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Although Latvian women started to publish their travel writings during the 1870s, until recently they have not attracted much scholarly attention. Thus the aim of this article is twofold: first, by focusing on Latvian women’s travel writing published in the last decades of the 19th and early 20th centuries, to expand the knowledge of women’s contributions to the genre and to the history of literature in general; and second, by concentrating on the female body, to analyze how women construct narratives about themselves as embodied travelling subjects. Based on the ideas of feminine writing (écriture féminine) and the insight that travel writing is one of the most physical of literary genres because it thematically involves the body moving through space, the travelogues of Minna Freimane (Par piemiņu, 1884) and Angelika Gailīte (Vērojumi un sapņojumi, 1920) are read in order to trace the changes in the representation of the female traveller’s body.
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The article presents an insight into the life, literary activities and translations of Latvian literature by four Baltic German women: Hanny Brentano (née Johanna Legai, 1872–1940); Elisabeth Goercke (married surname Braunz, 1888–1966); Elfriede Skalberg (married surname Eckardt, 1884–1964); and Martha Grubbe (married surname von Dehn, 1894–1971), and evaluates their contribution to the integration and popularisation of Latvian literature among German-speakers. The article compares different approaches to the translation of rhythmical texts – songs and poetry, drawing attention also to the cultural context of Latvia and of Europe, offering explanations, wherever possible, of what it was that compelled each of the four translators to turn to the transfer of Latvian texts into a German-speaking social environment, and assessing the reception that their translated texts met.
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This paper summarizes the discussion about the origin and the status of Afrikaans. Two schools appear to be opposed to each other: the philological school and a creolistic view. The philologi-cal school tried to demonstrate with meticulous research of sources that Afrikaans is a full daughter of 17th century Dutch, which set foot ashore with van Riebeeck in 1652 at the Cape of Good Hope. Lin-guists who thought of a pattern of creolization in the formation of Afrikaans point to the influence of the languages of slaves brought to South Africa and to the influence of the original inhabitants, the Khoi and the San. This contribution mainly outlines the ideological background of these two schools of thought.For the philological school this is the system of Apartheid, while for the Creolist view the emphasis is more on decolonization.
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The large number of words from Arabic found in modern Spanish is proof of the deep influence Arabic has had on the Spanish language. Historical sociolinguistic processes which have lasted to the present day indicate that the influence of Arabic culture has been neither brief or superficial. Instead; it has; and continues to have great significance for the language situation of Spain. Much linguistic research has shown how loans from Arabic have been assimilated as they have become part of the lexical resources of modern Spanish. Arabic culture and civilization in the Iberian Peninsula (711-1942) above all involved the sciences; literature; art; architecture; engineering; agriculture; the military; medicine. At that time; Al-Andalus was one of the most influential European centers of science and cultural exchange in Europe. Contacts between Arabic and the Romance languages found in the Iberian Peninsula resulted in numerous loans both from Arabic to the Romance languages and from the Romance languages to Arabic. These topics have been the subject of extensive research conducted from historical; cultural and linguistic points of view. Despite the existence of numerous works concerning Arabic loans; this area requires; further; deeper research. In this article; selected issues concerning Arabic loans in Spanish are analyzed as are the adaptive processes they have undergone and the level of their integration into Spanish. The basis of the analysis is made up of oral and written texts collected in the Corpus de Español del Siglo XXI [CORPES XXI; RAE] – a corpus of contemporary Spanish from the 21st century.
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Kim Il Sung’s 1964 and 1966 conversations with linguists are appropriately deemed important as the establishment of the North’s “cultured language” as a standard, as well as guidance related to language purification and script. In the analysis of inflection point related to language planning and policy in the North, is the often guidance on re-enshrinement of teaching “Chinese characters” (hanja) in North Korean education. Clearly this was official pronouncement of functional, synchronic digraphia, which has been preserved and operationalized down to the present. Scholarship on these conversations, amounting to policy guidance, attribute the shift in policy related to script as an inflection point. The author of this article concurs with its importance, but with respect to digraphia in the North, the conversations related to hanja instruction served as a confirmation for what was a broad trend in North Korean language planning during the years 1953-1964, a language planning and policy fait accompli, diminishing the portrayal of the conversations as a digraphic inflection point in North Korea.
