parrot time - issue 8 - march / april 2014

Parrot TimeThe Thinking of Speaking Issue #8 March / April 201 4

LLaanngguuaaggeess IInn PPeerrii ll

Esala PeraheraTThhee FFeessttiivvaall ooff tthhee TTooootthh

LLaanngguuaaggeess CCoonnffll ii ccttssTThhee ttwwoo wwrrii ttii nngg ssyysstteemmss ooffNNoorrwweeggiiaann :: BBookkmmååll aanndd NNyynnoorrsskk

Words Which HaveChanged Their MeaningLLaanngguuaaggeess aarree ddyynnaammiicc ccrreeaattiioonnss..HHeerree ii ss aa llooookk aatt hhooww ssoommee EEnnggll ii sshhwwoorrddss hhaavvee bbeeeenn aall tteerrrreedd

KKeeeeppiinngg UUpp WWii tthh TThheeKKaarrttvveell ii aannss:: SSvvaann ,,MMiinnggrreell ii aann aanndd LLaazz

SSppeeaakkiinngg wwii tthh AAll ii eennssLLiinngguu iissttss aanndd ttrraannssllaattoorrss iinnsscciieennccee ffii ccttiioonn

LLooookk bbeeyyoonnddwwhhaatt yyoouu kknnooww

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Contents

Parrot Time | Issue #8 | March / April 201 4 3

6 Speaking with AliensWhen we travel beyond this planet in science fiction movies andTV shows, we are bound to meet non-humans, yet we alwaysfind a way to communicate. We will look at some of the wayswhich are used when speaking with aliens.

24 At the Cinema - Pane e Tulipani

1 8 Language ConflictsLanguages don't always get along with each other. Sometimes,they don't even get along with themselves. Norwegian is alanguage that has two written forms: Bokmål vs. Nynorsk.

40 Languages in Peril - Keeping Up With TheKartvelians

50 Word on the Streets - Indonesian Innovators

46 Where Are You?

28 Words Which Have Changed Their MeaningLanguages are constantly changing. Even while they adoptwords from other languages or create new ones, some wordsalso change their meanings.

Parrot TimeParrot Time is a magazinecovering language, linguisticsand culture of the world around

us.

It is published by ScriveremoPublishing, a division of

Parleremo, the language learningcommunity.

Join Parleremo today. Learn alanguage, make friends, have fun.

Departments

Features

05 Letter From The Editor

Editor: Erik ZidoweckiEmail: [email protected]

Published by Scriveremo Publish-ing, a division of Parleremo.This issue is available online fromhttp://www.parrottime.com

The editor reserves the right toedit all material submitted. Viewsexpressed in Parrot Time are notnecessarily the official views ofParleremo. All rights of reproduc-tion, translation and adaptation re-served for all countries, exceptwhere noted otherwise. All copy-right material posted in the public-ation retains all its rights from theoriginal owner. Parrot Time, Par-leremo, officers and administra-tion accept no responsibilitycollectively or individually for theservice of agencies or persons ad-vertised or announced in thepages of this publication.

Cover: A woman walkingalong a street towards acounty shop in Nepal, India.

1 4 Celebrations - Esala Perahera

54 GlobTech - Google Translate SectionGlobTech is a new column dealing with new ways of utilizingglobalization technology on the internet. In this article, we lookat the Google Translate Section function.

48 Sections - Member Reviews

PPaarrlleerreemmoo

LLeeaarrnnaallaanngguuaaggee,,MMaakkeeffrriieennddss,,HHaavveeffuunn!!

wwwwww..ppaarrll eerreemmoo..oorrgg

Letter From The Editor


OOne of the big buzzwords in use today is globalization. Wikipediadefines it as “Globalization (or globalisation) is the process of

international integration arising from the interchange ofworld views,

products, ideas, and other aspects ofculture. Put in simple terms,

globalization refers to processes that increase world-wide exchanges of

national and cultural resources.”

For polyglots, there is a particular interest in globalization, becausethat is where their skills really come into play. While the world isexchanging all these views, products, ideas and resources, it is goingto need people that can translate between the many nations andpeople. While it can be said that English is the language of business,globalization goes beyond just business.

On the internet, there are many new standards and technologiesbeing designed and implemented to facilitate this increasing need. For example, a few years ago, itbecame possible to have domain names that were actually written in numerous scripts and not just thebasic Latin alphabet. Websites are increasingly using UTF-8 for their character encoding, thus enablingpages to handle a much larger range of languages. Many sites now recognize the need to be available inmultiple languages and allow visitors to select which to use.

But it has to go beyond just being able to display text in other languages. The world is still divided byour measurement systems (imperial vs. metric) , numerical notations (using periods and commas), dateformats, currency conversions and a host of other differences. Some of these can be handled by acomputer already, such as converting Euros to Yen, given the a database of currency exchange rates.Others take a little more work, like displaying the proper language in a date and timestamp, where thenames of the days and months need to also change according to the language.

In this issue, we are introducing a new column, called “GlobTech”, short for “GlobalizationTechnologies”, in which we can examine some of the methods being used as we push toward a moremultinational view of the world.

Some topics will be related to translating and languages while others will focus on the basics of handlingother technical requirements. We will try to look at why these things are needed as well as providingsolutions as they currently exist.

Whenever possible, we will be providing these answers in actual working code, often taken directly fromthe working components of Parleremo. The coding will be mostly in HTML, Javascript, CSS and PHP,depending on exactly what is needed.

We look forward to hearing from our readers their own experiences with these technologies as we explorethem!

Globalization

Erik ZidoweckiERIK ZIDOWECKIEDITOR IN CHIEF

The Tardis can travel anywhere inspace and time. It also automaticallytelepathically translates anylanguage into another.

Speaking with Aliens


We study languages so as to commu-nicate with other people, but what aboutother species? What happens we we gobeyond our planet? How do we commu-nicate then? Here we look at some ofthe linguists and translation devices ofscience fiction.

ntertainment media which deals with peoplefrom other countries often has the problem ofdifferent languages. We’ve all seen movies like

“The Hunt for Red October” which has an entireRussian submarine crew as the main object of thestory. While it would make sense that the crewwould all speak Russian throughout the movie,that would mean that much of the film requiressubtitles. Sadly, movies with extensive subtitlesare often shunned by the general population, soan excuse has to be made, or we are expected tojust “suspend our belief” as the Russians all speakEnglish to each other with proper American ac-cents (except for the captain, of course, who isplayed by British actor Sean Connery).

In the science fiction genre, this can get evenworse, since often completely different alien spe-cies are involved. Even if we pretend they arereally speaking their own language while talking toeach other, there has to be a way to show howEarthlings speaking English can understand be-ings from other worlds.

So writers come up with ways to at least at-tempt to ease this confusion without having to cre-ate new languages all the time for new races, usingsubtitles, and having long scenes explaining howthe two races learn to communicate. In a fewseries, they include linguists which can thenquickly learn the new language and interpret forthe rest of the people. In others, they include adevice that does all the work for us, and we just ig-nore that there is any problem in communicationsat all.

Of course, we still sometimes laugh when werealize that all aliens somehow speak modernEnglish, using slang and accents which match thehomeland of the series.

In this article, I look at a few of the linguists ofscience fiction as well as some of the devices em-ployed to explain away any language barriers.

Stargate: SG-1In the American TV series, Stargate: SG-1 , we findour first linguist. The series is based around anancient artifact called a “Stargate” which allowspeople to travel from one planet to another, thou-sands of light-years away.

The Stargate is a circle of metal, over 6 meters(18 feet) in diameter with a moving inner ring andspecial symbols, representing star constellations,around the edges. When given a series of sevensymbols, which together provide a set of coordin-ates to determine a course, a wormhole is openedfrom the first gate to another one. Once a personsteps through, they are instantly transported toanother planet, where they emerge from the Star-gate.

The series follows the adventures of the maingroup, SG-1 . The series was based upon the movie“Stargate”, which told the story of how the purposeof the artifact was determined and what happens

Daniel Jackson of Stargate: SG-1, examining a book.

SSppeeaakkiinngg wwii tthh

AAlliieennss


8 Parrot Time | Issue #8 | March / April 201 4

when it is first used. DanielJackson is an archaeologist,Egyptologist, and linguist who isbrought in to decode the writ-ings accompanying the Stargatewhen it was uncovered in Giza,Egypt, in 1928. He is the onethat works out that the symbolsare star constellations and whenhe identifies the seventh symbol(which represents the homegalaxy and vital in charting acourse), they show him the Star-gate. They “dial” up another gateand send through a group of sol-diers, along with Jackson, to ex-plore. Jackson is requiredbecause he is the only one thatcan find the right symbol com-bination to get the group backhome to Earth.

Once they reach the otherside, Jackson finds no writings,leaving everyone in despair. Theydo find a large, primitive city fullof people speaking an unknownlanguage. Through the course ofthe movie, Jackson figures outthat the language is ancientEgyptian, and that he didn’t re-cognize it because he had as-sumed a different method ofpronunciation.

Jackson also manages tofind the writings he needs andfigures out how to get everyonehome, but not before they des-troy an alien who has enslavedthe people by pretending to bethe Egyptian god, Ra.

In the TV series, the excusefor most of the planets they ex-plore having English speakers isbecause long ago, the peoplefrom these planets were fromEarth and were scattered to oth-er planets via the Stargates. Ofcourse, that would make themhuman, but not all speakingmodern English. The Stargatesthemselves compose a huge net-work, originally put in place by avery old alien race, referred toonly as “the Ancients”. The An-cients have left the galaxy longago, and the Stargate systemwas taken over by more of the

aliens, called Goa’uld, which areactually small snake-likecreatures that live inside humanbodies as parasites, taking fullcontrol.

Daniel Jackson is utilised totranslate any languages thatthey can’t identify. He first hasto learn the language of theJaffa, the soldiers of the Goa’uld.

The Goa’uld language issometimes described as a con-structed language used in theseries, much like Klingon wascreated for Star Trek, althoughmost of it is simply made uprandomly for a script. There ex-ists word and phrase lists takenfrom the series, but there is nota true vocabulary or grammarfor it.

The series ran for ten yearson American television andmade Daniel Jackson perhapsthe most known linguists in ascience fiction series.

Star Trek: EnterpriseArguably the most popular sci-ence fiction series in the world isStar Trek. It is actually a com-bination of several series, allplaced within the same universe.The first series aired in 1966,and is now referred to as Star

Trek: The Original Series, or inshorthand as “ST:TOS”.

This American series followsthe adventures of a crew of ex-plorers in the 23rd centuryaboard the starship USS Enter-

prise, which is the flagship forStarfleet, a deep-space explorat-ory and military service underthe United Federation ofPlanets.It typically had the problem ofhaving most aliens speakingEnglish, and since these weresupposed to also not be relatedto humans, they needed to comeup with a way to explain how thecrew didn’t have a problem con-versing with the alien races theyencountered. So, the Universal

Translatorwas used as an ex-cuse. But before that, there wasEnsign Hoshi Sato.

The final TV series, StarTrek: Enterprise, is actually aprequel to all the others, meantto show how humans first de-veloped interstellar space flightand how many of the future in-ventions were first created. Sincethey were first time exploringand meeting aliens, there was noway to communicate with them.

Hoshi Sato, on board the Enterprise.

They are all meant tosupposedly remove theneed for learning anoth-er language, but in real-ity, they are in place tomake it easier on theshow writers.



A linguist is required. EnsignHoshi Sato is an Asian Americanlinguist and the communicationsofficer on the ship Enterprise.She speaks over 40 languagesand taught linguistics in Brazilbefore joining the crew. It his herjob to figure out the languages ofnew alien species the crew of theEnterprise encounter duringtheir travels and communicatewith them.

Sato was a major figure be-hind creating the UniversalTranslator, so that other crewsand future ships would be ableto converse easily with any spe-cies they encountered, not need-ing to first learn the language. Ina way, she essentially ends thecareer of all linguists and poly-glots, making learning languagesan extinct pursuit in the future.

Babylon 5: CrusadeBabylon 5, another American TVseries, is about a space stationin the year 2258 which acts as adiplomatic outpost and port-of-call for various alien races. Dip-lomats from various alien worldslive there to help maintain peacebetween the planets. However,

wars do happen, and the majorone is between two ancientraces, the Vorlons and the Shad-ows. After the war, some of theallies of the Shadows retaliateagainst the Earth and release aplague which will kill everyoneon the planet in 5 years.

This is where the spin-offseries Crusade begins. Earth isquarantined, and an exploratoryship, the largest Earth vesselever, called the Excalibur, istasked with searching the galaxyfor a cure.

The Babylon universe hasno kind of universal translator,and a few languages are usedduring the show, but since mostof the main characters are diplo-mats, they have learned English.Some aliens have personaltranslator devices to convertwhat they say into English.

Without such a device, andnot knowing who they might en-counter during the travels, thecaptain of the Excalibur, Mat-thew Gideon brings on a linguistand archaeologist, Max Eilerson.

Eilerson works for Interplan-etary Expeditions, a large organ-ization which deals with artifacts

from other worlds. He was achild prodigy with a natural giftfor understanding alien lan-guages, a fact which he neverhesitates to boast about. Eiler-son is normally arrogant, greedyand sarcastic, making him adirect contrast to both DanielJackson and Hoshi Sato, whoare normally humble and a bitshy.

During his time with thecrew of the Excalibur, Eilersonworked not only to interpret thelanguages of some living aliensbut also to translate writings,ancient and current, of aliens.His skills even alert the crew to aparasitic life force when heidentifies that the aliens theyhave infected are using two dif-ferent languages: one of thehosts and one of the parasites.

