Round 248 | Språkspelet

Round
<< 1	< 247		249 >	282 >>

Jake Kissinger Here we have round 248!

ㄍㄨㄛˋㄑㄩˋㄉㄜ˙ㄙㄨㄛˇㄗㄨㄛˋㄙㄨㄛˇㄨㄟˊㄨㄛˇㄈㄣㄅㄨˋㄑㄧㄥㄏㄠˇㄏㄨㄞˋ
ㄍㄨㄛˋㄑㄩˋㄉㄜ˙ㄍㄨㄤㄧㄣㄌㄧㄡˊㄕˋㄨㄛˇㄐㄧˋㄅㄨˋㄑㄧㄥㄋㄧㄢˊㄉㄞˋ
ㄨㄛˇㄘㄥˊㄐㄧㄥㄖㄣˋㄨㄟˊㄐㄧㄢˇㄉㄢㄉㄜ˙ㄕˋㄑㄧㄥˊㄒㄧㄢˋㄗㄞˋㄑㄩㄢˊㄅㄨˋㄇㄧㄥˊㄅㄞˊ
ㄨㄛˇㄏㄨㄖㄢˊㄍㄢˇㄉㄠˋㄧㄢˇㄑㄧㄢˊㄉㄜ˙ㄕˋㄐㄧㄝˋㄅㄧㄥˋㄈㄟㄨㄛˇㄙㄨㄛˇㄗㄞˋ

This may look longer than it is written this way; it's just 4 lines of a song. Anyone who knows the language is welcome to drop hints! Can someone tag everyone? I kind of want to go to sleep...

Jake Kissinger Brad Ed Wrik Vincensiu Arief Christian Zev Sarah Helene Nicolás Thatcher Murilo Justyna Maria

Jake Kissinger Darn! Why doesn't it tag everyone?

Jake Kissinger Vincensiu Arief Sarah Nicolás Maria

Jake Kissinger Oh, maybe they disabled tagging. Anyway, allayall & anyone else who's interested but I forgot...

Arief Wibowo Hardcore SpSR tags himself: Arief Wibowo

And Vincensiu Dionisiu, Sarah Karoline, the rest I can't tag from phone.

Arief Wibowo And yaaaaaay we finally have this orthography (hint

) in Sprogspelet!

Wrik Chatterjee Is this Spanish in Bopomofo?

Jake Kissinger LOL, no, it's not Spanish (I had an idea a while ago to write Spanish in Bopomofo, but this isn't that.)

Arief Wibowo Speaking of the ortographic fun, let's tag our progenitor and guardian angel Malin Elisabeth Nilsson!

Sarah Karoline Jake: I'm still taggable to all

Sometimes FB plays up. I think there's a limit to how many people one FB user can tag at a time. Incidentally, I can't tag you or anyone for some reason..

Congratulations on your win

Brad Wilson Is it "meant" to look like katakana?

Arief Wibowo It's *beep*yin...

Brad Wilson aah, zhuyin ... so this is a phonetic way of writing Chinese?

Arief Wibowo Yes!

One of two formal ways, to look like Latin: Pinyin, to still look like Hanzi: Zhuyin

(though I personally like Gwoyeu Romatzyh, it's helped many friends understand Mandarin tones...)

Brad Wilson This is all too foreign for me (trying to translate from zhuyin>IPA>???). If this is an Asian language, then I'm out of my depth anyway (only a few weeks of Japanese, and that's mostly forgotten). Think I'll sit this one out. Good luck to all.

Jake Kissinger I wouldn't try to go from Zhuyin (also known as Bopomofo) to IPA; I would go from Zhuyin to Pinyin. There's a direct correspondence between Zhuyin symbols and Pinyin, so I wrote this just by converting text in Pinyin. Whoever takes a whack at this, I would start by just converting it back to Pinyin and try to figure out the characters from there.

Arief Wibowo I will pinyinify this if round is stallified

Adrian Baxt-Dent is there any online hep for pinyinifying? or even hanziifing? I think I can work a dictionary (I have a paper one!!) better from Hanzi.

Adrian Baxt-Dent AND it is right here nest to the computer!!! What are the chances of THAT?!?!?! (For people in this group... possibly quite high.

