How’s your Hmong?
If I thought Polish looks like a difficult language to learn then I must be wrong. What catches me out with Polish is that no words seem to look the way they are spelled. Phonetically as it were. For example “STOŁOWY” means table. The Ł is pronounced like an english “W” and the W is pronounced like an english “V”. Hence herself’s name is Sylwia, or as we would spell (and pronounce) Sylvia. Anyway I thought it was hard until I came across this:
And no that is not a mistake or one of those “Lorem ipsum” thingies. It’s pure Hmong. unlike Polish they use the same alphabet as English orthographically. Now try and figure out what it says!
For fans of Neal Stephenson, it looks like Qwglhm from his novel, Cryptonomicon.
22 queries. 0.650 seconds.
I’m lost!
You aren’t alone Grannymar. My head still hurts!
I can rattle off the names of a few Polish beers without too much difficulty. Żywiec (jeveeitz?), Okocim (Oh-ko-cheem), etc.
The problem with Polski, to me anyway, is that the pronounciation is totally different to othe r Western European languages.
Thankfully the people of Poland, at least in the major cities, generally have an excellent command of English.
I’ll be there (again) in just over four weeks
have you any idea what a Sprzedam is?
me don’t know no focal at all
Robert, having studied Hmong for about 20 years this November, I am still not fluent but I think this Wausau article is talking about domestic violence in Homg (which is actually spelt Hmoob) spoken homes.
Wausau interviewed 4 women and all 4 were in agreement that the Weston area was the worst as far as dialects and violence were concerned. Also, some of the shops in the area were charging too much for groceries and cleaning products. Teenage pregnancy was a huge social problem. Sorry I can’t help more, in about 10 years I should be completely fluent.
For a bit of Hmoob fun have a look at: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000505.html
Disclaimer: I take no responsibility for the quality of my translation. Of course, since I made it all up.
Ryan – You are as close as you can get. The only letters to be wary of are the ones with a diagonal line through them i.e. “Ł” which is a ‘vu’. A “Z” with the thingy through it is a ‘zhu’ or ‘shie’ I think. (Where is Frob when he is needed?). No thingy = ordinary Z which polish words seem to love!
Dan – Herself is asleep so as soon as she surfaces I will ask her to translate. Unless Frob can provide the answer first. But I think it means Text Book or Manual.
Gaye – Are you serious? You speak Hmong?
You are right about the context of the article. I managed to find a Hmong online translation service that didn’t give me the translation but enough context to figure out what it was on about.
Robert, I am so sorry I feel like a complete spastic for making you ask that question to which my answer is “no”. I was only joking. My little linguistic stunt was almost successful as there were the names of the women on the right side, with their names also included in the article and plus there was an English translation in parenthesis that said “domestic violence” somewhere in the text. The rest I was just making up.
I like languages and am trying to learn as many as I can, unfortunately Hmoob is not in the list, yet.
If you have seen the 13th Warrior with the shortass but sexy-accent Antonio Banderas in it, like him, I was pretending I could read a text in another language and by the end of it I’d be fluent… Not likely, but it’s a delicious fantasy for a language freak like myself.
PS: Banderas is an Arab who listens to drunken Norse men rambling in the dark of the night and by morning he can speak the language… as if.
Hi Gaye,
I was pretty sure that you were joking but on the wilds of ‘teh internets’ one can never be sure