Jun. 8th, 2013 05:30 pm
So where do the Githyanki fit in?
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muckefuckThe book I feel into reading last weekend, even while I hadn't yet finished up Parrot and Olivier, was Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's Petals of blood. As mentioned before, his Devil on the cross (Caitaani mutharaba-ini) is--like Sōseki's Kokoro--one of those books I read as an undergraduate which I retain positive feelings towards despite not being able to recall much of anything about the style or plot. Petals treats the same subject matter, i.e. what's wrong with Kenya, and has much the same trick to pull off, i.e. keeping us interested in the trajectory of its central characters when we know that the chances of a happy resolution are nonexistent.
Somewhat predictably, I suppose, it's gotten me interested in the author's native tongue, Gikuyu. Practically the first thing I discovered about it is that I've been mispronouncing "Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o" all these years. You'd think the tildes were there to indicate nasality (cf. Portuguese) or, barring that, pitch/tone (cf. Ancient Greek, bzw. Vietnamese). But you'd be wrong: they indicate vowel quality. Gikuyu isn't unusual in having a seven-vowel system, but more common methods for differentiating the two mid middle levels are representing the open vowels with the corresponding IPA symbols (i.e. ɛ, ɔ) or distinguishing the closed vowels with a dot below (i.e. ẹ, ọ). I'm not sure what the motivation is for having ĩ represent /e/ and ũ /o/ unless it's the fact that, in related languages with a five-vowel system (notably Swahili), they've been merged with /i/ and /u/, respectively.
Given the relatively rarity of dental fricatives, you'd also likely assume that th represents an aspirate. But, no, it's /ð/. Gikuyu actually has a full fricative series, but it's not obvious from the orthography where /β/ is written b and /ɣ/ g. So "Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o" has the pronunciation [ˈŋɡoɣe wa ðiˈɔŋɔ]. The only remaining curve ball is c which can represent [s] or [ʃ] depending on the speaker--unless, that is, you count the fact that prenasalised voiced stops often simplify to simple ones. That is, the [ŋɡ] or [ᵑɡ] at the beginning of Ngũgĩ often ends up as [g]. In general, though, the phonology is more conservative than that of Swahili, and this extends to morphology as well, with Gikuyu keeping distinct more of the noun classes inherited from Proto-Bantu.
Ngũgĩ seems to enjoy tossing in snatches of both Gikuyu and Swahili into the text, and I can't find much of a pattern to it, let alone to why he glosses some words and not others. He tells us, for instance that ugali is porridge but neglects to mention that mnazi is palm wine. And I can understand leaving words like mbari, ahoi, and ndugata in because these are roles in Kikuyu society without exact counterparts in English. But why words for "kettle" or "insects"? Not that I mind--you know I love looking this sort of thing up. Googling "shifta" led me to an article on a war I never knew had happened, giving me some valuable cultural background for understanding the larger context.
Somewhat predictably, I suppose, it's gotten me interested in the author's native tongue, Gikuyu. Practically the first thing I discovered about it is that I've been mispronouncing "Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o" all these years. You'd think the tildes were there to indicate nasality (cf. Portuguese) or, barring that, pitch/tone (cf. Ancient Greek, bzw. Vietnamese). But you'd be wrong: they indicate vowel quality. Gikuyu isn't unusual in having a seven-vowel system, but more common methods for differentiating the two mid middle levels are representing the open vowels with the corresponding IPA symbols (i.e. ɛ, ɔ) or distinguishing the closed vowels with a dot below (i.e. ẹ, ọ). I'm not sure what the motivation is for having ĩ represent /e/ and ũ /o/ unless it's the fact that, in related languages with a five-vowel system (notably Swahili), they've been merged with /i/ and /u/, respectively.
Given the relatively rarity of dental fricatives, you'd also likely assume that th represents an aspirate. But, no, it's /ð/. Gikuyu actually has a full fricative series, but it's not obvious from the orthography where /β/ is written b and /ɣ/ g. So "Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o" has the pronunciation [ˈŋɡoɣe wa ðiˈɔŋɔ]. The only remaining curve ball is c which can represent [s] or [ʃ] depending on the speaker--unless, that is, you count the fact that prenasalised voiced stops often simplify to simple ones. That is, the [ŋɡ] or [ᵑɡ] at the beginning of Ngũgĩ often ends up as [g]. In general, though, the phonology is more conservative than that of Swahili, and this extends to morphology as well, with Gikuyu keeping distinct more of the noun classes inherited from Proto-Bantu.
Ngũgĩ seems to enjoy tossing in snatches of both Gikuyu and Swahili into the text, and I can't find much of a pattern to it, let alone to why he glosses some words and not others. He tells us, for instance that ugali is porridge but neglects to mention that mnazi is palm wine. And I can understand leaving words like mbari, ahoi, and ndugata in because these are roles in Kikuyu society without exact counterparts in English. But why words for "kettle" or "insects"? Not that I mind--you know I love looking this sort of thing up. Googling "shifta" led me to an article on a war I never knew had happened, giving me some valuable cultural background for understanding the larger context.