El antiguo jardín nocturno
Parece soportar una pena profunda,
Como si el peso de una sombra silente
Se cerniera en el aire.
La hierba se inclina con profundo pesar,
Incapaz de olvidar todavía,
Recordando desde ayer,
Aquellas zarpitas que la agitaron.
<a href=”https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25040740-the-story-of-q” style=”float: left; padding-right: 20px”><img alt=”The story of Q” border=”0″ src=”https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/111×148-bcc042a9c91a29c1d680899eff700a03.png” /></a><a href=”https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25040740-the-story-of-q”>The story of Q</a> by <a href=”https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2747359.Allan_Hunter”>Allan Hunter</a><br/>
My rating: <a href=”https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1214088037″>4 of 5 stars</a><br /><br />
Bildungsroman about the life of Derek, regarded as different since childhood. Derek narrates his journey being queer in a squareminded society where the youngsters, contrary to popular belief, are the quintessence of conventionalism. Full of allusions and interesting references to other authors to take into consideration in the quest for self-discovery, as Derek is eager to learn what is “wrong” with him and this fact invites the reader to wonder and investigate. Through its pages we travel across the scant effects of hippy America in some southern universities – to Derek’s disappointment – during the seventies, and the stark difference between traditional views on women – held by some young ladies in the universities where Derek studied – and women’s lib movement – including an allusion to Valerie Solanas -. Highly recommendable.
<br/><br/>
<a href=”https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/18210433-gisela-p-rez”>View all my reviews</a>
As you will remember from my previous article on the origin of English, it is a close relative of German, even if Present day English does not bear much resemblance to its “cousin”. We must take into consideration that although both languages had a great part of their vocabulary in common to begin with, in the case of English, only 85% of it survived the Norman invasion – above all basic vocabulary -. Now, let’s see some basic similarities.
We can find several similarities in lexicon, such as the existence of some words in Present day English and German whose origin can be traced right back to Old English:
OE sprecan / PdG sprechen / PdE speak
OE nū / PdG nur / PdE now
OE cū / PdG Kuh / PdE cow
OE cyning / PrG König/ PdE king
and others whose resemblance to Modern German is patent, while the equivalent terms in Present day English are no longer their descendants:
OE burg / PdG Burg (castle) / PdE fortress
OE beame / PdG Baum / PdE tree
OE þū / PdG du / PdE you
OE oððer / PdG oder / PdE or
OE scīene / PdG schön / PdE beautiful
OE niman / PdG nehmen / PdE take
another similarity which links Old English to Present day German is the prevalence of self-explained compounds:
hydrogen – Wasserstoff (water-stuff), telephone – Fernsprecher (far speaker)
lēohtfæt – lamp-lēoht (lēoht = light, fœt = vessel)
fiellesēocnes – epilepsy (falling sickness)
If we look at its grammar, Old English resembles German more than it does Present day English: nouns and adjectives have four cases, adjectives have three separate forms, one for each gender, and verb inflection is less elaborate than that in Latin but yet it has distinct endings for person, number, tense and mood, and we can also find a remarkable resemblance since we start studying verb conjugation:
infinitive – bīdan(remain) / present simple, second person singular – bītst, third person singular – bīt(t)
Old English, a synthetic language just like Modern German, contrasts in the most striking manner with Present day English due to the complete absence of inflections in the latter, where this kind of complexity is unnecessary, as it conveys meaning – as an analytic language – through the placing of the words alone, without resorting on inflectional morphemes. As a Germanic language, Old English developed a twofold declension; a strong declension which is used with nouns when they are accompanied by a definite article or similar (demonstrative, possessive pronoun), and a weak declension, used when the noun is preceded by such determinants, which has remained in use in Present day German, whereas in Present day English adjectives bear no inflections at all.
gōd cnæpling- gut Junge
sē gōda cnæpling-der gute Junge
En estos tiempos de avances tecnológicos diarios, cada día se crean nuevas aplicaciones que facilitan la vida diaria de las personas con acceso a tales avances. Últimamente he escuchado en la radio los detalles de las mejoras realizadas en Google Translator, gracias a las cuales van a poder traducirse fragmentos orales de conversaciones en el momento. Sin embargo, esta aplicación tiene sus limitaciones, al estar fundamentada en un sistema literal de traducción, que seguramente dará lugar a no pocas hilarantes situaciones que pueden traernos del recuerdo aquel memorable discurso de Kennedy en Alemania en el que declaraba ser un donut (Ich bin ein Berliner, en lugar de Ich bin Berliner que sería “soy Berlinés”).
El caso es que en la traducción no sólo prevalece la lingüística, sino que estamos ante una tarea interdisciplinar. Y si se pueden cometer cómicos errores debido a las diferencias lingüísticas como el anteriormente mencionado, las faltas de exactitud debidas al exceso de literalidad, pueden ser aún mayores, pese a que pueda resultar paradójico. El texto está inserto en una red de signos culturales de las lenguas fuente y término, por lo que la fidelidad al sentido del texto no es igual a la equivalencia entre palabras o textos, sino que al funcionar el texto dentro de una cultura, se debe conseguir que el impacto del texto en la lengua término sea igual que el texto original en la lengua fuente.
Como opinaba Douglas Robinson, la traducción es un proceso intuitivo; “sense is not cognition but sensation”. Y eso no lo conseguirá jamás una aplicación.
