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2016-07-05 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

Of masks, minds, sinners, and the word “person”

Enlace para español/Click here for Spanish

Dear reader,

What is it you and I, and everyone we know, are all examples of? So many words for it: “individuals,” “human beings,” just plain “humans,” “persons,” to name just a few. These are plurals; in the singular, each of us is an “individual,” a “human being,” or simply a “human,” or a “person.”  That last word may be the most common of all.persona máscara classic mask

“Person” has an interesting history: it comes from Latin persona, with a root sense of “to sound through”—the reference is to an actor’s mask, possibly with some means of voice amplification, as with a horn. Persona, then, came to mean “role” or “character,” gradually acquiring the further sense of “person, individual.” Engl. “persona” (with the “a” hanging on at the end just like in Latin) still means an assumed role or personality.

Persona’s descendants are found throughout the Romance languages (Sp.. It. persona, Fr. personne which can also mean “nobody,” Port. pessoa, etc.), but also Ger. Person, Swed. person, and many others.

The Slavic languages use a wholly different word: Rus. chelovek (pronounced “chel-a-VYEK”) appears to derive from words for “mind, thought” and “time, eternity”—thus the word for “person” would mean something like “eternal mind,” a lovely and spiritual sense Plato no doubt would have savored. (Engl. “man” seems, likewise, cognate with “mind” and originally meant any human being.)

Depending on the context, a whole series of terms can be more or less equivalent to “person”: “citizen,”  “subject”, “taxpayer,” “voter,” “resident,” and “consumer,” to name just a few. Of course their connotations differ pretty dramatically. There is an assertion of rights implicit in “citizen” that’s not quite there in “consumer,” though the latter has legal rights too.

Then there is “souls” with all its mystery and sometimes pathos—think of a phrase like “the 1,517 souls that perished on the R.M.S. Titanic.”

A curious and fascinating word for “person” is pikadur in Guinea-Bissau Crioulo, a tongue with a strong Portuguese core plus West African elements. Pikadur is from Port. pecador (sinner). Pecado (sin) is related to the second syllable in “impeach” which originally meant “to find fault, to find sin.”  In this word for “person,” the hand of the Christian missionary is not hard to see!

Theology meets language: in Crioulo you may mean “person” but you’re saying “sinner”!

¡Buenas palabras! Good words!

Pablo

Copyright ©2016 by Pablo J. Davis.  All Rights Reserved. An earlier version of this essay originally appeared in the Jul. 8-14, 2016 edition of La Prensa Latina (Memphis, Tennessee) as number 188 in the weekly bilingual column, “Misterios y Engimas de la Traducción/Mysteries and Enigmas of Translation”.  Pablo Julián Davis, PhD, CT is an ATA (American Translators Association) Certified Translator, Engl>Span; a Tennessee State Courts Certified Interpreter, Engl<>Span; and an innovative trainer in the fields of translation, interpreting, and intercultural competency, with over 25 years experience. He holds the doctorate in Latin American History from The Johns Hopkins University, and is a Juris Doctor Candidate at the Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law, University of Memphis (May 2017).

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: "Pablo J. Davis", certified, Davis, etymology, individual, Pablo, person, persona, translation, translator

2016-06-26 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

The whole megillah

Enlace para español/Link here for Spanish

Dear reader,

A friend was recently telling us about his first time on a plane: “Después la azafata nos explicó lo del cinturón, las salidas de emergencia y todo el rollo.” (Then the flight attendant explained about the seat belts, the emergency exits, and everything.)

megillahThe last phrase, y todo el rollo, is a common idiom in Spanish to refer to the whole of something, with a sense of thoroughness and detail. Colloquial English has equivalents including “the whole nine yards,” “the whole shootin’ match” and others.

Spanish rollo means roll (e.g. of paper). How is it that it can also mean  mean something like “the whole nine yards,” with the sense of completeness or tedium?

Before books became commonplace, documents were written on parchment arranged in rolls. The most famous of these was the Torah, the Hebrew Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) that is the origin and ancestor of what we know today as the Bible.

Here’s where a colloquial English expression, slightly outdated but still common, comes in: “the whole Megillah.” The phrase, carrying the same sense and tone of todo el rollo, undoubtedly arose among Yiddish speakers (as were nearly all Ashkenazi Jews, that is, those of European origin, as distinct from the Sephardim of Spanish and North African origin) using the deeply-familiar Hebrew word. The expression in Yiddish: gantse megillah.

The cartoon character “Magilla Gorilla” derives its name from the colloquial use of this word.