)

Arief Wibowo From our other benefactor, the great Omniglot : http://www.omniglot.com/writing/zhuyin.htm
The 2nd line is pinyin

Arief Wibowo After successful pinyinifying, next is hanzifying... There's a certain cheerfully colored bridge that helps you jump straight to englishifying too

Jake Kissinger To Pinyinify, check out the Wikipedia article on Zhuyin/Bopomofo in addition to the Omniglot one, & http://www.pinyin.info has a page on Zhuyin with every possible Pinyin syllable & the Zhuyin equivalent of each.

Jake Kissinger Here's the latter: http://www.pinyin.info/romanization/bopomofo/basic.html

Jake Kissinger I don't know what the cheerfully-colored bridge Arief is referring to is.

Arief Wibowo (Third color of rainbow)bridge dot com

*pushing 5-min rule to the limits*

Brad Wilson would that be yellowbridge.com that I'm looking at right now?

Brad Wilson I'm able (I think) to pinyin-ate it, but it means nothing to me and the tone markings are just dots and stuff ... I have no idea how those get into pinyin

Jake Kissinger The Wikipedia article is great & shows the correspondences in the tone markings between the 2 systems.

Arief Wibowo Or go pro and type the toneless pinyin into yellowbridge.com and guess the meaning from the results?

There are 4 basic tones in Mandarin:
First tone (flat): ā or a1 or
Second tone (up): á or a2
Third tone (down-up): ǎ or a3
Fourth tone (down): à or a4

Zhuyin uses the accents (so look out for the small strokes, the first word, e.g., ㄍㄨㄛˋ is 4th tone

)
Yellowbridge.com uses the number (e.g., guo4)

Brad Wilson This is way too much work ... what I have for L4 = wö hu rán gän dào yän qián de shì jiè bìng fei wö suö zài

Arief Wibowo Good job! (though you meant the third sound by the umlauts)

By the way, you may use the numbered pinyin (e.g., wo3 hu ran2...) too, most online dictionaries accept numbered pinyins

Brad Wilson Yes, I didn't see that I could use numbers until after I had already done this.

Arief Wibowo No worries, Brad Wilson

Brad Wilson Here's my pinyin gloss (pure mechanics):
L1 = guo4 qu4 de suo3 zuo4 suo3 wei2 wo3 fen1 bu4 qing1 hao3 huai4
L2 = guo4 qu4 de guang1 yin1 liu2 shi4 wo3 ji4 bu4 qing1 nian2 dai4
L3 = wo3 ceng2 jing1 ren4 wei2 jian3 dan1 de shi4 qing2 xian4 zai4 quan2 bu4 ming2 bai2
L4 = wo3 hu1 ran2 gan3 dao4 yan3 qian2 de shi4 jie4 bing4 fei1 wo3 suo3 zai4

Brad Wilson But there's way too many different definitions for each of these. I need a Tsingtao. :-p

Adrian Baxt-Dent Yeah, maybe this is why after studying this for two years, I still don;t five minute rule myself.

Brad Wilson All I can get from the 1st line is something about going to some house.

Arief Wibowo Or Ve Tsin?

I am kiiinda native speaker (I speak Mandarin-Indonesian creole at home), but when I went to China few years ago, a security officer angrily said "did you go to school?" because of my poor choice of words...

Arief Wibowo Protip: Try to search few words at once, most of them are phrases

Brad Wilson My Chinese is limited to ni3hao3 and zai4jian4 at the door and pointing to the menu items.

Adrian Baxt-Dent guo4 qu4 (possesive particle) suo3 zuo4 suo3 wei2 (First person singular pronoun) fen1 (no/not) (nice weather) huai4
guo4 qu4 de guang1 yin1 liu2 shi4 (1st person) ji4 (no/not) (nice people team)
(I am a Cengjing person) wei2 jian3 dan1 (possesive particle)shi4 qing2 xian4 zai4 quan2 (no/not) ming2 bai2
(i) hu1 ran2 gan3 dao4 yan3 qian2 (possesive particle) shi4 jie4 bing4 fei1 wo3 suo3 zai4

Arief Wibowo I asked "zai3 na2 li3 mai3 dan2" (where to bill?[sic]) to the said guard, I later learned that I should've said "ma3 biao4" (where to buy ticket?)

mai dan is something you say to ask for the bill after you finish eating... Hahahaha

Adrian Baxt-Dent guo4 is not "country" is it? I THink that is guo2.