Among the three linguists inthis article, he is probably theleast known, since Crusade

didn’t even last one season be-fore being cancelled and wasonly aired once.

The GadgetsWhen linguists are not used inscience fiction to interpret andtranslate the speech of alien lifeforms, other devices are utilised.Some are similar to concepts ofcomputer translators while someor are more organic in nature.They are all meant to supposedlyremove the need for learning an-other language, but in reality,they are in place to make it easi-er on the show writers.

Star TrekAs was mentioned before, StarTrek developed a device theyrefer to simply as the Universal

Translator, which is essentially ahand-held device.

How it exactly works isn’tquite clear. One explanation isthat any new language would betranslated when a being speaksenough into it for the device tocreate a translation matrix, afterwhich it would display the res-

The crew of the Excalibur from Crusade. Max Eilerson is second from the left.



ults on a screen. Sato is creditedwith creating a “linguacode”which would actually anticipate(somehow) the language andthus speed up the translation.These were built in to the com-munication systems of moststarships.

However, in Star Trek: The

Original Series, Captain JamesKirk described it in more lin-guistical terms as well as lesstechnically. Kirk claims thatthere were certain ideas andconcepts that were universallysimilar to all intelligent life,which is true of languages. TheUniversal Translator was able tocompare brainwave patterns forsimilar ideas and fill in the prop-er grammar and vocabulary tomake a translation. It didn’t stopthere. It was also able then toactually replicate the voice of thespeaker to speak the translation.

This explanation is a bitstrange, since it doesn’t explainhow a translator would workbetween ships. How does thedevice figure out which alien orperson to scan for the properbrainwave patterns? To make itan instant interpretion as theshow depicts, there is no matrix

being created, just a super fasttelepathic conversion. Theoddest part of this, however, iswhat happens to the voice of thespeaker, since we never hear theoriginal language being spoken.Between ships, it might just nev-er transmit the original source,but in face-to-face encounters,there would be some sound. Mi-raculously, even the lips (if thealien has any) also matches thenew speech.

In later series of Star Trek,even the pretence of a devicewas done away with, and it wasexplained that this functionalitywas built into the communica-tion badges all personal wore.

One oddity in the show isthat one race, the Klingons, havetheir own language which theyspoke quite often throughout theseries. For some reason,however, this is not translated,and as far as I know, this is nev-er truly explained. Some crewmembers learn to speak Klingon,yet when they are in the pres-ence of a large number of Klin-gons on their homeworld, all theKlingon language is either trans-lated or all Klingons are speak-ing English.

Doctor WhoThe Universal Translator of StarTrek isn’t the only one thatseems to have some kind of tele-pathic capabilities. A similarmechanism is used in the DoctorWho universe.

Doctor Who is the longestrunning science fiction seriesever. It is British and first airedin 1963, running for 26 yearsbefore being cancelled in 1989.It was then restarted in 2005and continues on the BBCtoday.

The main character, referredto only as “the Doctor” (theshow’s title comes from the jokeof a person, when meeting theDoctor, asks “Doctor who?”) , is aTime Lord from the planet Galli-frey. He is several hundred yearsold and travels through time andspace in a ship that looks like a1960‘s British police call box.This ship is called the Tardis,which takes its name from itsdescription “Time And RelevantDimensions In Space”. TheTardis is famous for being biggeron the inside than the outside,due to “transdimensional engin-eering”.

The Doctor travels around,seeing the wonders of the uni-verse, and constantly interven-ing to help when he can. Hedoesn’t travel alone, however,and is often accompanied by oneor more companions (most oftenfemale and from Earth). Unlikemost shows, the main characteris an alien himself, so the com-panions are the way viewers canconnect with him.

Travelling anywhere in timeand space means the show can’tsimply claim that every one theymeet is an Earth colonist (al-though they do meet plenty ofthose), and it can’t account forwhen the Doctor and his com-panions travel back in time or toother countries on Earth. Even ifthe explanation was that theDoctor has an innate ability tounderstand all languages, thatEarly Universal Translator on Star Trek.



wouldn’t help those that travelwith him.

So for this, they use a simil-ar explanation to the UniversalTranslator. The Tardis is a semi-sentient entity, which means itand the Doctor can communic-ate on a more telepathic or em-pathic (communicating byfeelings) level. The Tardisprovides the interpretation forthe Doctor of those he meets,and when he has companions,they are automatically includedinto that telepathic circuit.

This sometimes help withthe storyline. In one episode,companion Sarah Jane Smithhas been duplicated, with thefake being sent to fool the Doc-tor. While talking, the fake asksthe Doctor why she can under-stand everyone around her, andthe Doctor then realizes it isn’tthe real Sarah Jane.

The telepathic translationwas also used as a joke in anepisode with the Doctor and hiscompanion Donna Noble land inPompeii the day the volcano isgoing to explode. When the Doc-tor explains to Donna why shecan understand Latin, she askshim what happens if she speaksLatin instead of English, like“veni, vidi, vici”. The Doctor ad-mits he doesn’t know, so she

tries, saying those words to astreet vendor. The vendor looksconfused, then tells her, slowlyand loudly, he doesn’t speakCeltic.

Same problems here as theUniversal Translator: what hap-pens to the original voice andhow do the lips keep in sync. Inthis case, since it is all beingdone telepathically, that is ex-plained as the brain is just mak-ing everyone think they arehearing and seeing what theydo.

Hitchhiker’s Guide to theGalaxyFinally, we come to the mostwidely recognized science fictiontranslation device, even if peoplemay not recognize the origins:the Babel Fish.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the

Galaxy is a series of books byBritish author Douglas Adams.It is a comedy about the Earthbeing destroyed and the lastsurviving human, Arthur Dent,suddenly finding himself out in avery large and strange universethat no one on Earth ever knewabout. He is guided by his alienfriend, Ford Prefect, who is atravelling researcher for theelectronic book “The Hitchhiker’sGuide to the Galaxy”. The serieswas also made into a radioseries, a short TV series, and amovie, with all of the storiestwisting in different ways fromeach other.

Almost immediately after theEarth is destroyed and Arthurand Ford manage to survive byhitchhiking onto one of the shipsthat destroyed it, Ford makesArthur stick a small fish into hisear. This is the wonderous BabelFish. The book describes it as

“It feeds on brain wave en-

The Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith fighting an alien Krynoid.



ergy, absorbing all unconscious

frequencies and then excreting

telepathically a matrix formed

from the conscious frequencies

and nerve signals picked up from

the speech centres ofthe brain,

the practical upshot ofwhich is

that ifyou stick one in your ear,

you can instantly understand

anything said to you in any form

oflanguage: the speech you hear

decodes the brain wave matrix.”

This is the most organic ofthe methods used and perhapsthe oddest, for it means the,realistically, most people in theuniverse are travelling aroundwith small fish in their ears (orwhatever listening appendagethey may have). After this initialexplanation the Babel Fish is es-sentially never mentioned again.

Yet, this has become themost known of devices becauseof the online translation service,perhaps the oldest, which tookits name.

FarscapeWe will mention one more tech-nological replacement which isused in the Australian sciencefiction TV series Farscape. Thisseries is similar to Hitchhiker’s

in that it involves a single Earth-man, this one being JohnCrichton, who find himself sud-denly in a wild universe ofstrange beings. He finds his waythere by an accidental wormholewhile testing a new spacecraftand is unable to return home.

John gets picked up by a liv-ing spaceship called a Leviathan

and named Moya. The crew areescaped fugitives from the milit-aristic force known as “ThePeacekeepers”. When John firstmeets them, there is a lot ofchaos because he has neverseen beings like them before andthey are fearing he is a Peace-keeper. During the confusion,one of the small robots on theship injects John’s foot with“translator microbes”, essentially

bacteria, which then start auto-matically interpreting all speechfor him.

Magical DevicesWhen it comes down to it, mostof these devices act more on aprincipal of magic rather thanscience. Yet still, many peoplelike to talk about a day whensuch things will be possible,when the need to learn anotherlanguage will be completelywiped out by these instruments.I, personally, hope that day nev-er comes, for while it mightmake communications mucheasier, it will also steal so muchof the uniqueness from our cul-tures. Maybe we should hold onto speaking alien. PT

Elephants at the Esala Perahera inKandy, Sri Lanka. They aredecorated for part of a processionthat happens five nights to honourthe last remain of the Buddha.

Celebrations - Esala Perahera


here are many celebrationsthat involve parades andprocessions. These are

normally done to draw the atten-tion of a large group of people. Afew festivals, however, actuallyhave their sole purpose being topresent something in parade.The Esala Perahera is one ofthem.

Every year, Sri Lanka hasthe Buddhist festival Esala Pera-

hera, which translates to “TheFestival of the Tooth”, in July orAugust.

More precisely, “perahera” isa Sinhalese word, referring to aprocession of performers likemusicians, dancers and ac-robats, normally parading withdecorated elephants for a reli-gious event. Surprisingly, this isall to display a tooth.

HistoryActually, the Esala Perahera is acombination of two different his-torical celebrations. The first ofthese, the Dalada Peraherarelates to the sacred tooth ofBuddha.

After the Buddha died, hisbody was cremated and sevenremains were recovered from theashes: four teeth and threebones. Burial mounds calledstupas are used in the Buddhistreligion to house the ashes ofthe dead, normally with theashes divided up equally anddistributed to eight different stu-pas. However, the salvaged re-mains were not sent with theashes to be buried. What actu-ally happened to all of them isnot truly known.

One of the teeth did find its

way to King of Kalinga (an an-cient kingdom of India) in theform of a gift. The King had thetooth place in a temple in thecapital city of Dantapura, whereit remained safe until the 4thcentury. At that time, the cityfell under threat of war and so,to protect the tooth, it was sentto Ceylon, which became mod-ern day Sri Lanka.

The King of Ceylon, being adevout Buddhist himself, under-stood the significance of thetooth and had it placed in atemple in his own capital city.He also wished the tooth to begiven all the honour it couldhave, so he decreed that eachyear, the tooth would be paradedthrough the streets of the city forthe citizens to give it proper rev-erence.

The other celebration wasthe Esala Perahera which wasoriginally a water ritual, datingback to the 3rd century, per-

formed to elicit rainfall from thegods.

The tooth was not always al-lowed to be shown. Prior to thereign of Kandyan King Kirthi SriRajasinghe (1747–1781 ), thetooth was treated as privateproperty of the King and no oneelse was allowed to see it. KingRajasinghe changed that, re-es-tablishing the original decreeand the modern version of EsalaPerahera was born.

TodayThe full name of the tooth is the“Sacred Tooth Relic of Buddha”and while there is so much talkof having it on display, it is ac-tually kept in a series of sevenminiature stupas, made of goldand coated in precious gem-stones. Three times a day,monks perform rituals of respectand each Wednesday, the toothis further washed in scented wa-ter.

CCeelleebbrraattiioonnss

EEssaallaa PPeerraahheerraa

Sacred procession in Kandyfrom the book VlasMikhailovich Doroshevich«East and War»



The celebration takes placeover the course of ten days inKandy, which has the sig-nificance of being the secondlargest city in Sri Lanka, butmore importantly, it was the lastcapital of the ancient kings of SriLanka. The exact date of thefestival is shifted each year sothat it ends on a full moon.Everything starts with a ceremo-nial cutting of a young Jackfruittree. Pieces from the tree areplanted at the shrines, called de-

vales, of the four Buddhistguardian gods ofNatha, Vishnu,Katharagama and Pattini. Thiswas done historically as a meansof obtaining blessings for theKing and his people.

After this, for the first fivenights, various celebrations in-volving elaborate dancing anddrumming are held outside ofeach of the shrines, with eachnight becoming increasinglymore grand.

On the sixth night, the pro-cessions begins. The Esala Pera-hera is actually composed of fiveparades. The main one with thetooth is joined by a processionfrom each of the four shrines.First is the Devale Peraheras,which starts at the Temple of theTooth, the most importantBuddhist shrine in Sri Lanka.

For the procession, the toothisn’t actually used. A replica of itis used instead, being carried ina fine casket and carried on theback of a decorated elephant,called the Maligawa Tusker. Per-formers cracking whips and ac-robats wielding fire clear the wayfor the parade, and they are fol-lowed by flag bearers. The firstelephant bears the Peramuna

Rala (“Front Official”) , which isthen followed by dancers anddrummers who entertain theaudience. More elephants, dan-cers and musicians follow. Afterthem come the white clothed

singers who announce the ar-rival of the Maligawa Tusker. Fi-nally comes the Diyawadana

Nilame, who is historically giventhe responsibility of making surethat rain from the gods comeduring the right season.

The other four parades comefrom the four devales and joinwith the main Devale Peraheras.The first to join is from theNatha Devale. This shrine is be-lieved to be the oldest, built evenbefore the tooth was brought toKandy. It is given the honor ofcoming in second place.

Vishnu Devale follows next.Vishnu is a Hindu god and, be-sides being one of Sri Lanka’sGuardians, also represents thecrossover from Hindu toBuddhist beliefs.

Next comes Katharagama

Devale, which is dedicated to theHindu god of war, victory, loveand wisdom, Skanda-Murukan.A notable part of this parade isthe peacock dance, so called be-cause of the semicircularwooden devices, decorated bypeacock feathers, which thedancers bear on their shoulders.

The last procession is fromthe Pattini Devale, which is de-voted to the goddess of healthand fertility, Pattini. This is theonly parade which allows womenDecorated elephants. One of them is the Maligawa Tusker which carries a replica of the tooth.

