Blogging is light at the moment

I'm a bit occupied at the moment. I'll be back in action most soonest.

Angie

It's been only a few hours since I parted from my dear fiancée Angie, but I'm missing her already. She's off to visit family in the Philippines, and I'll be joining them in the tropics in a few weeks myself. But what would I do without her? Her advice: do your blog.

So I shall, and I begin this evening with a topical image I recently came across of that gold-digging publicity-hound Heather Mills-McCartney, who recently divorced the eminent Paul McCartney in order to get £24 million. She's the one on the left.

Musical Friday

As I am so uninspired at the moment with my blogging, I have decided to rip off others' ideas emulate other great blogs and have a bit of music for Friday. Naturally being linguistically oriented, I have gone for some translations of songs, in particular choosing Disney songs as in the idea stolen from Laura-Rose's shining example.

I am rather a fan of the music of the Disney film Pocahontas (even if the plot of the film is abysmally historically inaccurate), so here's a few translations, starting with German. There are a few differences, such as the blue corn moon in the English becoming Silbermond (silver moon) in German, and Colours of the wind becomes Farbenspiel des Winds (colour-play of the winds).

Here's Jennifer Rush singing "The Colo(u)rs of the Wind" in German:



The original cinematic version in German:



And the original in English:



And let's go for the Mandarin Chinese version while we're at it:



And why not have another language? Here's it in Japanese:



Now I've outed myself as a closet Disney music fan, I'll go and hang my head in shame....

No Book Review today

No book review today; I'm too busy. Blogging may be light over the next few days.

Thank you.

Announcement: Potentially serving notice on my blog

I mentioned a while ago about ending blogging.

No, this is not the goodbye statement, I'm going to carry on blogging for now, but recently I have been making moves for developing a career, and should I be successful with my career plans, I will end blogging under my own name in favour of my career. This is not likely to be for a few months yet, so please continue to enjoy my words for the moment.

POLITICS - Cool Wales, not cool Lembit

My thanks to Ordovicius for bringing this to my attention:

The Times reports:
Why Wales is suddenly cool ... Lembit Öpik represents a Welsh seat at Westminster. So it's all go. ... Indeed, jokes aside, the most tireless champion of all things Welsh in Westminster probably continues to be Lembit Öpik, who has a Welsh seat and was the head of the Welsh Liberal Democrats, but is of Estonian descent and was born in Northern Ireland.

At the end of the day, Lembit Öpik MP quite simply is not a champion of Welsh culture, you see. His tenure as leader of the Welsh Lib Dems went unnoticed, and although he has his good days and he has his bad, having a Welsh seat in Westminster does not necessarily make you Welsh. Just ask Peter Hain, like. As for him being champion of all things Welsh, well, to be honest with you, his head is so far stuck up his own asteroids that he probably would only notice Wales if a rock from outer space fell on it. No word of a lie, he goes and dumps Welsh totty (although she is getting on a bit now) Siân Lloyd, which is a real shame. Where to is she now then? Going from strength to strength, and I'll tell you what, he goes and cops off with a bastion of supposed musical culture, namely a Transylvanian geminid. Not Welsh there, is it? Crackin'.

Not being funny, but Lembit Öpik is not Welsh. I've said my piece and I can do no more, if you don't mind.

LITERATURE - José Rizal

Let us consider the works of José Rizal.

"Who?" I hear quite a few of you ask.

Well quite simply, sometimes a region, country, or a community of language will look to a particular text or author for inspiration, and will even sometimes become the standard for literature in that language. Look at the niche that Shakespeare has with the English language; he's the only specifically prescribed author that must be studied in the English GCSE curriculum. And with good cause. I do like Shakespeare. Personally, when it comes to poetry, my favourite poet in any language is Goethe, particularly the poem Der Erlkönig, but I digress.

Back to Rizal. Rizal is the literary inspiration of the Philippines, but he is much, much more than that. He is the inspiration for the Philippines. Rizal was martyred in 1896 by the Spanish authorities, who at the time ruled over the Philippines. Rizal is considered a national hero by the Filipinos, and rightly so. Rizal wrote two novels, Noli Me Tangere (sometimes known in English by the title The Social Cancer, but is often just referred to as Noli) and El Filibusterismo. These two books formed the nucleus of Philippine literature that inspired dissent against the ruling Spanish and forged the path towards later Philippine independence, and are required reading as part of the Philippine education system today.

