Date: Wed, 29 May 2002 12:42:38 +0930 From: Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.org> To: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@online.fr> Cc: Miguel Mendez <flynn@energyhq.homeip.net>, David Schultz <dschultz@uclink.Berkeley.EDU>, Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@FreeBSD.ORG>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Language in danger: Language loss Message-ID: <20020529124238.H82424@wantadilla.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <20020528152013.M37937@lpt.ens.fr> References: <20020527014353.B1951@HAL9000.wox.org> <20020528091410.G29491@wantadilla.lemis.com> <20020528001001.GA20175@hades.hell.gr> <20020528095208.A16567@wantadilla.lemis.com> <20020527175613.A1214@HAL9000.wox.org> <20020528102802.K16567@wantadilla.lemis.com> <20020527184817.A1485@HAL9000.wox.org> <20020528104311.A37937@lpt.ens.fr> <20020528150600.A79546@energyhq.homeip.net> <20020528152013.M37937@lpt.ens.fr>
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On Tuesday, 28 May 2002 at 15:20:13 +0200, Rahul Siddharthan wrote: > Miguel Mendez said on May 28, 2002 at 15:06:00: >> It's usual, in Spanish, to translate the name of a person, and keep the >> original surname. IMHO it's totally correct. > > Hm, maybe it's because I'm not from the European culture, but it > doesn't make so much sense to me... I don't see a distinction between > the first name and the surname from this point of view. It's true > that some people choose to change their names, eg Handel changed his > from Georg Friedrich to George Frederick, if I remember right. (Greg > will perhaps remark that the surname should be Haendel, but I've > almost never seen it written that way.) I've usually seen it written Händel. Note that in this case, H[än]ndel changed his own name, so this is probably acceptable. Also, of course, the Normans dropped three letters from the English language, including ä (which was written æ). That's why the word "that" has a different a than in "cart" (and why the th in "than" is different from the th in "thank"). Using the original English letters, which are still in use in Icelandic (and thus in 8859-1) they would be written ðænk and þænk. >> OTOH, some names are fully translated in english: Cristobal Colon -> >> Christopher Columbus. > > I didn't know that example; good point. I know some other examples > (eg, Jeanne d'Arc -> Joan of Arc), but in general, it seems to me that > English speakers take some pains to get the original spelling right. > Perhaps it's because spelling is so unsystematic in English anyway, a > little more confusion can't hurt... Things have changed over time. Translation of names is less common than it used to be. How do the French come to terms with your name? Greg -- See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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