Buddha Statue, Temple of the Tooth Relic, Kandy, Sri Lanka



to dance.This grand parade happens

for five nights, and on each one,each procession, full of its owndancers, performers and musi-cians, becomes larger andgrander. On the final night, thelargest and most spectacularprocession continues all night. Itall ends after the full moon atdawn, when priests from all fourdevales walk to the MahaweliRiver, the longest river in SriLanka, wade out into it, thenuse a sword to “cut” a largecircle. They then fill severalpitchers from water within thecircle and keep the water in theshrine for entire next year. Thisfinal action is similar to somewater purification rituals in oth-er cultural celebrations. PT Buddhist stupa in Sri Lanka

BBookkmmååll

NNyynnoorrsskkvvss..

Special Feature - Language Conflicts: Bokmål vs. Nynorsk


he language conflict of Nor-way is a rather odd one.

Other conflicts usually arise be-cause of two different spokenlanguages. In this case, thespoken language is agreed upon,what we call “Norwegian”, al-though you will still have localdialects, like most major lan-guages. The conflict is actuallybetween the two written forms ofthe language: Bokmål and Nyn-orsk.

Norway has both Bokmåland Nynorsk as “official” lan-guages, with both being used bythe government, schools, andthe media. Those only slightlyfamiliar with Norwegian mightnot even know there is astruggle. My own books on Nor-wegian don’t explain which ver-sion they are using to representthe spoken tongue. Unless oth-erwise noted, it should probablybe assumed Bokmål is beingused.

HistoryTo understand how this conflictarose, and how two written lan-guages could exist for one lan-guage (and we are speakingabout two different written lan-guages, not merely using twodifferent alphabets) , we mustlook a few hundred years intohistory. During the Middle Ages,Old Norse was the language ofNorway, and it had a rich liter-ary tradition. During the 14thcentury, however, there wereseveral demographic and politic-al changes, and Norway wasunited with Denmark in 1380.As a result, Danish became thewritten language of Norway,while the people continued tospeak their various Norwegiandialects. Written Old Norse be-came abandoned.

After over 400 year of Dan-ish rule, Norway finally secededfrom Denmark in 1814. Danishremained the written language,however, since they had no oth-

er. Because Norway was now itsown nation again, there was afeeling that it also needed a writ-ten language that was its own.To help with this, the linguistIvar Aasen conducted extensiveresearch for five decades into thespoken Norwegian language. Hegathered material from the dif-ferent dialects and made a com-parison of their linguisticstructures. From this, he createda new language for written Nor-wegian, which was called Lands-mål, or “National Language”.

However, others were work-ing to revise their current writ-ten Danish language byincorporating words that weremore descriptive of Norwegianscenery and folk life. They mod-ified the spelling and grammarto better fit as well, and this new

written language was adopted bythe Norwegian parliament asRiksmål, or “Standard Lan-guage” in 1899.

ReformsNow Norway had two differentwritten languages to work with,neither one being strictly “origin-al”, since both were adaptationsand the original had been aban-doned over 500 years ago. In1929, Riksmål was officially re-named Bokmål (literally “Booklanguage”) , and Landsmål toNynorsk (literally “New Norwegi-an”) . The names “Dano-Norwegi-an” and “Norwegian” lost by asingle vote in parliament, andany reference, even today, to“Danish” is very unpopularamong Bokmål/Riksmål users.

Through reforms in 1917,1938, and 1949, both Bokmåland Nynorsk were made closeras a result of a state policy to

merge them into a single lan-guage, called Samnorsk (Com-mon Norwegian). However, thisresulted in massive protests,and was basically dropped after1960, and was officially aban-doned in 2002. Users of bothwritten languages resented theefforts to dilute the distinctnessof “their” written language.

Now, if you have managed tokeep up with all this so far, youhave done well. But it is about toget even more confusing.

During the reforms to bringNynorsk and Bokmål closer,others opposed the changes anddecided to maintain the origin-als. One group kept the nameRiksmål as their own unofficialform of Norwegian, and ignoredthe spelling and grammarchanges of the Samnorsk move-ment. Riksmål and conservativeforms of Bokmål have been thestandard written language ofNorway for most of the 20thcentury. Large newspapers, en-cyclopedias, and a significantproportion of the population ofOslo, along with surroundingurban areas and much of theliterary tradition use them. Afterthe reforms of 1981 and 2003,the official Bokmål can be adap-ted to be almost identical withmodern Riksmål. Today, the dif-ferences between Riksmål andBokmål are minimal.

Mainly, the differencesbetween Bokmål and Nyn-orsk are in the key wordsof their vocabularies.



There were also opponentsto reforming Nynorsk. An unoffi-cial form of Nynorsk exists,called Høgnorsk, which discardsthe post-1917 reforms and iscloser to Ivar Aasen’s originalLandsmål. It is not, however, inwidespread usage.

SupportEach form has its own support-ers. The Noregs Mållag is a ma-jor promoter of Nynorsk, withover 10,300 members, while theNorwegian Academy handlesBokmål. So how come neitherone has managed to becomedominant? In general, despite ef-forts to keep both languages as“official”, Bokmål is by far themore common. The main reasonwhy Bokmål hasn’t managed tobecome the norm for all Norwe-gians is due to the Nynorsk lan-guage and the popularorganizations fighting for it.There is a level of national pridethat wants to embrace a written

language that wasn’t forcedupon the population. So whyhasn’t Nynorsk become moredominant? Because it is thenewer language, which is beingpushed to replace one that hasbeen basically in place for cen-turies. No living citizen of Nor-way actually experienced the“true” written Norwegian.

Documents open to the pub-lic can be published in eitherlanguage and are sometimeswritten in both. Each municipal-ity is free to elect to name Nyn-orsk, Bokmål, or both as itsworking language. Even privateauthors are free to write andpublish in whichever form theyprefer.

Primary schools may teachin Bokmål or Nynorsk as themajor language, but according tothe statistics I have found, ap-proximately 85% of the pupils inprimary and lower secondaryschools in Norway receive educa-tion in Bokmål, while about 15%

receive education in Nynorsk.From the ninth grade on, pupilsare required to learn both.

Although educated in bothBokmål and Nynorsk, around86%-90% of all Norwegians useBokmål as their daily writtenlanguage, while only 10%-12%use Nynorsk as theirs, eventhough most of the spoken dia-lects resemble Nynorsk moreclosely than Bokmål. Morebroadly speaking, Bokmål andRiksmål are more commonlyused in urban and suburbanareas while Nynorsk in ruralareas, particularly in WesternNorway. However, I am sure thatothers may dispute these stat-istics, and I personally have nomethod of verifying them. Ilearned long ago that “statistics”are not accepted as “facts”, andare often debated.

Meeting of the Noregs Mållag, the main organisation for Norwegian Nynorsk



DifferencesMainly, the differences between Bokmål and Nynorsk are in thekey words of their vocabularies. In general, a Bokmål word nor-mally closer to Danish while the same word in Nynorsk is closerto Swedish. We can look at these simple phrases, written in Eng-lish, Bokmål and Nynorsk:

What’s your name? - Hva heter du? - Kva heiter du?Are you coming? - Kommer du? - Kjem du?I love you. - Jeg elsker deg. - Eg elskar deg.

The name of the country of Norway is spelled Norge in Bok-mål and Noreg in Nynorsk. When shopping, you will probably findmilk packaged as either melk (Bokmål) or mjølk (Nynorsk).

As a further comparison, here is the Article 1 of the UniversalDeclaration of Human Rights in English, Bokmål and Nynorsk.

EnglishUniversal Declaration ofHuman Rights

Article 1

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act to-wards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

BokmålVerdemserkæringen ommennesker ettighetene

Artikkel 1.

Alle mennesker er fød frie og med samme menneskeverd og menneskerettigheter. De er utstyrt medfornuft og samvittighet og bør handle mot hverandre i brorskapets ånd.

NynorskDen internasjonale frasegna ommennesker ettane

Artikkel 1.

Alle menneske er fødde til fridom og med same menneskeverd og menneskerettar. Dei har fåt fornuft ogsamvit og skal leve med kvarandre som brør.

While this conflict is adifficult one to untangle,since neither written lan-guage has a true claim tobeing “authentic”, it doesn’tappear that Norway will betorn apart over this. Still, itremains an interesting pro-cess to watch, and we wel-come others comments andupdates on this issue. PT

A Norwegian troll. “Troll” is one Norwegian wordthat has made it into English.

Revisited - Words Which Have Changed Their Meaning


To move, to breathe, to fly, to float,

To gain all while you give,

To roam the roads of lands remote,

To travel is to live.

- Hans Christian Andersen

At the Cinema - Pane e Tulipani (Bread and Tulips)


his month’s review is about asimple romantic comedy from

Italy called Pane e Tulipani (Bread andTulips) . The lead character is an Itali-an housewife named Rosalba wholives in Pescara with her two sons andher husband, Mimmo.

We first see the family on a vaca-tion, visiting some ruins with a groupof other tourists. Watching them, theyseem to be like the average familymight be: the father is loud and incharge, telling everyone what to do;the teenage sons are basically in theirown little worlds, not wanting to listento what anyone else is saying and act-ing like they don’t really want to bethere; the mother is trying to makesure everyone is safe and happy. Wecan soon see, however, that despiteher constant smiles, Rosalba is notreally happy. She seems worn out,used and neglected.

When the tour bus stops at a reststation, Rosalba accidentally drops anearing in the toilet of a restroom, andby the time she retrieves it, she findsthe entire tour, including her family,have taken off again. When she finallymanages to reach the rest of the fam-ily by phone, Mimmo is furious andstarts yelling at her, blaming her foreverything and telling her to staythere. You get the feeling this is thenormal way their relationship works.

Disheartened, Rosalba sits on thesteps outside the station, watchingpeople. One bumbling woman catchesher eye and imagination, and she gets

a ride with the woman toward herhome, planning to hitchhike her wayback instead of waiting any longer tobe rescued. Next car she gets in is be-ing driven by a man going to Venice.She has never been to Venice, and de-cides maybe, since the family is onvacation already, she should visit it.As they pass the exit that goes to Pes-cara, Rosalba’s eyes light up andsmiles. She is tasting a bit of freedomand feeling rebellious.

After they arrive, she finds a smallhotel to spend the night in, planningto just see a little of Venice then re-turn home the next day. When shehas dinner at the local restaurant, shemeets the maitre d’, Fernando, andthey exchange some polite words, asshe is still very shy about being out onher own alone. She is terrified yetthrilled at having her own adventure,without the rest of the family.

Not everything is good, however.She calls her husband and gets yelledat again. The hotel she is in is alsoclosing, with the night she is there be-

AAtt tthhee CCiinneemmaa

PPaannee ee TTuulliippaannii((BBrreeaadd aanndd TTuulliippss))

Pane e Tulipani1 1 4 minComedy / Romance3 March 2000 (I taly)

Country: I taly / Switzerland

Language: I tal ian

“The film gives usa look at thesesimple lives inItaly, with peoplefinding their ownways.

Rosalba and Grazia spending some timetogether as friends.

At the Cinema - Pane e Tulipani (Bread and Tulips)


ing the last night it will be open.Rosalba spends the next day site-seeing, en-

joying the wonders of Venice, even writing a post-card home. She is so caught up in it, however,that she misses the evening train back to Pescara,and now she has a problem. She has little moneyleft, since all she had to start with was what re-mained of her vacation spending money, and shealso has no place to stay now. She goes back tothe restaurant for dinner, then asks Fernandowhere she might find a place to stay with the littlemoney she has left. He says there is no place avail-able for what she has, but he does have somespace in a room in his apartment, and so he setsher up there for the night.

The next day, Rosalba awakens to a table setwith breakfast and a note from Fernando, askingher to leave the keys in the post box. By now, sheis feeling more confident with her ability to handlethings as she heads to the train station.

Venice has trapped her with its charms,though, and she finds herself accepting a “HelpWanted” position in a florist shop. Now with an in-come, she returns at night to the apartment,meets another of tenants, Grazia, and Fernandomoves her into another room where she can stayfor a longer amount of time. Rosalba is on herown vacation. . . from her family.

Soon she is making a place for herself in theothers’ lives and, at the risk of sounding cliche,finding herself again. But while things are goingwell for her, things at home are not good. We learnnow that Mimmo has a mistress, and has had herfor a few years. No one else in the house will doany cleaning or take care of things. Mimmo, des-perate to have things back to the way they were,hires a plumber, Costantino, (who is an avid fan ofdetective novels) to act as a private investigator totrack down his wife. Mimmo is too cheap to hire areal detective.

Surprisingly, Costantino manages to find Ros-

alba after he posts pictures of her everywhere. Thepictures get the attention of Fernando, who is nowworried about what kind of person has broughtinto this life if she is being pursued by a detective.Rosalba explains, then confronts Costantino.

As it should be for a comedy, every characteris slightly odd in their own ways while still havingan endearing charm. No one, with perhaps the ex-ception of Mimmo (who is essentially the villain ofthe movie) , seems really to be pushing events inany direction; they just happen, as does life.Fernando and Rosalba learn more and more abouteach other, and suddenly find themselves in love,yet not completely ready to admit that. Only whenRosalba leaves Venice (having been found and ad-monished by Mimmo’s mistress for “abandoning”her family) do they fully understand what theyhave found.

The film gives us a look at these simple lives inItaly, with people finding their own ways. Thereare plenty of humorous scenes, including somerather odd ones when Rosalba dreams.

One of the most touching scenes for me iswhen we first see how lost Fernando is withoutRosalba. He is sitting at his kitchen table with avase of tulips on it (Rosalba brought fresh flowershome each day from the florist) . As we watch, oneof the petals peels off and thumps to the table, asif the flowers are also dying slowly without her. Ina later scene, we see Fernando at the same table,but now, all the pedals of the tulips have fallen ex-cept one, and the fallen ones have been collectedin a bowl on the table. It is both sad and funny atthe same time.

