#they translate titles and idioms and historical references as literally as they can and then add a note for clarification

[poorlittleyaoyao]

Thank you! I wish adding translation notes in the moment was the standard practice; I get the logic behind “Madam,” but the vibe so formal that it almost precludes there being a familial connection.

Hm, is there a reason “popo” keeps getting rendered as “Madam” in relation to Granny Wen in CQL subs? Netflix does it (because of course it does), but so does the YouTube upload I just watched.

[spanishskulduggery]

Do you know of any fossil words in Spanish, words that used to be common but fell out of use and are now only preserved in idioms? I tried looking on Google but all the results were English-only examples

I'll try and think of some others but here are the ones that come to mind; and I’m not sure all of these will be what you’re looking for.

si fuere menester = "in the event of" el menester used to be fairly common especially in the Medieval period, where it was another word for "need" or "necessity". Today you only see menester in si fuere menester which is an unusual construction as it is, since fuere is the future subjunctive - which is an obsolete tense - and so it literally means "should it be necessary". This expression only now shows up in contracts and legal contexts normally as "in the event of"

donde fueres haz lo que vieres = "when in Rome... (do as the Romans do)" Again, this is future subjunctive; literally "wherever you go, do what you see".. but in a more obtuse future subjunctive way "wherever you should happen to go, do whatever you may happen to see"

la urdimbre y trama = "warp and weft" The idea of this is related to "weaving", and though this phrase is rather antiquated or particular, it occasionally shows up as something like la urdimbre y trama de la sociedad or something where that's "the fabric of society". It's not the way you say that so much now [el tejido or la tela are more common], but urdir "to warp" was related to working a loom. You still do use tramar but it's not often that you see it related to weaving anymore... tramar is "to plot" or "to hatch a scheme", but you can see how "weaving" would go into "plotting"

so pena de = "under pain of" You don't often see so used in Spanish today, since it's a more direct link to Latin and Italian. And today la pena rarely means "pain" in the physical sense, it usually means "sorrow" or "anguish"... but again in legal cases, so pena de muerte is "under pain/penalty of death"

a diestra y siniestra = "all over the place" This expression literally means "to the right and left". The word diestro/a is still "right-handed" (also means "skillful" or "dexterous"), but siniestro/a used to mean "left-handed"... the idea that the left hand was more evil and "sinister", and "under-handed". In older contexts, siniestro/a means "left-handed", but in modern contexts you say zurdo/a for "left-handed"

al tuntún = "impromptu", "improvise", "on the fly", "by ear" This expression is derived from Latin, ad vultum tuum which is literally "to your face" in Latin. You never see tuntún anymore unless something is done al tuntún but it might be more regional; it just means you're making it up as you go

dormir como un ceporro = "to sleep like a log" Most people today say dormir como un tronco which is the same idea; el ceporro is a variation but it's extremely unusual to see it. Most people will use tronco if they have to

tuerto/a = one-eyed I'm actually not sure if people use tuerto/a still, since there are other ways to say "blind in one eye" or "one-eyed". In older Spanish, tuerto could show up as a "grievance", but in the expression en el reino de ciegos el tuerto es rey is still used sometimes, literally "in the kingdom of blind people, the one-eyed man is the king"

(el) haba = bean [technically haba is feminine] Not common to see el haba used much anymore except in certain contexts, and it's the root of la habichuela "bean". In Spain, sometimes haba is "idiot" so if you see el tonto del haba it's like "the biggest idiot that ever lived"

