Kitabu cha who?
Yesterday I checked out a Swahili Book of Mormon from the library (I'm going to start working on my Moroni 10:3-5 page again). Tried a fun little exercise that I did a few times back on my mission (with Chinese grammatically and with Tamil as far as the script): examine known passages/features of the text and try to find out as much about the language as you can. I only did it for a few minutes but here's what I've found. (Note that I haven't yet checked to make sure these conclusions are correct. Also, if you're not familiar with the Book of Mormon, it's been translated into several different languages -- over 100 now -- and so it can act as a kind of Rosetta Stone for amateur linguists. :) You could do the same thing with the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights page, which has over 300 different translations.)
First, the names of the books (which are usually of the form "Book of ...") are Kitabu cha ... Second, "First Book of Nephi" is Kitabu cha Kwanza cha Nefi and "Second Book of Nephi" is "Kitabu cha Pili cha Nefi", so kwanza is "first" and pili is "second" (so far I haven't checked to see how the ordinal numbers differ from the cardinals, if at all). Cha is used both as a possessive (cha Nefi) and as some kind of connective between kwanza/pili and kitabu. Third, "Third Nephi" is Nefi wa Tatu, interestingly. So there's some kind of difference between "First Book" and "Third Nephi" -- maybe wa functions as "the" sometimes does in English: "Nephi the Third." "Words of Mormon" is translated as Maneno ya Mormoni, so apparently the possessive can also be ya. I can't help but wonder why there's a difference between cha Nefi and ya Mormoni. Fourth, it seems like the only final consonants used are nasals and liquids (/m/, /n/, and /r/ are the ones I've noticed so far). Other than that, all syllables tend to end in vowels (of which there seem to be just the traditional a, e, i, o, u).
Well, all of that is probably awfully boring for most of you. But for budding philologists like me it's like an afternoon in a candy store. :) I've been reading about language acquisition in children in my English Language class (intro to linguistics), and it's incredibly fascinating. I'd never really thought a whole lot about it, but it reminds me a lot of my younger brothers and also provides some neat insights into second language acquisition.
Other than that, I've been reading The Richest Man in Babylon, by George Clason. It's good so far and the principles in it (mainly that you should save at least 10% of your earnings separately, and that your perceived "needs" (a.k.a. wants) will grow to fill your budget unless you protest to the contrary) are sound. I don't really care about being wealthy, but it would be nice to be financially secure and to know that I'm using money wisely and not foolishly.
First, the names of the books (which are usually of the form "Book of ...") are Kitabu cha ... Second, "First Book of Nephi" is Kitabu cha Kwanza cha Nefi and "Second Book of Nephi" is "Kitabu cha Pili cha Nefi", so kwanza is "first" and pili is "second" (so far I haven't checked to see how the ordinal numbers differ from the cardinals, if at all). Cha is used both as a possessive (cha Nefi) and as some kind of connective between kwanza/pili and kitabu. Third, "Third Nephi" is Nefi wa Tatu, interestingly. So there's some kind of difference between "First Book" and "Third Nephi" -- maybe wa functions as "the" sometimes does in English: "Nephi the Third." "Words of Mormon" is translated as Maneno ya Mormoni, so apparently the possessive can also be ya. I can't help but wonder why there's a difference between cha Nefi and ya Mormoni. Fourth, it seems like the only final consonants used are nasals and liquids (/m/, /n/, and /r/ are the ones I've noticed so far). Other than that, all syllables tend to end in vowels (of which there seem to be just the traditional a, e, i, o, u).
Well, all of that is probably awfully boring for most of you. But for budding philologists like me it's like an afternoon in a candy store. :) I've been reading about language acquisition in children in my English Language class (intro to linguistics), and it's incredibly fascinating. I'd never really thought a whole lot about it, but it reminds me a lot of my younger brothers and also provides some neat insights into second language acquisition.
Other than that, I've been reading The Richest Man in Babylon, by George Clason. It's good so far and the principles in it (mainly that you should save at least 10% of your earnings separately, and that your perceived "needs" (a.k.a. wants) will grow to fill your budget unless you protest to the contrary) are sound. I don't really care about being wealthy, but it would be nice to be financially secure and to know that I'm using money wisely and not foolishly.
posted by Ben at 9:27 PM
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