The Story of French

I've just started reading The Story of French by Jean-Benoît Nadeau and Julie Barlow, and it is a fantastic book. Although I'm constantly reminded of reading Bill Bryson's Mother Tongue in St. Andrews, Scotland, in the winter of 2006 and having my mind blown repeatedly.

I'm a sucker for interesting facts about language and how it changes over time, which leads me to include the following excerpt from The Story of French regarding the evolution of Anglo-Norman and subsequent formation of French, and its effect on the English language.

. . . The English language is an excellent laboratory for examining the different trends that were at work in the formation of French. For the word château, the Norman variant castel produced castle, whereas the Paris variant chastel produced chastelain and châtelaine. There are many other examples; for example, chasser (to hunt), which was pronounced chacier around Paris, but cachier in Normandy, produced chase and catch. Real, royal and regal meant the same thing in Norman, Françoys and Latin respectively, but English took them on and gave them each different meanings. The term real estate comes from two Anglo-Norman terms. Leal, loyal and legal followed the same pattern, although leal (meaning both "loyal" and "legal") has fallen out of use. Warranty and guarantee are the same word, pronounced with a Norman and a Françoys accent respectively; this difference in pronunciation also explains how Guillaume became William, guerre became war and Gaul became Walloon (p. 33).

What struck me most at first was the weight of the last sentence. I always knew that Guillaume was the French version of William, but I had never realized that in Anglo-Norman and the subsequent early incarnations of the modern French language, the pronunciation of g and w was the same, thereby drawing a relationship between guarantee and warranty that I never knew existed. It's also notable that guarantee and warranty are essentially the same word, though spelled differently. English is marvelous and fascinating to me because it can get away with making so many of the same sounds look different when written, such as the uar and arr, -ty and -tee of guarantee and warranty, respectively.

I'm only on page 33 of the book; I expect a lot of the cool stuff I find to overflow into this space. It's too good not to.

The Danske Tekster, part two

Preface: In my previous post, when I said "post a translation on Thursday," I meant that I would do so on the last Wednesday in October.

After writing my last post featuring the text in Dansk to be translated, I found that Danish: An Elementary Grammar Reader is available on Google Books. I hope nobody cheated.

Here's the original text followed by the translation.

Nu vil vi begynde. Vi vil lære dansk. Mange danske ord er i familie med ('med', with) engelske ord.

Vi er i et rum i et hus i England. her er en dør, og ('og', and) der er to vinduer. Vi kan se ud i en park, hvor der er mange børn. Solen skinner; det er en varm dag. Det er mandag den første september. I parken sidder en ung mand på ('på', on) en bænk og drømmer. På hans knæ er en åben bog. Et lille barn går i det grønne græs. Det lille barn har en ny spade i hånden; barnet vil grave et dybt hul. I et bed, hvor der er friske røde og hvide roser, går en høne og en tam ravn. En stork flyver over græsset. På græsset står en fed mand med en rød næse; han sægler iskrem. Alle børnene bil have is. Det er en varm eftersommerdag.
--
Now will we begin. We will learn Danish. Many Danish words are in family with (i.e. are related to) English words.

We are in a room in a house in England. Here is a door, and there are two windows. We can see out in (i.e. into) a park, where there are many children (cf. Scotch 'bairn'). The sun (cf. Latin and French and the English word solstice) shines; it is a warm day. It is Monday and the first (of) September. In the park sits a young man on a bench and dreams. On his knees is an open book. A little child goes (i.e. is walking) in the green grass. the little child has a new spade in the hand (i.e. in his hand); the child will (i.e. wants to) dig (cf. the English noun grave) a deep hole. In a bed (i.e. flower-bed), where there are fresh red and white roses, go a hen and a tame raven. A stork flies over the grass. On the grass stands a fat man with a red nose; he sells ice-cream. All the children will have (i.e. want) ices. It is a warm after-summer-day (i.e. late summer day).

Reading the translated text, it may be rather obvious that the translation is a literal one. The interesting thing about translation is that there is often a philosophical divide regarding how to proceed with a translation (especially if a translator is working with fiction). A translator can proceed with a literal translation or choose to reshape the text to convey the original author's meaning, but not necessarily the syntax. The second option, to reshape the text, is pretty appealing from a linguistic standpoint, if only because a literal translation often produces an exit text similar to the one above: one that conveys the meaning of the original author but with a syntax that shows it was first written in another language. Reshaping a sentence according to meaning is certainly a more hands-on task for a translator, but if the exit text is to be devoid of awkward constructions (e.g., "In the park sits a young man on a bench and dreams."; "All the children will want ices."), it is important to think of the exit text's audience and not simply the author's meaning.

The Danske Tekster

I've recently become a freelance copyeditor. It's pretty neat so far, although working from home is an adjustment. My favorite half-joke of the past two weeks (since I received the good news) is to talk about how, as a freelancer, I can work anywhere. That includes my home, a local coffee shop, the public library, on a ridge in West Virginia, or Copenhagen. I really want to go to Copenhagen.

I joined the Brooklyn Public Library and found Danish: An Elementary Grammar and Reader by Elias Bredsdorff. (I really like the cover.) I've always been more interested in Swedish because of my love of Ingmar Bergman's films but, in terms of destinations, I prefer Copenhagen to Stockholm.

I've only just started glancing through the book, but I've already found my favorite part: The Danske Tekster. In the subsection "The Written Language" (p. 2), Bredsdorff explains,

It is fairly easy for a British or American student to acquire a reading knowledge of Danish.

Three things are essential for that purpose: an elementary knowledge of the structure and grammar of the Danish language, a Danish–English dictionary, and a little imagination. Even without the help of the two former assets it is possible to understand many Danish words and sentences, because they have a close resemblance to English. As an illustration and a proof of this, three Danish texts are given below, with a total vocabulary of more than 150 common Danish words, of which only five are given in English translation. Using his [or her] imagination any English student should be able to understand and translate 90–100 per cent of the texts, even if they are the first Danish texts he has ever seen.

I had to read that twice, mostly because of how presumptuous the author was in claiming that any old Anglophone can translate Danish without having learned a lick of the language. I'm not offended by that though, because it plays right into what I like best about language: using it. Chances are good that I won't learn much Danish (not pessimism, just realism), so it's not a whole lot of fun to read about the specific parts of the language if I won't ever have to use that knowledge. However, what you learn about a language means a lot more if you know that you're learning it for a reason.

So, here's the challenge: translate the following paragraph from Danish to English. It seems a ridiculous task, but I tried it and it was pretty fun. Go ahead and post what you think the text says in English and mail it to patrickpatrickswayze at gmail. I'll post the book's translation on Thursday.

It's also worthwhile to know that the text is not especially complex, grammatically or semantically. That doesn't make it any easier, but just keep in mind that your translation should not sound like Proust.

(1)
Nu vil vi begynde. Vi vil lære dansk. Mange danske ord er i familie med ('med', with) engelske ord.

Vi er i et rum i et hus i England. her er en dør, og ('og', and) der er to vinduer. Vi kan se ud i en park, hvor der er mange børn. Solen skinner; det er en varm dag. Det er mandag den første september. I parken sidder en ung mand på ('på', on) en bænk og drømmer. På hans knæ er en åben bog. Et lille barn går i det grønne græs. Det lille barn har en ny spade i hånden; barnet vil grave et dybt hul. I et bed, hvor der er friske røde og hvide roser, går en høne og en tam ravn. En stork flyver over græsset. På græsset står en fed mand med en rød næse; han sægler iskrem. Alle børnene bil have is. Det er en varm eftersommerdag.