Macaronic language
Encyclopedia
Macaronic refers to text spoken or written using a mixture of language
s, sometimes including bilingual pun
s, particularly when the languages are used in the same context (as opposed to different segments of a text being in different languages). The term is also sometimes used to denote hybrid word
s, which are in effect internally macaronic. A rough equivalent in spoken language is code-switching
, a term in linguistics
referring to using more than one language or dialect in conversation.
Macaronic Latin specifically is a jumbled jargon
made up of vernacular words given Latin endings, or for Latin words mixed with the vernacular
in a pastiche
(compare dog Latin
).
The word macaronic comes from the New Latin
macaronicus, from Italian dialect maccarone ("dumpling, macaroni", regarded as coarse peasant fare). The term macaronic has derogatory overtones, and it is usually reserved for works where the mixing of languages has a humorous or satirical
intent. It is a matter of debate whether the term can be applied to mixed-language literature of a more serious nature and purpose.
at the end of the Middle Ages
—a time when Latin was still the working language of scholars, clerics or university students, but was losing ground to vernacular among poets, minstrel
s and storytellers.
An early example occurs already in 1130, in the Gospel book
of Munsterbilzen Abbey
. The following sentence is found, mixing late Old Dutch
and Latin:
Translated: This community was noble and pure, and completely full of all virtues.
The Carmina Burana
(collected ca. 1230) contains several poems mixing Latin with Medieval German
or French
. Another well-known example is the first stanza of the famous carol
In Dulci Jubilo
, whose original version (written around 1328) had Latin mixed with German, with a hint of Greek
. While some of those early works had a clear humorous intent, many used the language mix for lyrical effect.
Another early example in the Middle English recitals The Towneley Plays (ca. 1460). In play 24 (The Talents
), Pontius Pilate
delivers a speech in mixed English-Latin rhyme.
A number of English political poems in the 14th century alternated (Middle) English and Latin lines, as for example in MS Digby 196:
The taxe hath tened [ruined] vs alle,
Probat hoc mors tot validorum
The Kyng þerof had small
ffuit in manibus cupidorum.
yt had ful hard hansell,
dans causam fine dolorum;
vengeaunce nedes most fall,
propter peccata malorum
(etc)
in the late 14th century, apparently from maccarona, a kind of pasta
or dumpling
eaten by peasants at that time. (That word is also the presumed origin of the Italian word maccheroni.) Its association with the genre comes from the Macaronea
, a comical poem by Tifi Odasi
in mixed Latin and Italian
, published in 1488 or 1489. Another example of the genre is Tosontea by Corrado of Padua, which was published at about the same time as Tifi's Macaronea.
Tifi and his contemporaries clearly intended to satirize
the broken Latin used by many doctors, scholars and bureaucrats of their time. While this "macaronic Latin" (macaronica verba) could be due to ignorance or carelessness, it could also be the result of its speakers trying to make themselves understood by common folk without resorting to their "vulgar" language.
An important and unusual example of mixed-language text is the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili
of Francesco Colonna
(1499), which was basically written using Italian syntax and morphology, but using a made-up vocabulary based on roots from Latin, Greek, and occasionally others. However, while the Hypnerotomachia is contemporary with Tifi's Macaronea, its mixed language is not used for plain humor, but is rather as an aesthetic device to underscore the fantastic but refined nature of the book.
Tifi's Macaronea was a popular success, and the writing of humorous
texts in Macaronic Latin became a fad in the 16th and 17th centuries, particularly in Italian. An important example was Baldo by Teofilo Folengo
, who described his own verses as "a gross, rude, and rustic mixture of flour, cheese, and butter".
, such as Ireland
before the middle of the nineteenth century. Macaronic traditional songs, such as Siúil A Rúin
are quite common in Ireland. In Scotland, macaronic songs became popular for a period among Highland
immigrants to Glasgow
, using English
and Scottish Gaelic as a device to express the alien nature of the anglophone environment. An example:
The term "macaronic" itself was popular as it bears a superficial resemblance to a common Gaelic surname form: Mac a' ... meaning son of the ....
Folk and popular music of the Andes
frequently alternates between Spanish
and the given South American language of its region of origin.
