[Multilingual Monday] Of Linguistic Interest
Damn it, the project is taking longer to finish than I thought. Bad Regev, no cookie.
In the meantime, things that have piqued my interest:
From a friend of mine on Google+, he managed to find the one person to take a Eurovision entry and make ASL lyrics -- not that ASL's really USED in Europe, but we'll ignore that. :: laugh :: While there are plenty of ASL music translations, this one actually features a literal translation in captions, and this man's translation is very non-literal and somewhat liberal in places, in order to create a better ASL rhythm and rhyme scheme (yes, both of these exist in sign language!).
A friend of mine on Facebook, meanwhile, learning the Cherokee language (since he is, himself, Cherokee) stumbled across this Cherokee-language tombstone. I admit, though I can make the syllables out, I can't read the tombstone outside of a word here or there. My Cherokee studies fell by the wayside, but this tombstone, ironically, may bring new life to it yet.
Meanwhile, urso is halfway around the world in Yeosu for the World Expo. To prepare for being in Korea he at least took it upon himself to learn Hangul, but several non-Korean words threw him. For example, he stumbled on 샬롬 at the Israeli pavilion, and it took him a bit to realise that the word was a transliteration of שלום, shalom. He could read most of the country names, since they were all imported and transliterated into the Korean script, but he asked me a few days ago, "I give up. WHY is Germany 독일 (dogil) in Korean???" The answer -- one I give all too frequently -- is "blame Japan". The characters used to represent doitsu (as close as one can get reasonably to "Deutsch") is 獨逸, but these same characters, using Korean readings, sound out dogil. This kanji form is seen rarely (and usually the first character uses the more simple 独), but artifacts of this can be seen in such names as 獨協大学, Dokkyo University. The first two characters here stand for the longer 獨逸學協會, Doitsugaku Kyōkai, "German Language Studies Society."
In the meantime, things that have piqued my interest:
Click to viewFrom a friend of mine on Google+, he managed to find the one person to take a Eurovision entry and make ASL lyrics -- not that ASL's really USED in Europe, but we'll ignore that. :: laugh :: While there are plenty of ASL music translations, this one actually features a literal translation in captions, and this man's translation is very non-literal and somewhat liberal in places, in order to create a better ASL rhythm and rhyme scheme (yes, both of these exist in sign language!).
A friend of mine on Facebook, meanwhile, learning the Cherokee language (since he is, himself, Cherokee) stumbled across this Cherokee-language tombstone. I admit, though I can make the syllables out, I can't read the tombstone outside of a word here or there. My Cherokee studies fell by the wayside, but this tombstone, ironically, may bring new life to it yet.
Meanwhile, urso is halfway around the world in Yeosu for the World Expo. To prepare for being in Korea he at least took it upon himself to learn Hangul, but several non-Korean words threw him. For example, he stumbled on 샬롬 at the Israeli pavilion, and it took him a bit to realise that the word was a transliteration of שלום, shalom. He could read most of the country names, since they were all imported and transliterated into the Korean script, but he asked me a few days ago, "I give up. WHY is Germany 독일 (dogil) in Korean???" The answer -- one I give all too frequently -- is "blame Japan". The characters used to represent doitsu (as close as one can get reasonably to "Deutsch") is 獨逸, but these same characters, using Korean readings, sound out dogil. This kanji form is seen rarely (and usually the first character uses the more simple 独), but artifacts of this can be seen in such names as 獨協大学, Dokkyo University. The first two characters here stand for the longer 獨逸學協會, Doitsugaku Kyōkai, "German Language Studies Society."