So, given that the main languages of the Philippines are Tagalog and English and most copies today are sold in the Tagalog language, an outsider might presume that the books were written in Tagalog. I have a copy in English. But no, they were written in neither English or Tagalog, but in Spanish. They were later translated into Tagalog and English, and it is (I am told) the Tagalog translation which is used in the Philippines today.

However, when one reads a translated text, there are inevitably elements that may not easily translate. I don't speak Spanish yet, but it would be a goal if I could speak Spanish to read the books in the original Spanish, and compare them to the English translations. The recent linguistic history of the Philippines is bound up with these books, because two years after Rizal's martyrdom, the rule of Spain was over, and the language of power was no longer Spanish, but after America took over the Philippines subsequently the language of choice for dealing outside the Philippine islands became English. It is curious, but from an unscientific poll of Filipino acquaintances, there are hardly any who would actually be able to read the originals in Spanish, due to a lack of knowledge of Spanish.

But the books in whatever form, and Rizal's example, have endured. Rizal wrote not only novels, but diaries, poetry and more, all to inspire the Filipino. In Manila, his final text, a poem entitled Mi último adiós (My last farewell), is trilingually displayed in Rizal Park, at the site where he was martyred and has potentially become the most widely translated poem of farewell.

So let us raise a toast to the great writer and Philippine patriot José Rizal. Long may his works and deeds inspire.

LANGUAGE - Language GCSEs

Further to my previous post about about language GCSEs, here's the latest on how language GCSEs for the linguistic education of our children will develop in the UK.

Reading page 16 of the Times Educational Supplement Cymru of Friday April 18, 2008, an article highlights how the new format for GCSEs are to be modular, and I cite the paragraph about languages GCSEs:

"There will be a widely trailed move away from end-of-course oral exams to continuous assessment."

Okay, so far so good, continuous assessment could have the potential to be a good approach, as long as there is a uniform approach to marking. Assessment of oral with languages is absolutely vital.

"Schools will be given a set of suggested speaking "tasks", which they can adapt and can give pupils throughout the two years of the course."

Hmm, sounds to me like it's going to be very much a flexible scheme, quite selective even, especially if it can be adapted. How will the adaptations be monitored? I'm thinking it might be difficult to implement uniformity in marking, particularly if there are unregulated adaptations.

"Pupils will be able to select the one with the best marks to count towards their grade."

Now this is what gets me. Pupils will be able to select the one with the best marks. Now I'm all for people taking control of their education, but shouldn't all the marks be taken into account in continuous assessment? Maybe factor in something for weighting if marks are to be substituted, etc., but picking and choosing what you want to be assessed may not be the best method. Let's say, just as an example, that a pupil is assessed five times, and gets 50% in four out of the five assessments, but then gets 90% in the fifth assessment. Under the new scheme as I understand it (and I'm willing to be corrected if I'm wrong), a pupil could then claim to have got 90%, when a more accurate average of the five results would have the pupil with a grade of 58%.

"They will also have the opportunity to to take a short course in either the spoken or written aspects of the language."

Does this mean that if a pupil chooses to do a spoken course, then there will be almost no focus then on the written aspects of the language? This contrasts with the previous understanding that there was going to be less focus on the spoken aspects.

If I get time, I may investigate more. Busy busy busy. I'm investigating other aspects of education at the moment. In the meantime, the new GCSEs in "English, Maths and ICT will not be launched until 2010 because of a delay". I look forward to seeing how the English GCSE in particular develops.

Devon (2)

This is why I went to Devon.

Devon

Right, I'm going to be offline for a few days, as I'm off to Devon with my parents and Angie. I've something important to do, which I'll tell you about when I return.

Toodle-pip!

BOOK REVIEW - The Klingon Hamlet by Wil'yam Shex'pir

As a bit of a light-hearted review, I thought I'd have a look at the Klingon Hamlet.

Yes, Hamlet, as translated into Klingon. I picked it up a few years ago in a second-hand book store in Manila for a few pesos; the salesperson thought it possibly an Arabic book. I immediately spotted it for what it truly was and snapped up a bargain.

