Re: Trollspeak

Steg Belsky wrote:

> A friend of mine brought back a Hebrew translation of _The Hobbit_ for me
> when he went to Israel three years ago.  I just finished it a few months
> ago, finally :) , but it's very good.
> Anyway, the trolls' speech is translated as "non-standard" Hebrew (as it
> should be), one of the most stand-out features being the shortening of
> forms of "et", the direct-object marker.
> some examples:
>
> _et ha`or_ >> _ta`or_
> _levasheil otam_ >> _levasheiltam_ (instead of the correct short form
> _levashlam_)
> _et ha`atzamot_ >> _ta`atzamot_
>
> I've seen this kind of shortening before, on a poster/sign type thing in
> a classroom that said _`asita kevar tashi`urim?_ (<< _....et hashi`urim_)
>
> There's also the contraction _ma ta..._ for _ma ata..._, "what are
> you...", which i say a lot myself.
>
    But is the dropping of syllables in fluent speech  _non-standard_
language?  If so, an awful lot of people
are speaking non-standard versions of their language every day! (Does
_anybody_
speak like a grammar book in fast speech, ever?)
    For example, I have never heard, let alone used, in "normally" fast
English, (my native language) all the syllables in "what are you going
to do".
It comes out more like "wVtS gVn du".
    In my Ulpan in Israel, I was taught that to ask for the time, one
should
say: "ma ha-Sa?a" (= what the-hour). In real life, I usually
hear the request as "mSa" . The only people who put in all the sounds
are
those who have just begun to learn the language and are not yet used to
speaking it.
    The difference, IMHO, is not standard versus non-standard, but
careful
versus non-careful (_not_  "sloppy",  please)
speech.

Dan Sulani
--
 likehsna  rtem  zuv  tikuhnuh  auag  inuvuz  vaka'a.

 A  word  is  an  awesome  thing.