Author: 101translations

Gregory Rebassa was born in New York in 1922. He served as a cryptographer during the Second World War, and subsequently earned a PhD at Columbia University and pursued an academic career.

Rebassa is especially well-known for his literary translations from Spanish and Portuguese into English, especially of important Latin American novelists. His translations of works by Gabriel García Márquez are particularly renowned. Márquez even said that the English translation was better than the Spanish original, which is quite something! Thanks to Rebassa, works like ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ are as beloved of English-speaking readers as they are in Spanish-speaking countries.

Rebassa won numerous prizes for his translations, which he often did without having read the book in advance, saying that he ‘wrote’ the book in English as if the writer had been writing in English in the first instance, leading to a distinctively unique style for each author.

Gregory Rebassa died in 2016.

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The longest Greek word is:

λεπαδοτεμαχοσελαχογαλεοκρανιολειψανοδριμυποτριμμματοσιλφιοτυρομελιτοκατακεχυμενοκιχλεπικοσσυφοφατοπεριστεραλεκτρυνοπτοκεφαλιοκιγκλοπελειολαγῳοσιραιοβαφητραγανοπτερυγών.

Wow, that is indeed exceedingly long!

Aristophanes, a Greek poet born in about 450 BCE, is still on the curriculum for scholars of classics. In his day, he was renowned for his work in the area of comedy, which continues to influence modern theatre to the present.

One of the last plays Aristophanes wrote was ‘The Assemblywomen,’ with a plot about women planning to enter parliament and reduce male authority in favour of their own. Startled and alarmed by the revolt, the men quickly surrendered and accepted the state of affairs, although the new laws were difficult, particularly the one that required men to spend time with three unattractive women before settling down with a pretty one.

The story ends, as comedies often do, with a party, and at the party the guests were offered λεπαδοτεμαχοσελαχογαλεοκρανιολειψανοδριμυποτριμματοσιλφιοτυρομελιτοκατακεχυμενοκιχλεπικοσσυφοφατοπεριστεραλεκτρυνοπτοκεφαλιοκιγκλοπελειολαγῳοσιραιοβαφητραγανοπτερυγών.

The longest Greek word, as written by Aristophanes, was a compound word made up of all the elements of food and drink that were served to the guests.

Clearly, it was quite a feast.

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All over the world and throughout history, conquering cultures and new regimes make deliberate changes to local language use as a way to highlight their own power and authority. Just look at the placenames in the Americas, for example: while some landmarks retain indigenous names (hello, Lake Ontario!), many are given new names in the languages of the conquerors.

Currently, in Afghanistan, the ruling Taliban regime is working to eliminate Persian words and expressions from schools, universities, and placenames. In Kabul, the authorities are steadily replacing Persian placenames with alternatives in the Pashto language, generally by directly translating the names from one language into another.

The impacts of this sort of policy and behaviour are far-reaching. While the Afghan and Persian cultures have a long and complex history, Persian (which is known in Afghanistan as Dari) has long been the common language of Afghanistan, enabling people to communicate with ease, even when they spoke different languages at home. Demoting Persian in this way, especially in the harsh political environment of Afghanistan, sends a chilling message to the public, including education providers and businesspeople.

Of course, there are many examples of similar behaviours all over the world. Many cultures compromise by featuring two, or more, languages on signs and by having more than one official language. This way, rulers can make statements about power and authority, and ordinary people can continue to communicate in whatever language works best for them at any given time.

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Regular readers of our blog know that we’re extremely interested in how animals communicate. After all, this is the origin of language.

Researchers focusing on the African striped mouse and how it communicates have demonstrated that these cute little animals, which communicate with high-pitched squeaks that human ears can’t hear, have specific vocalisations, depending on which ‘nest bush’ they live in; a sort of mouse dialect. This means that if they hear a warning signal, for example, they know if it’s coming from one of their neighbours, or from a different group, and they respond very differently, depending on the circumstance.

Other species, even those not generally considered to be more complex thinkers, often communicate using more complex vocalisations than was formerly believed, often with recognisable patterns. These patterns mean that it may be possible to encode how they are communicating, and possibly even create a lexicon that would allow humans – with the help of noise-imitating technology – to speak to them.

What will be the practical implications of this? And are there any ethical considerations to bear in mind? We’ll certainly be watching to see what happens next!

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Even if you haven’t read Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien, you’ve probably seen the movie. So many orcs!

But did you know just how much linguistics went into the work?

Tolkien wasn’t just a great fantasy writer; he was also a linguist, and linguistics is at the heart of his writing. In fact, arguably, he wrote fantasy novels to find homes for the invented languages he created for the elves, dwarves, and other species that throng the pages.

In Tolkien’s work, Elvish languages, such as Sindarin, are based on real languages, and they have real grammar rules and phonetic patterns. Sindarin, for example, is intricately linked to Welsh.

Some of the languages Tolkien invented were supposed to be related, so he even invented common ancestor languages for them, and then allowed the ‘modern’ languages to evolve in a logical manner. All of this, coupled with his detailed work with landscape and the urban and natural geography of his imagined lands, creates a profound sense of history and make the stories feel deeply real, even as their heroes engage in impossible feats.

So, there you have it: languages are good for a lot of things, including creating fantastical imagined worlds.

We’re not even slightly surprised.

