Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

[Iversen]

OE: Ic wrāt gistran æt ic mynte nêotan "TY Old English" ær Leslie Blakeley befōran slaepan gistran niht, und ic wunode raedan þone bocan todæg. Ic mynte writan nathwilce ymbspræce onbūtan bocan and onbūtan þāra ealdena Engliscena, ac sweotol wes þe wes se begeondan minum cræftum - forþan þearf awritan on niwe Englisc.

For your information I used majstro.com, Glosbe, an E->OE wordlist from 1879 by Skeat, the books I mentioned in the Classical Group thread plus Verbix for the verbs (and a little bit of Wikipedia too) for just that tiny bit of text .. so you'll get the rest in Modern English, sorry.

One thing I have found amusing about Anglosaxon/Old English is the gamut of relative constructions. I do not entirely agree with Blakeley's terminology, but he lists the following five types:

i) using an indeclinable "þe", as in "(...) þæm dæle þe under Dena onwealda wæs" (that part which under Danish rule was)
ii) using a demonstrative se, seo, þæt as relative pronoun: "(...) Osric, þone Paulinus ær gefullode " (Osric, the-one Paulinus had baptized)
iii) using a demonstrative plus þe: "(...) Iudeiscra leoda cyning, se þe acenned is" (...) Jewish' people's king, he who born is"
iv) using þe plus a personal pronoun (which may be placed away from each other): "(...) ðæs biskopes gewitness, ðe he on his scriftshire sie" (the bishops' testimony, 'that' he on his diocese was" = .. in whose diocese he was)
v) omitting any sign of a relative: "on þys geare gefor Ælfred, wæs æt Baðum gerefa" (in this year died Alfred, (who) was at Bath sheriff"
(my cuts and translations)

The last type would still be allowed if the omitted relative term would have been the object, but not when it role would be that of the subject of the subordinate clause. Type iv reminds me of the atypical constructions with separation of a neutral relative and the bearer of its function which where discussed at some of the Berlin gatherings. No iii is in my analysis formally a demonstrative in extraposition with an attached relative clause, but that leaves at least three possible interpretations: either the demonstrative actually has adopted the role of a true relative pronoun or it is still an antecedent in extraposition, with an attached relative clause that has lost its relative term (most likely þe) ... or the clause is simply not a relative clause at all. Type i seems just to be a simplification, but I suspect that having such an 'empty' relative term has made it easier to accept types ii to v.

And if you have asked yourself where the usual diacritics have gone, then I have dropped them because it is a hassle to write them - and also because I have seen somewhere that the old Anglosaxons actually didn't use them (so why should I?).

I have also visited two museums and our central library today. In the library I looked cursorily through Benny Lewis' Italian hacking manual, but after that I also read the 194 or so pages of K.M.Østeraas' book "Ged eller mammut", which tells about translations and about interpreting. And I read that book attentively because I liked it and the theme was relevant. She takes the authors of subtitles in defence, claiming that with their salary based on pieces they are as good as you can expect (and maybe even deserve). She also tells of her research cause by the information in an Anglophone book that bears eat "moths" - and then the problem is whether this is to be translated as Danish 'møl' (those whose larvae eat your wollen stuff) or as 'natsvæmer' (nightly butterflys except those that are called 'møl') - and she ends up with the latter.

Unfortunately she doesn't see the positive side of literal or hyperliteral translations, namely that they show what actually is said in a another language. Of course you both know this and which expression would have been used in your own language, but some textbook writers and pedagogical types have a tendency the believe that it is enough to know the latter.

ged-eller-mammut.jpg

Btw - did you notice that this thread now has reached page 100?

[Teango]

Happy folio-centenary, Iversen! And may your language log sprout new leaves and colourful blossom for many more to come...

[Iversen]

I definitely intend to let this log grow - it keeps me focused on producing language for others, where my natural inclination would be to keep the whole thing to myself.

And I have actually spent some time on Irish in two different ways since the last message. In the afternoon I copied/studied a page from my psychophysiological printouts, and later I used my TY Irish as goodnight reading. I used my equally old TY Old English for the same purpose one night before (and with the same ultimate result: I fell asleep), but then I reverted to my TY Irish and read several chapters of it and translated the Irish text in one of the exercise ... and only after that herculean effort I was sufficiently mentally exhausted to fall asleep. I have never pretended that Irish is an easy language, but it is fascinating. The main trouble with the old TY is that its informations regarding the verbal systems are regional and/or out of date so I have to be wary about trusting it in that field - or rather, I just take note of the verbs, but intentionally disregard anything the book says about specific forms. And it uses the word 'aspiration' about lenition, but it is easy to get used to that particularity.

