Alice translation

[Sky Campbell]

My wife and I were out this morning when the idea of "mysterious/sacred" came to mind and we discussed it for a bit.  I like this approach if the idea of "curious" is "weird/strange" rather than "I want to know."  What I am lacking here is the cultural distinction (if any) between mysterious, sacred, medicine, etc. in these languages.

 

Sky

 

From: Siouan Linguistics [mailto:SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu] On Behalf Of Jan Ullrich
Sent: Saturday, April 12, 2014 8:26 AM
To: SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu
Subject: Re: Alice translation

 

 

>> Alice was a Victorian-age English girl.  When she fell down the rabbit hole and sampled the mushrooms, she said: “Curiouser and curiouser.”  A modern day American girl might communicate the same message with the formula: “Well, this is really getting weird.”  Here, the same substantive message can be communicated at least two different ways in the same language without using any of the same words or grammatical devices.

>>> In the mouths of fluent speakers, Siouan languages most likely had ways of expressing this same message.  It is not culturally specific; anybody, anywhere, might have occasion to utter it.  Lexically, we might want to check to see if we have one or more words meaning “curious”, in the sense of ‘strange’, ‘odd’, ‘weird’, or ‘contrary to expectations’.  If not, some word in the language probably got overlooked, and if we still have speakers we should search for it.

 

Rorry,

I think that in the context you described the expression is to a high degree synonymous with the words “mysterious” and perhaps “magical”. 

So one of the possible free translations of the sentence into Lakota is this: “Sáŋm wakháŋ áye” (more / mysterious / it is becoming gradually or changing cumulatively).

 

Jan

 

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