RE: RE: The Untranslatability of Ideas: Reading a Poem in Afrikaans and Reflections on Translation
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RE: The Untranslatability of Ideas: Reading a Poem in Afrikaans and Reflections on Translation

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5y

nursery rhyme because rhyming

Oh yes, I saw the rhyming but did not know if the pronunciation would rhyme. I know in Afrikaans we have words that look like they rhyme but when you pronounce them they do not. "kat" and "mat" rhymes but "ver" doesn't rhyme with "bed" or "met". Weirdly, the spelling of "ver" is sometimes "vêr" but when you link "ver" with other words the ê changes to an e but the pronunciation stays the same. Confusing for non-native speakers, to say the least. (And that is an easy example.)

Dutch pronunciation the closest

Funny you should ask, I will link a YouTube video of a native Afrikaans speaker who talks Dutch (she is married to a Dutch citizen) and to my ear it sounds so funny. (I have Dutch friends and my uncle lives in Belgium and I have Dutch professors at my Uni, so I know how Dutch should sound like. For an Afrikaans speaker to pronounce Dutch words correctly it is very hard!)

The video:

I tried to time stamp it at roughly 3 minutes 30 seconds or so. She is talking Dutch with an Afrikaans accent. To my ear, it is so funny because she sounds Afrikaans but then you realize the words are Dutch words.

Sorry, this comment is so long already!

I will finish.

I wonder, would a poem of both languages mixed sound fun, Finnish and Afrikaans.

That would be fascinating! I would love it. In Afrikaans, we mix English on such a regular basis, in poetry as well. So, if there is a community of Afrikaans speakers that can speak English and Finnish, there will be a trio of language poetry!! And I love what you did there in the end, it is a surreal painting in words:

in the tree there sits cat
on its feet white socks

Something like that.

@fermentedphil: nursery rhyme | Ecency