Yesterday the Washington Post ran an article about a fascinating language-related development in, of all places, a police department.
In Nezahualcoyotl, a municipality on the outskirts of Mexico City, police supervisors have begun to translate great works of Spanish-language literature from Spanish ... into Cop Spanish. The idea originally came about when supervisors were bemoaning the lack of interest in the tutoring program they had established to help educate its officers, many of whom never even finished high school. At first, the program was the educational equivalent of pulling teeth. But then they got clever.
They decided to start incorporating local police code into the program. A regional chief translated Don Quixote, and, all of a sudden, there was a surge of interest in reading. Police officers began to ask for books. And by the time this article was researched, they were happily discussing One Hundred Years of Solitude - and participating in classes where phrases like "Destroy the narrative line!" were bandied about.
Read the full article here (registration may be required) - it's well worth it.
What particularly interests me about this story isn't, as you might think, the structure of Mexican Police Code, but rather the pedagogical strategy at work. Which is to say this: "Don't dumb it down; just make it accessible."
I mean, Don Quixote and One Hundred Years of Solitude aren't exactly pieces of proverbial cake. Hell, I don't think I could tell you what the hell even happened in One Hundred Years of Solitude - I remember a woman eating mud? Is that right?
The point is that these are gutsy choices. And the genius of it is that it sets a really important tone right from the start: "We think you're smart." So often I come across non-fiction that pretends to want to impart information but treats the reader as inferior right from the get-go. The tone in these cases is "I think I'm smarter than you, and I shall deign to acquaint you with my vast intelligence."
I'm thinking, of course, of language books. Specifically, books about advanced English usage. Even more specifically, a certain book that features pandas and punctuation.
While I thoroughly enjoyed Eats, Shoots, and Leaves, I was deeply unsettled by the tone. Although I'm sure it was exaggerated for comic effect, Truss's disdain for those unacquainted with proper punctuation really put me off. Because it seemed to me that she wasn't writing a book to instruct the uninitiated with regard to apostrophes, but rather that she was writing a book to instruct the initiated with regard to mocking the uninitiated.
And then, she complains that some people don't know any better - and, horror! - that these people don't know any better despite the presence of her book, which would obviously set them straight.
Well: duh. Who wants to read a book that belittles them? And let me say this: just because someone hasn't acquired a knack for commas doesn't mean that they're impossibly stupid. Jesus, people. I cringe at a punctuation error like many others, but that's because I work as a copyeditor. It is, from time to time, my job to cringe at punctuation errors. And if I see a sign that's been professionally error-ridden, I get mad, because one of my colleagues is out there doing a shitty job. But do I assume that just because someone slips an its/it's error into an email that they're somehow subhuman? No.
I have limited classroom experience, having formally taught in only two situations: last year I volunteered as a tutor, and during my brief stint in grad school, I was the TA in a course on Middle Eastern government and politics.
(Which was particularly absurd because I knew absolutely nothing about Middle Eastern government and politics - my focus was East Asia. But apparently for my departmental coordinator, one non-European culture was as good as the next. Plus ça change....)
So I can't say that I really understand first-hand the practicalities of teaching. But I am an overeducated swot who comes from a family of teachers, which means that I actually spend a great deal of time thinking about the mechanics of education. And this is what I believe: oftentimes there's an initial hurdle to learning, kind of a barrier to entry, if you will. Study, frankly, can be scary. However, the solution to that doesn't have to be bar-lowering. Instead, try enjoyment-raising - the metaphorical equivalent of setting up a trampoline. Make your teaching witty, make your teaching entertaining, but above all, make your teaching respectful. Because if you don't respect your students from the get-go, I guarantee that unless your students are the type who crave positive pedagogical feedback (in which case they probably don't need any encouragement to study, as this is a key trait of the classic teacher's pet), they will shut down and stop listening.
In fact, unless you're actually in a school, don't even think of your students as students at all - because they don't have to be there. And you don't have any authority over them, no matter how much of a megalomaniac you might be. Instead, think of them as customers - and you have to fight for them.
