-e. But after I pronounced it for them I decided to write it down as well and they got really confused. Where's the l? they asked. The l, what? They were hearing an l.
Turns out the l in Dutch is this one: ɫ (velarized alveolar lateral approximant). Think that Russian-y one that sounds like swallowing. They sound much more alike to me when the Dutch one is said after a vowel as opposed to how it's initially pronounced in the link.
Anyway, I don't honestly know enough about this to say much of anything intelligent and it's been four too many years since my linguistics class (in Spanish!), but something at least feels similar in the way I make these two sounds, so even if I can't tell you in technical terms what's going on, I can hear/feel it. However! I looked it up and Wiki tells me that with lateral approximants (like this one: ɫ), the center of the tongue makes solid contact with the roof of the mouth. And of course with ɨ your tongue lifts toward the roof of your mouth (but doesn't touch).
Well of course! That makes so much sense! It made me so excited when they insisted they heard their l. I love this sort of thing, though. Example, with l and r (the tap). The first time I learned to say te extrañare in Spanish, I heard te extrañale and proceeded to say it like that for over a month until I finally heard it again and saw it written out with, to my surprise, an r. It happens in Romanian, too. A word like locurile gets my tongue a little twisted with the l and r that close and I have to slow down about half the time to get it out.
All you linguists, feel free to correct my fumbling descriptions. And language lovers, aren't these sort of things exciting? So much fun! Do any of you switch up sounds like this sometimes?
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