[Xmca-l] Re: Translations - Shona and Russian

[Zaza Kabayadondo]

Also... your other question about articles is super interesting to me
because I've been puzzling over the rules of Shona for a long time.

Does Shona have articles? Yes and no. We do modify nouns but we don't
follow the same rules as say French does with le, la, les. I like the
framing *What** kind of "the-ness" do you mean? The cat kind! *Technically
there is no article for "a", but in translation the absence of the article
means you mean a generic, unspecific unit of the noun - the equivalent of
"a". On the other hand, we have a lot of "the-ness" in Shona, but with more
nuances or qualification of what sort of "the" we mean. For example, the
small kind, the large kind, the despicable kind. So there's a distinct
article for the small cat, a distinct one for the fat cat, and one for the
gross/naughty/bad cat.

Ndaona kiti - I saw a cat
Ndaona kakiti  - I saw a little cat.
Ndaona zikiti  - I saw a big fat cat [I saw the big cat]
Ndaona chikiti  - I saw the cat (usually with more context to clarify the
cat is gross, naughty, etc)
To emphasize "the-ness" with the above statements you would add "-ya" to
the end of the sentence. But the "-ya" needs an agreement with the article
you used so it becomes "kaya" eg "Ndaona kakiti kaya" means "the one and
only little cat I am talking about" OR "the little cat."
Ndaona kiti riya - I saw the cat (but also I saw that cat)
Ndaona kakiti kaya - I saw the little cat
Ndaona zikiti riya - I saw the fat cat
Ndaona chikiti chiya - I saw the naughty cat

Plural forms:
Ndaona makiti - I saw cats
Ndaona zvikiti - I saw the little cats
Ndaona mazikiti - I saw
Ndaona twukiti - I saw the cats (usually with more context to clarify this
is a marauding pack of gross, naughty cats)

Question for the xmca community - are there languages you speak that do
extra work with their articles? Would love to see if there are patterns