Megillah offers a fascinating case of a word whose origin is sacred and which takes on a colloquial meaning that is profane (in the strict sense of worldly, non-religious) and humorous.

¡Buenas palabras! … Good words!

Pablo J. Davis

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: "Pablo J. Davis", culture, Davis, expressions, Jewish, Jews, megillah, origin, Pablo, rollo, the whole megillah, todo el rollo, translation, Yiddish

2016-06-16 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

Father’s Day and (in)gratitude

Enlace para español/Link here for Spanish

rembrandt autorretrato viejo

My father loved this self-portrait of Rembrandt, and for me it has become almost a portrait of him.

(Part of having a father is not always being grateful for what he does, or did, for us… Or not even being aware of most of it. Usually it takes growing up, living, taking our share of hard knocks, and then a few years of doing that pretty tough job he did… to open our eyes. Happy Fathers Day to all, and loving thanks to our own, RIP.)

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

–Robert Hayden (1913-1980) “Those Winter Sundays”.
With thanks to Garrison Keillor for introducing us to this poem one day, many years ago, on his radio feature, Writer’s Almanac.

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: daughters, Fathers, Fathers Day, gratitude, ingratitude, sons

2016-05-30 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

Memorial Day

Enlace para español/Link here for Spanish

What Memorial Day was: in the beginning, a century and a half ago, a commemoration of the Union and Confederate dead in the Civil War. It was called Decoration Day, because its ritual heart was remembrance of the war dead by visiting and adorning their graves. There were distinct days in the South and North; eventually they merged into a single national holiday instituted in hopes of bringing reconciliation after the shattering carnage of the conflict’s four years.

What Memorial Day became: a broader commemoration of the fallen in our wars. The name began to be used in the late 19th century and was made an official federal holiday after World War II.

Decoration Day, Kearney Neb. 1910

Memorial Day commemoration, Kearney, Nebraska, 1910. Photo courtesy of US Library of Congress, American Memory.

What Memorial Day often is: a celebration of all who have served in the armed forces of the United States, though there is a day set aside for that purpose every November, Veterans Day.

What Memorial Day should never be: a celebration of war itself. True, some conflicts were forced upon us, advanced human liberty, and had their moments of nobility. Defending our homes, hearths, and freedoms is just. But merely saying a war is right doesn’t make it so, and as painful as it can be to realize, the spilled blood of one of our own doesn’t automatically make the cause just, either.

It seems those who know war best hate it most. Those who merely fancy they know war, from the pages of books or from great deeds projected on silver screens, often seem the most eager to plunge their country (but not themselves) into that hell.

And it is a hell. Even a just war kills, mutilates, and destroys, sowing seeds of cruelty, disease, and ruin. Neither warriors nor civilians truly escape its scourges.

We’re often told Memorial Day is a day of gratitude, a day when we thank those who paid the ultimate price for our freedom. I know that’s what we’re supposed to think. It’s politically correct, in the true meaning of political correctness: it’s the most comfortable interpretation of this holiday, from the standpoint of those who’ve had the power to send our young people off to fight, and used it.

And sometimes, I agree, “Thank you” is the most fitting sentiment. But I don’t know that anyone has the right to tell us as Americans what to think and feel. Maybe sometimes the words that come from deep down are “I’m so sorry.” And, sometimes—always, really—the words written on our hearts, the only words that really matter, are: “We love you, we miss you, and we remember.”

Ninety-eight years ago this month, the English soldier-poet Wilfred Owen wrote these verses about a fallen soldier whose comrades move him into the sun, hoping he will recover under its warmth.

Move him into the sun—
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields half-sown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds,—
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides,
Full-nerved—still warm—too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
—O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth’s sleep at all?

Owen entitled this poem “Futility.” Two months after writing it, he suffered a gunshot wound to the head. Four months after that, as the “Great War” we call World War One was ending, Wilfred Owen died. He was twenty-five years old.

Pablo J. Davis

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: "Pablo J. Davis", CIvil War, Davis, Decoration Day, Futility, history, holidays, Memorial Day, memory, Pablo, poem, poet, soldiers, United States, war, Wilfred Owen

2016-05-25 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

“Vote for me, I’m jes’ folks…”

Enlace para español/Link here for Spanish

Dear reader,

In this election season that already seems too long by half, we’ d be lucky to have a nickel for each time we’ve heard that word so dear to politicians’  hearts: the (near-untranslatable) “folks.”

