English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

There are so many ways you could translate that Latin quote; but I think I recognize it now, from which writer? Not Cicero? In Italian it is less ambiguous I suppose.

kiamlaluno

3:22 AM

Suprema in Italian means most important, above.

Cerberus

It can mean that too in Latin.

kiamlaluno

La lotta suprema tra il bene ed il male.

Cerberus

The highest ... between good and evil?

Lot?

kiamlaluno

What I wrote is the motto of the Italian army.

Cerberus

Ah. Since when?

kiamlaluno

3:25 AM

Actually, Wikipedia translates the motto with "la conservazione dello Stato sia la legge più importante."

Cerberus

Yeah that would mean the same.

kiamlaluno

"The preservation of the State be the supreme law."

Cerberus

Italian is not so hard when you're drunk!

Did you go out as well?

kiamlaluno

Nope.

Cerberus

I find Italian newspapers and academic writing doable; but it gets hard in novels and plays...

Still a fun language.

kiamlaluno

3:27 AM

I would not suggest to read Italian newspapers. They could make you crazy in 30 minutes.

Cerberus

They do! Especially the eternal strikes.

kiamlaluno

I don't really like the style they have for titles.

Cerberus

I have never been in Rome without there being some strike.

Oh, what do they do to titles?

kiamlaluno

They are really the last place to learn Italian, especially with their constant usage of English words.

Cerberus

Even the most respected newspapers, are they so bad?

kiamlaluno

3:29 AM

Well, they cut off words.

Cerberus

Such as?

Pro? Euro?

kiamlaluno

"Uomo perde braccio destro; polizia indaga sul sinistro."

Cerberus

What does indaga mean?

kiamlaluno

Now, sinistro can mean both left, or incident.

Cerberus

Man loses right arm; police ...

kiamlaluno

3:30 AM

It means investigate.

Cerberus

Ah.

So police investigate left hand or accident.

kiamlaluno

Left arm.

Yep.

Cerberus

Right, arm.

kiamlaluno

No, "left arm".

Cerberus

But don't all newspapers in all languages do this, causing occasional ambiguity, which is admittedly bad?

Right, left arm.

All'arme!

kiamlaluno

3:33 AM

I dunno. I don't read foreign newspapers to avoid to go crazy with titles. :-)

"Armiamoci e partite!"

Cerberus

You know what I hate much about contemporary newspaper headings?

kiamlaluno

(That is actually something somebody really said.)

Cerberus

That they say stuff like "Italy in shock after train accident".

kiamlaluno

The font used for titles?

Oh, yes. Like if they asked to all the Italians.

Cerberus

Armiamoci... let us arm (ci: here? now? ourselves?) and you should leave?

That's it: I don't care whether Italy is in shock; I care about the train accident and what happened!

kiamlaluno

3:36 AM

It means "let us get ready for war, and YOU go to war."

nohat

"newspaper headlines"

Cerberus

Ah... so what is the "ci" enclitic?

Greetings, even though you lack hats.

kiamlaluno

-ci means us.

Cerberus

Oh, right, I wrote headings... weird... no idea why.

Ah, so reflexive?

kiamlaluno

Vestiamoci => dress ourselves.

Cerberus

3:38 AM

I thought -si/-se was reflexive already?

I am too drunk for improving my Italian I think...

kiamlaluno

But I didn't say "armiamosici." :-)

Cerberus

So I noticed!

So what about -ci v. -si?

Different persons or something?

I know you say andarsi and muoversi.

kiamlaluno

I am not sure -si is used. :-)

Oh.

Cerberus

Oh is it old fashioned?

I am sure it is used in operas as a reflexive suffix or enclitic...

kiamlaluno

"Muoversi" is correct, but I have never heard "andarsi."

Cerberus

3:41 AM

I suppose that verb doesn't need a reflexive pronoun because it isn't even transitive?

kiamlaluno

You can say "andare a vestirsi," though.