Macaronic verse was also common in medieval India
, where the influence of the Muslim
rulers led to poems being written alternatingly in indigenous medieval Hindi
verse, followed by one in the Persian language
. This style was used by the famous poet Amir Khusro
, and it also played a major role in the rise of the Urdu
or Hindustani
language.
A Greek-French example, well-known among French schoolchildren, is attributed to Xénophon
by Alfred de Vigny
in Pluton ciel que Janus Proserpine:
This means
but if read in French sounds like:
meaning
. Other examples are provided by the character Salvatore in Umberto Eco
's The Name of the Rose
, and the peasant hero of his Baudolino
. Dario Fo
' s Mistero Buffo ("Comic Mystery Play") features grammelot
sketches using language with macaronic elements.
The novel The Last Samurai
by Helen DeWitt
includes portions of Japanese
, Classical Greek and Inuktitut
, although the reader is not expected to understand the passages that are not in English.
Macaronic language is one of many language games used by the literary group Oulipo
, in the form of interlinguistic homophonic transformation: replacing
a known phrase by a homophonic equivalent in another language, the archetypal example of which is by François Le Lionnais
, transforming John Keats
' "A thing of beauty is a joy forever" into "Un singe de beauté est un jouet pour l'hiver" 'A monkey of beauty is a toy for the winter'.
Macaronisms figure prominently in the The Trilogy
by the Polish
novelist, Henryk Sienkiewicz
.
(1810, in English
with a Greek
refrain); and Pearsall
's translation of the In Dulci Jubilo carol (1837, in mixed English-Latin verse).
An example of modern humorous macaronic verse is the anonymous English-Latin poem Carmen Possum
("The Opossum's Song"), which is sometimes used as a teaching and motivational aid in elementary Latin language classes. Other similar examples are The Motor Bus by A. D. Godley
, and the anonymous Up I arose in verno tempore.
Recent examples are the mużajki or mosaics (2007) of Maltese
poet Antoine Cassar
(that mix English, Spanish
, Maltese
, Italian and French), the linguistic blendings of the Italian writer Guido Monte
, or the late poetry of Ivan Blatný that combines Czech with English.
A whole body of comic verse exists created by John O'Mill, pseudonym of Johan van der Meulen
, a teacher of English at the Rijks HBS (State Grammar School), Breda, the Netherlands. These are written in a mixture of English and Dutch, often playing on common mistakes made when translating from the latter to the former.
, the title character, who is a parody of Adolf Hitler, speaks a macaronic parody of the German language in his speeches. He uses German words like "Juden (Jew)" and "Sauerkraut" and English words that use macaronic German grammar, such as "Cheese-und-cracken". This was also used by the parody character of Benito Mussolini using famous Italian foods as insults, such as salami
and ravioli
.
Other movies featuring use of Macaronic language are the Italian historical comedies L'armata Brancaleone
and Brancaleone alle crociate
, by Mario Monicelli
, in which the characters speak a mix of modern and medieval Italian, as well as Latin (sometimes in rhyme, and sometimes with regional connotations, such as the Italo-Normans using words from modern Sicilian dialect).
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
s, sometimes including bilingual pun
Bilingual pun
A bilingual pun is a pun in which a word in one language is similar to a word in another language; this is often done by mixing languages, and is a form of macaronic language...
s, particularly when the languages are used in the same context (as opposed to different segments of a text being in different languages). The term is also sometimes used to denote hybrid word
Hybrid word
A hybrid word is a word which etymologically has one part derived from one language and another part derived from a different language.-Common hybrids:The most common form of hybrid word in English is one which combines etymologically Latin and Greek parts...
s, which are in effect internally macaronic. A rough equivalent in spoken language is code-switching
Code-switching
In linguistics, code-switching is the concurrent use of more than one language, or language variety, in conversation. Multilinguals—people who speak more than one language—sometimes use elements of multiple languages in conversing with each other...
, a term in linguistics
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
referring to using more than one language or dialect in conversation.