Pane e Tulipani is a beautifully done film, fullof heart and humour along with a touch of sad-ness. Everyone at times wonders how else their lifecould be, but few actually get a chance to “go onholiday” to learn. I would definitely recommendthis movie to anyone. PT

Rosalba sneaking away while Constantino is on the phonewith his mother.

Fernando and Rosalba, realizing how much fun they havetogether.

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e have seen in the chapter on“slang” how people are con-tinually using old words in

new ways, and how, through this, slangoften becomes good English and goodEnglish becomes slang. The same thinghas been going on all through the his-tory of language. Other words besidesthose used as slang have been con-stantly getting new uses. Many Englishwords to-day have quite differentmeanings from those which they had inthe Middle Ages; some even have ex-actly opposite meanings to their origin-al sense. Sometimes words keep boththe old meaning and the new.

In this matter the English languageis very different from the German. TheEnglish language has many wordswhich the Germans have too, but theirmeanings are different. The Germanshave kept the original meanings whichthese words had hundreds of years ago;but the thousands of words which havecome down to us from the English lan-guage of a thousand years ago havenearly all changed their meanings.

We have two of these old wordswhich have now each two exactly op-posite meanings. The word fastmeanssometimes “immovable,” and some-times it means the exact opposite--“moving rapidly.” We say a key is “fast”in a lock when we cannot get it out,and we say a person runs “fast” whenwe mean that he runs quickly. The firstmeaning of steadiness is the originalmeaning; then the word came to beused to mean “moving steadily.” A per-son who ran on, keeping up a steadymovement, was said to run fast, and

then it was easy to use the word forrapidity as well as steadiness in motionor position. This is how the word fast

came to have two opposite meanings.Another word, fine, has the same

sort of history. We speak of a “fineneedle” when we mean that it is thin,and a “fine baby” when we mean that itis fat. The first meaning is nearer to theoriginal, which was “well finished off.”Often a thing which had a great deal of“fine” workmanship spent on it wouldbe delicate and “fine” in the first sense,and so the word came to have thismeaning. On the other hand, the thingfinished off in this way would generallybe beautiful. People came to think of“fine” things as things to be admired,and as they like their babies to be fat, afat baby will generally be considered afine baby. It was in this kind of waythat “fine” came to have its secondmeaning of “large.”

The common adjectives glad andsad had quite different meanings inOld English from those they have now.In Old English glad meant “shining,” or“bright,” but in a very short time itcame to mean “cheerful.” Now it meanssomething rather different from this,for though we may speak of a “gladheart” or “glad spirit,” such expressionsare chiefly used in poetry. Generally inordinary speech when we say that weare “glad” we mean that we are pleasedabout some special thing, as “glad thatyou have come.”

Sad in Old English meant to haveas much as one wanted of anything.Then it came to mean “calm” and “seri-ous,” perhaps from the idea that people

Revisited

WWoorrddss WWhhiicchh HHaavvee

CChhaannggeedd TThheeiirrMMeeaanniinngg

Editor’s note:This article is areprint from“Stories ThatWords Tell Us”By ElizabethO’Neil l . I t wasoriginal lypublished in1 91 8.

Revisted - Words Which Have Changed Their Meaning


who have all they want are in amood to settle down and attendto things seriously. Already inShakespeare’s writings we findthe word with its present mean-ing of “sorrowful.” It has quitelost its earlier meaning, but hasseveral special new meaningsbesides the general one of “sor-rowful.” A “sad tint,” or colour, isone which is dull. “Sad bread” inthe north of England is “heavy”bread which has not risen prop-erly. Again, we describe as “sad”some people who are not at allsorrowful. We say a person is a“sad” liar when we mean that heis a hopeless liar.

The word tide, which we nowapply to the regular rise and fallof the sea, used to mean in OldEnglish “time;” and it still keepsthis meaning in the wordsChristmastide, Whitsuntide, etc.

One common way in whichwords change is in going from ageneral to a more special mean-

ing. Thus in Old English theword chest meant “box” in gener-al, but has come now to be usedas the name of a special kind ofbox only, and also as the nameof a part of the body. The firstperson who used the word inthis sense must have thought ofthe “chest” as a box containingthe lungs and the heart.

Glass is, of course, the nameof the substance out of which wemake our windows and some ofour drinking vessels, etc. , andthis was at one time its only use;but we now use the name glass

for several special articles--forexample, a drinking-vessel, atelescope, a barometer, a mirror(or “looking-glass”) , and so on.Copper is another word themeaning of which has becomespecialized in this way as timehas gone on. From being merelythe name of a metal it has cometo be used for a copper coin andfor a large cauldron especiallyused in laundry work. Another

example of a rather differentkind of this “specialization”which changes the meaning ofwords is the word congregation.Congregation used to mean “anygathering together of people inone place,” and we still use theword congregate in this sense.Thus we might say “the peoplecongregated in TrafalgarSquare,” but we should neverthink of speaking of a crowdlistening to a lecturer there as a“congregation.” The word hasnow come to mean an assemblyfor religious worship in a chapelor church.

Some words have changedtheir meaning in just the oppos-ite way. From having one specialmeaning they have come by de-grees to have a much more gen-eral sense. The word bureau,which came into English fromthe French, meant at first merelya “desk” in both languages. Itstill has this meaning in bothlanguages, but a wider meaning

A reed house, where people live.



as well. It can now be used todescribe an office (a place asso-ciated with the idea of desks) .Thus we have “employment bur-eau,” and can get English moneyfor foreign at a “bureau dechange.” From this use of theword we have the word bureau-

cracy, by which we describe a

government which is carried onby a great number of officials.

A better example of how aword containing one special ideacan extend its meaning is theword bend. This word originallymeant to pull the string of a bowin order to let fly an arrow. Theexpression “bend a bow” wasused, and as the result ofpulling the string was to curvethe wooden part of the arrow,people came in time to thinkthat “bending the bow” was thismaking the wood to curve. Fromthis came our general use of“bend” to mean forcing a thingwhich is straight into a curve orangle. We have, of course, alsothe metaphorical use of theword, as when we speak ofbending our will to another’s.

Another word which has hada similar history is carry. Whenthis word was first borrowedfrom Old French it meant tomove something from place toplace in a cart or other wheeledvehicle. The general word for ourmodern carry was bear, whichwe still use, but chiefly in po-etry. In time carry came to haveits modern general sense of lift-ing a thing from one place and

removing it to another. A well-known writer on the history ofthe English language has sug-gested that this came about firstthrough people using the wordin this sense half in fun, just asthe word cart is now sometimesused. A person may say (a littlevulgarly) , “Do you expect me tocart all these things to anotherroom?” instead of using the or-dinary word carry. If historywere to repeat itself in this case,cartmight in time become thegenerally used word, and carry

in its turn be relegated to therealm of poetry.

Words often come to haveseveral meanings through beingused to describe things whichare connected in some way withthe things for which they wereoriginally used. The word house

originally had one meaning,which it still keeps, but to whichseveral others have been added.It was a building merely, butcame in time to be used to meanthe building and the people liv-ing in it. Thus we say one person“disturbs the whole house.”From this sense it got the mean-ing of a royal family, and we

A knave as represented on a Spanishdeck of cards.

Words often come to have several meanings through being usedto describe things which are connected in some way with

the things for which they were originally used.



speak of the House of York, Lan-caster, Tudor, or Stuart. We alsouse the word in a large sensewhen we speak of the “House ofLords” and the “House of Com-mons,” by which we hardly evermean the actual buildingsknown generally as the “Housesof Parliament,” but the membersof the two Houses. The wordworld has had almost the oppos-ite history to the word house.World originally applied only topersons and not to any place. Itmeant a “generation of men,”and then came to mean men andthe earth they live on, and thenthe earth itself; until it has aquite general sense, as when wespeak of “other worlds thanours.”

Many words which are usedat present to describe bad or dis-agreeable things were used quitedifferently originally. The wordvillain is, perhaps, the most ex-pressive we can use to show ouropinion of the depths of a per-son’s wickedness. Yet in theMiddle Ages a villain, or “villein,”was merely a serf or labourerbound to work on the land of aparticular lord. The word in Sax-on times would have been churl.As time went on both thesewords became terms of con-tempt. The lords in the MiddleAges were certainly often morewicked than the serfs, as we seein the stories of the days ofRobin Hood; but by degrees thepeople of the higher classesbegan to use the word villain

more and more contemptuously.Many of them imagined that onlypeople of their own class werecapable of high thoughts andnoble conduct. Gradually “vil-lainy” came to mean all that waslow and vulgar, and by degrees itcame to have the meaning it hasnow of “sheer wickedness.” Atthe end of the Middle Ages therewere practically no longer anyserfs in England; but the wordvillain has remained in this newsense, and gives us a complete

story of the misunderstandingand dislike which must have ex-isted between “noble” and“simple” to cause such a changein the meaning of the word.

The word churl has a some-what similar history. We saynow that a sulky, ungraciousperson is a “mere churl,” or be-haves in a “churlish” manner,never thinking of the originalmeaning of the word. Here,again, is a little story of in-justice. The present use of theword comes from the supposi-tion that only the mere labourercould behave in a sulky or bad-tempered way.

Knave is another of thosewords which originally describedpersons of poor condition andhave now come to mean awicked or deceitful person. Aknave, as we now understandthe word, means a person who

cheats in a particularly meanway, but formerly the wordmeant merely “boy.” It thencame to mean “servant,” just asthe word garçon (“boy”) is usedfor all waiters in French restaur-ants. Another word which nowmeans, as a rule, some one un-utterably wicked, is wretch,though it is also used rathercontemptuously to describesome one who is not wicked butunutterably miserable. Yet inOld English this word merelymeant an “exile.” An exile was aperson to be pitied, and alsosometimes a person who haddone something wrong, and weget both these ideas in the mod-ern uses of the word. The wordblackguard, which now means a“scoundrel,” was also once aword for “scullion;” but it doesnot go back as far as “knave”and “villain,” being found chiefly

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in writings of the sixteenth andseventeenth centuries.

Another word in which the“villeins” and “knaves” and“churls” seem to have their re-venge on the “upper classes” issurly. This word used to be speltsirly, and meant behaving as a“sire,” or gentleman, behaves.Originally this meant “haughty”or “arrogant,” but by degreescame to have the idea of sulki-ness and ungraciousness, muchlike churlish.

Several adjectives which arenow used as terms of blamewere not only harmless descrip-tions originally, but were actu-ally terms of praise. No one likes

to be called “cunning,” “sly,” or“crafty” to-day; but these wereall complimentary adjectivesonce. A cunning man was onewho knew his work well, a sly

person was wise and skilful, anda crafty person was one whocould work well at his trade or“craft.” Two words which we useto-day with a better sense thanany of these, and yet which havea slightly uncomplimentarysense, are knowing and artful. Itis surely good to “know” things,and to be full of art; but bothwords have already an idea ofslyness, and may in time cometo have quite as unpleasant ameaning as these three which

have the same literal meaning.Fellow, a word which has

now nearly always a slightlycontemptuous sense, had ori-ginally the quite good sense ofpartner. It came from an OldEnglish word which meant theman who marked out his landnext to yours. The word still hasthis good sense in fellowship,fellow-feeling, etc. , and as usedto describe a “fellow” of a collegeor society. But the more generaluse is as a less respectful wordfor man. One man may say ofanother that he is a “nice fellow”without any disrespect; but theword has no dignity, andpeople, even though they use itof an equal, would not think ofusing it to describe a superior,and the more general use is thatof blame or contempt, as in theexpressions, “a disagreeable fel-low” or “a stupid fellow.” Theword bully was at one time aword which showed affection,and meant even “lover.” In Eng-lish now, of course, a bully is aperson, especially a boy, whotyrannizes over people weakerthan himself; but the Americansstill use the word in a goodsense when they say “bully foryou,” meaning “bravo.”

We have seen many wordswhose meanings have becomeless dignified than their originalmeaning; but sometimes the op-posite happens. Every one nowspeaks with respect of a “pion-eer,” whether we mean by thatpeople who are the first to ven-ture into strange lands, or, in amore figurative sense, peoplewho make some new discoveryin science or introduce somenew way of thinking or acting.Yet “pioneers” were originallymerely the soldiers who did thehard work of clearing the way foran advancing army. They werelooked upon as belonging to alower class than the ordinarysoldiers. But this new and atfirst figurative use of the word,

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applied first to geographical andthen to scientific and moral ex-plorers, has given the word anew dignity.

A group of words which hadoriginally very humble mean-ings, and have been elevated inan even more accidental way,are the names of the officials ofroyal courts. The word steward

originally meant, as it stillmeans, a person who managesproperty for some one else. Thesteward on a ship is a servant;but the steward of the king’shousehold was no mean person,and was dignified with the titleof the “Lord High Steward ofEngland.” The royal house ofStuart took its name from thefact that the heads of the familywere in earlier times hereditarystewards of the Scottish kings.So marshal, the name of anotherhigh official at court, means“horse boy;” seneschal, “old ser-vant;” constable, “an attendantto horses’ stalls,” and so on.Some of these words have keptboth a dignified and a commonermeaning. Constable, besides be-ing the name of a court official,is also another term for “police-man.”

The word silly meant in OldEnglish “blessed” or “happy,”but of course has wandered farfrom this meaning. On the otherhand, several words which oncemeant “foolish” have now quitedifferent meanings. Giddy anddizzy both had this sense in OldEnglish, and so had the wordnice. But later the French wordfol, from which we get foolish,was introduced into English,and these words soon ceased tobe used in this sense. Beforethis the two words dizzy andgiddy had occasionally beenused in the sense in which theyare used now, to describe thecondition of a person whosehead “swims;” this now becametheir general meaning, thoughgiddy has gone back again tosomething of its old meaning inits later use to describe a per-

son’s conduct. A giddy person isanother description for one offrivolous character.

