| In the beginning, there were no words. |
[Nov. 17th, 2003|03:08 pm] |
And so begins the life of a new journal, a place for me to write and keep virtual notes and link and muse and maybe even discuss.
About this and that, culture, dialects, discourse, grammar (and Grammar), -isms, -istics and -logies, language, literature, sounds, speech: this and that. |
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| Lardil |
[Nov. 17th, 2003|03:15 pm] |
There's a short article on the MIT Tech about Lardil, an aboriginal language spoken (though increasingly less so) off the coast of Australia, and about ongoing efforts to revitalize it led by Norvin Richards of the MIT Linguistics Department. Richards, a student of the late Kenneth Hale (who did substantial work documenting Lardil in the 60s), has also written about the "radical changes" the language has undergone in the last 30 years, owing presumably more to the lack of native speakers to pass the language along than to the effects of the extended use of English.
Read the entire article here. |
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| Anjela Duval |
[Nov. 17th, 2003|03:40 pm] |
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Here's a nicely designed (and trilingual) site dedicated to the complete poetry of Anjela Duval, a Breton poet who began writing at the age of 55 in the vernacular of Brittany and left us with over 515 texts (92 of which have been translated to English and are included). Also of interest is the link to Anjela Duval, a Breton peasant-writer, which briefly documents the state and decay of Breton throughout the XX century, at the time Duval chose to write her poetry. |
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| Hidalgo |
[Nov. 17th, 2003|03:41 pm] |
En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, no ha mucho tiempo que vivía un hidalgo de los de lanza en astillero, adarga antigua, rocín flaco y galgo corredor.
That's Cervantes, of course, and that's how he introduces to us his famous mad nobleman in the opening lines of Don Quijote. The word Cervantes uses, hidalgo, though often rendered as nobleman in translation, has its own bit of contextual history, interesting and illuminating, which gets lost in the process.
Hidalgo, etymologically speaking, comes to us through hijodalgo, short for hijo de algo or offspring of something, quite literally. The noblemen thus known formed something close to a social class in Spain during several centuries, and there was a prolific taxonomic system denoting subclasses of nobility, often with very illustrating names which explicated the entitlement to the term. And so there were hidalgos primarios, to designate those who'd acquired their noble status during the Reconquest (the seven-hundred-year endeavor to regain the Iberian lands from under Muslim rule), and hidalgos secundarios, to designate those who gained the title in reconquered land. Although he title was inherited and transferred through blood lines, there were exceptions. One could become an hidalgo de privilegio by Royal decree, and joining the Army while in the throes of misery often represented the only escape route to guarantee a noble future (sounds familiar?).
Of all the picturesque names (the online dictionary of the Real Academia Española lists about 7 or 8 categories), my favorite is hidalgo de bragueta. Bragueta is the Spanish word for the zipper or fly of one's pants (not that I imagine pants had zippers back then), and this kind of nobility was bestowed upon males who, within the confines of legitimate marriage, had been able to father seven male offsprings in consecutive order. Children fathered outside the marriage did not count toward (or against) the tally. So as long as the lawful wedded wives, some of whom I suppose must have lived in a perpetual state of pregnancy (not that that situation would have been unusual for the times), bred male offsprings, the race was still on. One can only imagine the kind of accursed life that a young girl with six older male siblings and a poor family with hopes for a tax-free future (for that was part of the noble benefits package) could have had in that kind of social environment.
The nobility of one's loose pants.
I read the first part of Don Quijote years ago, but the second part has languished on the shelf gathering dust for too long. I've decided it's time to correct that. |
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| Well, duh, y'all. |
[Nov. 17th, 2003|03:50 pm] |
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Somewhat amusing AP blurb about the not particularly surprising inability of speech recognizers to cope with Southern drawls: Southern drawls don't compute. I'm awfully curious to find out more about the technology they're using. I would get such a hearty laugh if they had been trained with speakers from Brooklyn or New England. |
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| Words that'll kill you |
[Nov. 17th, 2003|10:00 pm] |
It is reported that the last words uttered by William Barton Rogers, founder of MIT, were bituminous coal. Rogers was apparently delivering a talk to the graduating class of 1882, when, upon reaching those fateful words, died in mid sentence.
I can't help but wonder if Mark Twain ever commented on the incident. |
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cannylinguist's journal