Name Translation

[Christine]

A quizz question : besides Belgium, which other country has French and Dutch for official languages ? I've just learnt it this afternoon...

You mention that jokes are not always easy to grasp for foreigners, even if they share the same language. My twopence on this topic : I have friends born in Northern Africa ; they speak French, and have no problem at all with the language (better than most countrymen, I must confess). And yet, few really appreciate Asterix. I see 3 possible reasons : they don't always share the references, comics is not considered as a good reading for adults, and maybe that they do not like the same kind of jokes ; puns in particular seem strange and not always funny to them.
Right ? Wrong ? Too few people in my panel ?

[Sofie]

Thanks Jaap, I certainly will!

Different cultures, different tastes...Still, if you adapt everything to the culture our country it is translated for, people will never get acquaintanced with new things. For example, I get to know new things about the Netherlands by reading the translations. Not tons of information of course, but little bits and pieces. And you remember them.

Maybe Asterix has a typical European form of humour, since the series never caught on in the US either. But then again, most americans still know very little about European culture, and many of them aren't interested in it either (although there are of course a lot of exceptions). So it is in a way not surprising that products rising from Europe have a difficult time getting accepted there.

I'm travelling to Northern Africa in september, maybe I can raise a little interest in Asterix there . Although, I'm staying in Djerba, which is an island before Tunisia, so I will probably only be in Tunisia for one or two days. Anyway, if you friends happened to live in Tunisia, don't hesitate to let me know which things I should visit while being there.Personally I'm a horselover and I'm looking forward to ride a real arabian horse along the beach . If I ever visit Egypt, I want to visit everything by horse there. But for now, it's just too expensive....

[Christine]

Unfortunately, I have no tips for Djerba ; It sure is a nice place, though. Beware of pepper (Tunisian harissa is an evil thing for me...).
Tunisia is definitely a Europhoric country : they handle currency from millions of tourists, and Euro made things a lot simpler to them !

One terrible thing for Asterix-fans : 'Europeans' are called 'Roumi' in Algeria. In Tunisia also, maybe, I don't know. Guess why ? Romans conquered Northern Africa, and people ever since call Europeans 'Romans', Roumi / Roumiya in the arabized form.
Me, a Roumiya ?? By Toutatis, what a shame !
(I've already written that in an other thread, sorry for repeating).
Another hint to begin a conversation about Asterix : all french schoolchildren learnt in their History textbooks about "our ancestors the Gauls" ; the Northern African children also had to learn this line during French occupation (oops, sorry about that). It is too true, and this story is one of the symbols for colonization. That could have made a nice line in an Asterix album, though !
A last thing, no reference is made in Asterix about Northern Africa (which was French territory - sorry again- until the 60s) except for 2 Roman names : Faismoiducouscous ("Fais moi du couscous chérie", from a song by Eddy Mitchell ; couscous is a famous Northern Africa dish) & Suelburnous ('faire suer le burnous', i.e. make African people sweat (from work) in their traditional coat, the burnous. Not a delicate sentence, sorry 3rd time).

[invisifan]

A quizz question : besides Belgium, which other country has French and Dutch for official languages ? I've just learnt it this afternoon...

Well there's the Guianas (well Surinam & Guyane) which are like Siamese twins (Dutch & French), but I don't think either has both as an official language ... Saint Martins perhaps? Not exactly a country though - one island that's half an extension of the Nederlands and the other half an overseas department of France in the Lesser Antilles ...

[Christine]

Yes, Invisifan, I meant the island of St Martin / St Maarten

You are right, it's not exactly an independant country. I would gladly volunteer to go and see by myself what common points and what differences exist in both halves. From the program I saw, there is no Great Divide and little quarels betwen local Chiefs about boar tongue.

[purplesubmarine]

:) Hi Christine
Maybe African persons resent the way the Black pirate is made to speak in French, the guy can't pronounce the letter 'R'. I heard an African lady say once nobody ever speaks that way in African countries, at all. Maybe they find a story about Gauls complaining about being invaded ludicrous, given that up to not so long ago half of Africa belonged to France. I'd be very much interested in having some feedback from an African, either directly or indirectly, if possible.

[Christine]

:) Hi Christine
Maybe African persons resent the way the Black pirate is made to speak in French, the guy can't pronounce the letter 'R'. I heard an African lady say once nobody ever speaks that way in African countries.

