Happy Halloween and Samhain

[frameacloud]

Comic for Monday, October 30, 2006.


No, it's not about therianthropes or otherkin; this one is somewhat off-topic, although festive. Anyone who looked at the cartoon and is still wondering "who?" then refer to the Wikipedia article about Samhain. It's a Celtic holiday corresponding to Halloween and a modern version of it is celebrated by Wiccans and some Pagans. It's actually pronounced more like "sow-in" or "sa-vin," but the common joke is that newbie Wiccans/Pagans tend to pronounce it the way it's written.

Comments

[frameacloud]

It's from Gaelic. Gaelic is always spelled in a way that doesn't look phonetic to English-speakers.

The Wikipedia article for Samhain talks about the etymology a bit, but I don't really know about it. bard_bloom is the one to ask about the peculiar spelling of Celtic languages.

[thassalante.livejournal.com]

You know, I notice this kind of thing pops up alot in translations to English. I think the reason is some English fop decided they didn't want to spell a word like it sounds and just made something up. Sort of like how almost nothing in English that was named origionally in another language gets to keep the origional name. You know, like Germany.

[frameacloud]

Your hypothesis is right, or at least it's something that other people have considered as a possibility. I remember seeing an article a few years ago about how non-phonetic transliterations are chosen for foriegn languages to make them look more "exotic." The article said that it happened especially with Romanized transliterations of Chinese (with unhelpful spellings like "xiao" and "qing") and Arabic (where a simple word may be transliterated a dozen different ways). The article argued that such spellings result from an attempt to make people of other nationalities seem more foriegn and incomprehensible than they are, to put more distance between "them" and "us." The article suggested that more sympathy would happen between peoples if we standardized some systems of transliteration that were more phonetic.

A similar psychological thing probably goes on with giving places completely different names in each language. Those are even weirder because "Germany" doesn't even remotely sound like Deutschland. How did people come up with those things?

[thassalante.livejournal.com]

Back on the origional question, I actually heard from my brother yesterday that the reason Samhain and other Gaelic words are spelled the way they are in English is because they picked the letters that most resembled the look of the word spelled in the Gaelic tongue it came from. I don't know for sure either way, as I don't know what Samhain looks like spelled in the origional language.

[cassander42.livejournal.com]

Why does English write "Did you?" when we really pronounce it "dija"?

"h" is used to represent lenition in Gaelic, a change to a consonant in certain positions that mind of makes it "softer". Notice that "w" is pronounced with both lips just like "m" is... "m" changes into "w" in certain environments just like the final "d" and initial "y" kind of combine features to form "j" in the example above.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_initial_mutations

(Note: I'm no Gaelic specialist, so someone with more knowledge can surely explain this better)

[irbisgreif.livejournal.com]

Germany, comes from Caesar calling the region Germania (as opposed to Gaul).

English and French both continue this naming scheme.

Now, as to why Russians call Germany Немец (Njemjets or Nyemyets) I have no idea.

[(Anonymous)]

Don't forgot Japan. The locals say Nihon, the people are Nihonjin, the language is Nihongo, and it keeps going. So why do we call it Japan? We may never know.

[(Anonymous)]

Actually...

Japan:
1577, via Portuguese Japao, Dutch Japan, acquired in Malacca from Malay Japang, from Chinese jih pun "sunrise" (equivalent of Japanese Nippon), from jih "sun" + pun "origin." Earliest form in Europe was Marco Polo's Chipangu. Colloquial abbreviation Jap is from 1880, not originally pejorative but became so during World War II. Cultural contact led to japaning "coat with laquer or varnish" (1688), along with japonaiserie (1896, from French), japonica (1819, from variant Japon), etc. Japanese beetle attested from 1919, accidentally introduced in U.S. 1916 in larval stage in a shipment of Japanese iris. Japlish "Japanese with many English words" is from 1960.

[(Anonymous)]

In regard to your russian comment...
The PLACE is Германиа (Germania) and the people are Немнец(ци) (Nemniets[tsi]) basically drawing from the long running rivalry between Germany and Russia. A nemniets was quite literally an idiot, or good for nothing. (this was due to historically german speaking people were controlled by russia but refused to speak russian)

[irbisgreif.livejournal.com]

sometimes it has to do with trying to represent sounds we don't have in English, or representing letter constructions we don't use.

For example, in German the letters 'st' will sound like 'sht', but in German transliteration, they are often left as st.

For example:

Erst (First) -> Airst / Airsht

Or, it's used to maintain some system. For example, writing tu instead of tsu when transliterating the Japanese symbols つ and ツ. Which are analogous to the symbols た and タ, which stand for ta (NOT tsa).

This is also why Russian Ю, Е, И, Ё, Ю are translated as yu, ye, yi, yo, yu or ju, je, ji, jo, ju in some systems. The 'y' and 'j' aren't really there, but indicate that the vowel is 'soft' in the Russian sense (palatalized).