Cerberus

Perhaps I am making that one up then.

kiamlaluno

Exactly.

Cerberus

Right, but then it is because you are "clothing yourself".

kiamlaluno

"Andare" is not transitive.

Cerberus

3:42 AM

Or dressing, rather.

Right.

So any idea about the difference between ci and si?

kiamlaluno

It's like "I go."

Cerberus

I noes.

I gather -si and -se are interchangeable? Or aren't they?

kiamlaluno

"Muoversi" is not referring to any person in particular; it's generic.

Cerberus

Just as si and se?

Well, let me quote a line from one of my favourite operas...

kiamlaluno

"Muovetevi" => "move yourself" (plural).

Cerberus

3:45 AM

Qual di chi parla, muoversi //
il labbro suo vedea, //
e con la mano esanime //
chiamarmi a sè parea.

kiamlaluno

Auch! When did they write those lyrics?

Cerberus

I'd translate that as "I saw her lip move (itself)".

19th century.

Is that wrong?

kiamlaluno

"muoversi" means "che si muove," in that case.

Cerberus

Right.

kiamlaluno

I cannot translate "qual di chi parla", because in nowadays Italian doesn't mean anything. :-)

Cerberus

3:48 AM

Accusative with infinitive, used with verbs like hearing and seeing...

kiamlaluno

Are you sure it's not "quel di chi parla?"

Cerberus

I copy-pasted it...

But I never quite understood the structure of that first clause either.

It should mean something similar to "one day".

As in, one day, x happened.

I think.

Perhaps it should mean something else entirely.

kiamlaluno

Quando sommesso un gemito
Fra l'aure udir si fè,
Ed ecco su quel margine
L'ombra mostrarsi a me!
Qual di chi parla muoversi
Il labbro suo vedea,
E con la mano esanime
Chiamarmi a sè parea.

Cerberus

Regnava nel silenzio,

Alta la notte e bruna.

Etc.

Comes before your lines.

kiamlaluno

I can guess it means "quel di cui si parla muoversi."

The text is confusing, as one line is written in third person, and one in first person.

"Il labbro suo vedea" > third person.

"Chiamarmi a sè parea" > first person.

Cerberus

4:01 AM

Oh, I see! I actually thought "vedea" was 1st. So it must be something like "her lip seemed to move itself"?

I mean, technically.

I usually just look at the translation and guess about the syntactic structure in Italian.

kiamlaluno

"Il labbro suo vedea" > "she saw his lips."

It could also be "he saw her lips."

Cerberus

Ah ok, that's what I thought.

I think Lucia is watching the ghost, or was it Alisia.

kiamlaluno

"Vedea" is poetic for "vedeva."

Cerberus

Ahh... and parea?

Not pareva?

kiamlaluno

"Parea" is "pareva".

It seemed.

Cerberus

4:05 AM

Ah!

kiamlaluno

It could be a ghost; that would explain "la mano esamine."

"Esamine" means "without blood."

Cerberus

I thought you said "parea" was first person; but that was about "chiamarmi".

Lucia watches as a ghost appears in the garden, the scene is something like that.

kiamlaluno

"It seemed to call me [to go] to him."

Cerberus

If I were sober I'd look it up but now I'd rather just listen to the music.

Right, that is how I have always translated it.

kiamlaluno

(Sending greetings to Donizetti.)

Cerberus

4:11 AM

►

For anyone who doesn't know it already.

Callas is the best.

kiamlaluno

Qual di chi parla,muoversi    Her lips moved
il labbro suo vedea,   as if speaking,
e con la mano esanime   and with her lifeless hand
chiamarmi a sè parea.   she seemed to call me.
Stette un momento immobile,   She stood there, motionless,
poi rattab dileguò.   then she suddenly disappeared.
E l'onda, pria sì limpida,   And the water, earlier so limpid,
di sangue rosseggiò.   became as red as the blood.'