The word nice has had arather more varied history. Ithad its original meaning of “fool-ish” from the literal meaning ofthe Latin word nescius, “ignor-ant,” from which it was derived.Gradually it came to mean “fool-ishly particular about smallthings;” and we still have a sim-ilar use of the word, as when wesay a person has a “nice taste inwines,” or is a “nice observer,” orspeak of a “nice distinction,” bywhich we mean a subtle distinc-tion not very easily observed.But this is, of course, not the

commonest sense in which weuse the word. By nice we gener-ally mean the opposite of nasty.A “nice” observer was a good ob-server, and from this kind ofidea the word nice came to havethe general sense of “good” insome way. Nice is not a particu-larly dignified word, and is littleused by good writers, except inits more special and earliersense. It is, perhaps, less usedin America than in England, andit is interesting to notice thatnasty, the word which in Englishalways seems to be the oppositeof nice, is not considered a re-spectable word in America,where it has kept its earlier

Hawk quills, from which weget the term pen.



meaning of “filthy,” or absolutelydisgusting in some way.

Again, the word disgust, bywhich we express completeloathing for anything, usedmerely to mean “dislike” or “dis-taste.” In the same way, theword loathe, by which we mean“to hate” or feel the greatest dis-gust for, originally meant merely“to dislike.” The stronger mean-ing came from the fact that theword was often used to describethe dislike a sick person feels forfood. Every one knows howstrong this feeling can be, and itis from this that loathe andloathsome took the strong mean-ing they now have. Curiouslyenough, the adjective loath orloth, from the same word, haskept the old mild meaning.When we say we are “loth” to doa thing, we do not mean that wehate doing it, but merely that wefeel rather unwilling to do it. InOld English, too, the word filth

and its derivative foul were notquite such strong words as dirt

and dirty.Again, the words stench and

stink in Old English meantmerely “smell” or “odour.” Onecould then speak of the “sweetstench” of a flower; but in thelater Middle Ages these wordscame to have their presentmeaning of “smelling most dis-agreeably.”

We saw how the taking ofthe word fol from the French,meaning “foolish,” caused themeaning of several Englishwords which before had thismeaning to be changed. Thecoming in of foreign words hasbeen a very common cause forsuch changes of meaning. Theword fiend in English has now aquite different meaning from itsoriginal meaning in English,when it simply meant “enemy,”the opposite to “friend.” Whenthe word “enemy” itself was bor-rowed from the French, the wordfiend came to be less and less of-ten used in this sense. In time

fiend came to be another wordfor devil, the chief enemy ofmankind. But in modern timeswe do not use the word much inthis sense. It is most often nowapplied to persons. It soundsrather milder than calling a per-son a “devil,” but it means ex-actly the same thing.

The word stool came to haveits present special meaningthrough the coming into Englishfrom the French of the wordchair. Before the Norman Con-quest any kind of seat for oneperson was a “stool,” even some-times a royal throne. The worddeer also had in Old English themeaning of “beast” in general,but the coming in of the wordbeast from the French led to itsfalling into disuse, and by de-grees it became the special nameof the chief beast of chase.

Again, the Latin word spirit

led to the less frequent use ofthe word ghost, which was previ-ously the general word for spirit.When spirit came to be generallyused, ghost came to have thespecial meaning which it has forus now--that of the apparition of

a dead person.

A great many words havechanged their meaning evensince the time of Shakespearethrough being transferred fromthe subject of the feeling theydescribe to the object, or fromthe object to the subject. Thusone example of this is the wordgrievous. We speak now of a“grievous wrong,” or a “grievoussin,” or a “grievous mistake,”and all these phrases suggest acertain sorrow in ourselves forthe fact described. But this wasnot the case in the time ofQueen Elizabeth, when it wasdecreed that a “sturdy beggar,” aman who could work but beggedinstead, should be “grievouslywhipped.” In this case grievously

merely meant “severely.” On theother hand, the word pitiful,which used to mean “compas-sionate,” is no longer applied towhat we feel at seeing a sadthing, but to the sadness of thething itself. We do not now say aperson is pitiful when he feelssorry for some one, but we speakof a “pitiful sight” or a “pitiful

Man with several handkerchiefs on him.



plight.”The word pity itself is used

still in both ways, subjectivelyand objectively. A person canfeel “pity,” and there is “pity” inthe thing for which we feel sorry.This is the sense in which it isused in such expressions as“Oh, the pity of it!”

The word hateful once meant“full of hate,” but came to beused for the thing inspiring hateinstead of for the people feelingit. So, painful used to mean“painstaking,” but of course hasno longer this meaning.

One very common way inwhich words have changedtheir meanings is through thename of one thing being given toanother which resembles it. Theword pen comes from the Latinpenna, “a feather;” and as inolden days the ordinary penswere “quills” of birds, the namewas very good. We still keep it, ofcourse, for the steel pens andgold pens of today, which wethus literally speak of as feath-ers. Pencil is a word with asomewhat similar history. Itcomes from the Latin penicillus,which itself came frompeniculus, or “little tail,” a kindof cleaning instrument which theRomans used as we usebrushes. Pencil was originallythe name of a very fine painter’sbrush, and from this it becamethe name of an instrument madeof lead which was used for mak-ing marks. Then it was passedon to various kinds of pencils,including what we know as alead-pencil, in which, as a writeron words has pointed out, thereis really neither lead nor pencil.

The word handkerchief isalso an interesting word. Theword kerchiefcame from theFrench couvre-chef, “a coveringfor the head.” Another similar

word is one which the Normansbrought into England, curfew,which means “cover fire.” Whenthe curfew bell rang the peoplewere obliged to extinguish alllights and fires. The “kerchief”was originally a covering for thehead. Then the fashion arose ofcarrying a square of similar ma-terial in the hand, and so we gethandkerchief, and later pocket-handkerchief, which, if we ana-lyse it, is rather a clumsy word,“pocket-hand-cover-head.” Thereason it is so is that the peoplewho added pocket and hand

knew nothing of the real mean-ing of kerchief.

There are several wordswhich used to mean “at thepresent time” which have nowcome to mean “at a future time.”This can only have come aboutthrough the people who usedthem not keeping their promises,but putting off doing things untillater. The word soon in Old Eng-lish meant “immediately,” sothat when a person said that hewould do a thing soon he meantthat he would do it “instantly.”

The trouble was that often hedid not, and so often did thishappen that the meaning of theword changed, and soon came tohave its present meaning of “in ashort time.” The same thinghappened with the wordspresently and directly, and thephrase by-and-by, all of whichused to mean “instantly.”Presently and directly seem topromise things in a shorter timethan soon, but by-and-by is avery uncertain phrase indeed. Itis perhaps because Scotchpeople are superior to the Eng-lish in the matter of doing thingsto time that with them presently

still really means “instantly.”

In all the examples wehave seen of changes in themeaning of words it is fairlyeasy to see how the changeshave come about. But there aresome words which have changedso much in meaning that theirpresent sense seems to have noconnection with their earliermeaning. The word treacle is asplendid example of this. It

But there are some words which have changed so much in meaning that their

present sense seems to have no connection with theirearliermeaning.

A bowl of treacle, a favourite item among thepeople of southern Sri Lanka.



comes from a Greek word mean-ing “having to do with a wildbeast,” and this seems to haveno connection whatever with ourpresent use of the word treacle

as another word for syrup of

sugar. The steps by which thisword came to change its mean-ing so enormously were these.From the general meaning of“having to do with a wild beast,”it came to mean “remedy for thebite of a wild beast.” As remediesfor wounds and bites were, inthe old days, generally thick syr-ups, the word came in time tomean merely “syrup,” and lastlythe sweet syrup which we nowknow as “treacle.”

Another word which haschanged immensely in its mean-ing is premises. By the wordpremises we generally mean ahouse or shop and the land justround it. But the real meaning ofthe word premises is the “thingsalready mentioned.” It came tohave its present sense from thefrequent use of the word in doc-uments drawn up by lawyers. Inthese, which very frequentlydealt with business relating tohouses, the “things before men-tioned” meant the “house, etc. ,”

and in time people came to thinkthat this was the actual meaningof premises, and so we get thepresent use of the word.

The word humour is onewhich has changed its meaningvery much in the course of itshistory. It comes to us from theLatin word humor, which meansa “fluid” or “liquid.” By “humour”we now mean either “temper,” aswhen we speak of being in a“good” or “bad” humour, or thatquality in a person which makeshim very quick to find “fun” inthings. And from the first mean-ing of “temper” we have the verb“to humour,” by which we meanto give in to or indulge a per-son’s whims. But in the MiddleAges “humour” was a word usedby writers on philosophy to de-scribe the four liquids whichthey believed (like the Greekphilosophers) that the humanbody contained. These four “hu-mours” were blood, phlegm, yel-low bile (or choler) , and blackbile (or melancholy) . Accordingto the balance of these humoursa man’s character showed itself.From this belief we get the ad-jectives--which we still usewithout any thought of their ori-

gin--sanguine (“hopeful”) , phleg-matic (“indifferent and not easilyexcited”) , choleric (“easily rousedto anger”) , and melancholy (“in-clined to sadness”) . A personhad these various temperamentsaccording as the amount ofblood, phlegm, yellow or blackbile was uppermost in his com-position. From the idea thathaving too much of any of the“humours” would make a persondiseased or odd in character, wegot the use of the word humours

to describe odd and queerthings; and from this it came tohave its modern meaning, whichtakes us very far from the ori-ginal Latin.

It was from this same curi-ous idea of the formation of thehuman body that we get two dif-ferent uses of the word temper.Temperwas originally the wordused to describe the right mix-ture of the four “humours.”From this we got the wordsgood-tempered and bad-

tempered. Perhaps because it isnatural to notice more whenpeople are bad-tempered ratherthan good, not more than ahundred years ago the wordtemper came to mean in one use“bad temper.” For this is whatwe mean when we say we “giveway to temper.” But we have theoriginal sense of “good temper”in the expression to “keep one’stemper.” So here we have thesame word meaning two oppos-ite things.

Several words which used tohave a meaning connected withreligion have now come to have amore general meaning whichseems very different from theoriginal. A word of this sort inEnglish is order, which camethrough the French word ordre,from the Latin ordo. Though theLatin word had the meaningwhich we now give to the wordorder, in the English of the thir-teenth century it had only thespecial meaning (which it stillkeeps as one of its meanings) of

Clerk busy working at his desk.



an “order” or “society” of monks.In the fourteenth century itbegan to have the meaning of“fixed arrangement,” but the ad-jective orderly and the nounorderliness did not come intouse until the sixteenth century.The word regular has a similarhistory. Coming from the Latinregula, “a rule,” its modern gen-eral meaning in English of “ac-cording to rule” seems verynatural; but the word whichbegan to be used in English inthe fourteenth century did nottake the modern meaning untilthe end of the sixteenth century.Before this, it too was used as aword to describe monastic or-

ders. The “regular” clergy werepriests who were also monks,while the “secular” clergy werepriests but not monks. Thewords regularity, regulation, andregulate did not come into useuntil the seventeenth century.

Another word which hasnow a quite different meaningfrom its original meaning isclerk. A “clerk” nowadays is aperson who is employed in an of-fice to keep accounts, write let-ters, etc. But a “clerk” in theMiddle Ages was what we shouldnow more generally call a “cler-ic,” a man in Holy Orders. As the“clerks” in the Middle Ages werepractically the only people who

could read and write, it is, per-haps, not unnatural that thename should be now used to de-scribe a class of people whosechief occupation is writing(whether with the hand or atypewriter) . People in the MiddleAges would have wondered whatcould possibly be meant by aword which is common in Scot-land for a “woman clerk”--clerkess.

The words which changetheir meanings in this way tellus the longest, and perhaps thebest, stories of all. PT

Languages in Peril - Keeping Up With The Kartvelians


LLaanngguuaaggeess IInn PPeerriill

KKeeeeppiinngg UUpp WWiitthhTThhee

KKaarrttvvee lliiaannss

he Kartvelian languagebranch is a small one, with

only an estimated 5 millionspeakers of its languages world-wide, and most people haveprobably never heard of it. Thedominant language of it is Geor-gian, and even that language isnot commonly talked about. It isthe official language of theEuropean country and formerSoviet Socialist Republic, Geor-gia.

The three lesser known lan-guages are Svan, Mingrelian,and Laz. They are also en-dangered, having no officialstatus, being only minority lan-guages in Georgia and, in thecase of Laz, in Turkey. Theyhave lost their identities andpopulation of speakers to dom-inant Georgian and Turkish.

SvanSvan is the language spoken inthe Western Georgian region ofSvaneti, mainly by the Svanpeople. There are roughly 30thousand speakers remaining,which has earned it the categor-ization of “definitely endangered”by UNESCO. It is rarely written,but when it is, it is done usingthe Georgian alphabet, althoughit has been written using Latinor Cyrillic alphabets in the past.Most speakers of it also speakGeorgian, and Svan has no offi-cial status, although it is used incasual social communication. Ofall four Kartvelian languages,Svan is the most different fromthe others and is not mutuallyintelligible with them.

The ancestors of the Georgi-an people have probably inhab-ited the west-central part of thesouthern Caucasus region forover five thousand years. Onegroup of them may have movedto the northwest around threethousand BC, as there are placenames that seem to be of Svane-tian origin there. These ancest-ors later moved into what is nowSvaneti. Artifacts and ruins dat-



ing back to the Bronze Era havebeen found there, showing thatthese people were doing metal-work as far back as two thou-sand BC.

