Bla bla bla

[nooj]

My signature has two lines from the poet Sohrab Sepehri:

زندگی جیره ی مختصری است
مثل یک فنجان چای
وکنارش عشق است
مثل یک حبه قند
زندگی را با عشق
نوش جان باید کرد

Life is a little portion
Like a cup of tea
And by its side, there is love
Like a cube of sugar
You should imbibe life with love

The last line is nush-e jān bāyad kard 'one must relish it, enjoy it'.

نوش جان nush-e jān is a fantastic little phrase that Persian speakers say to each other to wish someone to enjoy their food, like bon appétit. It means literally nectar (i.e. nourishment) of the soul, jān.

Now another funny story about my friend Negār. In Tehrani Persian, long ā undergoes a pretty regular change to ū. So jān becomes jūn. Now this happens to be my name (in Korean), which makes Persian speakers laugh when I tell them my name. Also, jūn, which literally means soul, is appended to names of people who one is very friendly or intimate with. And in that context, it means 'dear, love'. So my friend would call me...jūn-jūn, dearest Jūn!

[nooj]

I've mentioned before that I learned Ancient Greek in order to read Sappho. And it was not a lie. Some languages I cannot recall when I wanted to learn them. For Ancient Greek, I know the exact day and why.

I was in the high school Latin class. We were reading Catullus 51:

Ille mi par esse deo videtur,
ille, si fas est, superare divos,
qui sedens adversus identidem te
spectat et audit
dulce ridentem, misero quod omnes
eripit sensus mihi: nam simul te,
Lesbia, aspexi, nihil est super mi
<vocis in ore;>
lingua sed torpet, tenuis sub artus
flamma demanat, sonitu suopte
tintinant aures, gemina teguntur
lumina nocte.
otium, Catulle, tibi molestum est:
otio exsultas nimiumque gestis:
otium et reges prius et beatas
perdidit urbes.

Aside from the last stanza, which I must admit still goes over my head (what does it add to the poem I mean), I was immediately smitten, and when I was told that it was based on a poem of Sappho's, I knew I had to learn Greek in order to read the original. And so I did. When I went to university I signed myself up to an Ancient Greek course and that's how I got my major in Ancient Greek. Totally worth it!

Here is Sappho's poem, in her Aeolic Greek dialect, followed by my translation. In my courses, we were technically only taught Attic Greek, all the other dialects, we learned 'on the go' as we met them. For example, in plays when choruses would sing in Doric Greek, the professor would just say 'in Doric Greek, they do this and that'. There's probably a monograph out there dedicated entirely to other Greek dialects, Classicists have a lot of time on their hands.

It should be noted that the poem is not complete, as almost all of Sappho's poems have been transmitted in fragmentary form. But the way it fortuitously ends, after 2500 years of transmission, is also quite lovely. It ends on a hopeful (?) note.

Φάινεταί μοι κῆνος ἴσος θέοισιν
ἔμμεν’ ὤνερ, ὄττις ἐνάντιός τοι
ἰσδάνει καὶ πλασίον ἆδυ φωνεί-
σας ὐπακούει καὶ γελαίσας ἰμέροεν. τὸ μ’ ἦ μάν
καρδίαν ἐν στήθεσιν ἐπτόησεν,
ὢς γὰρ εἰσίδω βροχέως σε, φώνας
οὖδεν ἔτ᾽ ἴκει· ἀλλὰ κὰμ μὲν γλῶσσα ἔαγε, λέπτον
δ᾽ αὔτικα χρῷ πῦρ ὐπαδεδρόμακεν,
ὀππάτεσσι δ᾽ οὖδεν ὀρημ’, ἐπιρρόμ-
βεισι δ᾽ ἄκουαι. καδ δέ μ᾽ ἴδρως κακχέεται, τρόμος δὲ
παῖσαν ἄγρει χλωροτέρα δὲ ποίας
ἔμμι, τεθνάκην δ᾽ ὀλίγω ᾽πιδεύης
φαίνομαι· ἀλλὰ πᾶν τόλματον

