how to speak hip ( new topic

[The Heartical Don]

Unfortunately, I can't finish the 'Swedish Riddle' today. So, Matt L., feel free to complete the job... if it's still unsolved tomorrow, I'll make a new effort.

Meanwhile, here's a riddle of my own. Again: which Beach Boys album?

Album u bë një misterioze, sepse kjo është një hije e një projekti të madh, një projekt që ndoshta kulminacion përfundimtar të muzikës popullore mund të jetë. Jo se kjo është një punë e garniturë të dytë. Por është ... short ... që recensues juaj në kohë të mendonin se ai pësoi gripit të butë dhe gjithashtu pak hallucinating.
Kjo është edhe një pjatë të shkurtër, shumë e shkurtër, si më poshtë ore e gjysmë, e cila gjithashtu ka dy këngë hit janë të përfshira, dhe dy copa të tjera mund të përshkruhet si mbushëse.
Too bad. Dhe ende i padyshimtë Beach Boys, por jo të shëndosha shfletoj, as kamerpop elegante e albumit mëparshme. Mbulojnë të shquar, që përshkruan një vilë në pyje, e bën të gjitha edhe nëse nuk i njohur për të.
Sa duket anëtarët e grupit janë blowden me gëzim të lirshme kur ajo regjistroi albumin, thuhet në pishinë bosh e një udhëheqësi.
Këshilla: Së pari të dëgjojnë, dhe pastaj blejnë.

[Fall Breaks]

Albanian, right? Couldn't you've taken a language that at least has some close relative? 

Let's see... the word "një" is used frequently and could mean "(is) not" since it's reminiscent of the Bosnian (Serbian, Croatian et c) nije with that meaning. "Misterioze" could very well be "masterpiece", but that's a guess (as well) . "Kulminacion" is of course "culmination" and "muzikës popullore" "pop music", and if një is not than we're not talking about a masterpiece in pop music?. "Hallucinating" and, for some reason, "short", wasn't translated. So... Smiley Smile? 

[rogerlancelot]

Deze lange spelen record werd opgetekend vier jaar na de vorige en was het een waar Brian kwam terug in productie. Het heeft vijftien nummers op en is meestal vreselijk. Het is het beste dit album los te slaan uit slechts een paar nummers. In feite sla ik het iedere keer speel ik de compact disc en ik ga naar de volgende.

[Matt Bielewicz]

Like the Don, I'm also loving this thread, but perhaps that's because it combines two of my personal favourite interests... the Beach Boys and languages...

I'm not a teacher (I'm a freelance technical writer), and I don't speak many languages (only two fluently; I wish it was more), but I've always been interested in them and the links between them and their historical development. I was born in and live in England, but have a very mixed heritage: eighth English, eighth Irish, quarter Italian and half Lithuanian (no, really!). My Grandfather spoke many languages fluently and I admired that as I grew up. I've learnt French, Spanish, Italian and German in my time, but only the German to fluency. But although I don't actually speak many languages, I've become fascinated by the fact that, for all their differences, most of the tongues and dialects in Europe are at least distantly related (with the exception of Finnish, Hungarian, Basque and Maltese, which come from completely different roots), and you can often see links if you look carefully and know something about the sound-shifts that have taken place through the centuries. Some of the languages are closely related, like Italian and Spanish, or Norwegian and Swedish, while other links are more distant (English to Russian, say, or Greek to Danish), but most of them are part of the same family tree, if on different branches, and there are common elements, which are often apparent in words which are very ancient and fundamental to human existence. So 'water', for example, which we all need to live: 'water' in Dutch and English, Gaelic 'uisce' or 'uisge' (pronounced 'weesher' or 'weezga') in Gaelic, 'Wasser' in German, and the 'vod-' bit in the Russian word 'vodka' comes from the same root (compare the 'wat-' bit in water with 'vod-' in 'vodka'). '-ka' on the end of something in Russian is a diminutive, meaning 'a small version', so vodka means 'little water', apparently for one of two reasons, one sensible, one funny: sensibly, because vodka has been distilled down to a concentrated form, and so can be said to be 'little water', and more amusingly, possibly because it was slang for people in the know, as in 'Fancy a drop of the old 'little water', then, know what I mean, nudge nudge?' Whisky, funnily enough, may have been named for similar reasons. Gaelic 'uisce beatha' (pronounced 'weesher veeta') was corrupted by Scots and English-speakers to 'whisky', but the original words mean 'water of life', and you can imagine some hardy peat crofters using this as slang in the wild Highlands of Scotland back in the day: 'Och, Angus, that'll be enough of the peat-cutting for today. I'm about ready for a drop of the water of life, ye ken?').

