h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

>> ..a fine disticntion I obviously wasn't even hearing! <<

They say getting past the denial is always the most important step. It is the key to understanding. Understanding anything. Even unto peace and enlightenment. But they say a lot of things and they aren't always right.

~jwf~

~jwf~ what do you mean? That I misspelled distinction, or what? Maybe I'm tired, but I don't get your meaning...

Sorry. I went beyond my usual vague generalisations there and wandered into universals.

But let me try to explain.
At some instinctual (or reflexive) level we all deny new information, refuse to see and hear anything that disrupts our status quo. It is an autonomic or subconcious mechanism essential to our survival that causes us to be wary of strangers or reluctant to try new ideas or be the first to cross new bridges.

[For more visible examples I need to appear insensitive for a moment to stereotypes about old folks and kids. Please forgive:]

I'm sure you can recognise this kind of recalcitrant behavior in older people. But it can be seen in children too. Their reluctance to try new foods, find friends, go to school, read a book.

Between these ages we all live in various states of denial.
"I don't wanna know!"
We make choices, both conscious and unconscious choices.

Often, even when we most consciously strive to learn, to open our minds, to embrace new cultures and new languages, we are still incapable of suppressing an instinctive refusal to absorb the unknown. This is especially true when the unknown has no precedent, no reference.

My resistance to Classical Music for example. Perhaps we all have that in our youth but I watched my friends one by one become absorbed while it seemed for me that the harder I tried to appreciate it the less I actually heard. My mind would immediately wander until I finally noted that the music had finished and I had not heard or understood it at all. Happily, after several decades of blues, jazz and rock and roll, this mental barrier is finally beginning to fade and I am at last hearing what all the excitement was/is about.

The subtleties of language are often just as difficult to discern. Especially when we are concsiously trying to hard to overcome our natural resistances.

The same pattern is recognised in addictive behaviors. And the key seems to be getting past denial because at so many levels it will not be overcome by force of will.

I hope that helps. And thank you for asking. My mistake was trying to create a maxim or universal law for all understanding where-by recognising denial was the first step. Getting past it is another kettle of porridge. And I'm well past it.


~jwf~

An interesting link, Edward. I know that lots of poetry translations are done but I was wondering how well they are done. I've read a bit of Spanish poetry translated into English and it usually sounds a bit clumsy to me compared to the Spanish versions.

Now *this* would be a translating challenge! I wonder if they will ever get beyond the first line.

http://www.scicli.com/joyce/


az

<>

I think that's quite true in a lot of situations, jwf. I have some students who are convinced they can't understand listening exercises on cassettes and so they don't (until I threaten them ). But with some things, like vowel sounds, I think it is something other than denial. No matter how many times I repeat words like 'ran' and 'run' they honestly cannot hear the difference.

And speaking of denial, I have an English friend here who has lived in Spain for more than 25 years and works at the university as a translator. His Spanish is perfect. But he says that if he walks into, say, a bar where he isn't known, the usual response is that the barman will not 'understand' him the first time he speaks.


az

>> "His Spanish is perfect."

Fluent or unaccented? Does he *look* foreign?



The vocal chords and mechanisms of speaking also settle down, making it imposssible to pronounce certain foreign langauges correctly, no matter how accurately you can hear them.

My ex was a Scot, (as I've already mentioned), and schooled me in saying Cocoa the Scottish way (Koh-koh) instead of my very very very RP English way (Keau-keau). It fairly rapidly became apparrent that there is a particular way of shaping the throat for the pure Scottosh "oh" sound that I simply cannot manage.

B

Totally fluent, almost totally unaccented (as far as I can tell), Ben. No, it was his appearance that threw people off as he looks obviously foreign. And so, in some situations people expect not to be able to understand him based on his appearance, even though he is speaking correctly.


az

>> No, it was his appearance that threw people off, as he looks obviously foreign.

Yep. That happens. People put their 'I cannot understand you' ears on sometimes.

B

Keeping on difficult phonetics, for a minute....The English are famously ignorant of the pronunciation of the 'ch' in (ahem) 'loch' and the Scots maintain that they (including me!) do not pronounce the R properly in words like 'pahk' and 'gahden'.

R-pronouncing dialects are known as 'rhotic' - but there are different versions of R. The French version, for example, is sounded back in the epiglotis, wheras the Scots 'rolled' R is frontal (the tip of the tongue flickers at the roof of the mouth, just behind the teeth. The hardest one has to be the Czech '&#345;', as in 'Dvo&#345;ak', which is sort of a trilled 'rzrzrz'. Even some Czechs - including Vaclav Havel - can't do it.

I am grateful to my maternal grandmother for giving me the Welsh 'll'. It's not 'Clandudno' of 'Flanelly'!

A curious one is 'Van Goch'. 'Van Go' in the US. 'Van Goff' (?!?!) in the UK. Neither sounds remotely like the Dutch (I suppose the Americans at least have the excuse of following the French)

Then there's all the '!' sounds found in southern African languages, such as Xhosa.

