Subject
Re: Cherokee nouns and VN
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> Suggested Cherokee name:
>
"he-who-abhors-both-cruelty-and-the-cheroot-smoking-witchdoctor-from-the-city-
> where-the-Danube-flows."
>
> Regards,
> Tom (Rymour)
Tom: I think that embedding "alien" proper nouns such as "Danube" would
break the "defining rules." One would need to replace "Danube" with
e.g.,
"brown-river-called-blue-by-fork'ed-tongue-paleface." But, by then, we
would
be overkilling -- sortof taking the PITH out, like! Many of the Cherokee
descriptors are quite succinct and Nabokovian:
policeman, di-da-ni-yi-sgi ("He-catches-them-finally.")
cemetery, tsu-na-da-ni-soh-di
("You-are-laid-there-by-others-but-only-temporarily."
Compare: "They are passing, posthaste, posthaste, the gliding years --
to
use a soul-rending Horatian inflection. The years are passing, my dear,
and
presently nobody will know what you and I know." ("Speak, Memory", Chap
15)
There's a nice hint of VN as meta-lexicographer in his Foreword to
Invitation to a Beheading:
"If some day I make a dictionary of definitions wanting single words to
head
them, a cherished entry will be 'To abridge, expand, or otherwise alter
or
cause to be altered, for the sake of belated improvement, one's own
writings
in translation."
This is sortof reversing the Cherokee challenge? I propose the verb
(trans.
and intrans.)
"to nabokov."
My 107th-birthday prezzie, dear Master. 107 is a prime number, and my
experience has been that primality does count when enumerating
anniversaries. My 71st and 73rd went swimmingly -- 74-75-76 horribili.
BTW: the very transliteration "Cherokee" is a Western abomination. Their
own
spelling is nearer to TSA-GA-LI.
BTW^2: The tsa-ga-li syllabary used to be available as an option on a PC
text-editor called MultiLingual Scholar. I know because ... self-toot
... I
designed the font. The 92 characters are quite bizarre -- not as pretty
as
Cyrillic but equally phonetic. Chief Sequoyah picked out printers'
blocks
from various missionaries' presses -- inverting and rotating them to
provide
distinct shapes for each of his syllables.
Stan Kelly-Bootle
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
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>
"he-who-abhors-both-cruelty-and-the-cheroot-smoking-witchdoctor-from-the-city-
> where-the-Danube-flows."
>
> Regards,
> Tom (Rymour)
Tom: I think that embedding "alien" proper nouns such as "Danube" would
break the "defining rules." One would need to replace "Danube" with
e.g.,
"brown-river-called-blue-by-fork'ed-tongue-paleface." But, by then, we
would
be overkilling -- sortof taking the PITH out, like! Many of the Cherokee
descriptors are quite succinct and Nabokovian:
policeman, di-da-ni-yi-sgi ("He-catches-them-finally.")
cemetery, tsu-na-da-ni-soh-di
("You-are-laid-there-by-others-but-only-temporarily."
Compare: "They are passing, posthaste, posthaste, the gliding years --
to
use a soul-rending Horatian inflection. The years are passing, my dear,
and
presently nobody will know what you and I know." ("Speak, Memory", Chap
15)
There's a nice hint of VN as meta-lexicographer in his Foreword to
Invitation to a Beheading:
"If some day I make a dictionary of definitions wanting single words to
head
them, a cherished entry will be 'To abridge, expand, or otherwise alter
or
cause to be altered, for the sake of belated improvement, one's own
writings
in translation."
This is sortof reversing the Cherokee challenge? I propose the verb
(trans.
and intrans.)
"to nabokov."
My 107th-birthday prezzie, dear Master. 107 is a prime number, and my
experience has been that primality does count when enumerating
anniversaries. My 71st and 73rd went swimmingly -- 74-75-76 horribili.
BTW: the very transliteration "Cherokee" is a Western abomination. Their
own
spelling is nearer to TSA-GA-LI.
BTW^2: The tsa-ga-li syllabary used to be available as an option on a PC
text-editor called MultiLingual Scholar. I know because ... self-toot
... I
designed the font. The 92 characters are quite bizarre -- not as pretty
as
Cyrillic but equally phonetic. Chief Sequoyah picked out printers'
blocks
from various missionaries' presses -- inverting and rotating them to
provide
distinct shapes for each of his syllables.
Stan Kelly-Bootle
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm