A Proposed Study of Historic Southeast Asian Languages and Writings: A Conlang
Posted: Tue Feb 11, 2020 8:07 pm
A Proposed Study of Historic Southeast Asian Languages and Writings
I am very excited about a new side-project I have begun! In order to make use of my budget-friendly collection of books, I'm going to "translate" the 1300s Thailand, Theravada Buddhist core classic "Three Worlds according to King Ruang" into perhaps a mixture of Classic Pali, Modern Cambodian, and then some Thai and Vietnamese. I'm also adding texts from the recent translation masterpiece, the bilingual "Lotus Sutra" in Classical Chinese and English. Which might be a Mahayana Buddhist text.
So it would be a invented language "conlang" based closely on various real languages and writing systems.
But I don't know how much time I'll find for this side-project as I'm currently engrossed in one project and have another that I put down waiting for me to finish this and return to that.
I bought "Three Worlds according to King Ruang" about October 2018 but haven't studied it much yet. It's a lot like Dante's Divine Comedy only I have that one in bilingual 1400s Italian in two editions and probably won't even be able to find the 1400s Thai (Old Thai? Middle Thai?) on the internet. But maybe at one of the nearby university libraries! Eventually.
These two classics of the Extreme Orient are nice because they end up as explorations of Indian and Southeast Asia from around ... well, like 500 AD or so. But there's also a lot of details "which seem fantastic or mythical" if you're not a true believer. (Note well, currently and or in the past, both of these texts are taken as extremely sacred by tons of people in Southeast Asia and China. Thousands of M and T Buddhist monks may be hand-copying or reading them as we speak. Them or their no-doubt myriad commentaries and commentaries upon commentaries.) They, and works like them, go on and on and on and include all sorts of interesting historic vocabulary - though often in the form of less-than-riveting lists. Still, the poetic passages are plenty.
So lots of kings with huge and elaborate palaces and empires filled with tropical plants and animals. But then also multiple universes populated by many different sorts of humanoid beings with all sorts of amazing or even seemingly impossible things. But all with reference to historic realities of c 200 AD or 1300 AD or far before that.
And then Ancient India literature is also marked by frequent very gigantic numbers for years and measurements. I have studied lots of the oldest known myths from around the world and "such fantastic elements" may also be found in them in describing the lands and doings of the gods and such.
Well, this is a weighty and sensitive matter.
First off, it's easy to balk at "fantastic elements" in historic accounts but it's notable how they teach and imply good deeds. And this in some contrast with modern literatures the world over.
But I will at least say without too much insensitivity that such accounts were not doubt welcome to humans and or hominids from all ages past because their lives were as boring or more boring than our own. And I suspect that even animals, maybe plants, tell eachother of such things, beyond the reaches of science.
In the ancient myths, the gods and heros travel all over the universe and explore everything. But archaeology and historic accounts indicate that humans and hominids only a few times a year moved their cities until the invention of agriculture, and almost always to the same places. As exciting as a vast world covered in forests and jungles and teeming with giant monsterous animals may seem to us, it was probably quite boring and even scary to past peoples and hominids, on top of the greater dangers of interpersonal faux pas's and misfortune.
...
Anyhow, so I have this really huge and rare dictionary of Cambodian to English, without an English to Cambodian index, from the 1970s. Then I have some very small Thai and Vietnamese dictionaries and phrasebooks and Schuessler's ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese with much reference to all these Southeast Asian languages, even many obscure ones, reconstructed and attested.
And I'm thinking about getting a huge Classical Pali dictionary. But neither I'm thinking of have English indexes (indices). Pali seems closely related to Sanskrit and is by far the number one ancient language of choice is Southeast Asia.
And, again, it would take me a lot of time to try to gather dictionaries, and their English indexes, of Old and Middle Thai and Vietnamese and Khmer (Cambodian), and more time and money still to buy copies, let alone dictionaries. And many of them might be in French, thus rendering the languages within that much less accessible to me. (Though I'm reading fluent in French, German, and some others, I still don't know every single word. Nor do native speakers, obscure words also have to be looked up by them.) Perhaps in 200 years, all these things will be free online. But if they are, projects like mine will be part of what stirred up global interested toward that end.
...
So I'm going to mix all these languages for words and grammar and make a constructed language out of them into which to translate selected texts from those works. I hope to mix the original grammars with exotic grammar elements in order to make the project more interesting. I may even make some writing systems for it, the hieroglyphic (logographic) being my specialty.
I might think of some simple imitation historical linguistics sound changes to apply to Modern Thai, Vietnamese, and Khmer. But maybe not, the whole thing sounds complex enough as it is. And only key words will I be able to "approximate" using real languages. The gaps will have to be quickly filled in according to a matching phonology and word-formation tramlescence and rebigumulation.
