The purge (aka just tidying away)

I’ve taken the past couple of days to (re)organise my languages (regarding both materials and in my head) – there often is way too much clutter to deal with!

Gone are Armenian, Bengali, Cantonese, Finnish, Hebrew, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Romanian, Russian, Tamil and Vietnamese; Swedish, which had made a quick but astounding comeback, was sent home as well (but I just couldn’t help dubbing it my ‘European Thai’ before, for its ability to regularly return from the Great Beyond). Although they were more like appendices, I’ve also had Faroese, Konkani and Marathi materials out too.

Despite, to all intents and purposes, existing in limbo, I’m keeping all things (Mandarin) Chinese, Esperanto, (Ancient) Greek, Hindustani, Latin, Polish, Turkish and Welsh, because the necromancer in me still feels way too attached to all the possibilities they offer, and I may always choose to spin the wheel of life and bring them back. For now.

Gotta love Vietnamese tones!

Unlike many Native American, African, and Chinese languages, Vietnamese tones do not rely solely on pitch contour. Vietnamese often uses instead a register complex (which is a combination of phonation type, pitch, length, vowel quality, etc.). So perhaps a better description would be that Vietnamese is a register language and not a ‘pure’ tonal language.

[…]

There is much variation among speakers concerning how tone is realized phonetically. There are differences between varieties of Vietnamese spoken in the major geographic areas (northern, central, southern) and smaller differences within the major areas (e.g. Hanoi vs. other northern varieties). In addition, there seems to be variation among individuals. More research is needed to determine the remaining details of tone realization and the variation among speakers.

Wikipedia contributors, ‘Vietnamese phonology’, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 28 December 2017, 07:53 UTC, <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vietnamese_phonology&oldid=817421402> [accessed 30 March 2018]

หลักเกณฑ์การทับศัพท์ภาษาโปรตุเกส

“จง​ขอ​เถิด แล้ว​ท่าน​จะ​ได้​รับ จง​แสวงหา​เถิด แล้ว​ท่าน​จะ​พบ จง​เคาะ​ประตู​เถิด แล้ว​เขา​จะ​เปิด​ประตู​รับ​ท่าน เพราะ​คน​ที่​ขอ​ย่อม​ได้​รับ คน​ที่​แสวงหา​ย่อม​พบ คน​ที่​เคาะ​ประตู​ย่อม​มี​ผู้​เปิด​ประตู​ให้”

Mt 7:7–8

To my surprise, I’ve found out that the Royal Institute of Thailand has actually issued rules for the transliteration of foreign words into Thai! From all I’ve read about them, I should actually be surprised I didn’t think of looking it up before.

From what I can gather, and just as I’d imagined, they’ve come up with systems that attempt to reflect as much of the phonology of the original languages and yet represent as much of the original orthographic features and idiosyncrasies by the Thai script.

The languages whose standards have been published seem to be:

• Arabic;
• Chinese;
• English;
• French;
• German;
• Hindi;
• Italian;
• Japanese;
• Korean;
• Malay;
• Russian;
• Spanish;
• Vietnamese.

That means that, contrarily to what the title of this post says, there doesn’t seem to be an official system for Portuguese.

For many features of Portuguese, I could actually come up with a reasonable basic system derived from common rules taken from the published standards that would also be valid for Portuguese – the representation of /ʒ/ by ฌ, for instance; for others, however, I wouldn’t be able to trace any parallels at all and would have to rely on examples found online and, well, my own whim – such as how to deal with unique sounds or raised (neutralised) unstressed vowels (to represent phonology or to reflect orthography?).

στεγανός (steganós) + γράφω ‎(gráphō)

In a way, I do find it disappointing that a word such as ‘steganography’ is borrowed into Japanese as ステガノグラフィー ⧼suteganogurafii⧽; I did think they’d have gone along the (elegant) lines of a compound such as Chinese 隐写术 (隱寫術) ⧼yǐnxiěshù⧽.

Korean has 스테가노그래피 ⧼seuteganogeuraepi⧽ too, but Vietnamese must have an interesting choice behind kỹ thuật giấu thư – any native speakers that might enlighten me?

Marasmo

So much linguistic apathy and stagnation in my life right now, and I’m not used to it at all. The thing, however, is that ‘real life’, so to speak, is taking a heavy toll on me versus languages these days – even though I’m also to blame for being so bad at organising myself any efficiently.