A final anecdote on phonetics: I was once in the company of a Zimbabwean friend, when we bumped into another Zimbabwean of my acquaintance. I introduced them and they talked for a while. After a few minutes, the second gut said, 'I'm trying to work out what you are. You've got the L as well as the R!' Appartently the Shona people of northern Zimbabwe have a strong, rolled R (as in 'Harare') wheras the Matabele of the south have a long L (as in 'Bulawayo'). My friend had a Shona father and a Matabele mother (and his father would beat the kids if they spoke to him in anything but English).

>> "His Spanish is perfect."

What would we mean by 'Perfect English'?

Here's a passage I read to my sister-in-law, who has an MA in Victorian Literature and who taught EFL, to test her comprehension. It's the opening lines of 'Bombay Duck' by Farrukh Dhondy:

"Fortune smiles. Is a routine with fortune. No guffaws, no big laughs, just Mona Lisa auditioning and being blood claat quizzical. Backayard, them woulda ask her "Whey 'tis yuh smile at girl? Yuh have a date with a Yankee sailor?"

How much of the nuance did *you* get? Who can tell me the meaning of 'blood claat' and 'backayard'?

Supplementary question: How much English do we have to understand before we can claim to be perfect? Shakespear? EU Directives? Finnegan's Wake? Jabberwocky? My two-year-old son? Chaucer?

My Czech pal, who also does TEFL, is pretty damn good. She says 'bugger' every over sentence.

I am now sitting here saying 'Loch' 'Llanelli' 'Loch' 'LLenelli'

The ll is very slightly further back in the throat than the ch, right?

>> (and his father would beat the kids if they spoke to him in anything but English).

British children born and brought up in the British Raj in India spoke Hindi with their ayahs and the house servants, although the servants spoke English. This was so that the children would not get an Indian accent.

My mother was born in the foot-hills of the Himalayas in the 20s and my father served there in the 30s. My mother never really mastered counting in English. She never really mastered counting at all, bless her.

There were several Hindi words in family usage, 'bus' for 'enough' or 'stop pouring me more wine, I'll spill the glass', 'mugra' for 'sulky and difficult to deal with', 'sahib log' for 'people in positions of power'.

My very favourite incident of all was when my mother and I saw a sculpture of a naked man doing a headstand. She said 'ulta pulta' (upside-down) and I said 'nunga punga' (naked).

One interesting thing was when I had a golden retreiever pup we called Whisky, my mother called him 'uisquebo' (sp?) on the basis that it was the Hindi word for 'whisky'. It may be. But if so, they had taken it from the Irish word for 'whiskey'. Likewise the word she said was the Hindi word for 'match' was 'guiali' which was an adaptation of 'give us a light'.

B

>> What would we mean by 'Perfect English'?

The following appeared as an important statement in a process document I was workin on some years ago for IBM.

I have never yet found anyone who can tell me what it means.



The approval of the pre-contract can happen also to the action of the acquisition of the contract, in the cases of exclusive engagement of internal resources of the company, in order to allow the reporting of the activities of " bid proposal and preparation " in the meantime given and not registered; in these cases the written approval of the Sector Leader (to see indicative facsimile under brought back) allows the insertion of the contract with date retroactive beginning service regarding that one brought back on the same contract (or regarding the date of reception near the Financial Support Division, in the cases in which the date has not been put on the contract).



Ben

Ch and Ll are totally different.

Ch is a 'voiced' aspirate ie it involves the larynx. Ll is unvoiced. Also - like the best things in life - it involves the tongue.

My advice is to put the middle of your tongue to the top of your mouth, as if saying 'L' - then blow,

Try here: http://gwybodiadur.tripod.com/ll.htm

Hey! Apparently it's also found in Greenlandic Inuit!

"ll" "ll" "ll" "ll"

I think I'm beginning to get it. Any nice friendly Wellsh people here?

B

Now try it in the middle of a word: 'Bwllch'

'Twll tyn pob saes!' (circumflex on the o)

Az. About the barman who won't/can't understand your friend's spanish: I encountered exactly the same thing in Madrid. It was odd though, because the latin americans who were there understood me perfectly. Ani.

Re <>

Perhaps it was my appearance that threw the Madrilenos off. Some stuff was stolen from my friend who was a Quebeker. We went to the police station. She took me along because I could speak Spanish. There was no need because the police gave her an officer who could speak English.

The officer had no trouble understanding that my friend was Canadian, but he could not wrap his mind around me being Canadian. Finally he gave up completely and wrote in his report that I was a 'little Dutch girl from Canada.' D-oh! How did that happen? Ani.

Further to the Czech 'rzrzrz' version of 'r': in certain parts of South America, people use the 'rzrzrz' instead of the hard trilled 'r.' My friend who was from La Paz used the 'rzrzrz.' His wife and stepsons from Santa Cruz used the hard trilled 'r.' But then also they aspirated their 'c' 's' and 'z' as a sort of sibilant 'h' while my friend from La Paz used a firm 's' sound.

blood claat = bloody clot? This was a common expression among people of European heritage in India.

Finnegan's Wake? Jabberwocky? Yeah, I think if you can work your way through these (and enjoy them), you've got English licked.

Oh and you forgot the Queen's Christmas address and you've forgotten Coronation Street. I cannot for the life of me follow CS. Ani.