Jambo! 拜拜漢語！Al Jazeera in French

Not again! I am making no progress in Chinese. Not because I am stuck in grammar or the vocabulary is huge or the writing system is different... I am no longer interested. It always happens like this. After a couple of months (this time it lasted for over six months) I give up the language. If I can't counter this tendency of mine, I will never ever be a polyglot. :(

But there is no need to brood about this. You can spend hours thinking about yourself, as if you were special, and still not comprehend a bit of it. Anyway, I am now focusing on Swahili. (Don't laugh!) I can already say: 

Jambo! Habari gani? Ninatumia Linux. Yangu distribution(?) Fedora. Unataka Ubuntu Linux? 

La, sitaki Linux. Ninataka Mac au Windows.

(Hi! How are you? I use Linux. My distribution is Fedora. Do you want [to try] Ubuntu Linux? 

No, I don't want Linux. I want either Mac or Windows.)

I have also deciphered the popular Swahili phrase 'Hakuna matata.'

ha- = negation prefix
kuna = there is / there are
matata = problem

So the literal translation is 'There are no problems.' and colloquially... well... you all know what it means! :D

Finally, I just came across something very interesting. Al Jazeera is going to launch a French service by the end of this year and it has chosen to set up its French language centre in Paris (oops!) Dakar, the Senegalese capital.

My first French poem - Je vous remercie mon Dieu

Yesterday I read my first piece of literature in French. It's a poem by Ivorian author Bernard B. Dadié. In the poem Dadié thanks the god for making his skin black.

I don't know what circumstances the poem was written under. So I am not competent to make a critical remark. Still I would have liked more if the poem was about the skies, stars or dreams.

I came across a verse on French Wikipedia and then found the complete poem here. I have translated it with the help of Wiktionary (English and French versions), all the while hoping that I wasn't doing a disastrous job. (^_^)

Je vous remercie mon Dieu

I thank you my god

Bernard Binlin Dadié

Je vous remercie mon Dieu, de m'avoir créé Noir,
d'avoir fait de moi
la somme de toutes les douleurs,
mis sur ma tête,
le Monde.
J'ai la livrée du Centaure
Et je porte le Monde depuis le premier matin.

I thank you my god, for making me a black,
for making me
the sum of all pains,
putting on my head
the world.
I took the world to the Centaur
And I have carried the world since the first morning.

Le blanc est une couleur de circonstance
Le noir, la couleur de tous les jours
Et je porte le Monde depuis le premier soir.

White is a colour that depends on the situation
Black is the colour of every day
And I have carried the world since the first evening.

Je suis content
de la forme de ma tête
faite pour porter le Monde,
Satisfait
de la forme de mon nez
Qui doit humer tout le vent du Monde,
Heureux
de la forme de mes jambes
Prêtes à courir toutes les étapes du Monde.

I am contend
with the shape of my head
been shaped like this on account of carrying the world,
Satisfied
with the shape of my nose
that had to smell all the scents of the world,
Happy
at the shape of my legs
ready to run on all the steps of the world.

Je vous remercie mon Dieu, de m'avoir créé Noir,
d'avoir fait de moi,
la somme de toutes les douleurs.
Trente-six épées ont transpercé mon coeur.
Trente-six brasiers ont brûlé mon corps.
Et mon sang sur tous les calvaires a rougi la neige,
Et mon sang à tous les levants a rougi la nature.

I thank you my god, for having created me black
for having made me
the sum of all pains.
Thirty-six swords have pierced my heart.
Thirty-six brasiers have burned my body.
And the cavalry reddened the snow with my blood,
And my blood made the east red.

Je suis quand même
Content de porter le Monde,
Content de mes bras courts
               de mes bras longs
                          de l'épaisseur de mes lèvres.

I am even
Content at carrying the world,
Content at my short arms
                at my long arms
                        at my thick lips.

Je vous remercie mon Dieu, de m'avoir créé Noir,
Je porte le Monde depuis l'aube des temps
Et mon rire sur le Monde,
               dans la nuit
                          crée le jour.

I thank you my god, for having created me black,
I carry the world since the beginning of time
And my laugh on the world,
                 during night
                      created the day.

Languages, books and the National Library of India

Langues, livres et la Bibliothèque nationale d'Inde

La Bibliothèque nationale d'Inde a plus de 22.65.000 livres et trois sur quatre sont en anglais. Il y a seulement 6.43.255 livres en autres langues Indiennes. En la section des langues étrangères, le chinois a 15.000 livres, le arabe a 12.000 livres le persan en a 12.000. On y trouve 5.000 livres en français et la section des langues slaves a 65.000 livres.

La bibliothèque possède 85.000 livres en bengali mais le nombre des livres en hindi est seulement 80.000. Le site web non donne pas de quelconque information concernant combien de livres dans la bibliothèque sont en pendjabi et télougou.

La condition actuelle en Inde le montre: bien que le gouvernement indien utilise deux idiomes - le hindi et l'anglais - officiellement au niveau fédéral; en vérité anglais est plus populaire et beaucoup d'indiens dans les le sud et l'est de la nation préfèrent utiliser l'anglais. Les livres à la bibliothèque nationale sont une autre preuve de ce phénomène.

========================================

Sometimes I wonder why don't they declare English our national language. My compatriots in South India and East India would surely welcome the decision; albeit North Indians (especially the Hindi speaking states) may not agree. Currently India doesn't have a national language. The Central Government uses Hindi and English but as you would suspect, Hindi is only nominally used. Perhaps they preserve it to use on the World Hindi Day. 

I found another illustration of this a couple of days ago, while I was browsing through the website of the National Library of India and from there I figured out that about one in three books in the library are in English. They didn't explicitly mention this fact but if of the 24,65,352 books in the library only 6,43,255 are in indigenous languages, you can safely think the rest aren't in Chinese or Russian.

Only 80,000 books in the library are in Hindi; even Bengali, a regional language, boasts of 85,000 books. But that's perhaps because the National Library is located in West Bengal.

Coming back home, I was really saddened to find out of all Indian languages they don't list the number of books they have only for Punjabi, English and Telegu. Perhaps that's a polite way of saying they haven't got much in Punjabi. 

It reminds me of a famous saying here in Punjab and it goes something like this:

If a Bengali were to suddenly get rich, he would construct a library in his house but if a Punjabi got lot of money overnight, he would make the flashiest of bars and have a collection of the most exquisite wines.

Perhaps the Bengalis took it literally. They gave the world the first non-European Nobel Laureate but that doesn't mean they have earned the right look down upon unruly Punjabis.

Turning to other Indian languages, Sanskrit has over 20,000 books which is huge when you compare it to only 500 books the Kashmiri section has. This makes me think do we really know the people we are - or at least claim to be - fighting for? After all we have fought four wars with Pakistan over Kashmir and now the territory is divided into three regions, one controlled by Pakistan, India and China each.

Here is the report card of other Indian languages:

Tamil: 57,000

Gujarati: 37,000

Marathi: 37,000

Malyalam: 34,000

Kannada: 32,000

Urdu: 20,000

Oriya: 19,500

Assamese: 12,000

Sindhi: 2,100

Impressive as it may sound to some, when you compare it with the Slavic language section that houses a decent 65,000 books you doubt if these languages are really indigenous or foreign.

There more more books in Chinese at the library than in Assamese and Sindhi; 15,000. That's probably because there is a China town in Calcutta.

Arabic and Persian have 12,000 each, next comes French with 5,000 books and Romanian has 2,000.