Strabo, a Greek geographerand historian, living in 1st cen-tury BC, described that Svans asstrong, warlike people of themountains, and that they wereruled by a king and a council of300 elders. Eventually theyformed into a feudal system,similar to those found in Geor-gia, in which the nobility ownedmost of the land, but it wasworked by the peasants.

During the 13th century, aseries of invasions began in thelowland parts of Georgia. Armiesof Mongols, Persians, and Turkstook turns at devastating the re-gion, but due to it’s remote loca-

tion, most of Svaneti was neverinvaded. Because of this, someof the finest works of Georgianheritage were preserved in theSvanetian churches. These itemsincluded precious icons, illumin-ated manuscripts, and varioussilver and gold objects. It alsohelped that the Svan peoplewere very religious, so they tookany theft of these items very ser-iously. Stealing an icon was anaction that was punishable bydeath, most likely by stoning.Over time, other valuable arti-facts made their way intoSvaneti from other cultures, in-cluding Italian, German, Syrianand Persian, perhaps becausethe amount of trade the Svanpeople had with others.

When the Kingdom of Geor-gia fell in 1455, the land was

broken into several smallerkingdoms and regions. Svanetibecame under the rule of thenewly created Kingdom ofImereti, which lasted until the19th century. Then it becameincorporated, along with most ofwestern Georgia, into the Russi-an Empire in 1804. The Svanetipeople resisted this rule for awhile, but finally gave in around1833. Under the Russians, thepeasant serfs were given theirfreedom along with small parcelsof land, thus ending the feudaltime of the Svans.

The Communist Revolutionof 1917 changed many things,including Georgia’s status. It de-clared itself independent fromRussia, but that only lasted afew years, for in 1921 , the Rus-sian Red Army invaded Georgia

In the 3rd century, Roman Lazicum was granted some level of autonomy whicheventually allowed it to become fully independent as the Kingdom ofLazica.



and made it part of the new So-viet Union. After the collapse ofthe Soviet Union in 1991 , Geor-gia became an independentcountry again, with Svaneti be-ing part of it.

Recently, improvements tothe infrastructure of Svanetihave been made, most notablywith new schools, fixed roads,and improved electricity ser-vices. The language, however, isnot being passed on enough tothe Svan youth, and it is beingreplaced completely by Georgian,which is the cultural, education-al and legal language of Georgia.No official documents are writtenin Svan, further pushing its de-cline. Unless something is donesoon, Svan may become extinctwithin the next few generations.

MingrelianThe second Kartvelian languagein Western Georgia is Mingreli-an, spoken mainly by the Min-

grelian people. There is nodefinitive number of nativespeakers because it is a second-ary language which is being re-placed by Georgian, as is Svan.The estimate is between five andeight hundred thousand, and itis listed by UNESCO as “defin-itely endangered”.

The primary land of the Min-grelians is the Samegrelo regionof Georgia. This ranges from theBlack Sea coast to the SvanMountains and the Tskhenist-skali River, encompassing theOdishi Hills and Kolkheti Low-lands. There are some otherspeakers scattered in other partsof Georgia, but most have re-mained in this area, which hashelped the language survive foras long as it has because thecompactness of the populationhelps promote the passing on ofit to the next generation.

The Mingrelians have theirorigins with the Colchian tribes.

They were the ancient Mingreli-an-Laz people who lived in thewest and southwest areas of theTranscaucasus region. TheKingdom of Colchis existedbetween the sixth and first cen-turies BC, and is believed to thebe the first early Georgian state.It then fell under Roman rule fora few centuries. It finally becameunited with the Iberian kingdomof the southeast around the 7thcentury AD, becoming Christianin the process, and it would laterbecome a new Kingdom of Geor-gia.

During the Middle Ages, theMingrelian aristocracy andclergy of the kingdom adoptedthe Georgian language for liter-acy and culture, thus promotingit a place of prominence. Thelived in a “golden age” ofprosperity until the 13th cen-tury, when it was invaded byMongols. It struggled to regainsovereignty, but was subjected

Svan people from the Latali community



to more invasions. The kingdomfinally became fragmented, withmany parts of it becoming inde-pendent state, including Mingre-lia.

Mingrelia remainedautonomous for a few centuriesbefore being annexed into theRussian Empire in the 19th cen-tury. There, the Mingrelianpeople were considered a separ-ate group for historical, political,and cultural reasons from thoseof eastern Georgia. Later theywere reclassified as “Georgian”in the 1930s, and today, mostMingrelians still identity them-selves as a part of the Georgiannation while retaining many cul-tural features, such as theirMingrelian language. WhenGeorgia finally became inde-pendent in 1991 , the first pres-ident, Zviad Garnsakhurdia, wasMingrelian.

Mingrelian is written usingthe Georgian alphabet and, likeSvan, has no written standard orofficial status. Most speakersalso speak Georgian, and theymainly use Mingrelian inform-ally. It is related closely to Laz,since both people and languagescome from the same group oftribes, but it became differenti-ated from it during the Turkicand Mongol invasions. Mingreli-

an is not mutually intelligiblewith the other Kartvelian lan-guages, being only slightly re-lated to Svan and Georgian, butsome speakers can recognize Lazwords.

During the 1930s, severalnewspapers were published inMingrelian, but now, there areno Mingrelian language schools,books, or newspapers. Therehave been some attempts to re-vive the language by publishingdictionaries and poetry books.Studies of Mingrelian folkloreare also popular. A bigger effortneeds to be made in some officialcapacity, however, in order toprevent the Mingrelian languagefrom becoming extinct.

LazThe third Kartvelian language isLaz, spoken by around 30 thou-sand people in Turkey with an-other 2 thousand in Georgia.The Laz people inhabit theSoutheast shore of the BlackSea, in a region they call“Lazona”, in northeastern Tur-key. Those living in Georgia livemainly in Ajaria. There are alsoLaz people in Germany who havemigrated there from Turkey.

As I mentioned before, Laz isclosely related to Mingrelian andshares much of the same his-

tory. When the Kingdom of Col-chis fell under Roman rule, itbecame restructured into theprovince of Lazicum and ruledby Roman legati (ambassadorsto the empire) . In the 3rd cen-tury, Roman Lazicum was gran-ted some level of autonomywhich eventually allowed it tobecome fully independent as theKingdom of Lazica. This lastedfor over two centuries, duringwhich time it adopted Christian-ity as its official religion, beforethe kingdom became part of theByzantine Empire in 562 AD.Under this rule, they had relat-ive stability for 150 years untilthe Arabs moved in as the newregional power in the 7th cen-tury.

The Arab Empire coveredmuch of Europe and Asia, andLazica became known asLazistan by the Persians. TheOttoman Empire, founded byTurkish tribes in north-westernAnatolia in 1299, then took overthe region, becoming one of themost powerful states in theworld. It conquered Lazistan in1578, and under its rule, themajority of Laz were converted toSunni Muslims and ruled as theLazistan _sanjak_ (a _sanjak_being an administrative division

Mingrelian wedding party. Engraved by Y. Pranishnikoff. Published in 1884

Laz newspaper from 1929



of the Ottoman Empire) . Theeastern part of Lazistan becamepart of the Russian Empire in1878, then in 1922, the territorywas divided between Turkey andthe Soviet Union. Three yearslater, the name “Lazistan”, alongwith its sanjak, were removed bythe new Turkish Republic in1925.

Today, most of the Laz inTurkey are part of the Hanafischool of Sunni Islam. The Lazin Georgia are Eastern OrthodoxChristians who adhere to the na-tional Georgian OrthodoxChurch.

The Turkish people use thename “Laz” to refer to all inhab-itants of Turkey’s Black Seaprovinces east of Samsun. TheLaz themselves try to differenti-ate themselves from other inhab-itants of these regions. Non-Laz

also don’t want to be called this,preferring the term _Karadeniz-li_, meaning “of the Black Searegion”.

Historically, the Laz lan-guage is not written. The literarylanguages are normally Turkishand Georgian, depending on thecountry, with most Laz being bi-lingual. There were attempts atcreating a literary languagebased on the Arabic alphabet byFaik Efendisi in the 1870s, butthat got him arrested and im-prisoned by the Ottoman au-thorities, and most of his workswere destroyed.

An alphabet system basedon the Turkish alphabet wascreated in 1984, and that hasbeen used in a handful of pub-lications that have appeared inLaz. The sounds of Laz are betterrepresented by the Georgian al-

phabet, but most Laz live inTurkey and they use a Latin al-phabet. Still, in 1991 , a textbookcalled _Nana-nena_ (’Mothertongue’) was published usingboth the Latin and Georgian al-phabets. The first Laz–Turkishdictionary was published in1999.

While most Laz are bilin-gual, they are likely to use eitherTurkish and Georgian most ofthe time, even in areas with onlyLaz people. These is a majorfactor in the decline of the lan-guage. It is also being heavilyinfluenced by Turkish vocabu-lary, so the purity is being lost.Families that still speak Laz onlydo so with other adults in in-formal situations, leaving thechildren with only a passiveknowledge of it.

Laz has five major dialects:Art’aşenuri ) isspoken in Ardeşen. Atinuri( ) is spoken in Pazar(formerly Atina); Çxaluri( ) is spoken in theDüzköy (Çxala) village in Borçka;Vitzur-Ark’abuli (

) is spoken in Arhaviand Fındıklı; Xopuri ( ) isspoken in Hopa and Ajaria.These dialects only add to thedecline, since speakers of differ-ent dialects often have troubleunderstanding each other, andwith then use the local officiallanguage instead.

Much of their beliefs andtraditions have been lost, butthose that have survived havedone so in the forms of folk po-etry and civil customs, relatingto birth, marriages, and deathprimarily. Little has been doneto study the language or folkculture while a strong push forassimilation has occurred inTurkey. Very recently there hasbeen a rise in attempts to re-vitalize the Laz language, butmany fear it is too late. PT

Laz people inthe 1900s

Where Are You?

46 Parrot Time | Issue #6 | June 201 3

This ancient historic town has been classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It was a bustling seaportduring the time of Periplus and Ptolemy around the 1st century AD. It had become a major port city bythe 7th century, when it was once described as ‘where the ships rode at anchor bent to the point ofbreaking laden as they were with wealth, big trunked elephants and gems of nine varieties in heaps’.

It is known by several names, but perhaps the best known by mariners is "Seven Pagodas", referring tothe pagodas which stood on the shore, one of which still survives: the Shore Temple.

The city has numerous historic monuments built largely between the 7th and the 9th centuries. Manyartifacts have been found in and around the area, including megalithic burial urns, cairn circles and jarsdating back to the times of Christ. Chinese and Roman coins have been found there, which shows theport was an active place for global trade.

There are also many temples which show events from a Sanskrit epic. Rathas, or shrines, shaped astemple chariots are formed from a granite rock face, and other rathas are modeled after the Buddhistviharas or monasteries. The different shrines were dedicated to different gods and goddesses.

Today, this ancient city is largely a place for tourists, with roads to it having been made more accessible,although these are now highly commercialized with restaurants, resorts, amusement parks and traffic.Even the view of the ocean, once open and clear, is barely visible. With all the tourists, the city hasbecome run down, but efforts are being made to protect and restore it.

Can you name this city and country?

Where Are You?

Last month's answer: Braşov, Romania

Sections - Member Reviews


ften when someone is looking forsomething new to buy or use, they willlook for advice from others. The mostcommon way to do this is to read product

reviews. Once these were only found in magazinesand newspapers, but now with the internet,people can find just about every product availablereviewed by someone.

In Parleremo, we attempt to help others in thesame manner with a Member Reviews section.Here, members can write about things they havebought or tried, even giving them ratings. Thenothers can read this and hopefully make a moreinformed decision.

The reviews are currently broken into five dif-ferent categories. Books and Book Courses is forreviews of printed publications relating to lan-guages or cultures. Podcasts and Audio Courses

is for writing about audio versions of the same.Web Sites should be reviews of any web page thatis related to cultures or languages. This is apretty broad category, since it can includeeverything from courses to dictionaries to articles,as long as the material is available online. Soft-ware is similar to Web Sites, except that thiswould be programs and applications that can bedownloaded and used offline. Movies can be lan-guage or culture related, but even if someone justsaw a movie they really likes, they can post a re-view of it here. Anything that is reviewed can becommercial as well as free, since, in many cases,we are attempting to aid people who might beplanning to make a purchase, like buying a bookor course, or subscribing to a commercial site,like LiveMocha.

Adding a ReviewTo add a review, a member first needs to selectwhich category their article will be related to. Thatwill take them to a list of other reviews in thatcategory. At the bottom of that list is the option to“Add Review”. Once that is clicked, the user istaken to a submission form.

Some of the items on the form are obviouswhile some need a little more explanation. Firstitem is the title, and this should be somethingthat tells people what is being reviewed. It mightbe just the name of the item, like “Pimsleur’sSpanish” or it could be something more descript-ive of the entire review, like “Why I Love RosettaStone”. It should mention the product, to make iteasier for others to find it.

The second item is the category for the writeup. If the author has opened this page from a cat-egory page, then that category will be in this entryall ready. If not, or they came to this page from adifferent category, they can change it here.

There is a place to select a language, if theitem being reviewed is tied to a specific language,like a book on Polish or a Russian movie. This is aselection from a list of languages. If the requiredlanguage is not in the list, then it can be typedinto a box to the right of the language selection,labeled “Other”.

Under that is a place for a rating, as given bythe reviewer. This is a numerical vote, with 1 be-ing the worse and 5 being the best. This can beleft blank if the person does not which to give theitem a numerical rating.