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The aim of this article is to shed light on selected sociolinguistic aspects of one of Tunisian most important agricultural heritage, the agricultural calendar. In Tunisia’s cultural heritage, there is a legend about Ḡaylana, its calendar and the way the agricultural year is divided. Tunisians for generations have believed that the shepherd Ḡaylān created the first agricultural calendar known throughout North Africa as ‘ḥsāb Ḡaylān’ ( (حساب غيلان [Ḡaylān’s calendar], ‘il-yawmiyya il-filāḥiyya’ ( اليومية الفلاحية ) [agricaltural calendar] also called ‘il-yawmiyya il-ʽarbī’ ( اليومية العربي ) [Arabic calendar]. The language spoken by Tunisian farmers on a daily basis is full of words and expressions that are hard to find in the language of city dwellers who perceive time according to the solar (Gregorian) calendar. This makes it possible to speak of a Tunisian agricultural dictionary. Everyday language, customs and work of farmers are closely related to the passing of the year. This cycle gives rhythm to the lives of the older generation of Tunisians. The research material that has been collected confirms the richness of the agricultural dictionary, and the analytical and comparative research shows the specificity of agricultural vocabulary, as it is difficult to analyze their language and cultural and social levels separately.
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Human language as the most complex communication system on Earth is the ‘home’ of Man. As such, it is the most expressive indicator of humanness. It also constitutes the domain of human alienation from the rest of the living world. However, the entire living world shares and is subject to what may be called the ‘biological imperative’ with its Universal (exceptionless) Mechanism of the Grip of Biological Imperative. The Mechanism, which is a part of the Behavioural Gematon realized through the operations of sensing, acting, doing, performing, expressing, and communicating, lies at the base of all behaviour. It is additionally and quite naturally present in human linguistic-communicative behaviour. The latter is, in turn, subject to the Mechanism of the Grip of Linguistic Imperative. The so-called ‘state language’, or the language generated by the ‘soft’ institution of the state, is regarded as being a direct and most expressive instance of linguistic-communicative imperativeness, whose social reception tends to be loaded with a whole plethora of negative emotions.
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The article is a pragmalinguistic analysis of the inaugural addresses delivered by U.S. presidents from 1981 to 2021. The study was conducted using Voyant Tools, a computer software used in corpus linguistics. Four aspects/parameters of the text that affect its level of complexity and thus the level of assimilation of the message (reading ease) were examined. The analysis included (1) lexical density; (2) average sentence length; (3) readability indices including: Gunning Fog, Flesch-Kincaid and SMOG Index; and (4) a tag cloud (cirrus). The point of reference is the classical Ciceronian concept of the Ideal Speaker, which assumes that the political communicator is both erudite, and linguistically competent, encompassing Latin terms sapientia (the personification of widsdom) and eloquentia (the art of oratory). It boils down to an assumption that a fully competent political actor knows the rules of making speeches so as to reach both elites (Latin: optimates) and ordinary citizens (Latin populares). Using a pragmalinguistic approach, it was questioned whether the presidential addresses analyzed provide evidence that the communicators delivering them meet the criteria, fitting into the role of the ideal orator.
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Nicolae Bălcescu's correspondence provides us with valuable material on the configuration of the norms of literary language in Wallachia between 1838 and 1852. The letters reveal a series of linguistic features (phonetic, morphological and lexical) that are important for the history of the Romanian literary language in the 19th century, a century that was primarily identified with the confrontations related to the creation and imposition of the supra-dialectal norm, which acted to remove from the language strictly regional and archaic elements. We also note the writer's contribution to the development and modernisation of literary vocabulary in general at a time when all the problems of literary language were subordinated to the idea of transforming it into a modern instrument in terms of its expressive possibilities and national unity, responding to the needs of an evolving culture.
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The rich imaginative world promoted by the Southeast European literature abounds in frivolous female figures, the beautiful ones touched by the same tragedy that marked this space. Part of the structure of a collective, the frivolous women are characters met with conflicting attitudes: either they are marginalized or stigmatized by society, or they are accepted, through a compromise, as a necessary evil. Mysterious, but also extroverted, they are repudiated and assimilated at the same time, thus becoming outcasts in a space dominated by an archaic worldview which rejects sexuality and, in general, any expression of femininity. Regarded as “carpe diem” women, they represent a type of femininity that lives in the moment and rejects, through attitude at least, the old-fashioned mentality of society.
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In 2016, Tatiana Țîbuleac publishes her first novel, Vara când mama a avut ochii verzi, a novel that focuses on interpersonal relationships. The male character Aleksy is defined by his relationship to the world he knows. Aleksy highlights the category of the outsider. Therefore, the character's way of being is outlined through the memories. Aleksy is defined by a marginal identity, given his childhood and adolescent experiences. Aleksy is the character who, through remembrance, seeks reconciliation with the past. Thus, the novel follows Aleksy's transformations, which are supported by the dialogue he has with his mother.