There's a difference between willfully stupid and willed-to-be stupid. I have nothing but contempt for one and compassion for the other. I leave it to you to figure out which is which.
magic realism
snowblind
In light of the first big snowfall of the year (and because I had a long time to think about various language-related topics as my car crept from Harvard Square to Brookline over the course of ninety minutes this afternoon), I thought it only appropriate to bring up one of the most infamous bits of bad language intelligence.
I refer, of course, to the notion that the Eskimo language has 10/20/50/100/a bajillion words for snow.
It might make for a lovely lede, but the truth of the matter is this: Eskimo does not have a bajillion words for snow. In point of fact, there isn't even really a language called "Eskimo."
Take a look at the Ethnologue listing for members of the Eskimo-Aleut language family here:
Aleut (USA)
Inupiatun, North Alaskan (USA)
Inupiatun, Northwest Alaska (USA)
Inuktitut, Eastern Canadian (Canada)
Inuktitut, Western Canadian (Canada)
Inuktitut, Greenlandic (Greenland)
Yupik, Pacific Gulf (USA)
Yupik, Central (USA)
Yupik, Central Siberian (USA)
Yupik, Naukan (Russia (Asia))
Yupik, Sirenik (Russia (Asia))
Granted, all but Aleut could be classified as "Eskimo" - but notice that none are, in fact, called "Eskimo." So when you say "the Eskimo language," you might as well be saying "the Romance language," which means ultimately that you might as well just be spouting general nonsense.
After all, if the word "bajillion" is not the least straightforward and transparent word in a sentence, you know you're in some real trouble.
The truth of the matter, no matter what your average language-indifferent trivia buff may tell you, is that the Eskimo-Aleut languages do not have a crazy high number of words for snow - I believe the number of words in Greenlandic Inuktitut for snow is about twelve. I would quote exact numbers with more authority here, but sadly I don't currently have access to any Eskimo-Aleut dictionaries or any of my usual language books. Although I did pick up an extremely promising-looking guide to Manchu while in Cambridge yesterday. (It's a sickness, it really is.)
But to find out more (and more specifics) about the reasons why the Eskimo language myth has become so prevalent, I highly recommend reading the titular essay of Geoffrey Pullum's great and memorable collection, The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax, in which Professor Pullum efficiently and brilliantly cuts to the heart of the matter - and manages to get in a few entertaining digs at poor Benjamin Whorf's expense as well.
But even though the linguistic community has long been aware that the Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax is just that - a hoax - popular media persists in using it like an amateur chef with an excess of fresh parsley.
Which brings me to my point: if you're currently stuck at home, watching the slush or sleet or flurries or flakes piling up outside your window, do your own small part to subvert mass misconception. If your friends or relatives try to tell you that if they lived in Greenland, they'd have many more ways to describe the stuff they're going to bitch about having to shovel out their driveways the next morning, don't agree with them. Instead, ask them this: if the Eskimos having bajillions of words to describe snow says something important about their culture, what does it say about Americans who have bajillions of words for "complain"?
(Whine, bitch, moan, complain, grouse, grumble, bleat, fuss, bleat, carp, moan, snivel, gripe, kvetch, bellyache, crab, bemoan, bewail, grouch - luckily, this is something that I don't need a dictionary for.)
Happy digging!
for the children
I almost forgot to mention this: I wrote an essay for Powell's, the Mt. Olympus of independent bookstores, which you can find here. I get all soul-searching and thoughtful - and don't swear once. Under-17 readers, rejoice!
radio days
It turns out that I love radio. This is a bit of a surprise to me. I haven't really listened to the radio since I left St. Louis. For me, radio was always something that you listened to in the car, and once I moved to the East Coast, I stopped driving and stopped listening to the radio except for 1010 WINS, whose jingle warms the cockles of my cold, cold heart. (And, by the way, inspired one of the greatest NYC-centric pick-up lines I've ever heard: "Give me twenty-two minutes, and I'll give you the world.")
Exactly how unfamiliar am I with radio? This unfamiliar: on Tuesday, when I went to KWMU, the St. Louis NPR affiliate, I walked through a hallway that was filled with photos of NPR's most famous radio hosts. And it was the first time that I realized that Terry Gross was a woman. I actually did a double-take.