I shan't be able to review the actual Klingon text, as I don't speak Klingon yet. From a throwaway line in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country ("You have not experienced Shakespeare, until you have read him in the original Klingon"; Chancellor Gorkon), a group of language enthusiasts decided to play on it, grasping the nettle and actually setting out the text in Klingon. To back this up, there is an introduction at the front of the book detailing how the original text detailing an attempted coup of the Klingon Empire, as written by the Klingon Bard Wil'yam Shex'pir, a Klingon. It was purportedly taken over by the United Federation of Planets, and adopted, ignoring the true Klingon origins of the play, thanks to the forceful propaganda of the UFP. A fanciful essay, it suggests an anachronistic tale which takes some thought but adds to the general ethos of the book.

Sacrilege for twisting the Bard so? Not really, but rather a wry look at a classic from the 24th century.

Hamlet itself needs no review; it has been reviewed thousands of times, and it is the jocular Klingon elements which are reviewed here. There follows a bilingual text of the whole play, the translation into English on the left, the original Klingon text on the right (just go with me on this).

With many modern publications of Shakespeare, there is usually a guide or vocabulary list for more difficult words, there is a similar section in the Klingon Hamlet, but with the Klingon book, it ends with commentary on how the translations differ; for example, whereas the English language version is set in Denmark, the Klingon language version is set on the Klingon homeworld, Qo'noS. And a quote from page 200: To be or not be... Klingon does not have an equivalent of the verb "to be" and the text goes on to explain that the verb used in Klingon is a form of the Klingon verb continue, thus the opening words of the famous speech (illustrated) are rendered thus in the original Klingon: taH pagh taHbe'. To top it off is a document in the appendices from Starfleet Academy about the Klingon Bard!

This is a fanciful lovely book that belongs on the shelf of every Star Trek enthusiast, constructed language enthusiast, and even on the shelf of every Shakespeare enthusiast.

TO PURCHASE, CLICK HERE: Klingon "Hamlet" (Star Trek)

POLITICS - Council elections

It's election time again, council elections in fact at the moment, and although I mostly would support candidates representing the Conservative Party, I am not involved this year, not even standing as a paper candidate. I've had to rearrange my focus in life (and blogging!) and I've realised that politics is not everything, and to be honest I don't have the resources or energy to put in the extra time and effort and money required to be politically active at the moment. This time four years ago, I was the candidate for the ward I live in, this time round, I'm just a voter. It'll be interesting to see things from the other side of the fence. I've received two leaflets through the door, both from the Liberals. There are some Tories standing, but I have yet to receive anything from them.

However, don't let this stop you from reading other blogs from people who take a far greater interest in it at the moment, in particular with the Cardiff Council elections. New Welsh Right has started blogging again, and although I certainly don't agree with what he writes sometimes (in fact his latest blogpost about the wonderful right-leaning Cardiff independent Councillors Jayne Cowan and Adrian Robson is absolutely atrocious vitriol; Jayne (illustrated) and Adrian are two of the nicest people you'll meet in politics, and if I lived in the ward where they were standing, they'd certainly get my vote), he certainly promises to make an opinionated read. Jayne and Adrian have served as good councillors thus far, whatever their party affiliation, and they thoroughly deserve to be re-elected.

So it just leaves me to say good luck particularly to Jayne Cowan and Adrian Robson, and good luck most of the other Conservative candidates across the country.

LITERATURE - back to writing fiction again

Last summer, I had a pop at doing a bit of creative writing, with the overly ambitious project of writing a whole novel in a month, ignoring the November scheduling of the National Novel Writing Month website and giving it a damned good go during June and July last year. After all, as I reasoned when I was seven years old, if I read the things, then who writes them? It must be fun to do that, I figured, so I started writing at that tender age. I have yet to complete a novel though, so I soldier on.

I abandoned the novel after thirty days as I felt it wasn't actually going anywhere, and saved it in a file in my hard drive, 10,000 words of writing. A friend commented: "10,000 words, THEN he gives up." For students, 10,000 words is a helling long essay or two, and a number to be feared, but when you consider the average novel comes in about 100,000 words, then it's not a lot. That was how I saw it, as not a lot of words really.

