02 September 2006

 

New/Old Words

The Meaning of Liff
By Douglas Adams and John Lloyd

In Life*, there are many hundreds of common experiences, feelings, situations and even objects which we all know and recognize, but for which no words exist.
On the other hand, the world is littererd with thousands of spare words which spend their time doing nothing but loafing about on signposts pointing at places.
Our job, as wee see it, is to get these words dow off the signposts and into the mouths of babes and sucklings and so on, where they can start earning their keep in everyday conversation and make a more positive contribution to society.
Douglas Adams
John Lloyd

*And, indeed, in Liff.



This as much as any other book encouraged me to further my English studies.
(The other book was "The brothers Karamazov")
I purchased my my first major dictionary after I read these spiffs.

This might be old hat to many, but I love it.

I will use Liff to enhance/degrade my posts as I see fit, or not.

My Mother tongue, Afrikaans is one of the most expressive languages in the world, but is spoken by 15 million people at most.
If I could tell you some of the stories that I have told on this blog in Afrikaans, you would die laughing.
But I have moved away from the circumstances that made me Afrikaans, yet they hold me very close.
So the stories that I tell do not ring true to the people that understand Afrikaans.
I often look at South African/Afrikaans/English sites, some are good and some are shit, some are so blatantly racist that I wince.
I have had some very nice response from Afrikaans people that have moved with me.
The term Afrikaans also include English speaking people from South Africa.
The people that I leave behind also include English speakers.

Patricia de Lille, a prominent SA politician, said amongst one and a half million other things, that SA cannot abolish Afrikaans as that would leave the country bereft of the ability to say "Jou moer"

"Jou Moer" is partly expresed in, "Fuck You", "You are an Asshole", "Your mother is a Whore", "Your mother is a Pig", "I don't like you"

"Jou moer my maat" means "Go for it I like you", "If you try that I will kill you"

Here at KeesKennis my nuances turn to shit.
I love it, it becomes a new challenge.

For those of you who like a bit of history and language here is the SA National Anthem pre 1994.



If you need more.
The columns as they apear are.
Afrikaans -- As we sing it today -- Literal translation from Afrikaans


I sing Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika as heartily as the rest even though I have, from many years ago resolved never to follow. (I even know the words, and what they mean)

Yes it is the same John Adams as you find in "Hitchiker guide to the universe", go and read all 4 parts of the trilogy and then come and argue, the ANSWER is 42.

John Loyd you have to google for, we white south africans ees tooo lazy, bro, besides that is the job of the gov'.
Comments:
There is entirely too much in your post to respond to on a quippy basis. I love Douglas Adams. I'm totally ignorant on Afrikaans and I need to reread what you've written and directed us to.
What a great site you have.
 
Thanks Mrs. Frothy.
 
I wish I was good at languages. I would love to learn Afrikaans.
 
For anyone interested in the John Lloyd who co-authored "The Meaning of Liff", here's a link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lloyd_%28writer%29

Marvin the Paranoid Android was based on the writer Andrew Marshall (in the John Lloyd article).
 
Post a Comment



<< Home
[ ... {NOT} lots of comment code here, BLOGGER IS EFFING YOU, Leave your comment RIGHT HERE... ] 4 comments

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

eXTReMe Tracker
Listed on BlogShares
Web Pages referring to this page
Link to this page and get a link back!
Click to give BLOG4REEL vote!