...
And notably, I'm working toward returning to a project I started back in 2010 of making a huge collection of bilingual English translations of the Old Khmer (Old Cambodian) and Sanskrit inscriptions of Angkor, c 800 to 1400 capital of Southeast Asia. Currently, the best translations are spread apart c 1930s issues of the academic journal JEFEO Journal D'Ecole Francais d'Extreme-Orient. And in French. And dense French with not a lot of explanation of complex words.
This corpus is epigraphic (carved) and not actually very extensive but still with much interesting vocabulary. They're land deeds and gift lists often prefaced by brief poetic passages in Sanskrit. They may be a few other things, I forget. About 2005, we had Professor Paul Jenner of the University of Hawaii, him to thank for producing 3 dictionaries of the Pre-Angkorian Khmer, Angkorian Khmer, and Middle Khmer of these Angkor inscriptions and of the total corpus of inscriptions of that the Khmer Empire (Cambodian Empire), covering all of c 800 to 1400 Southeast Asian and influencing all islands to Australia and maybe even its coast. What little we have of epigraphic Philippines? It's a good match for that at Angkor and of the Khmer Empire.
The great overarching concept of these inscriptions, though, is that certainly the Khmer Empire had vast libraries of treated leaf books of which we have nothing to survive the tropical climate. But we have works from the Middle Khmer language or maybe Early Modern Khmer (c 1500s) which might not be epigraphic, then we have this "Three Worlds According to King Ruang" and the vast Pali corpus for Theravada Buddhism of Southeast Asia. And then we also have many, many lengthy and insightful, even amazing and sometimes tedious, classics from Ancient India and even a few from "Ancient Dravidia" which are entirely Hindu. So we almost always have some surviving works which give us an idea of what we're missing. And this goes for all things in the study of history and prehistory. There's always something to study, even if few study it.
So we'll see if I ever get back to that or do anything with it, it could be decades, but a project like this helps build my enthusiasm and probably that of other people.
...
Previous to this, I thought of doing this for Classical Mongolian, Classical Manchu, and Jurchen. And I did some work toward this a few weeks ago but we'll see how into it I ever get. One of my universities does have a huge dictionary of Classical Manchu. And maybe with an English index. Still, my current work with West African Languages is wearing me out for alphabets and after that I have work on Western North America Native American Languages to which to return.
I am very excited about a new side-project I have begun! In order to make use of my budget-friendly collection of books, I'm going to "translate" the 1300s Thailand, Theravada Buddhist core classic "Three Worlds according to King Ruang" into perhaps a mixture of Classic Pali, Modern Cambodian, and then some Thai and Vietnamese. I'm also adding texts from the recent translation masterpiece, the bilingual "Lotus Sutra" in Classical Chinese and English. Which might be a Mahayana Buddhist text.
So it would be a invented language "conlang" based closely on various real languages and writing systems.
But I don't know how much time I'll find for this side-project as I'm currently engrossed in one project and have another that I put down waiting for me to finish this and return to that.
I bought "Three Worlds according to King Ruang" about October 2018 but haven't studied it much yet. It's a lot like Dante's Divine Comedy only I have that one in bilingual 1400s Italian in two editions and probably won't even be able to find the 1400s Thai (Old Thai? Middle Thai?) on the internet. But maybe at one of the nearby university libraries! Eventually.
These two classics of the Extreme Orient are nice because they end up as explorations of Indian and Southeast Asia from around ... well, like 500 AD or so. But there's also a lot of details "which seem fantastic or mythical" if you're not a true believer. (Note well, currently and or in the past, both of these texts are taken as extremely sacred by tons of people in Southeast Asia and China. Thousands of M and T Buddhist monks may be hand-copying or reading them as we speak. Them or their no-doubt myriad commentaries and commentaries upon commentaries.) They, and works like them, go on and on and on and include all sorts of interesting historic vocabulary - though often in the form of less-than-riveting lists. Still, the poetic passages are plenty.
So lots of kings with huge and elaborate palaces and empires filled with tropical plants and animals. But then also multiple universes populated by many different sorts of humanoid beings with all sorts of amazing or even seemingly impossible things. But all with reference to historic realities of c 200 AD or 1300 AD or far before that.
And then Ancient India literature is also marked by frequent very gigantic numbers for years and measurements. I have studied lots of the oldest known myths from around the world and "such fantastic elements" may also be found in them in describing the lands and doings of the gods and such.
Well, this is a weighty and sensitive matter.
First off, it's easy to balk at "fantastic elements" in historic accounts but it's notable how they teach and imply good deeds. And this in some contrast with modern literatures the world over.