Macaronic Latin specifically is a jumbled jargon
Jargon
Jargon is terminology which is especially defined in relationship to a specific activity, profession, group, or event. The philosophe Condillac observed in 1782 that "Every science requires a special language because every science has its own ideas." As a rationalist member of the Enlightenment he...
made up of vernacular words given Latin endings, or for Latin words mixed with the vernacular
Vernacular
A vernacular is the native language or native dialect of a specific population, as opposed to a language of wider communication that is not native to the population, such as a national language or lingua franca.- Etymology :The term is not a recent one...
in a pastiche
Pastiche
A pastiche is a literary or other artistic genre or technique that is a "hodge-podge" or imitation. The word is also a linguistic term used to describe an early stage in the development of a pidgin language.-Hodge-podge:...
(compare dog Latin
Dog Latin
Dog Latin, Cod Latin, macaronic Latin, or mock Latin refers to the creation of a phrase or jargon in imitation of Latin, often by directly translating English words into Latin without conjugation or declension...
).
The word macaronic comes from the New Latin
New Latin
The term New Latin, or Neo-Latin, is used to describe the Latin language used in original works created between c. 1500 and c. 1900. Among other uses, Latin during this period was employed in scholarly and scientific publications...
macaronicus, from Italian dialect maccarone ("dumpling, macaroni", regarded as coarse peasant fare). The term macaronic has derogatory overtones, and it is usually reserved for works where the mixing of languages has a humorous or satirical
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
intent. It is a matter of debate whether the term can be applied to mixed-language literature of a more serious nature and purpose.
Mixed Latin-vernacular lyrics in Medieval Europe
Texts that mixed Latin and vernacular language apparently arose throughout EuropeEurope
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
at the end of the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
—a time when Latin was still the working language of scholars, clerics or university students, but was losing ground to vernacular among poets, minstrel
Minstrel
A minstrel was a medieval European bard who performed songs whose lyrics told stories of distant places or of existing or imaginary historical events. Although minstrels created their own tales, often they would memorize and embellish the works of others. Frequently they were retained by royalty...
s and storytellers.
An early example occurs already in 1130, in the Gospel book
Gospel Book
The Gospel Book, Evangelion, or Book of the Gospels is a codex or bound volume containing one or more of the four Gospels of the Christian New Testament...
of Munsterbilzen Abbey
Munsterbilzen Abbey
Munsterbilzen Abbey was an abbey of Benedictine nuns in Munsterbilzen, Limburg, Belgium, founded in around 670 by Saint Landrada. It was plundered by Vikings in 881 but restored. From the 9th century it was dedicated to Saint Amor....
. The following sentence is found, mixing late Old Dutch
Old Dutch
In linguistics, Old Dutch denotes the forms of West Franconian spoken and written in the Netherlands and present-day northern Belgium during the Early Middle Ages. It is regarded as the primary stage in the development of a separate Dutch language...
and Latin:
Tesi samanunga was edele unde scona
et omnium virtutum pleniter plena
Translated: This community was noble and pure, and completely full of all virtues.
The Carmina Burana
Carmina Burana
Carmina Burana , Latin for "Songs from Beuern" , is the name given to a manuscript of 254 poems and dramatic texts mostly from the 11th or 12th century, although some are from the 13th century. The pieces were written principally in Medieval Latin; a few in Middle High German, and some with traces...
(collected ca. 1230) contains several poems mixing Latin with Medieval German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
or French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
. Another well-known example is the first stanza of the famous carol
Carol (music)
A carol is a festive song, generally religious but not necessarily connected with church worship, and often with a dance-like or popular character....
In Dulci Jubilo
In Dulci Jubilo
In dulci jubilo is a traditional Christmas carol. In its original setting, the carol is a macaronic text of German and Latin dating from the Middle Ages. Subsequent translations into English, such as J.M...
, whose original version (written around 1328) had Latin mixed with German, with a hint of Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
. While some of those early works had a clear humorous intent, many used the language mix for lyrical effect.
Another early example in the Middle English recitals The Towneley Plays (ca. 1460). In play 24 (The Talents
The Talents (play)
The Talents or Processus Talentorum, is a play from the Middle English recitals The Towneley Plays .This play contains an early example of macaronic English-Latin verse, spoken by the character Pontius Pilate:...
