Babylonian and Assyrian Poetry and Literature

An Assyriologist at Cambridge University have made recordings of poetry and literature in Babylonian and Assyrian and posted them online. Some of the works date back to about 1,900 BC and include The Epic of Gilgamesh, The Babylonian Epic of Creation and even an Incantation for Dog Bite.

This is the first time such recordings have been made and the main aim is to provide illustrations of theories about Babylonian and Assyrian pronunciation, metre, etc.

Word of the day – Petrichor

Petrichor, noun, /ˈpɛtrɨkər/ – the scent of rain on dry earth.

It comes from the Greek πέτρος (petros – stone) and ἰχώρ (ichor – the fluid that flows in the veins of the Greek gods), and was coined in 1964 by two Australian researchers, I.J. Bear and R.G. Thomas. The smell isn’t of the rain itself but comes from the oils released by vegetation when rain falls [source].

I found this word while searching for dripple, which I hear on the radio last night and which was described as being a type of light rain that isn’t quite drizzle. The only references to dripple I could find gave it’s meaning as “weak or rare” and there was no mention of rain.

I also found the Beaufort Rain Scale, a spoof version of the Beaufort Scale which ranges from:

Force 0: Complete Dryness.
Absence of rain from the air. The gap between two periods of wet.
Associated Phrase: “it looks like it might rain.”

through

Force 4: Visible Light Shower.
Hair starts to congeal around ears. First rainwear appears. People start to remember washing left out. Ignored by all sportsmen except Wimbledon players, who dash for cover. A newspaper being read outside starts to tear slightly.
Associated Phrases: “it’s starting to come down now,” “it won’t last,” and “it’s settled in for the day now.”

to

Force 10: Hurricane.
Not defined inland – the symptoms are too violent and extreme (cars floating, newspaper readers lost at sea, people drowned by inhaling rain, etc.). So, if hurricane conditions do appear to pertain, look for some other explanation.
Associated Phrases: “oh my god, the water tank has burst – it’s coming through the kitchen ceiling,” and “i think the man upstairs has fallen asleep in his bath.”

Assumptions

You can’t tell what language speaks by their appearance, but it’s common to make assumptions about such things. I do this myself and usually expect that people who look Japanese will speak Japanese, and that who look Chinese will speak one or more varieties of Chinese, though I don’t tend to talk to them in the relevant language until I’m sure they do actually speak them.

I came across some amusing blog posts today about how wrong assumptions can be, here and here.

Preserving immigrant languages

I found an interesting article on the BBC News website about Asian languages in the UK which discusses how some UK families of South Asian origin are trying to encourage their children to continue speaking their native languages, such as Bengali, Urdu, Punjabi and Gujarati. The children are taught in English at school, but some also attend complementary and weekend schools run by local communities where they are taught in their native languages. Such schools are run by volunteers and receive no government funding, and are helping to maintain bilingualism among their pupils, and perhaps because of this, those pupils are also achieving good results in their mainstream schools.

It seems to be common among immigrant families that native languages last only two or three generations, unless community efforts are made to maintain their languages. The situation can be similar for minority languages such as Maori and Irish. Another article I came across today is not very hopeful about the future of the Maori language and predicts it will die out in 50 years or so. In spite of initiatives to promote the language, the young generation is increasingly turning to English, even those who attend the Maori-medium schools. In the schools they speak Maori, but elsewhere many speak only English.

Language Conference

Other the past few days there was a conference at Trinity College Carmarthen entitled Reversing Language Shift: How to Re-awaken a Language Tradition, which was run by the Foundation for Endangered Languages. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to intend myself, but have found an interesting report and multilingual video from it on the BBC News.

Here’s a recording of delegates from the conferences speaking in their own languages. How many of the languages can you identify?

Did any of you attend the conference?

Dadsothachu

This morning I heard an interesting Welsh word on Radio Cymru that I hadn’t come across before – dadsothachu [dadsɔ’θaxɨ̬]. It means “to declutter” and combines a verbed form of the word sothach (bilge, garbage, junk, trash, trumpery) with the prefix dad-, which is the equivalent of the English prefixes de- and un-, and also serves as an intensifier. Another word they used for the same action was dadclytero (I think that’s how to spell it). Neither of these words appear in dictionaries I’ve checked.

I’ve been trying to declutter since I moved, and indeed before that. So far I’ve taken quite a lot books to local charity shops, but there’s plenty more filling my bookcases. At the same time I’ve acquired quite a lot more stuff. I also have more space in my new house, so the temptation is to fill it with even more stuff.