I digress, of course, as the water we're talking about here is not even of the Cool Cool variety. So to get back on topic...

I can certainly dispatch the final Swedish sentence on behalf of the Don, although I do feel I'm cheating a bit, as I didn't work this out for myself, as I admitted above. But I can usefully highlight some more connections in the languages as I do so, so here goes:

"Spår fyra är det enda som innehåller den person som ersatte Brian Wilson när denne slutade turnera åtta år tidigare."

I still haven't looked this up in any dictionary, but I assume from context that the word 'som' is a relative pronoun, translated in English as either 'that' or 'which'. 'När', it turns out, IS like Dutch 'naar' or German 'nach', but there's no similar equivalent in modern English: it means 'after'. And I think 'denne' is a demonstrative pronoun, translated in English by 'this/that one', or possibly 'he' or 'she', depending on context.  

'Slutade', I think, must come from a Germanic root meaning 'closing'. The word has cognates in Dutch and German ('sluiten' and 'schliessen' respectively) where it means to close or to lock (and Dutch 'sluitel' and German 'Schlüssel' mean 'key'), but that root has died out in modern English.

'Turnera' is also interesting, as I think it might be a so-called 'loan-word'. Sometimes, rather than evolving from common roots over hundreds of years, words are suddenly borrowed wholesale from other languages. Occasionally, there's a little adaptation or alteration so that the word reads or sounds more like a native word, but sometimes the borrowed word survives completely unchanged. There are zillions of examples of this: 'computer' from English is of course now used all around the world in hundreds of languages. English has also borrowed many terms from other languages that are now considered everyday English, like 'opera' (Latin for 'work'), bus (from 'omnibus', a Latin word in the Dative case meaning 'for the benefit of everyone'), 'rucksack' and 'kindergarten' from the German words for 'backpack' and 'child's garden' (ie. nursery) and 'bungalow' and 'pyjama' (from an Indian language, I forget which, possibly Hindi). Thanks to these so-called 'loan-words', I can occasionally read the odd word in Finnish, even though I know no Finnish at all and it is derived from a totally different family than most other European languages. The reason is that for much of Finland's history, the country was culturally dominated by the Swedish (not with the agreement of the Finns, I might add...). So, many words in Finnish were borrowed from Swedish during this time — and because Swedish IS closely related historically to German and English, I can figure them out occasionally. Anyway, to return (once again, sorry) to topic, the French word 'tournée' means 'a little turn' and has come to mean a tour (such as of a circus, of aristocratic nobility on holiday, or, of course, of a band or group). Our word 'tour' comes from the same place, with a slight alteration to make it look more English and less French. The Germans use 'Tournée' completely unaltered to mean the same thing. And I suspect 'turnera' in Swedish is the same.

So what have we got?

"Spår fyra är det enda som innehåller den person som ersatte Brian Wilson när denne slutade turnera åtta år tidigare."

"Track four is the only one that/which contains/features the person that/which replaced Brian Wilson after that one/he closed touring eight years earlier."

Or, in proper colloquial English, "Track four is the only one that features the person that replaced Brian Wilson after he finished touring eight years earlier." Marcella, of course, is supposedly the only track on Carl and The Passions to feature a vocal contribution from Bruce Johnston. However, I think the maths is off - didn't Bruce start touring in Brian's stead in *1965*, only SEVEN years before Carl and The Passions came out?

Anyway, there you go.

