Re: Old Languages

Yoon Ha Lee wrote:


>On Wednesday, October 3, 2001, at 08:30 PM, Roger Mills wrote:
>
>> A "dead" language with a considerable and fascinating literature, all but
>> unknown in the West, is Old Javanese. (snip)  It is
>> still used (though probably as memorized) in performances of the
>> shadow-puppet plays in Java and Bali.
>
>Roger, I've been curious about shadow-puppet plays for a while.  :-)
>Could you recommend resources for learning (and learning about) Old
>Javanese and/or modern Javanese?  I may not be able to pick up on it this
>year but come the summer...

Ah, ya shoulda stayed at Cornell.  I'm sure they teach mod. Javanese there.
Textbooks certainly exist.   I suspect you might find courses at UC Berkeley
too, (I'm sure they teach Indonesian at least, and where there's Indonesian,
there tend to be Javanese speakers too....).  Maybe even at Stanford.   Old
Jav. might be harder to pin down, it's pretty specialized. The only grammars
I can think of are in Dutch or Indonesian-- but I'm not up to date.   Talk
to whichever dept. handles off-beat Asian languages-- usually either
Linguistics or (East) Asian languages.  (Cornell might offer a summer
program, if you're heading back that way)

UCB might even put on the occasional wayang play; they have a _gamelan_
(orchestra) there, and surely get visiting artists from Java or Bali.  It's
a fascinating and very mysterious, even spiritual, art-form.

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