Harrison log cabin

Claiming humble origins has been a favorite gesture of politicians in the US, almost since the birth of the Republic. An example: William Henry Harrison’s 1840 campaign, which made much use of log-cabin imagery.

The main sense of this colloquial word is “people.” But unlike the latter, “folks” connotes familiarity, warmth, even intimacy. “What can I bring you folks to drink?” is what a waiter might say trying to be friendly and casual instead of formal.

Politicians adore saying “folks” as it makes them sound humble and approachable—at least they think it does. “I want to thank the good folks of this state for sending me to Congress…”

Not only do they like to call the people, voters, and taxpayers “folks”—they love to apply it to themselves. “I’m just folks” (the deep-fried Southernism is: “jes’ folks”) is a verbal version of bluejeans and  lumberjack shirt. Could be the richer the candidate, the more they like saying “folks”—or feel they need to!

It can also be an informal term for “parents”: “I really miss my folks back home.” Not quite as common is the broader sense of “relatives” (old-fashioned “relations” or colloquial “kin” or “kinfolk”).

As “ordinary people,” “folks” can be translated by Spanish el pueblo. As a form of address, two possibilities are mi gente or amigos; a particularly Mexican variant would be mi raza or mi racita.

It’s not to be confused with the singular “folk,” meaning “the (ordinary) people” or “a people,” as with an ethnic group. (This is where the term “folklore” came from.)

The friendly aura of “folks” can also be weirdly out of place, as when Pres. G.W. Bush spoke of “the folks responsible for 9-11” or when Pres. Obama said, “We’ve tortured some folks.”

For a brilliant dissection of the way so many of our politicans try to be “just folks,” give a listen to the late, great country singer Cal Smith performing Sonny Throckmorton’s song, “I’m Just A Farmer”.

¡Buenas palabras! Good words!

Pablo

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: "jes' folks", "just folks", campaign, culture, election, English, folks, humble, language, origins, politicians, politics, Spanish, translation

2016-04-21 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

“Cartonera” publishers: books for (and by!) everyone

Enlace para español/Link here for Spanish

Some stories are original. Some are classics in the public domain. Some brim with illustrations, some are for coloring. The variations are endless. But the covers are all made of recycled cardboard, with hand-painted titles and artwork. Each one’s a personal statement—a true original.

cartonera foto1Introducing the “Cartonera” phenomenon! This truly grassroots movement was born in Argentina during the early 2000’s economic crisis. Cartoneras are cooperative, neighborhood-based publishing ventures. They’ve spread throughout Latin America.

Now the movement has caught on here with the founding of “Memphis Cartonera” by Rhodes College students and local nonprofits. Dr. Elizabeth Pettinaroli, a Spanish literature and language professor at Rhodes who conducted field research on cartoneras in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Paraguay, has coordinated these efforts and led the mobilization of community partners.

It’s about rethinking art and literature’s place in our lives, fostering creativity, literacy, and sustainability.

This spring’s ongoing workshops: Centro Cultural (Cartonera comics), Cazateatro Bilingual Theater (Cartonera for adults/kids), Danza Azteca Quetzalcoatl (Spanish/Nahua poetry workshop), Refugee Empowerment Program (kids afterschool program), Latino Memphis/Abriendo Puertas (high-schoolers workshop), Caritas Village (Cartonera photo books for afterschool reading program).

A chance to learn more, talk with participants, and enjoy viewing some of the creations so far will be on Sat., Apr. 23 (6-9pm) at StoryBooth, 431 N. Cleveland in Crosstown Arts: the Memphis Cartonera opening party and exhibition. Free and open to the public. Attendees can paint, read, and make their own Cartonera book! The event continues Sun,. Apr. 24 (12-5pm).

Further info: Dr. Elizabeth Pettinaroli, 901-843-3828, pettinarolie@rhodes.edu. Sponsored by Rhodes College.

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: "Memphis Cartonera", books, cartonera, cultura, culture, humanidades, humanities, libros, Memphis, sustainable

2016-04-01 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

The first of April, fools and innocence

Enlace para español/Click here for Spanish

Dear reader,

It’s not a holiday, school kids don’t get the day off, stores don’t hold sales—but April First is widely loved.

April Fool’s Day is a day for telling false tales with a straight face—and, if the victim falls for it, crowing “April Fool!” aFree iPad visual!t your gullible listener. (French “Poisson d’Avril!” and Italian “Pesce d’aprile!¨ both mean “April fish”).

