Guyome's log

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guyome
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Re: Guyome's log [LAD, LAT, MAN, OCC, PER, YID]

Postby guyome » Sun Feb 14, 2021 9:00 am

It's been some time since my last post. Some things have changed and I think it would be wiser if I stopped making plans altogether.

Persian
On hold.
I feel slightly bad about that because I had made good progress so far. Stopping now is not a good idea from a purely language learning point of view but studying Persian has become more of a chore than anything else lately and that's the last thing I need at the moment. It may come back at any moment, only time will tell.

Occitan
I just finished reading Verd Paradís II by Max Roqueta (1908-2005). I really enjoyed the book. Most of the pieces in it feel very painting-like. There is very little dialogue (if any) and not that much action. What Roqueta does is give the reader something to see. Very enjoyable, in small doses at least; it felt a bit tedious if it went on for more than 5-10 pages.

Gascon made a come-back in my schedule but in a somewhat leisurely way, meaning I'm working through Lo Gascon lèu e plan (lesson 10 done).
I could go straight to reading books but reading in Gascon is still much slower than in Languedocian. I also see two main benefits from my working through the course:
- at this stage, just reading (relying on my knowledge of Languedocian) generally means I understand what I read but I don't always consciously notice the differences, meaning the vocab and the verbal forms don't really stick. That's fine if the goal is to read some short stuff and get the point, but I want to know Gascon better than that. I feel that, for me, having the grammar and vocab showed at me in a textbook setting really helps making things stick better when I meet them later in my reading
- also, reading and relying on passive Languedocian-based recognition doesn't help me that much with understanding audio, while listening again and again to the lessons in Lo Gascon lèu e plan helps.

I've also been reading Toinou : Le cri d'un enfant auvergnat, a grim description of growing up dirt poor in Auvergne in the 1890s. The author describes his childhood and early adulthood, first in the countryside and then in a small city. Not a pretty sight (poverty, violence, pedophily,...) but it makes for a good counterweight to the sometimes rosy picture of rural life Occitan literature can paint.
There are quite a few sentences in Occitan peppered through the text, and the book comes with an appendix on the Auvergnat dialect.
The book was published in the collection "Terre Humaine", which has some really great titles. Check it out if you want to read some anthropology/ethnology/first-person accounts by people who generally slip under the radar.

Latin
Read a lot. Among these:
- Busbecq's account of his first embassy to the Ottoman empire in the 1550s
- some poetry by Santeul, a 17th c. Latin poet from France. I'm not that much into poetry but Santeul got caught in the Jansenist controversy and incurred the wrath of the Jesuits for a piece he penned. Many others followed, in which he tried to placate them. That makes for an interesting war of words and made me want to dig deeper in Jansenist literature (there's a Latin translation of Pascal's Provinciales for instance).

Manchu
Lots of Manchu reading but in a rather scattered way, which means I'm only halfway through Nishan saman. There's also the fact that the manuscript is difficult to read, together with some not-standard words/spellings. All this make reading slower. Still, it is very interesting and I'll try to post something on the text and Manchu shamanism.
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guyome
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Re: Guyome's log

Postby guyome » Thu Apr 08, 2021 4:47 pm

I haven't posted in a long time but I've been spending a lot of my time on languages, just not always on the type of things I post about here.

Latin
For roughly the last ten days, I've been reading translations of Syriac works. Mainly lives of saints of holy men but also some metrical homilies by Isaac of Antioch and bits of Bar Hebraeus' Chronicon. I really like this early phase of getting familiar with an entire field. Before that, all I know about the Syriac world was scattered bits of information: some vague notions about the Mia(Mono-)physitism/Nestorianism/Chalcedon theological quarrel, a bit more about the Nestorian Church in China, and a couple of names (Ephrem the Syrian). Organising all this and gaining new knowledge about the chronology, the people, and the places feels good.

Syriac
All this reading in Latin inevitably led me to dabble in Syriac. I doubt I'll get very far before running out of steam but I enjoy it a lot so far. The alphabet is not really a problem when you already know the Hebrew/Perso-Arabic versions and Yiddish has brought me a not too shabby knowledge of many Semitic roots and grammatical features.