), Pontius Pilate
Pontius Pilate
Pontius Pilatus , known in the English-speaking world as Pontius Pilate , was the fifth Prefect of the Roman province of Judaea, from AD 26–36. He is best known as the judge at Jesus' trial and the man who authorized the crucifixion of Jesus...
delivers a speech in mixed English-Latin rhyme.
A number of English political poems in the 14th century alternated (Middle) English and Latin lines, as for example in MS Digby 196:
Probat hoc mors tot validorum
The Kyng þerof had small
ffuit in manibus cupidorum.
yt had ful hard hansell,
dans causam fine dolorum;
vengeaunce nedes most fall,
propter peccata malorum
(etc)
Latin-Italian macaronic verse
The term "macaronic" is believed to originate from PaduaPadua
Padua is a city and comune in the Veneto, northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Padua and the economic and communications hub of the area. Padua's population is 212,500 . The city is sometimes included, with Venice and Treviso, in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area, having...
in the late 14th century, apparently from maccarona, a kind of pasta
Pasta
Pasta is a staple food of traditional Italian cuisine, now of worldwide renown. It takes the form of unleavened dough, made in Italy, mostly of durum wheat , water and sometimes eggs. Pasta comes in a variety of different shapes that serve for both decoration and to act as a carrier for the...
or dumpling
Dumpling
Dumplings are cooked balls of dough. They are based on flour, potatoes or bread, and may include meat, fish, vegetables, or sweets. They may be cooked by boiling, steaming, simmering, frying, or baking. They may have a filling, or there may be other ingredients mixed into the dough. Dumplings may...
eaten by peasants at that time. (That word is also the presumed origin of the Italian word maccheroni.) Its association with the genre comes from the Macaronea
Macaronea (Tifi Odasi poem)
Macaronea or Carmen Macaronicum de Patavinisis a comical poem by the Italian Renaissance poet Tifi Odasi. It is considered to be the earliest example of macaronic verse, and the genre's namesake....
, a comical poem by Tifi Odasi
Tifi Odasi
Michele di Bartolomeo degli Odasi , pen name Tifi Odasi , was an Italian poet, the inventor of macaronic verse....
in mixed Latin and Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, published in 1488 or 1489. Another example of the genre is Tosontea by Corrado of Padua, which was published at about the same time as Tifi's Macaronea.
Tifi and his contemporaries clearly intended to satirize
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
the broken Latin used by many doctors, scholars and bureaucrats of their time. While this "macaronic Latin" (macaronica verba) could be due to ignorance or carelessness, it could also be the result of its speakers trying to make themselves understood by common folk without resorting to their "vulgar" language.
An important and unusual example of mixed-language text is the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili , called in English Poliphilo's Strife of Love in a Dream, is a romance said to be by Francesco Colonna and a famous example of early printing...
of Francesco Colonna
Francesco Colonna
Francesco Colonna was an Italian Dominican priest and monk who was credited with the authorship of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili by an acrostic in the text.He lived in Venice, and preached at St. Mark's Cathedral...
(1499), which was basically written using Italian syntax and morphology, but using a made-up vocabulary based on roots from Latin, Greek, and occasionally others. However, while the Hypnerotomachia is contemporary with Tifi's Macaronea, its mixed language is not used for plain humor, but is rather as an aesthetic device to underscore the fantastic but refined nature of the book.
Tifi's Macaronea was a popular success, and the writing of humorous
Humour
Humour or humor is the tendency of particular cognitive experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement...
texts in Macaronic Latin became a fad in the 16th and 17th centuries, particularly in Italian. An important example was Baldo by Teofilo Folengo
Teofilo Folengo
Teofilo Folengo , who wrote under the pseudonym of Merlino Coccajo or Merlinus Coccaius, was one of the principal Italian macaronic poets.-Biography:...
, who described his own verses as "a gross, rude, and rustic mixture of flour, cheese, and butter".
Other mixed-language lyrics
Macaronic verse is especially common in cultures with widespread bilingualism or language contactLanguage contact
Language contact occurs when two or more languages or varieties interact. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics.Multilingualism has likely been common throughout much of human history, and today most people in the world are multilingual...