April Fool jokes can be in print too; many newspapers traditionally added a false front page over the real one, with absurd, fake news. A few papers still do it.

This US election campaign will be tough on April Fool pranksters—who can top the absurdity of the actual, real news?

In the Spanish-speaking world, though US influence has spread “El Día de los Tontos” somewhat, the real equivalent is Dec. 28, Día de los Santos Inocentes.

This light-hearted festival has a dreadful origin: the Biblical massacre of infants ordered by King Herod, who hoped the Baby Jesus would be among those slain. Christianity’s Feast of the Holy Innocents commemorates these martyrs.

From those tragic innocents to the innocent victims of the creative lies of Dec. 28 is quite a jump. But that’s how popular culture adapted and transformed that ancient religious commemoration.

When someone falls for a Dec. 28 gag, the traditional gloat is “Que la inocencia te valga” (May your innocence do you good).

The tall tale can be called a “joke” (Span. chiste, broma), “practical joke” or “prank” (broma pesada). If it’s elaborately constructed, uses print or other media, and is meant to snare a large number of people, it’s a “hoax.” In Spanish, Dec. 28 jokes in particular are often called inocentadas, playing off the day’s name.

On a serious note, did you hear about the Trump-Sanders “national unity ticket”? And that Apple is giving away free iPads to commemorate Steve Jobs’s birthday? ¡Que la inocencia te valga!

Buenas palabras/Good words!

Pablo

An earlier version of this essay originally appeared in the Mar. 25-31, 2015 edition of La Prensa Latina (Memphis, Tennessee) as number 174 in the weekly bilingual column, “Misterios y Engimas de la Traducción/Mysteries and Enigmas of Translation”.  Pablo Julián Davis, PhD, CT is an ATA (Aamerican Translators Association) Certified Translator, Engl>Span; a Tennessee State Courts Certified Interpreter, Engl<>Span; and an innovative trainer in the fields of translation, interpreting, and intercultural competency, with over 25 years experience. He holds the doctorate in Latin American History from The Johns Hopkins University, and is a Juris Doctor Candidate at the Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law, University of Memphis (May 2017).

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: "Pablo J. Davis", April, April Fools Day, cultura, culture, Davis, Día de los Tontos, English, español, Fools, inglés, inocentadas, Pablo, Santos Inocentes, Spanish, Tontos, traductor, translator

2016-03-26 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

Lunary language and lore

Enlace para español/Link for Spanish

Dear reader,

This past week brought not only a full moon (Span. luna llena, or, in a graceful Latin form, plenilunio), but also a penumbral lunar eclipse.  And as far removed as most of us city folk are from the country and the spell the night sky used to cast on humanity, our companion orb has not lost the power to stun us with its beauty.

Human language testifies to the profound imprint that Earth’s satellite has made on human consciousness. We’ll look very briefly at some of that testimony, mainly in English and Spanish.

penumbral lunar eclipse march 2016The odd chance that Sun (Sol) and Moon (Luna) appear the same size in the earthly sky, has surely reinforced human cultures’ seeing them as a pair representing male/female, gold/silver, night/day.  The moon-female tie runs deep: the lunar phases find an echo in woman’s menstrual cycle.

The moon has its day: Engl. “Monday” (Ger. Montag, Dan. mandag), Span. lunes (Fr. lundi, It. lunedì).  It also gives us “month”; Span. mes is from Lat.  mensis, a root visible in words like “bi-mensual.”

Another link: moon and madness, yields  Engl. “lunatic” and Span. Lunático.  But  English informalizes it with “looney” and “looney tunes” (from the old cartoon series); “looney bin” is a mental hospital.

English also uses “moon” for “to languish sadly” (as one pining for a lost or unrequited love), which is a slightly archaic usage, and “to show one’s bared buttocks,” which isn’t.

Sp. lunar (loo-NAR) is also “birthmark,” once thought caused by the Moon’s influence, or “polka dot” on clothing. Spanish calls a landing on the Moon an alunizaje (by analogy to aterrizaje on Earth).

“Moonlight” (Sp. claro de luna, Fr. claire de lune) has a power over young lovers, long understood (and abetted) by poets and songwriters.

Samuel Johnson’s Sermon XII movingly uses the lovely, archaic word “sublunary” for “earthly”—urging his listeners “to bid farewell to sublunary vanities” and instead “with pure heart and steady faith to ‘fear God and keep his commandments.’”

¡Buenas palabras! Good words!