Vuestra Merced = "Your Lordship/Ladyship" This is the original form of it, but it eventually turned into usted "you" used for polite things. The title was Vuestra Merced and it was how you addressed someone without knowing their title, so it became very polite. In older Spanish you'd abbreviate it as Vd. which eventually became Ud. as the abbreviation for usted. Keep in mind that at a certain point in time, Spanish wrote the U sound as a V, and it followed more of the Latin pronunciation where the V had a softer U/W sound at times. Outside of Spain and works set in older time periods, you're unlikely to use vuestro/a - it even became informal plural "you all" in Spain - but you rarely ever see merced used. Chances are you're only going to see it was vuestra in front of it. But just know that vos has a very different meaning today than it did in the Middle Ages

meter/sembrar cizaña = "to sow discord" You're never going to see cizaña used in any other context unless you happen upon some botanical book. The literal translation is "darnel" which is sometimes called "false wheat"; basically la cizaña looks like trigo "wheat", and it grows close to wheat but it often has a fungus that's poisonous so you need to separate it. The idea behind it is that if you're deliberately planting cizaña you're actively trying to poison someone or make things worse

la celestina = "a go-between, a mediator" This word comes directly from La Celestina a novel written in Spain's Golden Age by Fernando de Rojas. In it there's a woman named Celestina who sets up meetings between women living in convents (who weren't always nuns) and men; acting as a go-between and chaperone for love affairs basically. The term was also la alcahueta but became celestina after the character in the book. Certain characters in literature are considered celestinas like the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet; basically the girl/woman can't risk her reputation so she has her maid or chaperone working to arrange things, and they're often the catalyst for things going wrong. In other contexts, celestina or una alcahueta is a "pimp" or "madame", or sometimes "a gossip"

pardo/a = brown, brownish-gray Today you’re only really going to see pardo/a used with animals. Specifically, el oso pardo is a “grizzly bear”, and pardo/a can be used with horses as “dun”. I don’t know if “grizzly bear” counts as an expression but anyway. In older Spanish pardo/a was another word for “brown” when it came to people too. Today, if you’re describing hair color as “brown/brunette” you’re using castaño which is literally “chestnut”, either castaño claro “light brown” or castaño oscuro “dark brown”. When it comes to things that are brown, the typical word is now marrón or sometimes you see it as color café which is “coffee-colored”

ser un caco = to be a thief Not commonly used as ladrón, ladrona “thief”, but un caco literally means “a Cacus”. Basically, Cacus was a mythological figure who stole some cattle and Hercules killed him. In some places people use un caco to mean “thief” as a euphemism

la Parca = the Grim Reaper Orginally, las Parcas were the Parcae in Roman (originally Greek) mythology. They were the sisters of fate who would measure someone’s life and eventually cut the thread. Today, it’s just one Parca and it’s typically a male figure, skeletal, with a scythe as the “Grim Reaper”, rather than it being a woman with scissors. That’s because during the Plague, people thought of Death as being a skeletal figure that held a scythe, the symbol for “reaping” wheat that was ripe.

manjar de los dioses = “nectar of the gods” / a delicacy el manjar is used in some places in certain contexts but it originally came from Italian as “food” or something “to eat”. Today, manjar is usually a “snack”, or in some cases it’s dulce de leche, but most of the Spanish-speaking world doesn’t use manjar so much. It is sometimes “delicacy”, but in older contexts it was code for “ambrosia”, the thing that the Greek gods couldn’t get enough of. The world manjar still feels very antiquated to me, but when it’s used it’s some kind of good food or eating a lot of food

valer un potosí = “to be worth a fortune” un potosí is pretty antiquated, but it came from the city Potosí in Bolivia which was famous for its silver mines that the conquistadores exploited. There are still some places that will use potosí as “something of great value”, though it’s not so common anymore unless you’re talking about the actual city.

moros y cristianos = “beans and rice” Usually it’s black beans and white rice, though this is literally “Moors and Christians”. You still use cristiano/a today but typically you only use moro/a in a historical sense

Also there’s the expression más sordo/a que una tapia where it means someone is really hard of hearing; literally “as deaf as a garden wall”, but I’ve never seen people use tapia ...only a muro or a cerca as “wall” or “fence”. The idea of tapiar is related to “mortar” and “masonry”

There are also some expressions related to metal and older words for it. For example, saturnino/a is an older word for “gloomy”, though it now refers to “lead-poisoning”. Saturn was linked to “moodiness” in alchemical society, and the symbol for Saturn was the older symbol for “lead”. 

