Worlds of English

If there is a contract of sale between Americans n the Japs,
the subject matter of the sale
better be the same in both languages.





David

Yes, but if something is translated literally, it will not make a lot of sense.

Thanks for this thead, Flutterby . . . it is not only very interesting, and it is stimulating too.

Sixteen hundred years ago, Latin was the language of an empire which embraced most of Europe south of Scandanavia, and which included Britain. But 1600 years ago, the imperial authority in the west was crumbling, and one consequence was the rise of new languages from the vernaculars. Some are obvious--Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian--and some are not so obvious, such as Catalan and Occitan. Occitan is almost dead, but Catalan is alive and well in Catalonia and the Balearic Islands. The splintering of languages is an on-going process, just as the growth of languages is an on-going process. Our neighbors on one side until quite recently were Italians. The father of the family was Scicilian, and the mother Calabrian. Their son who lived with them explained to me that he spoke three other langauges in addition to English--Italian, Calabrese and Scicilian. It makes me wonder if Romagna, Ligurian and Tuscan, as well as others, are as distinct. (It is worth noting that Tuscan, usually known to modern, well-educacted people as Etruscan, is an older language than Latin, at least in terms of literacy.)

There was also a lingua franca of northern Europe beyond the pale of Latin, and that was Frisian, now known as Old Frisian. The Frisians, the Picts and the Irish (known as Scots, for reasons i won't go into here) were the sea-going traders of the North Sea, the North Atlantic and the western Baltic, and Frisian became their lingua franca because it was comprehensible throughout that region. The people who learned Frisian learned it for economic reasons, much as English spreads today for economic reasons. (The vid about Singlish emphasizes this with the insistance of the government of Singapore on promoting standard English.)

Frisian was no imperial language as Latin was, and while several languages were heavily influenced by Frisian (especially English and Scots), Frisian itself was influenced by the languages of the people with whom the Frisians, Picts and Scots traded--the Svear (Swedes), Goths (also Swedes in our modern understanding), the Norge (Norwegians as we would say), the Danes, the Jutes (related to both the Danes and the Angeln) and Geats (we would call them Danes) all spoke dialects of Norse or of Old German, which were mutually comprehensible. The closest affinities were between English, Scots and Old Frisian--"Butter, bread, and green cheese is good English and good Frise," from English is "Bûter, brea, en griene tsiis is goed Ingelsk en goed Frysk" in Frisian. The use of the letters thorn (Þ, þ), wynn (Ƿ ƿ) and ash (æsc in Old English, and literally meaning the ash tree, possibly from its runic origin; it was rendered as Æ, æ) was common to Frisian, English and Norse, the latter meaning that it was used by the Norse, the Swedes/Goths and the Danes/Geats/Jutes. Even Old English--Anglo-Saxon--blended Frisian with the languages of the Saxons and the Angeln (to whom we historically refer as the Angles). In the world of the North Sea and the Baltic 1600 years ago, most of the distinctions didn't involve much of a difference.

Of course, that melding of languages has no meaning for modern English. It is interesting only for noting how political influences (Latin) and commercial influences (Frisian) can have a profound influence on languages. But one of the mistakes people so often make with history is in thinking that it is reliably predictive--it is not. No two eras in history are ever identical, and most eras--without even considering the differences arising from place and culture--are ever identical in detail, and in fact vary radically due to detail. The Romance languages which arose from the development of Latinate vernaculars did so in a time when there was no internest, no radio, no television, no texting--mere distance and geographical obstacles dissevered those dialects until they became separate languages. Latin became the lingua franca of literate Europeans because of the Church--no such condition obtains with contemporary English.

I think we live in exciting times, and English is a large part of that.

Your example does not prove your point.
If someone said: "I have hunger" his meaning is fully clear,
the same as if he said: "I have pain" or "I have contentment."





David

My example is from two linked languages and is off the top of my head. What about Lapin Chaud? Literally it means hot rabbit, but it actually refers to a sexually active, attractive woman.

Mandarin became in a sense, the Latin of China. People who could speak Mandarin could speak to any other literate person in China. The written langauge is Mandarin or classical Chinese, and anyone who can read modern Mandarin can read the Mandarin of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, written in the 14th century. Most modern English speakers could not read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight written in 14th century English, but that's misleading, because in the 14th century, Latin was the European equivalent of Mandarin.

The Japanese used Mandarin characters when they became literate about 1900 or 1950 years ago, and it was long their only means of writing. They didn't write the Japanese language with Mandarin characters, they translated their language into Mandarin and then wrote it down--this is kanji. Very quickly, though, the Japanese began to alter the use of the classical Chinese writing to reflect their own grammar and syntax. Since that time, although there are several minor variants, there have arisen three forms of writing--kanji, the adaptation of classical Chinese writing and kana, which used kanji to reproduce the sounds of the Japanese language rather than just using the Chinese symbols as cognates for the Japanese words. Kana has two forms, but i don't recall their specific names or the distinctions between them and kanji, although i believe that the two main forms are phonetic scripts for reproducing the sound of the Japanese language.