Interesting.
Since I'm on holidays, I have time to propose some answers.

1. about the black pirate :
All pirates are the caricatures of the pirates in another comics : Barberouge (Redbeard), by Charlier (http://lambiek.net/fr/charlier_jean-michel.html). Goscinny kept the typical features of the 'original' pirates, including the prononciation of the black pirate. The Numidian guy in 'Gods Manion' speaks normally, doesn't he ?

2. about the R in French :
'R' is a terrible letter for most foreigners, along with the nasalized vowels 'an', 'in' and 'on'. They gives the foreigners away, eventhough their pronunciation is otherwise perfect. In English, I guess the 'TH'in particular plays zis role for ze foreigners .
About the R :
In Africa, most of the people will pronounce R a bit like the Russians, like a flow rrrrolling on the tongue (in Northern Africa, in Senegal, Ivory Coast...).
Some people, in West Indies for instance, do actually almost skip the 'R's, or more precisely pronounce instead like a soft english 'w'. This is true for black and white people alike in this area; this, and other differences, make their language more fluid and musical.

3. about french language and colonization
During colonization, people tended to laugh at the way 'indigeneous' people spoke French - a proof of their 'backwardness' and 'inferiority'... If they don't speak well, they're stupid. Well, THEY made an effort to learn another language, without being taught it properly, whereas few French could pretend to master an African language. I understand that African people hold a lasting grudge about that.

There is a famous ad for chocolate powder using the drawing of a black soldier saying that this product is good in a very incorrect and 'exotic' way (Y'a bon, ***). It worked well in the 40s or 50s, it was really a well-know slogan, but now it is considered highly politically incorrect. And yet the brand recently drew a modernized picture of the famous black soldier to use it again on their products, while removing the revolting text. It attracted many criticism, I think.

[invisifan]

In English, I guess the 'TH' in particular plays zis role for ze foreigners :Wink: .

Most likely ... "th" in English can ignore the "h" altogether or signify either of 2 common sounds not represented in any other way (and uncommon in Latin based languages) ... "ch" is probably not a good combination to find in writing either since it can be pronounced 4 different ways (2 relatively unique & 2 usually represented differently)... but English spelling vs. pronunciation is full of pitfalls (as English speakers are generally even more aware than foreign students of the language) -- the (in)famous constructed example of "ghoti" springs to mind (pronounced "fish").

As for the "R" specifically, several prominent American accents in the East & Southeast drop the "r" when it follows a vowel (drawing out the vowel instead) ... In New England (Northeast) it's very upper class, but not far south in the NY/NJ corridor it's very working class, and in the deep South it's very low class or unsophisticated.

Given that Barberouge is set in the Carribean I suspect that last is the version intended (essentially deep south plantation slave -- though to be fair not too different from the accent of the plantation owners, but since the Civil War their ideological descendants are primarily reactionary rednecks ... so either way ...

btw, those accents are all quite distinct - they just have the common feature of dropping the "r" after a vowel ... interestingly (given your earlier example) they also tend to pronounce the voiced "th" as "d" ...

[Christine]

- the (in)famous constructed example of "ghoti" springs to mind (pronounced "fish")

??? I had to ghoti for information to understand this one...
http://www.alphadictionary.com/articles/ling006.html
To emphasize the problem, Bernard Shaw once proposed the spelling ghoti for "fish", with the [gh] from "laugh", the [o] from "women" and the [ti] from "nation".
Clever, that...

I know little about ancient english (and ancient French, BTW...), but I was very interested by the now-abandonned runic letter for soft 'TH', called 'thorn'. For the 'th' of 'this', I do not remember if there is a letter too.
Both sounds exist in Arabic (thalatha means '3' for instance), and even emphatic versions (Dhad). In north Africa, though, the dialects make do with 't' (3 becomes tlata ) and 'z'.[/i]

My fellow countrymen try to do zeir best, 't', 'd' or 'z' ; even 'f' has its followers, but they usually raise much surprise when they mean "thank you"...

[invisifan]

I know little about ancient english (and ancient French, BTW...), but I was very interested by the now-abandonned runic letter for soft 'TH', called 'thorn'. For the 'th' of 'this', I do not remember if there is a letter too.

