Faisons le point de ma vie

Je crois avoir découvert une autre langue de l'âme. C'est le persan. Je le considère le français oriental ! Je m'expliquerai plus tard.

Another use of à

J'ai appris un autre usage de la préposition "à". Il s'agit des expressions 'vivre à deux', ou bien 'une vie à deux'. Ne jamais dire "une vie de deux'. Je crois que c'est la même construction que "ménage à trois", que Nina m'a apprise.

Bonne découverte!

J-N-N

I was walking in the street today, listening to Nancy Ajram's Sheel 3oyounak 3anni, and figured out a new word, the root j-n-n. Not sure what the 3sg. past is but it seems to mean 'to drive mad'. She was passionately singing 'bitjaninni, ah ah ah ah, bitjaninni' which, according to the translation I had read, meant 'you're driving me crazy.' And I suddenly realised that it was linked to the epically famous name Mecnun, or Majnun which precisely means 'someone that has been driven mad', the past participle of j-n-n! Bitjaninni, however, can be broken down to bi-t-janin-ni. The prefix bi- is used in the Lebanese/Egyptian colloquial to denote present progressive, t- is the classic 2sg masc. marker.

I was thrilled at this discovery. I love moments like this when you just figure out how a language works without having to laboriously study from a grammar book.

Déclaration

Voilà encore deux mois sans que j'aie écrit quelque chose ici. Oxford is too hardcore. Couldn't really find time.

My linguistic life has basically fallen on two languages: French and Arabic. I'm not going to do language work of other languages for now, and maybe for the following three years. I'm not gonna worry about Italian or Greek until I *really* speak fluent French and Arabic. I already speak them and can use them whenever I need to. Greek, however, I'm planning on taking it up again at the earliest in my fourth year of university, and I should do a course in Greece.

I'm really glad to have decided to concentrate now. My life will be much easier.

Oriental Institute

Yes, I can do Arabic at the Oriental Institute and I'll have one lesson every day, doing it with students of Oriental Studies. It's £9/h and it has to be paid by the college. I can't do it this term now because 1. my Greek lessons at the Language Centre are paid for by the college; I doubt they'll pay for the Arabic course; 2. the students must have learnt a lot by now it'll be embarassing to get in knowing nothing. So I'm thinking of doing it in Year 2. I hope I can persuade the college because the tuition fee is quite dear. God told me Arabic is the right thing to do and if I deserve the course at the Oriental Institute, I will get in. :-)

French translation class HT Week 1

I'm going to put up notes to my weekly French translation homework here this year. I was gutted after the first translation class of Hillary Term, in which it was announced that I didn't get the prize for collections and my translation work, although 62, contained some embarassing mistakes and malapropisms. Farha got the most obscure vocabulary items that popped up in the mini revision test Jane gave us before class today. I must say my results were appalling. Lucky we were not marked. I should take French seriously now and putting notes up here will help me with my translation.

Ivor Winters met me...: my translation was rencontra, but apparently it implies that the person met me for the first time. What the English is really trying to say here is alla me chercher.

railway depot: I didn't know what it meant. It's gare ferroviaire. The French is clearer.

in early September/of late summer: I left the early out and translated 'late' into an awkward en déclin. Should be vers le début de septembre or au début de septembre and de fin d'été.

He took me to the room he had obtained for me...: my version was il m'amena, but a better one would be il me dirigea, because amener sounds literally physical.

a dinner he would make himself: tout seul vs. lui même (Farha's version)

young son: jeune fils. I don't know how the heck I translated it into petit fils. That didn't even sound like 'grandson' to me.. ><

I had been crossing the country... : was badly translated by me into Je vins de traverser le pais sans cesse. First, it should have been je venais de. But that wouldn't be right to use here either. Jane gave je traversais le pais depuis... So good! I should get used to the depuis + simple tenses instead of perfects. It's more French.

creative writing: création littéraire. I thought it would be écriture d'invention, which I saw on Profil study aids and was quite should would be right. But apparently, as a university course, 'creative writing' should be création littéraire. Écriture d'invention sounds too... juvenile. It's about writing stories.

... be working directly under Winters: sous la direction de. Directement sous sounds too hierarchical. If sous la direction de is used 'directement' can be omitted.

ramshackle car: voiture déglinguée (Alex's version), voiture délabrée (my version).

burned down to a gold: English. It meant to say the house is dried by the sun, not burnt by fire. The metaphore of burning can be kept in the French: brûlé en or. I really should learn to know how to use 'en' in the sense of 'become', and 'as'!! I translated 'a gold' to une pièce d'or which means a gold coin. So stupid.

he made me comfortable: il me mit à l'aise. Confortable is too literal to be correct.

the heat comes at you harder: as for the 'comes at', atteint is probably the best word. Farha remembered Camille's tapper from last term which would sound good as well. As for 'hard', I rendered it into a nice 'accablant' and changed the sentence a little but apparently you can just say fort.

half-orchard: moitié verger or être à moitié verger. The difference between démi (which I used) and moitié is that démi is mathematical measurement, whereas moitié is more abstract. Démi verger would literally be half a orchard, and the other half is set for other purposes.

giving me a drink... : m'offrant quelque chose à boire. Stop using donner!

chattering into vacancy: causer dans le vide. I used causer vainement because I didn't quite get the English.

On the 'why'

I've long been convinced that the reason why some people learn languages other than their own, is that they have lost identities to recover. Sadly we did not choose our race and birthplace, so for some of us, learning a different language draws you closer, linguistically and then even physically, to the culture you'd love to become part of. Everyone has a handful of languages that chime most sweetly in their heart; often, when your heart is enchanted by the sound of language, when you think its cadence has the most beautiful resonance, so beautiful that it seems it's about to move you to tears, then you know that's the language of yours that you were born without. Learning it is a process of completing your identity.

For me, they are French, Arabic, Greek and Italian.