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The aim of this research is to analyse the intriguing figure of Zogru, the eponymous charachter of Doina Ruști’s novel. Unlike the vampires from the traditional culture, this quasi-vampire, rather a spirit than a monstrous appearance, Zogru is the perfect sample of his creator’s type of fantastic. Humanized, caught between history and time, the green spirit deconstructs the viral image of the blood-addicted Dracula, showing that even a spectral presence can be a part of the world’s mesmerizing creation. Zogru is not afrid of garlic or of the sing of the cross, but the only element of the fantastic prop that is able to punish him is the platan wood. The narrative and imaginary economy of this novel is easily attached to the magical realism, fictional frame that allows literature to live between reality and phantasy.
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Learning one or several foreign languages has become more than just a necessity in the last few years. This is the reason why we are searching for the best teaching methods. Among these, every teacher must be looking for the suitable ones for their students. In this article, I am referring to the linguistic games, because in the beginning, they were not used very often, only in the extra-curricular activities. After they proved how efficient they are for a proper communication in a foreign language, more teachers began to introduce them in their courses.
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Essay by Péter Cseke on the works of Géza Páskándi.
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Inspired by the remarkable personage of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his transition from comedian and actor to an inspirational leader admired around the world, this paper will examine the similar fate of Hal/Henry V in Shakespeare’s second Henriad. The focus will be on Henry’s comic “career”, prior to ascending the throne, “slumming” with Falstaff and his followers, in particular in Henry IV Part One. There will be an attempt to demonstrate how Henry, contrary to expectations, makes profitable use of his time to “learn the ropes”. Henry in his interactions with Falstaff and others employs a wide range of comic techniques: jokes, insult comedy, imitations, political satire, etc. In contrast, however, with Zelensky who has bravely rallied his country and inspired the world with resistance to a larger aggressor in a defensive war, Henry V does the exact opposite invading neighbouring France on the most flimsy of pretexts. Although lionized in many productions as a great military leader, icon of Englishness and man of the people, this paper will argue for his ultimate failure as a leader, failing to heed the lessons of his comic “apprenticeship”, in stark contrast to Zelensky.
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The paper analyses verbal structures employed in 16 translations of Psalm 20 coming from Old, Middle, Early Modern and Late Modern English periods, spanning over ten centuries, with a view to determining the principles of mood selection in each of the psalter translations and observing any diachronic shifts in this respect. The major finding of the study is that grammatical choices seem to lie at the intersection of language change and the type of translation aimed at by the translators rather than reside in the source text underlying the rendition. The changes in the grammatical structure of the language inevitably surface in the text of the translation unless they are blocked by the overriding principle of formal faithfulness to the original, resulting in such marked choices as adherence to the subjunctive in main clauses in a Late Modern English rendition. The paper is a preliminary step in a larger diachronic study of the subjunctive in English and its findings suggest that it is possible to investigate the change in mood selection also on the basis of linguistic material gathered in biblical translations.
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This article looks at two turn-of-the-century neo-Victorian works – Tipping the Velvet (1998) by Sarah Waters and Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem (1994) by Peter Ackroyd. Both novels offer a detailed depiction of cross-dressing and theatre in the latter part of the nineteenth century and its effects on the main characters. The article analyses each work individually to sufficiently examine significant relationships and their impact on the main heroines’ character formation. Furthermore, it looks at gender performativity in the Victorian setting and the unique environment of the music halls. As demonstrated, the examined characters achieve liberation by occupying both male and female spheres and by refusing to propagate the strict rules encompassing gender binaries. As a result, both characters are able to freely explore their possibilities while wearing male clothes and arrive at a more authentic and well-rounded image of who they are.
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This contribution examines nine lessons from the Office of the Dead, foundin a group of English translations of the Book of Hours. The text of the lessons comesfrom six chapters of the Book of Job and therefore constitutes scriptural content ofthis medieval prayer book. Selected for this analysis are four primers as well as thetwo vernacular versions of the Bible available at that time, namely the Early andLate Version of the Wycliffite Bible (cf. Dove 2007). As far as the primers are concerned, three of them have received an edition, while New Haven, Yale UniversityLibrary, MS Beinecke 360, which is examined in this contribution, still remains to beedited and analyzed in depth. This study attempts to establish the textual traditionof its non-psalmic scriptural passages as well as that of other primers. This will beachieved by performing comparative analysis expressed by objective mathematicalvalues, with the results presented in tabular form and illustrated with fragmentsof the actual text. The analysis performed in this paper will shed some light on thecomplicated history of scriptural content of the selected English primers.
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