I'm not going into the same kind of detail over the first sentence of rogerlancelot's Dutch example above, as I can read the first sentence without any trouble from knowing German, and have figured out what the album is, so I'll leave this for others. I can drop some hints, though: 'opgetekend' must mean 'recorded', literally (I think) 'engraved': 'teken' is related to the English verb 'to sign' and German 'zeichnen' which means to draw, engrave or inscribe. 'Aufzeichnen' the modern German cognate to Dutch 'opteken' means 'to draw or write on something', which of course is what you do on recording tape: you could say that you 'write' a performance onto it, although ironically modern German doesn't use this word for audio recording. Dutch, though, does, clearly: you 'engrave' your recording. The 'op' bit on the front is like the German 'auf' and the English 'up', although we don't always use our word 'up' any more where the Dutch and Germans use 'op' or 'auf'. Here, perhaps, we might: 'opteken' literally means 'to write (up)'. 'opgetekened' is the past tense, so not 'record', but 'recorded'.

'vorige' is the same in German: 'Vorige'. It's connected to the English root '-fore' (as in 'before') and means 'the fore-running'. However, in modern English, we'd translate the word in this context with one from a Latin root, strangely enough: 'previous'. The Latin prefix 'Pre-' in 'previous', is actually related to the 'vor' in the German words, but more distantly, further back in history. 'F' sounds in one language often become 'p' sounds in another over time: compare Latin 'pater' to German 'Vater' and English 'father'.

'Terug' is related to German 'zurück': German 'z's and 's's are often Dutch and English 't's. The '-rug' and '-rück' in the Dutch and English mean 'back'. So this word means 'to back', or as we would now say, simply 'back', or, in some contexts, 'backwards'. There is a word that survives in modern English from the same root as '-rug' and '-rück', but we wouldn't use it in this context in modern English: it is 'ridge', which originally meant 'back' in old English, then became more restricted in meaning to mean just the back of the body or your spine (as modern 'back' still can, as in 'my back's playing me up something rotten, Harold'), and finally came to mean 'spine-like parts of a mountain range' as 'ridge' does today. If that meaning change hadn't happened, we might still be able to say in English 'all ridge to my place!!!!' or 'Ridge to the future'! Or, indeed, 'my ridge is playing me up something rotten, Harold'.

Despite these bits seeming familiar, there are plenty of words in the Dutch that I can only guess at, despite knowing English and German, which goes to show how even closely related languages can differ enough to cause confusion. "meestal freselijk" must mean 'mostly [something]', but I can't tell whether the word means the album is good or bad! I'm guessing it means bad from the next sentence, which is fine by me as I think this record is mostly schlock, too!

I am very lost by the second half, though. "Het is het beste dit album los te slaan uit slechts een paar nummers. In feite sla ik het iedere keer speel ik de compact disc en ik ga naar de volgende."

Het is (I think) both 'it' and 'the' in Dutch. 'dit' is a pronoun like German 'diese', or English 'this' or 'that'. 'Beste' is 'best' (easy) and 'los' ism, in both Dutch and German 'loose', which is very close to the English, too.  'Slaan' is, I would guess, like German 'schleien' and the related-but-not-exactly-the-same English word 'to sling'. In German, the 'los-' (loose) in 'losschleien', 'to sling loose', is used to intensify the meaning of 'schleien', to 'sling', and I would guess it's the same in Dutch: so 'losschleien' means 'to sling right out'. I'll come back to this.

'Uit' (sort of pronounced 'aye-t') is the equivalent of English 'out', and in fact the Royal Family and posh people here in England still prounouce this word like the Dutch! I've no idea about 'slechts', but I would guess it means something like 'with the exception of' or 'apart from'. 'nummer' is 'number' as in a musical number, or song, and 'een paar' must be like the German 'ein paar', which literally means 'a pair', but is often used just like we use 'a couple' (same meaning, actually) to mean 'a few, a small number of (a larger selection)'. So that would give us

"It is the best this album loose to sling out except for a couple of numbers"

This is, of course, complete gibberish, but once you realise that word order in Dutch and German is completely different to English, you can rearrange it to make the following sentence, which is much more comprehensible:

"It is the best to sling this album right out except for a couple of numbers".