To help give an overview, there is a “Sum-mary” box, in which the member should write asentence or two to give a reader some idea of whatthey are reviewing or how they feel about it. Theactual review is filled out in a larger text area.That has the same editing controls as a post onthe forum, with buttons for adding bold, under-line, colors and a number of other options.

Two other fields that need more explanationare “Link” and “ISBN”. Essentially, the link is ifthe product or item can be found online. Thiswould be a link to the web site being reviewed, thepage where software or podcasts can be found, oreven an online store in which the item can bepurchased. The link should be used to make iteasier to find the reviewed item online.

The ISBN entry is for books. It isn’t neces-

SSeeccttiioonnss

MMeemmbbeerr RReevviieewwssSections is a mothly column about different parts ofPaleremo,

explaining their purpose and how to use them.

Sections - Member Reviews


sary, but it can help in three ways. First, a readercan search for the book on their own when theyknow the ISBN. Secondly, the Member Reviews

utilizes Goodreads, a book reading and reviewingsocial network, to present a reader with other pos-sible reviews. If the proper ISBN number is enteredhere and a review for it exists on Goodreads, thena reader can also see those reviews from this sys-tem. We will discuss this more later. Finally, if thebook is available for sale on Amazon books, thenlinks to it will appear at the very bottom of the re-view.

The last item on the page is a button to uploadan image. This is used to add product images tothe review. To use this, the submitter clicks on thebutton then selects the proper image from theircomputer. It will be added to the review once theentire form is submitted to the system for approv-al.

All reviews must be approved by an adminis-trator before they appear for others to view. This isto prevent people from writing something obsceneor otherwise inappropriate for the community.

Reading a ReviewOnce the review has been approved, it will appearin the category it was assigned. There it will beavailable for everyone to read.

On the page of the review is basic information,like the author of the review, the day it was added,how many of viewed it, the link (if one was given),them item rating (if given one by the reviewer), andthe summary. Below all that is the major blockcontaining the review itself, along with any imagesadded to the review.

After the main text is a place for the reader torate the review. They select from a star rating (1 -5)by clicking on the highest star, or, if they don’thave Javascript enabled, they would select from adrop down menu. Once they have selected a rat-ing, the reader must click “Rate Review” to have itrecorded. Once that is done properly, they will beunable to rate it again. There is also a link thatwill show how others have rated the review.

Since a reader might want to share the reviewwith others online, there are some sharing options,such as Google Plus, Facebook “like”, and Twitter.

If an ISBN was given, then their might also besome links to Amazon books where the item canbe purchased. These will probably be for Amazonshops in different countries, like US, UK and Ger-many. In this way, a reader can easily buy it froma more local bookstore.

Besides being able to rate the review, a mem-ber can also leave a comment in a section at thebottom. This will give them a large form, again likea forum post, in which they can post whatever

comments they wish. They might be just shortcomments or their own reviews of the product.Comments should be something that might helpothers. Comments must also be approved beforethey will appear.

GoodreadsI mentioned a Goodreads connection earlier. At thetop right of the review page is a button that linksto a Goodreads review, if one exists. This will opento a new page with the same basic information asthe normal review, but the body will now containpreviews of reviews written by people onGoodreads. Selecting one of them will take a read-er to the full review on Goodreads. There alsomight be a button that will let them write theirown review on Goodreads.

We’ve incorporated the Goodreads connectionto make it easier for people to find more reviews. Ifa link for the book was given to someplace likeAmazon books, then more reviews could be readthere as well. We want to make it very easy formembers to find what they need while also sharingwith others.

SearchingIf one is looking for something particular anddoesn’t want to look through all the categories andreviews, there is a Search option available. There,words can be entered to searched for in the title,body, or both. The search can also be restricted toa specific language, category, date range (pastnumber of days or any time), and the member whoposted the review.

When the person reading the reviews has se-lected a language they are studying from the top ofthe page, there will also be a tab for that languagenext to the Search tab. This is a quick searchmechanism, just listing all reviews of items relatedto that language.

MyReviewsOnce a member has submitted reviews them-selves, they can list them all easily using theMyReviews tab. From there, they can read eachreview, or even edit or delete them.

AdditionsWe have tried to add everything we can to make iteasier for people to share their experiences andthoughts with this review section, but we are al-ways looking for more ways to expand it. If youhave an idea for something we could add or ex-pand in this section, please let us know. We alsowelcome any new category suggestions. Let usknow what you think! PT

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Word on the Streets - Indonesian Innovators


Ali Akbar Navis was born inPadang Panjang, WestSumatra on November 17,1924. Better known by thename of AA Navis, he was a

leading writer and humanist in Indonesia.

At a young age, Navis expressed creativity and tal-ent. Before he started his writing career, he be-came an accomplished musician with both violaand flute. He also became skilled as a painter. Hegraduated from the Dutch language teachers’school, Indonesisch Nederlandsche School (INS),in Kayu Tanam in 1945.

Navis began writing in 1950, but it took a fewyears for his work to be noticed. When it was, hewas given a position on the Central Sumatra Cul-tural Committee from 1953-55. His first real breakinto the literary world came with his short storySurau Kami in 1955. It was considered very bold inthe way it criticized the pious people who neg-lected the poor and was voted in the literarymagazine Kisah to be one of the best three storiesof the year. It was later released in a collection ofhis short stories also named Surau Kami in 1956.The collection has since been translated into Ja-panese, English and German.

During his lifetime, Navis created a number of mo-numental works in the areas of culture and art. Asa teacher, he inspired a new generation of writers.He always spoke and wrote frankly, earning himthe nickname “The Mocker”, for he did not holdback his opinions.

One of his criticisms was the way children weretaught in the educational system. He said that,from elementary school to college, students wereonly given the chance to receive information fromtheir teachers, but were not taught to speak theirown minds. This caused them to not be good atwriting, because one needs an open mind for that.They were not taught to read because readinggives people a chance for comparison. By the timethey arrived in college, they were not good at read-ing or writing, and this contributed to the declineof each generation.

He criticized the education models, saying theywere created as a strategy to keep people unable tothink for themselves, and that this must be res-isted and changed. He viewed literature as ameans of doing this, of helping people to thinkcritically and understand the concepts of life. Ac-cording to Navis, the most important thing for awriter is whether the work is durable or not. Tohim, writing was a tool.He claimed that he wrotewith one vision, not with the purpose of seekingfame.

Fame found him, though. Even as he taught otherwriters, he produced his own short stories, novels,poetry, children’s stories, radio plays and essays.Navis produced over 65 works of literature in mul-tiple forms. He wrote 22 books, plus five antholo-gies with other writers and eight foreignanthologies. He also produced 106 papers on avariety of academic activities at home and abroadwhich were collected into the book A Walk Along

the Way.

Ali Akbar Navis1 7 November 1 924 – 22 March 2003

Jalan Navis

Bibliography• Antologi Lengkap Cerpen A.A. Navis , 2005• Gerhana, novel , 2004• Bertanya Kerbau Pada Pedati , 2002• Cerita Rakyat dari Sumatra Barat 3 , 2001• Kabut Negeri si Dali , 2001• Dermaga Lima Sekoci , 2000• Jodoh , 1999• Yang Berjalan Sepanjang Jalan , 1999• Cerita Rakyat dari Sumatra Barat 2 , 1998• Filsafat dan Strategi Pendidikan M. Sjafei: RuangPendidik INS Kayutanam , 1996• Otobiografi A.A. Navis: Satiris dan Suara Kritis dariDaerah , 1994• Surat dan Kenangan Haji , 1994

• Cerita Rakyat dari Sumatra Barat , 1994• Hujan Panas dan Kabut Musim , 1990• Pasang Surut Pengusaha Pejuang, Hasjim Ningautobiography , 1986• Alam Terkembang Jadi Guru, minangkabau culture ,1984• Di Lintasan Mendung , 1983• Dialektika Minangkabau (editor) , 1983• Dermaga dengan Empat Sekoci, poets , 1975• Saraswati: Si Gadis dalam Sunyi, novel , 1970• Kemarau , 1967• Bianglala , 1963• Hudjan Panas , 1963• Robohnya Surau Kami , 1955



Jalan Wijaya

Partial BibliographyShort Stories• Gres, Jakarta: Balai Pustaka, 1982• Blok, Jakarta: Pustaka Firdaus, 1994• Darah, Jakarta: Balai Pustaka, 1995• Zig Zag, Jakarta: Pustaka Firdaus, 1996• Tidak, Jakarta: Pabelan Jayakarta, 1999

Drama• Dar-Der-Dor, Jakarta: Grasindo, 1996

Novels• Bila Malam Bertambah Malam, Jakarta: Pustaka Jaya,1971• Telegram, Jakarta: Pustaka Jaya, 1973• MS, Jakarta, 1975• Ratu, Jakarta, 1977• Sah, Jakarta, 1977

• Stasiun, Jakarta, Pustaka Jaya, 1977• Tak Cukup Sedih, Jakarta, 1977• Keok, Jakarta: Pustaka Jaya, 1978• Sobat, Jakarta: Sinar Harapan, 1981• Lho, Jakarta: Balai Pustaka, 1982• Nyali, Jakarta: Balai Pustaka, 1983• Dor, Jakarta: Balai Pustaka, 1986• Pol, Jakarta: Gramedia, 1987• Teror, Jakarta: Pustaka Jaya, 1991• Kroco, Jakarta: Pustaka Firdaus, 1995• Byar Pet, Jakarta: Pustaka Firdaus, 1995• Aus, Jakarta: Grasindo, 1996• Tetralogi Dangdut, 2008

Poetry• Dadaku adalah Perisaiku, Denpasar: Lesiba, 1974

Putu Wijaya11 Apri l 1 944 –

I Gusti Ngurah Putu Wijayawas born in Tabanan, Bali, inApril, 1944, and is normallyknown as simply PutuWijaya. He is a well knownand versatile Indonesian au-thor who has written numer-ous plays, short stories,

essays, novels, film scripts and soap operas. Hehas also received a number of literary prizes forhis works.

Putu Wijaya was born the youngest of eight chil-dren, with three of them from one father and fivefrom another. While in primary school, he wasalready reading classic literature by Anton Chek-hov and William Shakespeare. His love of literat-ure came from the extended family of the largehousing complex he lived in, for most of them readregularly. While Putu Wijaya’s father was hopinghe would become a doctor, he instead found him-self drawn to history, language and geography. Hislove for the theatre came in high school when hewas part of a performance of Anton Checkov’s playThe Bear.

He has been writing since junior high, and his firstshort story, Etsa (“Etching”) , was published SuluhIndonesia, Bali. His works later appeared in theFajar column ofMimbar Indonesia magazine, Ming-

gu Pagi and Majalah Djaya.

In high school, he performed in and directed hisown drama group, and later joined the Bengkel

Teater (“Theatre Workshop”) from 1967 to 1969.He then joined the TeaterKecil di Jakarta (“LittleTheatre in Jakarta”) . His play Lautan Bernyanyi

(“Chanting Ocean”) was awarded third place in adrama-writing contest of the Indonesian NationalTheater Development Agency in 1969.

Putu Wijaya moved to Jakarta and began his ca-reer as a writer when he was working as a journ-alist for Tempo and Zaman. He joined Teater Keciland Teater Populer to keep up his interest indrama. His novels are often published inmagazines like Kartini, Femina and Horison. As ascreenwriter, he has twice won an “Image in In-donesian Film Festival (FFI)” for Perawan Desa

(“Virgin Village”, 1980) and Kembang Kertas

(“Flower Paper”, 1985) He has also had fellowshipsto study kabuki in Japan and a Fullbright Schol-arship so he could teach Indonesian theatre atuniversities in the United States.

Putu Wijaya is still a major figure in the promotionof Indonesian literature and culture, and his nu-merous works have been translated into manylanguages, including English, Arabic, Dutch, Rus-sian, French, Japanese and Thai.



Jalan Alisjahbanai

Sutan Takdir AlisjahbanaFebruary 11 , 1 908 – July 1 7, 1 994

Sutan Takdir Alisjahbanawas born in Natal, NorthSumatra on February 11 ,1908. He was a writer and ex-pert on Indonesian grammarand is recognized as one ofIndonesian literature’s lead-ers, especially during its

move toward independence. Alisjahbana believedthat Indonesia could learn from the values of west-ern civilization and he remained a great promoterof modernism all during his life.

Even as a child, Alisjahbana loved books, and hewas often seen with a stack of books. He attendedelementary school at the Hollandsch InlandscheSchool in Bengkulu from 1915 to 1921 , then wenton to study at the Kweekschool (Training School)in Kota Bukittinggi and, later, Hogere Kweekschoolin London. He finally graduated from HoofdacteCursus in Jakarta in 1933, which was highestqualification for teachers in the Dutch East Indiesat the time.

During his time of studying law, linguistics, liter-ature and philosophy, Alisjahbana began creatinghis own works. His first novel, Tak Putus

Dirundung Malang (“Misfortune without End”) waspublished by Balai Pustaka in 1929. His novel Di-an Tak Kunjung Padam was published in 1932.Other novels were Layar Terkembang (1936) andAnak Perawan di Sarang Penyamun (1940). HisTatabahasa Baru Bahasa Indonesia (“A NewGrammar of the Indonesian Language”) came outin 1936 and it is still used today. He also had twobooks of poetry, Puisi Lama and Puisi Baru, pub-lished in 1941 and 1946, respectively.

Alisjahbana wrote dozens of books over the courseof his life, mostly on literature and linguistics. La-yar Terkembang (“Sail”) is one of his most famous.In it, Alisjahbana put his ideas for advancing soci-ety, especially the idea of promoting the role ofwomen leaders through the character of Tuti, aforward-thinking woman who was active in thewomen’s movement.