Occitan
Yesterday I started reading Lison, a novel written in the early 1930s by Clardeluna (aka Jeanne Barthès, 1898-1972). The book was published after her death.
I'm only 30 pages in but I like it so far.
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Re: Guyome's log

Postby guyome » Wed Jun 02, 2021 9:24 am

Ladino
A letter sent in 1943 by Albert Kabili to his brother Nessim. You can see scans on the Yad Vashem website, together with the following background information:
In January 1943, 40 Jews from Kavala, Greece, were deported to Bulgaria for forced labor. In March 1943 Jews were deported from all over Macedonia to Gorna Dzhumaya, Bulgaria, in preparation for their transfer to Poland. Albert Kabili was among the deportees; he wrote to his brother, who was in the Belitsa camp at that time, "Now you should know, Nessim, that they are transferring us to concentration camps without food and with nothing... they give us just 300 grams of bread a day and Ciorbă (soup)."

Notes from Yaakov Ramot Kabili who submitted the material:

Nessim Kabili was born in Kavala, Greece, in 1920; he was the only member of his family who survived. His parents, Yaakov and Dudu Kabili, and all his siblings, Albert, Daniel, Yisrael and Rachel, perished. Nessim was the first to be deported to Belitsa, a labor camp in Bulgaria, and the rest of his family was deported to Treblinka with the Jews of Kavala, March 1943.
My reading of the bolded part differs. The verb clearly seems to be tener here. If correct, then there is no "transferring us to" but "keeping/holding us in".

The Ladino is written in latin script, with some French influence on the spelling ("ou", "Jacquo"). The "ch" sound is represented by "ts"; I don't know if this reflects dialectal variation. Place names (and one family name) are written in Cyrillic.
At the start of the letter, a Cyrillic "d" seems to have found its way into the word "todos", resulting in a spelling looking like "togos". The same thing happened in the word "tsorba", where Cyrillic/Greek "r" was written before being corrected to Latin "r".

Image

There are also two words in Cyrillic (or Greek?) I can't read in the middle of page 1. Maybe someone here will be able to. Yad Vashem translates them as "concentration camps" but I am not convinced this is correct. As mentioned above, the sentence seem to be about the place Albert was in at the moment he wrote, not the place they were going to and, as far as I know, Gorna Dzhumaya was a transit camp not a concentration camp. Of course, that's not a bulletproof argument, Albert Kabili might well have used the words "concentration camp" for Gorna Dzhumaya anyway.

Imageστρατ..δα συγμεντρω..ς? бчрач..ба бу...? The Greek seems more promising to me.

Here are my transcription and translation of the letter:
(page 1)
Горна Джумаия 17-3-43
Por muestro caro ermano
Nessim

Sepas Nessim que toдos ya estamos boenos
de la saloud. lo esteso rogamos i por
vosotros yo ya arevi de Радуй i
me encontre con todos en Горна Джума[ия]
Non te escrivimos mas presto porque non
savemos coando vamos a partir cada
pounto i ora mos disin que mos apron-
temos por largo viage.
Agora sepas Nessim que mos tien[en?]
en ??? ??? sin pan
i sin nada penando moutso por
pan i por otras cosas nos dan solo
300 grames di pan al dia i tsorba
non mos dechan mercar nada.

(page 2)
Si vas avenir a encontrarmos
Nessim reservate de pan i de
otras cosas coualo tienes de
paras mercate de cosas de comer

Si es ceestas [=ke estas?] con Jacquo Бар-
леа dile que estamos en ?nouna? [=en una?]
con la familla soua i que fage
lo mesmo que vas a faser
tou.
Mas non tengo nada que te
escriva te bezamos i te
abrasamos todos en general
[signature]

Nessim mezor que non vos alvante[sh]
de ai que estach
Alber

(page 3)
Dales saloudes i a Samouel Levi
i dile que ya estan todos boenos
que non se secleen por eyos
(page 1)
Gorna Dzhumaya March 17, 1943
To our dear brother
Nessim,

Nessim, you should know that we are all
in good health, we ask the same for you all
also. I arrived from Radui and
I met with everybody in Gorna Dzhuma[ya].
We did not write to you sooner because we
don't know when we will leave. At every
moment they tell us to get ready
for a long trip.
Now you should know, Nessim, that they keep us
in ??? without bread
and without anything, suffering a lot about
bread and other things. They only give us
300 grams of bread each day and soup.
They don't let us buy anything.

