New News on Old Persian

Over at the Language Log today, there is a brief article on the discovery of an Old Persian administrative text on what looks like to be a clay tablet. Old Persian was thought to perhaps only have been used for inscriptions, but this looks like evidence that the use of it might have been more widespread that thought. I've only briefly studied Old Persian at the University of Texas, Austin, with Dr. Mark Southern when he was there, and it was striking how similar it was to Sanskrit.

However, the reason that I posted about this is that the article mentions one of my mentors and my teacher of Khotanese at Harvard, Professor Prods Oktor Skjærvø.

It is gratifying to see that the Language Log has mentioned the various Iranian language primers that Dr. Skjærvø has generously made available for free download at a webpage entitled Iranian Studies at Harvard University. I know he worked hard on those primers with a lot of feedback from his students.

So you can now get started on Old or Young Avestan, Sogdian (which I studied with Dr. Skjærvø for two years) or Old Persian. Just remember that I believe that it was Émile Benveniste, the famous linguist who called Sogdian "the devil's own language." Don't say that I didn't warn you.

There are also two Kurdish primers by W. M. Thackston, and two course readers for Dr. Skjærvø's Intro classes for Zoroastrianism and Manicheism.

All in all an Iranian cultural feast gratis.

My Grandparents and Father Jules Daigle

I have kept few mementos of my adopted maternal grandparents. I had a leather bag full of things belonging to my grandfather, but that bag molded over in the Southeast Texas heat and humidity while in storage in a shed. I think somewhere else in storage I have some of his things, but I don't have anything of my grandmother's since I was not in Texas when she died, and she had been sick for so long with Alzheimer's, that most of her possessions had been discarded or absorbed into the family.

Last night I was looking through a stack of my sister's books, and I found my grandparent's copy of A Dictionary of the Cajun Language by Rev. Msgr. Jules O. Daigle, M.A., S.T.L. It's signed by Monsignor Daigle, but unfortunately there is no date. Here is the information that I've been able to find about Father Daigle from here:

Jules Daigle, born December 4, 1900, is the son of Oscar Daigle and Eliza Landry and the 6th of 17 children. Father Daigle spent the first 2 years of his career in Baltimore, Md. and the final four he studied in Rome. He boasted that all of his professors went on to become Cardinals. Father Jules Daigle, who was ordained at the Vatican in 1926, returned to Louisiana where his sermons in Cajun French drew overflow crowds. After 48 years as a priest, he retired in 1974 and began a writing career. By 1984, using his own money, he published his 600 page dictionary which immediately became a best seller and supported many charities. His influence has spawned successful education programs teaching French to South Louisiana's children and adults even after his death on January 2, 1998.

He was also the author of a book called Cajun Self-Taught. Apparently, he was fluent in eight languages and a main proponent of the preservation of Cajun French. He certainly had some acerbic things to say about topics such as "Is Cajun bad French or just different French?" and "Other myths about the Cajun language". He had earned the right to be cantankerous, for he states in the introduction that he has been using the language for 84 years.

On the backside of the front cover in what I think is my grandfather's handwriting is his and my grandmother's names and their address. They must have purchased this somewhat close to the end of my grandfather's life, for the address indicates that it was after they had sold their house and moved closer to my mother so that she could care for them as they grew infirm.

I was able to find one book review of Father Daigle's dictionary:
Mary Patricia Trenkle, The French Review, Vol. 59, No. 5. (Apr., 1986), pp. 836-837. Although Father Daigle was convinced that Cajun was a separate language from French based on a variety of factors such as vocabulary, question formation, the uses of après, donc, and voir, abbreviations and repetitions, Trenkle remains skeptical. I leave that matter to the experts in the field and those that like to smash their heads against the language versus dialect debates.

I've always regretted not having been taught Cajun French by my grandparents, especially after I started studying French in high school. They didn't teach it to their kids, but it wasn't until recently that I realized the stigma attached to speaking it from the beginning of the 20th century to about the 1970s. From the same page above that gave me that biographical information on Father Daigle:

The French language was once so dominant in Louisiana that official state documents were published in French and English. In 1898, the State Constitution provided that "the French language may be taught in those parishes and localities where the French language predominates". But in 1921, the Louisiana Constitution prohibited the teaching of French in public schools. Children were spanked for merely uttering French words on the school grounds.

It's been said that the stigma against Cajun French was because que ce n'est pas le bon francais, but the stigma must've been stronger than that, for my grandfather even went so far as to change the ending of his name, Babineaux, to an -o, Babino, to make the name appear more Italian. I'm uncertain when he did that, but my maternal aunt, being the maverick that she is, changed her name back to the original spelling several years ago. I should look and see if I can find the documentation for the spelling change of his name. I'll have some more posts about this kind of stigmatization later.

I'm sure my sister will hold onto the dictionary. It doesn't look used at all, but I'm sure my grandfather and grandmother had little need of it, except as a reminder of their heritage and to honor Father Daigle.

Specialized English Vocabulary for Khotanese

Today I've been working on an index for the third (and as far as I know, last) volume of Studies in the Vocabulary of Khotanese. (See below for full bibliographic information.)

Khotanese is a Middle Iranian language with a large amount of Buddhist literature extant, hence the interest. Khotan itself was a thriving center of Buddhism in Inner (or Central Asia) for most of the first millennium after the birth of Christ, so the study of Khotan and Khotanese literature is important in understanding the spread of Buddhism from India to the rest of Asia. I'll be talking more and more about all things Khotanese as I get to various topics since this is one of the main areas that I am researching.

I've been working on this list in the hope of eventually creating a composite index of Khotanese words. Not necessarily a dictionary, but merely an index that lists where words are discussed since Bailey's dictionary only lists words of Iranian origin, and you often have to check in a variety of places to find a particular lemma. And this gets wearisome, so a master index is necessary. It's not like using a single dictionary while working in other language; I often have to check in three or four places without any guarantee of finding what I'm looking for. Eventually, with a master index in hand, the time to work through a text should be cut way down, but of course, I have to put in the time to create a list in the first place.

The 3rd volume of Studies in the Vocabulary of Khotanese is an ideal place to start since it is itself an index for all three volumes and the lemmata correct mistakes, problems, or ghostwords in Sir. H. W. Bailey's Dictionary of Khotan Saka. Incidentally, if you'd like to purchase a copy of this extremely rare dictionary for my use, it's only about $700. You'd have my eternal gratitude, of course.

So I'm going through making an index of the lemmata or headwords with a minimal amount of information such as location in the volumes and the translation of the particular term, and I have run into a surprising number of words that I had to look up so I thought I'd share them and their definitions with you in no particular order:
1. beestings - n. first milk given by cow after calving
2. supervenient - adj. surprising, unexpected
3. efflate - to fill with breath; to puff up.
4. simplex - having only one part or element; "a simplex word has no affixes and is not part of a compound--like `boy' compared with `boyish' or `house' compared with `houseboat'
5. raphe - n. seam joining two halves or parts of a body part (Anatomy); median line of the cell wall of a diatom (Botany)
6. clyster-pipe - n. injection of a liquid through the anus to stimulate evacuation; sometimes used for diagnostic purposes

Learn Khotanese, improve your English vocabulary!

For the pedants: Emmerick, R.E., and P.O. Skjærvø. 1997. Studies in the Vocabulary of Khotanese III, (Veröffentlichungen der iranischen Kommission herausgegeben von Heiner Eichner und Rüdiger Schmitt Band 27). Wien: Verlag der Osterreichischen Akademie Der Wissenschaften.