He seems to me equal to the gods, that man there
Whoever he is, facing you, who listens
Sitting close in, to your sweet voice
And your beautiful laughter. It sends my heart shuddering.
For when I catch a glimpse of you.
there’s no voice left in me. My tongue is gone to pieces.
And thin flame is racing beneath flesh
Eyes see nothing, ears are roaring
Sweat drenched
Trembling takes me utterly
I’m greener than grass

I’m at the very edge of death
it seems. But all can be dared because…

The gender of the participles is also indicative, the person whom Sappho is watching, the person who is systematically dismantelling Sappho's body, is a woman: φωνείσας ὐπακούει καὶ γελαίσας 'he listens to you speaking and laughing'.

[nooj]

Here is a taste of some of that medieval South Indian poetry I was talking about. I believe in fact it was my Sanskrit professor who told me to look into them. Completely destroyed the prejudice I had that classical Indian literature was going to be musty and not contemporary, as befits 'The Classics'.

It might be taught that way in Indian schools and no wonder poor Indian kids get bored of Sanskrit. But there's a lot of passion in there as well. Maybe it's a general malaise in the Classics, I mean honestly if I was teaching Latin I would not use Caesar as a starting point into Latin literature, I remember I was bored out of mind as a kid reading him.

Now keep in mind I do not know Tamil (mea culpa, mea maxima culpa), but I put in the Tamil origina anywayl, the transliteration, and then an English translation by A. K. Ramanujan.

This is by the poet Nammāḻvār, a Vaishnava devotee, worshipper of Vishnu from his collection of verses called the Tiruvāymoḻi 'the holy word of mouth':

நாமவ னிவனுவன், அவளிவளுவளெவள்
தாமவரிவருவர், அதுவிது வுதுவெது
வீமவை யிவையுவை, யவைநலந் தீங்கவை
ஆமவை யாயவை, யாய்நின்ற அவரே (1.1.4)

nām avan ivan uvan
avaḷ ivaḷ uvaḷ evaḷ
tām avar ivar uvar
atu itu utu etu
vīm avai ivai uvai,
avai nalam, tīṅku avai
ām avai, āy-avai
āy niṇṟa avarē

We here and that man, this man,
and that other in-between,
and that woman, this woman,
and that other, whoever,

those people, and these,
and these others in-between,
this things, that thing,
and this other in-between, whichever,

all things dying, these things,
those things, those others in-between,
good things, bad things,
things that were, that will be,

being all of them,
he stands there.

Bhakti poetry reminds me in a lot of ways of Beguine poetry (i.e. Hadewijch). That is to say, divine love poetry. If I may paraphrase this lovely hymn that combines grammar with theology, the point is that God is us, him, her, them, it, near, far, past, present, future, good, bad, all. Just looking at the transliteration and the English translation, the English translation is decidedly wordier, whereas the Tamil is tight and efficient: ready to be sung.

Here is another one:

வாரிக் கொண் டுன்னை விழுங்குவன் காணில்’என்று
ஆர்வுற்ற என்னை யழியவென னில்முன்னம்
பாரித்து, தானென்னை முற்றப் பருகினான்,
காரொக்கும் காட்கரை யப்பன் கடியனே (9.6.10)

vārik koṇṭu uṉṉai vizhuṅuvan kāṉil enṟu
ārvuṟṟa ennai ozhiya ennil munnam
pārittu, tān ennai mu ṟṟap paruginān
kār okkum kāṭkarai appan kaṭiyanē

While I was waiting eagerly for him
saying to myself,
"If I see you anywhere
I'll gather you
and eat you up."

he beat me to it
and devoured me entire.

my lord as dark as raincloud.
my lord self-seeking and unfair.

[languist]

I've read through the first 4 or 5 pages of your log - and it's fascinating. Both your apparent linguistic journey/life, and the sheer amount and variety of languages you seem to have experience with? I'm sorry if the summary is already contained somewhere in this thread, but I have to ask - which languages can you speak, or have you studied? To what extent and why? I'm inspired and slightly intimidated (in a good way, I promise).