And finally, you can easily turn this into good modern colloquial English:

"It's best to toss this album completely except for a couple of numbers".

Or: 'Most of this album is completely dispensible apart from a couple of tracks'.

I can't get the last sentence, though. "In feite sla ik het iedere keer speel ik de compact disc en ik ga naar de volgende." I've no idea what 'In feite' or 'keer' means.

'Speel', though, is like German 'spielen', to play (there's no longer any related word in modern English).

"Ik ga" is, I think, like German 'Ich gehe' and English "I go".

and 'naar de folgende' is like German 'nach der folgenden'. 'naar/nach' is 'to' or 'towards'. And 'Folgend' is like the English 'following' (we swallowed the 'g' in the middle of the word in the Middle Ages, and it became a 'w'). So 'naar de folgende' is 'to the following (one)'.

That gives: "[SOMETHING] [SOMETHING] sling I the [SOMETHING] [SOMETHING] play the CD and I go to the following one".

I'm going to guess, from context, that the whole of the last part is something like:

"Most of this album is completely dispensible apart from a couple of tracks. In truth, I skip most of them when playing the CD and go on to the next album".

Knowing what the album is, I sympathise. I'd rather hear the following one, too!

Now... this here Albanian...

MattB

[Matt Bielewicz]

I can do MUCH less with the Albanian. Although my ancestors were Lithuanian slavs, none of it has come down to me (my grandmother was the last one in the family to speak or understand any Lithuanian), and I haven't learnt any Slavic languages, more's the pity. Also, Slavic languages, although related to Latin and Germanic languages, are more distantly connected than either of those. And finally, Albanian is thought be a bit of an odd one out amongst the Slavic languages anyway.

So, in short, the languages I know aren't much use here. All I can do is spot the odd word or phrase that is related to things I do know. As with the example in my last post of scanning Finnish for Swedish loan-words, there are a few here that are clearly loan-words from other tongues I CAN read. For example, 'misterioze', I would think, is probably 'mysterious'. 'kulminacion' has got to be 'culmination'. 'muzikës popullore mund', I would guess, is 'popular music of the world', as  'mund', or words like it (French 'monde', Italian 'mondo', Spanish 'Mundo' and Latin 'Mundi') mean 'world' in a lot of languages. Similarly, 'Projekti' is obviously 'project'.

And 'kamerpop elegante', I would guess, is 'elegant chamber pop' ('Kammer' is 'chamber' in German, as in 'Kammermusik' or 'chamber music'). And chamber pop is stuff like The Left Banke: rock with strings and harpsichords that was popular in the mid-60s, roughly 1965-67. It was sometimes facetiously called 'baroque and roll'...

So I think, in terms of the Beach Boys here, we have to be talking about Pet Sounds, as it's the only album that could really be called 'chamber pop' in the BB's history, I think.

But wait!! I could hazard a guess that 'është' might mean 'is' and that 'bë' might mean 'be' or a part of the verb 'to be', like 'is', as the parts of the verb 'to be' are often similar in many European languages, as I've already said earlier in this thread. But that is a TOTAL guess and I might be completely wrong.

If so, that MIGHT mean that the first sentence begins 'this album is mysterious...' and the third paragraph begins (completely guessing again) "Too bad. The end of the Beach Boys, something something elegant Chamber Pop". Together with the reference to short-ness (and could the word 'shkurtër' mean shorter? or is that too much of a reach?), I think we might be looking at Smiley Smile here. Or, given the first bit about the album being mysterious and the couple of sprinkled references to a 'project', maybe even the cancelled Beach Boys SMiLE itself. Maybe it's saying that SMiLE (or Smiley Smile) marked the end of the Beach Boys' elegant chamber pop...?

I'm going to take a leap into the dark and plump for the cancelled SMiLE here.

[Hits 'Post', and wanders off to find an on-line translator of Albanian].

[Matt Bielewicz]

Wrong again!!! Guessing is clearly not my strong point. And some of the stuff (like 'mund' possibly meaning 'world') was completely incorrect. But overall, I was close...