This is similar to how áureo/a is “gold” but also linked to the “sun” because the Sun and gold are linked.

Another is el azogue which is the older word for mercury so it’d be “quicksilver”. You may see azogarse in some texts where it means “to be fidgetty” and it’s related both to mercury-poisoning, and probably to the idea of Mercury/Hermes being the messenger god so always on the move. 

There is also hidalgo/a which doesn’t have quite the same meaning it did originally. Today, hidalgo/a is sort of like “having noble blood”. It literally means “son of something/someone”, where originally in Spain hidalgos were the children of nobles - specifically, it tended to refer to the children of nobles who weren’t the firstborn male. Firstborn sons often got about 2/3 of the money and were expected to run the estates. The second or third or fourth children were usually on their own. It became a running joke that the firstborn became the lord, and the others would either join the army or the clergy. In Cervantes’s time, hidalgos could be among the poorest of society, even poorer than slaves in some cases. They were still “noble” in terms of blood though, and hidalgos couldn’t be tortured by the Inquisition because of it. So they were afforded certain rights, but usually tended to be poor or lower than you’d expect a noble to be. Today it just means “of nobility”, but in Cervantes’s time a hidalgo was the symbol of Spain under the Holy Roman Empire - wealthy and noble and glorious in theory, much poorer in reality.

I'd also add the phrases levar ancla "to raise anchor" or "anchors aweigh/away", where levar is rarely used today aside from nautical terms. Similarly, izar la bandera is "to hoist the flag"... not a lot of chances to use izar if it's not related to "flags" or la vela "a sail"

I also would say errar is less common today in Spanish. It's still used, but you normally say cometer un error "to make a mistake". Still, errar es humano, perdonar es divino "to err is human, to forgive divine". Also errar is weirdly irregular at times, it turns into yerro as present tense yo

And I’m also going to include when la manzana means a “city block”. Today manzana is not rare, it means “apple”. But manzana as a “city block” was originally mansana where it meant a “collection of manses/houses arranged in a block on a grid”. So there’s that. If you ever see manzana used for blocks in a city, it’s technically a separate word

Also depending on context el mar “sea” will be la mar with the feminine article. That’s usually more particular, usually meaning “open water” or deeper waters like alta mar “high seas”. The more poetic or open the water is, the more likely it is to be feminine, and so la mar isn’t quite so antiquated but it’s a little special

[arizona-trash-bag]

as my passive consumption through osmosing my mutuals’ content continues (thanks guys💖), I somehow found myself learning about chinese aristocratic titles whilst looking up a literal translation of 当年万里觅封侯 (Those Years In Quest Of Honor Mine). ya know, as you do. which made me reflect on the sometimes ridiculous degree of archaic/literary language in danmei, and just how rich my native culture really is.

backstory: I went to third grade and half of second grade in china, which actually gave me a passable level of fluency. for reference, I could read all of Harry Potter without a dictionary. I am however a genius (literally - an IQ test was part of my adhd panel) and was hyperlexic so ymmv. but it’s not unreasonable to expect that the average third grader could read most non-technical contemporary texts without much trouble.

apparently, danmei does *not* fall under ‘texts I can read without much trouble’. hahaha🤦‍♀️ a lot of danmei is set in historical eras and uses literary/classical language, as well as a ton of literary references and fancy four-word idioms. when briefly attempting to read 2ha raws, I was looking up words every other sentence and finding the [literary] label tacked next to the definition (although meatbun’s prose is some of the most sophisticated i’ve ever seen, danmei or otherwise. I really did myself dirty starting with her sigh)

so I was curious about the literal translation for the title of this book, bc I couldn’t quite line up the english title with my reading of the chinese title. the first four characters were fine, but I couldn’t even sound out 觅, and I could read 封 and 侯 separately but they didn’t make sense to me in this blurry context.