, such as Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
before the middle of the nineteenth century. Macaronic traditional songs, such as Siúil A Rúin
Siúil A Rúin
"Siúil a Rúin" is a tradtional Irish song, sung from the point of view of a woman lamenting a lover who has embarked on a military career, and indicating her willingness to support him...
are quite common in Ireland. In Scotland, macaronic songs became popular for a period among Highland
Scottish Highlands
The Highlands is an historic region of Scotland. The area is sometimes referred to as the "Scottish Highlands". It was culturally distinguishable from the Lowlands from the later Middle Ages into the modern period, when Lowland Scots replaced Scottish Gaelic throughout most of the Lowlands...
immigrants to Glasgow
Glasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...
, using English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
and Scottish Gaelic as a device to express the alien nature of the anglophone environment. An example:
When I came down to Glasgow first,
a-mach air Tìr nan Gall.
I was like a man adrift,
air iomrall 's doll air chall.
The term "macaronic" itself was popular as it bears a superficial resemblance to a common Gaelic surname form: Mac a' ... meaning son of the ....
Folk and popular music of the Andes
Andes
The Andes is the world's longest continental mountain range. It is a continual range of highlands along the western coast of South America. This range is about long, about to wide , and of an average height of about .Along its length, the Andes is split into several ranges, which are separated...
frequently alternates between Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
and the given South American language of its region of origin.
Macaronic verse was also common in medieval India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, where the influence of the Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
rulers led to poems being written alternatingly in indigenous medieval Hindi
Hindi
Standard Hindi, or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi, also known as Manak Hindi , High Hindi, Nagari Hindi, and Literary Hindi, is a standardized and sanskritized register of the Hindustani language derived from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi...
verse, followed by one in the Persian language
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
. This style was used by the famous poet Amir Khusro
Amir Khusro
Ab'ul Hasan Yamīn ud-Dīn Khusrow , better known as Amīr Khusrow Dehlawī , was an Indian musician, scholar and poet. He was an iconic figure in the cultural history of the Indian subcontinent...
, and it also played a major role in the rise of the Urdu
Urdu
Urdu is a register of the Hindustani language that is identified with Muslims in South Asia. It belongs to the Indo-European family. Urdu is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan. It is also widely spoken in some regions of India, where it is one of the 22 scheduled languages and an...
or Hindustani
Hindustani language
Hindi-Urdu is an Indo-Aryan language and the lingua franca of North India and Pakistan. It is also known as Hindustani , and historically, as Hindavi or Rekhta...
language.
Unintentional macaronic language
Occasionally language is unintentionally macaronic.A Greek-French example, well-known among French schoolchildren, is attributed to Xénophon
Xenophon
Xenophon , son of Gryllus, of the deme Erchia of Athens, also known as Xenophon of Athens, was a Greek historian, soldier, mercenary, philosopher and a contemporary and admirer of Socrates...
by Alfred de Vigny
Alfred de Vigny
Alfred Victor de Vigny was a French poet, playwright, and novelist.-Life:Alfred de Vigny was born in Loches into an aristocratic family...
in Pluton ciel que Janus Proserpine:
- Ouk élabon polin, alla gar elpis éphè kaka.
This means
- They did not take the city, as they hadn't a hope [of taking it].
but if read in French sounds like:
- Où qu'est la bonne Pauline? A la gare. Elle pisse et fait caca.
meaning
- Where is the maid Pauline? At the station. She's pissing and pooing.
Prose
Macaronic text is still used by modern Italian authors, e.g. by Carlo Emilio GaddaCarlo Emilio Gadda
Carlo Emilio Gadda was an Italian writer and poet. He belongs to the tradition of the language innovators, writers that played with the somewhat stiff standard pre-war Italian language, and added elements of dialects, technical jargon and wordplay.-Biography:Gadda was a practising engineer from...
. Other examples are provided by the character Salvatore in Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco Knight Grand Cross is an Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist, best known for his novel The Name of the Rose , an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory...
's The Name of the Rose
The Name of the Rose
The Name of the Rose is the first novel by Italian author Umberto Eco. It is a historical murder mystery set in an Italian monastery in the year 1327, an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory...