Qual di chi parla,muoversi - Her lips moved
il labbro suo vedea, - as if speaking,
e con la mano esanime - and with her lifeless hand
chiamarmi a sè parea. - she seemed to call me.
Stette un momento immobile, - She stood there, motionless,
poi rattab dileguò. - then she suddenly disappeared.
E l'onda, pria sì limpida,- And the water, earlier so limpid,
di sangue rosseggiò.- became as red as the blood.'

Don't ask me how they translate "il labbro suo vedea" with "as if speaking." :-)

Cerberus

4:29 AM

Right, I know that translation. It is necessarily rather free.

kiamlaluno

I still think there is a reason if the translation of "qual di chi parla" is "her lips."

Cerberus

The translation doesn't follow the original line by line I think.

kiamlaluno

That is for sure. :-)

Apart the first two lines, the translation of the other lines follows the Italian text.

I think the translation leaves out "qual di chi parla."

Or better, the translation is for "muoversi il labbro suo vedea, qual di chi parla."

In that case, "qual di chi parla" is translated with "as if speaking."

I think this is the most logical conclusion.

The word order is not the usual one; if it would not be different, it would not be opera.

(This reminds me of Petrarca.)

Cerberus

4:45 AM

I think you're right.

Now Morpheus calls me... adieu!

kiamlaluno

Good night. :-)

(It's from ages that I don't hear that phrase. :-))

Robusto

12:41 PM

@Cerberus I love Maria Callas, but it's hard to top Anna Moffo:

►

I was hoping to find her "Ach, ich fühl's" from Die Zauberflöte, but YouTube doesn't have that.

Anyway, you simply just hear that.

Billare

Do you guys ever get the feeling you're riding the train?

That is, for one reason or the other, the thread you've posted it in gets "hot" and upvotes start arriving in storms?

You pour in like an hour into one answer, 2 minutes into another, but if you hit the right jackpot upvotes start pouring in if the thread title is sufficiently interesting?

Come on do the train...we'll ride it

come on do the train...we'll ride it

choo choo!

Robusto

Well, I know whose questions I'm not going to answer anymore.

Billare

??

@Robusto ??

Robusto

12:59 PM

@RegDwight: Duplicate?

5

Q: Should I always use a comma after "e.g." or "i.e."?

It seems that "e.g." is always followed by a comma but "i.e." is not. Why is that?

comma

7

Q: Comma after i.e. or not?

If I remember correctly from English class, then one should put a comma after "i.e.", i.e., the Latin abbreviation for id est. But lately I've seen the comma after "i.e." dropped in books. So what is the rule or consensus here if any?

comma

Billare

Does saying "about" seem childlike to you?

RegDwight

1:16 PM

@Robusto Now you're asking.

No idea, it's vague enough to be a different question.

And I don't see any close-votes from regular users, either...

Robusto

@RegDwight — Hey, I got up late, Sosiouxme!

And I wasn't sure either. Certainly it's related. I also recall another question I couldn't find that was answered by either Kosmonaut or nohat regarding this question in its entirety.

And by "couldn't find" I mean "was too lazy spend a lot of time searching for it" ...

RegDwight

Sometimes I wish it were possible to tell whether or not people would have posted a particular question after seeing that other one.

Um. Sorry for the sentence structure, you understand what I mean.

Robusto

@RegDwight — Unfortunately, search heuristics — any search heuristics, not just the ones here — really do a poor job at parsing natural language for meaning.

God, what a boring wasteland Writers.SE is. I'm sorry I ever got knocked into that pool.

RegDwight

I'm looking at the google results for "i.e. site:english.stackexchange.com"... all kinds of i.e. questions, but all distinct enough. And I don't see that question you're referring to, the one that got answered by Kosmonaut or nohat.

@Robusto Hahaha. I answered like one question there and never visited again.

I mean, just look at this:

4

Q: Should I translate my own writings on language I also know greatly?

