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dreamer_easyI have promised myself I won't try and learn any languages until the novel is finished. But in the meantime, there's the joy of mucking about with languages - a close cousin of the cryptic crossword, methinks, and cunning jokes, all about the A-Ha Moment, that jolt of pleasure in your brain when you suddenly make the connection. Viz:
This is the Japanese version of SHINee's song "Lucifer", subtitled, romanised, and translated into English by an angel of a fan. Many of the lyrics have just been rewritten to scan better in Japanese, but I was delighted to see the daffy poetry of "I feel like I've become a clown trapped in a glass castle" has survived.
Better still, the Japanese word for "clown" jumps right out from the romanisation: "piero". Bingo, I thought, Portuguese loanword, like the ones I came across when writing Room With No Doors all those years ago. I guessed wrong there: it's from the French Pierrot, of course.
Curiosity piqued, I went back to the Korean lyrics, and found the same word: 삐에로, "ppiero". Now I wonder if the Koreans got it straight from French, or via Japanese. :)
This is the Japanese version of SHINee's song "Lucifer", subtitled, romanised, and translated into English by an angel of a fan. Many of the lyrics have just been rewritten to scan better in Japanese, but I was delighted to see the daffy poetry of "I feel like I've become a clown trapped in a glass castle" has survived.
Better still, the Japanese word for "clown" jumps right out from the romanisation: "piero". Bingo, I thought, Portuguese loanword, like the ones I came across when writing Room With No Doors all those years ago. I guessed wrong there: it's from the French Pierrot, of course.
Curiosity piqued, I went back to the Korean lyrics, and found the same word: 삐에로, "ppiero". Now I wonder if the Koreans got it straight from French, or via Japanese. :)
