Re: Slightly OT: Podcast Tagline in Pali

Dear Florian,

In fact Pāli itself is a constructed language as has been noted by scholars ever since Geiger (1916) who called it a Kunstsprache (man–made language). We know this because Pāli has elements of several different dialects within it  - east, west and northern. It was a language created by monks for ecclesiastical purposes - i. e. the transmission of the Buddhadharma and was a translation from an earlier, underlying language, which has been various called Buddhist Middle Indic (von Hinüber), une langue précanonique (Sylvain Lévi), Old Ardha Māgadhī ( Lüders, Alsdorf), a dialectically mixed Middle Indic vernacular (Edgerton), an überregionalDichtersprache (“transregional artistic language,” Bechert ), a Verkehrssprache ("Language of trade" Geiger), a Kanzeleisprache ("language of Aśoka's court" Lüders) just to name some of the principal labels of the pre-Pāli language/dialect.

For a discussion on the constructed nature of Pāli see


Hinüber, O. v. 1982. "Pāli as
an Artificial Language." Indologica Taurinensia 10: 133-140. Also
published in Kleine Schriften, Teil I, hereausgegeben von Harry Falk und Walter
Slaje (Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz Verlag), 451-458.


and


Hinüber, O. v. 1983. "The
Oldest Literary Language of Buddhism." Saeculum 34 (1983): 1-9. Also published in Selected Papers on Pāli Studies (Oxford:
The Pali Text Society, 2005), 177-94.

Regarding your questions:

The normal way to say "Welcome" is sāgataṃ + oblique case = sāgataṃ te (you are welcome). This comes from Skt. su-āgata (well-come), which is the past participle of āgam, āgacchati  (to come). You probably could use the optative (I don't think the benedictive survives in Pāli) of āgam, in the causative (āgameti,  "to welcome")  i. e. tvaṃ sāgameyyaṃbut I've never seen it. A verb like abhivad ("to welcome") in the indicative which is transitive might make more sense:tvam abhivadāmi or tvaṃsāgamemi, in the indicative.


"Constructed language" in Pāli would probably be katabhāsā ("made language"). To make it an abstract noun, add -tā or-ttaṃ (Skt -tvaṃ), i. e. katabhāsātā ("the state of a made/artifical language," "condition of..."). 


nigghosa might work for podcast, although it has more of the sense of "shout" in Pāli. Perhaps also  pavedana ("proclamation, announcement" < pra+vad in Skt. "proclaim, declare") or sāvana ( < causative of śru in Skt. "causing to be heard, announce, proclaim"). 

The usual construction for "regarding" isārabbha + accuṣ or sandhāya + accus.

I would have to know the rest of the sentence to advise about the relative clause - it can be done with  a compound in Pāli and with the relative-correlative structure. In this case, the second looks simpler, ye idaṃ/idāni karonti, te...  ("those who make it/them, they...")

Hope this helps. I'm interested in hearing what others have to say about the above,

Mettā,


Bryan







________________________________
  From: Florian Weps <fmw@...>
To: palistudy@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Friday, March 22, 2013 11:24:50 AM
Subject: [palistudy] Slightly OT: Podcast Tagline in Pali


 
Dear Group

if this is too far off-topic, please let me know.

There is a podcast about invented languages which I enjoy a lot. It's called
"Conlangery" (as in "constructed languages").

http://conlangery.conlang.org/

The tagline of the podcast is, "Welcome to Conlangery, the podcast about
constructed languages and the people who create them". By convention, a
different translation (into various constructed and natural languages) of this
greeting is played at the beginning of each episode.

I decided, as a little project, to translate it into Pali. Already I have a lot of naive questions:

1. I found the indeclinable "sāgataṁ" in a dictionary, meaning "welcome", but
is there an idiomatic way to say, "Welcome to ..." in Pali?  Thinking about it,
it seems to be benedictive, "may you be welcome to ...", is this appropriate in Pali?

2. The word "conlangery" seems to be an ideal candidate for a kammadhāriya
compound, something like kappita + bhasa - but how do I incorporate the sense
of "-erey" (as in "bakery")?

3. For "podcast" I found "nigghosa", "shouting out, proclamation". Reasonable?

4. "about" - would "akkāyika" (relating, narrating) be appropriate?

5. the relative clause "the people who create them" - bahubbihi compound, or a
construction with relative pronouns?

Thanks for any hints, and again, if this is too off-topic, I'll refrain from this kind of post in the future.

Cheers,
Florian




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