(page 2)
If you're going to come to meet with us,
Nessim, get yourself a supply of bread and of
other things, buy provisions for as much money
as you have.

If it is the case that you are with Jacquo Bar-
lea, tell him that we are together
with his family and that he should do
the same as you are going to do
yourself.
I don't have anything else to
write you, all of us kiss you and
hug you.
[signature]

Nessim, better that you all do not move
from where you are.
Alber

(page 3)
Greet also Samuel Levi
and tell him that everybody is doing fine
and that they should not worry about them.
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Re: Guyome's log

Postby guyome » Wed Jun 02, 2021 7:08 pm

Some googling with the bits of Greek I tentatively read lead me to στρατόπεδα συγκέντρωσης "concentration camps" (the accent on συγκέντρωσης is different in the letter). The sentence thus reads:
Agora sepas Nessim que mos tien[en?] en στρατόπεδα συγκεντρώσης sin pan i sin nada penando moutso por pan i por otras cosas
Now you should know, Nessim, that they are detaining us in concentration camps without bread and without anything, suffering a lot about bread and other things.

Some more googling also explained Kabili's use of -ts- where Ladino words have a /tʃ/ sound. It seems probable that Albert Kabili was influenced by Greek spelling conventions, where -τσ- is used to render /tʃ/, a sound which doesn't exist in Modern Greek (except in Cypriot Greek I am told). Hence Τσέστερ for Chester, γκασπάτσο for gazpacho, or Τσετσενία for Chechnya.
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Re: Guyome's log

Postby guyome » Thu Jul 29, 2021 8:45 am

Manchu

I have been spending some time reading texts taken from the 清朝前期理藩院满蒙文题本, a huge collection of Qing dynasty Manchu memorials on Mongolian affairs. Mongolia under Manchu rule was divided into Inner and Outer Mongolia, the latter enjoying more autonomy, while the former was more directly administered by the Qing dynasty. The difference left its mark on today's maps, since Inner Mongolia is now part of China and Outer Mongolia fell under Soviet influence in the early 20th c. and is now an independant country. As is the case with Tibet, Xinjiang and Manchuria, China today would look very different if it were not for the Manchus.

The memorials in the collection all come from Inner Mongolia, as far as I can see, and deal with various matters. Some are concerned with official business (awarding ranks to the sons of deceased, high-ranking Mongolians, congratulating the emperor on various occasions, etc.) but the bulk of the collection (80-90%?) is made of reports on criminal matters. Most of these are concerned with horse-stealing, apparently a popular occupation, but there is also a decent(!) number of murders and a sprinkling of other cases.

The collection is massive, with more than 20 volumes, around 15000 pages, and all in all something like 1200-1500 memorials. The vast majority of these were written during the reign of the Qianlong emperor (1711-1799, r. 1735-1796) and I guess you could get a pretty detailed picture of 18th c. Mongolian crime life if you read them all.

I'll probably post more about these texts, their structure and contents, so for now here is the main bit of a rather gruesome murder case. The legal machinery was set into motion when a man named Sang reported that:
ini jui Lamajab be. Sosa waliyabuha ihan be baime gaju seme ere biyai ice de gamafi jihekū. jai mini sargan. meni tubade tehe emu lama i sasa ice juwe de gaitai arun durun akū ukaka. mini beye yasa akū baicarao

"On the 1st day of this month, [my] son Lamajab obeyed Sosa who had told him to find back a cow that he [Sosa] had lost. He [Lamajab] did not come back. And on the 2nd day, my wife suddenly ran away with a lama living at our place, without leaving a trace. I have no eyes, please, investigate the matter."
Mini beye yasa akū baicarao: since Manchu has a word for "blind" I suspect this is just a way of saying "I don't have the ability to look around for them, please, do it it for me". If this is the case, I guess more reading will bring prarallels. The text shifts from indirect speech (ini jui Lamajab be, "His son Lamajab...", but soon shifts to direct speech.