Both sounds still exist as their own letter in some languages (notably Icelandic whose alphabet is otherwise Latin which means the upper- (Þ - html=Þ) and lower- (þ - html=þ) case thorns and upper- (Ð - html=Ð) and lower- (ð - html=ð) case are available here ...

[Christine]

I'd like to hear gaul language once, but I don't know if some people have tried to re-construct it. I suppose it sounds like modern celtic languages, with hard 'CH' sounds (like in Welsh 'Koch' or Scottish 'loch'). I've heard modern Britton (in Bretagne), and it sounds a bit like German also. Wonder if they had 'th' also.

1. in the international phonetic alphabet, the TH is noted :
- for the soft 'th' of 'thorn' (&thorn) : the greek letter upper-THETA,
- for the 'th' of 'this' : with &eth, like the runic letter Invisifan spoke of.
'Theta' is pronounced in modern greek as a &thorn, but if I remember correctly a friend told me it was not the case in ancient times. Don't ask me how they can know !

2.about the pronunciation of 'Rs' by African people :
In most of the african languages, the 'r' is pronounced as 'rolling' on the tongue. So, it's understandable that people in Africa pronounce it that way in french, at least when they begin learning. But why do they stick to this habit afterwards ? Two explanations : firstly, people do not necessarily try to learn a standard french (that's for upper classes), they use a "local" french to suit their needs, for instance as a lingua franca when different languages coexist. Secondly, and more interestly to me, the afrrrican 'rrrr' or norrther afrrican 'rr' are considered the correct and manly pronounciation. France's r is considered either snobbish or womanly, and men would not think of changing their 'R'. Women more often accept to change to the french 'r'. I've verified that in Algeria. So, they CAN pronounce it, they just do not WANT to. Irrrreductibles...

Afterrr all, in the past the frrrench also prronounced the rrr that way. It is now completely abandonned, except in local dialects. King Francois the 1st 'rolled' the Rs, and until now people in Burgundy for instance. Singers kept using ia soft rolled 'r' also for a long time, finding it more suitable for songs (Maurice Chevalier). Now, it's unthinkable.

[Christine]

another 'th'-related question,

in "Ye Olde England"
what does 'Ye' stand for ? How is it supposed to be pronounced ? Is it an ancient way of writing 'the' ?

[shr]

Ye is pronunced 'the', so it's the same word. It's the orthography which is ancient, not the word itself. Early modern printers used several characters which are now redundant e.g. v for u, j for i, f for s (which can get a cheap laugh when you come across words like suck in Shakespeare) and y for 'th'.

But the popular mind being what it is, everyone now thinks it not just an old word but one which conjures up medieval English, and it's often used in rubbish medieval fairs where it is pronunced 'yee' as in 'yee old English pub'.

[invisifan]

Ye is pronunced 'the', so it's the same word. It's the orthography which is ancient, not the word itself. Early modern printers used several characters which are now redundant e.g. v for u, j for i, f for s (which can get a cheap laugh when you come across words like suck in Shakespeare) and y for 'th'.

In Medieval English The Latin alphabet was used, plus the thorn character for "th" which did not occur in Latin. At that time the letters u & j did not exist -- i & v could be used as either a vowel or consonant depending on context and j & u were just variant orthography used in script -- essentially the difference between printing and writing. Ecclesiastic Latin began the practice of always rounding the v when it acted as a vowel, and adding a tail to the i when it was pronounced as a consonant which led to them becoming separate letters.

The use of the medial form (ſ) of uncapitalized s dates from the Greek (it's not a "f", there is no crossbar) -- the letter Sigma in script (σ) changes to a variant form (ς) iff it appears at the end of a word, and this was carried over to many medieval scripts with the modern small s being the terminal form...

As for "Ye Olde ..." the "Y" is not the Latin letter, it's a Thorn (discussed above) ... by late medieval times it was often written without closing the loop so it appeared as a "p" with the top cut off or a "K" without the lower right leg -- which was confused with the "Y" and in modern times the Y is used out of convenience (or more often ignorance). Note that as the thorn fell out of use in English it was still used for a long while in a few specific words, most notably "the", but also "thou" (the singular "tu" form of "you" -- now only found in really old writing & flowry poetry).