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Robert Chase, an American, suffered an injury requiring surgery when he was nineteen. Surgery went well, but everyone was astonished when he woke up speaking fluent Spanish, despite only having learned the basics at school. He spoke to everyone in Spanish for about twenty minutes before returning to his native English.

Since then, Robert had several other surgeries, and each time he woke up speaking excellent Spanish until the anaesthetic fully wore off. The funny thing was that he did not even realise he was doing it!

Although he only ever studied elementary Spanish, Robert grew up in an area that was also home to a lot of native speakers of Spanish. As a child, his best friend was a Spanish-speaker, and Robert often heard Spanish spoken in his home on playdates. It appears that, subconsciously, he absorbed the language. He has subsequently spent time living in Chile, a Spanish-speaking country, so now he can speak it when he is fully awake, too.

Robert’s case is an outlier, but it gives tantalising glimpses of how children acquire language, and what parts of the brain are activated in different circumstances.

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If we ever do make contact with beings from another planet, how on Earth will we communicate? We’ll definitely have completely different languages, and quite likely utterly different biologies too.

To avoid some potentially dangerous miscommunications (we’ve all seen Mars Attacks, right?) perhaps this is something we should start thinking about now. It certainly does not hurt to be at least a little prepared.

Some researchers believe that maths is a sort of universal language; a series of ineffable truths that are the same anywhere you go, including in outer space. They point to the fact that numerous species here on earth use maths in diverse ways. Their systems may not be the same, but the maths always is.

For example, bees, homing pigeons, and human beings all employ maths every day to get to where they are going and to do it efficiently. And while bees and homing pigeons do not talk about maths the way we do, they certainly know how to use it.

If aliens ever do visit earth, they will have to come in extremely sophisticated spaceships, so if that ever happens, we’ll be able to assume they are maths whizzes! So, you know, maybe we should start hitting the books and developing a maths-based language to reach out to them in?

Photo Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/view-of-earth-and-satellite-yZygONrUBe8

We’ve written before about various indigenous languages, and how often they diminish or perish in the face of the globalisation of a small number of languages. But sometimes there is a little good news.

In Australia, where there are about 250 distinctive indigenous languages, the indigenous language Bunurong hasn’t been spoken fluently for about a hundred years, although it was once spoken over a broad territory. Today, a Bunurong community group, led by community elder Gail Kunwarra Dawson, is working with a language group that includes members of the community of all ages and linguists, to bring the language back to life. With the help of nineteenth-century sources and linguistic know-how, they are creating a dictionary of words that will make it easier for people to translate from English into Bunurong and vice versa.

Reviving indigenous languages doesn’t mean not speaking English or another global language. Obviously, that’s essential for indigenous people to participate in economic and social life. It’s about embracing cultural identity and, beyond that, embracing bilingualism and the ability to move fluently between different linguistic and cultural environments. We can’t undo the injustices of the past, including the suppression of many indigenous languages around the world, but we can all work towards a more inclusive linguistic environment in the future!

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Every family, no matter what language or languages they speak at home, also has its own mode of communication. In linguistic terms, this is known as a ‘familect.’ It refers to variations of pronunciation and grammar, and even unique words, which are only used, and sometimes only understood, within the family in question.

So how do familects evolve? One major source are a child’s mispronunciations or made-up words that were cute, and that everyone else in the family adopted too, for use at home. Here at 101translations, one of our families has a storage space that’s been known as ‘the nusing cupboard’ since a super-cute little boy started calling it that because ‘it’s where we keep the things we nuse.’ That was nearly twenty years ago, and while the little boy has changed a lot, the name of the cupboard has stayed the same.

While familects often start to fade as children grow up, leave home, and start families of their own, sometimes words, phrases, and idiosyncratic grammar get passed down through the generations, and even spread from one nuclear family unit to a slightly broader community, perhaps including close relatives and/or friends.

Similar things can happen with language in other environments in which people spend a lot of time together, such as close friendship groups in adolescence and early adulthood, and even offices.

Using a shared ‘special’ variant of the local language is not just a way of communicating, it’s also a deeply bonding experience that makes family members feel closer.

Can you think of any special familectal terms that only you and your loved ones use?

We’d love to hear about them!

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Recently at 101translations, we found ourselves discussing words that are simply fun to say out loud. One that caught our attention was ‘quiz’. It’s short, snappy, and somehow manages to contain both a Q and a Z – which got us wondering: where did such an unusual word come from?

As it turns out, the story behind quiz is quite a curious one.

The word first appeared in written records around 1780, but its true origins remain unknown. Many linguists believe it began as student slang. At first, quiz referred to an odd or eccentric person, or even a prank or deception. Over time, its meaning shifted to “questioning” or “examining closely” before evolving into the sense we know today: a test of knowledge. By the mid-1800s, it was even appearing in the works of authors such as Charlotte Brontë and Jane Austen.

There’s also a famous legend behind the word. According to the story, in 1791 a Dublin theatre owner named Richard Daly bet that he could invent a brand-new word and have it enter everyday language within 24 hours. To prove his point, he supposedly hired local children to chalk the nonsense word quiz on walls across Dublin overnight. By the next day, curious locals were asking what it meant, and the word quickly spread.

It’s a brilliant story, but almost certainly just that. Researchers have found no evidence that Daly’s wager ever happened, and since quiz had already appeared in print before 1791, the tale doesn’t quite add up.

Still, it’s a great bit of table quiz trivia.

Just don’t be surprised if someone tries to tell you the Richard Daly story as fact!

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