Pablo

An earlier version of this essay originally appeared in the Nov. 27-Dec. 3, 2015 edition of La Prensa Latina (Memphis, Tennessee) as number 158 in the weekly bilingual column, “Misterios y Engimas de la Traducción/Mysteries and Enigmas of Translation”.  Pablo Julián Davis, PhD, CT is an ATA (Aamerican Translators Association) Certified Translator, Engl>Span; a Tennessee State Courts Certified Interpreter, Engl<>Span; and an innovative trainer in the fields of translation, interpreting, and intercultural competency, with over 25 years experience. He holds the doctorate in Latin American History from The Johns Hopkins University, and is a Juris Doctor Candidate at the Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law, University of Memphis (May 2017).

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: "Pablo J. Davis", certified, cultura, culture, Davis, English, inglés, Julián, luna, moon, Pablo, Spanish, traducción, traductor, translation

2015-06-15 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

The deafening silence: Magna Carta at 800

Today, June 15, 2015, marks an astonishing, almost inconceivable anniversary: 800 years since the signing of Magna Carta, at Runnymede, and with it the foundational idea that there are limits upon the power of the sovereign. That our rulers must not be above the law.

Apart from Biblical matters, commemorating events so far in the past is unknown to us.  Within the lifetimes of a good part of the US population, we’ve seen a bicentennial (1976, Declaration of Independence), quadricentennial (2007, founding of Virginia), and quincentennial (1992, Columbus’s landing).

La firma de la Carta Magna por Juan de Inglaterra en Runnymede, en el año 1215, según lo imaginara un artista siglos más tarde.

The barons who forced King John to sign Magna Carta at Runnymede in 1215 were fighting for what they saw as their rights and prerogatives as noblemen. They could not have known that the document would become immortal, serving over the centuries as a touchstone in the struggle for human liberty and constitutional government.

Magna Carta is three centuries older than the oldest of those! Its age beggars the imagination.

Does anyone care?  In what passes for right, center, and left on the debased landscape that is the American media, there was scarcely a mention. The websites of Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC each ignored the anniversary. All the New York Times website could manage was an op-ed by Tom Ginsburg scolding us to “stop revering Magna Carta.”

Stop revering it! What an idea! Just who is doing the revering, when the silence on the 800th anniversary is almost deafening.

(Credit where credit is due: National Review and The Nation, at least, have given the anniversary some of the serious attention it deserves. But from what this writer could tell from checking on a dozen mass media sites, the anniversary has passed almost entirely unnoted and unnoticed.)

What is the document about?  Strictly speaking, it was a peace treaty between English nobles in revolt against arbitrary royal power, and the monarch, John (“Bad King John,” to countless generations of English schoolchildren, in contrast with “Good Queen Bess”).

After their victory at Runnymede, the rebels forced John to sign a declaration of rights and liberties the king would be bound to respect.

Written in Latin, the Magna Charta Libertatum (Great Charter of Liberties) contained 63 articles, most famously the 39th:

“No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned or disseised or exiled or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him nor send upon him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.”  The 40th article is often cited as well: “To no one will we sell, to no one will we refuse or delay, right or justice.”

The “freemen” referred to were, of course, English barons. Still, in that localized conflict in A.D. 1215 between two groups of the privileged, is the germ of constitutional law, the model of due process, and the ultimate source of our Bill of Rights.  Magna Carta establishes the bedrock principle that no one—not even the sovereign—is above the law.

It contains a great deal more, including the remarkable 61st article, establishing a committee of 25 barons charged with seeing to the faithful observance of the entire charter, and authorized to petition for redress—even to rise up against the king should sufficient  remedy not be obtained.  And a closely related (and almost entirely neglected) document, The Charter of the Forest (1217) recognizes the rights of ordinary people to a share in the commons, that is to resources essential to economic survival (at that time, such resources as access to water in streams, to wood for fuel, to forage for their animals).

History shows us that the rights fought for at Runnymede, and whose recognition was wrested from King John on the battlefield and at the negotiating table, would have to be fought for over and over again. Magna Carta may be immortal—a document and a human achievement for the ages—but the powerful have not accorded its principles perpetual respect.  Other people at later times, and even in other places, have asserted them anew and sometimes they have won: the English Bill of Rights culminated one such struggle (1689); on these shores, the Declaration of Independence (1776) and the Bill of Rights (1789) announced and culminated (respectively) another. And in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), Eleanor Roosevelt and others consciously looked to Magna Carta for inspiration.

