Fw: JKR wit, translation, Chinese linguistics continued

[Tabouli]

No: HPFGUIDX 34373



Elkins:
> Some of the brands of humor that JKR favors have never amused me,
> frankly.  I absolutely hate most varieties of "comeuppance" humor, 
> for example -- I always have, ever since very early childhood -- and 
> there's a *lot* of that in these books.  

(Tabouli, who has been subject to humiliating bullying in her time, shudders sympathetically at the ghastly account of summer camp.  [At 10 I remember vowing in tearful fury to myself that when *I* was grown up I would *never* dismiss the cruelty children inflict on other children, or blame the victim rather than the tormentors.  I hate bullying.]  Then pictures herself as Snape, teaching the children of her tormentors.  New and rather disturbing possibilities arise.  Not that I could see myself torturing them the way Snape tortures Harry, mind - more likely the children of my tormentors would torture me as well)

Actually, I'm inclined to fall in with Elkins here.  My sense of humour tends to be whimso-verbal (?), not vengo-slapstick (??).  I find JKR's sharp social comedy hilarious, even when she spills into Lockhartian/Trelawnesque farce, but Draco the bouncing ferret and Dudley of the Pig's Tail and Ten Ton Tongue left me lukewarm.  After hearing about the girl who played the trans-Atlantic twins in The Parent Trap on the Movie list, I watched this film (might one day muse on OT about my accent-thoughts) and found myself wincing at the treatment inflicted on the Wicked Potential Stepmother, nasty though she was.  Couldn't help feeling that having a new relationship with someone who has young children from a previous relationship is hard enough without children being set this sort of example as a funny and just way of getting rid of a parent's new partner they don't like (and by the way, both versions of The Parent Trap are, IMO, completely derivative of the mid 20th century Swedish book "Lottie and Lisa" without crediting it.  Completely.  If I were the estate of whatshisname the Swedish author, I'd be getting my lawyers out...)

Radek:
> I don't think there exists any 
satisfactory translation: no body part sounds similar to anything 
astronomical in Czech.<

Ev vy:
> Lavender: Oh, Professor, look at that. I've got unaspected planet. Oooh, which planet is that, Professor?
Trelawney looking at Lavender's chart: This is Uranus, my dear. Uranus, a very important heavenly body.
Ron: Can I have a look at Lavender's body, too?

I know about as much Czech as your average hamburger, but as Ev Vy's example shows, I'm sure a translator with a minimal amount of imagination could find *some* way of wangling a risque joke out of the passage.  I mean, we have twin moons, we have rings, we have heavenly bodies, we have rocks, we have a Red Spot...

judyserenity:
> I don't think the name "Cho Chang" tells us much about Northern 
Chinese (Mandarin) versus Southern Chinese (Cantonese) origin.  I 
think the name could be from either dilaect. I just figured Chang is 
in the old Wade-Giles spelling system, not the newer pinyin system.  I 
doubt Cho's family is Singaporean, however; I think the spelling there 
is Cheng or maybe Cheung.<

(More than you ever wanted to know about Chinese linguistics warning)

Well, nothing *conclusive* about origin, but as someone who's seen an awful lot of Chinese names in her time (and has one of her own!), my instincts aren't bad.  There are a number of conventions and patterns in romanisation from different Chinese dialects and for people living in different countries, and  "Cho Chang" says Hong Kong to me.  More likely than Singaporean or Malaysian Chinese, partly because in those countries the Chinese tend to stick to the three name tradition (e.g. Lee Kwan Yew).

IIRC, in the old Wade-Giles system, I think "Cho" would be "Chou".

My feeling is that "Cho" is a non-systematic romanisation from a Chinese dialect other than Mandarin.  When the Chinese left China and settled in south-east Asia, they whipped up spellings of their Chinese names in a pretty haphazard fashion.  The same sound might be written as Yew, Yu or Yoo, depending on their mood on the day when they filled in the forms.  It's not uncommon to find that different members of the same family spell their family name differently!  In their view, it's the character that counts; any romanised rendition is an approximation anyway, so the spelling doesn't really matter.

There are of course other possibilities besides Mandarin and Cantonese.  Cantonese is the largest of the "Overseas Chinese" dialects because the Hong Kong and Canton province Chinese were seafarers (and hence immigrants), but other significant dialects include Hokkien (the south-eastern dialect which my mother speaks), Hakka and Teo Chew.  As the different dialects have different sorts of sounds in them to some degree, you can often guess someone's origins from the spelling of their name.  For example (bracketted words are the Mandarin pronunciations):

***
CANTONESE (GUANGDONGHUA): Origin Canton (Guangdong) province and Hong Kong

Has a lot of dipthongs, hence Cheung, Leong, and co in Overseas Chinese are likely to be Cantonese speakers (found in Hong Kong, but also elsewhere in SE Asia, in Chinese immigrant communities in Western countries, etc.).

Commonly has names ending in P, K, T and M (not found in Mandarin), hence Yap, Mak, Lam.  Often has "ng" at the start of syllables as well as at the end.

Examples: Ng Wai Ngok, Mak Wing-Kit

HOKKIEN (MINNANHUA): Origin Hokkien (Fujian) province, south of the Min river

Fewer dipthongs than Cantonese (though "ooi" is characteristically Hokkien), quite a few family names usually romanised with ending in "h" (Beh, Goh, Loh).

Some names ending with P,K,T,M, and starting with "ng", but less than in Cantonese.

Examples: Goh Kooi Ching, Lim Bee Soo

(don't know enough about other dialects to comment, but there are plenty of 'em)

***

I rang my (Hokkien speaking but English educated) mother earlier today, remembered this thread, and asked her about names, and she agreed that Cho Chang sounded like a Hong Kong name, though she thought that "Chang" wasn't a typical Cantonese name (which are more likely to have a dipthong, like Cheung).  She said that "Cho" was a unisex name.  She also said that her own Cantonese mother swapped her name over to the Hokkien pronunciation after marrying her Hokkien speaking husband, and that some of my great-uncles spelt the family name differently from her branch of the family!

As this illustrates, the "name as sacrosanct" concept is rather an individualist one...

Tabouli (who has noted that the "name as sacrosanct" theme comes up a lot in HP, doesn't it Weatherby?)


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]