, and the peasant hero of his Baudolino
Baudolino
Baudolino is a 2000 novel by Umberto Eco about the adventures of a young man named Baudolino in the known and mythical Christian world of the 12th century.Baudolino was translated into English in 2001 by William Weaver...
. Dario Fo
Dario Fo
Dario Fo is an Italian satirist, playwright, theater director, actor and composer. His dramatic work employs comedic methods of the ancient Italian commedia dell'arte, a theatrical style popular with the working classes. He currently owns and operates a theatre company with his wife, actress...
' s Mistero Buffo ("Comic Mystery Play") features grammelot
Grammelot
Grammelot is a term for a style of language in satirical theatre, a gibberish with macaronic and onomatopoeic elements, used in association with pantomime and mimicry....
sketches using language with macaronic elements.
The novel The Last Samurai
The Last Samurai (novel)
The Last Samurai was the first novel by American writer Helen DeWitt.-Plot introduction:The Last Samurai is about the relationship between a young boy, Ludo, and his mother, Sibylla...
by Helen DeWitt
Helen DeWitt
Helen DeWitt is a novelist.DeWitt grew up primarily in South America , as her parents worked in the United States diplomatic service...
includes portions of Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
, Classical Greek and Inuktitut
Inuktitut
Inuktitut or Eastern Canadian Inuktitut, Eastern Canadian Inuit language is the name of some of the Inuit languages spoken in Canada...
, although the reader is not expected to understand the passages that are not in English.
Macaronic language is one of many language games used by the literary group Oulipo
Oulipo
Oulipo is a loose gathering of French-speaking writers and mathematicians which seeks to create works using constrained writing techniques. It was founded in 1960 by Raymond Queneau and François Le Lionnais...
, in the form of interlinguistic homophonic transformation: replacing
a known phrase by a homophonic equivalent in another language, the archetypal example of which is by François Le Lionnais
François Le Lionnais
François Le Lionnais was a French chemical engineer and mathematician, perhaps best known as a founder of the literary movement Oulipo....
, transforming John Keats
John Keats
John Keats was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.Although his poems were not...
' "A thing of beauty is a joy forever" into "Un singe de beauté est un jouet pour l'hiver" 'A monkey of beauty is a toy for the winter'.
Macaronisms figure prominently in the The Trilogy
The Trilogy
In modern culture, The Trilogy may also refer to George Lucas' The Trilogy. For the general use of the term "trilogy", see Trilogy.The Trilogy is a series of three novels written by the Polish author Henryk Sienkiewicz. The series follows dramatized versions of famous events in Polish history,...
by the Polish
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
novelist, Henryk Sienkiewicz
Henryk Sienkiewicz
Henryk Adam Aleksander Pius Sienkiewicz was a Polish journalist and Nobel Prize-winning novelist. A Polish szlachcic of the Oszyk coat of arms, he was one of the most popular Polish writers at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, and received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1905 for his...
.
Poetry
Two well-known examples of modern non-humorous macaronic verse are Byron's Maid of Athens, ere we partMaid of Athens, ere we part (George Byron)
Maid of Athens, ere we part is a poem by Lord Byron, written in 1810 and dedicated to a young girl of Athens .Byron never met Teresa again. She eventually married James Black and died impoverished in 1875 in Athens, Greece ....
(1810, in English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
with a Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
refrain); and Pearsall
Robert Lucas de Pearsall
Robert Lucas Pearsall was an English composer.-Biography:Pearsall was born at Clifton in Bristol on 14 March 1795 into a rich, Quaker family. His father, Richard Pearsall , was an army officer and amateur musician...
's translation of the In Dulci Jubilo carol (1837, in mixed English-Latin verse).
An example of modern humorous macaronic verse is the anonymous English-Latin poem Carmen Possum
Carmen Possum
Carmen Possum is a popular 80-line macaronic poem written in a mix of Latin and English. Its author is unknown, but given its theme and language it can be surmised that he or she was from the United States, and either a teacher or a student of Latin....
("The Opossum's Song"), which is sometimes used as a teaching and motivational aid in elementary Latin language classes. Other similar examples are The Motor Bus by A. D. Godley
A. D. Godley
Alfred Denis Godley was a classical scholar and author of humorous poems. From 1910 to 1920 he was Public Orator at the University of Oxford, a post that involved composing citations in Latin for the recipients of honorary degrees. One of these was for Thomas Hardy who received an Honorary D. Litt...