The lama, Sosa, and the wife were later apprehended. Here is the lama's deposition:
bi daci taiji Sang ni boode tehe. amala bi uthai sang ni sargan de hebei latuha bihe. ini jui Lamajab. mini beye ini eme i emgi latuha be serefi. mimbe booci bašame tucibuki sehe turgunde. bi seyeme gūnifi abkai wehiyehe i juwan ningguci aniya uyun biyade. bi Sosa i emgi acafi ini waliyabuha ihan be baime genere kanagan de. taiji Lamajab be butui bade argadame gamafi. Sosa minde hūsun aisilame bi mukšan mooi Lamajab be tantame bucebuhe. Lamajab i giran be bigan de waliyaha. amasi jifi bi Sang ni sargan de alarangge. sini jui be bi tantame waha. uttu ofi ubade teci ojorakū oho. si mimbe dahalame gūwa bade genefi jirgaki serede. Sang ni sargan uthai mimbe dahalame gūwa bade genefi tehe. Lamajab be waki sere babe umai Sang ni sargan de hebešeme alahakūngge yargiyan

"Formerly, I was living in taiji Sang's house. At some point, I was having an affair with Sang's wife. His son Lamajab found out that I was having an affair with his mother and wanted to kick me out of the house. Because of this, I hated him. In October-November 1751, I came together with Sosa and, using the search for his lost cow as a pretext, we lured taiji Lamajab to a hidden place. With Sosa's help, I hit Lamajab with a wooden stick and killed him. We left his body in the wilderness.
I went back and informed Sang's wife: 'I have hit your son and killed him. Because of this, it has become impossible for me to live here. Follow me, we will go somewhere else and live the good life'. At this, Sang's wife followed me and we settled somewhere else.
Me wanting to kill Lamajab is not something I discussed with Sang's wife at all. It is true."
I take taiji as a title here, not a name.
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Re: Guyome's log

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Thu Jul 29, 2021 4:42 pm

Charming story. ;) Thanks.
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Re: Guyome's log

Postby Le Baron » Thu Jul 29, 2021 5:35 pm

guyome wrote:
I went back and informed Sang's wife: 'I have hit your son and killed him. Because of this, it has become impossible for me to live here. Follow me, we will go somewhere else and live the good life'. At this, Sang's wife followed me and we settled somewhere else.

That easy! No maternal instincts. Then again it would have been rather awkward to have to explain all this to the father. Qing Dynasty Jerry Springer Show.
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Re: Guyome's log

Postby guyome » Thu Jul 29, 2021 8:22 pm

Thanks for stopping by!

Yes, it's the mother's reaction that stuck out to me. In her short deposition, she just repeats what lama Jamsu had said (he came, informed her and they left together). Granted this is probably not the exact way she expressed it then (these memorials no doubt offer a rather streamlined version of actual confessions) but if she had said something akin to grief or regret, I guess it would have been reported.

The murderer being a religious person can seem surprising at first but monks made up a very large percentage of the Mongolian male population (1/3 at the beginning of the 20th c.; not sure about the 18th c.) and being a "monk" did not mean that much in terms of religious life. Still, his monkhood is mentioned as an aggravating circumstance in the memorial and he ends up being condemned to death.
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Re: Guyome's log