(I actually also got 侯 wrong - I had it mixed up with 候, which means ‘to wait’. those characters differ by one stroke. i’m pressed😩)

so I was even more confused bc I was reading 封 as ‘to seal’, as in an envelope. so I was like - ‘that year ten thousand li* [something] seal wait’??? what the fuck?? but I was too lazy to look it up. then I finally got tired of the voice in my head going ‘dang nian wan li mmph feng hou’ every time I read the title (does anyone else do that with words they don’t know in pictographic languages?? surely i’m not the only one?)

so I finally looked it up, and 觅 simply meant ‘to seek’. aha! suddenly the ‘quest’ part of the translation made sense. but what about the ‘honor’ bit? tf did that come from?

it turns out that character I got wrong - 侯 - meant ‘marquis’! things start to make more sense! and here’s where I learned that there are indeed five orders of nobility in feudal china. clearly I wasn’t paying attention in The Wife is First, bc 侯 is also Han Zhang’s family’s title.

the full list, if you’re curious:

definition courtesy of the Pleco app, which has helped me track down many an obscure character

so that then gave 封 another reading that i’d totally forgotten about: to ‘confer’, as in a title!

so finally we have:

当年 - that year

万里 - ten thousand li

觅 - to search

封侯 - to confer the title of marquis (!! meaningful bc it’s a major character beat in the book. not a spoiler tho don’t worry)

finally, we got here. all because of seven characters. bye, i’m gonna go cry about the rich complexity of the chinese language again.

*unit of measurement, approx 500km

[irisflammea]

I found your post about the book canon moments in the suitang tag and I want to ask you, where did you read the novel? I just finished the show like thirty minutes ago and am dying here.

Oh my goodness, I know the feeling! It's on novel updates under the title The Fourteenth Year of Chenghua. But the novel is not fully translated yet. The good translation is only up to chapter 20 and the other translation is not that great (and even that is only up to Chapter 60).

This novel is LONG! Extremely. And it is the slowest burn romance you will ever read. Like I'm talking they don't even kiss until Chapter 97 and don't officially get together until another 20 chapters. But that chemistry is 🔥. It is also full of historical references that if you read a bad translation you really won't enjoy it.

But ultimately to answer your question. I painstakenly read this in Chinese (I wouldn't even have attempted it, if it wasn't for the fact I had some level of Chinese). It was hard and slow especially with how long this novel is. Reading this with Google translate cannot translate the subtle nuances of language and all the idioms and references. (The bad translation is essentially google translate and it's barely tolerable. Especially if you're going to read over 700k words of it, you'll probably pull your hair out.)

But man was this novel worth it to read! After I finished it. I read it again at least 3 more times. It's beautiful and my most ideal version of a love based on mutual understanding. There's still so many scenes I can't get over! I might just have to post them all, cause I can literally write a dissertation on SuiTang.

[myrinthinks]

Okay, so I just spent almost two hours researching this (and even longer writing this down) so I hope someone will be interested in what I’ve found (although to be fair, the majority of those initial two hours was spent on finding the right editions and consolidating the millions of digital places where academic public domain works are published; the last time I did this was when I still worked on my dissertation and it’s still as cumbersome as it was then). Let me also say beforehand that I am German and most of the here-relevant authors were and wrote in German as well. Combine that with ancient and/or archaeological sources and we have a bit of a game of linguistical telephone on our hands, but I did my best to make everything as clear and understandable as possible - but please don’t hesitate to ask if something seems strange our out-of-place! All translations in this are mine. Anyway, onto the actual topic. The book @prokopetz​ is talking about is volume 8 of Theodor Mommsen’s Roemische Geschichte (”Roman History”) series which, with the exception of volumes 6 and 7, can be found in its entirety on eLibrary. The eighth book is, similar to its translation, called Laender und Leute von Caesar bis Diocletian (”Countries and People from Caesar to Diocletian”; “Länder und Leute” has this literal translation but it’s also an idiom of sorts and just means “literally everything”). The part in question can be found somewhere in the middle of the linked page - as far as I can see, it’s actually a footnote and says, among other things:

“Ihre magistratischen Praesidenten haben auch diese gehabt, wie denn kuerzlich sich ein Lesbiarch gefunden hat (Marquardt, a. a. O.) und ebenso die moesischen Hellenen unter einem Pontarchen standen.“ (“Their magistrates also had those, as recently a “lesbiarch” has been found [...] and just like the Hellenes of Moesia were governed by a pontarch.”).

I would actually like to see a scan of this page since it just, well, reads weirdly and I have a feeling that a word or two are either missing or have been erroneously included. Otherwise, it’s completely unclear to me what the “diese/those” refers to; there’s talk of “Muenzen von Apameia” (”coins of Apameia”) immediately beforehand but that sentence is also weird and IDK I guess it’s best to just forget about that part (OR someone could tell me what the Dickson translation says and I could reverse-engineer it; surprisingly, I could only find the first two books online). But no matter what this sentence is supposed to mean exactly, it’s clear that “lesbiarch” and “pontarch” are equivalent titles pertaining to geographically different regions. Now if you google “pontarch”, you probably won’t get many hits (and if you do, you’ll most likely only be able to see an excerpt or one single page), but it’s always in relation to the so-called “Western Pontic Koinon”, a “provincial assembly in the Moesia Inferior province along the western coast of the Black Sea (located in modern Romania and Bulgaria)”. In fact, “pontic” means “belonging to the Black Sea”, and it stands to reason that the “pont-” part of “pontarch” expresses exactly that. Ergo, the “lesbiarch” is to Lesbos what the “pontarch” is to Pontos. So far so good. Now, if we want to find out more about the actual historicality of this term - which, if you google it, only yields Mommsen as a result - there’s one very important reference in the original, and that’s the “Marquardt a. a. O.”. “a. a. O.” stands for “an anderem Ort” (”at another place”) and is a generally-outdated way of saying “ebenda/ebd.” (”ibidem/ib[id.]”). It’s outdated for good reason, because it’s an absolute pain in the behind to ever find what it references because it can mean basically any source by the same author that’s ever been named but fortunately, it’s pretty easy to deduce that in this case, it means the source right before this one, which is “Marquardt, Staatsverwaltung, Bd. 1, S. 516”. Joachim Marquardt was a German teacher, historian, and contemporary of Mommsen’s. The book referenced here is one of his main works, the three-part Römische Staatsverwaltung (”Roman Public Administration”). What I hate about this book is that it came out in 1873 whereas Roemische Geschichte was released in 1856 and yet the latter references the former. It probably has something to do with the fact that the three volumes of Staatsverwaltung also make up volumes 4-6 of a joint project of Mommsen and Marquardt’s called Handbuch der römischen Alterthümer (“Compendium on Roman Antiquities”) but I don’t know and frankly I don’t want to know because this is ridiculous. In any case, this was actually the part that took me the longest because I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what part of Marquardt’s work Mommsen could possibly be referring to. First, I found the table of contents (of the second edition, mind you, which only came out in 1881, ask me how much I hate literally everything about this) but not anything more than that. Its last part looks like this

and that looks indeed like there might be something relevant to our case on page 516. Finally, I found the aforementioned Mommsen-Marquardt joint venture on Google Books and, well, I couldn’t find a reference to Lesbos at all, even though the page’s general topic of state parliaments and their organisation fits reasonably well with the topic. So I thought I had the wrong source and looked and searched and finally, finally, after way too long, I had the glorious idea to look up the Greek writing of “Lesbos” and put that into the Google Books search bar and, lo and behold, I actually got two results, one on page 516 are you absolutely kidding me. It can be found in the main text, here:

Or rather, the first rectangle is, as I would find out shortly afterwards, the word that got transliterated as “Lesbiarch” (the second rectangle is the Moesia’s “Pontarch” which shows without a doubt that Mommsen was referring to this exact part). The IMO and for our case much more interesting part is the relevant footnote, though. It looks like this

and says that the word “λεσβάρχην“ can, according to French archaeologist Georges Perrot, be found in an inscription at the ancient city of Amastris (which today is part of Turkey and called “Amasra”). The Perrot book - published in 1875 and thereby throwing me into a release-date-related pit of despair - is called Mémoires d'archéologie, d'épigraphie et d'histoire and can be found here. Perrot says on pages 167 and 168 that the inscription must have adorned a statue’s pedestal and that “elle a été gravée en grands et beaux charactères, et qu’elle est fort bien conservé” (”it was engraved in big and beautiful letters and has been very well conserved”). And now look at this:

So we’ve finally arrived at the original source (I mean, I guess a picture of the actual inscription would be even better but this is as good as it gets). And what we can see from the above picture is that this Aulus Caecilius Proclus wasn’t only Lesbiarch but also Pontarch and, if I’m understanding the “fils de Lesbos” (”son of Lesbos”) correctly, he was also a born Lesbian. Lastly, regarding the forms “Lesbarque/Lesbiarch”: According to Google Translate and the very little bit of the Greek alphabet I managed to pick up by accident during university, “λεσβἀρχην“ transliterates to “lesbarchin”. As you can tell, I don’t speak Greek, so I don’t know if “-archin” (or some part of it) is a grammatical form denoting a certain case or if this simply means that the literal title of this postion was “lesbarchin” and the “-arque/-(i)arch” endings are just gallicised/anglicised/germanised versions of that suffix or whatnot. But for whatever it’s worth, everything points to the fact that “Lesbiarch” in whatever form was indeed a historically existent title.

In The Provinces of the Roman Empire from Caesar to Diocletian by Theodore Mommsen (translated by William P Dickson), the imperial magistrate of the Isle of Lesbos is, at one point, off-handedly referred to as the “Lesbiarch”.

The text does not indicate whether the magistrate in question historically bore this title, or whether it’s a term of Mommsen’s original coinage; if it’s the former, this is quite possibly the best title of office I’ve ever seen.

[eurolinguiste]

Welcome to this year’s second post as a part of the Language Reading Challenge.

As a quick recap, here are the books we’ve read so far this year:

January // Book about your native language

The guidelines to participate are available here and you can also join up by commenting on the posts here at Eurolinguiste or by becoming a part of the group on Goodreads.

This month, the challenge was to read a book in your target language (translation of a book from your native language). So I chose to read a book by one of my favorite authors, Patrick Rothfuss. The title of the book in Spanish is El Nombre del Viento, or in English, The Name of the Wind.

El Nombre del Viento by Patrick Rothfuss

I’ve mentioned before that I love reading fantasy/science-fiction. It’s one of my many favorite genres and lately, it’s become one of my best language learning resources for when I hit that intermediate/advanced stage in a language.

Patrick Rothfuss became one of my favorite authors in the genre for a variety of reasons (his craft, his storytelling style, the list goes on…), but more notably, the fact that his protagonist is a language-learning musician. I couldn’t relate to a character any more than I do with Kvothe if I tried.

When I was browsing his shop, The Tinker’s Packs, I first discovered the Croatian edition of his book, then went on to see that they had several translations of his work available. After the difficulty of getting Game of Thrones in Croatian, seeing a book that I love in the language so easily available had me floored and I knew that I had to get it. I then wondered what other languages his books were translated into and started making my wishlist.

Through the Tinker’s Packs, I could get his books in Spanish, Chinese, Korean, French, Russian, Croatian, Italian, Catalan, Czech, Hebrew, Greek, Finnish, Dutch, Japanese, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Swedish, Turkish, German, Estonian, etc. Granted, I don’t speak all of those languages, so it was easy to narrow the list down, but I still ordered the books in Korean, Chinese, Russian, Spanish, and Croatian. Plus, my purchase went towards helping out the Worldbuilders charity which was a pretty big plus.