Adrian Baxt-Dent 我去睡觉了

Arief Wibowo Yeap! (not country, country is guo2)

Arief Wibowo I should shui4 jiao4 too! Jia1 you2 everyone!

Jake Kissinger Adrian, I can tell you have the wrong form of rèn; it's not "I am a Cengjing person," ergo it's not 人。

Jake Kissinger Arief, do you know Chinese well enough to already know what this says, then?

Arief Wibowo I understood more than half of it (e.g., what's guo gu de.suo zuo suo wei, though I expect "did you even go to school?"-type of mistakes later), will jump in to save stallification

Arief Wibowo Random hint of the day shi4 jie4 means the world/the universe

Trivia: cognates with sekai, which appears in almost all Japanese rounds we ever played

Arief Wibowo Random hint of the day: guo4 qu4 means past/the past (makes more sense with the particle

)

Jake Kissinger 你们好马？ Anyone want to take a whack at this? I'm in China, so my internet access is really spotty; I turned administration of this round over to Arief.

Arief Wibowo Adrian Baxt-Dent, Brad Wilson, Sarah Karoline, Wrik Chatterjee, Ed Blankenship, Nicolás Straccia, Vincensiu Dionisiu, Victor Wåhlstrand Skärström, Andy Ayres, Thatcher Donovan, Robbin Michels, Rasmus Bach Ottosen, Дайте Нефть Из Баку, Christian James Meredith, Billy James Brightraven, Chiara Maggi, Dago Lesmes, Zev Brȹk, Helene Wiinholt, Maria Weidner, Justyna Rojek, and many many others

Arief Wibowo (retry) Ed Blankenship, Дайте Нефть Из Баку, Chiara Maggi, Maria Weidner

Arief Wibowo ?248:
ㄍㄨㄛˋㄑㄩˋㄉㄜ˙ㄙㄨㄛˇㄗㄨㄛˋㄙㄨㄛˇㄨㄟˊㄨㄛˇㄈㄣㄅㄨˋㄑㄧㄥㄏㄠˇㄏㄨㄞˋ
ㄍㄨㄛˋㄑㄩˋㄉㄜ˙ㄍㄨㄤㄧㄣㄌㄧㄡˊㄕˋㄨㄛˇㄐㄧˋㄅㄨˋㄑㄧㄥㄋㄧㄢˊㄉㄞˋ
ㄨㄛˇㄘㄥˊㄐㄧㄥㄖㄣˋㄨㄟˊㄐㄧㄢˇㄉㄢㄉㄜ˙ㄕˋㄑㄧㄥˊㄒㄧㄢˋㄗㄞˋㄑㄩㄢˊㄅㄨˋㄇㄧㄥˊㄅㄞˊ
ㄨㄛˇㄏㄨㄖㄢˊㄍㄢˇㄉㄠˋㄧㄢˇㄑㄧㄢˊㄉㄜ˙ㄕˋㄐㄧㄝˋㄅㄧㄥˋㄈㄟㄨㄛˇㄙㄨㄛˇㄗㄞˋ

Brad Wilson pinyinified the perfect Pinyin:
guo4 qu4 de suo3 zuo4 suo3 wei2 wo3 fen1 bu4 qing1 hao3 huai4
guo4 qu4 de guang1 yin1 liu2 shi4 wo3 ji4 bu4 qing1 nian2 dai4
wo3 ceng2 jing1 ren4 wei2 jian3 dan1 de shi4 qing2 xian4 zai4 quan2 bu4 ming2 bai2
wo3 hu1 ran2 gan3 dao4 yan3 qian2 de shi4 jie4 bing4 fei1 wo3 suo3 zai4

To speed up the round, here's the (Simplified) Hanzi:
过去的所作所为我分不清好坏
过去的光阴流逝我记不清年代
我曾经认为简单的事情现在全不明白
我忽然感到眼前的世界并非我所在

Thatcher Ó Donnabháin The hanzi should help a ton.

Sarah Karoline I thought I'd put a call out to our SpS players as the game has stalled again.

