Quadibloc
2009-03-01 01:09:39 UTC
For those who may not have heard of it, Uncleftish Beholding is an
essay by science-fiction writer Poul Anderson. Basically, it is a
short popular article about atomic energy which is rendered in a
modified form of English, in which all words containing Latin or Greek
roots are replaced with words based on Germanic roots but in a form
and spelling intelligible to English speakers.
Thus, hydrogen becomes waterstuff, oxygen becomes sourstuff, and the
Periodic Table of the Elements becomes the "roundaround board of the
firststuffs".
The thought crossed my mind - could it be translated into other
languages? I had a specific other language in mind into which it seems
to me that it could not be translated.
But first: could it be translated into German, or Swedish, or
Icelandic? It might seem as if it couldn't; after all, in German,
hydrogen already is Wasserstoff and oxygen already is Sauerstoff. But
while _some_ words that are made from Latin and Greek in English are
still made from native roots in those countries not having experienced
the Norman Conquest, the vocabulary of science and technology is
largely Latin and Greek everywhere.
So the same thing could be done in the modern Germanic languages, but
not as many words would be changed.
Let's give them an Uncleftish Beholding Index of 0.5 to represent
this.
Now, let's move in the other direction. What about French or Spanish
or even Italian? Clearly those languages already use Latin roots for
everything. However, scientific words borrowed from Latin still do
present their roots in a form distinct from that native to French or
Spanish, so these words would still show some change. And there are
still those words which are derived from Greek, which would change to
native roots.
So these languages might receive an Uncleftish Beholding Index of 0.3.
I'm not sure what would happen with Greek. Probably those words in the
international scientific and technical vocabulary that use Latin and
not Greek are borrowed, not changed to Greek roots, and if so, Greek's
UBI would probably be around 0.7.
When it comes to Japanese, things become more complicated. One could
say that Japanese deserves a UBI of 2.
Because while Japanese, with its syllabic kana system of writing, does
borrow foreign words from the West, it had also, previously, borrowed
words from China, which is why the kanji have both a Chinese on-yomi
pronounciation and a native Japanese kun-yomi pronounciation.
So in addition to changing the Latin and Greek roots into native
Japanese roots, one could translate _Uncleftish Beholding_ into
Japanese a *second* way.
The same applies to Korean. Although Korean is written with an
alphabet, the letters of which are combined into decorative forms for
each syllable that resemble Chinese characters, in certain forms of
writing, words borrowed from Chinese occasionally appear, written in
Chinese characters, called _hanja_.
However, if one were to replace words borrowed from Latin and Greek by
new borrowings from Chinese, the Korean reader would likely need a
Chinese dictionary, as the Chinese borrowings are limited in number,
and restricted to a narrow range of topics, unlike the Japanese case
where, as with Latin and Greek borrowings in English, the Chinese
borrowings provide a relatively complete set of nouns and verbs. So my
suspicion is that Korean has a UBI of 1.1.
An essay on atomic theory in Chinese, however, would *already* be a
lot like _Uncleftish Beholding_ without any artificial manipulation.
This is because Chinese almost never borrows foreign words, and
already renders virtually all of its scientific and technical
vocabulary by loan-translations instead. So translating Uncleftish
Beholding into Chinese is something like explaining water to a fish.
Or at least so it seems to me, based on my limited knowledge of these
matters. Comments and corrections are welcomed.
John Savard
essay by science-fiction writer Poul Anderson. Basically, it is a
short popular article about atomic energy which is rendered in a
modified form of English, in which all words containing Latin or Greek
roots are replaced with words based on Germanic roots but in a form
and spelling intelligible to English speakers.
Thus, hydrogen becomes waterstuff, oxygen becomes sourstuff, and the
Periodic Table of the Elements becomes the "roundaround board of the
firststuffs".
The thought crossed my mind - could it be translated into other
languages? I had a specific other language in mind into which it seems
to me that it could not be translated.
But first: could it be translated into German, or Swedish, or
Icelandic? It might seem as if it couldn't; after all, in German,
hydrogen already is Wasserstoff and oxygen already is Sauerstoff. But
while _some_ words that are made from Latin and Greek in English are
still made from native roots in those countries not having experienced
the Norman Conquest, the vocabulary of science and technology is
largely Latin and Greek everywhere.
So the same thing could be done in the modern Germanic languages, but
not as many words would be changed.
Let's give them an Uncleftish Beholding Index of 0.5 to represent
this.
Now, let's move in the other direction. What about French or Spanish
or even Italian? Clearly those languages already use Latin roots for
everything. However, scientific words borrowed from Latin still do
present their roots in a form distinct from that native to French or
Spanish, so these words would still show some change. And there are
still those words which are derived from Greek, which would change to
native roots.
So these languages might receive an Uncleftish Beholding Index of 0.3.
I'm not sure what would happen with Greek. Probably those words in the
international scientific and technical vocabulary that use Latin and
not Greek are borrowed, not changed to Greek roots, and if so, Greek's
UBI would probably be around 0.7.
When it comes to Japanese, things become more complicated. One could
say that Japanese deserves a UBI of 2.
Because while Japanese, with its syllabic kana system of writing, does
borrow foreign words from the West, it had also, previously, borrowed
words from China, which is why the kanji have both a Chinese on-yomi
pronounciation and a native Japanese kun-yomi pronounciation.
So in addition to changing the Latin and Greek roots into native
Japanese roots, one could translate _Uncleftish Beholding_ into
Japanese a *second* way.
The same applies to Korean. Although Korean is written with an
alphabet, the letters of which are combined into decorative forms for
each syllable that resemble Chinese characters, in certain forms of
writing, words borrowed from Chinese occasionally appear, written in
Chinese characters, called _hanja_.
However, if one were to replace words borrowed from Latin and Greek by
new borrowings from Chinese, the Korean reader would likely need a
Chinese dictionary, as the Chinese borrowings are limited in number,
and restricted to a narrow range of topics, unlike the Japanese case
where, as with Latin and Greek borrowings in English, the Chinese
borrowings provide a relatively complete set of nouns and verbs. So my
suspicion is that Korean has a UBI of 1.1.
An essay on atomic theory in Chinese, however, would *already* be a
lot like _Uncleftish Beholding_ without any artificial manipulation.
This is because Chinese almost never borrows foreign words, and
already renders virtually all of its scientific and technical
vocabulary by loan-translations instead. So translating Uncleftish
Beholding into Chinese is something like explaining water to a fish.
Or at least so it seems to me, based on my limited knowledge of these
matters. Comments and corrections are welcomed.
John Savard