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From: John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org>
Subject: Re: Two languages books
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Date: Mon, 18 Nov 1996 18:17:10 GMT
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Daniel von Brighoff wrote:

> (Besides _Finnegan's Wake_, which seems
> to be the ultimate in language mixture; how people have managed to
> translate this, I'll never understand.)

Well, sort of.  The underlying language is still clearly English;
the grammar is almost always English, and so is the basic vocabulary.
You could say that Eurish ("Wake-speak") is English, but more so;
it incorporates even more alien word sources, and uses the typical
English derivational morphology to an even greater extent than
actual English.

Compare:

	Bygmester Finnegan, of the stuttering hand, freemen's
	maurer, lived in the broadest way immarginable in the
	rushlit toofarback for messuages when joshuan judges
	had given us numbers and helviticus [T. S. Eliot] had
	committed deuteronomy [the *Waste Land*] ...

with:

	'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble
	in the wabe; all mimsy were the borogoves, and the
	mome raths outgrabe

ignoring the verse qualities of the latter.  Which is closer to
ordinary English?

-- 
John Cowan						cowan@ccil.org
			e'osai ko sarji la lojban