So, being new to the whole public-radio scene, I was more than a little nervous about the prospect of doing an hour-long interview for KWMU. But I ended up having a wonderful time, chatting about language, complaining about my ruthless rejection from the CIA, and talking to listeners who called in to tell stories or ask questions. I even learned a few things - who knew that there were spelling bees in Belgium?
In any case, the complete interview is available here, on KWMU's website. Many of the callers have some great anecdotes, and one in particular (about a mistranslation involving the Pope) is truly unmissable. Also: I sing. Briefly. Consider yourselves forewarned.
shelf awareness
Those of you who aren't in the book business might not know about Shelf Awareness, a newsletter that goes out to about 12,000 subscribers, many of them the kick-ass folks who own and operate independent bookstores, doing their part to help keep the book world diverse, challenging, and cutting-edge. The newsletter is by subscription only, but if you're interested in keeping abreast of book-related goings-on, I highly recommned taking a look. Of course, I also recommend them because they printed a little essay of mine about books and booksellers in other languages. Find a friend with a subscription to check it out!
(I realize that I'm going overboard on the exclamation points these days. All I can ask is that you bear with me while I seek help.)
and now for something actually totally related
Commenter zhoen pointed out that in my last post I completely failed to reference the seminal language-related Monty Python sketch "The Dirty Hungarian Phrasebook."
Allow me to remedy that immediately:
Also, as I was pulling up this clip, I found a number of clips from the Hungarian show Megasztár (in Hungarian, a "sz" is pronounced like an English "s," while an "s" is pronounced like an English "sh"), an American Idol-like talent competition. How American-Idol-like? This American Idol-like:
I have no clue what they're saying, but I think we can all imagine the gist of it.
This, however, is the strangest clip that YouTubed Megasztár has to offer. It is, as far as I can tell, a mock Megasztár clip featuring ... well, I couldn't really tell you. Cousin It? Playing death-metal? If ever I needed an enticement to learn Hungarian, it is so I can start to understand this:
you say ocd like it's a bad thing
The three reasons I haven't been keeping up with my writing:
1. The World Series. Not only does it eat up large chunks of my evening, but I also have to find time in the afternoon to catch up on all the primetime TV I would have been watching were I not the sort of person to sit through the entirety of every game, even it's a slow-ass Boston blowout. (I have very strict TV rations. I'm like a Mogwai, except I don't turn Gremlin if you feed me after midnight, only if you keep me from 30 Rock.)
2. Genealogy. Last weekend I had the idea "Hey, I'll make family trees for Christmas!" Cut to me, four days later, like some sort of family-tree-crack addict, hunched over my computer, frantically pulling Scottish and Norwegian census records and ignoring all phone calls except those from my mother. ("Hi sweetie!" "Do you remember great-grandma Mary's maiden name?" "No ...." "I'll talk to you later." Click.) I've never been particularly interested in my ancestors - mostly, admittedly, because my living relatives are a handful enough as is - but that was before the availability of online family-tree-making tools. It's like ... you know the satisfaction of going through your iTunes library and fixing all of the song information so it's perfect and complete and consistent? Building a family tree is like that. Except slightly more emotionally rich.
In any case, I'm going to Ellis Island on Sunday, so I'll write more about this later - particularly as it's looking like I was related to some very bad people back in the day. (By which I mean: turns out I'm secretly part-English. My father almost cried when I told him.) But if you're wondering just how much time a person could possibly spend on such things in the course of the week, I will just say this: I have traced a few lines of the family back to the 900s or so. It's a sickness. Thank god I never got into scrapbooking.
But then I ran out of paper, which meant that I couldn't keep printing out parts of the tree for notetaking purposes, which meant that I had to turn to my next current obsession:
3. Hungarian. I actually haven't succeeded in getting very much studying done in the past couple of weeks, but when I realized that I had less than two months left before my trip (and since someone once told me that "It only takes two years to learn Hungarian - provided they're the first two years"), I figured I'd better get cracking.