One of the chapters I read was the one about numbers - and to illustrate the problems I'd like to quote a whole paragraph in extenso (p.63):

The numerals without a following noun are as above, always preceded by unstressed a which prefixes h to aon and ocht. With a noun a is dropped, dó is changed to dá and cathair to cheitre. Aon and dá always aspirate a following initial consonant (but see the special rules pp. 16-17), and dá is usually itself aspirated (dhá) if the article doesn't precede (an dá); thri, cheitre, cúig, sé may be followed by a noun in the singular, which is then aspirated1, but if the plural is used there is no aspiration; seacht, ocht, naoi, deich cause eclipsis. Note that dhá is followed by the dual (Lesson XII). Aon meaning "one" requires amháin "only" after the noun: aon fhear amháin "one man". Without this supporting amháin, aon means "any": an bhfuil aon airgead agat? "have you any money?" Ní fhaca aon ní iontach "I did not see anything strange, I saw nothing strange".

This is of course only a fraction of what you need to know about Irish numbers. As mentioned in the quote there is a dual, which already is a rare thing in modern Indo-European languages (shared only by Sorbian and Slovenian), there are special 'personal' numbers for groups of people and if you want to say "13 boats" in Irish than you have to say ten boats and three. There are more hilarious details about Irish numbers in the more stricly structured Gramadach na Gaeilge, but until I also buy one of those fancy new handheld gadgets I can't read the Gramadach while I'm lying down in my bed.

IR: An bhfaca mé rud éigin aisteach? Geall tú! Chonaic mise an Ghaeilge i ngníomh!

For once I used GT to search for a translation of "you bet!". It claims that "Geall tú!" has been checked so maybe it is actually a valid expression. Otherwise I prefer to make my own blunders.

And one thing more: I noticed one similarity between Old English and Modern Irish when I studied my text yesterday after afternoon, namely the way they both accept smashed-up relatives with a neutral conjunction and the role as element in the clause that normally would be taken care of by a relative pronoun taken by the part of the sentence that would have been there if it hadn't been a relative clause.. of sorts. Let's take an example:

Tá de phribhléid agamsa aithne a bheith agam ar bean a bhfuil galar Alzheimer uirthi le blianta beaga anuas.
Google: I have a privilege to know a woman with Alzheimer's disease in recent years.
Free me: I have had the privilege to know a woman who had Alzheimer's disease the last couple of years.
Hyperliteral me: Is of privilege with-me acquaintance þe be with-me with woman þe illness Alzheimer with-her with years small down.

... and thus I actually found something in Old English þe I could use it (!) in hyperliteral translations from Irish: the Anglosaxon þe!

Kunst129.JPG

[galaxyrocker]

I have never pretended that Irish is an easy language, but it is fascinating.

That it is. It's one of the main reasons I love it so much.

The main trouble with the old TY is that its informations regarding the verbal systems are regional and/or out of date so I have to be wary about trusting it in that field - or rather, I just take note of the verbs, but intentionally disregard anything the book says about specific forms.

Not out of date, just regional. They're still used quite regularly in Munster, even among younger speakers,

The numerals without a following noun are as above, always preceded by unstressed a which prefixes h to aon and ocht. With a noun a is dropped, dó is changed to dá and cathair to cheitre. Aon and dá always aspirate a following initial consonant (but see the special rules pp. 16-17), and dá is usually itself aspirated (dhá) if the article doesn't precede (an dá); thri, cheitre, cúig, sé may be followed by a noun in the singular, which is then aspirated1, but if the plural is used there is no aspiration; seacht, ocht, naoi, deich cause eclipsis. Note that dhá is followed by the dual (Lesson XII). Aon meaning "one" requires amháin "only" after the noun: aon fhear amháin "one man". Without this supporting amháin, aon means "any": an bhfuil aon airgead agat? "have you any money?" Ní fhaca aon ní iontach "I did not see anything strange, I saw nothing strange".

The numbers are weird. Fun. But weird.

This is of course only a fraction of what you need to know about Irish numbers. As mentioned in the quote there is a dual, which already is a rare thing in modern Indo-European languages (shared only by Sorbian and Slovenian), there are special 'personal' numbers for groups of people and if you want to say "13 boats" in Irish than you have to say ten boats and three. There are more hilarious details about Irish numbers in the more stricly structured Gramadach na Gaeilge, but until I also buy one of those fancy new handheld gadgets I can't read the Gramadach while I'm lying down in my bed.