However, having recently revisited my hard drive, I opened it back up and had a read of what I've written and (although I do say so myself) I quite liked it, coming to it fresh after quite a few months, and thought it was a rather good opening for a SF novel. I need to have a good long think about where this story is going next if I'm going to get back to work on it, so in my free time, that's what I'll be doing, reconsidering the story. I'll just take it a bit easier and slower this time.

LANGUAGE - Spelling - even I am prone to errors

Something recently came to my attention, via a comment on this blog, in fact. With all the wedding planning, etc., going on, I have found myself using a word which I have been incorrectly spelling for many years.

The word nuptial. I have always spelt it nuptual, based on what I have always heard pronounced around me, but I stand (or actually sit, perched on the edge of a chair as I type this) corrected. I suppose that I should have realised when I have recently become aware of a bridal company called Pronuptia, but for once I did not make the connection.

You learn something new every day. Thank you Graham, for pointing it out.

I have been musing over in my mind for a long time whether any form of spelling form would be viable for English, and this perhaps points out the differences between the orthographic rendering and the actual pronunciation of a word. This example of my error with the word nuptial could enforce the argument that English orthography needs to be more phonetic. On the other hand one could argue however that by having a spelling which reflects the speech more closely lead to dialects diverging into separate languages more quickly, and interintelligibility is thus lost.

One could say the split has already begun. Centre/center, theatre/theater, and so forth, with minor spelling differences already apparent. Mind you, they've been arguing for years that American English is a different language anyway....

And in answer to Laura's question, the language of the wedding ceremony will be English. The Philippines is (mostly) bilingual, with English and Pilipino the two main official languages of the country.

(A day late, but forgive me)

My lovely horse

It just had to be posted.... It's just too topical.

Nagging feeling

After posting the horse story, I noticed that it seems to have become a popular topic on a number of blogs. Hen Ferchetan gets my vote (so far) for best blogpost title, Murder She Rode. It's linguistically and creatively great to see all this horseplay with words.

And as for the horse being terrified.... Again Hen Ferchetan gets the vote for no nonsense commentary: have a look at that picture up there, not only does the horse seem pretty comfortable around her, she's even got her hand on his bloody nose!

I think it's a case where it's got nothing to do with linguistic identity; whoever did it speaks English and no Cymraeg, and wrote it in pidgin Welsh to try and shift the blame. I still have a nagging feeling (pun intended) that there's more than meets the eye on this. I wonder if the InterTran website has any method of tracking who has searched for what translations, and can track them back via their ISP? It would be interesting to see if the first search can indeed be tracked back to that village....

Blogging Days

Well, I believe I've successfully moved this blog away from being a politics only focused blog as per my plan, so now it's time to contemplate another move I've been thinking about for the blog. I was thinking of possibly having themed days. Naturally it won't be something I'll absolutely rigidly adhere to, I may have something doing on one evening which will impede my blogging, but as a framework it'll do.

Here's what I was thinking:

Mondays: Languages and linguistics
Tuesdays: Literature and Creative Writing
Wednesdays: Politics
Thursdays: Book Reviews

And what of Friday, Saturday and Sunday...? Maybe a bit more language?

Your suggestions please.

I'll start next week, if you don't mind.

English out....? Neigh, lad....

Let's surmise a siaradwr Cymraeg Welsh nationalist person with a nasty racist streak (in particular, not liking the English), would want to make sure the racist didn't look even more of a fool when scrawling graffiti expressing racist views. I'd want to scrawl my graffito in correct Welsh, if I were them, in order to get my message across.


So, what is the correct way of saying in Welsh "Get lost English" or something like that?

According to Miserable Old Fart, the words to be used are:

North of Dyfi Bridge use Saeson Allan

South of Dyfi Bridge use Saeson Mas

alternatively use the generic Twll Din Pob Sais throughout Wales.

Now, having decided to do a bit of Welsh language nationalist graffiti, the vandal must now carefully select a target, and do a bit of assault. Naturally, an English person would be a good target.

So here's where the logic starts to go a bit wrong.

The target for assault in question is not anyone English, but a seven month old pony called Hope. All right, I'm not sure if the pony is English, but for the sake of argument we'll say the beast is Welsh for now. Horses don't speak Welsh anyway, apart from Mr Ed's Welsh cousin, Mr Twp. The damage has been done though. Now, are the owners English? And what of the community?