It’s been basically me and Polish for a while now. But gosh, do I miss Arabic! And Japanese! And German! And the step-by-step movement away from Portuñol towards Rioplatense Spanish! And the never-ending task of consciously polishing my British-oriented English! And French! And Italian!

Not that I’m not tempted by other languages that have always appealed to me – from Thai and Swahili to Hungarian and Welsh, with even Faroese and Old Tupi sprinkled somewhere in between –, but I had to learn how to be practical and realistic at some point. Having lost all my digital language materials when my HDD was fried by lightning / a power surge (and I had no useful recent backup whatsoever) did certainly help with that.

There are also the languages I used to love deeply, but that for this or that reason have lost the appeal they once held, the prime examples being Greek, Persian and Vietnamese.

And last but not least, there’s Bulgarian forever skulking below the surface – a language that I’ve loved from day one, so many years ago, even when it was absolutely impossible for me to even think about it, but that I’ve possibly mistreated all along.

Crossroads

Bulgarian	Portuguese	Thai	Turkish	Vietnamese
български език ⟨balgarski ezik⟩	búlgaro	ภาษา​บัลแกเรีย ⟨phasa Bankaeria⟩	Bulgarca	tiếng Bulgaria
португалски език ⟨portugalski ezik⟩	português	ภาษา​โปรตุเกส ⟨phasa Protuket⟩	Portekizce	tiếng Bồ Đào Nha
тайски език ⟨tayski ezik⟩	tailandês	ภาษา​ไทย ⟨phasa Thai⟩	Tayca	tiếng Thái
турски език ⟨turski ezik⟩	turco	ภาษา​ตุรกี ⟨phasa Tunki⟩	Türkçe	tiếng Thổ Nhĩ Kỳ
виетнамски език ⟨vietnamski ezik⟩	vietnamita	ภาษา​เวียดนาม ⟨phasa Wiatnam⟩	Vietnamca	tiếng Việt

Bài thứ nhất: “Cô tìm ai?”

Bài tập

1. Chào ông! — Bonjour, Monsieur !
2. Ông tìm ai? — Qui cherchez-vous, Monsieur ?
3. Ông là ai? — Qui êtes-vous, Monsieur ?
4. Tôi tìm cô Lan. — Je cherche monsieur Lan.
5. Mời ông vào! — Entrez, s’il vous plaît !

Điền vào chỗ trống

1. Bonjour, Mademoiselle ! — Chào cô!
2. Je cherche monsieur Ba. — Tôi tìm ông Ba.
3. Merci, Monsieur. — Cám ơn ông.
4. Je suis Lan. — Tôi là Lan.
5. Qui êtes-vous, Monsieur ? — Ông là ai?

Minimal units

Breaking things down into units is always fun… I looked chỗ and then trống up, and could obviously make ‘empty spot’ out of them… But, if I’d bothered to look chỗ trống up from the start, I’d have found ‘gap’ anyway after all.

Lk 16:25

‘Son, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish.’

„Чедо, спомни си, че ти получи вече доброто си приживе, а Лазар — злото: сега пък той тук се утешава, а ти се мъчиш.“

『子よ、思い出してみるがよい。お前は生きている間に良いものをもらっていたが、ラザロは反対に悪いものをもらっていた。今は、ここで彼は慰められ、お前はもだえ苦しむのだ。』

“Con ơi, hãy nhớ lại: suốt đời con, con đã nhận phần phước của con rồi; còn Ladarô suốt một đời chịu toàn những bất hạnh. Bấy giờ, Ladarô được an ủi nơi đây, còn con thì phải chịu khốn khổ.”

“孩子，你应记得你活着的时候，已享尽了你的福，而拉匝禄同样也受尽了苦。现在，他在这裏受安慰，而你应受苦了。”

Sir 23:6 (RSV-CE)

Let neither gluttony nor lust overcome me, and do not surrender me to a shameless soul.

P.S.: Just because (although, curiously enough, the Bulgarian numbering seems to be off compared to the other translations):

Пощевките на корема и сладострастието да ме не овладеят и не предавай ме на безсрамна душа.

食欲や色欲のとりことせず、恥知らずな欲情に引き渡さないでください。

Xin chớ để thói ăn chơi truỵ lạc thống trị con, đừng để con đắm chìm trong những dục vọng trơ trẽn.

不要让肚腹的食慾和肉慾的烈火统治着我，也不要让我有一颗无耻愚昧的心。