If you're wondering how I go about the early stages of learning a language, it is this:
First, I sift through all of the material I have in my own library, which is usually a fair amount. Then, my brain suddenly decides to forget that my apartment is already overrun with books as is, and I go Amazon-crazy, buying any remotely useful-looking grammar or instructional text I can find. Three-to-five days later, buyer's remorse set in as I find myself with a bunch of generally shitty language texts. I do this every time. And every time I get another yellow-labelled copy of Teach Yourself: Whatever, I remember how completely useless it is and wonder what the hell I was thinking. (Short answer: I wasn't. Amazon one-click ordering is going to kill me.)
By the way, the only consistently useful language-learning brand I've found is the Routledge series of grammars. It does vary from language to language (and from edition to edition, as a thoughtful commenter pointed out to me), but the books generally provide a solid introduction to the grammar of a language. The Teach Yourself books, however, are middling at best as instruction and absolutely fucking useless as reference. (Try looking a particular point of grammar up in any of those books. I dare you not to go insane.)
Anyway, after spending my hard-earned editing money on, essentially, bookshelf-filler, I finally remembered my own damn advice and went online. (Taking care to avoid Amazon at all costs.) Basically, if you want to learn a not-entirely-obscure language, the Internet usually has you covered. Wikipedia is usually my first stop, as it has a pretty intense group of linguaphiles who regularly police the language pages, so the grammatical information you find there is relatively trustworthy. (All the same, I highly, highly recommend clicking through to the talk page to see if there are any points of debate.) Also, if you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you'll usually find a collection of language-learning links to help you in your studies.
The two main resources I'm using for this project are Magyaróra, a pretty amazingly comprehensive collection of Hungarian study materials, and the old State Department teaching texts and tapes, which can be can found here. The State Department materials aren't new (which is the reason they're so conveniently in the public domain), but I've had good luck with them in the past, as many of the audio exercises are based on repetition and substitution, which seem to mesh well with the particulars of my brain. (The only thing that has ever got me to consider joining the military is the prospect of having access to the language school at Monterey. After, that is, I was rejected by the CIA, which I applied to for similar reasons.)
I realized fairly quickly that the problem with Hungarian for me is not going to be so much that the grammar is difficult to grasp on a theoretical level, but rather that the morphology is highly whack on account of Hungarian vowel harmony (which means, broadly, that affixes change depending on the type of vowels in the stem). That is: it's a bitch in practice. Lots of little quirky changes in endings, that sort of thing. So instead of starting out by learning the grammatical patterns or paradigms, which is my usual MO, I decided to just dive in and start memorizing words and phrases.
And here's where things start to be useful for people who aren't me. Just the other day, Lifehacker's featured Mac download was a flashcard program called Genius, which "organizes your information and carefully chooses questions using an intelligent 'spaced repetition' method that's based on your past performance." I'm still not exactly sure what this means, but I will say that so far the program seems to be performing beautifully. And the best part is, the flashcard files are shareable. So if anyone else wants to learn some Hungarian with Genius, drop me an email and I'll be happy to send you the flashcard files I create.
So far, I've only entered the words and phrases from Unit One of the State Department text (which includes lots of useful things like asking if the beer is good), but I plan to keep going up until I get on the plane to Budapest.
Just don't expect me to make too much progress before the World Series is over.
fish of babel
Today a friend of mine received the most astoundingly charming email from a prospective writer. It makes me love online language translators just a little bit.
How are you?It's hard enough to pitch your work in your native language - I can only imagine the guts it took to plug this into a translator. Frankly, I think he deserves a shot based on chutzpah alone. If only everyone else were so willing to take a shot at getting a language so gloriously wrong.
It forgives me for the confusion in the text, is that I do not say English, then I used an electronic translator pára to write it.
I was very difficult to obtain its contact. Therefore I ask for that it gives only some minutes to me of its attention.
I need an opinion of a qualified professional as you.
I finished to write my first book and would like to publish it. The fact is that Brazil is not a good market, nor so little has so qualified professionals how much in the United States to analyze a work.
Of form until innocent I believe that my book has a good tram, well I am amused and as a loving father, I would say until he does not lose in nothing for best-sellers as "The Big Needle" or "Possession". Good this in my opinion.
But my opinion does not count, I need somebody that really understands of success, and know that this person is you, therefore I am asking for its aid.