  A post shared by Shannon Kennedy (@eurolinguiste) on Oct 25, 2016 at 6:13pm PDT

So back to The Name of the Wind.

The Name of the Wind is the first book in Patrick Rothfuss’ Kingkiller series. Kvothe, the main character in the book, is quick-witted and sharp-tongued, a university student and a talented musician. Like much of modern fantasy, The Kingkiller Chronicles, has several invented languages. And in the first book, Rothfuss uses different languages to illustrate the relationships between characters, to further embellish scenes, and to world-build. He talks somewhat about the language learning process, but not as in-depth as he does in the second book (so I’ll save that for later).

Some of my favorite bits about language learning:

– The use of the Temic language between Kvothe and Bast to show their friendship. In an early scene, Kvothe switches into the Temic language to joke with Bast, and the banter is well-employed. The main character also uses language to sometimes establish rapport with other characters – much in the same way we do (‘Hey, look, I speak the same language as you! Let’s be friends!’). – The Chronicler’s shorthand writing system which Kvothe picks up within moments. This was used to show Kvothe’s aptitude for languages and the description of the shorthand system is just vague enough to sound like it could exist.

—¿ Es cierto que aprendiste temán en un solo día?

Kvothe esbozó una sonrisa y agachó la cabeza. —De eso hace mucho tiempo. Casi lo había olvidado. Tardé un día y medio, para ser exactos. Un día y medio sin dormir.

[…]

—¿ Aprendiste todo el idioma entero?

—No, claro que no —contestó Kvothe con cierta irritación—. Solo una parte. Una parte importante, desde luego, pero no creo que se pueda aprender todo de nada, y menos de un idioma.

Rothfuss, Patrick (2013-09-03). El nombre del viento: Cronicas del asesino de reyes: Primero dia (Spanish Edition) (Kindle Locations 1317-1324). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

“Did you really learn Tema in a day?”

Kvothe gave a faint smile and looked down at the table. “That’s an old story. I’d almost forgotten. It took a day and a half, actually. A day and a half with no sleep.”

[…]

“Did you learn the whole language?”

“No. Of course not,” Kvothe said rather testily. “Only a portion of it. A large portion to be sure, but I don’t believe you can ever learn all of anything, let alone a language.”

Rothfuss, Patrick (2007-03-27). The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle Book 1) (p. 51). DAW. Kindle Edition.

– The Tolkein-like historical depth to the languages even if the languages themselves aren’t as developed.

—Eso sí lo sé —dijo Ben—. Son siete. De eso puedes estar seguro. De hecho, su mismo nombre lo dice: Chaen significa siete. Chaen-dian significa «siete de ellos». De ahí viene Chandrian.

—No lo sabía —repuso mi padre—. Chaen. ¿En qué idioma? ¿En íllico?

—Parece temán —comentó mi madre.

—Tienes buen oído —dijo Ben—. En realidad es témico. Es unos mil años anterior al temán.

Rothfuss, Patrick (2013-09-03). El nombre del viento: Cronicas del asesino de reyes: Primero dia (Spanish Edition) (Kindle Locations 2034-2040). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

“That I can answer,” Ben said. “Seven. You can hold to that with some certainty. It’s part of their name, actually. Chaen means seven. Chaen-dian means ‘seven of them.’ Chandrian.”

“I didn’t know that,” my father said. “Chaen. What language is that? Yllish?”

“Sounds like Tema,” my mother said.

“You’ve got a good ear,” Ben said to her. “It’s Temic, actually. Predates Tema by about a thousand years.”

Rothfuss, Patrick (2007-03-27). The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle Book 1) (p. 82). DAW. Kindle Edition.