Postby guyome » Sat Jul 31, 2021 11:26 am

Manchu
Still taken from the 清朝前期理藩院满蒙文题本. The confession of Bandi, ex-monk turned into (a not so successful) camel- and horse-robber:
buya niyalma ere aniya orin ilan se. Alašan cin wang ni harangga niyalma. mini boode minci tulgiyen. jai umai niyamangga akū. buya niyalma daci lama bihe. amala cisui sahaliyan etuku etuhe. inu sargan gaihakū. neneme abkai wehiyehe i gūsici aniya jakūn biyade. Sampil i emu temen Tebke i bade bifi. mini emhun hūlhaha. umai hoki akū. Sampil safi mimbe amcame jihede. buya niyalma uthai temen be waliyafi jailaha. geli abkai wehiyehe i orin nadaci aniya bolori forgon de Sainbayar i temen Bumbutu i bade adularade. buya niyalma terei adun i dolo emu sahaliyan geo temen i deberen be hūlhafi. Ice Hoton de gamafi sunja yan menggun de emu jugūn yabure takarakū lama de uncaha. geli abkai wehiyehe i gūsici aniya uyun biyade. Ūgedusun i cabdara ajirgan morin emke. ajige Tebke alin mangkan i bade siderilehebi. buya niyalma emhun. niyalma akū be sabufi. uthai morin i sideri be sufi hūlhame yalufi feksihe. gūnihakū tarbahi i feye de šungkufi. morin ci tuhefi morin absi feksihe be sarkūngge yargiyan

I am 23 years old this year. I am a subject of the Alashan prince. Except myself, there are no relative in my house. Formerly, I was a monk. Later I took black clothes on my own. I am not married yet.
Back in September-October 1765, there was a camel in Tebke belonging to Sampil and I stole it on my own. I had no accomplice. When Sampil saw me and chased me, I left the camel and fled.
Also, in the autumn of the year 1762, while the camels belonging to Sainbayar were grazing in Bumbutu, I stole a young black female camel from his herd, took it to Ice Hoton and sold it for five silver ounces to a traveling monk I didn't know.
Also, in October-November 1765, a brown male horse belonging to Ūgedusun was tied up in a small dune of the Tebke mountain. I was on my own and saw that no one was there, so I untied the horse, stole it and rode away quickly. I unexpectedly tripped on a marmot's burrow, fell from the horse and the horse run away I don't know where.
This is true.

abkai wehiyehe i gūsici aniya uyun biyade. Bayan. Nomtu juwe niyalmai emgi yabume. buya niyalma Ning Hiya hoton i tule ulhū tenggin i dalbai amba jugūn de jing giohošome yabure de. ce mimbe sabufi jafaki serede. buya niyalma jailame jabdurakū ofi. julesi ibefi Bayan i temen ebubure šolo de. Bayan beyei amala ci ini ashaha huwesi be durifi. ini hashū gala be huwesilefi. geli etuku nisihai hefeli de tokoro jakade. Bayan na de tuheke. ede bi uthai jailame ukaka. huwesi aibide waliyaha be sarkū. sirame gūsin emuci aniya ilan biyade. Cagasi i bade mimbe jafahabi

In October-November 1765, Bayan and Nomtu were on the road together and I was walking along the reed lake outside of Ningxia, on the main road, begging. When they saw me and wanted to catch me, I had no time to run away and I went towards them. While Bayan was lowering his camel, I snatched the knife he had behind him and pierced his left hand. Then I stabbed him in the belly, through his clothes, and he fell to the ground. At this, I fled. I don't know where I have left the knife. Later, in February-March 1766, they caught me in Cagasi.

"Black clothes" is not to be taken literally here. It means "layman clothes", as opposed to the monk's garments he would have worn until then. Yellow is the religious color because the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism (aka "the yellow hats") is the main Buddhist movement in Mongolia. Black is used in contrast because people who are not monks are allowed to grow their hair and consequently have "black heads". For instance, in a Buddhist context in Manchu, sahaliyan/kara urse lit. "black people" > "the people (as opposed to monks)".

Ice Hoton, "New City" in Manchu, probably refers to the garrison-city of Suiyuan, built by the Manchus during the 1730s. Together with Guihua, it formed a twin-city which is now Hohhot (Köke Khota "Blue City") in Inner Mongolia.

A map with the three main places mentioned above: Alashan, Ice Hoton/Hohhot, and Ningxia. I couldn't find the smaller ones (Cagasi, Bumbutu,Tebke mountain) but I'll have a look using Qing Maps and will update if necessary.

Image
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Re: Guyome's log

Postby cjareck » Sun Aug 01, 2021 8:02 am

You may find the GeoNames website helpful. It allows looking at the geographical names using alternative or historical names also. I've been using it with a lot of success in my researches about Arab-Israeli wars.
There is also an excellent site Vlasenko Maps, but you have to know Cyrillic script to read them.
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