Terça-feira, Junho 30, 2009

brenne to scamelliche askes

here is the phrase:

...inozequin intechmonequiz, ipan Incahuitl chicohuazen mextli...

the first four words should mean "additionally thereupon is needed a period of time"

chicohuazen does not appear in any dictionary nor in any google book
chico- according to one dictionary is a prefix usually meaning "to one side, perversely"
chicohuia according to another, means "to do things unfairly, to favor one side", but the form we have doesn't exactly match any inflection of chicohuia
cem means "one," and at the end of the word [m] becomes [n], but this particular scribe we have noted that sometimes he leaves off written 'n' at the end of a word, and -cen normally doesn't appear as a suffix, if i remember correctly
mextli, according to the first dictionary, is a variant of mixtli, which all sources agree to mean "cloud." additionally the second dictionary includes this example phrase from the florentine codex "intlâcahmo tleh mixtli," (if there aren't any clouds => provided that the weather is favorable)

so we'll just have to guess and say

"additionally thereupon is needed a period of time to allow for inclemencies"

and the record does not indicate whether this is a guess or a certainty, when all is done.

traducing the speaker

to waste time but not prodigally i like to read things in middle english. what i was supposed to be doing instead of reading middle english was translating from nahuatl a document that is nothing but variations on scamel. here is a passage from Langland's Piers Plowman (14th century), where he explains the meaning of Job 15:34 in the vulgate bible:

ignis devorabit tabernacula eorum qui libentur accipiunt munera, &c.
Amonge this lettered ledes, this Latyn is to mene
That fyre shal falle, and brenne al to blo askes
The houses and the homes of hem that desireth
Yiftes or Yeres-yyves bicause of here offices.

the trusty oxford english dictionary says:
lede = race, group of people
brenne = burn
blo = a dark-blue color, like a bruise, or lead
askes = ashes
yifte = gift
Yeres-yyve = a new year's gift

the latin is, more or less, "fire shall devour the tabernacle of those who please to take gifts"

munera is usually translated as bribes in english language bibles

Langland's elaboration is from having to write in a type of alliterative verse, and his description of munera (Yiftes or Yeres-yyves) is a more accurate description of the concept than "bribe" is.

whoever has tried to translate Piers Plowman to modern english and keep the alliterative verse must struggle, since lede, blo and yeresyeve are extinct as english words. even if yeresyeve were revived, it would no longer start with the same sound as gift. one would have to set out looking for new pairs.

Segunda-feira, Junho 29, 2009

for thise aren men on this molde that moste harme worcheth


now we have a kitten, because i am a pragmatic person.



a controversial claim from Chomsky and Halle's Sound Pattern of English:
"There has, in other words, been little change in lexical representation since Middle English..."

i also have a playstation 2 controller that plugs into the computer.

these are things that i can do in the summertime.

in texas it was warm, over 100 degrees every day. there were many people there, all familiar with each other. at spiderhouse coffee shop, they now offer table service, which makes it difficult if you intend to go there and buy nothing. as i understand it opened in 1995. in the year 2000 i used to go next door to sell plasma and the homeless teenagers were one time lying there talking about how with these fifteen dollars apiece, and the thirty dollars we can borrow from X, and Y, who can front it to us at the lowest quality, we can rent a motel room of the seediest variety, far from the shelter where they don't allow alcohol, and we each have a seven dollar 175mL bottle of jack daniels. i think the plasma place is shut down now. i best remember that i was taking physics 2 and it was difficult. and this very skinny girl told me that i should join her to study at spiderhouse coffee shop, where you don't have to buy anything. this was the year 2000 and i decided to not go to spiderhouse, but only to stay at the plasma center, because at this time i had it calculated to where i would get one hamburger ($2.50), one order of french fries ($1.25), one glass of ice water (free), four times a week at either 1am or 1:30am, which would be $15, then i'd have $20 left for the weekend, and buying a cup of coffee would throw everything off in multiple ways that are so distant from important now in 2009. when i went i ordered a coffee. the oldest man at the table paid for everything, because he is powerful. you might think that i now regret it, because i could have ordered a cucumber margarita or anything else to BEAT THE HEAT, but in fact i was hung over.

i brought that coffee with me. it was cold, but i was even able to take a sip from it ten hours later. this was after i had finished overseeing the grill.

Shakespeare in the park is a feature of summers in Buffalo, NY. residents bring camping chairs and sip wine from their coolers and give out one dollars to the poor players who strut and ask for donations to keep our beloved festival free. the time that i went we saw the Tempest. the tempest contains the word

scamel

which i think is a very nice word, with a delicate nuance of a meaning that helps people to share their feelings. scamel will cause you to have feelings you never had before. the Oxford English Dictionary defines scamel as follows:

Meaning uncertain: the statement in quot. 1866 is of doubtful value. Some have proposed to read staniel.

below are two quotations of the only attested uses (outside of metalinguistic or lexicographical discussion) of scamel. the first quote is from the Tempest,

"And sometimes I'le get thee young Scamels from the Rocke."

the second quote, as we are told, is of doubtful value.

i started to feel a bit dizzy when i was reading the Tempest, and came across a word i didn't know, and looked it up in the dictionary, and the dictionary told me it didn't know what the word meant. we only know that a scamel is a living thing that is edible and found among rocks on beaches. a staniel, which "some have proposed" as the reading for scamel, is a type of falcon, e.g.



i digress. sometimes, even the dictionary doesn't know. one theorem of classical logic is known as ex falso, quodlibet which means "if shit's fucked up, fuck it."

the kitten is always sleeping. if the kitten were grown, it might be able to go hunting for young scamels. perhaps scamels became extinct due to overharvesting before anyone could write down what exactly they were.

this summer i liken my job to the mystery of the scamel. i have to determine something that nobody, at the moment knows yet. and the things that i determine through careful investigation and long hours of study, will be of such interest to the general public as scamels are.

addendum:

From the London Daily News, printed in New York Times, 25 June 1892: A Norfolk man observes that "young bartailed godwits are in Autumn called scamels on the north coast of Norfolk."

Terça-feira, Junho 02, 2009

giggling

"The verbs to mother and to father mean very roughly 'to act as a mother/father toward someone', but are entirely different in the exact actions that count as relevant."
Jackendoff, Foundations of Language