xmca@weber.ucsd.edu writes:
>Renee-- I felt really educated by your note on local variations in
>language policy to go with Martin's contribution.
> Could I ask both of you, what are the variations in the meanings
>of the terms we have been talking about like "lichnost/personality/face"
>or Culture vs Kultur vs culture(s) that occur across the raggedy borders
>you are describing?
>mike
Most western European languages have been touched to some degre or other
by Roman occupation. The things that persist in the language are things
that were easily "fixed". These are things like toponymic terms like hill,
headland, river and so on; parts of the body; and colours.
Gallega and Catalan are "Romance" languages with strong latinate roots
with only a few throw backs into a celtic past and Moorish influences
hence Culture and Person remain with their Latin origins.
Euskara, the language of the Euskari... who are known in Latin languages
as the Basques have a totally inique language. I have hardly a word of
Euskari. It has no Latin influence to speak of.
There is a good site on Basque information:
http://students.washington.edu/buber/Basque/Euskara/
Wales had significant Roman intrusion, as Welsh was the language of most
of Great Britain at that time (the English being somewhere else). So Welsh
has some latinate words (Eglwys for church for instance) but not so much
as the classic romance languages.
So Culture is a local word : Diwylliant.... which as I said before is
un-wild-ing. This is usually used in the cultural artifact meaning: arts &
music etc.
The sociological sense of the word "culture" we would use the word
"cymdeithas" which is also used as the translation of "society". You will
note here and below the prefix "cy" features a lot. It has a tendency to
imply "together". I stand to be corrected but my amateur philology tells
me that cymdeithas is "travel-together" which may have deep historic
implications.
Personality:
Person is a latin introduction to the language but there is another word
for "person: rhywyn which literally is "some-one".
Personality is given in two senses: personolaeth: a development from the
borrowing of person, and cymeriad which I suppose is the same as
character..
Cornish and Breton (Breizh) share the same roots and influences as Welsh.
The other Celtic languages Irish, Gealic and Manx have not had the Latin
influence and they split form welsh some 2500 BC (if you think English and
Dutch are only about 1000 years apart).
So I will spend some time looking at the roots of the words in Irish.
Meanwhile we have on line dictionaries which are working to provide some
standardised terminology and also provide access to language engineering
tools minority languages. We currently are working with Catala, Euskuara,
Irish and Welsh
This is on http://www.melin.bangor.ac.uk.
with more information from: http://www.ite.ie/melin.htm
The Melin dictionaries attempt to go further than simple definition in
that it avoids simple translation but provides context as well.
Currently I think it is suffering from our guardians (the University
Inofrmation Services Department) mania for internet firewalls. Our motto:
no information, no service. I will try and get it fixed tomorrow.
Martin
Hizkuntza bat ez da galtzen ez dakitenek ikasten ez dutelako, dakitenek
hitz egiten ez dutelako baizik! (in Basque)
A language does not die because those who don't know it don't learn it,
but because those who know it don't use it.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue May 23 2000 - 09:20:39 PDT