On Sun, Nov 29, 2020 at 12:26 PM Zaza Kabayadondo <
zaza.kabayadondo@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm moving this to a new thread...
>
> Thank you for your question, David. I didn't realize people were using
> Google Translate. It's great for some languages - not so much for anything
> from Southern Africa at least as far as I've observed.
>
> Yes, I do speak Shona. I like to distinguish between functional Shona and
> idiomatic Shona. Functional Shona is literal and idiomatic Shona is
> literary (though spoken). I'm not a Shona linguist so I'm making up terms
> for the distinction I perceive but there might already be a convention for
> how Shona linguists describe the difference. Functional Shona is what you
> will hear people using on the streets. It is a more literal or explicit way
> of speaking and very similar to European meaning and sensemaking. In
> functional Shona you might say "I am tired." "She arrived yesterday." It
> some contexts it is considered rather crass to speak so directly of your
> feelings, wants, needs. I contrast this to idiomatic Shona which is a
> version of the language our elders spoke, it reflects pre-colonial Shona
> culture and thinking because it "beats around the bush". You would rarely
> directly ask a question, everything was a metaphor, a vague suggestion,
> never explicitly spelt out. It is more diplomatic, more evasive, and can be
> problematic when it comes to talking about social or political issues. Tuku
> sings in this idiomatic style. Tuku's song *Bvuma* is the best example of
> his style of which allows for double entendre (He is saying "Tolerance has
> faded" but he could also mean "Just accept that you're old."
>
> Todii is about HIV/AIDS. Originally, "utachiwana" meant any virus or germ,
> the underlying cause of an illness, but over time the only virus people
> talk about is HIV. (In "Hutachiwana" the "h" is a modifier emphasizes you
> mean "the virus"). The style is call-and-response which is typical in Shona
> folk music, both traditional and contemporary. The call and its response
> should be read as one sentence.
>
> As for the lyrics in question:
> Zvinorwadza sei kubhinywa newaugere naye...(Kana uinahwo utachiwana)
> *Translation: How it must hurt to be raped by the one you live with...**If
> you have a virus *
> Zvinorwadza sei kubhinywa neakabvisa pfuma** ...(Kana uinahwo utachiwana)
> *Translation:** How it must hurt to be raped by the man** who married you
> ...**If you have a virus *
> **The literal meaning is "by the one who paid roora (lobola/bride price)"
> Achiziva unahwo hutachiwana...(Kana uinahwo utachiwana)
> *Translation: When he knows you have the virus...If you have a virus*
> Ende uchiziva unahwo hutachiwana...(Kana uinahwo utachiwana)
> *Translation: **And you know you have the virus...If you have a virus*
> In the last two lines the response almost implies "hypothetically, let's
> say you have a virus." And for me this is really where the song touches on
> the sensibility of HIV/AIDS as it was experienced in Zimbabwe in the moment
> of the song. Not knowing who has it, suspecting who has it etc. Tuku was
> masterful with his play on words and structure.
>
>
> On Sat, Nov 28, 2020 at 2:56 AM David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Zaza--
>>
>> Dude, I don't really speak Russian either, as Nikolai and Anna will tell
>> you (we only speak English). In my translation work I spend a lot more time
>> on Google Translate than I would like, and that's why I burden the list
>> with the queries you mention from time to time.. But I bet you speak Shona,
>> or at least understand a little.
>>
>> So maybe you can help. I'm using this tune from the late great Tuku
>> (Oliver Mtukudzi) in a class I am giving on sex education in Korea. I've
>> been told that it doesn't really mention AIDS/HIV explicitly, and I get
>> that--in fact, that's one of the reasons why I think it's useful for making
>> certain parallels between pandemics and also discussing HPV and other
>> issues I want to talk about. But I don't quite understand THIS verse--maybe
>> you can help me?
>>
>> Zvinorwadza sei kubhinywa newaugere naye
>> (Kana uinahwo utachiwana)
>> Zvinorwadza sei kubhinywa neakabvisa pfuma
>> (Kana uinahwo utachiwana)
>> Achiziva unahwo hutachiwana
>> (Kana uinahwo utachiwana)
>> Ende uchiziva unahwo hutachiwana
>> (Kana uinahwo utachiwana)
>>
>> So "Kana uinahwo utachiwana" means something like "If you get infected".
>> But what is the reference to being raped by your roommate?
>>
>> On the subject of this thread. Like voter fraud, racism is a very serious
>> charge, and the right has successfully made hay out of its seriousness. But
>> as with voter fraud they have made even more hay out of rendering the
>> charge unproveable, by removing its class content and rendering it a purely
>> subjective inclination. This is why, I think (I hope), Arturo and others
>> tend to raise this sort of thing in private off-list material that is so
>> much at variance with their public writings that it fairly attracts the
>> charge of hypocrisy or at least political timidity. After all, if you
>> really suspect your interlocutor of racism, it's incumbent on you to keep
>> your mouth and not just your eyes open. But you've got to put money where
>> your mouth is: you have to provide some evidence (e.g. the paper that
>> Harshad circulated on the list not too long ago). There are important
>> scientific issues we need to discuss which are actually not unrelated to
>> the one that Arturo was reacting to: whether you can accurately judge the
>> language proficiency of a person by their race or national origin (as I
>> have done in the second paragraph above). Not unrelated. But not identical
>> to either, else I would not have written that paragraph.
>>
>> Here's an example. A dear colleague of mine, who like the vast majority
>> of people in this country is not white and wouldn't know deficit
>> linguistics from a surplus, has just written a paper on why Korean children
>> tend to drop articles (i.e. "a" and "the"). He begins with the Chomskyan
>> premise that all nouns must, according to universal human grammars which
>> are hardwired at birth, be realized by "determiner phrases". What that
>> means is that a noun phrase like "the cat" is not really about a cat--it's
>> about "the", and the "the" is modified by "cat" (What kind of "the-ness" do
>> you mean? The cat kind!)
>>
>> But it's THIS, and not Vygotskyan, Hallidayan, or Bernsteinian
>> developmentalism, that is deficit linguistics. I won't say it is racist,
>> because unfortunately that term has lost its scientific content and become
>> nothing but a thought crime. But I will say that people who speak languages
>> without articles or languages that emphasize nouns over determiners (e.g.
>> Korean, Chinese, Russian) are not born with a birth defect (or "null spell
>> out", as the Chomskyans say).
>>
>> Does Shona have articles or not? Do you know?
>>
>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sY0JssD8Hzc__;!!Mih3wA!S9KPuAupp8hp07K9J75RHXsGvazSHUtOm7W8a7jYE8aRud1cTYn898z1Xq4R2qASbGCwtg$ 
>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sY0JssD8Hzc__;!!Mih3wA!QePX9kKiZVk8QmwFWMwYJblxjbu3_Pd2XeZXyOV1YZVr6VOrUaRfbuTZlUpgqPtWWiBSSw$>
>>
>> David Kellogg
>> Sangmyung University
>>
>> New Book with Nikolai Veresov
>> L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works, Vol. I: The Foundations of Pedology
>> Translated with Prefatory Notes and Outlines by David Kellogg and Nikolai
>> Veresov
>> See free downloadable pdf at:
>>
>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007*2F978-981-15-0528-7__;JQ!!Mih3wA!S9KPuAupp8hp07K9J75RHXsGvazSHUtOm7W8a7jYE8aRud1cTYn898z1Xq4R2qDtGAgI7w$ 
>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007*2F978-981-15-0528-7__;JQ!!Mih3wA!QePX9kKiZVk8QmwFWMwYJblxjbu3_Pd2XeZXyOV1YZVr6VOrUaRfbuTZlUpgqPuZA6tlEA$>
>>
>> Forthcoming in 2020:
>> L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works, Vol. II: The Problem of Age.
>> Translated with Prefatory Notes and Outlines by Nikolai Veresov and David
>> Kellogg
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Nov 28, 2020 at 6:02 PM Huw Lloyd <huw.softdesigns@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>> P.S. To my best understanding (very minimal, no doubt), the subject
>>>> matter of Vygotsky's cultural-historical theory is the *development of
>>>> human higher psychological functions*. (How that is "left," "right,"
>>>> or otherwise is beyond me.)
>>>>
>>>
>>> Political propensities can be discerned across some (adult)
>>> developmental stages.
>>>
>>> Huw
>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>
> --
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>


-- 
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