, and the anonymous Up I arose in verno tempore.
Recent examples are the mużajki or mosaics (2007) of Maltese
Malta
Malta , officially known as the Republic of Malta , is a Southern European country consisting of an archipelago situated in the centre of the Mediterranean, south of Sicily, east of Tunisia and north of Libya, with Gibraltar to the west and Alexandria to the east.Malta covers just over in...
poet Antoine Cassar
Antoine Cassar
Antoine Cassar is a Maltese poet and translator. In September 2009, his multilingual poem Merħba was the Grand Prize winner of the United Planet Writing Contest.-Mosaics poems:...
(that mix English, Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, Maltese
Maltese language
Maltese is the national language of Malta, and a co-official language of the country alongside English,while also serving as an official language of the European Union, the only Semitic language so distinguished. Maltese is descended from Siculo-Arabic...
, Italian and French), the linguistic blendings of the Italian writer Guido Monte
Guido Monte
Guido Monte is an Italian writer and poet. In his recent works, he employs linguistic blending in the search for meaningful and archetypal relations between distant cultures....
, or the late poetry of Ivan Blatný that combines Czech with English.
A whole body of comic verse exists created by John O'Mill, pseudonym of Johan van der Meulen
John O'Mill
Johan van der Meulen , better known by his pseudonym John O'Mill , is a Dutch author mostly known for his wordplay and limericks, and for using a macaronic combination of Dutch and English words and sentence structures he called "Double Dutch" Johan van der Meulen (11 January 1915, Breda - 13...
, a teacher of English at the Rijks HBS (State Grammar School), Breda, the Netherlands. These are written in a mixture of English and Dutch, often playing on common mistakes made when translating from the latter to the former.
Film
Macaronisms are frequently used in films, especially comedies. In Charlie Chaplin's anti-Nazi comedy The Great DictatorThe Great Dictator
The Great Dictator is a comedy film by Charlie Chaplin released in October 1940. Like most Chaplin films, he wrote, produced, and directed, in addition to starring as the lead. Having been the only Hollywood film maker to continue to make silent films well into the period of sound films, this was...
, the title character, who is a parody of Adolf Hitler, speaks a macaronic parody of the German language in his speeches. He uses German words like "Juden (Jew)" and "Sauerkraut" and English words that use macaronic German grammar, such as "Cheese-und-cracken". This was also used by the parody character of Benito Mussolini using famous Italian foods as insults, such as salami
Salami
Salami is cured sausage, fermented and air-dried meat, originating from one of a variety of animals. Historically, salami has been popular among Southern European peasants because it can be stored at room temperature for periods of up to 10 years, supplementing a possibly meager or inconsistent...
and ravioli
Ravioli
Ravioli are a traditional type of Italian filled pasta. They are composed of a filling sealed between two layers of thin egg pasta dough and are served either in broth or with a pasta sauce. The word ravioli is reminiscent of the Italian verb riavvolgere , though the two words are not...
.
Other movies featuring use of Macaronic language are the Italian historical comedies L'armata Brancaleone
L'armata Brancaleone
L'armata Brancaleone is an Italian comedy movie released in 1966, written by the famous duo Age & Scarpelli and directed by Mario Monicelli. It features Vittorio Gassman in the main role...
and Brancaleone alle crociate
Brancaleone alle Crociate
Brancaleone at the Crusades is an Italian comedy film directed by Mario Monicelli in 1970, the sequel of the famous L'armata Brancaleone.-Plot:...
, by Mario Monicelli
Mario Monicelli
Mario Monicelli was an Italian director and screenwriter and one of the masters of the Commedia all'Italiana , three times nominated for Oscar.-Biography:...
, in which the characters speak a mix of modern and medieval Italian, as well as Latin (sometimes in rhyme, and sometimes with regional connotations, such as the Italo-Normans using words from modern Sicilian dialect).
See also
- Dog LatinDog LatinDog Latin, Cod Latin, macaronic Latin, or mock Latin refers to the creation of a phrase or jargon in imitation of Latin, often by directly translating English words into Latin without conjugation or declension...