I do not know the correct form to present the work, therefore I am sending a synopsis to it of the book.
Now, for gentility, before playing this correspondence in the garbage, he considers the hypothesis to read the annex. After to read, then, you will be certain of that I do not know to write, or that I can improve, or even though who knows, exists the possibility to publish what I wrote.
I trust its opinion, moreover, I do not intimidate myself with critical, am opened to recommence everything of the zero to rewrite everything I will be myself necessary, to sacrifice me and to give everything what I have until my work of certain. However I cannot sail the blind people. Necessary of a route, and he is this that I am asked for you.
Debtor for its attention.
I wait anxious, a reply.
But the real question is this: what the hell is "The Big Needle" a garbled translation of? Any ideas, Portuguese-speakers?
I wait anxious, a reply.
lost in translation
As a rabid purveyor of pop culture who has a mild fear of interpersonal interaction, online fandom is something that I find particularly compelling. Because I am, I admit, absolutely the sort of person to fall head-first into a fictional narrative, and I understand the feeling of never wanting to leave.
I should note that I was a huge Star Trek, Buffy, and X-Files fan back in the day. And with regard to the latter, thank God I started watching it before I had real Internet access, because I was (this is so embarrassing) a Troi/Riker shipper. I even purchased this book. And read it multiple times.
Had I known what fanfiction was when I started watching TNG, I can pretty much guarantee that I would’ve started writing it. And once you dip your toe into that water, it’s hard not to get swept up like Virginia Woolf on a really bad day.
I’m also interested in the more academic questions related to fandom – like why is it, for instance, that Newsies has a huge online presence? There are over 5,000 Newsies fics on fanfiction.net, more than any other movies save Star Wars, Pirates of the Caribbean, and X-Men. Which, really: what the fuck. I mean, I love Christian Bale as much as the next girl, but … singing paperboys? Really?
But whatever you might think about fanfiction as a product or a pastime, there’s little doubt that fanfiction communities are, more and more, proving to be an unexpectedly successful training ground for new writers – and, I’m realizing, language-learners.
While searching for resources on the subject of world fan culture (running the potentially terrifying Google search “fanfiction in translation” – which did indeed return a Stargate SG-1 fic), I was directed to Confessions of an Aca-Fan, the blog of Henry Jenkins, the co-founder of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program. About three months ago he posted some really amazing stuff on Internet fandom and translation that was written by Ksenia Prassolova, a Russian scholar who spent a Fulbright year at MIT working on the Harry Potter fandom.
One of the most interesting parts of the piece for me (and for anyone looking to promote language study) relates to fan-driven translation projects in Russia.
She writes:
“… fandom was eagerly looking for flaws in official versions and engaging in translation projects of their own. Inspired by Maria Spivak, the 'People's Translation Project', high regard for translators in our country and the nagging 'I can do that, too' feeling, fans started to create both individual (Fleur, Yuri Machkasov) and collective (Snitch, The Phoenix Team, Harry-Hermione.net, HP Christmas Forum) translation projects, and by the time Half-blood Prince was released in Russia in December 2005, there had already been nine (sic!) independent translations on the Web, some of them completed not a week after the July 16 release of the English version.”
Read the first part here; the second can be found here.
I often recommend reading or watching a favorite book or TV show in translation when learning a language because no matter how much you love language, it can get a little dry at times. But if you’re working with something that you enjoy – or even something that you’re borderline obsessed with – you’ll be better able to get through those dry spells. And I can only imagine how painless language study might become were it able to harness the full-fledged obsession of fandom.
And if it means an even greater proliferation of Newsies slashfic, well, that's a price I'm willing to pay. As long as I don't have to read it.
construction language
I recently purchased a new dresser at IKEA to replace my previous clothes-storage system, which was an elaborate arrangement of garments in descending order of cleanliness. By which I mean I had two piles on the floor next to my bed: one clean; one dirty. Honestly, this was fine by me.
But my mother is coming into town this weekend, so I felt it was time to give up la vie de bohème and buy a damn dresser - if only to avoid the otherwise inevitable “Oh, sweetie, won’t this wrinkle?” (This is also the reason I have purchased primarily wrinkle-free fabrics for the past ten years.)