Why today’s near-total silence over Magna Carta? In the US, the groundwork has been laid for a state of exception by reason of a “war” vaguely defined, against no specific enemy, and of quasi-perpetual duration. A Republican president launched, and his Democratic successor has deepened, the practice of perpetual imprisonment without charge, and even of summary execution, as legitimate presidential powers. Could it be that Magna Carta has become an embarrassment? Or that its name troubles the conscience of at least some of our leaders?

Magna Carta’s anniversary should be remembered, and its significance debated. It should be a moment for genuine questioning of the exercise of power in a constitutional republic, for an honest stock-taking of what is left of the ancestral liberties that the people must not allow to slip away out of some combination of apathy, distractedness, ignorance, and fear.

Let Magna Carta be honored, let Magna Carta be defended. Let it be criticized, let it be scorned as obsolete by those who see it that way. Remembered, studied, debated, … anything but ignored.

Copyright © 2013-2015 by Pablo Julián Davis. All rights reserved. An earlier version of this essay was originally written for the June 16-22, 2013 edition of La Prensa Latina (Memphis, Tennessee), as part of the bilingual column, A Mi Modo de Ver/The Way I See It. Pablo Julián Davis (www.interfluency.com) is an ATA Certified Translator (English>Spanish) and a Supreme Court of Tennessee Certified Interpreter (English<>Spanish). He holds the Doctorate in History from The Johns Hopkins University and is a Juris Doctor candidate at the Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law, University of Memphis, in May 2017.

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: 800th anniversary, anniversary, Bill of Rights, Constitution, constitutionalism, liberty, limited government, Magna Carta, octocentennial, republic, tyranny, United States

2015-02-28 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

Carry that weight

Enlace para español/Link for Spanish

Dear reader:

The languages we live in are very old, older than the earliest ancestors most of us can name.   Yet most of our words are older still. Remember: go back more than 500 years and you will not find an English (or a Spanish) language you can understand—but for many of the words we use, there is a lineage that goes back not a few hundred years, but thousands.

Mujer llevando canasta

What this woman is doing is the basis for one of the most powerful word roots in all of human language.

What is the first thing we ever do in the world? Actually, it’s less something we do than something done for us, the first thing done for us as separate beings, making all else possible: After nine months of giving us the very marrow of their bones,  our mothers “bear” us into the world: we are “born.” Old Engl. beran (to bear, bring, produce, endure) could trace its lineage back to Proto-Indo-European *bher-.

In ancient Greek (another Indo-European descendant), pherein is “to carry” or “to bear”—the root of “fer” in “transfer.” Carry a word over from one place (meaning) to another: meta + pherein yields “metaphor.”

It’s the same root shared by the fer element in words like ferriferous and auriferous, iron-bearing, gold-bearing.

Latin turned ph into p and we got the -port- in “transport” (to carry across), “import” (to bring in), to “comport” (carry) oneself—and so on, and on.

Spanish portar is to bear—portar arma is to be packing, to carry a weapon. An aircraft carrier is a portaaviones, a case for carrying papers a portafolios (portfolio), etc.

To bear or endure a burden, is to “support it”—soportar, in Spanish. To “suffer,” sufrir, is the same root.

The name of Christopher, the Christian saint and friend to travellers, comes from Church Greek khristophoros, literally Christ (Khristos) + bearing (phoros), as the saint is fused with medieval legend of a benevolent giant who helped travellers across rivers.

From this sublime meaning to such a humble object as a “wheelbarrow” (a “barrow” is for carrying, from that Old Engl. beran); the essential figure in poetry and language itself ( “metaphor”); and reaching back to the very moment of our “birth”: what unfathomable mystery and power in this word, in all its vast reach and its countless forms!

Good words!  ¡Buenas palabras!

Pablo J. Davis

A version of this essay originally appeared in the Nov. 20-26, 2015 edition of La Prensa Latina (Memphis, Tennessee) as number 157 in the weekly bilingual column, “Misterios y Engimas de la Traducción/Mysteries and Enigmas of Translation”.  Pablo Julián Davis, PhD, CT is an ATA (Aamerican Translators Association) Certified Translator, Engl>Span; a Tennessee State Courts Certified Interpreter, Engl<>Span; and an innovative trainer in the fields of translation, interpreting, and intercultural competency, with over 25 years experience. He holds the doctorate in Latin American History from The Johns Hopkins University, and is a Juris Doctor Candidate at the Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law, University of Memphis (May 2017).

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: "Pablo J. Davis", bear, birth, born, carry, cultura, culture, etimología, etymology, metaphor, Pablo, traducción, transfer, translation

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