[nooj]

In traditional Basque culture, one says, gure aita, gure ama, 'our father, our mother', etc with members of the family when we actually mean 'my father, my mother'. This is also true of the house, gure etxea 'our house', when we mean 'my home'.

This is exactly how it works in Korean.

For example if someone asks me how my mother is doing, I would say 우리 어머니는 잘있어요, literally 'our mother is fine'. But I'm not talking about our mother shared between this other person and me! This person could be a total stranger. No, I mean OUR mother shared between members of my family And when someone asks me where our home is, I would talk about 우리집 (our house = home).

In Korean this goes further than in Basque, and the norm is to say things like 우리 나라 (our country = Korea), 우리 언어 (our language = Korean). In OUR language, we say this and that, in OUR country, we behave like this or that. My sister and I once had a conversation about this, and we think it is indicative of the communitarian nature of Korean culture.

I say it is the case in traditional Basque culture because as people are less beholden to their baserri (traditional home in rural area passed down from generation to generation), that conception has weakened, and people now freely say 'my father, my mother, my home'. I also posted before that Basque last names traditionally derive from the name of their house, evidence of this strong link between house and person.

A lexical happenstance shared between Korean and Basque is the word for stupid, idiot.

In Korean, we can say 바보 [babo], in Basque one can say babo as well.

Ez zaitez baboa izan! = Don't be an idiot.

I also noticed that in Basque, the word for God is Jaungoikoa. <jaun 'lord' + goikoa 'of above'. In Korean, aside from the more usually heard 하나님 < 하나 'one' + 님 'honorific, sir', you also have 하느님 < 하늘 'sky' + 님 'honorific, sir', something like Sir Heaven. This is not odd, I mean it makes sense for God to have something do with the sky, but I like looking at etymologies and it makes learning the vocabulary easier and fun as well.

[nooj]

I've read through the first 4 or 5 pages of your log - and it's fascinating. Both your apparent linguistic journey/life, and the sheer amount and variety of languages you seem to have experience with? I'm sorry if the summary is already contained somewhere in this thread, but I have to ask - which languages can you speak, or have you studied? To what extent and why? I'm inspired and slightly intimidated (in a good way, I promise).

Respectfully I think there are other loggers who have a much greater spread than me as most of my languages are Indo-European. And with greater spread often comes more shallow knowledge. A person who dedicates more time to one language will probably get better results than one who spreads it out over 5 or 6. That's a personal choice I've made and I'm at peace with it.

English is the only language I'm truly comfortable with in all aspects, all fields, all registers. Korean is a mother language and heritage language that I am recuperating. I say mother tongue because it was the only one I spoke until 5 and the only one my parents spoke to me and the only one they still speak to me in today. The challenges and also the easy parts of learning a heritage language, with respect to learning a foreign language, could fill a whole book! It's fascinating, fun and also wrapped up in a lot of emotions.

Classical languages are cheating because for most of them I only have to study reading and writing with no oral or aural component, except for Modern Standard Arabic. I studied Latin at high school. Ancient Greek and Sanskrit at university. Classical Arabic on my own.

I will write up a lengthier self reflection of my other languages later. But just to be clear when someone asks me what languages I speak, I say English. I guess I'm being deceptive, because I get 'but you're saying that to me in French right now...' to which I reply 'ah I'm learning French!'.

I would prefer to characterise myself as a monolingual person in spirit with some multilingual habits.

[Maiwenn]

In traditional Basque culture, one says, gure aita, gure ama, 'our father, our mother', etc with members of the family when we actually mean 'my father, my mother'. ...

Oh my goodness, the opposite of this in Morocco bewilders me. My partner and his siblings will be discussing their (shared) mother together and each will be saying أمي if in Darija or ma mère if in French. It always sounds to me like they're discussing different mothers or alleging that she is not the mother of the others.

Thank you for the insight into Basque and Korean. It's really interesting!

[nooj]

I am translating an article I read on Aizu!. Here is the original article.