MattB

[Matt Bielewicz]

And on the Dutch... I should have got 'In feite' and 'keer'. 'Feite' is like the German 'Fakt' and English 'fact', and 'keer' is to do with 'what comes around' (German 'kehren' is 'to come [around]'). It seems it means 'time' or 'times'. (I guess because time is what comes around).

And 'iedere' was a steal I shoulda had, too... it's like German 'jeder', and pronounced the same too ('yay-der'). It means 'each' or 'every'.

So: "In feite sla ik het iedere keer speel ik de compact disc en ik ga naar de volgende"

is "In fact, sling I it every time play I the CD and I go to the following one"

or

"In fact, I skip it every time I play the CD, and go on to the next album instead".

D'oh!

MattB

[smile-holland]

Deze lange spelen record werd opgetekend vier jaar na de vorige en was het een waar Brian kwam terug in productie. Het heeft vijftien nummers op en is meestal vreselijk. Het is het beste dit album los te slaan uit slechts een paar nummers. In feite sla ik het iedere keer speel ik de compact disc en ik ga naar de volgende.

I have a strong suspicion that this text was translated from another language. The structure of these sentences aren't correct in the Dutch language. And of a few sentences I'm not even sure what the author exactly wanted to say.

O, and Matt: despite of the inaccuracies in abovementioned text, you're translation of the last sentence is pretty much spot-on.

[The Heartical Don]

Albanian, right? Couldn't you've taken a language that at least has some close relative?  

Let's see... the word "një" is used frequently and could mean "(is) not" since it's reminiscent of the Bosnian (Serbian, Croatian et c) nije with that meaning. "Misterioze" could very well be "masterpiece", but that's a guess (as well) . "Kulminacion" is of course "culmination" and "muzikës popullore" "pop music", and if një is not than we're not talking about a masterpiece in pop music?. "Hallucinating" and, for some reason, "short", wasn't translated. So... Smiley Smile?  

...is a perfectly good guess!!!

BTW: the penultimate sentence contains the verb: 'blowden'. The machine decided to not really translate my word, but to simply insert it. Did no one notice?

At any rate, indeed: 'hallucinating' and 'short' are real hints too.

To Matt Bielewicz: you made a tremendous contribution. I simply lack the time to read it in detail now, will make up for it tomorrow.

[Fall Breaks]

Matt, I bow to your deduction ability and knowledge of languages! Yes, you're right about Bruce coming aboard in 1965. I thought of Brian's breakdown on that plane in late '64 as when he stopped touring, but of course that doesn't bring Bruce aboard earlier… Sorry!

I can only bring about some small corrections to your translation: 'när' means 'when' and not 'after' (which would be 'efter'), but in this case both words work. 'Slutade' is indeed related to 'closed' but means 'stopped', 'quitted' or 'ceased'. 'Closed' and 'stopped' is the same in the present tense ('sluta') but is ... conjugated, is that the English word when it comes to verbs? ... as 'sluta, slutade, slutat' when meaning '(to)stop' and 'sluta, slöt, slutit' (i.e. irregular) when it comes to '(to) close'.

'Den här skivan' is indeed 'This here disc' literally, but is not dialectical in Swedish and corresponds with 'denna skiva' which means the same. 'Denna', btw, is used when the noun is neuter or feminine - 'skiva' being feminine - while 'denne' is masculine. (In spoken Swedish 'denna' can be heard for masculine words as well.)

'Betydligt' has nothing to do with time, though. Here 'considerably' would probably be the best translation. Something is 'tydligt' when it's clear, detailed and unambiguous (which is a wonderful word imo!). ‘Väldigt’ is not past tense but instead an adverb, meaning ‘very’, or literally ‘hugely’. And I do not refer to the Holland album; instead ‘i det att nästan…’ means ‘in that almost…’ which Don almost figured out. So the sentence would read ‘The record is also very democratic in that almost all members [only sans Bruce, right?] contribute lyrics and music to at least some song’. So ‘någon’ means ‘any’ or ‘some’. Could it be related to ‘einige’, perhaps?

All in all, great work, Matt! I learned a lot!