Assembling the dresser - named Hemnes, after a Norwegian municipality known, I’m assuming, for its skill with faux antique finishes – is a fairly complicated process. I should point out here that I spent most of my time in college working as a stage carpenter, so my woodworking and construction skills are slightly above average. And certainly above, say, Tim the Tool Man Taylor levels of incompetence. And yet, I've made at least three fatal errors in the course of putting the damn thing together.
Although, to be fair, one of these errors only happened because I was distracted by my idiot cat. She was doing her best to eat a plastic drawer peg.
But most of my problems resulted from a misinterpretation of the directions, which, in typical IKEA fashion, are made entirely out of pictures so that the company doesn’t have to waste time or resources composing and distributing language-specific instructions. (Although: I’ve never been to an IKEA outside of the U.S. I would be incredibly amused if it turned out that every other country got instructions with actual words.)
Anyway, as I flung said instructions across the room for the third time to date, I was struck, suddenly, by a thought: how would you teach someone to write in IKEA? Because you know that there’s totally some corporate retreat where the illustrators and designers get stuck watching PowerPoint presentations about “Affordable solutions for better instruction.”
So I decided to try to decipher IKEA. As far as I can tell, there are eight components to an IKEA instruction booklet. The first is the illustration, the picture that identifies the two pieces you’re working with (and, sometimes, the tool that is needed to work with them). A big black X is applied to certain illustrations to eliminate potential ambiguities, like so:
An arrow identifies the direction of motion, while a line indicates the destination of the action (the insertion point). Speech bubbles are typically used to indicate which piece is being inserted into which. Why speech bubbles, I don’t know. Perhaps to give the illusion of amiability?
Then there are two kinds of numbers: a product number further clarifies the identity of the pieces in question while a multiplier indicates how many particular pieces are needed.
The final key component of IKEA is the facial expression of the little IKEA man.
There’s the happy face:
The sad face:
The confused face:
The I-need-to-go-to-the-gym-because-I-can’t-lift-a-piece-of-fake-wood face:
And the I’m-about-to-die face:
Nowhere, it should be noted, is the why-did-I-buy-this-crap-when-I-could-have-found-real-furniture-on-craigslist face.
Here’s my question: how would each of these parts be identified from a linguistic perspective? Here are some of my suggestions – but I’d love to know in the comments how others might interpret this. After all, I’ve never tried to make sense of a language from scratch (nor am I exactly qualified to do so), and I won’t pretend that this will be rock-solid from a linguistic standpoint. But then again, I’m analyzing an IKEA instruction manual for Pete’s sake, so I think the endeavor is, from an academic standpoint, pretty well fucked from the beginning.
Anyway! The easy stuff first: the illustrations operate as nouns; the multipliers are simple quantifiers.
The arrows and little lines, meanwhile, are the verbs. Under the circumstances, I think we can assume that the only mood in IKEA is imperative. There are, by the way, four main verbs in IKEA (or at least in the Hemnes dialect): put in, screw in, flip over, and lay down. Which leads me to believe that if IKEA were a natural language, it would be the favored language of frat boys everywhere.
The speech bubbles act as case markers: the illustration within the bubble is the object of the verb; the illustration pointed to by the speech bubble is the locative.
All potential instrumentals (i.e., that crappy little Allen wrench) are pre-case-determined on the first page of the book through the use of a similar speech bubble:
The big black X's help clarify the identity of a specific illustration, which could be considered a roundabout demonstrative. This raises the question: do any human languages (as IKEA is clearly, if not inhuman, certainly inhumane) primarily use a “not-those” instead of a “those” construction? I can’t think of one off the top of my head – the closest parallel I can think of are languages like Quechua that have inclusive and exclusive first-person plural pronouns: we-and-you and we-and-not-you.
