This is a translation of part of the chapter on Romance languages in Marius F Valkhoff’s 1943 study of De expansie van het Nederlands. The text is annotated–probably excessively and untidily so–with [additional or contrasting information] and [???] where Valkhoff has clearly found something I haven’t.
I’ve been translating quite a lot of elderly Flemish over the past few months. Here’s an excerpt from some manuscript memoirs found in the municipal archives of Ditverstaanzetochniet: An ivory trader on the Congo River has been suffering severe depression as a result of harrassment by an inquisitive steamboat captain speaking defective French. He decides…
It may not have worked, but nineteenth century medicine often sounds rather fun. This from An Epitome of Braithwaite’s Retrospect of practical medicine and surgery (1860): M. Lallemand, of Montpellier, has great confidence in aromatic bitters, to which a small portion of brandy has been added, followed by active friction of the loins… As internal…
The excerpt feature in Google Books sometimes delivers surreal gems, Escher stones. Here’s one from Advance Japan: A Nation Thoroughly in Earnest: “that the equivalent of the expression ‘not worth a button’ is, in Japanese, ‘not worth the head of a sardine.’ Mackerel also are extremely plentiful.” (I’m translating some mid-nineteenth century colloquial Flemish and…
Flemish jurisprudence dealing with relationships between potato coops and their tax-mitigating members. One new expression: tegensprekelijk debat, from the French débat contradictoire of réunion contradictoire, meaning basically (and slightly bizarrely to my mind) a meeting or hearing at which several or all parties are present. Due to some aspect of legal history with which I…
Eric Dams notes the problems Flemish ultras are facing in getting their own “country” domain. The report in De Tijd is incorrect: .cat was granted to a similarly nasty coalition of Catalan separatists not because of Catalonia’s regional status but on the basis that it be used for cultural entities and purposes, a condition which…
That’s what Urs Dürmüller of Berne University says, and Switzerland.isyours explains why in greater detail. English became popular in Brussels, partly because it was viewed as a neutral language, exempt from the rivalries of the supporters of Flemish and French (German princes were invited to take up Balkan thrones in the C19th for much the…
While we’re on things Flemish, I’m afraid I have a tendency to disbelieve shibboleth stories. The big one in these parts is that of the brave Flemish-speakers identifying the craven French-speakers after a battle in 1302 by politely asking them to say “scilt ende vrient”. That’s debunked by Bill Poser here. An alternative version has…
There’s a curious note in the part of Alfonso X’s General estoria (ca 1280s) where he’s listing the languages spoken by Japheth’s descendants, sensibly identified early on as Europeans by European bible scholars:
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