Nabokov was very discouraged when he translated his Lolita into Russian. And he spended half of the year on it. So should I be busy with the translation myself?

language translation

And people actually answer, yes, give it a try, your English is impressive...

This is more about PC than actually answering the question.

Robusto

@RegDwight — Good answer to a poorly phrased question.

@RegDwight — Maybe it was something one of them said in chat. I tend not to remember everything from chat because I'm always multi-tasking when I'm in here.

BTW, I find it fascinating that Boris Balkan is the narrator in The Club Dumas. I can't wait to see where this goes.

RegDwight

1:30 PM

Ah! So how far are you in?

Robusto

Only about 50 pages.

RegDwight

Then all the exciting stuff is still waiting for you.

Robusto

My son is home from college so my reading time is curtailed somewhat.

RegDwight

Turn it into a game. Who can read faster. 50 bucks per page difference.

Robusto

$50 a page? You must be thinking of my other son.

RegDwight

1:33 PM

Haha. Well, make it 50 rubles.

Robusto

I wonder if the author is having fun with these names.

Balkan, Coros, and especially Ungern.

RegDwight

I don't remember many of the names, actually.

Ah.

Robusto

La ponte.

La Ponte I mean.

It's also frustrating reading this book because I want to make highlights and write notes in the margins, but it's a library book so I can't.

RegDwight

I feel your pain. I always make a ton of notes.

Robusto

It's the only way to make complete sense of a work.

RegDwight

1:38 PM

Especially if it's Javier Marias or something.

Robusto

Or Eco.

RegDwight

Or Mulisch.

BTW, may I add letters in front when playing Matryoshka words?

Robusto

Yes, of course.

And is that really a Russian schoolchildren's game?

Or were you pulling my leg?

RegDwight

I have certainly seen this before.

Not that the Russian schoolschildren play it in the schoolyard, mind you. It was in a children's magazine.

They also had word ladders and whatnot.

5

Q: English term for a word that differs from another one by just one letter

When I was a child, pretty much every children's magazine I subscribed to used to publish those little word-chain games where you had to get from one word to another — often an antonym — by replacing one letter at a time. To simplify (or complicate) things a little, you were allowed to take only ...

terminology word-games

Robusto

Ah. I was just musing on the word burrows one day and the idea for the game came to me. It's not an easy game. That turned out to be the longest sequence I could make.

@RegDwight — This is not the same game as that.

The one you reference is called "bridge words" or something like that.

RegDwight

1:44 PM

@Robusto No. Hence the also.

Robusto

Ah, back to reading comprehension school for me.

RegDwight

"They also had word ladders and whatnot".

Yeah, yeah.

Robusto

What is the difference between "also" and "all so"?

And "all sew"?

RegDwight

And all sioux?

Robusto

And "all sow"?

RegDwight

1:45 PM

The difference is that the first one is a German word, but the rest is just gibberish!

Robusto

@RegDwight — You keep your Indian lawyers away from me.

RegDwight

@Robusto How so?

You insisted on being introduced to them.

Robusto

@RegDwight — How is that different from "How sew" or "How sow?"

RegDwight

Yeah, BTW re:Indian, ShreevatsaR is cheating. I want to come up with a solution without a Pers script.

Robusto

I'm talking feathers, not dots.

RegDwight

1:47 PM

@Robusto It is not. They mean the exact same thing. In fact, they are spelled identically, if you see a difference that's because your chat is broken.

2 days ago, by RegDwight

It's really easy, just type your password here in chat, it will show up as *******.

Robusto

OK, my password is regdwightisadope107

Hmm ... guess it doesn't work.

RegDwight

Hey! Mine is just as long!

It does, I see "OK, my password is *******************"

You can only see your password because it's yours.

Robusto

Oh.

You know, however good a movie is, and you know I love movies, books are so much richer.

There is time to explore minor characters, rhyming subplots, loose but interesting threads, etc.