The dual has mostly died out, however. It might still exist in some parts of Munster, but I'm fairly certain it's on the way out even there.

For once I used GT to search for a translation of "you bet!". It claims that "Geall tú!" has been checked so maybe it is actually a valid expression. Otherwise I prefer to make my own blunders.

I can definitely say that this is not a good translation of "you bet!" It literally means something like "Bet you", where you're commanding someone to bet themselves (except it'd also need to be "thusa féin" or some such in that case). Sadly, "you bet" is highly idiomatic, which means there's not really an equivalent Irish translation that iwll work all the time.

All this leads me to a rant about the state of Irish -- most Irish you see on the internet is grammatical incorrect. Sadly, a lot of people don't realize that, so it gets spread with the full force of Dunning-Krueger behind it. It's such a shame, really

[jeff_lindqvist]

The numbers are weird. Fun. But weird.

There are 2 different counting systems:
by tens (decimal system, an córas deachúlach)
by twenties (vigesimal system, an córas fichiúlach)

http://www.nualeargais.ie/gnag/zahl.htm

[galaxyrocker]

The numbers are weird. Fun. But weird.

There are 2 different counting systems:
by tens (decimal system, an córas deachúlach)
by twenties (vigesimal system, an córas fichiúlach)

http://www.nualeargais.ie/gnag/zahl.htm

On top of the different sets for people, things and counting! Vegesimal is where it's at tho.

[Iversen]

(...) if you want to say "13 boats" in Irish than you have to say ten boats and three.

After consulting the amazing Gramadach I have realized that I made a mistake in this sentence. It should have been 'three boats and ten' ("trí bhád déag"). It would also have been worth mentioning that above 40 the Irish employed two counting systems, one for people with shoes and one for those without (decimal versus vigesimal). This may seem frightning, but since I already know Danish and French (including the variant that uses 'octante' for eighty) I wouldn't have expected Irish not to have something similar. In Danish we have
40 = fyrre (from fire ti, 4 x 10), which for weird reasons becomes ordinal 40. = fyrretyve (literally 4 x 10 x 20)
50 = halvtreds (from halv tredje sinds tyve = [3-½] x 20), as ordinal 50. = halvtredsindsindstyvende
60 = tres (from tredje sinds tyve = 3 x 20), and as ordinal 60. = tredsindstyvende
80 = firs ( from fire sinds tyve = 4 x 20), with the ordinal 80. = firsindstyvende
90 = halvfems (from halv fem(te) sinds tyve = [5-½] x 20), and the ordinal here is of course halvfemsindstyvende
And why is halvtredje and halvfemte 2½ resp. 4½ and not 3½ and 5½, you may ask? Well, for the same reason that "halv tolv" is 11:30 and not 12:30. Unfortuately it is unknown to me what that reason might be.

The Swedes use sexti and otti (6 x 10 resp. 8 x 10), which is more rational, but less fun

And the Irish? Well, they apparently use both the Danish system and the Swedish system. When we still used paper checks for payment we would also have used the simpler Swedish system so it is not long ago that we were in the same boat as the Irish. But now that boat has disappeared from the surface of the ocean and we only use our own system EXCEPT when speaking to Swedes.

For once I used GT to search for a translation of "you bet!". It claims that "Geall tú!" has been checked so maybe it is actually a valid expression. Otherwise I prefer to make my own blunders.

"You bet!" should mean something like "You can be so sure of that that you could bet on it". How would Galaxyrocker translate "you can be sure of that". Google Translate proposes a fairly literal translation: "Is féidir leat a bheith cinnte de sin", i.e. "(it) is possible with-you to be sure of that", but surely the surviving native Irish speakers wouldn't be satisfied with something as boring as that?

Irish_vigesimal.jpg

[galaxyrocker]

"You bet!" should mean something like "You can be so sure of that that you could bet on it".

I'd say they'd just use a simple "gan dabht" or "cinnte", depending on the occassion, or even perhaps "ar ndóigh!"

[Iversen]

Can it be that simple in Irish? How can that be?? I'm totally flummoxed now...

Apart from that, I did make a wordlist yesterday based on the Irish text about Alzheimer's disease, and of course I made the wordlist from the text itself with occasional peeks into my right-margin notes, mostly to refresh the meaning a word, but sometimes also to refresh my memory of the infinitive in case of irregular verbs - maybe it is time soon to reread the chapter about the famous 13 irregular verbs in my grammar.