The product numbers confuse me a bit. Both in real life and in this exercise. Because the pieces aren’t actually marked with their product numbers. The product numbers are only useful in distinguishing between similar pieces – but to do so you have to refer to the chart at the beginning of the book, which shows the product numbers as well as the rough size differences between pieces. Could this be considered a sort of size-related deixis? I’m not sure. I do know, however, that in practice the product numbers are fucking useless, as demonstrated by fatal error #2, which found me lying on my floor under the dresser with my needle-nose pliers in one hand and the biggest mallet I could find in my other. Which is never a good sign.
And then there’s Mr. IKEA Man. What function does he serve? Is he is a disjunctive adverb? An implied apodosis or a conditional mood marker? Or just someone IKEA came up with to taunt me?
Again, these are just thoughts. Because these are the sorts of things I think about. (Well, that and whether or not it is ironic or appropriate that the Indians beat the Yankees on Columbus Day.) But I’m just saying: if anyone out there with a linguistics background were to, oh, make up a mock-formal grammar tree for IKEA, I would provide them with the online equivalent of a nice wet kiss. Like a picture of a really adorable puppy or something.
Meanwhile, I'm going to see if I can't translate something from English to IKEA. Given the relative dearth of verbs, I suspect I'll be limited to translations of pop music. Or porn.
The dresser, by the way, is sitting in my bedroom half-finished, as I’m seriously wondering whether or not the drawers are absolutely necessary. I’m sure if IKEA man were to hear of this, he would look something like this:
Which, come to think of it, rather resembles the expression my mother will probably have come Friday.
wheeze-it
Here's an interesting blog post from Jennifer 8. Lee at the NYT City Room blog. (Aside: I had no idea that the Times had so many blogs. I notice that Judith Warner's blog is only updated once a week. Does that even count as a blog? Isn't that just a web-only column? I'm going to stop asking questions now before I start seriously contemplating the semantics of blogging and slip into a meta-coma.)
The post/web-only article hints at the difficulties of practicing medicine and treating patients in a city whose residents speak dozens of different languages - in this particular case, the problems faced by doctors trying to diagnose asthma in Spanish-speaking patients. She writes: "In interviews with 39 Spanish speakers, 'wheeze' was translated into 12 different Spanish expressions, including 'tight chest,' 'suffocation,' 'asphyxiation,' 'snoring' and 'congested breathing.'" And, as "wheeze" is obviously a rather key term for respiratory diagnosis, a Columbia University Medical Center survey has targeted translation as a major issue in treating the rise in respiratory ailments among the city's Latino population.
Now, it's obvious that it is not the case, as I suspect Ms. Lee well knows, that there is no word in Spanish for "wheeze." But most reporters seem to find the "no word in [pick a language] for [pick a concept that somehow demonstrates the strangeness of said language or culture]" template irresistible - probably because hyperbole makes for a sweet lede. But clearly, Spanish-speakers have been wheezing just as long as English-speakers, and somewhere along the line they've undoubtedly come up with a word or phrase to describe the phenomenon. And the discussion in the comments section certainly bears this out. (As you might expect, the nasty implication that any misdiagnoses are the patients' faults for failing to learn English also rears its ugly little head. Which is so lacking in compassion and basic human decency that I won't even dignify it with a response.)
The problem, as far as I can see, seems not to be that there isn't one word in Spanish for "wheeze," but rather that there are lots of them, and that many medical professionals are not, as it turns out, equipped to deal with the lexical variation - which is no mere fodder for linguistic cocktail-party convo, but rather a serious and pressing public-health issue. And this is why I'm more than happy to forgive Ms. Lee any language-related lily-gilding. Because she certainly manages to make that latter point clear.
By the way, Language Log has a number of posts relating to the "No word for X" syndrome (or snowclone, as regular readers of that site know) that are well worth reading. My favorite is Geoffrey Pullum's "No word for 'lazy hack parroting drivel'?," but you can find a list of a number of others here.
everybody clap your hands
I live about fifteen minutes by subway from Shea Stadium, so even though I’m a lifelong Cardinals fan, I go there from time to time to get my in-person baseball fix. Now, Shea Stadium has few aesthetic charms. It’s ugly, it’s falling down, and it reeks of urine and twenty-one years of despair. Even so, it’s become one of my favorite places to watch a game. Because nowhere else can you find The Jose Reyes Spanish Academy, a series of stadium videos in which Mets shortstop Jose Reyes teaches fans basic – and often bizarre - Spanish phrases.