It was considered a very high art form in Japan for a millennium or more after they adopted classical Chinese writing to compose poetry on Japanese forms in the Chinese language. International relations being what they are, Japanese accounts tell us that Chinese diplomats or merchants invariably looked down upon Japanese poetic efforts. What is arguably the world's oldest novel (and there is a good deal of argument) is Genji Monogatari, The Tale of Genji, by Murasaki Shikibu, a Japanese noblewoman living in the early 11th century. This makes it older than The Romance of the Three Kingdoms by more than three hundred years. Murasaki is a nickname and it is used in the novel--her real name is not known for certain, but the majority opinion is that she was Fujiwara Takako, for whom there is a written record that she was a lady in waiting at the Imperial court in the early 11th century. In Japanese, the clan name is given first (the equivalent of calling John Smith, Smith John), and the Fujiwara were an ancient and respected clan, considered highly cultured. Fujiwara Takako's father was famed as a writer of Japanese poetry in Chinrese. However, Lady Murasaki (as she is known, whatever her real name was) wrote this "novel" in Japanese, using Kanji.

The Koreans, too, had long used the classical Chinese writing. They also developed three major and several minor versions of classical Chinese writing to depict their languaga, and many scholars believe that the Japanese imitated the Koreans in this--the Japanese do not necessarily agree. However, late in his reign in the 15th century, King Sejong of Korea invented an alphabetic system of writing for Korean. Speaking from my own experience, that made it a hell of a lot easier for me to learn Korean, and to read signs in public. I could at least get a decent meal, and go into a bus or train station and read the schedule boards. The few times i visited Japan, i was reduced to the miserable necessity of finding a Japanese sufficientlyproficient in English to explain things to me.

A better example might be chercher midi à quatorze heures. Translate it literally and it means to look for noon at two o'clock. Let's see if David can come up with the proper way to translate that into English.

My daughter has pretty much confirmed that. She, had no such problems, being able to speak Japanese fairly proficiently when she was only 17. At least that's what she tells me, it was a college trip, so I stayed in the UK.

I don 't deny your general principle,
but the translation shud be kept as literal as possible.

Trial attorneys have observed dialogues
between witness n translator, thru multiple cycles.
Sometimes, we have understood the alien language
and know the explanations that r going on
and even the translator suggesting how the witness
can express it better. That is egregiously intolerable
to the conduct of litigation, which requires precise
analysis of a witness's expression; that 's how it works.





David

I 'm still contemplating how obtuse I was
to reply to someone who goes out of his way
to be so unpleasant a person with whom to converse,
the ubiquity of whose malice is chronic.

Setanta was correct in that I WAS obtuse in opting to address him.
I already KNOW what to expect from approaching him:
"lay down with dogs and get up with fleas" thay used to say
(not to imply that Setanta is a dog; whether he has fleas remains uncertain).

I ask myself: "is it worth it?"





David

That's hilarious in view of how frequently you get vicious with me. Liar. Hypocrite.

Nothing that I have said was knowingly false; therefore, the allegation of mendacity is false.

I believe everything that I have said; therefore, I am not a hypocrit.





David

You misspelled hypocrite.

This, though, was hilarious:



So, essentially, your thesis is that being delusional absolves one of hypocrisy? I don't for a moment believe that bullshit you've peddled in the past about running home in tears after the "commie next door" told you about the Sullivan Act, not if you were three, or four, or five, or whatever other story you've made up. In my mind, that makes you a liar.

Hiragana and Katakana - both are used to represent the sounds of Japanese.

Most of Kanji used in Japan have borrowed from Chinese characters. In 1946 Japanese government carried out a reform of its writing system, in which 1850 Kanji were stipulated as Currently Used Chinese Characters. But Japan itself also invented about a hundred special Kanji similar to CC, which are different to the simplified Chinese characters popular in Mainland China.

Japanese writing system is mainly composed of hiragana and katakana and Kanji. For example (Click the link of a news from yomiuri):

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/politics/news/20120104-OYT1T00444.htm?from=main5

The kanji 橋下市長, 面従腹背, 当然 etc are the same as Chinese characters, but は is a hiragana unknown to most of Chinese people.

I am not sure what you're saying, Dave.

If you referred to the Chinese language of Three Kingdoms, I'd say it is not so easy for most Chinese people to well understand the book literally, because the book was written more than 600 years ago (Moss Roberts translated it into English) in half-ancient Chinese (of course its stories are familar to almost all Chinese).

Everywhere thru out America,
written English is recognized and understood.

Is it similarly true that thru out China
its written language is recognized and understood??

I 've heard (from Chinese) that the spoken languages of China
are not understandable from one region to another.





David

Yes, I am from China. Due to the lack of English environment, learning English is not so easy in China. Although we spend a lot of time learning English, we could not speak it out smoothly. However, most of studtents still learn it hard. If one can speak English, she or he can find a jot easily. That's why.

I wish u good luck in your use of English.
Are you in China now ?





David

Written Chinese is recognized and understood in almost all of China, but I suspect in some regions of Xinjiang and Tibet, it might be a problem. I believe you know why.

As for spoken Chinese (Mandarin or Putonghua) , I've asked several Chinese doctors to tell whether they have encountered Mandarin-ignorant people in some city, county or town when in travel or on errand with whom they failed to chat about. They told me in some rural areas in Guangdong or Zhejiang, Mandarin is not understood. Almost every city or county in China, except some districts of Xinjiang or Tibet, Putonghua is the best tool for communication.