I also dealt with tourism - first and foremost by making even more 3D maps for old trips abroad, secondly by working with an Albanian text about the town Gjirokastër, which is one to the best preserved old towns in the country because it was the birthplace of the dreaded dictator Enver Hoxha.

AL: Qytetet janë përfshirë në Listën e Trashëgimisë Botërore të UNESCO, dhe kam vizituar atë gjatë një udhëtimi në ishullin grek të Kethrisë (Κέρκυρα alias 'Corfu'). Ka një traget nga ky ishull në Sarandë në Shqipëri. Pas shikimit të gërmadhave në Butrint dhe duke fjetur një natë, unë shkova me autobus në Gjirokastër. Është shumë e lehtë. Ka një kështjellë me muze ushtarake, dhe teksti im dje ishte në lidhje me këtë muze.

GR: Θα μπορούσα να μείνω στην Κέρκυρα (όπως όλοι οι άλλοι τουρίστες), αλλά ήταν θορυβώδεις φιλοξενούμενοι στο ξενοδοχείο μου και επιπλέον δεν είχα πριν επισκεφτεί τηνΑλβανία - και θα ήθελα να το δω τώρα που έγινε τόσο εύκολο. Οι Έλληνες δεν προσπάθησαν να διαφημίσουν πολύ τον πλοίο στην Αλβανία - θέλησαν σίγουρα οτι όλοι οι τουρίστες να παραμείνουν στο νησί τους και να ξοδεύουν τα χρήματα τους αλλά.

F2507b01_Gjirokastra.JPG

In the period around 2000 I have reached now I made several trips to Latinamerica, and maybe that's the reason that I woke up this morgen with a touristy dream from a Spanish speaking country (though with a setting more like Spain than some place in the Americas).

SP: Primero recuerdo una vista general (como una postal) sobre una ciudad con un estuario al mar. Y no, no fue Lisboa (que he visitado recientemente), porque en la otra orilla del río había una colina empinada con asentamientos en la pendiente. Tenía la noción de que conocía el área detrás del suelo de un sueño anterior, así que lo visitar una vez más, y luego de repente me dirigí a un auto rojo muy pequeño. Havia un camino oblicuamente por la pendiente, y cuando conduje allí, vi una especie de hacienda en el lado izquierdo de la carretera. Cuando quise conducir por el camino estrecho, otro auto vino contra mí que me bloqueó el acceso, pero ya sabía que era un sueño, así que simplemente lo aparté con mi pequeño auto rojo. Estacioné y entré en uno de los edificios.

Aquí había una sala muy grande que parecía una exposición mezclada con una sala de ventas para una cava - muchas botellas y vasos. Había un grupo de turistas estadounidenses con su guía, así que pensé que había visitas allí, pero probabilmente no en este edificio, que era más bien el restaurante del lugar.

Entré en el otro edificio donde había dos señoras sentadas tras una mesa, y detrás ellas había muchas sillas y una pantalla de proyección. Enfrente el pasaje era bloqueado, pero se podía ver una antigua sala con muros de piedra y algunos turistas. Pensé que las damas sin duda querían ver un boleto, peró no había comprado uno - pero en mi bolsillo encontré una larga tira de papel la cual llegué a la señora más cercana a la mesa. Y luego pregunté en español: ¿cuándo comienza el tour? La otra dama a la mesa comenzó a responder al alemán, pero le interrumpí y le pregunté de nuevo: ¿cuándo comienza el tour? La dama volvió a responder al alemán, y yo le interrumpí una vez más, muy cortésmente: Por favor, ¿desde qué lugar y a qué hora comienza la visita guiada? Y esta vez la señora se dio cuenta finalmente de que yo no quería hablar alemán, y entonces me dijo en español que uno tenía que ver un video primero y después comenzaria la visita guiada. Me senté en una de las sillas detrás de ella ... y luego me desperté. Nunca llegué a ver las habitaciones.

[galaxyrocker]

Can it be that simple in Irish? How can that be?? I'm totally flummoxed now...

Indeed. I'd even lean to say ar ndóigh is probably the one you want, though it has some other shades of meanings as well.

Also, discussing the verbs with you, you might like the site Réimnigh. It has the main irregular ones, and some regular ones, for all three dialects. I've been told there's a typo or two, but still an amazing resource for comparing dialects.