12/11/05: Name That Language

[davidlevine]

So I was doing a Google search on my own name, as one does, and Google turned up this page on a mysterious site known only by a number.

The page is about "The Tale of the Golden Eagle" and it has two reader comments. One reader gives the story a grade of 5, the other a 4.

I can't even figure out what language the page is in, never mind what it says.

The Xerox language guesser thinks it's Estonian. But there doesn't seem to be any automated Estonian to English translator on the web. I've tried Romanian, Slovenian, and Serbian translators and none of them can extract any meaning from it.

Can anyone reading this tell me what it says?

Comments

[hollyking.livejournal.com]

My guess would be a nordic language such as Icelandic, Finnish, Sweedish or something along those lines.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I agree that it's Estonian. There's a drop-down menu where you can put comments, and the first choice one can pick for language is Estonian. (The only word in Estonian I know is "Estonian", picked up in Tallinn.) (Second on that menu is English and fourth is Finnish; more than that I can't say, as I'm working from Finnish cognates and you can just guess how much Finnish I have.) (I need more parentheses.)

Try sending it through a Finnish translator if you can find one. That'd be its closest living language relative.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Okay, the Finnish translator idea isn't so hot (http://www.tranexp.com:2000/InterTran?url=http%3A%2F%2F193.40.240.76%2FSFBooks%2Fgetrets.asp%3Fraamat%3D54716&type=text&text=&from=fin&to=eng). It can tell that menu choice number four is German (I miscounted earlier, five is Finnish, and this translator can't tell that). I had hoped that there were closer similarities, but I was way wrong. No useful information.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

I would have figured out that #1 is Estonian, #2 English, and #5 Finnish. But I wouldn't have figured out #4. "Saksa" is probably a cognate of "Saxon". (How many different words for "German" are there in various European languages, anyway?)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

"German" is one of those words that has LOTS of differences! Saksa, allemand(e), Deutsch... and not a single one I know sounds like the English version of the word. Stuff like this fascinates me. How'd they get so many words?

[orangemike.livejournal.com]

I can sort of see how "Deutsch" evolved into "tedesco"; but it's still fascinating, I agree. The English comes from the Latin name for the region, "Germania"; "Saksa" does sound like it was "Saxon" originally. But "allemande"?

allemande

[calimac.livejournal.com]

From a German tribe that the Romans called Alemanni. They were the tribe that the French (to be) had the most contact with, so their name is the one that stuck.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I should note that I know enough Swedish, Finnish, and Norwegian to state that this is not those.

[safewrite.livejournal.com]

I agree with hollyking - my sister lives in Sweden and this looks like something from thar-abouts. Icelandic? Norwegian? Give 'em a try.

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

I ran three of the words (including Ameerika) through google, and all three gave me mostly .ee top level domains, which would be Estonia. You could try a few more words, but that does seem to be it. I can't find a translation thingy online either.

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

Someone on ljgenie might be able to help.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

It's probably Finnish, or possibly Estonian. I hesitate only because I'm not fully up on the differences between them. But it's definitely one or the other. It most emphatically is not Icelandic or Norwegian or any other Indo-European Scandinavian language. Anybody who thinks it might be ... I'm sorry, but such a person should not be offering opinions on language identification. Would one identify a Harlan Ellison story as by Doc Smith?

[andyhat.livejournal.com]

Well, the 193.40.240.76 in the URL has the name tool.dcc.ttu.ee, and .ee is the extension for Estonia, so Estonian is almost certainly a correct guess.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

Suggestion: Post a message in English, explaining how you found the site and asking what's being said.

[vaxjedi]

It's Estonian. Hinne is Estonian for "mark or grade". So that makes sense. The best I can make out in the first sentence is "Altogether it's a bit SF-fantasy". After that, my guessing skills+dictionary searching fails me ;)

[teroyks.livejournal.com]

Definitely not Finnish. Forwarded the link to a friend of mine, who (IIRC) knows some Estonian; will see if she knows what it says.

[jukkahoo.livejournal.com]

As said plentymany times, it is Estonian, namely from the "Ulmekirjanduse Baas" archive of sf/f-related reviews, "ulme" being the word for science fiction in Estonian.

Unfortunately, while Estonian and Finnish are related languages, very few Finns know it well enought to be able to read or speak it. I'm certain I could get a beer and food, and even say "thank you" afterwards, but anything after that would be just guessing. Some words are the same, a lot of them are shortened and some have totally different meaning, but in general, it has an eerie feeling of familiarity clouded by lots of obscure words.

And even more unfortunate is the fact, that there is precious little connection among Finnish and Estonian fen. Maybe it is in our nature as members of the same language group, that we tend to keep to ourselves and not really mingle with the outside world? Other that a really quick trip to Scottish Worldcons every decade or so...

There is a small, but apparently vibrant sf-community in Estonia, as their website confirms: http://www.ulme.ee/ but it is in Estonian.

Translation of the reviews

[(Anonymous)]

Hi!

Yes, it's Estonian. I know it, because I study there (I'm Finnish myself). Here's a rough English translation of those reviews. I've done them very hastily so the might have errors in them.


1. Overall, its a very good sf-story. I've always liked, when writer combines old stories and creates new myths out of them. That's what I liked in this story too. A couple of unorthodox (or original, if you prefer) ideas and the weird love story makes the story definetely worth reading. The name of the main character, Nerissa, added weirdness (and brought some bones value too) to the story (5 stars)

The second comment was more difficult, so I might have made some errors in the translation. Sorry about that.

2. That wasn't bad, although there were few logical gaps. The story was somehow sterile, as if the author wanted all the time to withhold some information that only he has (inside his head?).

It could also mean something like "it seems as the author had withhold or kind of self-censored the text for the reasons only known to himself. (4 stars)

Okay, but you get the picture, right?


Yours,

Aleksi aka Mustakuutio
(thank jukkahoo for bringing those reviews to my attention)

[davidlevine]

Thanks so much for passing my request along to Aleksi! Greatly appreciated.

[orangemike.livejournal.com]

Are you going to reply to them, give 'em a bit of egoboo?

[davidlevine]

No point in replying to an Anonymous comment -- where would the email go? My reply to jukkahoo's comment sends a note to him, who is presumably in a position to pass the information to Aleksi, and it's also just below Aleksi's comment on the page if he visits here.

Re: Translation of the reviews

[davidlevine]

Okay, I changed my mind...

Googling your name

[rs-writer.livejournal.com]

As a fellow googler of my own name (it can't hurt to see who is talking to you) I must say that there are weird sites that manage to get your name on them somehow. In fact, I dug up a review today that I had done on a book sellers website, and found to my surprise that my full name and email were listed too, something I wouldn't do these days. It took a little searching to find out how to remove it, but it's gone now.

I use Google.ca, being Canadian, and I notice that it has a nice feature that Google.com apparently doesn't. Once I do a search, I get an option to set up an email notification of any new sites where my search would make a hit, and then I get an email informing me of them. That way, they do all the work over at google. Neat, eh? I don't think there is anything stopping you from doing that too, if you like.

Rebecca

Re: Googling your name

[davidlevine]

Google Alerts are available in the US too (http://www.google.com/alerts) and I use both Google Alerts and GoogleAlert (http://www.googlealert.com, not associated with Google). I believe it was GoogleAlert that notified me of the existence of the Estonian page.