But I will at least say without too much insensitivity that such accounts were not doubt welcome to humans and or hominids from all ages past because their lives were as boring or more boring than our own. And I suspect that even animals, maybe plants, tell eachother of such things, beyond the reaches of science.
In the ancient myths, the gods and heros travel all over the universe and explore everything. But archaeology and historic accounts indicate that humans and hominids only a few times a year moved their cities until the invention of agriculture, and almost always to the same places. As exciting as a vast world covered in forests and jungles and teeming with giant monsterous animals may seem to us, it was probably quite boring and even scary to past peoples and hominids, on top of the greater dangers of interpersonal faux pas's and misfortune.
...
Anyhow, so I have this really huge and rare dictionary of Cambodian to English, without an English to Cambodian index, from the 1970s. Then I have some very small Thai and Vietnamese dictionaries and phrasebooks and Schuessler's ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese with much reference to all these Southeast Asian languages, even many obscure ones, reconstructed and attested.
And I'm thinking about getting a huge Classical Pali dictionary. But neither I'm thinking of have English indexes (indices). Pali seems closely related to Sanskrit and is by far the number one ancient language of choice is Southeast Asia.
And, again, it would take me a lot of time to try to gather dictionaries, and their English indexes, of Old and Middle Thai and Vietnamese and Khmer (Cambodian), and more time and money still to buy copies, let alone dictionaries. And many of them might be in French, thus rendering the languages within that much less accessible to me. (Though I'm reading fluent in French, German, and some others, I still don't know every single word. Nor do native speakers, obscure words also have to be looked up by them.) Perhaps in 200 years, all these things will be free online. But if they are, projects like mine will be part of what stirred up global interested toward that end.
...
So I'm going to mix all these languages for words and grammar and make a constructed language out of them into which to translate selected texts from those works. I hope to mix the original grammars with exotic grammar elements in order to make the project more interesting. I may even make some writing systems for it, the hieroglyphic (logographic) being my specialty.
I might think of some simple imitation historical linguistics sound changes to apply to Modern Thai, Vietnamese, and Khmer. But maybe not, the whole thing sounds complex enough as it is. And only key words will I be able to "approximate" using real languages. The gaps will have to be quickly filled in according to a matching phonology and word-formation tramlescence and rebigumulation.
...
And notably, I'm working toward returning to a project I started back in 2010 of making a huge collection of bilingual English translations of the Old Khmer (Old Cambodian) and Sanskrit inscriptions of Angkor, c 800 to 1400 capital of Southeast Asia. Currently, the best translations are spread apart c 1930s issues of the academic journal JEFEO Journal D'Ecole Francais d'Extreme-Orient. And in French. And dense French with not a lot of explanation of complex words.
This corpus is epigraphic (carved) and not actually very extensive but still with much interesting vocabulary. They're land deeds and gift lists often prefaced by brief poetic passages in Sanskrit. They may be a few other things, I forget. About 2005, we had Professor Paul Jenner of the University of Hawaii, him to thank for producing 3 dictionaries of the Pre-Angkorian Khmer, Angkorian Khmer, and Middle Khmer of these Angkor inscriptions and of the total corpus of inscriptions of that the Khmer Empire (Cambodian Empire), covering all of c 800 to 1400 Southeast Asian and influencing all islands to Australia and maybe even its coast. What little we have of epigraphic Philippines? It's a good match for that at Angkor and of the Khmer Empire.
The great overarching concept of these inscriptions, though, is that certainly the Khmer Empire had vast libraries of treated leaf books of which we have nothing to survive the tropical climate. But we have works from the Middle Khmer language or maybe Early Modern Khmer (c 1500s) which might not be epigraphic, then we have this "Three Worlds According to King Ruang" and the vast Pali corpus for Theravada Buddhism of Southeast Asia. And then we also have many, many lengthy and insightful, even amazing and sometimes tedious, classics from Ancient India and even a few from "Ancient Dravidia" which are entirely Hindu. So we almost always have some surviving works which give us an idea of what we're missing. And this goes for all things in the study of history and prehistory. There's always something to study, even if few study it.
So we'll see if I ever get back to that or do anything with it, it could be decades, but a project like this helps build my enthusiasm and probably that of other people.
...
Previous to this, I thought of doing this for Classical Mongolian, Classical Manchu, and Jurchen. And I did some work toward this a few weeks ago but we'll see how into it I ever get. One of my universities does have a huge dictionary of Classical Manchu. And maybe with an English index. Still, my current work with West African Languages is wearing me out for alphabets and after that I have work on Western North America Native American Languages to which to return.