Language Geek

Being a language geek takes you down some odd paths. I once bought a Sanskrit-English dictionary online from Powells.com. When I got it, I realized it was almost useless to me. It was only Sanskrit-English, with no English-to-Sanskrit section, and all the Indic words were in the Devanagari script, which at that time I did not read. By the typeface it looked to be an older book, possibly 19th century, originally published in India and reprinted in the 1990s in England.

I eventually got myself a used version of the cinder-block-sized 1899 Oxford "Sanskrit-English Dictionary" by Sir Monier Monier-Williams. That puppy rocks!

But I still kept the other dictionary around for a while. It made fascinating bedside reading, and I found myself sitting up at night, thumbing through it, scanning the columns of strange script and familiar definitions. A dictionary half in an unknown language is an intellectual gift from the gods. Delightful connections flower there, along with conceptions that convince me ancient India had a civilization hardly matched again in subtlety and sophistication.

Here are some definitions:

• A man who does not cook for himself; a bad cook [a term of abuse].
  
• A mouse; a miser.
  
• Licked; surrounded.
  
• m. A bee; a scorpion. f. A woman's female friend.
  
• A whirlpool, a crowded place.
  
• Inaccessible; unfit for sexual intercourse; difficult to understand.
  

There are whole sermons and life lessons in a single word:

• Repentance, intense enmity, close attachment.
  
• Fire; appetite; gold.
  
• A great danger; a desperate act.
  
• Supported; haughty; near; obstructed.
  
• Touched; violated; judged; endured.
  
• Relaxation; independence.
  

There are mysteries fit to be taken whole as a poem by Wallace Stevens or William Carlos Williams, or to inspire a Borges ficcione:

• A benediction; a serpent's fang.
  
• Homeless, imperishable.
  
• Ungovernable; necessary.
  
• Painting figures on the body; feathering an arrow.
  

I meet words I wish I had; that is, words for which there is no single word in English that covers the same territory:

• Pleasure arising from sympathy.
  
• One who has suppressed his tears.
  
• An illustration of a thing by its reverse.
  
• A practice not usually proper to the caste but allowable in time of distress.
  
• A figure of speech dependent on sense and not on sound.
  

If you enjoyed that, here are some other linguistic diversions I've bookmarked. Buried in Cathy Ball's excellent reference pages on Old English is a translation of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" into Anglo-Saxon verse collected online by Philip Craig Chapman-Bell.

This is even more impressive if you have some background in Anglo-Saxon verse. In terms of the kennings and the repetitions-with-expansion, and the "not-un-" constructions, and the alliterative tropes, he absolutely nails it:

Incipit gestis Rudolphi rangifer tarandus

Hwæt, Hrodulf readnosa hrandeor --
Næfde þæt nieten unsciende næsðyrlas!
Glitenode and gladode godlice nosgrisele.
Ða hofberendas mid huscwordum hine gehefigodon;
Nolden þa geneatas Hrodulf næftig
To gomene hraniscum geador ætsomne.
Þa in Cristesmæsseæfne stormigum clommum,
Halga Claus þæt gemunde to him maðelode:
"Neahfreond nihteage nosubeorhtende!
Min hroden hrædwæn gelæd ðu, Hrodulf!"
Ða gelufodon hira laddeor þa lyftflogan --
Wæs glædnes and gliwdream; hornede sum gegieddode
"Hwæt, Hrodulf readnosa hrandeor,
Brad springð þin blæd: breme eart þu!"

Explicit

Than, and this is always the best part, Chapman-Bell takes the Old English and renders it -- literally -- into modern English.

Here begins the deeds of Rudolph, Tundra-Wanderer

Lo, Hrodulf the red-nosed reindeer --
That beast didn't have unshiny nostrils!
The goodly nose-cartilage glittered and glowed.
The hoof-bearers taunted him with proud words;
The comrades wouldn't allow wretched Hrodulf
To join the reindeer games.
Then, on Christmas Eve bound in storms
Santa Claus remembered that, spoke formally to him:
"Dear night-sighted friend, nose-bright one!
You, Hrodulf, shall lead my adorned rapid-wagon!"
Then the sky-flyers praised their lead-deer --
There was gladness and music; one of the horned ones sang
"Lo, Hrodulf the red-nosed reindeer,
Your fame spreads broadly, you are renowned!"

I thought of all this again because I went looking for another modern-to-ancient-to-modern translation and it wasn't there any more. Schade! It was Sir Mix-a-Lot's "Baby Got Back" in ancient Greek. Oh well, you'll have to settle for the Latin version.

De clunibus magnis amandis oratio
Mixaloti equitis

magnae clunes mihi placent, nec possum de hac re mentiri.
(Large buttocks are pleasing to me, nor am I able to lie concerning this matter.)
quis enim, consortes mei, non fateatur,
(For who, colleagues, would not admit,)
cum puella incedit minore medio corpore
(Whenever a girl comes by with a rather small middle part of the body)
sub quo manifestus globus, inflammare animos
(Beneath which is an obvious spherical mass, that it inflames the spirits)
virtute praestare ut velitis, notantes bracas eius
(So that you want to be conspicuous for manly virtue, noticing her breeches)
clunibus profunde fartas esse
(Have been deeply stuffed with buttock?)
a! captus sum, nec desinere intueri possum.
(Alas! I am captured, nor am I able to desist from gazing.)
o dominola mea, volo tecum congredi
(My dear lady, I want to come together with you)
pingereque picturam tui.
(And make a picture of you.)

... and so forth. I liked the Greek better, though.