Like this one:
Strangely, Reyes has never related any actual baseball phrases while I’ve been in attendance. Which got me to thinking about foreign-language sports terminology. So, in honor of the postseason, I went and did a little Internetting in search of a few resources for baseball-loving linguaphiles who might want to follow the playoffs on ESPN Deportes.
The first thing to note is that there are two Spanish words for baseball itself: la pelota and el béisbol. Anyone who’s ever studied Spanish knows that there are massive lexical variations from one region to another – something that’s particularly problematic if you, like me, have a penchant for profanity. I haven’t quite been able to pin down the locations where pelota is used instead of béisbol – my initial instinct was that one would be used in Europe and the other in Latin America, but that doesn’t seem to be true.
In fact, both seem to be in use in Puerto Rico. This site notes that “in Ponce, broadcasters never refer to the baseball; the thing the pitcher throws is la Wilson (because she is la pelota - but in Caguas, they call it el Wilson because he is el béisbol).”
Another tidbit from the same page is this: “An interesting point is the use of the adaptable suffix -azo (‘wicked big’), which is too slangy to be taught in high-school Spanish.”
I can’t help but wonder: are there Red Sox fans in Puerto Rico?
In any case, if anyone knows the rhyme and reason behind la pelota and el béisbol, I would love to hear it.
The best resource for baseball Spanish is the great bilingual baseball dictionary available for download at Baseball-Reference.com. The dictionary includes a full list of all the baseball terminology you would ever have to know in the course of a regular game. It also includes useful phrases like dedos de mantequilla – literally, “fingers of butter.” This phrase has also, apparently, been turned into verb – enmantequillarse - meaning “to bobble.” Or, as I like to think of it, “to be-butter oneself.”
Another evocative definition can be found in the entry for “fluke”: gloria de mañana, or “morning glory.” In other words, something that blooms brightly in the morning and dies in the afternoon. And the translation for the Texas Rangers is Rancheros or Vigilantes – something that made me smirk pretty nastily until I remembered that in Spanish, vigilantes just means “watchmen.” I choose, however, to think that there’s a double meaning there.
My favorite entry by far, however, is this one:
biased umpire: n.f. estatua de la libertad
I don’t feel that any additional explanation is needed there. Unless, of course, it were to come courtesy of Professor Reyes.
It’s not like he has anything better to do at the moment, after all.
Later: Japanese baseball terms and how they shed light on the sudden star power of Kaz Matsui. Because I sure as hell can’t find anything else that explains it.
german expressionism
In elementary school, one of my favorite events was the seasonal distribution of a slim mail-order discount publishing catalog. Basically, it was like a Girl Scout Cookie order form, but for nerds. To be perfectly honest, my brain waters a bit just thinking about it.
I can't remember what they were called or what company produced them, but I do remember that it was a fairly important element of my ongoing childhood strategy to wheedle as many books as possible out of my parents. ("But Mo-om, these books are for schoo-ol! And I get five! For a dollar! The last time books were this cheap was when you were a kid!")
Occasionally, though, the offerings were less than impressive, and I would have to settle for a few oddball selections in order to make my bulk-discount quota. This is why, in sixth grade, I ended up buying my first foreign-language dictionary - in German.
It was, pretty much, the most useless book I could have purchased. My school didn't teach foreign languages, not really, preferring instead to have us study much more useful things like meditation and advanced Oregon Trail. We also had a three-month unit on the tundra, during which we spent two torturous weeks reading To Build A Fire.
Unfortunately for me, my dictionary didn't include anything about permafrost or impassable quagmire, so it wasn't of much use. It was soon relegated to a bookshelf in the corner of my bedroom where it has sat, neglected, ever since.
I have never had reason to regret that decision.
Until today.
Because today I discovered a series of amazing, almost Salad Fingers-like instructional videos at MyGermanClass.com.
I have no idea what's going on between Übel Knübel and his bester Freund here - and, actually, I have no idea what's going on in any of them, but I bet if I'd paid more attention to that dictionary, I would know. And I'm pretty sure it would be awesome.