Among his friends were Indonesian poet AmirHamzah and Indonesian author Armijn Pane, andtogether they founded and edited Poedjangga

Baroe (“The New Writer”) , a journal which con-tained the best work of many writers. It was firstpublished in 1933 and ran for nine years. Whenthe Japanese occupation began in 1942, themagazine stopped publication. In 1953, Alisjah-bana became the editor for another publication,Konfrontasi (“Confrontation”) .

During the Japanese occupation, Alisjahbana wasappointed head of the Indonesian Language Com-mittee. There, he pushed to modernize Indonesianso it could be a unifying national language of thenation. After World War II ended, he became a lec-turer at a number of universities, including theUniversity of Indonesia (1946-1948), the NationalUniversity (1950-1958), Andalas University (1956-1958), and Malaya University (1963-1968).

Despite all his achievements, Alisjahbana neversaw his greatest wish realized: to make BahasaMelayu, or simply Malay, the language of instruc-tion in the Southeast Asian region. He died inJakarta on July 17, 1994. PT

Partial Bibliography• Tak Putus Dirundung Malang, 1929• Dian Tak Kunjung Padam, 1932• Tebaran Mega, 1935• Tatabahasa Baru Bahasa Indonesia, 1936• Layar Terkembang, 1936• Anak Perawan di Sarang Penyamun, 1940• Puisi Lama, 1941• Puisi Baru, 1946• Pelangi, 1946• Pembimbing ke Filsafat, 1946• The Indonesian language and literature, 1962• Kebangkitan Puisi Baru Indonesia, 1969• Grotta Azzura, 1970 & 1971

• Values as integrating vorces in personality, societyand culture, 1974• The failure of modern linguistics, 1976• Perjuangan dan Tanggung Jawab dalamKesusastraan, 1977• Lagu Pemacu Ombak, 1978• Kalah dan Menang, 1978• Sociocultural creativity in the converging andrestructuring process of the emerging world, 1983• Kebangkitan: Suatu Drama Mitos tentang BangkitnyaDunia Baru, 1984• Perempuan di Persimpangan Zaman, 1985• Sajak-Sajak dan Renungan, 1987.

GlobTech - Google Translate Section


GlobTech is a new column dealing with newways ofutilizing globalization technology on the internet.

For most language lovers, the mere mention ofGoogle Translate is likely to evoke groansof misery or even curses.

The idea of having a machine translating from one language to another is one thatpeople have long promised, but the results are usually rather disappointing. Translatingbetween languages can be tricky enough for a human fluent in two languages. For a ma-chine that can’t even truly understand the language, the task becomes much more difficultand that results in some very poor texts.

I would not suggest using a machine translation when trying to communicate withsomeone else. First, it is likely to be very annoying to the other person, for their language isbeing butchered. It is also insulting, because it shows that you aren’t making any real effortto speak to them as people.

Having said that, there are benefits to using an automated translator in certain situ-ations. Quite often, we don’t need to have a perfect understanding of what was said. Rather,we need to have a basic understanding, and even a bad machine translation can usuallyprovide us with such. In that case, we are inflicting the translation upon ourselves.

So, when using a translation system, use it for your own understanding, like convertinga web page into something you can understand. Do not, however, use such a system totranslate a web page to present to others.

Using on a SiteWith the Google Translate page, a person can enter text written in one language and have itinstantly converted to another. There is also a feature that allows someone to translate anentire webpage into another language. This can be useful if you need the information on apage but it doesn’t have a page in your language.

There is a much more specialized use for the Google Translate system that I have put touse. That is the ability to translate just a specific piece of text on a page. The given text isspecified in the code of the page and when a certain link is clicked (the default in English is“Translate”) , it is instantly translated into a specific language. Another click and it returnsto normal.

While most sites probably wouldn’t have a need for such a device, there are many usesfor it on a site for learning languages. The most obvious is on a forum. The text of a post canbe converted as needed for a person, so even posts written in an unknown language to thereader can be understood.

Furthermore, this can be used as a learning aid in that environment. If a person islearning Polish, they can practice their comprehension by reading posts written in Polish,using the translation button only when they find themselves stuck.

Translating the text of a post could also be achieved by using the page translator or thetext translator page of Google, but this is much more accessible and faster.

Another use is in comment and feedback sections. Parleremo has a journal system, in

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GGooooggllee TTrraannssllaattee SSeeccttiioonn

GlobTech - Google Translate Section


which people write about something in a language they are studying. They then rely upon other mem-bers to correct them and leave comments. These comments might be left in the studied language, but bebeyond the capabilities of the original poster to understand fully. Putting these comments into a trans-latable section ensures the writer will understand the responses. The translation capability has been ad-ded here as well as the recording system, which is similar, except that people record themselves readinga text.

What is NeededGenerally, there are three components to adding this sectional translation capability to a page. First,some basic Javascript code is added to set up a few class names and color. This is what is used on Par-leremo:

<script type="text/javascript">function googleSectionalElementInit() {new google. translate.SectionalElement({sectionalNodeClassName: 'goog-trans-section',controlNodeClassName: 'goog-trans-control ',background: '#f4fa58'

}, 'google_sectional_element'); }</script>

The background color is simply to help the mechanism blend in better with a website.

Next, we need a line to include a script into the page which will do the heavy lifting:

<script type="text/javascript" src="//translate.google.com/translate_a/element. js?cb=googleSectionalElementIn-it&ug=section&hl=en"></script>

The last part, hl=en, dictates what language the text will be translated into. The en is the ISO-639-2code for English. This should be changed to whatever is needed. On Parleremo, this is replaced by whata person has selected for their site language, which is viewed as their source language for the entire site.

Finally, the actual wrapping of the section of the text:

<div class="goog-trans-section" lang="nl">Dit is de te vertalen tekst<div class="goog-trans-control"></div>

</div>

Replace “Dit is de te vertalen tekst” with whatever you want. The lang="nl" defines the language ofthe text, again using the ISO-639-2 codes. If the entire line lang="" is left out, then Google Translate willattempt to guess what language is being used. This works best with a larger body of text because it willbe more likely that a proper guess will be made.

The second div is where the “Translate” link will be placed. This is needed to toggle between transla-tions. The first div holds the text to be translated and the control div.

Note that the classes used in this last bit of code match those used in the original declarations. Youcould probably change these to whatever you want, but I suggest just keeping them unique as they are.

That’s It!Now you can add your own sectional translations to your website or blog. As I said before, I wouldn’trely upon this to come up with completely accurate translations, but it should provide a user with a ba-sic understanding. Remember that it won’t work for all languages, just for those that Google Translateknows. The good part about that is it already has over seventy languages, with more being added. PT

Credits


Letter From the EditorWriter: Erik ZidoweckiImages:Petey: People Around World

Speaking with AliensWriter: Erik ZidoweckiImages:Petey: TardisSources:• "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" Douglas Adams; London 1 979• This website \ magazine is not endorsed, sponsored or affi l iated with any of these companies:• The STAR TREK and ENTERPRISE trademarks, images and logos are owned by CBS Studios Inc.• The STARGATE and STARGATE:SG-1 trademarks, images and logos are owned by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) Studios• The BABYLON 5 and CRUSADE trademarks, images and logos are owned by Warner Bros. Television• The DOCTOR WHO trademarks, images and logos are owned by British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)• The FARSCAPE trademarks, images and logos are owned by Jim Henson Productions and Nine Film & Television Pty. Ltd.• The HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY image is owned by British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)

Celebrations - Esala PeraheraWriter: Sonja KrügerImages:Bodhitha: Elephants at the Esala Perahera in Kandy, Sri LankaBil l Littman / StretchyBil l : Fire dancers performing in the street (title)Daniel Liabeuf: Decorated elephantsSimon Frost: Buddha Statue, Temple of the Tooth RelicMilei.vencel: Buddhist stupa in Sri LankaPetey: Sacred procession in KandySources:• "Esala Perahera" From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia <http: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esala_Perahera>• "Kandy Perahera - Esala Perahera in Sri Lanka." Lakpura Travels <http: //www. lanka.com/sri-lanka/kandy-esala-perahera-1 29.html>• "Esala Perahera" Fact Monster <http: //www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0934571 .html>• "Kandy Esala Perahera" The Association of Consuls in Sri Lanka <http: //www.consulsri lanka.com/kandy-perahera/>

Language Conflicts: Bokmål vs. NynorskWriter: Erik ZidoweckiImages:Zakuragi: map of the official language forms of Norwegiannoregsmallag: Landsmøtet var i Teatersalen ti l Bondeungdomslaget i Oslo.Petey: Water pier (title); Trol l ; Houses on waterSources:• "Norwegian language" From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia <http: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_language>• "Nynorsk vs. Bokmål: agreeing to disagree" M. Michael Brady. <http: //theforeigner.no/pages/columns/nynorsk-vs-bokml-agreeing-to-disagree/>• "BOKMÅL vs NYNORSK" Skjold Lodge - Sons of Norway <http: //www.skjoldlodge.com/dyk_archives/bokmal_nynorsk.htm>• "Norwegian" By Irene Thompson, updated 201 3 by Scott Coble <http: //aboutworldlanguages.com/norwegian>

At The Cinema - Pane e Tulipani - Bread and TulipsWriter: Erik ZidoweckiSources:• "Bread and Tulips" Internet Movie Database <http: //www.imdb.com/title/tt0237539/>• "Bread and Tulips" Wikipedia <http: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_Tulips>All images are copyright Istituto Luce, Rai Cinemafiction, Amka Films Productions, Monogatari, Televisione Svizzera I tal iana(TSI)

Revisited - Words Which Have Changed Their MeaningWriter: Elizabeth O'Neil lImages:jppi: Dictionary (title)Seemann: Reed houseGDuwen: Knave of bastos of the Spanish Deckquil : Small stoolmissmeganbunny: Ghost decorationjdurham: Hawk quil lsMuzzlesf: Man with handkerchiefsJi-El le: Treacle (Sri Lanka)mensatic: Clerk at deskSources:• "Words Which Have Changed Their Meaning" Stories That Words Tell Us Elizabeth O'Neil l , M.A. London: T. C. & E. C. Jack,Ltd. 35 Paternoster Row, E.C. And Edinburgh 1 91 8

Credits


Languages in Peril - Keeping Up With The KartveliansWriter: Lucil le MartinImages:deguonis: Mestia (title)ArnoldPlaton: Distribution of the Kartvel ian languagesKolkhianboy: A laz newspaperPetey: Svan people from the Latal i community; Mingrel ian wedding party. Engraved by Y. Pranishnikoff. Published in 1 884; Lazpeople in 1 900sSources:• "Kartvel ian languages" Wikipedia <http: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kartvel ian_languages>• "Svan language" Wikipedia <http: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svan_language>• "Svan" Languages in Danger <http: //languagesindanger.eu/book-of-knowledge/l ist-of-languages/svan/>• "Svan people" Wikipedia <http: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svan_people>• "SVANS" Svaneti Trekking <http: //www.svanetitrekking.ge/eng/mtielebi.htm>• "Svans - History and Cultural Relations" Every Culture <http: //www.everyculture.com/Russia-Eurasia-China/Svans-History-and-Cultural-Relations.html>• "Mingrel ian language" Wikipedia <http: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mingrel ian_language>• "Mingrel ians" Wikipedia <http: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mingrel ians>• "Mingrel ians - Orientation" <http: //www.everyculture.com/Russia-Eurasia-China/Mingrel ians-Orientation.html>• "Laz language" Wikipedia <http: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laz_language>• "Laz people" Wikipedia <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laz_people>

Where Are You?Writer: Sonja KrügerImages:Sekhar300: Shore TempleSections - ReviewsWriter: Erik Zidowecki

Word on the Streets - Indonesian InnovatorsWriter: Sofia OzolsImages:Petey: Great Mosque of Yogyakarta; Navis; Wijaya; AlisjahbanaSources:• "Ali Akbar Navis" Wikipedia <http: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al i_Akbar_Navis>• "A.A. Navis" Dari Wikipedia bahasa Indonesia, ensiklopedia bebas <http: //id.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.A._Navis>• "Biografi A.A. NAVIS" shvoong.com <http://id.shvoong.com/books/biography/211 8445-biografi-navis/>• "Haji Al i Akbar Navis" <http: //www.tamanismailmarzuki.com/tokoh/navis.html>• "Putu Wijaya" Wikipedia <http: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putu_Wijaya>• "Putu WijayaZ" Dari Wikipedia bahasa Indonesia, ensiklopedia bebas <http: //id.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putu_Wijaya>• "Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana" Wikipedia <http: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutan_Takdir_Alisjahbana>• "Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana" Dari Wikipedia bahasa Indonesia, ensiklopedia bebas<http: //id.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutan_Takdir_Alisjahbana>• "Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana" Boigrafi <http: //biografinya.blogspot.com/2011 /1 0/sutan-takdir-al isjahbana.html>• "Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana" Boigrafi <http: //biografinya.blogspot.com/2011 /1 0/sutan-takdir-al isjahbana.html>

GlobTech - Google Translate SectionWriter: Erik ZidoweckiImages:Petey: world map

All images are Copyright - CC BY-SA (Creative Commons Share Alike) by their respective owners, except forPetey, which is Public Domain (PD) or unless otherwise noted.

Explore the little known and little changed

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For those that prefer an active nightlife and

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home of painter Marc Chagall.

Leave the commonly followed paths of travel

and find a whole new experience in Belarus!

BBeell aarruussDestination

This ad was not paid for by any agency or person associated with Belarus

parrot time - issue 8 - march / april 2014

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