Second-cousin languages

 

[Cousins*]

All that glitters is not gold nor do any identical letters make for identical languages. The confusion is not between Spanish and Italian or German and Dutch, languages that evolved sufficiently long ago so as to be immediately distinguishable, but instead between languages that are directly related by history but have only recently (in historical terms) gone different ways.

One example is French from France as compared to that written in Quebec. Clearly, the letters and grammar are identical as are most of the words. However, a deeper analysis would identify some traps for the unsuspecting translator. On the one hand, Quebecois tends to more firmly insist on French roots as compared to English roots in business, e.g., réunion and planification instead of the free French use of meeting and planning. On the other hand, funny Americanisms, such a chien chaud for hot dog, do show up. On a lexical note, French-Canadian meanings can differ, including déjeuner and dîner are breakfast and lunch, respectively, in Quebec as compared to the Parisian petit déjeuner and déjeuner. For more information see https://www.technitrad.com/the-differences-between-french-and-canadian-french-when-translating-professional-documents/ Both customers and translators should confirm the source of the French text.

Hebrew and Yiddish share the same letters but have different vocabulary sources. Hebrew uses roots derived from Hebrew and Aramaic with some more recent English and Russian additions. On a humorous note, I just heard a music judge say “lejamjem”, meaning to have a jam session. By contrast, Yiddish is a localized combination of Hebrew, Russian, Polish and German roots, transliterated into Hebrew applying Yiddish grammar. It was the language that allowed Jews from all over Eastern Europe and Russia to communicate with each other. Clients see the Hebrew letters and assume that the text is in Hebrew. While a non-Yiddish speaker can understand some of the text, it is a language in itself.

My personal bugaboo is Ukrainian. I translate many certificates from Russian and occasionally don’t pay attention to the entire text when quoting. Only upon started the job do I discover that the months of the year are different. Curiously enough, the Ukrainians use a much older system of month names based on agriculture and plants, naming each month for that feature of it. For example, travyen means grass and is the equivalent of May while Syerpen means a sickle and is the equivalent to August.  For a beautiful presentation of the Ukrainian calendar see https://www.ukrainianlessons.com/months/.This is only one of the differences in these two separate languages but it is easy to catch and helps me avoid having to find a Ukrainian translator. Not all Cyrillic languages are created equally.

In the most perfect of worlds, translators would always read the entire document carefully before proposing a price and accepting a job. In reality, there are occasional lapses. As Bregalad the Ent would say, they are occasionally "hasty" and don’t properly check the source text to identify the actual language, creating a solvable but avoidable problem. On the bright side, it does make for a funny story.

* Picture captions allow the blind to access the Internet. 

Picture credit: Image by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/thevirtualdenise-5804203/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=2491047">Denise Husted</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=2491047">Pixabay</a>

Middle Eastern Languages

National languages seem like inevitable facts. The language of your country is like your dominant hand. You don’t choose it.  However, the modern Middle East shows how that seeming passiveness is an illusion.  Due to the area serving as a corridor between Asia, Europe and Africa, the Middle East has been host to countless empires, each imposing its own language.  To choose to speak a language different from your occupiers is a political statement.

Egypt, for example, was technically part of the Ottoman Empire for several centuries until World War I.  Its administrators were Turkish, often Kurds.  Thus, Turkish was the official language of communication in Egypt.  It was only in the 19^th century that a few intrepid Egyptians starting publishing newspapers in Arabic.  The Turks gave Arabic the same status as the French have given French Creole, a bastard language at best.  As part of the nationalist movement in Egypt, Arabic was used as a way of expressing Egyptian pride. So, the fact that Arabic is the official language of Egypt is an act of will.

That will is even more evident in the status of Hebrew in Israel.  Hebrew was a hibernating language for 2000 years, maintained only as in its written form.  Variants of Yiddish and Ladino were the lingua franca of Diaspora Jews in addition to the official language of the land.  The revival of Hebrew as an active language was an explicitly political act to create a Jewish identity and part of the overall program to create a Jewish state, a wild dream in the 19^th and early 20^th century.  The Turks, followed by the Brits, ruled this area until 1948, imposing their language for administrative purposes.  To learn and speak Hebrew in the 1920 and 1930’s was a statement of identity.  Later, the imposition of Hebrew became part of the plan of creation of the New Israeli (as compared to the Diaspora Jew),  a Jew whose cultural and linguistic past was cut off.  For practical purposes, to be Israeli meant and means that you try to speak Hebrew.  Accent and accuracy are irrelevant – listen how many of the Israeli’s early leaders spoke – as long as a person showed the intention to “fit in.” Still, the reality for the early generations of Israelis was quite different.  To demonstrate, in the Technion, there was a serious proposal to make German the language of instruction as most of the professors were German. Today, even Moslem, Christian and Druze Israeli, who daily language is Arabic, all speak Hebrew to the point that their Arabic has many Hebrew words inserted into it. The choice to make Hebrew the daily language was a conscious use of a language to establish identity, which was successful.

So, as people shape the physical world around them, they also influence their linguistic space.  There is nothing inevitable about it, especially in the Middle East.