RegDwight

Yeah well, books are what your phantasy makes of them. Movies are fleshed-out phantasies of others.

Robusto

Yeah. But sometimes other people's fantasies are pretty damned interesting.

Others just make you feel unclean.

RegDwight

1:51 PM

Donnie Darko.

Robusto

Donnie Darko was interesting, but I thought the ending a little too pat.

It tied things together too neatly.

RegDwight

Depends on how you look at it. Plus, aren't there like two different endings?

Robusto

I just saw the Director's Cut version. Once.

RegDwight

I'm not even sure which version I saw.

Robusto

What does Makarova mean in Russian, besides its patronymic connotations? Anything to the name itself?

RegDwight

1:55 PM

Makar is a male name. So it's kind of like Makardottir in Icelandic.

Robusto

Yes, I know that part.

RegDwight

No idea where that name comes from, I'd have to look up.

Robusto

Hence the "patronymic" in my question.

Back to reading comprehension school for you.

RegDwight

Ah.

Yeah well, before I do that, I will tell you that there's Makarios in Greek.

Wikipedia tells me that it's one of Zeus' nicknames.

Robusto

Also, the name Taillefer (the guy who hanged himself) is very interesting. The original Taillefer was a jongleur who accompanied William the Bastard on his conquest of England in 1066.

RegDwight

1:58 PM

The literal meaning of Μακάριος being "happy, blessed".

At least that's what I'm told.

Robusto

@RegDwight — I would bet then that the name is not coincidental or accidental.

In the context of the book, anyway.

RegDwight

Interesting. In contemporary Russian, nobody would draw any connection to anything. Makar is a rather archaic, pre-October Rebolution, peasant-sounding name anyhow.

Robusto

Hey, send me an email sometime if you feel like it. I'll share a little secret with you.

@RegDwight — Rebolution ... How you talk!

RegDwight

@Robusto Okay.

@Robusto Ah, sorry, should have been Robolution, obviously.

Robusto

Obviously.

RegDwight

2:05 PM

@Robusto I didn't know that. I thought it was a word play I didn't understand, taille + fer.

Robusto

Well, it's also a word play.

RegDwight

That's madness.

Now I feel like I have never read that book.

Robusto

@RegDwight — You're given a very succinct definition of "word-play", my friend.

Self-reinforcing ramifications that bleed into other meanings — how much madder can you get?

RegDwight

Well, I...

Robusto

Language is the original hallucinogen.

RegDwight

2:09 PM

I dunno. I think mushrooms predate language.

Robusto

We think we are nailing down meanings when actually we are loosing them upon the world.

They grow and mutate as they will.

RegDwight

Feb 23 at 14:35, by RegDwight

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

Robusto

Stop that. I'm entering a trance state here and you keep clapping your hands to wake me up.

Etymonline says "runcible" is a nonsense word coined by Edward Lear, but I wonder if its etymology actually somehow comes from Roncevalles or Roncevaux ...

Hmm ... looks like Cecil Adams has something to say about this:

Runcible

"Runcible" is a nonsense word invented by Edward Lear. The word appears (as an adjective) several times in his works, most famously as the "runcible spoon" used by the Owl and the Pussycat. The word "runcible" was apparently one of Lear's favourite inventions, appearing in several of his works in reference to a number of different objects. In his verse self-portrait, The Self-Portrait of the Laureate of Nonsense, it is noted that "he weareth a runcible hat". Other poems include mention of a "runcible cat", a "runcible goose" (in the sense of "silly person"), and a "runcible wall". Origin ...

RegDwight

We'd have to ask Edward Lear. Or more like his therapist.

Noöne can invent a word out of complete nowhere. You'd have to have an empty brain to be able to.

Robusto

Are you saying Peter Noone has an empty brain?

Not that I disagree, mind you.

RegDwight

2:20 PM

We'd have to ask Peter Noone. Or more like his therapist.