Andy Christian Brad Ed Thatcher Nicolás Дайте Victor Anna Zev Justyna Wrik Rasmus Helene Vincensiu Arief Dago
(I can't tag anyone else!)

1. Can any of you help?

2. I thought I'd also pose a question... As SpS rounds have stalled all too often these last few months, should we perhaps relax the rules of the game (e.g. the five-minute rule, thus allowing advanced learners to take part in a round, despite their pre-existing knowledge) or go "back-to-basics" with the texts we choose? Of course, the term "back-to-basics" needs defining, given we all learn different languages and what's "basic" or "easy" to one may not be to another. Questions, questions, questions!

2.ii Perhaps creating a list of languages we learn or know would help roundsmen and roundswomen in selecting a language for their round...

p.s. With "basic" texts we're also more likely to learn from them.
---
In the meantime, I'll try to find more words...

Helene Wiinholt I haven't participated in the last many rounds, seeing as I'm mostly focused on the nordic languages.

Brad Wilson I'm sitting out ... I don't know Asian langs at all

Sarah Karoline I'm finding this round very hard too. My knowledge of and success with the oriental languages is non-existent too

Sarah Karoline I've looked up all the words, but only the following have the potential to make any sense. The words I've omitted are about death, dynasties, streams, passages and someone called Jane(!) :/

line 1: The past departed...... of..... because I .... time..... not bad.
line 2: The past departed light....... I don't remember.....year.......
line 3: I once ......recognition for.......
line 4: I suddenly promise........eye.....in front of........feeling.......

Sarah Karoline My resource.... http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%9C%A8

Thatcher Ó Donnabháin 我会说一点儿中文，因为我在学校学习了。不过我学了，但是我不会读这张课文。对不起，不能帮你们，因为我得去我的viola课，我正在打车。

所以：对不起。
(I can speak some chinese, because I took it in school. Although I studied it, I cannot read this text. Sorry, I cannot help right now because I have to go to a viola lesson, I am in the middle of going by car to it now.

So: Sorry.)

Arief Wibowo From line 4, 世界 means the universe/the world

Arief Wibowo And don't worry guys, in fact we're encouraged to join in deciphering languages we know less about, and not allowed to join in languages we are expert in.

And that's kinda what Malin's Sprogspelet is about: it let's you play with languages' grammars and vocabularies that you've never seen before (Cochtaw, anyone?)

--
In my case, I have a lot of pressure ending my era of freelancing and going back to employment, hence very limited participation for now.

Jake Kissinger Great, Sarah! There are indeed no deaths, dynasties, streams, or Janes involved. It looks like you are starting to get the right translation; can you post what parts you translated & what parts you couldn't, in a fashion like we've done before so Arief or I can do some bracket thingamajiggers?

Jake Kissinger Oh, cool, Thatcher, I didn't know you played the viola! I've played in school orchestras for a while, myself; I play the bass.
Feel free to help when you get the chance, especially since there hasn't been much activity in this round!

Sarah Karoline Here is the list of characters and translations I found. I've looked the words up again, this time using a different resource.

过 = past. 去 = go/depart. 的 =the 所 =by. 为 = because. 我 = I. 分不 = cannot. 清 = ? 好 = good. 坏= bad.

过 = past. 去 = go/depart. 的 = the. 光 = light. 阴 =? 流 = stream. 逝 = ? 我 = I. 记 = remember. 不= not. 清 = ? 年=year. 代 = generation.

我 = I. 曾 = once. 经 = by. 认 = recognition. 为 = for. 简 = ? 单=single. 的= the. 事 = things. 情 = love. 现 = now. 在 = in. 全 =all. 不 = not. 明 = ? 白= white.

我 = I. 忽 = suddenly. 然 = however. 感 = a sense of. 到= to. 眼 = eye. 前=? 的 = the. 世= world. 界=community. 并 = and. 非 = non-. 我 = I. 所 = by. 在 = in.

Thatcher Ó Donnabháin Half of those are wrong because Chinese mixes words together to make new ones. That is why it makes next to no sense.

Sarah Karoline I've read up on some grammar and vocabulary, and tried looking up characters in different combinations. Then I looked up characters in different combinations. 7 hours later I have the following.