Let us quote the Daily Mail, that bastion of all things correct and right-minded (tongue firmly in cheek)....

The couple were both born and bred in Wales and decided to move to the countryside from Cardiff a year ago.
They set up home in Cilgerran, near Cardigan, five months ago and bought eight acres of land intending to start their own riding school.
Mrs Hayes said: "This is a Welsh-speaking area and they might have mistaken our Cardiff accents for English, that is all I can think.
“This was an incredibly cruel thing to do. Hope is a beautiful, friendly animal and she was slashed across the face and mouth.
“The motivation of these people was ridiculous and to take it out on an innocent horse was wicked.
"Hope loved being around people but now I can't get near her. She is terrified."

Okay, so the horse's owners have singled it out as a Welsh speaking area. It's curious, as it's going to be a rural area, so even if a Cardiff accent were mistaken for an English one, the grapevine and community spirit in such an area would certainly have passed onto the community in the five months of living there that the newcomers are Cymro and Cymraes, from the Welsh side of the border.

The fact that the language has been made into an issue also suggests that that Mr and Mrs Hayes do not speak Welsh, so one may speculate that perhaps they have not integrated into their surrounding Cymraeg community as much as they would have liked to.

To top off the assault, graffito was left, reading: Cai Maes Sais. Now I don't speak Welsh to any great extent, and am actually learning Cornish, but from reliable informants, Miserable Old Fart and Hen Ferchetan, one can conclude that it's more likely to be Gibberish (as spoken in Gibraltar), not proper Welsh. In fact, it can be traced to a computer-generated translation from English into supposed Welsh (because the translation tool isn't much cop), showing that the assailant may not actually be a Welsh speaker at all, but someone who looks to fan the flames and pin the blame on Welsh speaking nationalists, by using a translation into Welsh! They've been caught out by the quality of the translation, whoever it was.

Now as they were planning to start a riding school, this animal is likely to be a working animal, so most probably will be insured (yes, you can get horse insurance). It seems from the words from the Daily Mail above, that the animal's ability to interact with humans may be over. And horses aren't cheap.

Enough detective work. Time for some creative writing, another interest of mine. The following is pure speculation, an idle thought to pass the time of day, just fiction. Being creatively minded, one can take stories from newspapers, etc. and build fiction from them. In fact, for a creative writing course I had to do just that. Let's do that now with a newspaper story.

For your creative writing fiction class today, having taken an article from a newspaper, (I have chosen the Daily Mail article, cited and linked to above) consider the following words, then craft a story.

Insurance job.

Oh Mother, where art thou?

Well, the engagement done, Angie is now at her most sweetest going into overdrive, planning the wedding. Today we're looking at writing the text for the wedding invitations, the wedding over a year away, but everything must be perfect in time. There are some things I have resigned myself to not having any choice over (after all, although it's about us, it's truly her big day, the day she looks like a princess - she does anyway, I may certainly add), such as the bridesmaids' dresses' colour, but the language of the wedding is something I'm naturally interested in, and the sticking point right now is how to refer to our mothers. There is currently some cause for debate over the correct spelling for the label of the female parental unit.

Here in South Wales, it is Mam, spelt with an A, and that's certainly what I'm used to, and how my mother spells it. Angie, coming originally from the Philippines, is used to Mom, as the English language of the Philippines is heavily influenced by the English language as spoken in the USA. There is of course the British English Mum that we could both neutrally apply, but neither of us completely feel comfortable with that.

A solution must be found, so I'll let you know how it goes. At least our Dads are Dads, no changing there.

Goodbye, John

John Moorcraft, the eminent blogger and possessor of a Delphic knowledge of all things to do with the youth movement of the Conservative Party, has announced that he's ending his blogging. He is the one who really got me into blogging, and I am saddened to mark the loss of another blog that I enjoyed regularly reading. He's been at it for nearly two years, a long time in the blogosphere, and I'm going to miss his writing. Fancy going out for a pint soon, John?

In the meantime, here's a picture of a number of the lads including John in honour of his great blog's passing, John to the right of the image, me leering over him.

More amusement

This should keep you entertained until I resume blogging properly.