Here I am, tired as if I had been digging up a trench. All I have been doing is studying for my exams. Sociolinguistics on Wednesday and Literary Criticism on Friday – which has not been much of a success, if I am sincere…-. I am dog tired, plumb-tuckered… And there are two exams left! My mind is still full of data, and I am feeling a bit defeated because of my failure to spot Derrida in my exam on Friday. I really find this man difficult to read. He sounds very scholarly and expert. I mean, when you finally get to understand what the guy is actually saying, you really find it interesting and intelligent, but reading Derrida gives me a headache. I was much more keen on reading Roland Barthes. Above all “Mythologies”. R.B. makes a very clever analysis of society through popular culture such as Hollywood films about the Roman Empire, Pressing-catch or propagandistic photography in politics. It is clever, enlightening and great fun. The article on propagandistic photography is great and while you are reading it, you see what Barthes actually means, as this is daily stuff that you experience in your life whenever the elections time gets close.
It would be great to have elections now in my country. As I witness how people are thrown out of their homes, how no one seems to be able to find a job anymore, how my own boss is drowning in debt, how they make it more and more difficult here for you to create your own company and people apply in other countries, how I may become one of the nearly six millions of unemployed people any minute now, politicians here keep lying and spending money from our taxes we pay and from the E.U. bailout in becoming filthy rich. The same politicians who filled our walls with posters, with photos in which they had that “dreaming-of-an-ideal-future”gaze, or this face-to-face sincere look in their eyes, or that family guy air about them, must be laughing their heads off at us for having put them in such an advantageous position.
The fact is that corruption has always been endemic here. It is very sad that the rules to the game are so dirty that everyone who gets near the power-centre starts emitting a characteristic stench of putrefaction due to their systematic disregard of the people, of the base of the pyramid of power.
“The bluest eye” depicts a patriarchal society, that of the black south, in the forties. One of the protagonist families moves up North in order to increase their probabilities of having a better life after the Great War. The prospects in the South were not hopeful, but those they encounter up North are not what they had first expected either. Mr. and Mrs. Breedlove come across difficulties, due to the clash between societal habits in the North and South, but this fact is much more noticeable by Pauline Breedlove, as she has developed a strong dependence on her husband and finds it harder to adapt to their new environment. She depends on him emotionally and economically, until she decides to work. They start having violent fights and finally their relationship deteriorates until eventually she becomes fully responsible for work and money, while her husband becomes a drunkard layabout. When they arrive at Lorain, Ohio, she feels lonely, dependent and useless, and she is despised for it. When she starts working, she keeps on being abused by other coloured women (for being ugly, for not straightening her hair, for her manners), by the whites and at home. She becomes just a beast of burden that produces money, sexual relief and absorbs all her husband’s complaints and resentment about his past experiences, and his meaningless present.
We encounter concentric circles of dependence and abuse in “The bluest eye”, the outer being constituted by being black in a white ruling society, then the one resulted from the tense relationship between southern blacks and northern coloured people. Another circle holds men’s frustration due to all all the above pressures which are in turn projected on women in the shape of violence, contempt, hostility and hatred, the same feelings they get from their surrounding context.
The inner circle of subservience is that constituted by little girls. Little boys are abused as well, as can be derived from Cholly’s experience or by the image of Sammy being beaten up by his mother in order to release her own pressure as a woman abused by men, society and the whites. However it is even more noticeable in the case of girls, who are subjected to abuse as children and as women. Pecola is turned into the object of everybody’s contempt and hostility (except for the group of whores), even other children’s. Finally, she is raped and impregnated by her own father, which is the culmination of all subordination and reification of women.
DISSENT, DEBATE, CREATE
a critical theory podcast
Lingüista y escritor. Profesor universitario.
"Y si leo, si compro libros y los devoro, no es por un placer intelectual —yo no tengo placeres, sólo tengo hambre y sed— ni por un deseo de conocimientos sino por una astucia inconsciente que recién ahora descubro: coleccionar palabras, prenderlas en mí como si ellas fueran harapos y yo un clavo, dejarlas en mi inconsciente, como quien no quiere la cosa, y despertar, en la mañana espantosa, para encontrar a mi lado un poema ya hecho."
thoughts about politics and the passing scene
La guerra es la paz. La ignorancia es la fuerza. La libertad es la esclavitud.
Etimologías, gramática, vocabulario, ortografía y muchas más cosas relacionadas con la lengua
Life, Love, and Learning with Borderline Personality Disorder
Antropólog@s de diversas generaciones y miradas
Historias de perros y gatos que acuden a Clínica Veterinaria Betulia. Just another WordPress.com site
Club de Lectura de la Asociación Cultural Aminta
Scientific Investigations into the Cthulhu Mythos
Delegación Oficial en Cantabria de KRAV MAGA FEL ESPAÑA (sistema de defensa personal y combate cuerpo a cuerpo) en Santander, Ribamontán al Mar, Cartes y Santoña. Fundadores del Departamento de Krav Maga de la Federación Cántabra de Lucha (Consejo Superior de Deportes). Pioneros en Cantabria (2005).
Ideas change everything
African Americans in the 19th Century: Slavery, Resistance, Abolition, the Civil War, Emancipation, Reconstruction, and the Nadir
Un blog para i-lustradores
The Culture Shock from West to East
La vida en un blog
Gisela Pérez González 