The text possibly says the following. I've used a little poet licence to fill in gaps....:
1. I cannot distinguish/tell good and/or bad actions of the past.
2. I cannot remember the past years which have gone by.
3. I once thought simple things. Now I don't understand.
4. However, I suddenly feel a sense of the world/universe. Not just where I am.

Sarah Karoline I'll check back in the morning as it's midnight here!

Anna Robbins Hello there, and apologies for my long absence! I have now risen from the dead

Thanks for the tag, Sarah--I was wondering where the current thread had gone!
I have knowledge of Mandarin, so I won't translate anything I already know unless someone has a question they want verification on--in which case I'll help if the host isn't available to give hints

Sarah Karoline Hi Anna! Welcome back, although perhaps only momentarily

Rather than a question, waving a magic wand, thus enabling those of us with no knowledge to be able to read the above script would be very helpful!

Anna Robbins All right. So have the above characters already been definitely established? Sorry, I'm just jumping in here to check how far you've come

In that case, Arief would be correct in translating 世界 as "world". Sarah, you're making decent progress up there with your last attempt

Anna Robbins Also, another hint--as Thatcher said, a lot of Chinese must be translated in pairs or sets of more than one word. Treat them as compound words or phrases, as opposed to individual words, where you don't see the text making any sense.

Sarah Karoline Thank you for your feedback, Anna!

In yesterday's draft I'd looked the words up in pairs and sets. I shall try again.....

---
(I wish someone else was playing too - a feeling Vincensiu knows too well, I imagine

)

Anna Robbins I wouldn't trust myself to 100% approve a final translation, so I'll leave that to Jake, but it looks like steady progress to me

And also, if I disappear again, it's because I'm still busy with preparations to leave for Sweden :p

Sarah Karoline OK!

Ha det bra i Sverige! Var i Sverige ska du studera? Jag studerade i Uppsala (för länge sedan!

)

Sarah Karoline (p.s. tagging failure...)

Jake Kissinger Wow! Nice job, Sarah! My mouth actually dropped open because of how much progress you made from one post to the next. Nice hint, Thatcher! As Thatcher and Anna (who I still can't tag!

) hinted, the characters aren't words necessarily but more like morphemes.
You're pretty darn close, actually. In the third sentence, think about whether or not the things are really simple. Also, is the fourth sentence about where the speaker is or where he is not?
I'm going to give the first and second to you; you're close enough. The translation I have says the same thing, just in a more eloquent-sounding fashion: "I can’t tell if all the things I’ve done were good or bad. / Past times fade and I can’t recall the years."

Anna Robbins Ah, there's Jake

Sarah, jag ska studera på KTH i Stockholm

Sarah Karoline Thank you Jake It took several hours of guesswork. Mz method was as follows...

Enter one character at a time into yellowbridge.com until a word appears.
Apply guesswork when I couldn't find a word.

Not the most academic approach!

I shall redo the last two lines...
---
Anna : Jag har varit till Stockholm, men inte KTH.

Adrian Baxt-Dent I was going to help, but I couldn't find my paper dictionary, which normally sits within reach of my computer.

Sarah Karoline I'm back with attempt number 3. May I say this is really hard

1. I cannot distinguish/tell good and/or bad actions of the past.
2. I cannot remember the past years which have gone by.

3. I once thought things which now I don't understand to be simple.
4. However, I suddenly feel a sense of the world/universe is not where I am.

Jake Kissinger 3: "The things I thought were simple I now can't understand at all." Good!

Jake Kissinger 4: "I suddenly feel the world in front of my eyes is not where I really am." I think yours is close enough.

Jake Kissinger Congratulations, Sarah! You won!

Jake Kissinger Text in question, BTW, is the second stanza of the song "It's Not That I Don't Understand" by Cui Jian. http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=p7QUtXTY-xI

Sarah Karoline And there I was expecting line 4 to be wrong and line three to need fixing - haha

I'll come up with a text and I'll start a new thread. If FB allows me to tag, I'll tag everyone

Thatcher Ó Donnabháin Congratulations! Čestitam!

Sarah Karoline Hvala Thatcher

The next text is ready....

Round
<< 1	< 247		249 >	282 >>