The last words of Oaxaca

The town of Chontecomatlan has 400 inhabitants, and no one but don Hilarino has a phone with connection. He cannot communicate with anyone, as the signal does not reach up into these mountains, but he speaks into it ceaselessly, the telephone in his hand.

He guided the screen to a tree, he started recording, and he said some words:
-Ijltaa a ek guishanajl (this is an avocado tree)
He recorded next a house.
-Ijltaa ley nejujlk (This is my house).
He continued forward in the town.
-Ijltaa lane ajlbae jlijuala gahi (This road leads to the next town).

Don Hilarino Torres Mendoza, an agricultor of 56 years, with a straw hat, his beard starting to turn white (literally, starting to turn blue), is recording sentences of the Txontal language of Oaxaca. Txontal is one of the 68 languages that are used in Mexico, like many others, it is about to disappear: it has only 3,500 speakers, most of them are older than 50 years, and they are scattered across these mountains.

"He's an impressive man", says Salvador Galindo, expert at the Society for the Development of Indigenous Languages of Oaxaca. "In some towns, we are received with suspicion, when we arrive to collect testimonies and to propose plans to recuperate the languages. Don Hilarino however, he came to us straight away to show us a bunch of videos and to say that our visits made him very happy."

There was a problem however.

"He doesn't know how to use the the telephone well. When he was showing us a video, he later deleted it without wanting to. I wonder how much information he's lost, because he presses the wrong button or because he doesn't have enough memory in the phone."

Don Hilarino as a kid, suffered the systematic repression of his language. "What used to happen in that time? Well, the teachers forbade you to speak in Txontal, and us kids we stayed silent. I did learn Spanish, but I did not forget Txontal; The kids of today however don't know it, and the government does not give any help to save the language."

Galindo does what he can. He is Zapotec, he is 45 years old, with a broad face, messy black hair, with a smile that is at times melancholic and at other times ironic. Every year, he travels thousands of kilometres in his car in order to visit isolated towns. The mountains and forests of Oaxaca preserve a stunning cultural diversity: there are 19 ethnic groups (Zapotecs, Triques, Mixtecs, Chinantecs...), 15 indigenous languages are spoken, in dozens of dialects. The year before, he distributed CDs from town to town: recordings made of Txontal speakers in 1967 by the US linguist Paul Turner. He saw that there was an enormous regression that had happened. Today, there are very few people who are able to answer in Txontal the questions of half a century ago.

"We need to give renewed strength to the language, yes," says don Hilarino. "Even so, I think that it will disappear and for this very reason I record things on the phone: so that our words may be preserved some place."

The treasure of the Zapotecs

We went on for another 5 hours in the car, up and down the zig-zagging high ways of Sierra Juarez, to reach the small village of Yazatchi, in the Zapotec region.

"It's a ghost town" Galindo told me. And it's in this village that his mother lives.

We saw one old man on the streets of Yatzachi, no one else. Around150 inhabitants are said to live here now, because most of them have emigrated. There are more people from Yatzachi living in a suburb of Los Angeles than in Yatzachi itself.

The mother of Salvador lives in one of the rare adobe houses that are still standing: Rebeca Llaguno, a retired school teacher of 60 years, a small woman, lively, with long white hair tied up in a bun.

"Whenever I see someone on the street, I am very happy" she says. "There are still people in the town! I don't want to move to the city".

She sits Salvador and me in the kitchen. She gives us passion-fruit water, and she starts to prepare corn tortillas, beans and cheese.

"How do you pass your days?"

"I have chickens, I take out the weeds, I go to visit the neighbours who can't go out anymore to the road. Every Wednesday, a seller comes to the town; he brings us fruit, vegetables, coffee and things like that."

She brings us the tortillas, and she quickly goes into her bedroom. She brings us a gift: a small yellowing book from 1985. It is a handbook and alphabet made by Rebeca, with 5 other teachers and linguists, the foundation of a unified writing system.