– The fact that people who speak different languages in the story don’t have magical total mastery of the primary language of the book.

  — …adláteres. —Pronunció despacio la última palabra—. ¿Se dice así? ¿Adláteres?

Asentí, y Wilem puso cara de satisfacción. Entonces frunció el ceño. —Ahora que me acuerdo, hay una frase extraña en tu idioma. La gente siempre me pregunta por el camino de Tinuë. «¿ Cómo está el camino de Tinuë?», dicen. ¿Qué significa?

Sonreí.

—Es un modismo. Significa…

—Ya sé qué es un modismo —me interrumpió Wilem—. ¿Qué significa ese en concreto?

—Ah —dije, un tanto abochornado—. Solo es un saludo. Es como preguntar «¿ Cómo va todo?», o «¿ Qué hay?».

—Eso también es un modismo —protestó Wilem—. Vuestro idioma está plagado de tonterías. Me extraña que os entendáis. «¿ Cómo va todo?» ¿Va adónde? —Sacudió la cabeza.

—A Tinuë, por lo visto —dije sonriendo—. Tuan volgen oketh ama —añadí. Era uno de mis modismos siaru favoritos. Significaba «No para quitarle importancia—.

Rothfuss, Patrick (2013-09-03). El nombre del viento: Cronicas del asesino de reyes: Primero dia (Spanish Edition) (Kindle Locations 6501-6521). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

“…coterie.” He pronounced the last word slowly. “Is that the right word? Coterie?”

I nodded, and Wilem looked vaguely self-satisfied. Then he frowned. “That makes me remember something strange in your language. People are always asking me about the road to Tinuë. Endlessly they say, ‘how is the road to Tinuë?’ What does it mean?”

I smiled. “It’s an idiomatic piece of the language. That means—”

“I know what an idiom is,” Wilem interrupted. “What does this one mean?”

“Oh,” I said, slightly embarrassed. “It’s just a greeting. It’s kind of like asking ‘how is your day?’ or ‘how is everything going?’”

“That is also an idiom.” Wilem grumbled. “Your language is thick with nonsense. I wonder how any of you understand each other. How is everything going? Going where?” He shook his head.

“Tinuë, apparently.” I grinned at him. “Tuan volgen oketh ama.” I said, using one of my favorite Siaru idioms. It meant ‘don’t let it make you crazy’ but it translated literally as: ‘don’t put a spoon in your eye over it.’

Rothfuss, Patrick (2007-03-27). The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle Book 1) (pp. 273-274). DAW. Kindle Edition.

– Just the fact that Patrick Rothfuss put that much thought into his characters speaking different languages, learning different languages, and that they’re always learning no matter how well you speak a language. It definitely beats some of the other portrayals of language learning I’ve read where characters just magically pick up a language without any effort or prior experience. It’s refreshing to see something more authentic.

On Reading Translations

You may have noticed that as a part of this challenge you’re asked to read two books in your target language. One is intended to be a translation of a work originally written in your native language and the other a work that is originally written in your target language.

Why?

Because you gain different things by reading both.

In reading translations you benefit from already knowing the story because you’ve likely already read the work in your native language. You also benefit from the language because it’s going to be written differently as a translation that it would be as a work originally conceived in your target language. Plus reading a translation guarantees that the book is available in your native language to use for reference if needed.

In reading works originally published in your target language you get to benefit from the language. As I mentioned above, things are written completely different when they are originally conceived in a language rather than translated into it.

That being said, reading translations gives you the opportunity to work with material you know and love (like Patrick Rothfuss’ work for me). This is so valuable because it increases the odds that you’re going to enjoy the tools you’re using to learn your target language because you aren’t just using boring old textbooks or flashcards to learn a language. You’re actually ‘living’ in the language and using materials that you enjoy.

Title: El Nombre del Viento Author: Patrick Rothfuss Pages: 880 pgs Publisher: Vintage Espanol Publication Date: September 3, 2013

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