CHICLE's blog

I'm in a mystery book phase just now. This usually happens when I'm a little (or a lot) overwhelmed by work and life, causing all the non-fiction that I can't resist buying to stack up on the floor and to await the return of my normally calm state.

I'm now reading the fifth in a wonderful series by Fred Vargas. Her characters are fascinating and they grow on you more with each novel. Fred Vargas is a French woman. You can read about her and about her name on Wikipedia, of course. One of the problems with reading a series originally written in another language is the order in which translations appear is often different than the order in which the originals were printed. A friend put me onto a website that helps to solve that: Stop, You're Killing Me! If you are mystery reader and don't know this site, you will be very grateful to me for sharing it.

Here are the French and English titles of the Vargas books. I've added the translations.

L’homme aux cercles bleus (1990, 1996) [The man with the blue circles]
The Chalk Circle Man [2009]

L’homme à l’envers (1999) [The man in reverse]
Seeking Whom He May Devour [2004] 

Pars vite et reviens tard (2001) [Leave quickly and come back later]
Have Mercy on Us All [2003]

Sous les vents de Neptune (2004) [Downwind of Neptune]
Wash This Blood Clean From My Hand [2007]

Dans les bois éternels (2006) [In the eternal woods]
This Night’s Foul Work [2008]

Un lieu incertain (2008) [An uncertain place]
An Uncertain Place [2011]

L’armée furieuse (2011)

Interestingly, Google Translate, which looks for common translations, translates Pars vite et reviens tard as "Have Mercy on Us All", since, when you Google the French title, most of the references are to this book and its English title. I have absolutely no idea why the titles were changed and no opinion as to whether the originals or the English titles are better. If you do, send me your thoughts?

The last book in the series has been translated into Spanish (El ejercito furioso) but not into English. I might be tempted to try the Spanish if it doesn't come out in English soon. (The Spanish titles are mostly direct translations of the French.)

While we, of course, believe that attending classes at CHICLE is the best way to learn Spanish, we do encourage our students to spend as much time as possible listening, reading, and speaking Spanish outside of class. Gerald Erichsen, at Spanish.about.com, sends me a word a day, accompanied by very creative sentences using that word. You can sign up for this. I usually try to translate the Spanish sentence he sends before looking at his translation. I'm getting better at colloquial translation and think I have even occasionally improved on his. Here are a few recent ones that are fun.

Palabra

la querencia

Significado

place someone feels at home, a drawing or attachment for such a place, homing instinct, attachment, something one feels attachment for or at home with, home, nest

Ejemplo

Parece, pues, que la precoz querencia de mi hija sieteañera por Beckham no es sólo una manifestación de rebeldía contra un padre omnipotente, sino que denota que se está produciendo ya un alejamiento afectivo y una devaluación de mi imagen.

Traducción

It seems than that the early longing of my seven-year-old daughter for Beckham is not only a rebellion against an omnipotent father, but it also shows that there is already a detachment from and devaluation of my image going on.

Palabra

la lisonja

Significado

flattering remark, flattery

Ejemplo

Bien puede haber puñalada sin lisonja, mas pocas veces hay lisonja sin puñalada. (Refrán)

Traducción

One can well be stabbed without flattery, but seldom is there flattery without stabbing. (Proverb)

You can also subscribe to his Dichos, refranes y citas daily email. This can be a little trickier to translate if it's one you're not familiar with. There are also some useful links to blogs, articles, exercises, quizes, and lists on his main page.

In 1980, a twenty-three-year-old student named Aaron Lansky set out to rescue the world’s abandoned Yiddish books before it was too late. Twenty-five years and one and a half million books later, he’s still in the midst of a great adventure. Filled with poignant and often laugh-out-loud tales from Lansky’s travels across the country as he collected books from older Jewish immigrants—books their own children had no use for—Outwitting History also explores brilliant Yiddish writers and enables us to see how an almost-lost culture is the bridge between the Old World and the future.

The book provides a wonderful history of Jewish immigrants who focused on assimilation and of those who tried to preserve the Yiddish culture they came from. I, somewhat naively perhaps, think that if everyone understood the continuity and similarities in the waves of immigration to the U.S., they'd be hopeful about the future of our country. 

I'm one of those 3nd generation Jews who only heard Yiddish spoken when I wasn't supposed to understand what was being said. It's one of the languages I would study if I could live to 110. It's such a mishmash of other languages and so much fun. But Lansky teaches us that it is a real language, albeit one of those that may be disappearing.

Lansky writes: "Yiddish (the word means 'Jewish') first emerged in the tenth or eleventh century among Jews living along the banks of the Rhine River. The more distinct their communities became, the more their spoken language differentiated itself from that of their non-Jewish German-speaking neighbors. Not unlike Black English, it became the 'in' language of a people on the outs, except that in the case of Yiddish, Jews brought with them a core culture rooted in Hebrew (the language of the Torah) and Aramaic (the language of the later sections of the Talmud)."

He describes Yiddish as an amalgam of German, Hebrew, Aramaic, Latin, French, Italian, Ladino, Judeo-Greek, Judeo-Persion, Judeo-Provençal, Polish, Ukrainian, White Russian, and Slovak.

For fun, here's a Wikipedia list of English words of Yiddish origin.

You can also check out an earlier blog piece I wrote on Yiddish, nu?

I've written about Anu Garg and his brilliant Wordsmith a.word.a.day website before. He has been sending out emails since 1994. The NY Times says "The most welcomed, most enduring piece of daily mass e-mail in cyberspace." I agree. I particularly love the weekly summary he sends out with amazing comments on the week's words from individuals throughout the world.

Last week he ran a contest on Wellerisms. 

MEANING: noun: An expression involving a familiar proverb or quotation and its facetious sequel. It usually comprises three parts: statement, speaker, situation.

Examples:
"We'll have to rehearse that," said the undertaker as the coffin fell out of the car.
"Prevention is better than cure," said the pig when it ran away from the butcher.

ETYMOLOGY: After Sam Weller and his father, characters known for such utterances in Charles Dickens's novel Pickwick Papers. Earliest documented use: 1839.

The responses were wonderful. Check them out here. Here are his top three winners. I actually had some other favorites. But I defer.

"Would you put it on one side for me?" he said when the man at the Airfix shop told him they had a model Italian cruise ship in stock.
-Bullus Hutton, Vancouver, Canada (bullus shaw.ca)

"Health is wealth," said the doctor as he totaled his earnings.
-Rama Bishnoi, Mumbai, India (ramabishnoi yahoo.com)

"Darling, I've missed you!" she said as she fired the gun a second time.
-Ken Kirste, Sunnyvale, California (kkkirste sbcglobal.net)

I'm reading three books at once right now. Ridiculous. Cajas en Carton, which I wholeheartedly recommend and will talk about after I finish it, a mystery (that I bought as a gift for someone who is not me), and Is That A Fish in Your Ear: Translation and the Meaning of Everything, by David Bellos.

I've barely begun the last one but was fascinated by a passage in the first chapter. Did you know that "most of the English now spoken and written in the world comes from people who do not possess it natively, making 'English speakers' a minority among the users of the language."?

Bellos says that a "vehicular language" is one that people learn in order to communicate with those who don't speak their language. There are some 7000 languages today and almost everyone who does not speak one of the six or so major languages natively speaks at least a second language. Many speak the language(s) of their neighbors as well as the "major" language prevalent in their area. If you knew Chinese, Hindi, Arabic, Spanish, Russian, Urdu, French, Japanese, and English, you could effectively communicate with about 90% of the world's population. So, 2.5 down and 6.5 to go for me.