, e.g. Mater si, magistra noMater si, magistra noMater si, magistra no is a macaronic phrase that means Catholics need not follow all the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, particularly in regard to economic justice or the rights of workers... - Code-switchingCode-switchingIn linguistics, code-switching is the concurrent use of more than one language, or language variety, in conversation. Multilinguals—people who speak more than one language—sometimes use elements of multiple languages in conversing with each other...
- Phono-semantic matchingPhono-semantic matchingPhono-semantic matching is a linguistic term referring to camouflaged borrowing in which a foreign word is matched with a phonetically and semantically similar pre-existent native word/root....
- Contemporary Latin
- Hiberno-LatinHiberno-LatinHiberno-Latin, also called Hisperic Latin, was a learned sort of Latin literature created and spread by Irish monks during the period from the sixth century to the tenth century.-Vocabulary and Influence:...
- UEFA Champions League Anthem
- Amir KhusroAmir KhusroAb'ul Hasan Yamīn ud-Dīn Khusrow , better known as Amīr Khusrow Dehlawī , was an Indian musician, scholar and poet. He was an iconic figure in the cultural history of the Indian subcontinent...
- Guido MonteGuido MonteGuido Monte is an Italian writer and poet. In his recent works, he employs linguistic blending in the search for meaningful and archetypal relations between distant cultures....
- DenglischDenglischDenglisch or Denglish is a portmanteau of the German words Deutsch and Englisch. Used in all German-speaking and Dutch-speaking countries, it describes an influx of English, or pseudo-English, vocabulary into the German or Dutch language through travel and the widespread usage of English in...
- DunglishDunglishDunglish or Dutch English are the mistakes native Dutch speakers make when speaking English....
- FranglaisFranglaisFranglais , a portmanteau combining the French words "français" and "anglais" , is a slang term for an interlanguage, although the word has different overtones in French and English....
, a mixture of French and English often used for humorous effect - SpanglishSpanglish.Spanglish refers to the blend of Spanish and English, in the speech of people who speak parts of two languages, or whose normal language is different from that of the country where they live. The Hispanic population of the United States and the British population in Argentina use varieties of...
, a mixture of Spanish and English - SwenglishSwenglishSwenglish is a colloquial term meaning either:*English spoken with a heavy Swedish accent*English spoken or written as heavily influenced by Swedish vocabulary, grammar, or syntax- English heavily influenced by Swedish :- Pronunciation :...
, a mixture of Swedish and English - PortuñolPortuñolPortuñol or Portunhol is the code-switching of Portuguese and Spanish.The word portunhol is a portmanteau of the words Portugués/Português and Español/Espanhol ....
or Portunhol, a mixture of Portuguese and Spanish - The Boar's Head CarolBoar's Head CarolThe Boar's Head Carol is a macaronic 15th century English Christmas carol that describes the ancient tradition of sacrificing a boar and presenting its head at a Yuletide feast...
. Traditional 15th century university Christmas carol with English and Latin text. - NadsatNadsatNadsat is a fictional register or argot used by the teenagers in Anthony Burgess' novel A Clockwork Orange. In addition to being a novelist, Burgess was also a linguist and he used this background to depict his characters as speaking a form of Russian-influenced English...
, a form of Russian-influenced English used by teenagers in Anthony Burgess's novel A Clockwork OrangeA Clockwork OrangeA Clockwork Orange is a 1962 dystopian novella by Anthony Burgess. The novel contains an experiment in language: the characters often use an argot called "Nadsat", derived from Russian....
. - Faux CyrillicFaux CyrillicFaux Cyrillic, pseudo-Cyrillic, pseudo-Russian or faux Russian typography is the use of Cyrillic letters in Latin text to evoke the Soviet Union or Russia, regardless of whether the letters are phonetic matches. For example, R and N in RUSSIAN may be replaced by Cyrillic Я and И, giving "ЯUSSIAИ"...
- PidginPidginA pidgin , or pidgin language, is a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups that do not have a language in common. It is most commonly employed in situations such as trade, or where both groups speak languages different from the language of the...