When Rebeca was a child, the teachers imposed punishments on those students who spoke Zapotec. "We had to pay 50 centavos as a fine: that was the equivalent of one day's earning of our father. When we saw a teacher in the street, we ran away from him, just in case. They spoke to us in Spanish, but we sat there trembling, silent. And like that, we all became mute, little by little."

But not everyone. After saying goodbye, Rebeca asked me to take the alphabet, please, in order to show to the people.

[nooj]

From the Basque linguist Itziar Laka (whose work I use to better understand Basque!)

As a child, I always thought I would grow up to be the kind of biologist that goes to Africa to film wild animals. Either that, or a novelist. Becoming a linguist was not part of the landscape, since I had no notion then of what a linguist did. However, I grew up in a place and a time where language was a constant and relentless issue: the dictator Francisco Franco was alive, his regime in full force.

There were many stories that had language at their heart when I grew up, too many to tell here. There was for instance the story of how grandmother Damiana, my fathers mum, had spent a night in jail because she had been caught speaking Basque in the streets of Bilbao to an acquaintance who came from her village and could not speak Spanish. That night in jail left a mark that never went away. On my mother’s side, there were books hidden first, then burnt, forbidden books whose crime was the language they were written in.

Even my school was clandestine and forbidden, it did not have a fixed location. We left in the morning with a book and a folding chair, to the home of whoever’s turn it was. Then, for a week or so, the folding chairs would unfold in your living room and that would be school. I cannot thank enough the brave unassuming women who taught us. They were truly risking it all in their quiet, humble, daily work. It is hard to explain what it is like to have your language forbidden. It definitely makes you very aware of it.

Here she is talking about the very first ikastolak, at that time secret schools for teaching kids their subjects in Basque.

[nooj]

I was reading a book (in English) and I picked out some phrases and words that I wanted to know in Basque. I do this thought experiment everyday, where I go around and say 'how can I say this in Basque?'. I cannot recommend it enough. Then I can show them to a native speaker and see what I got wrong, what sounds unnatural etc. I make tons of mistakes, but that's fine, one learns that way. Here is my go, and I will post the native speaker correction after in another post, for comparison's sake:

They were convinced that I was a spy
Uste dute espioi nuela

He is out doing errands
Mandatuak egiten ari da.

Cairn
Harri pila 'a stone pile'

She avoided eye contact
Ez du nahi nire begiei begiratu 'she didn't want to look into my eyes'

Dung is precious
Gorotza baliotsua da

I picked up a round pebble
Harri-koskor biribil bat jaso dut.

Native speakers can almost never explain why it is said the way it is
Hiztun zaharrek ia beti ezin dute azaltzen zergatik hitz egiten den horrela.
i) Old speakers are almost never able to explain why it is said like that'.
Hiztun zaharrek ia beti ez dezakete azaldu arrazoiak esan dutena esateko.
ii) Old speakers can almost never explain the reasons of what they have said'.

The fire warmed my fingers
Suak berotu hatzei egin zizkidan.

The smell permeated my clothing
Usainak busti du zeharo nire arropa. 'the smell soaked through my clothing'

He sharpened the knife against the rock.
Labana harriarekin zorroztu du 'he sharpened the knife with the rock'
C.f. zorroztarri - the whetstone, from zorroztu 'to sharpen' + harri 'stone'.

He pulled on the hind leg and cut the artery without spilling a drop of blood
Atzeko hankarik tiratu zion eta arteria moztu odol tantarik isuri gabe

The sheep passed into a coma within seconds
Ardiari joan burua zaio berehala
'the head to the sheep went immediately'

The gallbladder contains poisonous bile and must not contaminate the meat
Behazun-besikulak behazun toxikoa darama, hortaz ez du kontaktu egin behar haragiarekin.

After uncoiling the intestines, he emptied them of the little balls of dung they contained. Then he washed them thoroughly and he hung up the guts to dry.
Hasteak desbiribilkatu ondoren, hartik kendu ditu barruan ziren gorotzazko bolatxoak. Guztia oso ondo garbitu du eta azkenean kanpoan eseki du lehortzeko.